Is beaver builder right for me?

Beaver Builder
1

I’ve been playing with Beaver Builder for about a month so far and I love what it is capable of, however after a month of playing with it, I’m not sure if it is going to work for my needs or not. I’m hoping I can share my thoughts and feedback with you and you can let me know your thoughts.

I’m a freelance web developer looking for a way to speed up my workflow so that I can make sites for my clients quicker.

What I love
I love how fast I can build a site. Once I got the hang of things I was able to build a site for a client in less than 2 hours and I think I could get that time down even lower as I make more sites.

I love how the beaver builder theme design looks. In two hours I had a great looking site, comparable to a lot of wordpress templates you could buy on themeforest.

I love how customizable the theme is too. So many possibilities and options to set up a website for a large range of clients.

What I don’t love
Once the site is built and I’m ready to hand the keys over to the client it feels like I’m giving clients too much control. For example, what if I have a client who has employees that will be editing the site? The employees will be able to change the layout, colors, add columns and change my whole design around?

It also feels like editing the content of the site has too many steps for my non-technical client. Before I used BB I would have clients edit their site using the wordpress dashboard. I’d use plugins or custom code to strip out everything they didn’t need in the admin section and I’d use Advanced Custom Fields (it’s my understanding that ACF won’t work with BB, please let me know if that’s not correct). With this set up, a client would log in, go to their page, make the changes and the click update. With BB, a client has to log in to the dashboard, go to the page, then launch the page builder, then click on the text they want to edit, then make the changes, then click done and then publish. Then at the end of the process, it leaves the client at the page they just edited and they have to manually go back to the dashboard and start over for another page. I’d love for a way to have the client be able to edit BB in the dashboard which I can customize and control.

Lastly, what if client is already familiar with wordpress? Since BB is totally different, the client would have to get used to a whole new process.

Conclusion

I really love BB and I’m not writing this novel of a post to just rant or complain. The ease of development is so important to me that I’m willing to do anything to figure out a way to make BB work for me. Essentially, for me personally, the missing puzzle piece is having a way for me to use the page builder during development and forcing my client to use the wordpress dashboard once I had the keys over.

I can see how in certain applications BB would be perfect as it is (like a productized service), but as a developer who has spent years customizing and perfecting the dashboard for clients, I am having a really hard time letting the wordpress dashboard go.

Is there any way to use BB for development and strictly limit the client to the wordpress dashboard for editing, (Even if it means some extra work on my part setting it up?) or is BB just not right for me?

Thanks for reading,
Keith

2

Hey Keith,

I’ll leave this one open for feedback from other users, but wanted to chime in on a few things you mention above.

Client hand-off - We realize this is a big one and we deal with it as well when training our clients on websites we provide. While it really hasn’t been an issue for us, you can add users as editors or any other WordPress user level for that matter to constrict what they have access to. In addition, we have the capability settings in the page builder settings that you can use as well if you like. A deeper way of constraining their abilities in the actual editing interface isn’t possible though, sorry about that.

You are correct in that ACF doesn’t necessarily work that great hand in hand with BB. We’re looking at that however, and may get something in the works eventually there, but that isn’t a guarantee as we have so many other awesome features/functionality we want to bring to users beforehand.

Re. workflow, that particular way is pretty cumbersome. I recommend our clients do it a bit differently. Anything needing to be done in the dashboard, should be done while in the dashboard. When it comes time to edit pages using BB on the front-end, just launch from the backend, make edits on a given page and if you click in the menu to go to the next page, you will get prompted to publish, etc. and then immediately be on the next page in editing mode. It makes it super quick going page to page to do whatever is needed. I believe this only works in our theme though, but it isn’t difficult to jump page to page on the front-end and do all of your editing.

We’re a front-end page builder so having BB usable in the backend isn’t something we are going to do nor is it possible unfortunately. It actually started as a backend builder, but we quickly changed our mind on that! :slight_smile:

Anyway, hope some of the above helps and I’m sure some others will chime in on their workflow or thoughts. Thanks for the feedback!

Best,
Billy

3

Thanks for your response Billy,

I forgot to mention that I also love your support. Everyone is so fast and clear.

Client Hand Off: To make sure I’m on the same page, there isn’t a way to allow clients to edit content and not make design changes, is that correct? You mention that I can “constrict what they have access to”, but isn’t access to the editor binary? Either they can edit the website content or they can’t? Will you ever have the ability to limit editing to just content that is already there? Am I understanding this wrong? (I hope I am).

Good point about the workflow. That does seem a little better although I would like clients to be able to only do one or the other (either edit all in the dashboard or all in the front end). Anyone else who may be reading this: Are there other developers out there who use BB for client projects or is BB more for do-it-yourself-ers making their own Wordpress sites? Do your clients have any confusion with maintaining their BB websites or am I just being OCD?

Thanks again for your time,
Keith

4

Hey Keith,

Thanks for the kind words, appreciate that!

You are correct in that you can only limit their ability to edit or not edit. There isn’t the ability to limit either just content editing as opposed to the ‘design’ settings in BB content. That just isn’t possible. I can’t say whether that will change or not at this point, but we are planning on taking a look at the UI and doing some enhancement late this year. I would suggest posting this in our User Voice forum. If this request gets a lot of votes, we’ll certainly take a look at some point.

Best,
Billy

5

Hi Keith,
just to add a bit from a developer’s view: We have the same client issues. Our solution (which works fine in most cases) is that we give the client an alternative: a) Edit content on your own (see consequences below) or b) sign a support agreement with us and we do it.

Consequences for a): Customer needs to sign off for a paid training which we mostly do via Teamviewer. This is minimum 2 hours and can last longer - depends on the complexity. After this training the customer is fully responsible for the site content. Of course we restrict access as Billy explained. If something breaks of course we help. This is then charged by the hour.

In your case you would have 3 alternatives: a) and b) as described and c) the way you worked before. Probably you can make a pricing model out of this.

The ACF stuff is a pitty but might be solved in the future. For us it’s not a big problem because we don’t rely on WordPress. We develop with Contao, TYPO3 and Jekyll as well.

Hope this helps,
Leo

6

Thanks so much for your input Leo!

Giving clients and option is definitely something that I’ll consider, maybe I can push them to signing a support agreement.

Thanks again!
Keith

7

Fine, give it a try and let me know the results. You’ll find my email on my website confidea.

We had an offering once for an e-book and at first we gave the customer 2 alternatives:
1 = ebook online: 39€
2 = ebook PDF: 59€

Nearly 80% decided for alternative 1 - no surprise.

Then I changed the pricelist to the following:
1 = ebook online: 39€
2 = ebook PDF: 59€
3 = ebook online & PDF: 59€

At first sight this might seem like a nonsens offer but the experience was, that now app. 70% decided vor alternative 3. I love Marketing.

Since that experience I have similar alternatives in all our offers.

Good luck,
Leo

8

Thats a great idea! Offer different packages at different prices. I’ll do a trial run and let you know how it goes.

Thanks!!
Keith