Page builder · in regular use
Elementor agency in Nice
WordPress's page builder: layouts are edited visually, within the boundaries of the agreed design.
What we do with it
Elementor at our clients, concretely
We use it with Elementor Pro and its Theme Builder, and we write our own widgets: four for the Les Sens restaurant website, seven in the Ordelya plugin to display menus, wines and set menus, and fourteen in our base theme.
The limits
When we recommend something else
On a site where every millisecond counts, or when the team wants full control of the code, a hand-coded theme without a page builder is lighter.
Our work
Projects we delivered with Elementor
Ordelya
Restaurant management platform: back office, tablets, kiosks, screens and website.
Elementor: Seven widgets to place menus, dishes, wines, desserts and set menus in pages.
Les Sens
Redesign of a Nice restaurant's website, in three languages, with online booking.
Elementor: Theme Builder and four custom widgets: practical info, header, booking and gallery.
Site d'une entreprise de recherche de fuites
Nice-based showcase website built on our WordPress base theme.
Elementor: Fourteen custom widgets, Theme Builder header and footer.
Site d'un architecte d'intérieur
Bilingual website showcasing projects and furniture.
Elementor: Site-specific widgets built into the theme.
Method
How we bring Elementor into a project
We work with Elementor Pro and its Theme Builder, which lets the site's headers and footers be built like any other page. The foundation is a child theme of Hello Elementor. In MZ's reusable base theme, colours and fonts are not set widget by widget: they point to Elementor's global settings, so the theme can be rebranded for a client by changing a handful of values.
When a block appears often or has to stay consistent, we turn it into a custom widget rather than rebuilding it by hand. The MZ base theme includes 14 of them. For the Les Sens restaurant site, four widgets were written: practical information, header, Zenchef booking and gallery. The Ordelya plugin adds seven, displaying a restaurant's menu as maintained in the platform: menu, dishes, wines, wine list, desserts, set menus and tasting menu.
A custom widget exposes only the settings that matter to the person editing the page. Styling stays tied to the global settings, and changes go through a staging site before going live.
For your business
What it changes in practice
For your staff, Elementor means editing a page while seeing the result directly: changing text, replacing a photo, rearranging a section. Custom widgets cut the risk of mistakes, because whoever edits fills in specific fields instead of assembling a complex block. On a restaurant site connected to Ordelya, the menu widgets display dishes, wines or set menus without re-entering them, and the Zenchef booking button stays identical from one page to the next.
For management, the benefit lies in consistency and handover. Colours and fonts defined in the global settings apply everywhere, so a brand refresh does not mean going back over every page, and new pages match the existing ones from the outset without extra styling work. The trade-off is reliance on Elementor Pro, whose licence must be renewed to keep receiving updates. The code of widgets written for you belongs to you and follows Elementor's conventions, so another developer can extend it.
Decision guide
Should you choose Elementor?
Elementor or the native WordPress block editor?
The native block editor avoids an extra dependency and works well for mostly text-based pages. Elementor makes sense when your staff want to compose varied layouts themselves, and when the site needs headers, footers and business blocks built in the same tool with the Theme Builder. We then recommend it with a lightweight child theme and global settings, so that the tool's flexibility does not turn into pages that all look different.
Free Elementor or Elementor Pro?
The free version is enough to put together simple pages. Elementor Pro becomes necessary as soon as headers and footers are built with the Theme Builder, or when the advanced layout features we use on our sites are needed. We work with Elementor Pro. The Elementor Pro licence has to be renewed to keep receiving updates; we include it in the written, costed action plan.
Should we have custom widgets developed?
Not as a matter of course. The widgets supplied with Elementor cover most needs. A custom widget is justified when a block recurs across many pages, displays data from another tool or must stay strictly identical. That is the case for the seven widgets in the Ordelya plugin, which display a restaurant's menu, or the Zenchef booking widget on the Les Sens site. We propose a widget when it genuinely makes editing simpler.
Client questions
What clients ask us about Elementor
Will we be able to edit our pages ourselves?
Yes, that is what Elementor is for. Text, images and sections are edited in the visual editor, with the result in front of you. For sensitive blocks, such as a booking module or a menu display, custom widgets show only the relevant fields. The code of those widgets belongs to you, as does the child theme's.
Does Elementor slow the site down?
Elementor adds code compared with a hand-written page, and a page crowded with nested sections can become heavy. We limit the effect by starting from Hello Elementor, a minimal theme, by reusing global settings rather than repeating styles, and by grouping recurring blocks into custom widgets. We also keep additional plugins to a minimum.
How do we change the site's colours or fonts?
In Elementor's global settings. Our base theme draws its colours and fonts from there, and the custom widgets do the same, so a change made in that one place carries across the whole site. It is also what lets us rebrand the base theme for each client without rewriting the styling of every page.
Can you take over an Elementor site built by another supplier?
Yes. We first review the theme in use, the add-on plugins, whether global settings are used and the Elementor Pro licence. Fixes are tested on a staging site before anything changes on the live site. You then receive a written, costed action plan setting out what can be kept and what would benefit from restructuring.
Who owns the widgets developed for our site?
You do. The code of the custom widgets and the child theme is handed over to you, and it follows Elementor's publicly documented development conventions. Another developer familiar with Elementor can therefore read it and extend it. Only the Elementor Pro licence remains subject to the vendor's terms and must be renewed to keep receiving updates.
Going further
Elementor sits within our Software development
A technology does not make a project. The method around it decides the outcome: scoping, prototypes, short cycles, and a clean way out.
Neighbouring technologies
A Elementor project in mind?
The first conversation is free. We will tell you plainly whether this technology is the right one, and if not, which is.