For years, one of the strongest arguments for using a WordPress page builder was simple: if you wanted precise control over how a website behaved on desktop, tablet and mobile, the native editor was not enough.
That argument has just become weaker.
With WordPress 7.1, responsive styling becomes a native part of the editing experience. Blocks can now have different styles for tablet and mobile, both globally and individually, without relying on custom CSS. Themes can also define their own responsive breakpoints instead of being tied exclusively to WordPress defaults.
Does this mean Elementor, Divi and other page builders are suddenly obsolete?
No.
But it does mean that the reason we use them is beginning to change.
Page builders solved a real problem
It is easy to look at page builders today as an additional layer sitting on top of WordPress.
Historically, however, they solved a very real limitation.
Designers wanted visual control. Clients wanted to edit pages without touching code. Developers needed practical ways to build complex responsive layouts without creating everything from scratch.
Page builders filled that gap.
They introduced visual editing, reusable components, responsive controls, layout systems, dynamic content and design settings long before the WordPress editor could offer comparable tools.
For many professional workflows, using a builder was therefore not simply a preference. It was often the most efficient way to build the website.
But WordPress itself has been changing.
Slowly at first, and much more significantly in recent releases.
WordPress 7.1 removes an important limitation
Responsive design is a particularly important milestone.
In WordPress 7.1, the editor can define styles specifically for Mobile and Tablet viewports. These responsive states work with supported properties including typography, spacing, dimensions, borders, colors, backgrounds and layout.
The default style remains the base — effectively the desktop configuration — while tablet and mobile can override it where necessary. WordPress also allows theme developers to configure their own viewport values.
That sounds like a relatively small feature.
Architecturally, it is not.
Responsive styling is one of the fundamental requirements of modern web design. Moving it into WordPress Core means that an increasingly important part of the design system no longer needs to be provided by an external builder.
And responsive controls are not the only sign of this evolution.
WordPress 7.1 also expands native styling capabilities with interactive states such as hover and focus, while continuing the broader development of Global Styles, blocks and theme-level design controls.
The direction is becoming increasingly clear.
WordPress wants responsive visual design to be a first-class capability of the platform itself.
This does not create page-builder parity
There is an important distinction to make.
Adding native responsive controls does not suddenly give the WordPress editor everything that a mature page builder provides.
A professional builder is not just a collection of CSS controls.
Products such as Elementor and Divi have spent years developing complete design environments: advanced layout tools, dynamic content, visual theme building, reusable design systems, animation controls, conditional behaviour, ecosystem integrations and workflows that agencies already know extremely well.
For complex websites, those capabilities still matter.
There is also a significant difference between having a feature and having an efficient professional workflow around that feature.
The question is therefore not:
Can WordPress now replace every page builder?
It cannot.
A more interesting question is:
How many tasks still require a page builder that WordPress Core cannot reasonably handle itself?
That list is getting shorter.
The real change is architectural
This is where WordPress 7.1 becomes particularly interesting.
Every plugin added to a website introduces a dependency.
Dependencies are not inherently bad. WordPress itself is designed around extensibility, and plugins are one of its greatest strengths.
But every dependency needs to justify its presence.
It must be updated.
It must remain compatible with WordPress.
It must remain compatible with PHP.
It can affect performance.
It can conflict with another component.
And at some point, it may change direction, become unsupported or simply stop fitting the project.
For an agency maintaining websites over many years, these considerations matter enormously.
If WordPress Core can reliably perform a task that previously required another layer of software, the decision to add that layer becomes less automatic.
This does not mean adopting a simplistic “fewer plugins are always better” philosophy.
It means that every major dependency should provide enough value to compensate for the complexity it introduces.
The same principle increasingly applies to page builders.
So should we stop using Elementor or Divi?
Not because of WordPress 7.1.
That would be an overreaction.
There are excellent reasons to continue using established page builders, particularly when they already form part of a mature production workflow.
An agency may have its own component library, templates, internal standards and development processes built around a particular builder. Replacing that environment simply because WordPress added new native controls would generate complexity rather than remove it.
Existing websites are an even clearer case.
A well-built website using Elementor or Divi does not suddenly need to be rebuilt because WordPress Core has evolved.
Software architecture should be driven by requirements, not fashion.
But new projects deserve a different conversation.
Before automatically installing a page builder, we can increasingly ask whether the project actually needs one.
For a relatively simple corporate website, publication, landing page system or content-driven platform, native WordPress may now deserve serious consideration.
For a highly designed website requiring advanced interactions, sophisticated dynamic templates or a workflow already optimised around a builder, the answer may still be very different.
And that is precisely the point.
The choice is becoming a choice again.
AI makes this shift even more interesting
There is another factor accelerating this change: AI-assisted development.
One of the historical advantages of visual builders was that they reduced the need to write custom code for relatively ordinary design requirements.
That equation changes when producing, understanding and modifying small amounts of CSS, JavaScript or theme configuration becomes dramatically faster.
A designer or developer no longer necessarily needs a dedicated visual control for every possible behaviour.
Native WordPress can provide the structural foundation, while AI-assisted development can help cover the smaller gaps that previously made a page builder almost indispensable.
This does not eliminate the need for technical knowledge.
If anything, it makes architectural decisions more important.
AI can generate code.
It cannot automatically decide whether adding that code, installing another plugin or introducing an entire page-building framework is the right long-term decision for a particular website.
That remains a design and engineering question.
We may be entering a different phase of WordPress
For much of the last decade, the standard professional WordPress stack often looked something like this:
WordPress + theme + page builder + plugins.
The next phase could become more nuanced:
WordPress + native design system + only the additional tools the project genuinely requires.
Sometimes that will still include Elementor.
Sometimes it will include Divi.
Sometimes it may include neither.
WordPress 7.1 does not mark the end of page builders.
What it does is remove another reason why they once felt mandatory.
And that may ultimately be the more important change.
The future of professional WordPress development is unlikely to be “Core versus page builders”.
It will be about choosing the smallest, most maintainable and most effective stack for each project.
And as WordPress continues to absorb capabilities that once belonged almost exclusively to third-party builders, that decision is becoming considerably more interesting.
