Is Divi Worth Buying? Read Before You Decide!
When we’re talking about fiscal responsibility, it’s crucial not to overspend on things you don’t need. It’s only human nature that we want to save as much money as possible to spend it on better things in the future, and in that; it’s important to make careful choices when building your website. It’s obvious that a huge portion of today’s business is conducted on the internet, especially now that a global pandemic has rendered us physically unapproachable – being able to buy and sell online is instrumental in ensuring our safety. Creating your website for these purposes can be tricky, and you’ll want it to be as good as it can get with spending the least amount of money on it. In this, you’ll be naturally attracted to designing it on your own – and Divi is definitely one of the options, the question is: is Divi really worth buying?
Divi is absolutely worth buying. If you’ve decided to build and maintain your website on your own, paying $249 for lifetime access (or $89 a year) isn’t a bad option. It’s just important to get creative and have a set-out plan before you start your design.
DIY (Do It Yourself) online tools have become popular because the user doesn’t have to depend on a web designer. Having someone else build your website can be exhausting since it means that you’ll mostly have to wait on feedback and give some back, prolonging the whole process. Unfortunately, not all of us are web designers – meaning that we still need our websites built and maintained, but we don’t know-how. This is where a lot of pages came to help, having their own web designers create online tools for web design, which we’re now able to use the same way children use play-doh. This ensures individuality and quickens the process.
Divi is one of these design framework presets, ready to use, so go check it out on their official website. In this article we’ll be answering questions about Divi, how much does it cost, is it good for SEO, how quick is it, can you use it with any theme, and is it worth its money (and why). Let’s get started.
How Much Does Divi Builder Cost?
Divi comes at two prices, $89 with a yearly payment plan and $249 for a lifetime. These prices were determined by Elegant Themes, the company behind Divi, and other themes. The prices are the same for every theme, and there’s even a 30-day free trial if you need to be convinced into buying it.
With the yearly deal, the package you receive includes access to Divi, Extra, Bloom, and Monarch (various themes the site is providing), hundreds of website packs, product updates, premium support, unlimited website usage, risk-free guarantee.
The lifetime deal is somewhat different, giving you access to Divi, Extra, Bloom, and Monarch (various themes the site is providing), hundreds of website packs, lifetime updates, lifetime support, unlimited website usage, a risk-free guarantee, and a one-time fee.
A lot of people wonder whether they can upgrade to a different package after signing up – the answer is yes, they can. You can upgrade any time after signing up, when logging in you’ll see a notice regarding the current package and instructions explaining how to upgrade.
If you cancel your subscription, your account will remain active for the remainder of your paid subscription (the remainder of your one-year term). After that, you’ll lose access to the member’s area and all new themes, theme updates, and tech support. The themes that you’ve already downloaded, however, are yours to be used forever.
Sometimes people want to buy a single theme and the option to edit it, instead of buying the whole package deal. This, unfortunately, isn’t an option. However, I think that $89 is more than a fair deal, even if you intend to use a single theme instead of the whole collection. At many other theme shops, you’ll pay more than $89 for a single theme, and in this deal, you get all themes for the same amount.
No matter if you are a beginner in the content writing business, are you writing 500 or 1000 words per article investing in Divi is a good idea.
Can You Use Divi Builder With Any Theme?
It’s important to be able to tell the difference between Divi Builder and the Divi Theme. In this article, we’re discussing Divi Builder, and the question that needs answering is: can you use Divi Builder with any theme?
Divi Builder can be used on other themes, as well. When you purchase a membership on Elegant Themes, you’ll see that you have access to both Divi Builder and Divi Theme. It’s important to know that the Divi Theme includes Divi Builder, and has everything you need to be wrapped into one theme. Once you’ve downloaded the Divi Theme, there’s no need to download Divi Builder as it’s already included.
You should feel free to use Divi Builder with other themes. If you feel that another theme gives you more options regarding a specific part of your site (for example header and footer), then you can install Divi Builder on it and it will work on that site.
Once you’ve installed Divi Builder, you’ll have all the same options you would have if you were using it with the Divi Theme – upload logo, add Google Analytics, CSS, fonts, customize buttons, footer font, etc.
Is Divi Fast?
It’s difficult to answer this question correctly. Elegant Themes have received a lot of complaints about their tools, especially Divi Builder being too slow. However, in 2019 they ran a series of updates, claiming that they sped it up. So, Divi’s now standing on some sort of uncharacteristically calm middle ground, where no one’s willing to define it as openly quick, but no one wants to say it’s slow either.
On January 14th 2018, Elegant Themes made a list of 20 Fastest Loading WordPress Themes in 2018, saying this “Divi now has an improved Google Page Speed score so you can be sure it will load fast.”
However, users still complained about Divi being slow after that.
Divi is not just any page builder – it takes the process of website design to a new level, allowing the user to design every part of the website visually, not depending on complicated third-party design software. This means that Divi requires more resources than other themes and builders. According to Elegant Themes “Divi has a lot of performance enhancements that have been added in previous updates that have made Divi sites (and the Divi Builder) run faster than ever.” – something that they’ve posted on their website, discussing this particular issue, on July 10th 2019.
It’s ideal to have your webpage load in 3 seconds or less, and Divi’s faced issues in meeting these requirements, as a lot of users complained that the loading time sometimes took even double that time (which is sort of silly, considering that it’s only 6 seconds).
On June 6th 2019, Elegant Themes released an official statement, saying this “Today we are releasing major performance improvements for Divi that will both speed up your website and the Divi Builder. These performance improvements are significant, reducing front end page load times by up to 60% in most cases. That means pages now load more than twice as fast as before. “
This was said a month prior to the previous quote, stating that Divi is no longer slow. Since then, Elegant Themes have released a lot of updates, ensuring better loading speed.
On September 11th 2019 (somewhat insensitively), Elegant Themes have released a final statement on the issue, saying “Today we are releasing a performance enhancement that greatly reduces load times and peak memory usage for the Divi Builder. This means each time you use the builder you will spend much less time waiting for the page to load and the builder content to render. Combined with the Divi Builder options cache and PHP definitions cache released earlier this year, complex layouts can be loaded with surprising speed.”
The reason I’m covering this topic meticulously is because this issue has been raised several times, and it’s rarely been addressed by anyone except Elegant Themes themselves.
Is Divi Good For SEO?
Given the importance SEO poses on visibility, traffic, leads and conversion, it’s no wonder that website owners ask this question when choosing on builders and themes. It’s natural that questioning whether Divi is good for SEO is a topic that’s regularly brought to the table when discussing this builder.
A great number of web designers claim that Divi is actually bad for SEO, but it should be noted that this is a common argument web designers make when discussing any page builder (mostly because it puts them out of business). They always make complaints about two similar things: shortcodes and a slow website.
Shortcodes make the entire design process much faster and more valuable. This ensures that Divi pages can be set up so quickly, they’re basically appearing every day. However, this often leads to bloating of the site, while coding from scratch is actually much cleaner. Coding, on the other hand, increases the chances of mistakes, so both schools of thought have some reasonable credibility to them.
Shortcodes aren’t bad for SEO, as search engines only see whatever is inside the shortcode, not the shortcode itself.
The second argument against Divi is that it makes your website slower, as all the shortcodes can add up and overload the site. However, this happens rarely, affecting websites with an amazing amount of flash elements and other outdated platforms.
Most statements about Divi being bad for SEO are conjecture and myth. There are instances where the builder might not offer the best SEO, but these issues can be solved. On top of that, Divi’s considered to be SEO friendly and maybe even better for SEO than some other themes.
Is Divi Worth The Money and Why?
It’s important to know you’re getting your money’s worth when you’re buying something. After all, taking into account the current economic crisis that was always bound to follow the pandemic, now might be more important than ever to take special care of your money. When purchasing a plan on Elegant Themes, you have two options: paying $249 for a lifetime plan, or paying $89 yearly. With this, you have the option to use any theme and builder available on Elegant Themes, not just Divi. However, since we’re discussing Divi, here’s why Divi is definitely worth the money you’ll be paying for it.
When it comes to choosing builders and themes for your website, there are several things one should think through thoroughly. Customer support should always be at the top of that list. Elegant Themes have been very professional about this, achieving great results. One customer reviewed them with “Elegant Themes is Without a doubt the best service and support I’ve ever met.
The level of willingness to crack and solve problems that arise is above and beyond all expectations.
They do this professionally until the customer is fully satisfied.
highly recommend.”, giving them a rating of five stars.
Another customer commented “I love the new support method that Elegant Themes have implemented. It makes it much easier to get support and speeds up time to get issues sorted. Thank you. And thank you to Eduard that figured out my issue which turned out to be stupid browser plugin related and not theme/server/plugin related. I would never have thought of that causing the problem I had. Shows the value of experience on the Support side and the value of going with a company that constantly develop, improve and support their products. Hats off to Elegant Themes.” – which earned them another five-star rating.
Being able to use the builder efficiently is a must. The whole reason people love builders like Divi is because it saves them money on web designers. The principle behind builders relies on the ability of the builder to mimic the job of a web designer, allowing anyone who might not be a web designer to design their own website. Most of these builders rely on simple drag-and-drop methods, choosing from color pallets, etc. Divi has certainly succeeded in this, following these comments.
One user commented “Divi is the KING when it comes to ease of web design. What used to take a week takes a few hours and now we’re all in with our personal goal to convert all of our clients’ websites to Divi…If anyone is complaining about Divi they are missing the big picture. We love DIVI :)” rewarding them with a five-star rating.
Another said “The best WordPress framework ever. No doubt about it. You will shout with joy. Get it and you’ll become a lifelong fan.” and they earned another five stars with this.
There are other reviews that may be useful to know, but first I’d like to state some facts of my own that I find important.
- Divi is a completely functional WordPress theme that works straight out of the box. This means that it doesn’t need any particular installation aside from what you would need to do with any other WordPress theme.
- It requires absolutely no experience in coding or in web design. Every customization is available through a user-friendly interface, one that’s been designed to accommodate amateurs.
- You do most of your customizing on the front end. This is actually a substantial advantage in comparison to traditional web design because you have a preview in real-time as you’re doing your customizations, meaning that you don’t have to wonder what your customization will look like. This way, you can solve problems before they even arise, and you can immediately reedit something that needs more work.
- Divi lets you build any type of design or layout imaginable, while still using the same theme.
The latter is an important advantage when comparing Divi to other builders: it doesn’t force any themes or designs on you. It rather lets you explore your own creativity, allowing you to fine-tune anything to your liking by using its many options.
Here are a few other interesting features in Divi: everything (and that’s literally everything) you see on the page is customizable, all layouts are mobile responsive, Divi comes with over 20 premade layouts out of the box, you can save your layouts and designs – exporting and importing them for use on other sites, and nearly everything in Divi works through drag and drop.
I believe that this is more than enough to prove that Divi really is worth its money, not to mention that you get access to all the other themes at Elegant Themes, as well (while at some other sites you wouldn’t even get a single builder for that kind of money).
If you need any more proving, there are plenty of reviews on Elegant Themes’s official site, and I recommend checking them.