Best WPBakery Page Builder Alternative for UK WordPress Sites

WPBakery Page Builder — sold for years under the name Visual Composer before a brand separation — holds the distinction of being one of the most widely installed WordPress plugins in the world. At its peak it shipped bundled with thousands of premium themes, which meant a huge proportion of WordPress sites built in the 2010s were built on it almost by default. At the time, the ability to drag rows, columns, and elements into place without writing PHP or CSS felt like a genuine productivity breakthrough, and for many agencies it was.

The problems that have accumulated since then are well documented in WordPress development circles. WPBakery stores its layout data as shortcodes — custom tags embedded directly in post content. Deactivate the plugin and those shortcodes are exposed as raw text throughout every page you built with it. The HTML it generates is verbose and poorly optimised; sites built on WPBakery consistently struggle with Core Web Vitals assessments, and no amount of caching can fully compensate for the underlying markup inefficiency. As Gutenberg has matured and alternatives like Elementor, Bricks, and bespoke WordPress development have raised the bar, WPBakery has become one of the most common reasons UK businesses approach agencies like Xpose, based in Norwich, for a site rebuild.

Why WPBakery’s shortcode architecture is a long-term liability

The shortcode system that WPBakery introduced was a pragmatic solution to a real WordPress limitation — at the time, the block editor did not exist and embedding layout logic in post content was one of the few options available. The consequence is that WPBakery layouts are inseparably bound to the plugin. Every column, row, button, and content element on a WPBakery-built page is represented by a shortcode tag. If WPBakery is removed, those tags are rendered as literal text on the page. This is not a configuration problem or a fixable edge case — it is an inherent property of how the plugin stores data.

For businesses that built sites on WPBakery during the 2010s, this architecture now represents a meaningful technical debt. Updates to the plugin sometimes break existing layouts. Compatibility with newer PHP versions, newer WordPress releases, and newer theme frameworks is not guaranteed. And because WPBakery’s shortcodes are not a standard format, no other tool can read them — there is no migration wizard, no export format, and no automated conversion path to Gutenberg blocks or any other system. Every page must be rebuilt by hand.

Comparing WPBakery alternatives: Elementor, Gutenberg, and Bricks

Elementor is the most straightforward replacement for WPBakery in terms of workflow — it is a visual drag-and-drop builder with a comparable feature set and a much larger community. Its output is considerably cleaner than WPBakery’s and it does not use shortcodes, storing layouts in a custom block format that is at least contained within the plugin’s own namespace rather than polluting post content. Elementor’s performance has historically been criticised, but recent versions have improved and, with proper configuration, Elementor sites can pass Core Web Vitals. It remains the go-to recommendation for clients who specifically want a visual builder and expect to edit pages themselves.

The native WordPress block editor (Gutenberg) is the most future-proof option for most UK businesses. Content created in the block editor is stored as standard WordPress blocks — a documented, supported format that any WordPress installation can render without any additional plugin. The full-site editing capabilities introduced in recent WordPress releases allow complete theme customisation through the block interface. It has a learning curve for clients accustomed to WPBakery’s column-drag interface, but for sites that need to be maintainable over the long term without recurring plugin costs, it is the strongest foundation. Bricks Builder sits between these options: it produces excellent clean code and is popular with developers who want visual flexibility, but it carries a licence cost and is most suited to developers rather than end clients.

Planning a WPBakery migration for your UK business site

Migrating away from WPBakery is a project, not a plugin swap. Because no automated conversion exists, the correct approach depends on the size of the site, the complexity of its layouts, and how much of the existing design you want to retain. For small sites with fewer than twenty pages, a migration to Gutenberg blocks or a bespoke WordPress theme can often be completed in a concentrated period of work. For larger sites, a phased approach — migrating the highest-traffic or most important pages first — is usually more practical.

The migration is also an opportunity. WPBakery sites built in the 2010s often carry design decisions, image treatments, and content structures that no longer reflect how the business presents itself. A full rebuild rather than a like-for-like migration allows those decisions to be revisited with fresh eyes and with current best practices for mobile performance, accessibility, and search visibility. UK businesses that have gone through this process consistently report that the rebuilt site performs better in search, converts better on mobile, and is easier for their team to maintain. Xpose handles WPBakery migrations for clients across the UK from our office in Norwich, covering everything from audit through to launch and post-launch support.

Our view on Wpbakery

We are a Norwich agency established in 2015, and we have worked with businesses on both sides of this comparison over the years. Our honest view: the right choice depends on your business, your team and where you want to be in two years — not on which platform is currently the most talked-about.

If you would like a straight opinion on which makes more sense for you — or whether you should leave the decision alone entirely and focus on something that will move the needle more — a free, no-pressure conversation is always available.