If you spend much time around WordPress at some point you’re likely to come across Elegant Theme’s, Divi. I currently manage a couple dozen divi sites that serve a variety of purposes. Divi is hands down one of the slickest looking page builders on the market today, and visually there is no denying that divi does an excellent job.
Divi is different from the previous builders we’ve looked at and will cover in it offers both a theme and plugin version. With that said, I personally have never worked on a site that used a separate theme with just the Divi builder. It’s usually where you see divi, the theme is typically always involved.
Price
Divi has one of I believe the best pricing models on the market that is friendly to those who purchase it. Most companies have gone to a multi-tear annual subscription model, divi currently offers two options: yearly access to everything for $89 or a one time, lifetime access, purchase of $249. Personally, I would suggest if you’re going to use divi to go with the lifetime purchase.
Usage
Personally in my career, while I as I mentioned above, manage multiple divi sites I’ve only every personally started two builds with it. When I was first introduced to divi it was from a lady who was giving a talk at a WordCamp. She had built her business totally on setting up sites for a nominal fee using only divi. Every site she spun up for her clients was a divi site. It was a great success for her and her clients. For the types of sites we typically built divi wasn’t the best option.
Until recently developing custom modules for divi meant taking a far different approach than other builder options. It was far more time consuming and that in it self took it out of consideration on projects. Divi recently release 3.1 which now includes a new developer API. After reviewing their documents it’s something that I will have to look deeper into and possibly try on a future build but for now I can’t give first hand knowledge on the experience there.
Drawbacks
Divi has at times been criticized for being slow, and even bloated. I have seen this myself on past projects but they have been working on stepping up their performance. Overall Divi is a great option, but like any other builder it’s a tool in the toolbox and you should make a right decision on when to use it, and Divi has a lot of times when it can be used.