Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

CodePen VS Elementor

Compare CodePen VS Elementor and see what are their differences

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CodePen logo CodePen

A front end web development playground.

Elementor logo Elementor

Elementor is a front-end drag & drop page builder for WordPress.
  • CodePen Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30
  • Elementor Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-04

CodePen features and specs

  • Real-time Collaboration
    Developers can collaborate with others in real-time, making it easy to work on projects with teammates or seek help from the community.
  • Immediate Visual Feedback
    CodePen allows you to see the results of your code as you write it, which is highly beneficial for learning and debugging.
  • Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
    CodePen provides a comfortable and feature-rich online IDE environment with syntax highlighting, autocomplete, and more.
  • Community-Driven
    Users can share their work with the CodePen community, receive feedback, and explore a wide range of projects created by others.
  • Extensive Resources
    CodePen offers a wealth of examples and templates for various web development tasks, making it a useful resource for learning and inspiration.
  • Cross-Device Accessibility
    Being an online platform, CodePen can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, making it convenient for developers on the move.

Possible disadvantages of CodePen

  • Limited Offline Functionality
    Since CodePen is primarily an online tool, it requires an internet connection for most of its features to work, limiting its usefulness in offline environments.
  • Performance Constraints
    Complex or resource-intensive projects may not perform as well on CodePen as they would in a full-fledged local development environment.
  • Subscription Costs
    While many features are free, advanced functionalities and additional storage options require a paid subscription, which may not be ideal for all users.
  • Limited Backend Capabilities
    CodePen is primarily designed for front-end development, so it offers limited support for backend technologies, making it less suitable for full-stack or server-side development.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies and libraries can be cumbersome compared to local development environments which have better tools for this purpose, like npm.
  • Security Concerns
    Sharing projects with the public can expose your code and assets to unauthorized use, posing potential intellectual property and security risks.

Elementor features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Elementor features a drag-and-drop interface that is user-friendly for both beginners and experienced developers, making website building straightforward and intuitive.
  • Design Flexibility
    With a wide range of design options, templates, and widgets, Elementor offers extensive customization capabilities. Users can easily create highly unique and professional-looking designs.
  • Integration Capabilities
    Elementor integrates well with many popular WordPress plugins and themes, enhancing its functionality and allowing for easy addition of various features.
  • Responsive Design
    Elementor provides tools to ensure that websites look great on all devices, with built-in responsive design settings that allow customization for different screen sizes.
  • Regular Updates
    The Elementor team frequently releases updates and new features, continuously improving and expanding the platform's capabilities.

Possible disadvantages of Elementor

  • Performance Issues
    Elementor can sometimes lead to slower website performance, particularly if many widgets and third-party plugins are used simultaneously, which can affect load times.
  • Premium Features
    While the free version of Elementor is robust, many advanced functionalities and widgets are only available in the Pro version, which requires a paid subscription.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its ease of use, new users may still face a learning curve due to the sheer number of customization options and features available.
  • Theme Compatibility
    Elementor may not be fully compatible with all WordPress themes, which can result in design conflicts or require additional customization.
  • Limited SEO Tools
    While Elementor offers basic SEO settings, it lacks some of the more advanced SEO tools found in specialized plugins, necessitating the use of additional SEO plugins.

CodePen videos

What Is Codepen?

More videos:

  • Review - Learn to use CodePen from a co-founder of CodePen
  • Review - Using CodePen For Inspiration & Learning

Elementor videos

Elementor Page Builder Plugin -- I was WRONG!!

More videos:

  • Review - Elementor Experts: All You Need to Know
  • Review - Elementor Pro Review - #1 Best Page Builder Plugin For WordPress? [INSIDE VIEW + SPEED TEST]
  • Review - Elementor Experts vs Jetpack Pros? WordPress freelancers rejoice! 😲
  • Review - Introducing Elementor Experts: The New Discovery Network For Web Creators
  • Tutorial - Elementor Page Builder Pro Review and Tutorial

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to CodePen and Elementor)
Text Editors
100 100%
0% 0
Website Builder
0 0%
100% 100
Programming
100 100%
0% 0
CMS
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using CodePen and Elementor. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare CodePen and Elementor

CodePen Reviews

Best Forums for Developers to Join in 2025
Codepen is a social network for developers to show off their work, ask and answer questions, and exchange ideas. It's like a Reddit for coding and design, with a large community of talented web developers.
Source: www.notchup.com
Top 10 Developer Communities You Should Explore
Codepen is a social development environment that allows developers to showcase their work and experiment with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a collaborative space. Codepen’s focus on visual and interactive development makes it an excellent community for front-end developers and designers.
Source: www.qodo.ai
8 Best Replit Alternatives & Competitors in 2022 (Free & Paid) - Software Discover
Codepen is a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases to learn.
Best Online Code Editors For Web Developers
Probably the most popular online code editor. CodePen is fast, easy to use, and allows a web developer to write and share HTML/CSS/JS code online.
Source: techarge.in
Top 25 websites for coding challenge and competition [Updated for 2021]
CodePen is a cool online IDE that allows you to write code in your browser and see the result just as you build it. CodePen challenges is a place for leveling up your skills by building things. Each week, new challenges appear for you to tackle, and the best “Pens” get picked.

Elementor Reviews

Top 9 Elementor Alternatives in 2023
Elementor is an effective page-building tool, but it won’t suit everyone’s needs. Especially if you need more than one license, Elementor Pro plans can be expensive. Plus, it might not be optimized for your specific WordPress theme. When these issues arise, it can be beneficial to find an alternative tool.
Source: kinsta.com
7 Best Elementor Alternatives 2023
First off, if you’re looking for the best free Elementor alternative, then I would recommend starting with Brizy. While there are some other plugins on this list that offer free versions, Brizy’s free version is the closest to offering the same level of flexibility that Elementor’s free version offers. With the premium version, Brizy can also offer a number of features that...
Source: athemes.com
5 Best Elementor Alternatives for Building Beautiful Websites
In general, WordPress themes can be a good Elementor alternative if you’re primarily looking for an alternative to Elementor Theme Builder. A customizable one can give you a similar level of flexibility in a simpler package. Some, like the Neve theme on our list, even offer lightweight drag-and-drop header and footer builders.
Source: themeisle.com
22 Best Free Portfolio Website Builders 2021
Elementor is a versatile page editor that comes applicable to all WordPress users. If this is your CMS (content management system) of choice, do unlock even more possibilities for yourself with a powerful and free portfolio website builder. You can adjust and modify existing web design or you can easily come up with custom layouts that best resonates with you. Again, it’s...
Source: colorlib.com
10 Best Elementor Alternatives
Elementor is a leading WordPress page builder for building eCommerce websites and landing pages.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CodePen should be more popular than Elementor. It has been mentiond 503 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

CodePen mentions (503)

View more

Elementor mentions (61)

  • A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev
    Elementor — WordPress website builder. Free plan available with 40+ Basic Widgets. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • 400+ Websites That I Use as a Web Designer/Freelancer - All Compiled and Categorized in One Place
    Elementor - As much as I hate Elementor after getting used to Webflow, it deserves a praise. You can build so much stuff with little-to-no knowledge with it on Wordpress. (One of My Favorites). Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Best Website Builder? looking for reddit suggestions!
    Elementor is a fantastic plugin for WordPress that takes website building to the next level. It offers a visual, drag-and-drop editor that empowers you to create stunning and dynamic websites without any coding knowledge, I been creating some very cool websites with this plugin and wordpress and it been working well for me. I like to be able to have more control over my sites and unlike stuff like wix or shopify,... Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Classic Themes with Block Patterns in WordPress
    WordPress is celebrating its 20th anniversary and it still powers millions of websites all over the world, so we can say that's an open-source software success story. The "WordPress multiverse" has been fragmented for a long time, due to a multitude of possible combinations of plugins and page builders like Elementor? But efforts to unify mainstream development and obsolete page builders doing full-site editing... - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Seeking feedback on website & demo reels
    Regarding your theme 'Pixova Lite,' it hasn't been updated in more than 2 years. You might want to think about getting one that is actively maintained. Take a look at a page builder like Elementor. You'll have a lot more flexibility with design. Source: almost 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing CodePen and Elementor, you can also consider the following products

JSFiddle - Test your JavaScript, CSS, HTML or CoffeeScript online with JSFiddle code editor.

WiX - Create a free website with Wix.com. Customize with Wix' website builder, no coding skills needed. Choose a design, begin customizing and be online today

CodeSandbox - Online playground for React

SquareSpace - Squarespace is the easiest way for anyone to create an exceptional website. Pages, galleries, blogs, e-commerce, domains, hosting, analytics, 24/7 support - all included.

GitHub - Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.

Divi Theme - A flexible WordPress theme with the power of Divi Builder built in.