Elements for Freelance Designers

Elements
1

Good morning and greetings. I wonder if I might solicit some advice from this impressive community about the choice of Elements as a web design platform for a small freelance side hustle.

One of the activities I have enjoyed since I recently retired is tinkering again with website design. The last time I built a website was more than 30 years ago, long before the age of smartphones and responsive design. (Remember Macromedia Dreamweaver?!) I’ve been on a self-education and retraining quest for the past 18 months, starting with RapidWeaver Classic and Stacks and then jumping to the emerging Elements platform last year. I’ve built a couple small personal websites for my husband with Elements, and I have had such fun using it that I’m considering turning my “hobby” into a legitimate registered freelance business focused on building small sites. My target clients would be other freelancers and small businesses in my area.

Thus my question to you. As I consider taking on paying clients, I’m wondering about my choice of platform going forward. Those of you who are freelancers: why have you chosen Elements? I’ve looked at other options – Wix and Squarespace: No. Limited design flexibility and locked in to a proprietary hosting platform. Hand-coding: No. I prefer WYSIWIG. I’m exploring WordPress now, and I must say I’m impressed with the capabilities I’ve seen so far, not to mention that “43% of all internet sites are built on WordPress.” It occurs to me that my future clients would benefit from a site built on WordPress – they could make small updates themselves and could hand their site off to another freelancer if and when I exit the scene .

So, freelancers: why Elements? I’m curious to know.

Thanks in advance.

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Hi, being in this position for 20 years I can strongly argument against Wordpress. It seems convenient at a first glance but:

Less ongoing liability: WordPress sites need continuous attention around core, plugin, and theme updates, and WordPress’s own documentation includes hardening steps such as disabling dashboard file editing because compromised admin access can lead to code execution.

• Plugin risk and maintenance overhead: A major WordPress risk is not usually WordPress core itself but the plugin/theme ecosystem; Patchstack’s 2025 mid-year report says most WordPress vulnerabilities were found in plugins, with far fewer in core.

• Fewer “client broke the site” situations: With WordPress, clients can install plugins, edit content in ways that destroy layouts, or trigger update conflicts. A Realmac/Elements workflow keeps more control with you as the designer and reduces the chance that the client turns a clean site into a messy admin-driven system.

• Better fit for static or semi-static sites: Realmac describes RapidWeaver Elements as a macOS visual website builder for modern, responsive sites, with local project control and no lock-in as a core part of the product positioning.

• Performance advantage: Elements is built around Tailwind CSS and AlpineJS, and its documentation says it generates only the CSS the project actually uses instead of loading Tailwind from a CDN. That is a good selling point for clients who care about speed, Core Web Vitals, SEO, and clean front-end output.

• Cleaner GDPR/DSGVO story: A lightweight static or mostly static site usually means fewer cookies, fewer third-party plugins, fewer tracking surprises, and fewer database/user-account concerns. This is especially useful for German small-business clients who want a legally safer, simpler site.

Please feel free to contact me and we can have a call and I can tell you about my experience if you like. Just pm me :slight_smile: