If you're looking for a tool to add facets and grids to your WordPress websites in order to showcase advanced search and filter options with beautiful content grids to your web pages so that users can use those options to easily find the content or information they require, then stick with this blog article, as I am going to review FilterWP which does exactly what you need.
In this review, I am going to evaluate this WordPress Facet & Grid Builder Plugin and help you decide if this tool is suited for your use case or not.
Therefore, if you're interested in learning more about FilterWP and everything related to this WordPress Plugin, then read this entire article, as I believe it will be worth your time and you would end up finding a great tool that has the potential to upgrade the search and filter feature of WordPress with ease.
Introduction of FilterWP
FilterWP is one of the most powerful, developer-friendly WordPress Facet Builder Plugins. It has been created to easily add search, filter, and grid functionalities to your WordPress-powered websites or stores. This is an advanced yet intuitive tool that allows you to quickly set up facets and grids to showcase your products, taxonomies, and blogs in order to help users easily narrow down the information they need.
This much-needed and powerful facets and grid plugin has been developed by talented people including Gagan Goraya and Preet Singh under the umbrella of BetterWP.
The purpose of BetterWP is to provide the best user experience possible by offering great products and services for all those who use WordPress, including the general users, developers, designers, and creators.
BetterWP has hard-working and talented members including:
- Gagan Goraya: Development & Product
- Preet Singh: Design & User Experience
- Robin Singh: Technical Support
Resources for FilterWP
Explore the important resource links for FilterWP as you're going to need them if you decide to use the product for your websites.
- Official Product Page: https://toolono.me/filterwp
- Official Free Version: Unavailable
- Official YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxQtQV1Skuh3k7gi9ezGwfA
- Official Community Group: Unavailable
- Official Documentation: https://docs.betterwp.co/
- Official Roadmap: Unavailable
- Official Changelog: https://betterwp.co/changelog/
- Official Support: https://betterwp.co/submit-ticket/
- Toolonomy Deal Page: https://toolonomy.com/deal/filterwp/
Main Features of FilterWP
Explore the main features of FilterWP and see if the functionalities exist in this tool that you are going to need for your website-building projects.
- Multiple Content Type Support
- Pre-Defined Post Per Page
- Custom WordPress Query
- Grid & List Layout Options
- Configure Columns by Breakpoints
- Ajax Content Loading
- Apply & Reset Module
- Multiple Pagination Options
- Multiple Filter Type
- Multiple Filter UI
- Collapsible Filter
- Duplicate Content
- Inbuilt CSS & PHP Editor
- Conditional Logic
Best Features of FilterWP
Find out some of the best features that I found useful and powerful in FilterWP among all the other main features.
Multiple Content Type Support
The best thing about this tool is that it supports multiple content types, which means you can set up facets and grids for blog posts, pages, WooCommerce products, Easy Digital Downloads products, custom post types, and many more.
Inbuilt CSS & PHP Editor
If you're an advanced user or web developer, then you will love how this tool allows you to build and customize the card from scratch using the power of its Inbuilt CSS and PHP Editor.
Custom Mobile Breakpoints
If you're concerned about the mobile responsiveness, then not to worry, because this plugin allows you to set up different layouts for different breakpoints using the power of its mobile column feature, which will enable you to configure columns by breakpoints.
Custom WordPress Query
You can build your own custom query to showcase post grids on your site by combining any of the standard WordPress Query Parameters for query arguments using the easy-to-use visual interface of FilterWP.
Integrations & Compatibility of FilterWP
Find out the third-party WordPress tools that are either officially integrated or compatible with FilterWP in order to make your life much easier because the ecosystem is what makes a tool great and valuable.
Official Integrations
- Oxygen Builder
- Gutenberg
- Meta Box
Official Compatibility
- Divi
- Elementor
- WooCommerce
- Easy Digital Downloads
- Advanced Custom Fields
Pricing Structure of FilterWP as of September 2022
In this section, I am going to share with you the current pricing structure of FilterWP in order to help you make your decision easier about which pricing plan is best for your business and use cases.
Standard Plan
This yearly standard pricing plan offers 2 active website licenses for a year, which is best for people who have 1 or 2 live websites.
- $49 / Yearly
- 2 Active Websites
- 1 Year of Support
- 1 Year of Updates
- 14 Days Money Back Guarantee
Pro Plan
This yearly pro pricing plan offers 12 active website licenses for a year, which is best for professionals and freelancers that manage multiple websites.
- $129 / Yearly
- 12 Active Websites
- 1 Year of Support
- 1 Year of Updates
- 14 Days Money Back Guarantee
Lifetime Deal
This lifetime pro pricing plan offers 50 active website licenses for a lifetime of this product, which is best for people who don't like to pay subscriptions and manage dozens of websites.
- $249 / One-Time
- 50 Active Websites
- Lifetime Updates
- 1 Year of Pro Support
- Lifetime Community Support
- 14 Days Money Back Guarantee
PROS of FilterWP
Explore the good things about FilterWP that can help you understand why and how this product is best and suitable for your use cases.
Unified Interface for Easy & Quick Set Up
I have also used Piotnet Grid and I can say it takes a long time and multiple steps to set up everything. But when I tried FilterWP it was really quick and easy to set up, which is great because you don't need to switch over to different screens back and forth to set up your filters and grid, as it offers a unified user interface to access everything in a single screen.
Great for Web Designers & Developers
FilterWP can be great for you if you're an advanced user who prefers to write your own code to create and customize the filters, cards, and grids, because it allows you to write HTML, PHP, and CSS while creating cards, and also it offers a dedicated Custom CSS Editor where you can manually write custom CSS styles to customize any part of this plugin.
Ready to Use Preset Layout Library
FilterWP has multiple preset design layouts, and you just have to select one of the preset layouts by clicking on the cards or the select button. Then you can modify any layout and change the styling or the structure. Also, it allows you to duplicate one of the preset layouts, then customizes it as much as you want, depending on your requirement.
Access Control for WordPress User Roles
This access control feature is a must-have for any kind of plugin that can majorly impact website functionalities if mismanaged by someone who shouldn't touch it.
Where the FilterWP shines, as it offers a standard access control feature that you can use to restrict the FilterWP backend access for certain user roles who can potentially break the website functionalities if touches the back end settings.
Although it doesn't offer advanced role management features like tools like Oxygen Builder, but at least it works and has the potential to save the website from any unfortunate disaster.
Deep Oxygen Builder Integration
I wish that FilterWP had its own visual builder interface for designing cards and grids, which I am really missing on this tool. However, if you're a hardcore Oxygen Builder user, then it won't bother you much, because this tool is deeply integrated with Oxygen, which saves you a lot of hassle to write custom codes yourself.
You can simply build and customize your cards and grids however you want inside Oxygen's most powerful visual interface, using the easy post and repeater element offered by Oxygen Builder, and then assign that to the facets you built using FilterWP to showcase the beautifully crafted filterable posts on your websites.
CONS of FilterWP
Explore the bad things about FilterWP and understand why this product is not suitable for your use cases. If you're really concerned about and can't live without the things that I have listed in the below section as CONS.
Lack of In-Depth & Complete Documentation
In my opinion, having great documentation that covers every aspect of the tool for any kind of software is a must. Because even if you build a powerful product but people won't know how to leverage it for their use cases with its highest potential, then there is a very high chance they will end up using a different product, even if it is less powerful, but with easy-to-understand, in-depth documentation.
After scanning through the entire documentation, I realized that, although the FilterWP has huge potential, still people might find it difficult to use it because the documentation is not in-depth with enough proportion of text, image, and video content that covers all aspects of this tool.
Lack of Frontend & Advanced Visual Interface
I am not sure why, but it doesn't have any dedicated frontend visual builder user interface to create cards, which means you can only use their premade templates. But if you need something custom, then you need to write and customize it from scratch, or duplicate their premade templates and modify the code as per your needs.
Also, it offers a very minimalistic user interface to set up cards and you won't have any advanced or frontend visual way to customize every aspect of grids, which means you're limited to the few settings and what they offer to create and customize grids.
And I think the filter styling options are very limited as compared to the other facet and grid builder plugins, and they encourage you to write your own CSS and style the things however you want, which is not a beginner-friendly approach in my opinion.
Lack of Third Party Content
No text and video-based content from third-party content creators can hugely impact the product, because people don't purchase a product just by checking out the landing page, but they want to know what other people are talking about it and if it's even recommended by other people or not.
As far as I can see, currently, no one is talking about this product in the WordPress arena. I couldn't find any meaningful web pages on the search engines that contain any review, tutorial, or guide around FilterWP except a few videos made on its official YouTube channel.
Suggestions for FilterWP
In this section, I am going to share my honest suggestions for the BetterWP team in order to make the product and other related things around it better and improved as compared to the current scenario.
- Limited Free Version: A free version with limited features could be a great opportunity for increasing brand awareness and capturing users' attention.
- Make it More Beginner Friendly: Currently, the product is more focused on web developers, but I believe to capture a bigger market, the team should focus on making the product more beginner-friendly.
- Dedicated Public Roadmap: Create a public roadmap with feature requests and a voting system for clarity on the direction of the product.
- Active Facebook Community: Facebook group is the best place to grab more eyeballs and generate more engagement, as most people consider Facebook as compared to other community platforms.
- Landing Page Enhancement: Make the product page stand out with all the necessary updated product information and best-practice standards.
- Partnership with Content Creators: Make a partnership with content creators in the WordPress industry and encourage them to create different types of content around this product.
Conclusion
In this review article, I have tried my best to evaluate and share my honest feedback on every important aspect of FilterWP which is a Facet & Grid Builder Plugin for the WordPress ecosystem.
If you ask me if you should grab this tool for your WordPress projects or not, then my answer would be: IT DEPENDS! It actually depends on various factors.
I would highly recommend you grab this tool if you're an advanced user like a developer or designer, who is comfortable writing custom codes, as its visual interface is very limited and only offers necessary customizations, but it has a dedicated code editor which allows you to write your own codes, including HTML, CSS, and PHP.
Also, I would recommend this tool if you just need a quick and easy way to put together some facets and grids for your website and you're not interested in further tweaking, styling, or anything for a more customized result.
However, I wouldn't recommend this tool if you're not comfortable with codes yet still want to customize every aspect of the facets and grids using the advanced visual user interface, because in this case you will be disappointed.
Therefore, if you belong to the last group of people, then consider checking my other detailed review of an alternative tool known as PiotnetGrid, because it allows you to customize every aspect of your facets and grids using the power of its highly advanced visual builder user interface.
In the end, I would also love to know what are your thoughts about this product and topic, so feel free to dump it in the comment section in a constructive manner, so other readers also find it valuable.
And if you like this FilterWP review then consider sharing it with your circle and community in order to help them discover this powerful tool that they also may need for their projects.
