Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Tailwind UI VS Element UI

Compare Tailwind UI VS Element UI and see what are their differences

Tailwind UI logo Tailwind UI

Beautiful UI components by the creators of Tailwind CSS.

Element UI logo Element UI

A Desktop UI Library. Element, a Vue 2.0 based component library for developers, designers and product managers.
  • Tailwind UI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-19
  • Element UI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-29

Tailwind UI features and specs

  • Rapid Development
    Tailwind UI provides pre-designed components that help developers build interfaces quickly, reducing the time required to go from design to production.
  • Customization
    The components are built with Tailwind CSS, which allows for easy and extensive customization directly within the HTML, providing flexibility in design without needing to write custom CSS.
  • Consistency
    Using Tailwind UI ensures consistency across the application by providing a unified design language and pre-designed, reusable components.
  • Accessibility
    Components in Tailwind UI are designed with accessibility in mind, helping developers to create more inclusive and usable interfaces.
  • High-Quality Design
    The components are designed by professionals, ensuring high visual and functional quality, which can be beneficial for projects without a dedicated design team.
  • Documentation
    Tailwind UI comes with comprehensive documentation that aids developers in integrating the components effectively and understanding how to best utilize them.

Possible disadvantages of Tailwind UI

  • Cost
    Tailwind UI is a paid product, which can be a barrier for small projects or individual developers who are operating on a limited budget.
  • Learning Curve
    While Tailwind UI components are easy to use, the underlying Tailwind CSS framework can have a learning curve for those unfamiliar with utility-first CSS approaches.
  • Overhead
    Incorporating a large number of components can increase the initial bundle size, which may affect the performance unless optimized appropriately.
  • Dependency on Tailwind CSS
    Tailwind UI components are tightly coupled with Tailwind CSS, which means switching to or migrating from another CSS framework may require substantial effort.
  • Not Always Unique
    Using pre-built components might result in less unique designs, as other developers and projects using Tailwind UI can have similar looks and feels.
  • Limited Scope
    The pre-designed components cover a wide range but may not fulfill every niche use case, requiring additional custom development or design.

Element UI features and specs

  • Comprehensive Component Library
    Element UI offers a wide range of well-designed components that cover most use cases, making it easier to develop complex interfaces.
  • Consistency
    The UI components maintain a consistent look and feel throughout the application, providing a professional and unified user experience.
  • Customization
    Element UI is highly customizable, allowing developers to easily modify the appearance and behavior of components to match their design requirements.
  • Documentation
    The library comes with comprehensive documentation, which includes examples and detailed guides to help developers quickly get up to speed.
  • Active Community
    It has an active community and regular updates, which means that any issues are quickly addressed, and new features are frequently added.
  • Integration with Vue.js
    Element UI is specifically designed for Vue.js, providing seamless integration and making it a go-to choice for Vue developers.

Possible disadvantages of Element UI

  • Bundle Size
    The complete library can be quite large, which may impact the performance and loading times of your application if not handled properly.
  • Limited to Vue.js
    Element UI is built specifically for Vue.js and is not easily compatible with other JavaScript frameworks, limiting its versatility.
  • Customizability Limitations
    While it is possible to customize the components, doing so can sometimes be complex and may require deep knowledge of the library and Vue.js.
  • Learning Curve
    For developers who are not familiar with Vue.js, there is a learning curve associated with both the framework and the Element UI components.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies and ensuring compatibility between different versions of Vue.js and Element UI can be challenging.
  • Scoped Stylings
    The styling of components may sometimes conflict with the scoped styles in your application, requiring additional adjustments.

Tailwind UI videos

TAILWIND UI: First Impressions!

More videos:

  • Review - Tailwind UI: A collection of fully responsive components from creators of Tailwind CSS
  • Review - Build a landing page using Tailwind UI

Element UI videos

Vue.js Element UI Component Library | Demo & Review

More videos:

  • Review - Element UI Vue Introduction (Component Framework) On Basics (First Look)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Tailwind UI and Element UI)
Design Tools
88 88%
12% 12
Developer Tools
88 88%
12% 12
Development Tools
0 0%
100% 100
UI Design
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Tailwind UI and Element UI

Tailwind UI Reviews

Tailwind CSS: 15 Component Libraries & UI Kits
Tailwind UI has over 500 components in total; the documentation has component code for React, Vue, and raw HTML. The project has over 61,000 stars on GitHub and gets around 4 million weekly downloads on npm. *
Source: stackdiary.com
22 Best Sites for Free Tailwind Components
This Tailwind UI kit was introduced by the creators of the Tailwind CSS framework. So, this is undoubtedly one of the most reliable UI Kits for Tailwind CSS out there. Their responsive UI Tailwind components included 400+ professional-looking elements. For full interactivity, there is also a production-ready JavaScript. In addition, it is also compatible with Vuejs and Reactjs.
How to Choose a Tailwind Component Library (Plus the Top 6 Options)
First, you might be wondering: how does a TailwindCSS component library differ from just using TailwindCSS itself? Well, out of the box TailwindCSS doesn’t give you any pre-built components; it only offers utility classes. This means if you want a component, you need to build it using the classes provided to you. Or, you can use a component library built with TailwindCSS and...
Source: prismic.io

Element UI Reviews

14 Best Vue UI Component Libraries 2023
This library is developed mostly by Chinese contributors and the original documentation was written in Chinese. It’s highly suggested to check out the internationalization guide before starting a project, as the default language of the project is Chinese. Element is a great kit for developing complex desktop UIs by teams of developers, designers, and product managers.
Source: athemes.com
15 of the Most Interesting Vue UI Component Libraries for 2023
Element, too, has significant documentation in Chinese, although Spanish and English translations are provided. Non-native Chinese speakers should go through the internationalization documentation before using Element in their projects.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Tailwind UI seems to be a lot more popular than Element UI. While we know about 212 links to Tailwind UI, we've tracked only 2 mentions of Element UI. 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.

Tailwind UI mentions (212)

  • Ask HN: Link to interactively learn UI/Typography design
    Studying existing component systems is a great starting point. You have to imitate and respect the systems that already exist before you can innovate on new things from scratch. I'd recommend starting by reading, building with, and imitating the most well-known frameworks for some personal projects. You can also find some good Figma projects to get started with on each of these. https://tailwindui.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Session and User Registration in PHP
    Require base_path('views/partials/head.php') ?> require base_path('views/partials/nav.php') ?>     class="flex min-h-full items-center justify-center py-12 px-4 sm:px-6 lg:px-8">         class="w-full max-w-md space-y-8">                             class="mx-auto h-12 w-auto" src="https://tailwindui.com/img/logos/mark.svg?color=indigo&shade=600"                      alt="Your Company">                 ... - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Ant Design – the second most popular React UI framework
    There's https://tailwindui.com/?ref=top, from the Tailwind CSS people. They come with a "HTML" mode, which I think means no JS. But if you need interactivity, on the web it has to be JS, because that's the only thing that can manipulate the DOM. The alternative would be something like a server-updated Canvas where the UI is done outside of the DOM and not in the client, but even that would need some JS shims just... - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • How to Use Tailwind CSS for Your Ruby On Rails Project
    If you want to learn more, you can access many ready-to-use templates and components thanks to Tailwind's vibrant community, and products such as TailwindUI (from Tailwind's creators). - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Playing around with Hotwire ⚡️
    I won't take credit for the re-design though. If you're using the Tailwind CSS Library you should checkout Tailwind UI. It's helped me scaffold a few components and pages quite easily, without having a designer onboard. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
View more

Element UI mentions (2)

  • Awesome | Top 9 UI Frameworks for Vue.js
    Element is a UI library for building web applications, primarily targeted at desktop applications. It is simple to use and offers a wide variety of components and features. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • How can I make a page look more professional?
    Thanks for the input, I use this library which already has it's own design and margins so I just used the default ones for certain items, I did alter some of the css for other items. I do see how that could make everything square up better and look more consistent. Source: about 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Tailwind UI and Element UI, you can also consider the following products

Tailwind CSS - A utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces.

Material UI - A CSS Framework and a Set of React Components that Implement Google's Material Design

DaisyUI - Free UI components plugin for Tailwind CSS

Bootstrap - Simple and flexible HTML, CSS, and JS for popular UI components and interactions

Ant Design - An enterprise-class UI design language and React implementation with a set of high-quality React components, one of best React UI library for enterprises

Chakra UI - Simple, modular and accessible UI components for your React applications.