I am writing my Cwicly Review today after spending the best part of the last few months trying out all the other WordPress Page Builders and Theme builders on the market that I thought were worth testing.
I had no intention of rebuilding my website from Bricks Builder to Cwicly, but it was hard to ignore how much Cwicly allows you to do in the WordPress Block Editor.
In this Cwicly Review, I will explain some of the other page builders I tried before Cwicly and I will compare Cwicly to them so that, by the end of this review, you will understand why I chose Cwicly for my website over the other alternatives.
Who is Cwicly best for?
If you are not comfortable with CSS, you don’t know what Flexbox is and CSS Grid sounds like an X-box game, then I would not recommend using Cwicly.
You will not be able to leverage what makes Cwicly the greatest WordPress Page Builder currently if you do not have some coding experience.
But if you DO, then Cwicly might just be for you.
After trying out 4 of the most popular WordPress Themes for 2023, the reason I chose to use Cwicly to rebuild my website is because it has advanced features that allow you to quickly produce a WordPress website that loads very fast and whose output HTML code is as close to how you’d code it from scratch.
Keypoints
šĀ About
Cwicly is the most advanced WordPress Page Builder on the market right now that uses the Block editor (Gutenberg). It uses a class-based styling system (which is what you want to be using), does not offer a lifetime deal (so itās sustainable) and the team is very active with development.
šµĀ Pricing
Prices start atĀ 49 ā¬ / Year (about $50 USD) for a 3 site license.Ā Click here to check all PricingĀ Plans.
šĀ Good
Class-based styling system, uses the Block Editor which is the future of WordPress & what WordPress core uses, it is the first builder to release āComponentsā (more on this later), is developed by an active team and supported by an active community.
ā Bad
Some people donāt want to use Gutenberg / the Block Editor as they donāt find it intuitive. People also comment that the Cwicly UI is overwhelming or too advanced.
š¤ Verdict
I initially bought Cwicly and installed it, found the UI confusing and put it aside and went back to Bricks Builder. A month or so later, I was working on creating a website using Bricks Builder and I found it hard to manage my site using 2 builders (Block editor for Blog Posts, Bricks for other post types) and so I went searching for another builder. After trialling GeneratePress + GenerateBlocks, Kadence, GreenShift and Cwicly ā Cwicly was the best-suited builder for my website. I highly-recommend giving it a go if youāre somewhat advanced with Builders and are looking for something to build WordPress websites with that is fun to use.
Pros and Cons
I put together this section so that you can see why I chose Cwicly and why you might want to give it a go / why it might not suit your needs if you build websites that are different to my style.
Cwicly is a Block-based Theme
You are future-proofing yourself because you are building pages in the Block editor (also called the Gutenberg editor) which is the direction WordPress core is heading in. I love building websites with Bricks Builder, but the fact that Bricks & other builders (e.g. Breakdance, Beaver Builder) use their own unique editor separate from the WordPress block editor can cause some issues.
Cwicly uses a class-based styling system
This helps create consistent styling across all your pages. You create a CSS class, then add properties for this class using the Cwicly UI. Then, on any page, you can just apply this class to any element on any page of your site. This is how websites were meant to be styled and coded and how youād do it if you were hand coding a website. This is a non-negotiable for me now and should be for you, also. I wonāt use a builder that does not use a class-based system for styling as its hard to update your site otherwise (more on this later).
Cwicly creates fast-loading websites with clean code
When you install Cwicly, the default code for your website isā¦zero. I mean, nothing. Even your inputs, textareas and other html elements have no styling. You are building your website from the ground-up exactly how you want it. Some will argue that this is a negative because it now takes more time to complete a website build, but others (like me) enjoy the ability to set up the styling of our website exactly how we want it without having to override default styling from the builder. This is why I say Cwicly produces clean code ā any code output on the page (CSS / HTML) has been added and styled by you in Cwicly. I will talk about this more later in this review of Cwicly.
Components + Tailwind Integration
You might already know what Tailwind CSS is, but if you donāt ā it is the most popular CSS Framework.
Sustainable pricing model
Cwicly did a lifetime deal launch on AppSumo and then moved to annual pricing straight after. I feel better about this because at least I know the developers have recurring revenue to support adding new features.Ā
Professional team that engages the community
Head on over to theĀ Cwicly YouTube channelĀ and watch some of their videos. You can tell that Cwicly is becoming a very mature product with a team who is serious about its growth.
Not suitable for non-coders
If you donāt know how to write CSS and HTML, then Cwicly is not going to be the best option for you to use and I would recommend checking out another builder. The power of Cwicly comes packed inside itās class-based styling system, itās advanced Query capabilities and the fact that it does nothing out of the box (you customize everything exactly as you want it).Ā
No starter sites (yet)
Currently, there are no out-of-the-box Starter Sites to help you build websites quickly. That will change once Cwicly releases their Tailwind integration as then they have a CSS framework to release designs with.Ā
No free plan
You need to pay to play from the start with Cwicly on your own website, but on the Cwicly website they currently have a Sandbox feature that lets you create a demo website with Cwicly. Hopefully my article today can help you make your decision a bit easier and they have a no-risk refund policy.