- In this video, I'm gonna be taking a look
at Elementor Cloud to showcase
how easy it is to build a WordPress website.
I'll explain what Elementor Cloud is,
how it compares to other options,
and how to quickly get started building
your WordPress website.
This video is sponsored by Elementor.
They reached out and asked me to take a look
at their new Elementor Cloud hosting solution.
So without further ado, let's get right into it.
Typically when working with traditional WordPress hosting,
you're not gonna have the easiest solution.
After you get your account set up with the host,
you have to install WordPress and pick a theme,
and install the theme, and find a page builder,
install that, get all these plugins installed and activated
just to start working on your website.
Elementor Cloud is completely changing the landscape
for WordPress websites.
So what is Elementor Cloud?
Well, Elementor Cloud is
a managed all-in-one WordPress hosting solution
with Elementor Pro built in.
It's hosted on Google Cloud platform,
features CloudFlare CDN,
and includes automatic daily backups.
This is a big feature for me.
I don't recommend WordPress hosting
unless it has automatic backups as a feature,
and I'm really impressed with
how easy Elementor Cloud makes it
to get started with your website.
So how is Elementor Cloud unique
from other hosting solutions?
Well, first, I would say the setup process
is incredibly simple.
It reminds me of other website builders out there
that make it really easy to step through the process
and ask you, why are you building a website?
Which template stands out to you from these options?
Elementor has what they call kits, which are selections
of pre-built pages that work with Elementor Pro.
So right after you get started with the Setup Wizard,
it'll ask you which kit you like.
You can search through a bunch of different options
and find one that really stands out to you
and start building your website right from there.
It's no nonsense.
You don't have to worry about installing WordPress,
finding a theme, installing a page builder plugin.
That whole process that previously was a headache
with getting things configured is super simple
with Elementor Cloud.
They even give you a temporary domain,
so if you're not ready to buy a domain yet
or you don't want to bother with connecting a domain yet,
you can get started right away using a temporary subdomain
supplied by Elementor.
The other thing that makes Elementor Cloud unique
is the fact that you get an Elementor Pro license built in.
This is a $49 a year value,
and with a $99 a year price point of Elementor Cloud,
literally half of the value is already justified by the fact
that you have this Elementor Pro license built in.
So is the value really there with Elementor Cloud?
To get to the bottom of this, I decided to take a look
at some other WordPress hosting options
and find the answer.
I started with Namecheap's EasyWP hosting solution.
Their middle plan offers a free CDN,
somewhat similar to Elementor Cloud,
and they claim to offer an easy, smooth,
managed WordPress hosting experience.
While the setup was easy,
the themes they give you to pick from are not great,
and they don't offer automatic backups,
which is a huge downside to me,
especially when this Namecheap plan costs $80 a year.
So it's almost as expensive as Elementor Cloud
but it's lacking the built-in Elementor Pro license,
which is a $49 a year value.
It's lacking automatic backups,
the CDN doesn't claim to be CloudFlare,
and I definitely think CloudFlare CDN
is superior to other options,
and it just doesn't get that simple Elementor touch
that makes it super easy to get started with your website.
Next I took a look at DreamHost.
Your starter WordPress plan is about $85 a year,
and it didn't even come with WordPress pre-installed.
After purchasing the account, I had to go in on my own,
click the Install WordPress button.
It didn't give me any option to pre-install a theme,
so I was given the default WordPress theme.
And at that point I had to log in, find a theme, install it,
find a page builder, install that,
get all the plugins ready to go
just to start building my WordPress website.
So again at that $85 a year price point,
if I'm not getting Elementor Pro built in,
if I'm having difficulty with the setup experience,
if it's making it complicated for me
to get started building my website,
why wouldn't I just go with Elementor Cloud?
So one thing I wanna point out
with these alternative hosting options
is even though they might let you pick a free theme
during this setup process,
you're not gonna have a page builder.
You're still gonna need to purchase a subscription
to Elementor Pro or another page builder,
or you're gonna have to buy a premium theme
which may include access to a page builder.
You're really not gonna have a fun time
if you just install a free theme
and use the built-in editing UI.
You typically really want a quality page builder
like Elementor Pro,
and if you're gonna have that added cost,
you're probably gonna end up spending more money
than if you just use Elementor Cloud to begin with.
Now to really make sure Elementor Cloud was a good value,
I wanted to take a look at a third option,
so I looked at Hostinger,
and found a plan that was $180 a year,
much more expensive than Elementor Cloud,
but it offered a similar feature set,
things like automatic daily backups,
the free CloudFlare CDN, and enough storage and bandwidth
to reasonably run a website.
However, again, if you're not getting
Elementor Pro built in,
the themes that you could pick from
and the setup process were not really great,
you're still gonna have to find a page builder somewhere,
and I don't think that Hostinger offers
as premium of an experience as Elementor Cloud.
Now I'm gonna walk you through how easy it is
to get started with Elementor Cloud.
I've got the website pulled up right here,
and I'm just gonna go for the Hosted Elementor Website plan,
and click our Buy Now button.
Then I'm gonna enter my details and my billing information
and continue on to the next screen.
And once I've made my purchase,
I'm just gonna click Start creating your website.
Now we've come to the setup part with Elementor Cloud
that I really love.
It's asking for our website name.
I'm just gonna put Craylor Made.
Maybe I'll work on a blog for my channel.
I'll just click Next.
And right here we have the temporary subdomain
that Elementor is giving us.
So we can use this to access our website
before we purchase a domain name
or link an existing custom domain name.
One of the things that I really like about Elementor Cloud,
I don't have to wait for DNS to propagate
or make a domain purchase, or anything like that.
So definitely gonna want to remember this,
and I'll click Next.
I'm gonna say I'm making a blog in this case,
and I'll click Next.
And as you can see, we have these kits
that I was referring to earlier.
We can choose from a lot of different designs
that are recommended, but I can also say Clear filters
'cause right now it's just Blog.
So if I say Clear filters,
or actually just change this to All types,
you can see we have 103 three different results
to pick from.
I think I will go back to Blog and pick something from here.
So I'll just take a look,
and I'm kind of interested in this travel blog.
I can say what's inside.
Get a full preview here.
I can see how it looks on desktop as well as mobile
by just clicking this little button right here.
And as you can see, this looks great
as a starter kit for a website, so I'm happy with this.
I'm just going to click Start with this kit,
and now Elementor Cloud is getting our website
all ready to go.
This may take just a couple minutes,
but as soon as it's done, the screen is going to notify us,
and then we're ready to start building our website.
(downtempo music)
Ta-da, your site is ready.
Cool, so I'm just going to click Let's go!
And I will click Edit with Elementor.
This is gonna take us straight to the homepage
to edit with Elementor Pro.
Here I am at the homepage,
and we have the Elementor Editor right here,
and it's super simple to make changes.
I can just click and drag
and begin to make my changes right here.
And like right here, I can just click the description,
a blog about Craylor Made's stuff.
So as you can see, it's super simple to make changes.
Now I'm not gonna get too in depth
with Elementor itself today.
I have a full tutorial video that you can watch over here.
Today I'm gonna focus mainly on Elementor Cloud
as a hosting solution and what it offers,
but it's very easy, very simple to get started
with Elementor once you walk through the setup process,
and I think it's a great solution for a lot of people.
Now let's take a look at Elementor Cloud
and some of the powerful hosting features that it offers.
In the Elementor Cloud dashboard,
I'm able to do anything that I would need to do
with web hosting.
I have my website right here,
and I can say Manage this website.
I can manage a domain here.
I can add a custom domain.
I can see my temporary subdomain that I have.
Right now the site lock is active by default,
which means that people cannot publicly access our website
because it's brand new.
It's still under construction.
We're still working on it.
But when that site is ready to go live,
I can just switch this to off and say Unlock Site,
and then that's gonna make our website live.
Now what if you've been working on your website,
maybe you make a mistake.
You need to restore a backup.
You can do that right here in the Backups section.
I just have one backup because I just created this website,
but every night it's gonna take an automatic backup,
it's gonna tell you the date when that was taken,
and then you can just click this Restore button
and just say you understand
that you're reverting your website to the previous version,
step through that process, and then you're gonna have access
to the backup point of your website.
So maybe you edit a page, and you mess something up,
or maybe something happens
and you just need to get back to an old version,
you can do that with Elementor Cloud,
and it's all automated.
That's been editing and managing your site
with Elementor Cloud.
Now I want to answer the question,
who is Elementor Cloud for?
Well, it's great for new WordPress users
who want a simple set-up experience,
and you wanna just start building your website
without having to worry about all the logistics
to get you to that point.
Elementor Cloud is also a great fit
for advanced WordPress users
who want to leverage the power of Elementor Pro.
Thanks to the what-you-see-is-what-you-get experience,
you can drag elements exactly where you want them
on the page.
You can edit margin, padding, colors, size,
and you can even insert your own PHP, CSS,
and JavaScript snippets to really get things
exactly how you want them to be.
And just a note, if you're already an Elementor Pro user
but you have hosting elsewhere,
you might want to consider migrating to Elementor Cloud.
It might make sense and save you some money
to consolidate that and have that all in one place.
And finally, I think Elementor Cloud is a great fit
for people who want to leverage the power
and flexibility of WordPress, but you're wanting
that out-of-the-box website builder experience
that WordPress has never been known for.
Elementor Cloud really takes WordPress to the next level.
It makes it simpler, it makes it more powerful,
and it makes it easier for new WordPress users to enjoy
and not feel overwhelmed.
By the way, if you want to see an in-depth tutorial
for building a WordPress website with Elementor,
be sure to check out my other video here.
Huge, thanks to Elementor for sponsoring today's video,
and if you like this video,
do be sure to hit that Subscribe button and click the bell
so you don't miss when I release new videos.
With that said, I will catch you guys next time.