Switching your core toolset isn't a decision you take lightly. Here's why I made the change, and why I haven't looked back.
Switching the tool you build websites with isn’t a small decision. When you have client sites running on a particular platform, dependencies everywhere, and a workflow you’ve spent years developing, changing course takes more than a vague feeling that something better might exist.
I made the switch from Elementor to Breakdance in 2023. It wasn’t impulsive. I tested Breakdance properly before committing, and I only moved once I was confident it was genuinely better, not just different. Having now built all my new client sites on Breakdance, and migrated a significant number of existing ones, I can say clearly that it was the right call.
This article explains why. Not as a technical comparison for other developers, but as an honest account for anyone who has an Elementor-built website and has started wondering whether something is off.
Let me be clear: Elementor isn’t a bad tool. It’s popular for a reason, and I built websites with it for years that I was proud of. It opened up WordPress website building to a generation of designers who didn’t want to write code, and it genuinely changed how the industry worked.
But after several years of using it, the frustrations became impossible to ignore.
The code it produces is bloated. Elementor loads a significant amount of CSS and JavaScript on every page, whether that code is needed or not. The more complex a site becomes, the more it accumulates. For clients, this translates directly into slower websites. And slow websites lose visitors before they’ve had a chance to see what the business offers. This isn’t a minor technical concern. Page speed is a confirmed Google ranking factor, and slow sites perform worse in search results as well as in user experience.
Updates broke things regularly. This was the frustration that wore me down most. A routine Elementor update would introduce a conflict somewhere, a layout would shift, a popup would stop working, a mobile view would break. Then I’d spend hours diagnosing and fixing something that had been fine the previous week. Every client site carried this risk, and it’s not a risk you can explain to a client in a way that sounds acceptable.
The workflow felt increasingly clumsy. After a certain point, Elementor started to feel dated. The interface, the logic, the way elements were structured. It worked, but it didn’t feel natural. Working in it felt like pushing against the tool rather than working with it.
Everything required an extra plugin. Mega menus, popups, advanced forms, custom post type displays. Each one required an additional plugin, often a paid one, which added complexity, additional update risk, and more potential for conflicts.
The direction of development became a concern. Beyond the day-to-day frustrations, I became increasingly uncomfortable with where Elementor’s development seemed to be heading. The feedback the user community had been raising for years, the bug reports, the feature requests, the persistent issues, didn’t appear to be the primary driver of where the product was going.
It felt like a platform being steered more by investor expectations and commercial growth targets than by what the people actually building websites with it needed. That’s a position any business can take, but it doesn’t inspire confidence in a tool you’re committing your clients’ websites to for the long term.
Elementor has introduced performance improvements over the past couple of years, and they’ve made a genuine difference. But the community evidence as of 2025 and 2026 is consistent: getting good performance from an Elementor site still requires significant additional optimisation work, third-party plugins, caching layers, and manual configuration that a cleaner builder doesn’t need in the first place.
I tested Breakdance thoroughly before making any commitment. What I found was a page builder that had clearly been built by people who thought carefully about how professional web designers actually work.
It’s also worth saying upfront that the choice of page builder is, to a significant degree, a personal one. Different tools suit different working styles, and what feels intuitive to one person can feel clunky to another. I’m not suggesting Breakdance is objectively right for everyone. What I can say is that when I tested it seriously, it felt immediately like a tool designed for how I think about building websites. That matters. A tool you enjoy working in produces better results than one you’re constantly fighting, and after years of increasingly fighting Elementor, the feeling of working with the grain rather than against it was genuinely significant.
The code quality is better. Breakdance outputs lean, clean code. It loads only what a page actually needs. For clients, this means faster websites from the outset, without the performance optimisation work that became a routine part of every Elementor build.
The workflow feels right. Breakdance feels like a tool designed for how web design works today. The logic is intuitive, the interface is clean, and working in it feels efficient rather than effortful. Across a full website build, the difference in time and mental overhead is significant.
Almost everything is already included. Mega menus, popups, forms, WooCommerce layouts, custom post type displays, motion effects. The vast majority of what professional website builds require is built into Breakdance itself. The dependency on a collection of additional plugins, with all the update risk that brings, largely disappears.
Updates don’t break things. In the time I’ve been using Breakdance, I haven’t had an update break a client site. That sounds like a low bar, but anyone who has managed multiple Elementor sites through major updates will understand exactly why it isn’t.
Accessibility is taken seriously. Breakdance builds in proper semantic HTML, ARIA labels, keyboard navigation, and focus states as standard. This matters both for users who rely on assistive technology and for Google, which is paying closer attention to accessibility as part of its quality assessment.
If you’re reading this as someone with an existing Elementor site, you might be wondering whether any of this is relevant to you.
It depends on what you’re experiencing. If your site is slow and you’ve been told performance is hard to improve without rebuilding it, that’s a genuine Elementor-related issue in many cases. If you’ve had layouts break after updates and spent time getting things fixed, that’s a familiar pattern. If your mobile view requires constant manual attention, that’s a workflow problem the tool is contributing to.
Not every Elementor site needs to be moved. Some are well-built, well-maintained, and performing fine. But if you’ve noticed any of the above and wondered whether it’s supposed to be like this, the honest answer is: no, it isn’t.
I offer a migration service that handles the move from Elementor to Breakdance properly. Not a rushed conversion that recreates the same site in a different builder, but a considered rebuild that takes the opportunity to improve performance, structure, and mobile experience at the same time. If that sounds relevant to your situation, you can find out more about the Elementor to Breakdance migration service.
If you have an Elementor website, these are worth checking before assuming everything is fine:
How does your site score on Google PageSpeed Insights? A score below 70 on mobile is worth investigating. Below 50 is a problem that is actively costing you visitors and rankings.
When did you last apply Elementor updates? If you’ve been delaying them because you’re worried about breakage, that hesitation is itself a warning sign.
How does your site look on a device you haven’t specifically tested it on? Not the one you checked during the build, but a different phone, a different screen size.
How long does your home page take to load on a mobile connection? Open it on your phone with WiFi turned off. If it takes more than three seconds, visitors are already leaving before they’ve read a word.
Have you had to ask someone to fix something that broke after an update? Once is bad luck. More than once is a pattern worth taking seriously.
The decision to switch wasn’t about chasing something new for its own sake. It was the accumulating weight of frustrations that had become part of every working week: slow sites, broken updates, a clunky workflow, plugin dependency, and a growing unease about where the tool was heading and why.
Breakdance resolved all of those things. The sites I build now are faster, more stable, and built more efficiently. For clients, that means a better website with less ongoing risk. For me, it means less time firefighting and more time building.
If you’re on an Elementor site and some of what I’ve described sounds familiar, it’s worth a conversation about whether a migration makes sense for your situation. You can find out more about how the process works here.
It can, yes. Elementor loads a significant amount of CSS and JavaScript regardless of whether a particular page needs it. On complex sites with multiple plugins, this accumulates. The result is slower load times, which affect both user experience and Google rankings. It’s one of the most common performance issues I encounter on existing client sites.
Elementor operates as part of an ecosystem of plugins that need to work together. When Elementor updates, it can introduce conflicts with other plugins, including its own add-ons. This is a structural issue with how the platform is built rather than a problem with any individual update. It’s something I experienced consistently before switching, and it was one of the main reasons I made the change.
For my work, yes. Breakdance produces cleaner code, includes more functionality natively, updates without breaking things, and offers a more efficient workflow. That said, the right page builder is partly a personal choice that depends on working style. What I can say from my own experience is that Breakdance is consistently the better fit for the professional website builds I do for small and medium businesses.
Both are WordPress page builders that allow websites to be built visually without writing code. The main differences are in code quality, Breakdance produces leaner and faster output, built-in functionality, Breakdance includes significantly more natively without additional plugins, and update stability.
Breakdance is also a newer platform built with current web standards from the ground up, rather than having evolved incrementally from an earlier era of WordPress development.
Yes. I offer a migration service that handles the move properly, rebuilding the site in Breakdance while improving performance, structure, and mobile experience in the process. You can find out more about how that works on the Elementor to Breakdance migration page.
Done properly, a migration should improve rather than harm rankings. A faster, better-structured site with cleaner code gives Google more to work with, not less. The important thing is that the migration handles redirects correctly, preserves URL structure, and doesn’t strip out content or metadata in the process, which is why it’s worth having it done by someone who understands both the technical and SEO implications.
Page experience in Google Search results — Google’s documentation on how page speed and experience affect rankings
Core Web Vitals — the specific performance metrics Google uses to assess site quality
Google Search Essentials — the foundational rules every website should follow
SushiWP builds and manages websites for small businesses across Hampshire and the UK. Clear, jargon-free, and built to get you found and keep the enquiries coming.
