Oxygen Builder Review 2024
by Adam Preiser updated Feb 23, 2024
Oxygen Builder is a tool that enables you to build entire WordPress websites. It is not a page builder or a theme, but a hybrid product that enables you to have more control over what you create.
Current Pricing: $99 – $169
Ease Of Use
7/10
While Oxygen Builder is powerful, you will not find it as easy to use as other page building tools. So it will require patience and effort.
Price / Value
10/10
At the $99 – $169 price for a lifetime license, you are not going to find a better value for a tool like this.
Support
8/10
While I have not experienced support first hand, there are some comments down below that range from excellent to miserable.
Oxygen Builder Pros
- Provides full control over your website.
- Does output cleaner code.
- Integrates with ACF.
- Allows you to centrally store templates.
- Ability to create popups.
- Display content based on conditions.
Oxygen Builder Cons
- Potentially steep learning curve
- Not client friendly as with other builders
- Not easy to switch and get your data out
- Not compatable with all plugins you may want to use
Oxygen Builder Coupon Discounts
I have seen them offer a discount on the Oxygen Builder website in the past. But really, for $99 can it be any cheaper?
Oxygen Builder Review: Wrap Up
Personally, Oxygen Builder is not for me, but you may love it. I like to refer to it as a page builder for coders who hate page builders.
Given its complexity, this builder isn’t really for non-techies.
For most users, Oxygen Builder is a strong departure from how typical users use WordPress.
There will be a steeper learning curve, so it will require more time & patience.
115 thoughts on “Oxygen Builder”
Interesting to read your review on Oxygen. I agree with everything you’ve written. I use Oxy for some client sites, but because it lacks a decent ability to use WordPress core I tend to use Padma Unlimited (a fork of Headway)
Most of my clients want to update their own websites, just simple things like changing an image, or a new hero section. The only way to do this with Oxygen is to create custom post types…why?? you’ve already got everything you need in WordPress. Using Padma I can create a section that pulls in a post, creates the background image from the featured image, use’s the post title for the heading, and the excerpt for the text, better still a button to link to the post. The section allows me to pull in posts from a selected category. All the client needs to do is create a post and click the relevant category.
Unfortunately, the downside to Padma is the lack of responsive CSS, it has some, but nowhere near as good as Oxygen. Anyway, my point (which backs up your finding) is anyone wanting to buy Oxygen should consider who will be managing the site. If you charge clients for updates or if it’s your own site then Oxygen will do the job, but if a client wants to manage it. My opinion would be to look for alternatives
I use the Gutenberg oxygen plugin and make the page editable with Gutenberg or just make sections or elements from oxygen become Gutenberg blocks. This way, the client can edit whatever they like without touching the layout.
I have a problem with Oxygen loading times. When I click on [Edit with Oxygen] I usually have to wait 8 seconds. This on a subdomain of a reasonably fast hosting.
But with Oxygen and the “Oxygen Elements for WooCommerce” plugin activated, the time increase from 8 sec to 20 seconds! Even for an almost empty About page with only one teaxarea, it takes +/- 20 seconds. 🙁
To give an indication of the hosting:
In another subdomain on the same server, I have Divi with up to 7 seconds loading time for pages with even more content.
With Enfold also in a subdomain my waiting takes no more than 2 seconds.
What kind of hosting do you have? I doubt its Oxygen Builder causing that.
I think even if that’s the problem with oxygen, it’s worth using yet as it is only you who have to wait not your clients! For your clients it’s a superfast experience which is not possible that way in wp.
I been using CMS for 15 years now from php nuke, mamboo to joomla, and then use the wordpress because lot of client asking for it, so started the wordpress way back 5 years ago.. then use the themify page builder, thats the worst thing that ever happen to me only completed two sites in wordpress and bounce back to joomla,.
Then this Elementor Show in facebook ads I test it well so far not my type of page builder,.. Andn i found the Oxygen page builder,.. my first impression “It look like Boostrap Studio”,.try onsite demo for weeks and buy the $99 dollar… done my first website with oxygen in 4 days..
And really you are right about Oxygen are not for really for beginners .. You need good background and experience to page builder.
The good thing now with oxygen is the Gutenberg add-on,. you can transfer the website to you’re client without worrying they break something in oxygen.
The only problem in oxygen that I encounter is that “NO UNDO REDO button or command” you buy that separate independent add-on. The rest is ok..
It has been added in 3.4 that just came out. If you are just starting with wordpress, leave oxygen along (coming from an Oxygen Fanboy). If you have good css and html background, oxygen is a must have. I agree with most of what Adam has said with respect to Oxygen and Non Techies
I am looking for a support forum which is not on FB – I detest the company and have been banded for not giving them my phone number.
Ugh. I wanted to use oxygen. I wanted to love it. But it is just. So. Ugly.
I have to strongly disagree with Adam that this is best suited for the programmer who hates page builders. Because that’s exactly who I am. I wanted a quick and easy way to produce a beautiful website and then supercharge it with my own css, javascript etc. But the prebuilt templates are so ugly that it makes more sense building it in Visual Studio Code.
I know my words are harsh and hats off to the developer for making such a robust tool. But hire some goddamn designers and testers(and ui/ux testers because that is severely lacking). I code well, but my designing skills are lackluster. My frontend just doesn’t have that clean, sleek, pop. I don’t have that natural creative flair. I had hoped that I could use Oxygen to create that gorgeous front end that clients love and supplement it with my own css/javascript.
It’s not the best of both worlds. But rather the worst of both worlds. Anyway that’s the end of my rant. I hope they improve their designs in the future.
I completely agree with you, I have looked at giving Ox a go sooo many times but as soon as you start looking at their templates or ‘packages’ it kills it for me…I actually found it hard to find a site that looked any good, please guys hire a developer to do your templates! Ugly sites don’t do it for me.
Hi Adam! I have used Beaver for years, Elementor for a month, and oxygen for 2 months.
It really isn’t that hard to use, really.
I am just not sure of the SEO bonuses it can give compared to a site made with Beaver, really not sure of that, I am still looking to compare because the possibilities of creation are a little more limited …
It’s good that you are typing all the different builders to see what works best for you. I will say that there is going to be no SEO benefit in choosing one WordPress page builder over another. You will get the most SEO benefit out of having a design that keeps visitors on the page, so whatever builder is going to get you there is the best one to use.
I wish your comments section had dates as it’s really difficult to decipher if some of these comments are relevant to the latest product version. Just my 2 cents 🙂
Added them right after you posted this.
I Bought OxygenApp a few months ago, love to see something happen but sadly, it’s looking bleaker and bleaker by the day.
Hi Sapna, I just purchased it – what is the problem?
Being new to Oxygen can you clarify what you mean by “When you deactivate all data is stuck in the database” please? Do you mean the data simply is remaining the DB causing unnecessary db bloat or do you mean all the data I need is “trapped” in the DB and therefore it is being held captive by Oxygen. “Captive” may seem like a harsh word but I am only using it for explaining what I am trying to say. My website is an eLearning website an I don’t want my student data to be “held hostage” by anything. (Sorry for the harsh descriptions.)
Thank you for everything you do!
Sorry for not clarifying that. So what I meant by it is that your data is trapped so it can’t be reused. And it is stuck in your database, but the amount of bloat is minimal. It would be better if your page content was still accessible as plain text and images upon deactivation.
Hi,
on their website they now say that the license is GPL.
Yes that appears to be the case now. I need to update this as they have made some changes recently.
Hey Adam! I’ve just read this article and and all of the comments. I feel compelled to commend you for standing up for yourself against an onslaught of trolls. It’s quite refreshing. Thank you from your newest fan.
Thanks Wendell, it’s been a nonstop barrage of trolls. But after a few years of being on YouTube, I have grown a thick skin.
I actually think the pros and cons for this article are about spot on after using it for about 6 months. It’s takes a long time to learn – and TBH (not mentioned) it is still buggy (nothing big but that’s part of the learning curve – refresh is your friend).
That said, once you get over the learning curve, you can do anything you like in WordPress. See a theme you like? Copy it and make it better in a day or two. Really.
Another huge advantage (and I think people should really notice) is that Oxygen is based on standard css/html. So if there is a setting for margin-width, this is what it’s called etc. You just have a graphical way of editing and seeing the results. So as you learn Oxygen, you learn real CSS not how to use a builder. This helps later on if you want to make more custom code. And if you start off with some CSS knowledge, then you automatically have an advantage.
How it does it compare to UX Builder in Flatsome? Way better than Flatsome UX Builder? or just slightly?
The user interface for UX Builder is going to be a lot more user-friendly. But if you are a coder, you may prefer Oxygen Builder.
I don’t consider myself a techie, and I had a lot of frustration with WordPress. On a whim, I went for Oxygen thanks to their limited time only $99 offer. It turned out to be not nearly as difficult as I thought, with the help of their instructional videos. To be sure, I haven’t yet gotten into the more advanced features, but I have enjoyed using the basic ones, and now find that building my website is more of a pleasure than a chore.
I know a bit about css, html and php. In the past, I have always picked out themes with which I could reach my goals together with selected plugins reasonably.
Now for three months I have been working on a website with Oxygen. For the first time, I feel I can actually do everything the way I want it. For me after all the years it has never been so easy to make a consistent design and layout as in Oxygen. For example the responsive layout, so easy to create it perfect however you want by a few clicks for any viewpoint you define and it works. The integration of custom fields, especially together with ACF, is child’s play, and it works. Inserting plugins with a shortcode to the right place and adjusting the layout, no problem at all, and it works. And if there was an obstacle in the past months, support has ALWAYS helped me within 24-36 hours. That is for me a very new experience although I am not a beginner in wordpress.
Of course it takes time to get the knowledge and I’m still not familiar with all the features of Oxygen, but they are all documented in a bundle of excellent public videos. Taste it.
Whatever I had in my mind and wanted to create, I did it so that I actually have the feeling that I can design an almost perfect website with my abilities. Oxygen has given me all kinds of wonderful opportunities to implement my ideas for a website uncompromisingly so that it works.
My respect for the soflyy team!
So there seems to be a lot of different views here is Oxygen better than the others ?
After having problems with Divi and frustrations with Elementor I been searching for something that’s better. I have a quick look and so far I like what I see could anyone give me a view on the following or even a sample site I can look at.
1 Site speed
2 SEO plugin compatibility
3 Any good examples
4 Are there templates cannot find on site
Adam, I bought Oxygen version 1.xxx not long after you reviewed it the first time around. I got it to do the theming that Elementor was lacking before the release of 2.x .
It’s always been a love/hate thing with Oxygen. I love the speed. I love the ability to use PHP and javascript. I hate the run around the moon that you have to do if you want to use Elementor to design headers and footers for use with it. Seems like it should be a straight forward thing to design a page header with Elementor, save it as a template, then drop its shortcode into a code field in the Oxygen head, but it’s never quite so easy. The best way to use it is if you have a PHP page that must be inserted into a WordPress site, but then you lose your Elementor theming. Ah at the frustration in finding the good balance. se la vì
Thank You for this post.
I bought some days ago the actual version.
My main thing on it is, that the website get quite fast.
Without having an additional theme, if it is an easy theme without too much overhead or a full packed theme with a lot of additional plugins.
So far, I agree, it takes time to learn how to use it.
And I will test a lot of factors as mentioned the speed, SEO technically stuff etc.
I worked already with several themes like visual composer based, Divi etc.
It is a new challenge and I like to try all things out.
Regards,
Simon
Thats great to hear Simon. Hope it works out fantastic for you and the sites that you build.
what do you think about divi! looks nice support .
I’m not an Oxygen user but am thinking about giving it a try.
I’m intrigued by the comments about $99 lifetime not being sustainable. Surely that depends on how many they sell and what their overheads are?
Their FB user group has 8372 members. Let’s say 8000 of them have purchased (not unreasonbale as some people will buy without joining the group and others will join before buying / not buying). That’s already $792 000. If the team is as small as people are saying that’s still pretty healthy, surely?
Oh, and Oxygen 3 Alpha 1 was released today I believe?
You should go for it. $99 is not a lot of money for something like this. And those numbers, two things come to mind. Many of those group members are not going to be custoemrs, but curious people. On the other side of that, not all customers are going to be in the group or on Facebook at all. Lastly, $800k may sound like a lot, but spread out over 3 years, after fees, taxes, and salaries, it’s not a whole lot. But all that is speculation and I am sure they know what they are doing, this isin’t their first rodeo :-)!
Oxygen is probably THE best page builder around right now. I haven’t used every single page builder in existence, but I can’t say I’m surprised it doesn’t get the nod here since they don’t have a recommend-for-money program.
It’s quite sad that you would write that. First, not sure why you say it “doesn’t get the nod” when my content has always been focused on “WordPress For Non-techies”.
FACT 1: Oxygen only has a “recommend for money program” today.
FACT 2: I have many email offers from Oxygen to pay me and I decline them all.
FACT 3: All the reviews on the internet, including videos, were all bought and paid for. So you are 100% misinformed there.
FACT 4: They did have a referral program in the past and it was quite generous.
FACT 5: When they had the referral program I did make a review video because many people asked me. In the video, I pointed out all the things that I didn’t like about it and also didn’t recommend buying it at the time.
Point being is you and the founder of Oxygen like to attack anyone that doesn’t like Oxygen by making all sorts of false claims. Why can’t someone just not like something without being accused of some hidden motive?
And to back all the above up, I can post screenshots but whats the point.
“Why can’t someone just not like something without being accused of some hidden motive?”
Exactly! A lot of people can’t accept that some of the things they like are not liked by others. Well bad luck. Go and have a cry.
Can you post the screenshots? I’m interested if this is true.
Oh it’s true, but I will not be posting screenshots. However, you can ask around to verify because it’s common knowledge.
I appreciate this comment thread. To be honest, I had felt you had ignored detailing it because you wouldn’t be rewarded and you’re right that’s unfair. I think that’s more due to me being in the mode of “how can heloing people make me money” vs you sticking to your own guidelines.
I think the main things is your “Personally, Oxygen Builder is not for me, but you may love it. I like to refer to it as a page builder for coders who hate page builders.”
You might want to edit it to say something like “given its complexity this builder isn’t really for non-techies and I won’t go deeper into it because of it”
What’s there now seems like a dismissive frustration vs sticking to the site purpose.
This was the only negative I had about your site.
Hi Adam,
I’ll be honest, I’m not a big fan of your style of tutorials, but this is the first thing that I agree with you completely. There’s just something weird about their videos where they’re constantly calling other page builders crap. It’s one thing to compare them and show customers that their product is superior, however (in my opinion) it’s completely unprofessional to bash their competitors.
FACT 2 seems very realistic to me given their marketing strategy to get only big names to promote them. I offered to promote (and optimize their design sets) and help them with marketing/sales twice (for free), and both times the offer was completely ignored (which is fine, it is their choice), but also unacknowledged.
The response from their support team is also very curt and not customer friendly at all.
Here is a response I got recently:
—————————————————————————————————–
Hi Nick,
>> I know that usernames cannot be changed, however the way it is displayed can be changed, and you offer that as an option.
The dropdown box shown in your screenshot isn’t related to which name is displayed in the portal. The portal is configured to display the username and this isn’t something we’re going to change.
How would you rate my reply?
Great Okay Not Good
—————————————————————————————————–
I’m in two minds whether to request a refund, as I do like their loading speeds. Seriously. But that’s about it. The ux/ui is not friendly, their own website (customer area) is not ux/ui friendly, and the support, while fast, doesn’t seem too knowledgeable or friendly.
I hope you post this comment so others can see this and make up their own mind. And I have learnt a few things from you, so thank you for that as well.
Have a great day!
yours sincerely,
Nick
Don’t hold back now :-). Yea I publish all comments (the ones I like and the ones I don’t like), just not spam.
That’s ridiculous. It’s well known Adam and Louis don’t exactly get along too well. Quite frankly I’m surprised Adam is talking about them at all. I think Adam is very fair in his assessment. From what I’ve read here, he’s telling people in no uncertain terms what a great value Oxygenbuilder is.
I can’t wait to hear what Adam thinks of 3.0 which was just released yesterday. It has some new features like the Gutenberg block addon which now provides a very easy “hand off to client” functionality. Also, the new WooCommerce integration is the best I’ve seen of any builder on the market.
Oxygenbuilder 3.0 is a pretty amazing accomplishment. The price is now $169 LTD (which includes the WooCommerce & Gutenberg addons.) The base plugin is still $99 LTD.
I got to say that this is NOT the friendliest visual builder. Learning curve is there and yes, kinda buggy. But, once you get the hangs of it, it will perform quite decently.
My biggest problem is that it is not compatible with some plugins (as compared to Thrive Architect).
Overall, I will still recommend this plugin.
Absolutely terrible customer support from Oxygen Builder was our experience. We since requested a refund and would have nothing to do with their product nor their false promises.
I don’t agree with this. I have superb experiences with support.
And again, the price is 99$ for lifetime license and you have one price, strong builder (without limitations of BB) so you can’t expect reply in 2 hours. This isn’t nothing against BB, I used it and I liked it, but the price per year is high for me and you need some money if you want to have so customizable builder as Oxygen is in basic.
I am seriously considering trying out Oxygen. The points mentioned before are also a concern for me too:
1) how is the $99 for life price sustainable? that has to change because any time I invest in building sites with it are at risk with a business model like that
2) Elementor is fat and slow – Beaver Builder is faster and leaner and Oxygen is on a whole other level of sleekness. With the ever increasing demand for faster page load – especially for mobile and SEO, Elementor has me very concerned with it’s code bloat.
3) Oxygen needs a free version. They would get so many more people trying it. I personally love what I have seen in their recent videos. I think their builder is superior to Elementor – classes for one, stands out as amazing.
Honestly though, I would have way less reservations about buying Oxygen if it was $99/yr instead of lifetime.
You should also take into consideration the ease of use and capabilities. The whole claim about Oxygen and the significance of code bloat is blown way out of proportion and reality. But hey if that’s all you got, that’s all you got! In the real world, if an Elementor page has an extra 10kb – 20kb, that equals nothing in regards to page loading speed or requests (and requests is a BS metric because of HTTP/2).
The challenge with Elementor is not Elementor itself, its more the 3rd party add-ons that are poorly coded. So if you have a true apple to apple comparison, there is no real-world difference.
I more look at capabilities and ease of use. Oxygen has fewer capabilities currently (but that can always change with time) and is nowhere near Elementor in terms of ease of use (doubt this will ever change).
All that being said, I do think Oxygen is perfectly positioned as the tool for coders that hate page builders, but doubt it will ever be a mass-market product. And that’s ok when you have a recurring subscription model. Hence my concern with the $99 lifetime price and the sustainability of the product.
“All that being said, I do think Oxygen is perfectly positioned as the tool for coders that hate page builders,”
I think pinegrow would be better suited for coders who hate page builders. At least in pinegrow you can export your finished wordpress theme. No need to have all that extra stuff.
Good point!
I think you’re understating the performance difference quite a bit here. I tested 2 equivalent pages in elementor and oxygen just displaying recent posts, a header, and a footer. The oxygen version was about 200kb smaller and scored 30 points higher in lighthouse performance test. On slow 3G it loaded about 5 seconds faster. For clients that care about mobile in emerging markets these are very significant differences.
Fair point, but I would also add that I do not design my website for people using technology from over 10 years ago. Sure I want them to be able to access my site as well, but I am not making decisions based on that.
that’s a big mistake in my point of view.
if you make a fast website it will be 100% fast in all devices, if you only care about new technology you will give to most of the people bad experience. Google knows that people that doesn’t have good experience on a website, it leaves that website, that’s why it introduced AMP. usually, people that doesn’t optimize their code, usually they don’t do it because they don’t know better…not because they don’t care about “old” technology.
I make mobile apps for a living, and on my google / apple statistics page, i can see that 80% of people that download apps have +2 years phones and most <300 euros phones. From around the world. If you only make webpages for "good" hardware, that's a rookie mistake (or really you don't know better).
Regarding on oxygen, I'm testing some frameworks to teach our designer to work with, and for now oxygen was the easiest to use. Guess having a programmer background helped, but in less than half an hour I was making blocks from scratch. It helps if you understand the basics of html and how to create a website from scratch without a framework. if you know the basics, oxygen is pretty much easy to build any website. Flutter from Google uses same approach. In flutter you need to code ofc, but the idea how to insert the blocks is the same.
They just need to change their whole pricing structure for NEW customers whenever they reach a point (if they reach that point) where it makes sense. There are many variables at play, anything is possible.
Yes, and I will say that is gonna be a tough transition. They have had this firesale pricing for 2 years, and in those same 2 years, Elementor has been installed on 2 million websites, built their staff to over 60, and are completely dominating everything. Point being, if this is all the traction you get even with this firesale price for 2 years, raising the price is gonna be really hard to do.
I’m curious. There has been many, many reads on WordPress’s copyleft GPL license. It is my understanding that anything that is made with the code of WordPress as a derivative, theme, plugin, etc. must accept the GPL license as they must accept that license first to use WP.
Could you correct me if I’m wrong here, but I just don’t get how people can pick and choose their own license.
The bottom line is this theory had not been tested in the courts. That being said, it’s my understanding that the PHP in a plugin or theme had to be GPL and everything else does not. But how can you separate that? It’s like a divorced couple with a kid saying you take the top half and I will take the bottom half. In a practical sense, it doesn’t work that way.
This is called a split license and it’s how 99% of Envato products are licensed.
After reading down through the posts i see a lot of disagreement which distracts from 1 major issue.
1 time fee unlimited life time model is never sustainable for long. How can it be?
Value comes with a subscription when product upgrades create a valid sticky reason to renew.
As a product owner myself, I can say it’s not sustainable at all and is more resembling a Ponzi scheme. The only way it works is with a lot of consistent volume of sales coming in. The problem is the minute those sales stop coming in now you have this long-term liability. You also see this happen when you significantly underprice your product even if it has renewals.
That would depend Adam, on how you manage it. Ff you rely solely on the app sales itself, then yes, not sustainable business. However, if you add some premium monthly addons/themes/icons/etc, by which I believe they will add it soon, that’s called kicking the competitor’s asses and being smart at the same time. But that’s my opinion tho lol
In theory that’s great. Having someone pay me $10 for $1 is a great theory as well. Thing is, you will have a hard time pointing to one example of a WordPress product company that has pulled anything like that off. So I guess we are in agreement that it’s not sustainable.
Hello,
Can you please help me understand what it means that this isn’t GPL certified? I did some research and I guess I understand what GPL means, but I’m having a hard time understanding what kinds of problems you could run into with using a tool that isn’t certified. Or what the “freedoms” are that you mentioned?
Thank you!
I don’t believe I use the phrase GPL certified, I did use the phrase GPL licensed. When software is GPL licensed it protects you in the event that a developer goes out of business, among other things. GPL is the whole reason we have WordPres to begin with.
This actually is misleading as i remember reading seeing this when it came out and now i was expecting and update on the video. Maybe the outdated video should go. I’ll give the v2 a spin as the v1 didn’t quite cut it for me. I’ll be back for my review aswell.
Sorry that I am not “meeting your expectations” but if you take a moment to read above, I have clearly stated that I will not be making any videos on Oxygen Builder and I detail out the reasons.
There is nothing misleading if you take the time to read the post. It clearly states that the written review is on Oxygen Builder v2 and there will be no video coming. It also clearly states that the video is on Oxygen Builder v1.
Oxygen 1 was an awesome proof of concept. It had a lot of bugs and they did go quiet (as far as updates / bug fixes go) for a while as they rebuilt the framework to become Oxygen 2.0. Oxygen 2.0+ is absolutely fantastic and is under heavy development with a consistent update/release cycle. I used to loathe working in WordPress, but with Oxygen I have a new found love for WordPress. It’s incredibly easy to rapidly build a simple highly aesthetic website, and there has yet to be any advanced functionality that I haven’t been able to implement.
You should really update this review to reflect its current status as its confusing that the “Last updated shows September 3” but the review is for an old version of Oxygen.
It’s now updated for Oxygen Builder v2.
Adam. I’m thinking about giving Oxygen a go. I only hesitate because of the learning curve rather than the $99.
I always find that the software developers are great at showing you how much you can do with their kit, rightly so, but you never see behind the curtain, which is when your newly purchased software starts to reveal itself and all of the frustrations associated, not just with the learning curve but with the inevitable omissions and bugs that come with it.
One case in point that I read, there is no ‘undo’ function. Really? You can revert to the last saved version, and that’s it.
I joined the Facebook group to have a poke around and sure enough, there are plenty of gripes, as there always are if you look hard enough, with anything.
Anyway, my question is, now that they have released Oxygen 3 along with the Gutenberg block integration and Woocommerce features, are you planning to revisit the software at some point in the future to see if it qualifies as a trendsetter, or even just a good solid site builder?
I’m so reluctant to move away from Elementor, and of course, I won’t but I fell for this when I opted for Macromedia Fireworks instead of Photoshop all those years ago. Look how that worked out for me.
Not sure where you guys are getting all your intel from, but nothing could be further from the truth!. Having recently switched to Oxygen from Divi, I could not be happier. In the few months we have been using it, we have received a great update to 2.1. The support is great, there is an active Facebook page with so many users all willing to help and the creator himself is always on there.
I am all for different opinions as we all have our favourites, but misguided comments can certainly hurt a business. Don’t like a feature, ok but to talk about how often they are on twitter, c’mon please!!
I have never learned to code but after watching their very well put together tutorials, I am knocking out sites with ease. If you liked Divi..you will love Oxygen
Who’s talking about “how often they are on twitter”?
That’s where you lost me.
Another point worth mentioning to those working with RTL – they don’t have support for the plugin actually kind of breaks on a RTL WordPress install.
I really need this kind full control builder which they provide big time on the v2, but i get the filling it’s like a one man show or something, the support is very slow and unhelpful, there blog is updated very rarely and i don’t see updates (not even near to what is happening in Elementor which has a live big community and a lot of updates and so on… only they don’t give full control – not even close).
Yea I wonder if it is related to the very low cost of the plugin. The dev has stated that you can be profitable with a low-cost lifetime price, but I think it is VERY hard to pull off for a page builder because the level of support needed is on a completely different level. It’s one thing to do it for a simple importing utility plugin, but a page builder is entirely different. The only reason Divi has been able to do it is because of their scale and volume.
hi, I’m curious. I have had Ultimatum theme for a few years and I’m wondering what you think of Oxygen compared to Ultimatum. I havent really been satisfied with Ultimatum because I want something where i don’t have to spend so much time fiddling and can work with things out of the box. Is there a big difference between Oxygen v1 and v2?
Yea there are a ton of people leaving the Ultimatum theme right now. Oxygen Builder is not my personal prefrence for the reasons I listed out above. I prefer Elementor Pro which is a full theme builder.
To preface, I’m not affiliated with Oxygen in any way and I totally agree with this assessment of V1. V1 was subpar in terms where they got vs their ambitions for the tool. I saw the vision but felt it fell short in many ways some of which you outline in your video. V2 however I think is an amazing tool, especially when approached properly. I love the way page builders make things efficient and “repeatable”, but as a hand-coder, I’m always left wanting with page builder tools (Beaver Builder, elementor, divi, etc) and end up writing everything into the child theme or a plugin anyways. I love that I’m able to have total control over every aspect of a site with oxygen v2 and things operate inline with how I’d expect them to if I was hand coding a site and yet they’ve also managed to get the visual editing experience to feel incredibly natural and powerful for non-devs. Adding a class to multiple elements then using visual point/click to edit one reflects changes across all elements in real-time. It also gives you the ability to create your own component/section libraries that can be loaded in the interface and drag and dropped in just like all the other popular options provide. I personally love the way they have laid out the library in a way that lets you have siloed “design system” component libraries. A developer can provide a library to a designer that doesn’t know how to code and they immediately have the ability point and click make changes with no code.
At our agency, we utilize an in-house boilerplate on all our client projects. It’s a decoupled next.js (react.js) frontend that connects to WP via the rest API. We use type rocket page builder framework as the backend editing experience which passes custom block info to the rest API and is loaded as React components on the frontend. We’ve now realized we can take our existing react components after transpiling to HTML and build those into Oxygen component libraries for our lower budget clients to also utilize. That’s code reuse to the max and creating the ability for less digitally savvy designers to drag/drop create top-notch sites without breaking anything or having to code the underlying HTML. Certainly not going to be for everyone but they’ve done a pretty good job of making things easier for the non-devs with this new release I’m just hoping that support and updates continue at their current pace and don’t fall off the map like seems to have happened with v1. :/
I absolutely agree with you. Oxygen is a solid web builder. VS 2 is even more powerful and flexible. What you can build is limited by your imagination.
looks like 2.0 is out. Looking forward to your insights. Thanks
Hi Adam
Now Oxygen Version 2.0 has been released. After your assessment of version 1, it would be appropriate if you would also make a fair assessment of version 2.
I will, but on my timeframe.
This article is misleading in that you head it as ‘Oxygen Builder Review updated Sept 2018’. anyone coming here will think you have reviewed 2.0 or 2.1 but you haven’t. its just another funnel to your site.
You need to take it down or update it properly to show a full review of version 2.1. In your own time? You’ve had plenty of time.
Who died and make you king of the internet?
So here I am doing a good thing, updating this review to make it perfectly crystal clear that this is on v1, not v2 and somehow I have done this horrible thing according to your rules. I mean listen to yourself here.
You can’t make this stuff up.
And the demands you make, that somehow I have to do things on your timeframe.
See folks, this is exactly why I will not make any videos on Oxygen Builder for the reasons listed above.
Adam, while I do agree it was pretty demanding way to ask of you, I do think he has a point.
Just for ‘transparency’ sake, I would suggest that you change this review name to ‘Oxygen App’ (as that was that was the v1 name) and then create a new pending review for ‘Oxygen Builder’. This would really help separate v1 from v2 because honestly, v2 feels like a much different experience. I used v1 for about a week back in college and was not really a fan.
Also, I don’t believe that Louis should be blamed with actions of the community. But I do think that they way Oxygen’s community is, with us literally being able to talk 1-on-1 with the founder, can make it feel like ‘family’ for some people. This is something I haven’t really experienced with many other wordpress tools and honestly makes if feel like we are being heard and not talking to some faceless corp. So basically when we/they see something negative, it is like you are attacking the family. Oh the human mind.
Anyways, sorry if you feel harassed by the community. I really don’t think that this was Louis intent (tho he can be sassy).
The written portion has been updated for v2. There will not be a video coming.
To you, I am happy that you found a product and community that you like.
Again I apologize that you feel like anyone has gone after you (not that that really means much from one random member of the community lol).
Maybe boredom will one day lead you to play around in Oxygen, even if it isn’t for WP Crafter :).
Anyways, good vibes, peace, love and happiness.
John is right. Your non version update of Oxygen 2.0 (coupled with your personal opinion of the owner/creator) is no doubt causing people to make decisions. These decisions are based on YOUR input and YOUR input has caused readers to make decisions.
So, instead of going after some who disagree with you, whattya say that you get to that update…or delete all on Oxygen…because, as I stated, your opinion of a version of Oxygen that doesn’t exist, coupled with your personal opinion of the owner/creator of Oxygen, skews the results.
Thanks for all that you do here,
Harry
Why don’t you go take that same attitude in response to the person that directed you to come here and write this comment in the first place. If it’s good enough advice for you to give it to me it’s also good enough advice for you to give it to him.
Today the new version of Oxygen 2 has just been released. It looks great, but I have my doubts after seeing what is discussed here, but I also have to say that I am a Sofly customer and I think its WP All import plug-in is very good.
It looks good on the surface, but I still have some concerns. The advantage I see is that it uses flexbox for the generated code which makes it lighter, but other page builders will eventually switch to this, Elementor is already starting. This will appeal to hand coders, but it’s not really that big of a deal in the real world. Oxygen Builder I think it’s the perfect tool for people that hate page builders. Its made for that type of developer, many aspects of the builder will require an understand of coding principals.
Screwed is a harsh word. Sure it’s a pity when 2.x isn’t backwards compatible with 1.x, but sometimes a system isn’t amendable but best continued by a complete rewrite. 2.x is a very good foundation for the future, and both 2.1 and now 2.2 alpha is very good updates. I’m originally from DIVI lifetime and I think O2 is more lean and better to build my sites on. Sure DIVI is feature rich, but it also comes with, in my opinion, with too much bloat and too many rapid updates in a short period of time. That can be challenging when I have to test everything in a staging environment before going live, each and every time. Not much fun when something breaks on a live site.
As for the 1.x sites. You can still use 1.x if it’s too much hazzle to rebuild the site with 2.x. Any updates to 2.x, 3.x, 17.x is free for the curren users, so no additional costs there. The same issue is when you want to change from any of the available page builders on the market to another one. You have to rebuild if you want to change. Every page builder has a level of code lock-in. The coice you make in most cases will follow you through the sites life cycle. Choose wisely. Oxygen is an excellent choice. In many regards on par with it’s competition. It’s more down to the choice between apples and oranges…
Yes, it is a strong word, but that is how I would feel as a user. Sure I get the argument for not having backward compatibility. But we are talking about this happening in less than 12 months. That is not normal no matter how anyone tries to justify it.
You are making that sound like its a normal and good thing, but it’s not. Sure if it was 5 years, but less then 12 months, hell no.
Regardless it’s all water under the bridge now.
Oxygen 2.0 is in closed beta and is shaping up really well. Its control for Custom post Types and templates is Amazing and it is very different from the typical drag and drop builders
Yes they reached out to me a few days back and asked that I test it. I’ll happily do that and revise this review.
Your comments where done 6 months ago – did anything change since then? Updates of oxygene, Improvements? etc.
I read that they got some WPMUDEV Developers who were building the UpFront Builder now working for them and there was also a call on Facebook that he was offering even a benefit if more WPMUDEV Devs would move to them – would actually be much better if they would move to DIVI instead – anyway!
I see a great potential of such a builder – it is in a pretty similar way also available in Flectra / Odoo and CubicERP (which are all based on Python) but a huge ERP system with a super Website builder which also stores all stuff inside the database (postgres). Very easy to setup a websop or and site presenting your company with data from your erp system – has also blog.
For Developers that could be a real cool tool Oxygene. The fact that it losses the content isn’t so good, especially if you are using Elementor or Beaver Builder. You better avoid Oxygene. When using DIVI it actually won’t matter as both would lose the content and therefore I think the best would actually be if DIVI would integrate that Developer features into their own DIVI Builder to make especially modifying Headers and Footers much easier than right now.
Even greater would be if all those Layouts – DIVI will bring out about 800 in the following months!!! – would be reusable also in Oxygene as then the combination or DIVI with Oxygene would be the best tool for future web development and you could entirely forget about Elementor and Beaver which not even offer a lifetime license! -> which means you purchase yourself into a prison – vendor lock-in.
Thanks for your in-depth comment. It’s hard to say what has changed since Oxygen is in closed Alpha testing right now.
Since it’s not page builder, BB, Elementor nor Gutenberg does not compete with it.
It’s rather “new” Headway but more solid.
Strange thing is it’s not theme but completely take over the theme.
Might be more powerful than BB Themer or Elementor 2.0
Just an update, Oxygen 2.0 Alpha is now available for testing. Is is obviously buggy and the author warned us. It is actually a new standalone web application and will not replace version 1 I mean they will focus on ver 2 but will also look after ver. 1 only for security updates. There are few MAJOR improvements, the layout engine use now CSS Flexbox that make building any layout far easier, there is drag and drop support for sections and single elements and this can also be done using the DOM tree. Video backgrounds, parallax, overlay are now quite easy to achieve. The template builder looks very straightforward, the easy posts element allow for many different style combinations for archives. If you feel adventurous you can also code directly in PHP the WordPress loop, I think no other page builders can do that. Stiling a Gravity form is now easier because the CSS inspector allow for easy targeting of HTML elememys to style. This web app is very unique and innovative, no anymore themes and child themes all changes are stored in the WP database. Id you love a page builder like Elementor (I do) you can combine it with Oxygen quite easily.
Yes, I wish them well with the product.
Definitely web developers should seriously have in they tool box Oxygen. Personally I use Genesis since 2012, then I have Astra Agency paired with Elementor Pro and look forward to build sites with Oxygen 2 when is ready. My plan is to use it alone and combined with Elementor Pro as well.
Can you please share how to put hands on the Alpha? I am currently working a lot on Webflow but miss WordPress CMS and in the same time will prefer Oxygen to all other WP visual builders (personally, I like having total control on div level) but was reluctant to buy due to no communication or updates. Do you have any idea if the current licence will extend to 2.0? Thanks!
Hello Bojan,
if you own Oxygen 1.0 you are entitled to use also ver 2.0. Cheers
Thanks!
You should definitely approach people to pay you to do tutorials.
They would provide value for the people that want to use it and you’d make money from the videos.
Just my two cents.
Thanks for the encouragement Mike. I will consider it.
I am a beginner , and so far most page builders I have used feel extremely limited. This to me seems much more intuitive and removes a lot of constraints of theme page builders, even with elementor canvas. I think the product is brilliant and to me just what is needed in the market for newbies, such as myself (aside from the coding aspect). Where they lack in customer , they make up for in speed and options of what is possible , which I believe far exceeds anything in the current marketplace . This should fuel the next generation in WYSIWYG website building. I hope they succeed !
Al
I got into a fight with the creator and I have to say. He is an ass, plain and simple. I told him that he should at least send out an email blast to current subscribers to let us see behind the scenes. His response…does Apple send out free previews of their software/hardware? WHOA bro, you consider your company Apple. LOL.
Any good marketer will tell you that customer service is key. This company has zero customer service and zero support. I’d love to see something happen but sadly, it’s looking bleaker and bleaker by the day. And even if it does happen what does this long wait indicate to those people who have purchased? Longer updates? Security loopholes for people who try to find a way to hack the software?
This had so much potential but sadly, I don’t see it being anything more than a really, really bad purchase.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Yea I read that whole Apple analogy and thought it was a head-scratcher as well.
Hi,
The Author has assured they are working on 2.0
Vijay
I sure hope they deliver! I want them to succeed.
The company blog indicates no updates will be released until version 2.0, which they are working on. Hopefully they will get the update out soon.
Sometimes I just think they put that up to milk more sales. Not saying that is what is happening but I have seen it many times in the past. I wish them the best.
Bought OxygenApp a few months ago, and there doesn’t seem to be any updates, support is limited to e-mails rather than forums, and I do regret purchasing. It’s good at what it does, but quite buggy and inconsistent. Wish I’d swerved it, it’s not going to be around for the long run, and zero updates mean trouble.
Yea I am pretty concerned as well that it has been abandoned.
They haven’t tweeted in a month which sounds ominous. Guessing it’s curtains.
I wish them well, and want them to succeed! I have seen enough products come and go, but hope that doesn’t happen here.