Complaint Review: Elegant Themes

Elegant Themes once led the pack for WordPress page builders, but that’s no longer the case. 2.5 years ago, they announced Divi 5, expected to be ready in 12-18 months. Now, it looks like it will take 3.5 years, and Elegant Themes won't commit to any specific release dates.

This delay would be acceptable if they continued updating and maintaining Divi 4, but they haven't. For the last 2.5 years, they've neglected their paying customers, offering the same product without new features or even bug fixes. Other page builders have since surpassed Divi 4 in functionality, highlighting how dated it has become. Divi 4 doesn't support modern standards like Flex and has 3,800 known bugs, according to CEO Nick Roach. He admitted publicly on Facebook that they lack the resources to maintain Divi 4, as all efforts are focused on Divi 5.

Instead, Elegant Themes has found resources for new pay-for-use addons, neglecting customers who bought lifetime updates. These addons are subpar compared to third-party options. For example, the Divi AI page creation tool can create a single page well but struggles with multiple pages. The image generation tool lacks controls and doesn't compare to tools from OpenAI or Stable Diffusion. Charging a high monthly fee for occasional use is unreasonable; a simple credit system could solve this.

CEO, Nick Roach shows disdain for customers by blocking them on the Elegant Themes Facebook page, deleting their messages, and asking other Divi fan pages to do the same. He claims blocking people on the Elegant Themes page is sometimes a mistake intended as he thought it his personal account. However, rather than listening to valid complaints and addressing them, he dismisses them, which only fuels customer frustration. “Ignoring people on my own account is my choice, and I do it so that I can interact with my friends in peace. I can’t live in a social space where I am getting bothered by angry customers.” - Nick Roach. There is a reason customers are angry - addressing those reasons is a better strategy than blocking them. Nick uses his personal account for business. He could easily have a separate account for friends. If the personal account is for business, then it is fair to include his personal account in business responses and raise issues.

Elegant Themes advertises VIP support but excludes lifetime members, treating them as second-class customers. To be fair, Divi 5 is faster, but it offers the same functionality as Divi 4. Other builders have also increased their speed, matching or surpassing Divi. Thus, 2.5 years of inactivity will stretch to 3.5 years before Divi 5 ships. Nick Roach's public response to release date inquiries—"It will be done when it's done"—is unacceptable.

Recently, Elegant Themes experienced an outage, leaving account and cloud features down for over a day without clear communication. Support acknowledged the issue but provided no information, compounding customer dissatisfaction.

Elegant Themes relies on third-party developers to fill gaps, forcing users to pay for functionality included in other builders. There's no guarantee third-party plugins will work the same with Divi 5, and users will likely face new bugs that Elegant Themes lacks resources to fix quickly.

I have invested in Divi sites and will stay for now due to the cost and effort of switching. However, I strongly discourage anyone from starting with Divi and Elegant Themes products. Their disdain for paying customers and lack of transparency are evident. Divi 5 may be fast, but so are other builders. Explore other options to find the best fit.

To be clear, the product was great in the past. If Elegant Themes had supported Divi 4 properly until Divi 5 shipped, this wouldn't be an issue. But no updates or features for 2.5 years is abandonment. Addressing customer dissatisfaction and frustrations by blocking them and deleting messages is a worse strategy. Nick Roach and Elegant Themes need to reassess how they treat their customers. Their open disdain is unacceptable. I used to recommend Divi to many others; now, I regret it.