I’ve been a Divi owner for so long that it feels like we’re practically related. I bought my Elegant Themes subscription nearly a decade ago, which means I’ve had plenty of time to almost use Divi for serious projects—and then decide against it. Repeatedly. And with conviction.

Owning Divi has felt less like using a mature WordPress theme and more like signing up for a drawn-out motivational seminar. You know the kind: endless promises, lots of applause, and the constant assurance that greatness is just around the corner. Any day now.

Divi 3.0: The Visual Builder

Back when I first jumped on board, everything revolved around Divi 3 and the Visual Builder. The messaging was relentless. “Just wait,” we were told. “This will change everything.” After months of buildup, the Visual Builder finally arrived—and promptly face-planted. It was slow, unstable, and often unusable. The miracle failed to materialize.

It’s a bit like the Biblical story of Moses leading the Israelites around the desert for 40 years, telling them that soon they would reach the promised land.

Divi 4.0: The Header and Footer Builder

Years passed. Improvements trickled in, incremental at best. Then the spotlight shifted to Divi 4 and the Theme Builder. Cue another extended hype cycle. This one dragged on even longer, promising full header and footer customization – and overall newfound freedom. When it finally shipped, the result was…okay. Not revolutionary. Not terrible. Just underwhelming—especially if you cared about such things as basic navbar design.

Throughout all of this, Divi’s core personality never really changed. It remained clunky, slow, and oddly fragile. And every complaint was met with the same familiar refrain: “Hang tight. The next big release will fix everything.”

Divi 5: The Long and Winding Road

Which brings us to Divi 5. I wish I were exaggerating when I say we’ve been hearing about it for nearly half a decade. As of now, it’s still in beta—and sadly, the experience matches the label. It’s sluggish, awkward, and riddled with issues. In daily use, it’s simply inferior to a modern block-based setup using the default WordPress theme paired with tools like Twentig and GenerateBlocks.

It’s Unnecessarily Hard to Use

With the WordPress default block editor, you can find and insert a wide variety of patterns and pre-built page sections. You can do the same with the Elementor page builder. With Divi, on the other hand, there are no available patterns. You have to import them from existing site designs, an ungainly process that requires you to exit the page you’re creating and import parts from a huge collection of highly-opinionated pre-designed sites.

You’re essentially dumpster-diving (most of those pre-designed sites are hyperformatted beyond being usable) for something remotely acceptable – something that you’ll spend another 30 minutes or more deconstructing so that you can make it work with your current site.

It’s complicated, a mess, and way more difficult than using even the default WordPress theme and core blocks. which I find infinitely more useful and intuitive. Or you can try to cobble together your own Divi library of such sections, but that either requires you to set up a new library for each site or try to use Divi Cloud, neither of which works properly for me in Divi 5.

Meanwhile, even inserting a simple slider is crazy difficult, and I’ve been making Web sites for over 25 years. I’ve used WordPress slider plugins for ages, and today I gave up in disgust after a half-hour of trying to insert a very basic, two-image slider into a potential Divi project.

I Still Can’t Recommend Divi

If you take nothing else from this post, take this: don’t sink time, money, or client goodwill into Divi. Learn the WordPress block editor instead. It’s faster, cleaner, and dramatically less frustrating. As one example, Divi’s text editor still makes internal linking way harder than it should be. WordPress core solved that problem years ago.

And the vexations keep coming. Layouts I created can no longer be reliably saved or reused (as I alluded to a moment ago) because the Divi Library and Divi Cloud simply don’t work for me anymore. The blog module can’t seem to do a simple post list. Occasionally, images refuse to display for no apparent reason. These aren’t exotic edge cases—they’re basic expectations.

I Suppose That It’s Not All Bad

Yes, there are some positives. Finished Divi sites usually look decent, load reasonably fast for visitors, and behave nicely on mobile with a bit of tuning. Once everything is built, maintenance isn’t awful. And to be fair, Elegant Themes’ support is generally responsive and helpful.

Still, patience has limits.

In the Bible, Moses eventually led the Israelites to the promised land. It took only 40 years of wandering. Divi, on the other hand, still feels like it’s asking users to trust the roadmap.

The Block Without the Chain

At this point, I only touch Divi when it’s on an existing site. I wouldn’t choose it for a new project, and I don’t recommend it to others. Block themes are clearly where WordPress is headed—and Divi isn’t one of them.

That’s just my perspective, shaped by more than 17 years of working deeply with WordPress (with almost nine years of traditional web authoring before that). If you want a longer list of grievances, I’m happy to share. Or just post yours here.