Divi vs Gutenberg: An In-Depth Comparison (2024)

Confused about choosing between Divi or Gutenberg?

You’ve come to the right place.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at Divi vs Gutenberg, comparing their features side-by-side to help you decide which one is right for your website.

Divi vs Gutenberg – Quick Look!

Before starting off the comparison, here’s our quick view of Gutenberg vs Divi to give you complementary knowledge. 

Keep reading till the end, you will get to know these two page builders better.

Divi vs Gutenberg: Features to Compare

Divi was released at the end of 2013. Meanwhile, Gutenberg introduced itself five years after Divi with the WordPress 5.0 release in 2018. That means WordPress is now running its editor with the Gutenberg editor instead of their classic editor.

Though there is an age gap in both page builders; they have significant to do.

Let’s dive deeper into both of them. 

Ease of use 

A page builder’s most important feature is its user-friendliness. No one likes to work in a complicated environment and confusing elements that entangle the page-building process rather than simplifying things.

Considering these states, Divi is easier to use than Gutenberg because its features are more organized and user-friendly compared to Gutenberg.

Divi offers a visual builder that allows you to add modules with a button click. This takes a bit longer to execute because of its wireframe and layers nature. 

Meanwhile, Gutenberg lets you make your content creation with its visual builder via blocks. The ‘plus icon’ from the upper left expands the block list and from that, you can add the necessary blocks you want. 

Divi and Gutenberg allow you to customize the look and feel of different pages and elements without requiring code. If you need extra assistance, CSS functions are available for both.

Not at all, Starting Divi and Gutenberg serves you a welcome tour and lets you know the basics to make your content.

Plus the onboarding guides, blogs, and video tutorials make them accessible for you to make an easy use of Divi. In contrast, Gutenberg helps you only with its extensive collection of docs. For the visual tutorials, you have to rely on Google and YouTube.

Verdict: Divi, because it has a more organized interface than Gutenberg that lets you make your content creation easier.

Visual Builder 

Divi’s visual builder is better than Gutenberg because it gives you more ways to change and customize things. 

Both builders let you edit things easily, like moving them around with a drag-and-drop feature. If you make a mistake, you can fix it with the undo-redo option. You can also copy, duplicate, and move your work quickly.

Divi has a significant WireFrame View. Using it, you can transform the visual builder into a block-based builder where you can modify your webpage’s structure without hampering the content. 

In contrast, Gutenberg makes this complete with having List View option. The customization and works are like same as the wireframe view; the only difference is the appearance.

(WireFrame View vs image)

But Divi makes an exception with its built-in A/B testing (split testing), while Gutenberg doesn’t. This testing helps you show visitors different page versions and see which works best for your goals.

In terms of Gutenberg, you have to use third-party plugins or extensions to make a move.

As for modules or widgets, both website builders have a wider range. Divi has 65+, whereas Gutenberg counts itself as 100+. 

Even though Divi has fewer modules than Gutenberg, it performs comparatively better to build a complete website from scratch. Plus, they both have eCommerce compatibility. 

The main difference between Divi and Gutenberg is how their visual builder works. Divi’s visual builder comes with a lot of customization options. From text to space, you can make changes on every spare. 

Gutenberg, on the other hand, has a lot of limitations. You can’t change everything while using its blocks. Each block has specific customization settings. And most of them limit you to customization like Divi.

But yes, if you want to accelerate more, adding custom HTML and CSS code options is here to help.

Verdict: Divi, because it offers more freedom, gives you a complete content creation facility and as a bonus you can do the split testing too.

Builder Options

Divi’s builder option is much wider than Gutenberg’s. 

(Builder Options vs image)

Divi has plugin settings that include API control, performance options, integration options, and more. Also, full theme-building support in Divi allows you to customize your site’s header, footer, and body globally. 

The Divi library manages your templates. It lets you import, export, category, and edit your templates. 

However, Gutenberg lacks all that is in Divi. You have to use third-party plugins or theme builders to avail of them. 

(role-editor vs image)

But yes, comparatively the Gutenberg builder options consist of a support, documentation, and experiments tab. The support tab redirects support through wordpress.org, and the documentation tab has a bunch of guides. 

And the experimental tabs include experimental features that are usable while they’re in development. You can enable them on your preference. 

Note: These features are likely to change, so avoid using them in production.

Finally, both Divi and Gutenberg have one unique feature in common: the role editor. Gutenberg named it as ‘Block Manager.’ The block manager only lets you toggle on/off the blocks, but Divi’s role editor works more advanced. Along with the module toggle option, it enables you to control what users can do on your site via its administrator, editor, author, and more options. 

Verdict: Divi, because this page builder gives you the most unique page-building features and customizations. 

Design Elements

When it comes to design elements, Gutenberg highlights by providing 100+ blocks, while Divi offers 65+ modules. Along with the standard elements, they both offer eCommerce elements too.

(Content Modules vs image)

In terms of customization, both Divi and Gutenberg have their settings for blocks/modules. But Divi indeed includes all Gutenberg’s element customizations on its module settings.

Not only that, Divi extends its module customization feature by offering unique margin-padding options for sections, rows, modules, and child items. It also excels in module conditions, transitions, scroll effects, and box-shadow options, which Gutenberg doesn’t offer.

One of the most significant features Divi provides in its module settings is that you can copy, expand, and reset every customization option of the module. In comparison, Gutenberg keeps you from doing that. You can only save your whole module design or copy them. 

For example – we are taking the same module from both these builders, for the Divi- image module and Gutenberg- image block. 

(feature compare vs image)

Rather, Gutenberg has a sheer number of blocks, but in terms of element customization options, Divi excels more than Gutenberg. However, you can make your website-building journey flawless with both of them.

Verdict: Divi

Speed & Performance

Divi is faster than Gutenberg because Divi has dedicated speed and performance optimization features in its bucket.

Let’s have a test to see how they compare. We will complete the test using PageSpeed Insights.

For the test, we have made a page with three standard modules/blocks for both – heading, text, and image in the builders. The title, text content, and image are exactly the same in both. 

Here’s the result of Divi builder –

And here’s for the Gutenberg –

Not at all, we have the loading metrics of those pages –

Divi is faster than Gutenberg in both tests. That’s casual because Gutenberg doesn’t have a significant speed optimization feature. Whereas, Divi has a dedicated tab for performance only.

All you can do in Gutenberg is turn the necessary blocks on or off using the block manager during website building. Also, Gutenberg offers load-in-line style sheets feature to speed up your website. 

On the other hand, Divi achieves speed by using the defer jQuery and jQuery Migrate features. These help your website remove a render-blocking request and speed up load times. 

The dynamic module framework in Divi allows loading only the necessary modules for each page. This prevents unnecessary bloat in Divi. Also, the dynamic CSS does the same, as it doesn’t load unwanted CSS on your website.

Plus, the Critical CSS feature in Divi doesn’t load the entire page’s stylesheet all at once, enabling your content to appear quickly, even within milliseconds.

Gutenberg, on the other hand, can not be thrown away. It doesn’t offer as many features as Divi but makes up for it by being compatible with various plugins that can help you build your dream website. This means that the loading time of a Gutenberg website should be quicker than any multi-purpose page builder like Divi.

Verdict: Divi

SEO Friendliness

In this comparison, Divi is seen as the best builder for SEO.

SEO relies on various factors, and ‘performance’ is one of them. As a result, Divi lets you create structured and semantically correct content. This helps search engines understand your content better, increasing your chances of ranking higher in search results.

For example – if your pages take 5-10 seconds to load that will negatively affect user experience. This keeps you from getting higher ranks on Google. So, good performance in SEO matters a lot.

And check back to the previous speed and performance section, Divi outperformed Gutenberg in features and tests. This indicates that Divi is more SEO-friendly than Gutenberg.

However, Gutenberg is still valuable. It uses clean code instead of shortcodes, which is also considered an SEO-friendly feature. But Divi defends this lack by having the cache clearing option. 

Verdict: Divi

Templates Collection

Divi has 2500+ layouts with 350+ full website templates for various purposes. Whether you’re creating an online store, a portfolio, or a business site, Divi has templates for all your needs.

On the flip side, Gutenberg counts its patterns(block collection) to 190+. You can’t find full website templates like Divi here. You will get all the website elements as block templates, such as – header, footer, gallery, Woo, and more.

Verdict: Divi, because of the sheer number of layouts and pluses with pre-built website templates.

Woo Compatibility

Divi has better Woo compatibility because it has vast customizable Woo modules and layouts than Gutenberg.

Divi comes with 25+ default Woo modules, whereas Gutenberg has 30+ blocks for eCommerce website creation. 

Though Gutenberg pluses with five blocks, you can create all eCommerce things with Divi. It doesn’t lack online store creation with its extensive Woo module customizability.

(Woo Compatibility vs image)

Additionally, to give a swift website creation experience, Divi offers 200+ premade Woo layout packs containing 29+ ready-made online stores. Whereas Gutenberg doesn’t. But both builders have marketplaces that provide over 100 third-party layouts or blocks.

Verdict: Divi

Support and Documentation

Divi (especially Elegant Themes) offers live chat support 24/7, a super easy way to get help. Whereas Gutenberg doesn’t. It gives support through the WordPress forum. You have to create a topic and wait for their response.

But yes, both builders have in common that they have ‘how to’ guides, FAQs, and tutorials for documentation. 

But Divi makes itself an exception for some reasons. Divi’s live chat contains preset questions, and the ‘Help’ options connect you with their Documentation, release tutorials, and FAQs. 

Also, the blog section of Divi keeps you regularly updated with a better understanding of their product. 

(Support and Documentation vs image)

Both Divi and Gutenberg serve on social media too. The Facebook community helps users chat, share ideas, and help each other out. But Divi pluses with the ‘Divi Meetups’ that help users connect with the Divi community worldwide.

Recently, Divi introduced ‘Divi VIP’ for advanced support, promising premium assistance within 30 minutes, but it comes with an extra cost.

Verdict: Divi

Pricing

As mentioned, Gutenberg is part of the WordPress core software, so it is free to use. However, you can purchase additional themes or plugins from third-party providers to improve Gutenberg’s functionality.

(Pricing vs image)

In contrast, Divi provides two subscription plans: Divi and Divi Pro. Both of these plans can be purchased as a yearly or lifetime access. 

The Divi yearly plan costs $89 with unlimited website usage and free plugins – Extra, Bloom, and Monarch. You can get the same deal for a lifetime for $249.

The Divi Pro plan costs $569 and includes everything the Divi regular pack offers, including Divi AI, Divi Cloud, and Divi VIP. You can also claim the Divi Pro lifetime deal at $729.

Verdict: Gutenberg. Free always comes first before the paid one.

Which One to Use – Divi or Gutenberg?

Divi is better than Gutenberg in every way, except pricing plans. Divi costs money, starting at $89, while Gutenberg is free.

If you’ve never used a page builder before or are just getting started with WordPress, Gutenberg is the best free page builder to choose from. Though it’s free but has positives – it’s built into WordPress, less cluttered, easy to use, and doesn’t flood you with many styling options.

But if you need to create more complex pages, Divi is more suitable. It’s a high-performance-oriented page builder, SEO-friendly, offers many templates, supports Woo, and more to make a complete website.

Divi vs Gutenberg Outro

Divi and Gutenberg are excellent WordPress page builders; their selection is based on your usage. 

While Divi may cater to some people’s needs, it may fail to satisfy others, and the same goes with Gutenberg.

Now, let’s share with us your selection in the comment section below. Your point of view will help others make the right choice, too!