Every small edit to your Elementor site means waiting for the editor to load. The add-ons need licences, and the person who knew the builder well has moved on. Meanwhile the block editor that comes with WordPress has grown up, and you are wondering whether to switch from Elementor to the block editor and stop depending on a plugin for every page.
It is a reasonable plan, and it is also a real project. There is no button that converts a builder page into blocks. What follows covers how to decide whether the move is worth it, how to rebuild one page at a time without breaking addresses or search settings, and why the builder should be the very last thing you remove. The same method works for Divi, WPBakery and most other page builders.
Is moving away from a page builder worth it for you?
Start here, because the honest answer is sometimes “not yet”. The move tends to pay off when:
- Most of your pages are text, images, a few buttons and a contact form.
- Nobody on your team edits complex layouts often.
- You pay for builder add-ons or a Pro licence mainly to keep a handful of features.
- You are already planning a new theme, or a refresh of the design.
- Editing is slow enough that people avoid updating the site.
It tends not to pay off when the builder is doing heavy lifting you would struggle to replace: complex landing pages built every month by a marketing person, dynamic templates, membership content, or a large number of pages that each need hand rebuilding. In that case, tidying the builder setup may serve you better than leaving it.
Speed is often the reason people raise, and it is a fair one, but it deserves its own look. Our comparison of page builder and block editor output explains where the difference comes from and when it matters.
What happens to your pages when the builder is gone
Everything else in the plan follows from one fact. A builder saves each page’s design in its own format, and only the builder can turn that format into the page your visitors see. If you deactivate it, the design disappears.
- Elementor keeps its layout data separately and usually saves a basic copy of the text in the normal page content as well. With Elementor off, pages usually show that plain text and images in a single column, with no layout.
- Divi and WPBakery have historically stored layouts as shortcodes. With the builder off, pages fill up with bracketed codes around your text.
Either way, nothing is deleted. Your words are still there to copy from. But visitors would see a broken page, which is why the rebuild has to happen while the builder is still active.
Take stock before you rebuild anything
Make a simple spreadsheet. It will become your checklist for the whole move.
- List every page built with the builder. In the Pages list, Elementor normally adds an “Elementor” label beside the title of each page it built. Include landing pages that are not in the menu.
- List the builder’s other parts. Headers and footers made in a theme builder, saved templates, global widgets, popups and forms. In Elementor, these are usually under Templates in the dashboard menu, though the menu layout changes between versions.
- List what each part depends on. An add-on widget for a price table, a builder form that sends enquiries, a slider. Each needs a replacement.
- Note the address and SEO settings of each page: the slug, the SEO title and meta description in Rank Math or Yoast SEO, and whether it is set to noindex.
- Rank the pages by importance. Start rebuilding with a simple, low-traffic page so you learn the block editor on something that does not matter much.
Check the theme first
Many builder sites run a minimal theme, such as Hello Elementor, whose job is to stay out of the builder’s way. Without the builder, that theme gives you very little to work with. So the move often means picking a theme that works well with the block editor, such as a recent default theme (a block theme) or a classic theme like Kadence, GeneratePress or Astra, and setting up its header, footer, fonts and colours.
That is a theme change in its own right, with its own risks. Our guide to changing your WordPress theme safely covers what survives a switch, and our overview of how block and classic themes differ helps you choose which kind to use. Do this on a staging copy, where you can have the new theme and the old builder pages side by side.
How to switch from Elementor to the block editor, page by page
The safest method keeps each page’s existing address, ID and SEO settings, so search engines and your menus never notice anything other than a new design.
- Back up the site and, ideally, work on a staging copy.
- Create a new draft page called something like “Rebuild – About us”. This is your workspace.
- Rebuild the content in blocks. Copy the text from the live page, then lay it out with Group, Columns, Cover, Image, Buttons and Heading blocks. Use block patterns from your theme where they fit. Upload images again only if you want different sizes; existing images in the Media Library can be reused.
- Preview it on desktop and on a phone, and compare it with the old page. Check every button and link.
- Copy all the blocks. In the block editor, open the options menu (the three dots at the top right) and choose Copy all blocks.
- Open the original page in the block editor. On a page built with Elementor, the block editor usually shows a notice with a button to go back to the WordPress editor instead of Elementor. Use it, remove the old plain copy of the content, and paste your blocks in.
- Reset the page template. In the page settings, change any builder template, such as Elementor Canvas or Elementor Full Width, to one from your theme. Those builder templates stop existing once the plugin is removed.
- Update the page, check it on the live address, then delete the draft workspace.
Because you edited the original page, its slug, its place in the menu and its SEO plugin fields stay as they were. Should a page genuinely need a new slug, point the old address at it with a permanent redirect, as described in redirecting an old WordPress page.
Replacing the builder’s extra features
- Headers and footers: rebuild them in the Site Editor (block themes) or the theme’s own Customizer settings (classic themes), then turn off the builder’s versions.
- Forms: set up a form plugin, send a test, and replace each builder form. Check that entries reach the right inbox.
- Repeated sections: a call-to-action band that appears on many pages is a good job for a synced pattern, so you edit it in one place.
- Popups and sliders: ask whether you still need them. Often a plain section does the job better.
Remove the builder last, and carefully
Only when the spreadsheet is fully ticked should the builder go. Before you deactivate it:
- Go through the Pages list again and confirm no page still carries the builder’s label. Check posts and any custom post types too.
- Check that no header, footer or popup from the builder is still active.
- Take a fresh backup.
- Deactivate the builder and its add-ons, but do not delete them yet.
- Visit every page in the spreadsheet as a logged-out visitor. Look for single-column layouts, stray codes or missing sections.
- Run a check with our broken link checker to catch links that pointed at builder templates or old landing pages.
- Leave the plugins deactivated for a few weeks. If nothing turns up, delete them. Check their settings for any option to remove stored data first, and decide whether you want that.
Mistakes that make the move harder
- Rebuilding everything at once. A page-by-page move lets you keep the live site normal throughout.
- Creating new pages with new slugs and forgetting to redirect the old ones.
- Losing SEO titles and descriptions because they were set on the old page and never copied.
- Swapping one builder for a stack of block plugins. Install one block collection at most, and only if core blocks fall short.
- Deleting the builder before checking old landing pages that are not in the menu but still get visitors from ads or emails.
The whole move is one of the bigger jobs in our WordPress site owner’s handbook, mostly because of the care it needs rather than any difficult step.
Frequently asked questions
Can a plugin convert Elementor pages into blocks automatically?
Some tools claim to, but results vary a lot, and the converted pages usually need cleaning up by hand. Builder layouts and blocks are built on different ideas, so a perfect one-to-one translation is rare. For a small business site with a modest number of pages, a careful manual rebuild is usually quicker to get right.
Can I use Elementor and the block editor on the same site while I move?
Yes. Each page is edited with one or the other, and both can live on the same site. That is what makes a page-by-page move possible. Keep track of which pages are finished so nobody edits an old builder version of a page you have already rebuilt.
What happens to the images I uploaded through Elementor?
They stay in the Media Library, because Elementor uses the normal WordPress uploader, so you can reuse them in blocks without uploading again. Background images set in a section’s style settings are the exception to watch: they do not appear in the page text, so note them during the rebuild and add them back, for example as a Cover block image.
What should I do with my Elementor Pro licence after the switch?
Once Elementor and Elementor Pro are deactivated and deleted, the licence is no longer needed on that site. If it covers other sites, keep it active for them. If it does not, you can let it run out at renewal. Keep a record of the account login in case you ever need old invoices.
A move like this does not have to be all or nothing. Our WordPress support team can take on the trickier pages, or check the site over before the builder is switched off, while you handle the rest.
Next in this series: How to Edit an Elementor Page Without Breaking It
