The Easy Way to Migrate From WPBakery to Elementor in 2026

Managing a WordPress website means your tech stack needs to evolve alongside your business goals. For years, WPBakery has been a staple page builder for WordPress. However, as web standards shift toward faster loading times, intuitive visual editing, and streamlined code, many site owners are making the switch to Elementor.

Migrating between page builders can sound daunting, especially when you worry about losing content, breaking layouts, or SEO damage. But with the right approach, transitioning from WPBakery to Elementor in 2026 is smoother than ever.

Why Make the Switch to Elementor?

Before diving into the migration process, let’s look at why Elementor remains a top choice for modern WordPress websites:

Cleaner Code Output: Elementor generally generates cleaner HTML compared to older builders, helping improve page load speeds.
True Visual Editing: The drag-and-drop interface provides a seamless, real-time editing experience.
Extensive Ecosystem: With countless widgets, templates, and third-party addons, designing custom layouts is fast and efficient.

Step-by-Step Migration Guide

Step 1: Backup Your Entire Website

Never make major structural changes to your WordPress site without a complete backup. Use a reliable backup solution to save your database and files so you have a safety net if anything unexpected happens during the transition.

Step 2: Prepare a Staging Environment

Do not perform the migration directly on your live site. Set up a staging environment to test the migration, clean up shortcodes, and ensure your new Elementor layouts look pristine before pushing them live.

Step 3: Install and Activate Elementor

Navigate to your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New, and install Elementor (and Elementor Pro if you are using advanced features). Activate the plugin alongside your existing WPBakery setup for the time being—do not deactivate WPBakery just yet.

Step 4: Clean Up WPBakery Shortcodes

When you deactivate WPBakery, its shortcodes will appear as raw text (e.g., [vc_row]...[/vc_row]) on your frontend. You have two main ways to handle this:

Manual Rebuilding: Recreate key landing pages from scratch using Elementor to ensure the cleanest possible design and code structure.
Using Migration Plugins: Utilize specialized migration tools or search-and-replace scripts to safely clean up leftover shortcodes if you have hundreds of pages to process.

Step 5: Test Thoroughly and Go Live

Once your pages are rebuilt and styled in Elementor, review every page on mobile, tablet, and desktop viewports. Check for broken links, missing images, and responsiveness issues. Once you are fully satisfied, push your staging site changes live and deactivate WPBakery.

Need Professional Assistance?

Migrating a complex enterprise website or a large blog with thousands of posts requires technical precision. If you want to avoid downtime, layout glitches, or SEO ranking drops, the expert team at SiteSuraksha can handle the entire migration securely.

Contact SiteSuraksha Today