ColibriWP: The Freedom of WordPress Website Design
When WordPress started it was pretty obvious that it needs plenty of enhancements. It wasn’t the best user experience. But soon a community emerged that created themes and plugins, and the WP blossomed. Still, it wasn’t enough. Some issues like switching interfaces and styling elements were still causing headaches.
Then the WordPress builders showed up, and the game changed for good. So, today we’re introducing one of the game changers, Colibri.
We’ll go through its features, its pros and cons, and we’ll even make a comparison with another website builder, outside WordPress – Wix.
Let’s get going!
What is ColibriWP?
ColibriWP is a drag-and-drop WordPress website builder that does not require any coding knowledge.
It comes packed with 60+ website templates for a variety of niches and 150+ ready-made blocks. Now, some of these are in the free package, some of them aren’t.
Its drag-and-drop customization is effortless and brings in fast and great results. You won’t ever need to go back to the WordPress Customizer, everything gets managed in a single interface: headers, footers and sidebars.
ColibriWP Features
Colibri WP offers a lot of visually appealing features that help you easily create a stunning website. Now, let’s take a look at some of the most important features one by one.
Website Templates
You can start building your website from scratch, but why reinvent the wheel? You can use one of the templates, it will help you anchor your project better. There are 60+ available templates, that fit a variety of niches: from business, health, photography to sports, and food.
Just head over to the WordPress dashboard and select Colibri Settings from the Appearance submenu. Then pick a template from the Demo sites section.
When you create the Colibri WP account you can also save your themes, redesign them later and they stay in Colibri WP’s cloud. This option lets you use your themes on other websites without any struggle. You can apply your creative design to your website with only a few clicks.
When you finish your theme you can redesign it later in the Colibri cloud. This option allows you to recycle it and use it on other websites if you like. This can also be done in just a couple of clicks.
What you need to know: the moment you import a template, you won’t be able to go back to the initial website design. The initial pages won’t be erased, you will find them inside Trash, but the general design changes will be affected by the template.
If you want to avoid that, you can always duplicate your original site.
Work Within a Single Interface
You can design your website in a single interface, never having to go back to the WordPress interface. You won’t have to worry about additional customization to go through after finishing your project.
This is one of the greatest Colibri options, that makes it stand out from the WordPress builders crowd.
Pixel-Perfect Web Design With No Code
Doesn’t matter if you start from scratch or redesign a template – you can customize every detail till you reach pixel perfection. All you need to do is to drag and drop your desired elements and then use some sliders for styling.
For example, you can adjust sizes, opacity just by using sliders, until you reach your desired style.
Just head over to Appearance > Customizer. Then, choose the element you want to design (heading, button, menu, content, etc). When you select it you will see a menu with the options: Content, Style and Advanced. Styling magic happens in the last two options.
Blocks & Components
These modules are here to make your life easier. They can fit flat or modern design.
If you need:
- Clients section
- About section
- Testimonials layout
- Photo gallery
or some other content pieces you can add them from the pre-designed blocks. As I said, nobody has to reinvent the wheel.
And because headers are essential to a website, there are predefined headers at your disposal.
The components refer to sliders, dividers, buttons, carousels, pricings, etc. These are smaller modules.
One of the things I liked the most is that you can create your own blocks and reuse them later in another design!
Also, you can duplicate your pages, if you want to make little tweaks to them and keep the website consistent.
Mobile Responsiveness
In a multi-device world, it’s vital to have a fully responsive website. Colibri lets you see how your website looks on both desktop and mobile devices, and make changes accordingly.
Important: the styling changes you do in one mode (desktop, tablet, or mobile) do not affect the other modes. Content changes will affect all modes.
Now, always check how your website looks on tablet and mobile. We know that this can be something that gets easily forgotten.
In-Line Editing
This is one cool feature. You won’t have to add the text in a separate section, and then wait for it to show up on the screen. Text edits happen in the preview area.
User-Centric Design & Easy Navigation
The interface is very intuitive. Navigation flows naturally.
On the left-hand side, you will see all the modules that you have on your website, from the heading to blocks and footer. Any extra block that you want to add will show up here as well.
There’s a pattern that repeats itself under each element. The moment you want to edit any of these items, you will see the same options:
This means you won’t get lost in multiple options when moving from image editing, to button editing. The learning curve is pretty short.
Great Support
From the WordPress Dashboard, from Appearance > Colibri Settings you can access documentation and also get in touch with the support team. You can always reach them by sending an email to [email protected].
You can reach them as well from their website. You should know that those with a paying plan will have priority support. You can even ask them for new features, and they’ll get on a list, waiting for implementation, depending on the number of requests.
You can also check their Youtube channel for general WordPress and Colibri tutorials. Every 2 weeks you’ll get a new video, under 3 minutes, to help you get better with your WordPress skills.
Pre-Packed With Powerful Plugins
We all know that the power of WordPress comes from its community of theme and plugins builders. Colibri comes jam-packed with the most powerful and useful plugins out there. All you have to do is to install the ones that you need, from the Colibri Settings.
Should You Upgrade to Colibri PRO?
Colibri has a free plan that includes a few features that are a good fit for a website that isn’t too complex. Before you start your website, take a look at the difference between the free and paid plans.
Now, if you want:
- Full control over fonts and colors
- More than 3 pre-designed templates (more than 50)
- Unlimited video and slideshow backgrounds
- More header layout options
- More than 30 content blocks (up to 174)
- Google Maps integration
- Priority support
- Widgets access
- To use shortcodes. These are tiny pieces of code, inside brackets like these [], that can add a specific feature to a page, post, or content (pretty cool stuff this one).
- Multi-Language options. You can access this feature through the Polylang plugin.
Then, it’s time to check your options.
ColibriWP Pricing
The ColibriWP pricing doesn’t spice up your budget. You can choose from yearly and lifetime plans. If you want to develop more websites, you can switch to a business or agency plan.
ColibriWP vs Wix
Now, we all know there are good WordPress builders’ competitors out there. Wix is one of them. But, where’s the difference? Which tool is better?
Here’s a short list of pros and cons for both tools, to make your decision easier.
Colibri Cons
- Can’t change the width, height of an element by dragging it, you will have to play with pixels, or ems to adjust the size.
- You need to use plugins to take care of the website security and maintenance.
- It doesn’t work with any WordPress theme.
- E-commerce functionalities are basic
Wix Cons
- Mobile responsiveness isn’t handled very well.
- Making code adjustments is close to impossible.
- Far less number of apps available (below 300).
- E-commerce functionalities are still in the draft “mode” mode.
- Website migration to another builder? Hold your horses: “Your Wix site and all of its content is hosted exclusively on Wix’s servers, and cannot be transferred elsewhere.”
- Might be tricky with more complex websites.
Colibri Pros
- Thousands of plugins and integrations available (both free and paid).
- No code limitations, you can easily adjust HTML and CSS if you want something “more” custom-made easily and make custom changes.
- You own your website and its data: you can migrate your website to another website builder with ease.
- It deals better with the mobile responsiveness.
- You have access to a huge WordPress community and lots of resources for troubleshooting and inspiration.
- Fit for both beginner and more complex projects.
- Blocks you create can be saved and used in future designs – I’m loving this!
- Good native blogging features (duh, this is how WordPress started, as a blogging solution).
- Integration with some of the most important marketing and performance plugins out there.
- Could have more fancy templates.
Wix Pros
- More templates to choose from.
- No need to worry about security and maintenance, WiX takes care of these.
- The width, height of an element can be changed by dragging it.
- Shorter learning curve than for WordPress.
- A good fit for non-technical users.
There are a lot more details about the same web page in Wix and Colibri worth knowing that can help you better understand the differences between these two web page builders.
Colibriwp – the Takeaways
ColibriWP offers an intuitive and user-friendly WordPress website building experience. No coding is required, but if you insist, and have some HTML and CSS background, then, the sky’s the limit. The sites you build can be adjusted for mobile devices as well.
I like it that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, and you have templates and pre-designed components and blocks that can make your life easier. You will be able to create a website just by drag and drop.
The Colibri team consistently releases new features and adjusts to the latest WordPress changes.
In the end, take it for a ride, there’s a free trial, and see if you’re a match.
We hope this article was helpful. If you liked it, feel free to check out some of these articles as well!
