The Argument in 30 Seconds
Page builders like Elementor are no longer necessary for professional WordPress development. Full Site Editing has crossed the production-ready threshold, and the performance gains alone justify the migration effort.
"While most WordPress developers still rely on page builders like Elementor, Full Site Editing in 2025 delivers comparable design flexibility with significantly better performance and no plugin dependency."
That is the thesis. If you are still reaching for Elementor by default, this post will explain why that reflex is now costing you.
What You Will Learn
- The Evolution How FSE matured from "not ready" to production powerhouse between 2021 and 2025.
- The Hidden Costs What page builder dependency actually costs you in updates, conflicts, and lock-in.
- The Data Real performance numbers from an actual Elementor-to-FSE migration.
- The Forecast Where WordPress development is heading and what that means for your current stack.
The 2025 Reality Check: WordPress Page Building Has Changed
The criticism of early Gutenberg was valid. In 2019, it was clunky. In 2021, it was frustrating. Anyone who told you to abandon Elementor for Gutenberg in those years was either lying or delusional. The tools were not ready.
They are ready now.
The gap between WordPress 6.0 and WordPress 6.7 is not incremental. It is categorical. Full Site Editing in its current form bears little resemblance to the half-baked experiment it was three years ago.
The FSE Evolution: 2021 to 2025
First block themes. Site Editor was experimental. Most developers laughed and kept using Elementor.
Style variations. Better typography controls. Query Loop block. Still rough around the edges.
Distraction-free mode. Fluid typography. Pattern management. The "usable" threshold crossed.
Font Library. Block Hooks. Data Views. Interactivity API. The "preferable" threshold crossed.
Twenty Twenty-Five. Design tools parity. Performance-first architecture. The "why would you not" threshold.
The Hidden Costs of Page Builder Dependency
Elementor works. That is not the argument. The argument is that "works" comes with a cost that most developers stopped calculating years ago.
Update Anxiety
Every Elementor update is a prayer. Will the template break? Will the widget render? The plugin creates a dependency you have to manage forever.
Plugin Conflicts
Page builders touch everything. CSS, JavaScript, the database. The more plugins you add, the more opportunities for mysterious breakage.
Vendor Lock-in
Your content is stored in Elementor shortcodes. Disable the plugin and your pages become cryptic markup. You are not renting a tool; you are renting your own content.
The "Elementor Is Easier" Fallacy
I hear this constantly. "But Elementor is just easier." Easier for what, exactly? Easier for the developer who learned it in 2018 and never updated their skills? That is not a feature of Elementor. That is inertia.
The modern block editor with Twenty Twenty-Five provides drag-and-drop layout, global styles, reusable patterns, and responsive controls. The interface has caught up. The learning curve argument expired sometime around WordPress 6.4.
If your comparison is "Elementor in 2025 versus Gutenberg in 2020," then yes, Elementor wins. But that is not a fair comparison. That is a memory.
The Missing Link: What the Page Builder Debate Ignores
Most comparisons between Elementor and FSE focus on features. Can you make columns? Check. Can you add animations? Check. Can you style buttons? Check. This misses the point entirely.
The real cost of page builders is not performance, though that matters. It is the development workflow and the long-term maintainability of your content.
What Surprised Me During Migration
When I migrated my production site from Elementor to FSE, I expected the performance gains. What I did not expect was how much cleaner the development experience became. No more hunting through Elementor settings panels. No more wondering which widget controlled what. Just HTML structure with block attributes. Readable. Debuggable. Sane.
The Mental Model Shift
Elementor thinks in "widgets" and "templates." FSE thinks in "blocks" and "patterns." The difference is not semantic. Blocks are composable, portable, and standards-based. Widgets are proprietary abstractions that only exist within the plugin ecosystem.
When you build with blocks, you are building with WordPress. When you build with Elementor widgets, you are building with Elementor. One is a foundation. The other is a dependency.
Content Portability: A Concrete Example
[elementor-template id="1234"]
Disable Elementor? This becomes meaningless text. Switch page builders? Your content stays behind.
<!-- wp:paragraph --><p>Your content.</p><!-- /wp:paragraph -->
Disable Gutenberg? The HTML remains. Switch themes? The content travels with you. This is the web, not a walled garden.
The Future-Proofing Argument
WordPress core is betting everything on blocks. Every major update improves the block editor. Every new feature is block-first. Automattic has made the strategic direction crystal clear.
Page builders are now swimming against the current. They must constantly reverse-engineer core changes and maintain compatibility with a moving target. Some will keep up. Others will not. Either way, you are betting on a third party to match the pace of core development indefinitely.
Native blocks do not have this problem. They are the current.
Data-Backed Proof: Performance Comparison Results
Arguments are nice. Data is better. Here are the numbers from an actual migration: a marketing site with 12 pages, modest traffic, standard hosting. Same content. Same visual design. Different underlying architecture.
Testing Methodology
Tests conducted using PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and WebPageTest. Each page tested 5 times with median values recorded. Desktop and mobile metrics measured separately. Both sites used identical hosting (managed WordPress), no CDN, and no caching plugins to isolate the architectural differences.
Core Web Vitals Comparison
| Metric | Elementor | FSE (Twenty Twenty-Five) | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | 3.2s | 1.4s | 56% |
| First Input Delay (FID) | 180ms | 45ms | 75% |
| Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) | 0.18 | 0.02 | 89% |
| Time to Interactive (TTI) | 5.8s | 2.1s | 64% |
Page Weight and Requests
| Resource | Elementor | FSE | Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Page Weight | 2.8 MB | 890 KB | 68% |
| HTTP Requests | 87 | 32 | 63% |
| JavaScript | 1.2 MB | 180 KB | 85% |
| CSS | 420 KB | 95 KB | 77% |
The Business Impact
A 56% improvement in LCP directly affects SEO rankings. Google has been explicit about Core Web Vitals as ranking factors. Faster pages also convert better. Studies consistently show that every 100ms of latency costs conversions. The performance gap is not academic. It is revenue.
Why the Difference Is So Dramatic
Elementor loads its JavaScript and CSS on every page load, even when features are not used. It renders content through JavaScript, adding processing time. It generates inline styles for every element, bloating the DOM.
FSE with a block theme like Twenty Twenty-Five renders clean HTML and CSS. No JavaScript required for layout. Styles are generated once and cached. The architecture is fundamentally lighter.
You could optimize Elementor. Add caching plugins. Defer scripts. Strip unused CSS. But that is fighting the architecture. With FSE, you start light. Optimization is gravy, not necessity.
Future Forecast: Where WordPress Development Is Heading
Predictions are dangerous. They age poorly. I am making them anyway because the trajectory is clear enough that hedging would be dishonest.
The WordPress Roadmap Is Block-Centric
WordPress core development is organized around Phase 2 (customization), Phase 3 (collaboration), and Phase 4 (multilingual). All of these phases assume blocks as the foundation. Classic themes are in maintenance mode. Classic editor is a compatibility plugin, not a supported pathway.
Automattic is not subtle about this. Matt Mullenweg has repeatedly stated that the block editor is the future of WordPress. The investment in Gutenberg development dwarfs everything else. When the platform owner tells you where they are heading, you should probably listen.
Consolidation Pressure on Page Builders
The page builder market has already started consolidating. Smaller players are disappearing or pivoting. The economics are brutal: maintain compatibility with an increasingly capable core, or watch your feature advantage evaporate.
Elementor will survive. It has the market share and resources to adapt. But the business model will shift from "essential tool" to "power user option." The default answer to "how do I build a WordPress site" is moving from "install a page builder" to "use the block editor."
AI-Assisted Block Creation
The AI angle is interesting. Tools like AgenticWP can generate content directly into native blocks. No intermediary layer. No widget translation. The AI writes what WordPress understands natively.
Page builders add a translation layer that AI must navigate. Native blocks are simpler to generate, simpler to validate, simpler to modify. As AI-assisted content creation becomes standard, the architectural simplicity of blocks becomes another advantage.
Strategic Timeline
| Year | Predicted Shift | Your Strategic Priority |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | FSE achieves feature parity for 80% of use cases | Start new projects on FSE. Evaluate migration for existing sites. |
| 2026 | Page builder market share declines significantly | Complete critical migrations. Develop FSE expertise. |
| 2027 | Page builders become niche tools, not defaults | FSE-first development is the expected standard. |
These predictions could be wrong. The timeline could stretch. Elementor could innovate in ways nobody expects. But the direction is not changing. The question is not whether FSE will dominate, but when.
Summary of Key Predictions
For those who scrolled to the end, here are the core predictions in scannable form.
Full Site Editing has crossed the production-ready threshold. The "wait and see" period is over.
Performance gains from FSE are substantial enough to affect SEO rankings and conversion rates.
Page builders will shift from default tools to niche options by 2027.
Native blocks provide better content portability and future-proofing than proprietary page builder formats.
AI-assisted content creation will accelerate the shift to block-based development.
Building with Native Blocks?
AgenticWP generates content directly into WordPress blocks. No page builder required. No shortcode lock-in. Just native content that works with any block theme and stays portable forever.