Pro version is excellent

I switched to the Pro version and I’m very happy with the value. It was a single, once-off price for unlimited websites, so I won’t get nagged for annual maintenance when I use this for clients. It is difficult to explain annual costs to clients when I buy Pro versions of plugins and themes, and I end up paying year-after-year out my own pocket.

The drag-and-drop panels are easy to use and have sensible defaults for both large screen and mobile. The theme is similar to Mesmerize (my other favourite theme) but with more panels and customisation options (useful ones like “don’t show on mobile” and “animation effects” for every panel. The critical improvement on Mesmerize is that there are many more parameters one can change on the front end where I have always had to add CSS. I can get the look I want.

The reason why it wasn’t 5 stars is that in this early version, the blog and page templates need work. There are no settings at all, and that means going into the templates to put the headline in the body and not inside the hero image. The page template doesn’t use a sidebar, although a widget is shown for it. The blog archive page by default is boring and doesn’t have a card/masonry option (which means using the page builder). I am hoping all these options will be added in time.

I received good support when I had a problem. This was a relief after spending a fortune including “support” on Elementor and then getting no support at all! I struggled with some issues on Elementor for 2 years, and they just sent me to their Facebook community.

Yes, there is a steep learning curve on Colibri because of all the options, but after the first simple website I built I found it more intuitive.