GenerateBlocks vs Blocksy: Which Boosts Your Site More?

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Building a website is like assembling a puzzle. You piece together different parts, hoping they fit seamlessly to create a stunning final product. Two popular pieces of this puzzle are Blocksy and GenerateBlocks. Today, we’ll explore which one is right for you.

Choosing between GenerateBlocks vs Blocksy is critical for WordPress users, especially entrepreneurs who want an impressive online presence. We’ll compare these two, from design flexibility and speed to user experience and pricing. This GenerateBlocks vs Blocksy comparison is for anyone serious about making smart website choices.

GenerateBlocks vs Blocksy: A Detailed Comparison

When building a WordPress website, you might wonder if a simple theme with block plugins like GenerateBlocks is enough. Or, maybe a full-fledged theme like Blocksy is better. It’s like choosing between a blank canvas with tools or one with predesigned elements. It’s a balance of flexibility and convenience.

GenerateBlocks: Building Blocks for Creativity

GenerateBlocks offers fundamental blocks: Container, Grid, Headline, and Button. It’s a minimalist’s dream, allowing full creative freedom. You arrange these core elements, customizing the layout.

With over 100,000 active installations, you control crafting each page section. GenerateBlocks allows you to create dynamic content layouts using its grid block and other content blocks. This offers extensive customization options for design and layout.

GenerateBlocks Pro, at $59/year, unlocks features and enhances designs. Layout blocks like the Accordion block and Flexbox controls are available. There’s more flexibility for advanced users who use custom CSS and understand custom attributes.

GenerateBlocks integrates beautifully with GeneratePress. You can find support for GenerateBlocks within the GeneratePress ecosystem. This is not required, but the synergy offers many design benefits for WordPress sites.

Blocksy: All-in-One Design Powerhouse

Blocksy is like stepping into a furnished room. You get the basics ready-made. Customization options are ample, focusing on intuitive adjustments, not deep coding.

The appeal is efficiency. Get up and running quickly with predesigned sections. These custom headers and footers are a standout feature.

The Blocksy theme has over 100,000 active installations. It offers a WordPress theme and starter sites, giving you a base to quickly build your website upon.

Blocksy’s header builder lets you drag and drop elements. Shape both desktop and mobile versions easily. This is essential for busy entrepreneurs. Many enjoy this ease of creating headers for the front end of the website, rather than delving into custom code.

Speed and Performance: GenerateBlocks vs Blocksy

Page load speed comes down to clean code and minimal clutter. It’s vital for users and how Google ranks your site. Both Blocksy and GenerateBlocks boast speed and lean coding.

Where might you hit snags? Consider the balance of themes, page builders, and extra block plugins. Adding lots of extras can add bloat and can slow things down. It also uses more server resources than necessary.

GenerateBlocks with a lean theme like GeneratePress or Neve achieves the advantage of an all-in-one option with great page speed. You also avoid excessive code and plugins that can decrease performance. Many find using Blocksy with a fast shared hosting plan, even with many files and images within the WordPress installation, that site speed and load times can perform quite admirably. This can vary based on various hosting related elements, of course.

Adding page builders to a fully-featured theme like Blocksy could cause issues. Slow loading or rendering discrepancies in browsers or mobile versions can occur.

Customization: Fine-tuning Your Vision

Customization isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s about practicality and branding. Consider how deep you want to go with tweaking settings. GenerateBlocks, a freemium plugin, allows a free version for testing its customization options. You might prefer tweaking design and performance over fiddling with plugins.

Some prefer Blocksy. Others use GeneratePress with GenerateBlocks. It provides flexibility and the customization needed in order to create exactly the look and design of your choice.

User Experience: Keeping it Smooth for Everyone

A theme might look great, but clunky tools can make it rough on creators. An excellent front-end user experience often hinges on your tool choices. A well-organized backend customizer is impactful. Consider exploring more options when looking into improving the front-end user experience for GeneratePress paired with the block styling and dynamic blocks available in GenerateBlocks Pro.

GeneratePress and GenerateBlocks Pro offer easy configuration. Some themes with predesigned modules hide options. GenerateBlocks puts everything at your fingertips.

GenerateBlocks requires little to no coding for page customizations. Anyone can edit virtually every detail using this Gutenberg blocks plugin.

Pricing

FeatureGenerateBlocksBlocksy
Free VersionAvailableAvailable
Pro Version$59/yearPaid options available

FAQs about GenerateBlocks vs Blocksy

What is the difference between a block theme and GeneratePress?

GeneratePress isn’t a block theme. It pairs well with block plugins like GenerateBlocks for styling. It’s highly customizable for bloggers using various plugins in conjunction with their blogging workflow. Those plugins can vary by things such as an author box posts section at the bottom of every blog post, sharing boxes with social icons to allow readers to share articles easily, or any other plugins which allow adding more features into GeneratePress.

Is the Blocksy theme good for SEO?

Blocksy has strong SEO settings, but further optimization is always beneficial. It contains a built in search icon that is displayed at the top of the screen in order for a site visitor to search for anything on your site, and for them to easily access any related articles which can help satisfy their search query intent. You may have seen examples such as a grid container displaying results from any posts types within WordPress such as articles, products, categories, or anything other post types installed via any blocks plugins.

Is GenerateBlocks Pro worth it?

If advanced styling, asset management, and effects appeal to you, GenerateBlocks Pro justifies its price. The value of supporting developers is also a consideration.

Features include an asset library, custom blocks creation, advanced backgrounds and design elements. This creates highly customizable pages without being confined by template blocks limitations, as some users feel. This provides many more design capabilities beyond just using things like headlines blocks, the hero section with the featured image, typography and color, and many others which may or may not apply directly when choosing to not take advantage of GenerateBlocks Pro features. Those advanced features in GenerateBlocks can allow creating almost any website that can be conceived within someone’s mind.

Is Blocksy Pro worth it?

It depends on if you need white label features, deeper WooCommerce customization, or if using something like GeneratePress is sufficient for your website needs. For those who run or maintain sites using GeneratePress and wish to expand capabilities with additional features and more design aspects when building new websites, this may not require use of separate plugin such as when utilizing the capabilities found within the Pro offers in GenerateBlocks. Using GenerateBlocks with GeneratePress does provide great workflow and site creation features while providing highly customizable themes, pages, templates, and design features such as SVG icons and the like.

With Blocksy and GenerateBlocks, select display settings based on device visibility.

Conclusion

Your choice between GenerateBlocks vs Blocksy depends on your comfort and goals. Do you enjoy crafting from a blank slate, or is a polished starting point better?

There’s no right or wrong answer. Blocksy offers more starting resources. It might feel limiting as your project grows. GenerateBlocks provides an initial structure you can mold. It requires careful integration with themes like GeneratePress for comparable technical capability and workflow convenience. Both achieve excellence. Understand your needs and choose what suits your site creation preferences best.

About the Author
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Dr. Sheri James, PhD, MSCIS, BSACS, is a content producer, educator, digital agency owner, and digital nomad with over 40 years of experience in software engineering and digital marketing. She specializes in helping entrepreneurs and small businesses succeed online. Dr. James's digital agency, Critical Thinker Media, focuses on web design and development, while her personal blog, Dr Sheri James through Affluent Virtuoso, offers templates and educational resources. Her work simplifies the complexities of online business for clients, all while embracing a location-independent lifestyle that allows her to travel and work from anywhere in the world.
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