Elegant Themes has released the Divi 5 public beta after extensive preparation. This public beta isn’t merely a bug-hunting test; it’s a ready-to-use release built for stability and full functionality.
Most Divi 4 sites can migrate with little to no trouble. However, sites with complex add-ons or advanced customizations are safer to test in a staging environment first. I migrated an existing WordPress Divi site to Divi 5 and it worked smoothly without any issues.
Divi 5, a complete redesign from Elegant Themes, is not just an update—it’s a reimagined version that substantially boosts speed, flexibility, and stability. Divi 5 incorporates modern web standards such as Flexbox, CSS Grid, design variables, and a custom responsive editor, delivering a faster and more intuitive web design experience.
Trying the new builder in Divi 5 to edit pages left me impressed—with no slowdown, the interface responds quickly just like the old Divi Builder or Elementor, but without the lag.
Divi 5 for WordPress: The Next-Generation Page Builder Unveiled
Divi has always aimed to be a simple yet powerful theme, and in recent years it has become even easier to use thanks to a host of convenience features. For instance, Elementor Pro’s theme builder functionality spread largely because Divi introduced it first. It also offers more than 2,600 layout designs to help you build pages quickly.
Divi 5 has been redesigned from scratch to greatly improve speed, security, and flexibility.
In practice, updating to Divi 5 and testing showed that selecting elements in the page editor responds instantly, delivering impressive performance. It reacts immediately when clicked, as shown in the video.
When using a builder in WordPress, editing can sometimes feel slow, but testing Divi 5 gave me a strong sense of stability: clicks respond straight away and there are no errors.
For more details about Divi 5, refer to the Elegant Themes blog post.
Divi 5: Summary of Key Changes
The release of Divi 5 signals a potential turning point in WordPress page building, given its leaps in speed and stability.
Divi 5 isn’t just an upgrade; a complete rebuild that reportedly solves the slow performance, bugs, and complex extendability issues that Divi 4 users have faced.
- Core structure: Built-in modern layout technologies like Flexbox and CSS Grid allow design to be created without custom CSS.
- Design variables: Define colors, typography, and spacing once to apply site-wide for easier brand consistency.
- Responsive editor: Provides custom breakpoints and device-specific previews for an optimal experience across environments.
- SEO-friendly modules: Accordions, FAQ, and loop builders now support updated schema and structure, boosting chances of rich results in search engines like Google.
Divi 5: Speed, Performance, and Stability Breakthroughs
Speed and performance are among Divi 5’s strongest advantages. While Divi 4 suffered from loading delays and double reloads, Divi 5 optimizes performance through these innovations:
- Dynamic JS/CSS loading: Only the code needed for the page is loaded, with automatic generation of critical CSS to help you easily achieve top scores on PageSpeed Insights.
- Back-end builder responsiveness: Immediate feedback during layout edits and design changes speeds up your workflow.
- Significant bug reduction: Bottlenecks and conflicts seen with complex pages in Divi 4 are largely absent now.
Although Elementor is widely used as a page builder, Divi remains the most commonly installed premium theme, largely due to its licensing. Divi can be installed on unlimited sites, while Avada—the best-selling theme—allows just one site.
Elementor sells annual licenses only, whereas Divi offers both annual and lifetime licenses, which is why agencies managing multiple sites or client projects favor Divi.
With the public release of Divi 5, it seems Divi may lead the pack in speed and reliability among builders.
Migrating to Divi 5
If you’re already on Divi 4, your biggest question is likely: “Is migrating to Divi 5 safe?”
Step-by-step Migration Tips
- Site backup: Use hosting automatic backups, plugin backups, and manual DB/file exports to back up your current site.
- Test in a staging environment first: If your host offers staging, install and update Divi 5 there to review functionality and design before going live.
- Install Divi 5 and run the migrator: The tool automatically analyzes content and addon compatibility; unsupported third-party modules run in backward-compatibility mode.
- Test important pages and features: Check forms, store (WooCommerce), dynamic content, and global settings.
- Go live and final checks: After thorough testing, apply to the live site. If issues arise, you can restore from backups. (Divi 5 also includes a rollback feature.)
In environments that support automatic backup/restore, you can update to Divi 5 and verify there are no issues.
For critical sites like e-commerce, if staging is available, create a staging site to validate updates beforehand.
New sites can start right away with Divi 5, while existing sites typically can migrate after a backup. If you’ve used complex add-ons or advanced customizations, test updates on staging or a test server first to ensure there are no errors.
Testing Updates in a Staging Environment
Cloudways users can clone apps or create staging sites to test updates before deciding whether to migrate to Divi 5.
Now, here’s how to test Divi 5 updates on Cloudways. If you need other tests, you can similarly clone the app (WordPress site) or create a staging site for testing.
1 First, log in to the Elegant Themes homepage and download the Divi 5 Beta.
2 Log in to your Cloudways account and navigate to the Applications list to clone the Divi-installed WordPress site.
Or select the application (WordPress site) and click Launch Staging Application in Staging Management.
3 Choose the server to clone the application to. Select the same server when possible.
Staging creation requires checking Create as Staging. If you don’t check it, it will clone as a separate app.
- Staging site → after updates, you can push changes to the live site immediately
- Cloned site → after validation, you can update the live site directly
Either option works; the difference is whether changes are pushed to the live site immediately after testing.
4 Once the app is cloned, it appears under the Applications tab. If it’s a staging clone, the app name will be prefixed with Staging-.
5 In Access Details, you can view login information. Attempting to log in to the staging site may prompt for a separate login; this popup is for application access protection, not the WordPress admin login.
When the popup asks for credentials, copy the Username and Password from the Password Protection section and enter them.
If you don’t need this feature, you can disable Password Protection. (Enable it if you want to restrict access to the staging site.)
6 Log in to the staging site’s WordPress admin, go to Appearance » Themes, and upload the Divi 5 installer file you downloaded.
The existing version is 4.27.4. If you see the screenshot above, click Install from Uploaded to update the theme with the uploaded file.
7 Now you can migrate from Divi 4 to Divi 5. Click Divi » Divi 5 Migrator.
8 In the migrator tool page, run the compatibility check. If you see Congratulations! This site is 100% compatible with Divi 5, click Migrate This Site to Divi 5.
9 After migration, you’ll see a “Welcome to Divi 5” message. On my simple site, the migration completed in under 10 seconds. 😄
After migration, review key pages and content to ensure there are no issues. If something breaks, you can click Restore Divi 4 Content to revert to Divi 4 content.
10 Opening the Divi Builder’s page editor reveals a clean, refreshed interface. Most notably, elements respond instantly to clicks, which is very impressive.
Click the plus icon on the left to bring up a layout insertion popup.
To add a new module, click the Insert Row (+) icon and choose an appropriate structure.
Below is a capture of the module insertion popup.
11 Browse the site and check for any layout issues or errors. If a page doesn’t render correctly, open it in Divi Builder and save once to refresh the layout’s appearance.
If all looks good, go to Staging Management » Copy Data from Staging to Live and click Push.
👉 In a Staging environment, Push refers to applying completed changes from the staging site to the live site in production.
12 Select the data you want to copy to the live site.
If you’d like a backup just in case, check Yes, please take backup.
Proceed will copy the changes to the live site.
After completion, if any page’s layout looks off on the live site, open that page in Divi Builder and save to restore the correct layout. (In my experience, saving in the builder and clearing the cache resolved layout issues.)
In Conclusion
The Divi 5 release isn’t just a theme upgrade; it represents a complete architectural rebuild that could redefine how WordPress sites are built. Elegant Themes has eliminated the old shortcode-based structure and introduced a new framework that dramatically improves speed, stability, and scalability. Builder performance is up to twice as fast, and it’s optimized to run smoothly even with complex modules and large layouts. It also includes developer-friendly APIs and a structured data system to enhance future feature expansion and third-party module compatibility.
For more details, please refer to the Elegant Themes website.