Is a WordPress page builder a bad idea for your business website?
If a web designer has ever told you your website is built on a “page builder”, it might have sounded like a warning. You’ll hear that they’re slow, bloated and a bit of a shortcut.
I build most of my sites with one. I think it’s the right call for small businesses, and I’ll show you why.
What a page builder actually is
It’s a tool inside WordPress that lets you lay out pages visually. You click on some text and change it. You swap an image. You add a new section without touching any code.
For you, that means changing a phone number or adding a new service doesn’t need a call to me. Not many clients change things often, but it’s there when you need it.
“But aren’t they slow?”
Some are. And for some sites they’re not the right fit. If I’m building an online shop, I use WordPress’s own block editor with Kadence Blocks instead. A shop carries a lot of extra features that weigh it down, so everything else needs to be as lean as possible. The trade-off is that the block editor isn’t as easy to edit as a page builder.
But around 90% of the sites I build are small service-based websites for local companies. For those, a page builder makes sense. You get a site that’s easy to edit, and the hit on speed is so small you’d barely notice it.
They’re also quick to build, which keeps your costs down.
My aim is for every page to fully load in under a second. Most of the time my sites come in below 0.75 seconds.
Don’t take my word for it
Here are three live sites I’ve built with Beaver Builder, each tested on GTmetrix (a free speed testing tool) from a server in London. It’s the homepage in every case.
| Site | Tested | Performance | Largest Contentful Paint | Fully loaded | Page size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alice Potter HR | 3 Sep 2026 | 100% | 454ms | 513ms | 465KB |
| Olovus | 20 Aug 2026 | 100% | 619ms | 620ms | 633KB |
| Stovetastic | 17 Jul 2026 | 100% | 622ms | 626ms | 742KB |
Largest Contentful Paint is when the main part of the page appears. Fully loaded is when everything has finished.
All three get an A grade. Nothing holds up any of the pages while they load (GTmetrix calls this Total Blocking Time, and it’s 0ms on every one). Nothing jumps about as they load either (layout shift is 0.03 or lower, and Google counts anything under 0.1 as good).
The slowest of the three is fully loaded in 626ms. That’s under the 0.75 seconds I usually hit, and well inside my one second aim.
Structure scores are 95 to 96%, not 100. GTmetrix always finds a few small things to tidy, like caching (keeping copies of files so they load faster next time) and a CDN (a network that serves your files from somewhere close to the visitor). It’s also one test on one page each, so treat it as a snapshot rather than a promise. The reports are linked above if you want to check them yourself.
Why this matters for your business
A fast site means visitors aren’t left waiting, and Google does look at page speed when it decides who to show.
A quicker build means a lower cost for you. I’m not hand-coding every section from scratch.
And I look after over 70 sites, all built in the same way. I know roughly how yours is put together before I even open it, so I’m not wasting time working out how it was built.
Why I use Beaver Builder
I’ve been using Beaver Builder for over a decade. It always gets a laugh when I say the name.
At my last company we were looking for the right page builder. Beaver Builder had only been out for about six months, but from the research it just seemed to work. We went with it and never looked back.
It’s stable. I’ve had very few issues over the years. The team don’t release a load of updates all the time, which you might think is a negative. For me it’s a massive plus, because I want building and updating sites to get easier, not more fiddly.
I can also build custom modules for it, so the sites I build don’t all follow the same look. I build a lot of my own tools to benefit my clients.
Elementor went heavy on marketing and a good-value deal, and that got their numbers up. That’s a fair way to play it. But does it make it a better product? I don’t believe so. It’s why I stick with one I know inside out.
What about being locked in?
This is the fair criticism, and there’s no way round it. Most page builders tie your site to them, because the tools that make editing easy belong to the builder. The block editor (Gutenberg) is the exception, because it’s built into WordPress.
My clients’ sites are tied to Beaver Builder. If one left, the site could be moved over to the block editor, but it would need some changes and a bit of tweaking. I’ve not really had anyone with a Beaver Builder site leave. But when I take someone on now, I make sure they understand what moving the site away would cost, and what they’d need to pay for any premium plugins.
The other side of it is finding a developer who knows the builder. People with Beaver Builder sites tend to find me because of it. I take on sites built with other builders too, and some of those are hard work.
It’s not right for everything
My own business website isn’t built with a page builder. It’s on Gutenberg and Kadence Blocks, but only because I wanted to learn more about the block editor and my own site is the perfect place to test. It wasn’t because it’s easier or better. The first site I did for myself was actually built with Beaver Builder.
If a page builder isn’t the right fit for what you need, I’ll tell you.
Check your own site
Take your homepage and run it through GTmetrix. It’s free. Look at the Largest Contentful Paint and the Fully Loaded Time. Under a second is good. If yours is several seconds, it’s worth asking why.
If your site feels slow, or you’re not sure what it’s built on, tell me about your website. I read every message myself and reply within a day.
