Spectra Review: The Right Visual Website Builder for You?

As a Gutenberg user, you may have come across the Spectra Block plugin to build your website in WordPress block editor experience. In this Spectra Review guide, we provide an in-depth analysis of Spectra Blocks.

This Gutenberg plugin comes with a variety of blocks, extensions, pre-made templates, page builder functionalities, and many more to ease and empower your WordPress building journey.

In this Spectra review, we’ll explore its key features and web-building functionalities, compare it with other Gutenberg page builders, and help you determine if it’s the right choice for your needs.

Spectra Overview

Spectra is one of the most popular page builders in the market developed by Brainstorm Force a reliable name in the WordPress industry. With over 400,000 active installations and glowing reviews from its user base, it has earned a strong reputation among WordPress enthusiasts.

One of the key factors behind this success is its smooth integration with the default WordPress block editor, eliminating the need to go through the additional learning curve. This effective user experience eases the user’s journey creating professional and highly functional websites.

Another notable thing about this page builder plugin is its incorporation of cutting-edge technologies to address the evolving needs of modern users. I really appreciate its approach of choosing the React framework for faster and more effective loading of web page’s design components. 

Plus, the JIT markup also contributes to the dynamic loading of page assets. And, all these work for a speedy page experience for web visitors. 

Spectra’s Website Building Blocks Analysis

Spectra supports a host of advanced website building blocks to create any modern-day design. Its growing block library already includes about 49+ blocks that cover diverse web design needs.

Spectra is probably all possible, from building headings to showing blog posts and giving a creative touch with elements like Lottie animation, slider, info box, and icon list. These design blocks are also very powerful. For example, the Spectra Container block is developed with the idea of a Flexbox container mechanism. 

You can change the orientation of the elements, adjust the justification-content settings, and align the container exactly the way you want by changing the flexbox properties. So, you can imagine how helpful these blocks could be. 

Now, focusing on another important part for web designers is customizing features within these blocks. The good thing is that every content and design element like typography, icon, background, alignment, etc can be controlled from an easy-to-use interface.

Spectra Visual Builder Capabilities

Spectra is a drag-and-drop Gutenberg-based plugin that extends the visual editing functionalities of Gutenberg.  Let’s look at some key page builder features available with this plugin.

⚒️ Dynamic Content

Applying conditional content is an effective way to personalize content for an interactive visitor experience. The Spectra Dynamic content feature pulls text or visual content from different sources, such as media libraries or dynamic feeds, depending on visitors’ preferences and behavior.

You can even choose multiple content options to set conditions in the dynamic content settings to precisely define your visitors with targeted content. 

⚒️ Popup Builder

Engage your visitors with the perfect offer at the right moment using Spectra’s powerful popup builder. This block editor plugin lets you precisely define where and on which pages your popups will appear. With a variety of triggering options, you can effortlessly capture your audience’s attention and drive conversions, whether it’s doubling your revenue or collecting vital leads.

⚒️ Loop Builder

Spectra loop builder functionality allows to display of relevant information like blog post lists, portfolios, product grids, or more in an engaging and visually appealing sequence. It means you can create a visually consistent story with repetitive elements or specific categories and customize the loop appearance for a compelling look. One good thing is that Spectra has seamless integrations with almost all dynamic content plugins like ACF, Toolset, Custom Fields, etc. 

⚒️ Display Condition

Another way to target users precisely is by implementing the Spectra Display Condition extension. It lets you show or hide block content based on user roles like visitor’s login status, browsers, operating system, etc. Even, you can display a block for a specific time. Therefore, you won’t have to set up weekend offers or member-exclusive content every time.

⚒️ Responsive Conditions

Spectra ensures your website’s functionality and appearance remain consistent and seamless across all devices, screen sizes, and viewports. You can control the number of columns of a layout based on different devices. Further, the Granular Control feature lets users define font size, icon size, background, and other customizing parameters for a specific screen type.

⚒️ Animation Effects

Give your WordPress website a vibrant exposure with Spectra animation and transition effects. Spectra’s Animation extension will let you add eye-catching animation effects that will keep your visitors’ eyes glued to the web page without having to deal with any coding hurdles. You can set between animations in a loop or play once as users scroll.

Spectra Other Key Features

Now, we’ll focus on some of the key features that Spectra facilitates to improve your page builder experience. 

🔶 Starter Templates

Think of an industry and there’s a good chance that Spectra’s design library has a complete website template for it. The Brainstorm Force team is a prominent name for pre-made templates. Spectra block-based templates are easy to import within the Gutenberg dashboard. 

Then, you can change its content and other design elements by doing some click works and start your WordPress website in no time. These templates are designed with world-class designs and royalty-free images and visuals. 

🔶 SEO Features

The Spectra Blocks plugin offers exceptional built-in SEO features, including automatic schema markup and specialized blocks like How-To, FAQs, and Review Schema. These features help to develop SEO-friendly websites that will be compliant with Google Core Web vitals. So, you don’t have to do extra work for SEO needs.

🔶 Page Speed Optimization

Spectra is designed with a strong emphasis on optimizing page speed. The development team selected the modern ReactJS framework to ensure web pages are inherently faster and more robust. Spectra’s design elements load only when needed, eliminating unnecessary dependency.   

Simultaneously, the Spectra block editor dashboard is also lightweight, allowing you to edit and customize your site quickly and smoothly.

🔶 Zip AI Assistant

A groundbreaking innovation from the Spectra team is the introduction of Zip AI, referred to as ChatGPT for WordPress website building. It gives you artificial support to alleviate the traditional struggles on your WordPress journey.

Let’s see what this Zip AI is bringing to the table: 

✅ Generate engaging website copies.

✅ Write compelling product copies. 

✅ Response to any WP-related queries. 

✅ Manage and respond to comments on your website.

✅ Integrated with AI-supported language translation system.

✅ All together, Zip AI ensures AI collaboration in your WordPress journey.

🔶 Support & Community

Spectra can be a reliable option, as it’s already used on 1,000,000+ websites. This broad user group chooses Spectra not only because of its modern no-code web design solutions but also because the company has earned trust with its popular products. The support team is committed to giving dedicated customer support. 

Spectra VS other Page Builders

Spectra is a comprehensive Gutenberg page builder, but there are alternatives in the market, such as GutenKit and Kadence Blocks. So, which one, a user should take?

Ultimately, the choice depends on your specific needs. For example, most WordPress users preferred a mega menu feature when choosing a page builder. In this case, GutenKit wins the game with advanced header-footer functionalities. 

Plus, GutenKit also boasts advanced animated features like one-page scroll, motion effects, parallax effects, glass morphism, etc. And, when it comes to Spectra, you are missing out on these features even by paying more.

If you want to say that GutenKit is a new plugin, it was created by the same ElementsKit team. So, they have experience in achieving the satisfaction of millions of users. 

Altogether, Spectra raises some questions about whether it should be the top choice.

Spectra Pricing: Does it Worth Your Money?

Spectra is a freemium plugin. Its premium version is available in three different packages: 

🔵 Spectra Pro: The normal price of this plan is $59, which ships with all the pro features of Spectra for one year. You will also enjoy premium support within this package.

🔵 Essential Toolkit: This annual package includes the Spectra Pro, Astra Pro, and Premium Starter templates for $99 only. 

🔵 Business Toolkit: In this $199 package, you will get everything in Spectra Pro and Essential Toolkit, additionally you will get SureFeedback & SureWriter. 

So, here is all you need to compare the Spectra Pro package with its alternative. Then, you can make the right decision.  

Up to You!

So, this was our honest Spectra review. We’ve tried to give a detailed explanation of this block editor plugin. Now, before making the final decision, there’s a good thing is that Spectra has a free version to use. 

Similarly, its competitors like GutenKit and Kadence are also available in the WordPress plugin repository. So, you can experiment with all free versions and then decide to go for the premium one.