Our company has been using Avada for about a year now and there’s a lot I absolutely love about the theme from a design standpoint (saved libraries, global elements/columns/section that updated across the site, ability to import saved libraries from other sites we’ve built) but I know that Avada is a bit of a bloated theme when it comes to the code and there’s a lot of negative opinions out there.
Are there any themes/builders you all would suggest that would improve site speed/be less bloated than Avada while allowing us to keep the design functions mentioned above? I’ve looked into Divi which seems to have all the same time saving design features but I know people here have complaints about that as well.
Any suggestions/advice would be appreciated!
[ad_2]
I’m currently also doing some research. Also worked with avada. It works for my use cases with some optimization, but i’m not getting constant good results on pagespeed. Mainly due to high main thread work and render reflows.
I read a lot of good things about kadence, but i have a feeling that you will quickly run into limitations with the free version and thus needing to pay for the pro version. Which is fine, but than you also have the option for a lifetime bundle. but that one is a bit steep on price. And I don’t know how my brain and the site owner feels about changing from workflow. Block editor really looks and feels different. So i am just slowly digesting it and see if it fits.
Bricks
Carbon Fields. Carbon Fields. Carbon Fields.
Are there any specific issues that you’re experiencing with the Avada builder? For example, site is loading slow on the front end for your visitors or you’re thinking you get better with other builders based on the online comments?
As far I know almost all builders are getting the same user feedback, you can check their forums / support groups, so it is really the question if other builder will fix specific problem that you might have.
Another thing is that switching builder is not smooth, most likely you would need to recreate content which you made using Avada builder (that applies to all builders when it comes to switching).
On a side note, upcoming Avada 8 will be a performance release – it will be completely refactored including the builder as well l, so you migh want to wait for that before doing the switch (explore other options in the mean time of course).
Checkout Breakdance builder. New super fast and packed with features
A corollary of “a poor workman blames his tools” is “a skilled craftsman can work with any tool.” So if you’re able to get good results then… eh, with a lot of work you can make good sites with Avada.
That said!!!
Since you’re only one year into Avada there are other, better choices to invest your time in. Almost anything except maybe the Enfold and X themes will be better. Even Divi.
Bricks and Breakdance are becoming extremely popular for good reason. They’re performant, flexible, and comprehensible to graphic designers, site owners, and other non-programmers.
But since
Bricks. The answer is always Bricks. Love that shit.
If you need to stick with a builder type of setup vs just custom WP, the best combo I’ve used is Elementor with a custom boilerplate (essentially a bare minimum theme). This will get rid of a lot of bloat, give you the functionality you’re looking for and keep things relatively simple.
I just dove into Oxygen. Out of the box with their Atmoic site on my VPS hosting, Google PageSpeed scored it a 92 on performance. Really liking what I’ve seen so far.