Visual Composer: The Brain-Twisting Story of the Name Change

Detailed explanation of the change in Visual Composer product line: The difference between WP Bakery and Visual Composer Website Builder

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Users who have been using Visual Composer for a long time may be confused by some recent changes. First, the Visual Composer page builder was renamed WP Bakery. Then, a new product called Visual Composer Website Builder was launched.

Faced with such a major change, you may have questions:

"What is the difference between them?"

We noticed that many users are confused by these changes - they don't know if there is any difference between the Visual Composer website builder and the Visual Composer page builder.

They are confused by WP Bakery: Is this a new product or just a rebrand? What about the website builder? Is this version 2.0 or something completely different?

In view of this, we have written this article to remove this misunderstanding and apologize for the unpleasant situation we have caused to our clients.

We are deeply sorry for the confusion surrounding Visual Composer.

More importantly, we are sorry for not dealing with this issue immediately after it arises. We wrote this article to finally be honest about the whole situation and explain what actually happened.

You will soon find that this is a puzzling journey that leads us to this path. Things are happening gradually, and the more we try to “solve” the problems along the way, the worse things are.

It all starts with name change.

The first logical question that comes to mind is Why did we decide to change the name? After all, you may have seen the name of Visual Composer on every major WordPress theme.

Long story short, we have no choice.

If you want to know the whole story, you can watch the video or read the following.

It all starts with our new product, Visual Composer Website Builder. It should be clear that the Visual Composer website builder and the Visual Composer page builder are not the same product. Page Builder is a product exclusive to Envato with a lifetime license. Our new plugin website builder is more complex and is not suitable for the lifetime license model.

It is more functional and built for a growing number of users in our user base whose website building needs have grown rapidly. It is designed to get rid of the lifetime license model, as the new React.js technology stack means higher development costs and can only be maintained with the annual license model.

The annual license model also enables us to stay in touch with our users and provide them with high-quality support. However, when we proposed the plan, we didn’t think about something important.

We overlooked a key detail, which put us in a dilemma.

That is the contractual restrictions we have with the market, which prevents us from selling other products under the name Visual Composer outside their platform.

Once we realize this, we have only 2 options:

1. We can lower the specifications of the new product to fit the lifetime license model and place it on the same market as the Visual Composer page builder.
2. We can change the name of the Visual Composer page builder. This is the only way for us to lift contract restrictions with the market where the product is sold.

This is a very difficult decision and we know we should not take it lightly. After considering all possibilities and options, we decided to change the name of the Visual Composer page builder to WP Bakery.

This is why the Visual Composer page builder became WP Bakery.

We are busy with new products and don't even realize how much confusion we have brought to Visual Composer users.

Not only everyone was confused about the change of Visual Composer page builder to WP Bakery, but users were completely confused about our new product, the Visual Composer website builder. They don't know if this is a new product or a rebranding of the old one.

When we realize our mistakes, we decided to take you through the whole process to help you understand how things happen and which product is. Let's start with our new product, Visual Composer Website Builder.

What is the Visual Composer website builder and what does it do?

Visual Composer Website Builder is a real-time preview editor with drag and drop capabilities, and it comes in two versions; free version and premium version with additional features.

When you use drag and drop blocks and view changes immediately, you can easily achieve your vision with hundreds of ready-made content elements.

Visual Composer Website Builder works with any theme; you can easily integrate it into your existing theme; you can choose from many cool WordPress templates that are suitable for a variety of pages , including portfolios, company websites, login pages, product pages, etc.

There are two types of page editing: front-end editor and tree view. With tree view, you can easily browse the elements available on the page and save a lot of time.

One of the coolest features of premium versions are header, footer, and sidebar editors, as well as access to a large number of add-ons you can get from Visual Composer's dedicated center or standalone developers.

How is the Visual Composer website builder different from WP Bakery?

Visual Composer Website Builder and WP Bakery are two completely different products.

The following are the main differences:

1. WP Bakery is only used in the content part, while the Visual Composer website builder allows you to build a complete website (with headers and footers).
2. The Visual Composer website builder is built from scratch using React.Js, and it does not use any WordPress shortcodes, which helps improve performance. WP Bakery, on the other hand, is based on shortcode.

Why is this an important difference?

First of all, the Visual Composer website builder allows you to generate clean code, and it won't get messy if you disable the plugin (just like a shortcode-based plugin).

Visual Composer Website Builder comes with a cloud-based hub where you can download the elements you need – and avoid downloading unnecessary resources.

If you want to learn more about the differences between these two products, click here.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment and we will do our best to answer all questions as soon as possible.

Thank you for reading this puzzled story. We are very grateful!

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