WordPress editing in 2026 is split between two worlds. On one side sits Full Site Editing (FSE) — WordPress's official direction, built into core, using the block editor to control every part of a site from header to footer. On the other sit page builders — Elementor, Bricks, WPBakery, Breakdance — third-party plugins that provide visual drag-and-drop design tools independent of the block editor. For UK business owners planning a new site or redesign in 2026, the practical question is which to start with, which affects your hosting requirements, your Core Web Vitals scores, and your ability to hand the site over to someone else in five years. This guide covers what FSE can do now, what page builders still do better, performance benchmarks, the hybrid approach that most UK SMEs actually use, and what it all means for your hosting.
The state of WordPress editing in 2026 · Full Site Editing: what it can do now · Page builders: still the popular choice · Head-to-head comparison · Performance impact: builders vs native blocks · The hybrid approach · What this means for your hosting · Migrating from a page builder to FSE · The future of WordPress editing · Frequently asked questions
The block editor (Gutenberg) has reached Phase 3 — Collaboration — in its four-phase roadmap. Full Site Editing, the Phase 2 milestone, is considered functionally complete. Block themes have grown to roughly 15–25% of WordPress installations in 2026, up from near zero in 2021. The WordPress.org theme directory actively promotes block themes, and most new theme submissions are block-first.
Yet page builders remain dominant in practice. Elementor has over 5 million active installations. Bricks Builder is the fastest-growing alternative. WPBakery persists on millions of legacy sites. The majority of WordPress sites — especially those built by freelancers and agencies for clients — still use a page builder of some kind.
The question UK business owners and developers face in 2026 is not theoretical ("which is better?") but practical: should I build my next site with the block editor and a block theme, or continue with a page builder?
FSE in 2026 is not the limited, buggy experiment it was in its early days. The Site Editor is a capable visual tool for building and customising entire WordPress sites without touching code.
The Site Editor (Appearance > Editor) provides visual control over the entire site — not just post content. You can edit headers, footers, sidebars, archive layouts, single post templates and 404 pages directly in the browser. Templates are built from blocks; you create or modify them without writing PHP.
Global Styles (controlled via theme.json) define colours, typography, spacing and layout settings that apply consistently across the entire site. Change your primary colour in Global Styles and every button, link and accent updates instantly. This is the block-theme equivalent of a Customiser on steroids — more powerful and more standards-based.
Block patterns are pre-designed sections (hero banners, feature grids, testimonial carousels, pricing tables, FAQ accordions) that you insert with one click and customise visually. The WordPress Pattern Directory provides hundreds of free patterns; block themes include their own curated collections. The closest equivalent to Elementor's template library — but built into WordPress core.
The Twenty Twenty-Five default theme is the reference implementation for what a modern block theme can do. Clean, performant, highly customisable through Global Styles, and demonstrates that block themes can produce professional, visually sophisticated sites without a page builder. Worth installing on a staging environment (one click in Plesk WP Toolkit on smartxhosting.uk WordPress hosting) to experience the current state of FSE firsthand.
Honesty requires acknowledging the gaps:
Page builders persist for a simple reason: they provide a level of visual design control and speed-to-result that the block editor has not fully matched.
The most popular WordPress page builder. Drag-and-drop editor with a vast template library, widget ecosystem and theme builder capability. The free version covers basic needs; Pro (from ~£49/year) unlocks theme building, WooCommerce widgets, dynamic content and popup builder.
Criticism: heavy JavaScript output (300–800 KB), significant impact on Core Web Vitals (especially INP), slower editor performance on complex pages.
The performance-focused alternative gaining rapid traction among developers. Generates significantly cleaner, lighter HTML and CSS than Elementor. Developer-friendly with custom CSS controls, dynamic data and query loop features. One-time licence (~$79–$199 lifetime).
Criticism: steeper learning curve than Elementor, smaller template and add-on ecosystem, fewer beginner-friendly tutorials.
Still active on millions of sites (often bundled with ThemeForest themes) but effectively in maintenance mode. Not recommended for new projects — its shortcode-based architecture is outdated and produces heavy markup. Sites built with WPBakery should plan migration to either a block theme or a modern builder at the next redesign.
From the creators of Oxygen Builder. Positions itself between Elementor's ease of use and Bricks's performance focus. Growing but smaller community. Worth evaluating for developers who want visual building with cleaner output than Elementor.
| Criteria | Full Site Editing (Block themes) | Elementor | Bricks Builder |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ease of use (beginners) | Moderate — improving | Easy — most intuitive | Moderate — developer-oriented |
| Design flexibility | Good — growing | Excellent — most flexible | Very good — clean approach |
| Performance (front-end) | Excellent — lightest output | Poor — heavy JS/CSS | Very good — clean output |
| Core Web Vitals pass rate | Highest | Lowest of the three | High |
| Template/pattern ecosystem | Growing (WP Pattern Directory) | Largest (thousands of templates) | Moderate (growing) |
| Third-party add-ons | Growing (block plugins) | Largest (Essential Addons, etc.) | Moderate |
| WooCommerce integration | Good (WooCommerce blocks) | Excellent (WooCommerce Builder) | Good (WooCommerce integration) |
| Future-proofing | Official WordPress direction | Adapting (adding block support) | Independent but aligned |
| Cost | Free (built into WP core) | Free / Pro from ~£49/yr | ~$79–$199 lifetime |
| Hosting resource demand | Light | Heavy (more CPU, RAM, JS) | Moderate |
| Learning resources | Growing (Learn WordPress, docs) | Extensive (YouTube, courses) | Growing (docs, community) |
This is where the choice has the most measurable consequence. The front-end output of your editing tool directly determines your Core Web Vitals — and those scores affect Google ranking and user experience alike.
| Approach | LCP | INP | CLS | JS payload | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Block theme (Twenty Twenty-Five) | 1.2–2.0s | 50–120ms | 0.01–0.05 | 50–150 KB | 70–85% |
| Elementor (typical) | 2.5–4.0s | 200–500ms | 0.05–0.15 | 300–800 KB | 30–45% |
| Bricks Builder | 1.5–2.5s | 80–180ms | 0.02–0.08 | 80–200 KB | 60–75% |
The difference is stark. A typical block theme site passes Core Web Vitals 70–85% of the time. A typical Elementor site passes 30–45% of the time. This is not because Elementor developers are careless — it is because Elementor's architecture requires a JavaScript framework to render content on the client side, adding 300–800 KB of JS that must be downloaded, parsed and executed before the page becomes interactive.
INP (Interaction to Next Paint) measures how quickly a page responds to user interactions — clicks, taps, key presses. The threshold is 200 ms. Elementor's JavaScript framework typically produces INP values of 200–500 ms, frequently exceeding the threshold. This is the single biggest Core Web Vitals challenge for Elementor sites.
The fix is either migration to a lighter tool (block theme or Bricks) or aggressive JavaScript optimisation (delay non-critical scripts, reduce widget count, minimise add-on plugins). Server-side performance — NVMe, Redis, PHP 8.x on quality hosting — helps but cannot fully compensate for front-end JavaScript weight.
The most pragmatic strategy for UK businesses in 2026 is not an all-or-nothing choice — it is a hybrid approach using the right tool for each content type.
Blog posts, news articles, documentation pages, simple landing pages, informational content. The block editor handles these efficiently with native blocks: paragraphs, headings, images, lists, tables, columns, media. No page builder overhead needed for straightforward content.
Homepage hero sections, portfolio grids, pricing comparison tables, complex service pages with custom animations, any layout that requires pixel-perfect visual positioning. Use Elementor or Bricks for these pages only — keeping the builder's JavaScript impact isolated to the pages that need it, rather than loading it site-wide.
Use a block theme (Twenty Twenty-Five, or a developer-focused option) for the site's header, footer, navigation and template structure. This keeps the site shell light and fast, with the block editor handling Global Styles for consistent branding.
A typical UK business site:
Result: only 1 page out of 15+ loads the page builder JavaScript. The rest of the site runs on lightweight native blocks. Core Web Vitals pass on the majority of pages, and even the builder page benefits from quality hosting absorbing the extra overhead.
Your choice of editing approach has direct hosting implications. Server resources scale with the complexity of your editing tool.
| Approach | PHP memory | CPU demand | JS payload | Redis importance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Block theme only | 128–256 MB | Low | 50–150 KB | Moderate |
| Block theme + Elementor (hybrid) | 256–512 MB | Medium (on builder pages) | 300–800 KB (builder pages) | High (builder pages generate more queries) |
| Elementor everywhere | 512 MB+ | High | 300–800 KB (every page) | Very high |
| Block theme + Bricks (hybrid) | 256 MB | Low–Medium | 80–200 KB (builder pages) | Moderate–High |
Block themes are lightest on hosting resources. Elementor sites need more powerful hosting to perform well. A site that passes Core Web Vitals on a block theme with budget hosting may fail the same metrics on Elementor without better infrastructure.
NVMe SSD, Redis, PHP 8.x and Imunify360 absorb the overhead page builders add — making even Elementor sites load faster than on budget hosts. Plesk WP Toolkit handles both approaches equally well: staging for testing theme switches, smart updates for plugin management, security hardening regardless of editing tool.
smartxhosting.uk WordPress hosting works with any editing approach — pure block theme, Elementor, Bricks, hybrid. Whether you are building with Twenty Twenty-Five blocks or Elementor widgets, the hosting infrastructure performs.
Already on Elementor or WPBakery and considering a switch? Realities of migration:
Text, images and basic structure import cleanly into the block editor via the block-converter plugin. But Elementor layouts are Elementor-specific — they cannot be "translated" into blocks automatically. Expect to rebuild each page's design.
If your Elementor site works well, ranks well and you are comfortable maintaining it, migration is not mandatory. The cost is rebuild time; the benefit is future-proofing and better performance. Pick migration when you hit a clear pain point — Core Web Vitals failures, slow editor, cost of Elementor Pro, or just planning a redesign anyway.
WordPress's direction is clearly block-first. The Gutenberg roadmap's Phase 3 (Collaboration) and Phase 4 (Multilingual) are extending FSE rather than replacing it. WordPress 7 is expected to solidify blocks as the default editing model with no remaining "experimental" features.
Page builders are adapting. Elementor increasingly supports blocks. Bricks maintains its performance stance while adding FSE-style global styles. The lines between "builder" and "block editor" are blurring.
For new UK business sites in 2026, the lowest-risk bet is starting with a block theme and adding a page builder only if a specific page demands it. Five years from now, the block theme parts of the site will still work natively; the page builder parts may or may not have been maintained. For maximum future-proofness, block-theme-first is the right default.
Should I switch from Elementor to Full Site Editing?
Not necessarily right now, but plan for it. If your Elementor site works well and you are comfortable maintaining it, a forced switch offers no immediate benefit. However, if you are planning a redesign, building a new site, or struggling with Elementor's performance impact on Core Web Vitals, evaluating a block theme is worthwhile. The practical middle path: keep Elementor for existing complex layouts and use the block editor for new content pages and blog posts.
Can I use Full Site Editing for a WooCommerce store?
Yes, with caveats. WooCommerce has added block-based features: product collection blocks, cart and checkout blocks, block-based product pages. A block theme with WooCommerce blocks produces a functional and fast online store. However, some advanced WooCommerce features (complex product variations, subscription management, advanced shipping rules) still work better with classic theme templates and dedicated WooCommerce plugins. For most standard UK online stores, a block theme with WooCommerce blocks is viable in 2026.
Is Bricks Builder better than Elementor?
Bricks is the fastest-growing WordPress page builder in 2026, primarily because of its performance advantage. Bricks generates cleaner, lighter HTML and CSS than Elementor, resulting in significantly better Core Web Vitals scores. It also offers a more developer-friendly interface. Elementor has a larger ecosystem and lower learning curve for beginners. Performance priority: Bricks. Ease of use priority: Elementor.
Does editing tool choice affect my hosting needs?
Yes. Page builders (especially Elementor) add significant PHP processing overhead during page rendering and larger front-end JavaScript payloads. Page builder sites consume more server CPU and memory per request than block theme sites. On budget hosting with limited resources, this difference causes noticeably slower page loads. On quality hosting with NVMe SSD, Redis and adequate PHP memory, the overhead is absorbed better — but the performance gap still exists.
How do I learn Full Site Editing?
Start with the official WordPress documentation at developer.wordpress.org and the Learn WordPress platform (learn.wordpress.org), which offers free video courses on the Site Editor, Global Styles, block patterns and template editing. Install Twenty Twenty-Five on a staging environment (one click in Plesk WP Toolkit) and experiment. The learning curve is moderate — if you are comfortable with the block editor for posts, extending that to full site layout editing is a natural progression.
What is the difference between Global Styles and the Customiser?
The Customiser is the classic-theme tool with a fixed set of options per theme. Global Styles is the block-theme equivalent but offers more granular control and uses theme.json as its source. Global Styles can set colours and typography per-block, whereas the Customiser typically sets them globally only. Global Styles also persist across theme changes better because they live in the database under a standard structure.
Will my Elementor site break when I update WordPress?
Usually no, but always test updates on staging. Elementor and WordPress core teams maintain compatibility, but edge cases can break specific widgets or custom Elementor templates. The Plesk WordPress Toolkit Smart Update tests on staging before rolling out. For mission-critical sites, manual update via staging is safer than auto-update.
Can I use both the block editor and Elementor on the same page?
Per page, no — each page is either a block editor page or an Elementor page. Per site, yes — some pages can be block editor, others Elementor. This is the hybrid approach.
Is Bricks Builder free?
No. Bricks is a paid builder with a one-time licence fee (no subscription). Prices range ~$79–$199 for lifetime licences depending on site count. The value calculation vs Elementor Pro's annual fee depends on how long you run the site.
How does hosting on smartxhosting.uk support page builders?
NVMe SSD + Redis + PHP 8.x absorb the PHP processing overhead page builders add. LiteSpeed Cache caches the rendered HTML so subsequent visitors do not trigger re-rendering. Imunify360 keeps the site secure regardless of editing tool. Plesk WP Toolkit provides staging for testing builder / theme migrations safely.
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