Two years ago, Elementor was first launched into the world. During the first year, we mainly focused on getting the word out. We knew we had the best tool, and needed people to know about it. 

The second year, however, posed a greater challenge: making Elementor the leading solution for professional web designers. We tackled this ambitious task via different approaches: developing Elementor beyond the page builder level, making significant UI improvements, and releasing features specifically oriented to improving the designer workflow. These are just some of our actions that helped Elementor grow from 100K active installs at the end of year one, to 900K+ active installs today.

So let’s dive in and look back at the second year of Elementor’s development.

What we accomplished

Top Plugin

Elementor is the 39th most popular plugin. We weren't even in the top 100 a year ago, and our trajectory looks promising

100+ YouTube Videos​

We greatly improved the quality and quantity of our YouTube videos. We built an in-house studio, set up professional recording equipment and managed to create dozens of helpful videos, which were viewed over 3 million times. These videos helped us grow our following to 25K+ YouTube subscribers - more than 3 times what we had at the end of year one.

17,000+ Members in Facebook Group​

Since the start of Elementor, we made a conscious decision to invest in building our Facebook group. I have to give an honorable mention here to Verdi Heinz, Ike Ten, Barna Buxbaum, Mor Cohen, Siggi Becker, and Menny Benady, who devote considerable time and brain power to maintain the many challenges that managing such a heterogeneous group involves.

Elementor Available in 50+ Languages​

Elementor is one of the top 10 most translated plugins in WordPress. We want to bring better design to every WordPress user, regardless of their language or origin. If you want to help with the translation efforts, visit our plugin's translation page.

Developer Resources & Github Activity

This year, we released a complete code reference for Elementor. We also further expanded our API and opened an entire developers website dedicated to theme and plugin developer tutorials. Our GitHub achievements are quite remarkable: 10,974 Commits, 2,494 closed issues, Starred 1,436 times, Forked 339 times, Watched by 128 GitHub users. More about the developer API

Elementor Add-ons and Themes

It is hard to precisely quantify the many plugins and themes developed to extend Elementor. A quick search in the WordPress repo reveals over 70 plugins that explicitly extend it, and many other popular and useful ones exist outside the repo. We've seen an explosion of Elementor themes as well in the past year, and we see more and more well crafted themes pop up everywhere.

How Elementor developed

Editor Interface

This year saw some major improvements to our interface, as well as some enhancements that were necessary to allow the extension of Elementor into the website building realm.

Theme Builder

A major portion of the year was spent developing the Theme Builder, and coming up with an entirely new and innovative process of building every part of a WordPress website.

This was a venture into the unknown and was the greatest challenge we ever faced. People have been used to building websites with code and themes for 15 years, and we were bold enough to challenge the status quo.

The past year’s accomplishments are both a testament to our commitment to our users, as well as our users’ commitment and belief in us.

The official launch of our WordPress theme builder was on Apr 16, 2018, not so long ago. We worked long and hard on this product, examining its solution from every angle.

Version 2 is still in development, and we have some really interesting features lined up to be released in the coming months.

Template Library

Elementor’s template library has expanded in size and improved in functionality. The library now has filtering, search, favorites, and easier import and export options. The most consequential improvement, however, came from introducing the new Blocks tab, which increases speed and productivity to your workflow when setting up a landing page or any other page on your website. Blocks go hand in hand with the release of our Theme Builder, since users need Blocks to quickly set up their header, footer, single post, archive page, and other areas of their site.

Features for WordPress Professionals

For the first versions of Elementor, we focused our efforts on features that all users can enjoy, newbies and professionals alike. For the second year, the emphasis shifted toward evolving Elementor as a tool for professional web designers.

This is apparent throughout this review but is most noticeable in features oriented explicitly towards professionals. Integrating to mail automation services, restricting users to only edit content or using code reference and developer API were much needed by Elementor professionals, and adequately addressed by the following releases.

The work is far from done in this area, and we have extensive plans to make Elementor more useful for professional web designers, developers and marketers that make their living from providing WordPress related services.

Focus on Design

Following the line of the previous idea, we released several features oriented explicitly towards web design professionals. From icon packs, custom fonts, hover effects to the call to action widget, we are making many efforts to put Elementor at the forefront of the design industry. This way, you never have to settle for bootstrap-looking websites, and can elevate your designs to a truly premium level without having to pour endless custom CSS code into your websites.

Widgets

Last but not least, we come to the rest of our design soldiers. Each one of them can be considered as a standalone plugin, and together they combine the most useful powerpack for designers.

What's Next?

In the following weeks, we will release the WooCommerce builder, as well as Copy Style and a few other surprises. Two years after launch, today Elementor is the established and growing brand we set out to create. Our vision continues far into the future, with many opportunities to strengthen what we’ve already built, while branching out into much needed and yet unexplored territory.

Don’t go just yet! Wish us a Happy Birthday, and tell us what kind of feature gifts you’d like to see next year.