Is Spectra V3 Good Enough to Replace Kadence Blocks on WordPress?

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Is Spectra V3 beta good enough to replace Kadence Blocks on WordPress? That is a question that I have been exploring in my own research and I thought I might as well share my findings with you in case you are exploring the best page builder to use on WordPress for your next project.

At DIY Dream Site, we’ve spent the last five years building websites exclusively with KadenceWP on WordPress. I even spent 18 months working at Kadence as the Senior Product Marketing Manager from April 2024 through October 2025.

And it’s been a minute since I have taken a look at any other page building tool in the market. And I’m genuinely wondering, are there other tools out there that could possibly replace the one that I have been using for so long now?

This may need to be an entire video series, but for today, I just want to share what I have experienced after testing out the Astra theme with Spectra Blocks V3 beta version. If you’re wondering what we currently use and recommend for your next website build, check out our free guide:

A Few Caveats Before I Share My Findings

There are some caveats that I want to share up front.

I Tested Spectra V3 Beta, Not the Current Production Plugin

First, I have never used the Spectra Blocks v2 plugin, so I don’t have a frame of reference for the “old way” of building with Spectra. I went straight to the beta because I’ve heard they’ve done a complete rewrite of the plugin and testing an old version that’s about to be replaced just really doesn’t make a ton of sense.

The Only Question I’m Asking: Could This Replace Kadence Blocks If Released Today?

Secondly, I understand that this plugin is in beta, meaning that it’s not meant to be used on live websites yet and it’s not the final version that will be released to the public.

But in doing my test, I’m asking myself if this version of the plugin were to be released today, could it replace Kadence Blocks?

I Don’t Code, and That’s Actually an Asset When Reviewing WordPress Tools

Third, you should know that I don’t know how to code. I have people on my team who do, but personally it’s one of my limitations.

I see this as both a blessing and a curse.

• The curse is that when a tool can’t do something natively, I can’t just go open up the code editor and fix it myself. Although with AI tools, that’s changing the game for me completely, and I can do a lot more now.
• But the blessing is that most of the people that I build websites for can’t code either. So if something is going to trip me up, that’s a pretty good sign that it’s going to trip up a lot of other people too.

This Is Not a Comprehensive Review — These Are My Initial Findings

And then lastly, I understand that every tool has a learning curve.

Just think about every time that you’ve started a brand new job. You’ve had to learn what settings to change in the new software, what buttons to push, what sequences to follow in order to get the results that you want. That’s just how software works.

But I’m a busy agency owner and we have several client projects in the works along with a new theme design in production for local and service-based businesses. And we’re also prepping for a new launch of our membership experience called Site Success Academy. I don’t personally have endless hours to learn a new tool.

So this is NOT going to be a comprehensive review of the Spectra Blocks plugin. These are just my initial findings as I try out the tool for the very first time.

And the bar I’m measuring against isn’t just “can a beginner use it”. It also has to hold up across the range of projects that we take on from content creators and personal brands to local businesses and e-commerce shops. And if it can’t do all of that, then it’s not a fit for us.

Okay, that said, let me jump into my findings.

My First Build: Testing Spectra Blocks with the Astra Theme

Why I Expected a Simple Four-Column Layout to Be Easy

The first thing I did after installing the Astra theme and the Spectra V3 beta blocks plugin was open a brand new page and try to recreate a hero section from our Brie Theme, which is designed for food bloggers.

It’s a four-column layout. Nothing complicated. I genuinely felt like this should be an easy job, but it wasn’t.

I hit quite a few roadblocks right out of the gate, which honestly surprised me. I decided to forget about matching the exact design and just play with the bones instead. I gave each column a different color to wireframe it out: pink, yellow, blue, green.

When I went to preview it, the first real snag was a big chunk of white space sitting at the top and bottom of the hero section. And I had no idea where it was coming from.

Unexplained White Space in the Hero Section Coming From The Astra Theme

I searched high and low in Facebook groups and forums and came up empty. Plenty of other people had the same issue, but it seemed like they went to support, got it resolved, and never reported back with the fix. So I did what they did and opened a support ticket asking how to get rid of it.

While waiting for a reply, I started clicking around the customizer on my own. Eventually I found it buried in one of the design tabs. There were default values sitting there that simply weren’t being exposed to the user. You couldn’t see them, but they were affecting the layout the whole time.

I wrote back to support and asked them to please make those default values visible, because that mystery blocked me for longer than it should have. After quite a bit of digging, we figured it out.

And to be fair, it turned out to be more of an Astra theme problem than a Spectra blocks problem. But it’s the same company that owns both, so hopefully the two teams can work together to resolve it.

The Container Block Is Confusing to Use

Next, I wanted to go through and adjust the width of this column. So I wanted it to match the theme settings that I had set in the customizer. So I sent in a support ticket. Here’s what the first support ticket said. I said, I’m trying to understand how to use the container block, and I have some questions. Can you help me? I’m looking to recreate this section. What type of container do I use?

And they replied back and said, we have a width option with both flex and grid layout. Here is a video for reference. Now, this video has no sound, but it looks like they’re going through the inner containers and they are controlling the width inside of that, which is technically not what I was asking. So I replied back and said, sorry, there is no sound in this video and I don’t understand. Here is a video from my side.

So how do I get it to be a narrow width where there’s space on this side? If I come in here, now I’m on grid manual. If I go flex and I don’t allow it to wrap, it looks like this. And then I come down here and there’s height issues. I don’t see width on this setting. I want the entire section to be 1200 pixels for instance. How do I achieve that? You’re telling me I have to come into each container and do width. So now I’ve got to do math. I’ve got to say, okay, if I want 1200, that’s 300 each. That’s not the way to do it. So I don’t understand how do you get this entire thing to just be 1200 pixels wide?

So they reply back again and say, can you please try to check by adding the padding on both the left and the right for the main parent container that has four inner containers? I of course can add margin and padding, but I was hoping that there would be some sort of setting that would pull from Astra’s theme customizer because I’ve already set the max width within my theme over there. So I reply back and I say, I’m wondering if there is a way to inherit the max width from the theme settings configured in the customizer.

And they replied back one last time to close this out and said, at the moment, inheriting the max width directly in the container block from theme settings is not possible with current Spectra options. We appreciate the suggestion and it sounds like a useful improvement. We’ll be happy to forward this on as a feature request.

So I think a simple update for Astra’s team could be to add the toggle option that’s like the same as Kadence where you can inherit the max width from the theme. So that way people aren’t constantly like, well, I want it to be a specific size. How do I get it to be a specific size? That’s probably one fix that I think would be really valuable.

Spectra’s Grid Layout vs. Kadence’s Row Layout: A Beginner User Experience Problem

Here’s another build that I was going through. I was like, okay, great. Let me recreate this browse by category option. So I went in and I tried to build this. At first I thought the answer was to choose to do a grid that’s manual with eight columns. And then I started adding everything. And then I realized every element was its own column. In Kadence, when I were to go and do that, the section which was inside of the row layout would automatically be filled in for me. But if I go and I choose container and I choose grid of eight, the containers, which is what Kadence calls sections, are not there by default. And so that kind of really tripped me up here. I had to first go add eight containers, then I could add whatever I wanted inside of that container. It was just complex.

This block in particular was extremely confusing to use. And I even asked other experienced WordPress builders inside of the Kadence community what they thought about the container block and they also agreed that it was really challenging to use, not user-friendly, not that intuitive.

So for me, it feels like while you can build some cool flex settings with this container, it would almost be more valuable to beginners to possibly even have a row layout kind of like Kadence has, call it whatever you want, like a basic container and a flex container that are separate from each other. Because there are too many options and you’re like, which of these four do I choose for the use case that I’m trying to build? And if you have to do math in your head or have to go through a decision tree on some support page in order to use your foundational block, I feel like that’s a really big miss, especially for the beginner crowd.

If this version were to come out and be released, I don’t think I would be willing to switch at this point because of the complexity of the container block as it is right now. That’s my initial take. Maybe I need more training. Maybe there needs to be better documentation that I can follow in order to get these outcomes that I’m looking for. I don’t know. But I mean, it could be a me problem, but it feels like if I as an advanced WordPress user can’t figure out how to do that, I don’t know how anyone that’s more of a beginner than I am would be able to follow along either.

So at this point, I’ve really only highlighted the two big challenges. The white space issue and then the complexity of the container block. And honestly, the way that I’ve shown the speed of my builds as I’ve been talking hasn’t accurately depicted my experience because it looks like I’m just flying through the settings. But this is highly sped up over a long period of time and you don’t really get to see all of the parts in the build where I was frustrated and struggling, which was quite often, and I did have to reach out to their support team a lot.

Features That Kadence Blocks Has That Spectra V3 Does Not

As I was testing things, I also came across a number of other features that Kadence offers, but Spectra V3 does not.

No Dedicated Image Block in Spectra Blocks

For instance, Spectra does not currently have an image block. For images, you would have to go and use Gutenberg’s core image block, and I feel like that’s an elementary building block, and I’m honestly a little bit shocked that one doesn’t exist for Spectra.

Now, another issue, and this could just be a bug that’s in beta, but the copy and paste styles between blocks also doesn’t work right now. I tested this out by trying to copy and paste shadows from one container to another, and it absolutely didn’t work. So I reached out to the support team and they did confirm that this is in fact a known error and they are working to improve it.

Button Block and Text Block Limitations in Spectra V3

Now there were quite a few limitations also with the button block. While you can inherit the theme settings with the primary button, you cannot sync the secondary global style set in Astra with Spectra blocks. Again I emailed support and I confirmed that this is not possible.

There was also quite a lot of limitations with the text block. One important feature that I use daily in Kadence that Spectra does not currently have is the option to control the width of the text. And I think that this is very important for users to be able to control the line breaks responsibly without coding. And also, they don’t have a tooltips feature. Now, this technically could be considered a want and not a need, but there are just several use cases where my team or my clients need this feature. And I also couldn’t find a way to add an icon within the text block either. So let’s say you wanted to have an arrow at the end of read more and you wanted to hyperlink all of that. You would have to go and copy and paste an HTML arrow or add another container and have them sit side by side.

Missing Advanced Heading Customization and the SEO Risk of Spectra’s Workaround

And then one of the biggest features that’s missing for me that Spectra doesn’t currently support is the ability to customize a word within the heading. So Kadence has a feature called the Advanced Highlight that allows users to make a word or a phrase a different color or a different background or even a different font.

And when I reached out to Spectra’s team, they did offer a workaround. Here’s what they said. Regarding adding an accent font to a single word within a headline, Spectra currently does not have a built-in feature similar to that, which allows applying a different font to part of the same heading. To achieve a similar design without custom code, you can use two separate heading or text blocks. So for example, you would place the text in one heading block and the text in another with the script font applied. Then you would place both blocks inside of the container, set it to a flex layout so they appear in line as a single headline.

Now, I pushed back on this idea and I said, won’t that be a bad idea to have multiple headings for SEO? And they replied back and said, that’s a great question and a very valid concern to raise. The short answer is it depends on how you set the heading levels. So if both blocks are set to an H1, then yes, that would be bad for SEO. A page should only have one H1. However, the workaround itself is perfectly fine from an SEO standpoint as long as you are intentional about the heading hierarchy. The recommended approach is to treat the combined visual headline as a single logical heading. So if your headline is meant to be your primary page heading, set the first block to H1 and set the second block to a paragraph tag or a span styled to look like the heading, not another H1 or H2. This way, search engines only see one H1 on the page and the visual result looks identical to the visitor and your SEO structure stays clean. Alternatively, if this is a section heading deeper in the page, an H2 or an H3, you can set both blocks to the same heading level, for example both H2, and that is also perfectly acceptable since multiple H2s on a page are completely normal and expected. The key rule to keep in mind is one H1 per page, and use H2 through H6 for section headings in logical hierarchy. As long as your two-block approach respects that, there is no SEO downside at all.

So while I appreciate that there is a workaround, I feel like this requires some advanced understanding of SEO and web development, which beginners just don’t have. I worry that users could easily make some mistakes here trying to achieve this look, whether that’s making an SEO mistake or struggling to control the responsive settings to make it look like one cohesive headline on all device views. Plus, this isn’t great for accessibility, and having two or three separate headings read out loud to those users who need screen readers probably isn’t ideal.

So at this point, I haven’t even installed the Spectra Pro plugin yet, and I’m hitting quite a few blockers compared to what Kadence already offers.

The Spectra V3 User Interface Needs Work

Before I share my final verdict, let me also touch on the user interface really quickly. I know that Spectra’s team is trying to mimic Gutenberg’s core block designs, but in my experience, it’s been a pretty clunky experience. So let me give you a few examples here.

So let’s say that you go to build a brand new section. You’ll start with a container and then you’re going to set the number of columns you want. And then the way that the UI is set up right now, I would have to click this background option. But there are no options to add an image. So you have to exit this panel and then scroll all the way down to the very very very bottom of this panel, which is quite a long scroll to where you can actually add a photo or a video. I feel like that’s just an odd user experience. So I think that consolidating all background options in one place towards the top of the panel seems to be a much more intuitive path for users. But that’s just my opinion.

And honestly, the long scroll through the endless settings is also something that bugs me quite a bit. In Kadence, I really appreciate that I can collapse certain settings sections in the editing panel. Settings can be overwhelming to users, and it is nice to be able to control what I want to focus on as I’m editing my settings.

Hidden Settings and a Design Direction That Prioritizes Gutenberg Over the WordPress User

And I also initially thought that many features were missing, but they’re actually hidden behind these three stacked dots. And in a number of instances, you can click those dots and then select which additional settings you do want to have appear. And I know that that’s how Gutenberg does it, but to me it feels like Spectra is prioritizing a unified experience with Core’s UI over an actual good user experience. I don’t really understand the point of trying to get your proprietary UI to look like Core. And I would really love to understand why that’s the design direction that they decided to go in. I just feel like I personally prefer to have all of the settings available to me within a collapsible accordion so I can hide that section while I move on to another set of settings, but that’s just my personal preference.

What the Astra Community Is Saying About Spectra V3 Beta

Okay, so far my experience getting started with Astra and Spectra Blocks V3 hasn’t exactly been smooth. And so I wonder what other people in the community think about the development of the beta version so far. So I went over to the WordPress Web Creators by Astra Facebook group, which has over 62,000 members, to see what they are saying about the development so far.

And I submitted an anonymous post and I asked, is there a release date planned for Spectra V3? Is there a video coming out soon about the container block? I said, I consider myself a pretty advanced WordPress user, and this block is quite confusing knowing when to use what setting. My first impression is that it’s not very intuitive or beginner friendly and has quite a steep learning curve. And I’m very concerned that beginners not knowing how to build with this block will create very bloated pages that have a big impact on speed. Is there a way for the secondary button style in Astra to be applied to a button block in Spectra without manually styling it every time? And will there be an image block?

In a group this size, I really thought that there would be a lot more engagement, but the post only got seven likes and nine total comments. And the comments this post received weren’t exactly positive. One user said, hopefully it’s a long way off to give them time to fix the UI and make it more intuitive instead of the current options everywhere and split up. And another said, I’ve said this several times before, but of course, it never gets a response. The communication from the team is always so poor. It’s unbelievable. Such a contrast with the Sure products. I really just don’t understand why they don’t handle it all the same way. Apparently, they’d rather leave their users in the dark.

Now let me say this. I managed the Kadence Facebook group while I worked there, and that group has 17,000 members, and I know that every group has negative Nellies, and that sometimes the loudest opinionated voices aren’t always how the entire community feels. However, those opinions also somewhat echo what I have found in my own research at this point. And there was also no company response to that post either.

Is Spectra with Astra Actually Competing with Kadence Blocks Yet?

So I’m kind of wondering how does the Astra community have so many users in that Facebook group. And I was thinking it must be because the majority of users are using the Astra theme with another page builder like Elementor. Because when I was doing research on Astra tutorials, most of them were referencing Elementor as its companion builder. And Elementor I know has a crazy share of the WordPress page building market, something like 30 to 50% depending on which source you look at.

So in my mind though I was thinking that Spectra with Astra was a direct competitor with the Kadence theme and Kadence Blocks. But my own testing and also research hasn’t found many tutorials talking about this specific combination as a real contender yet. I think V3 is their attempt to enter that space, but I think it needs a little bit more development at this point.

And I want to be very honest. Kadence’s communication from their team has dwindled a lot since I personally left the company back in October and new leadership took over. And their lack of response to customers has been pretty jarring compared to the customer first culture that Ben Rittner created while he was running the show. In the event that I were hypothetically going to switch away from Kadence Blocks, provided that I can find a comparable tool, I want to make sure that I’m moving to a reliable tool set that is going to be responsive to their users. And I just don’t see that type of engagement with the Spectra community right now. And that doesn’t instill a great amount of confidence for me either.

A Promising Look at Where Spectra Is Headed

But back in November, I actually reached out to Adam Pryer directly, and he walked me through where Spectra V3 is headed with their global styles and their class-based system.

So this is a site that he has, and this is the global styles tab in the settings. And it’s nice because you can visually go here and you can set your colors. And there’s different ways of doing this. And then you’ve got your spacing. You can set them all here. You can set all your font sizes here. So your heading, say you want your H1 and you want it to be something different. So there’s this centralization of all your global styles. But I think where there needs to be some good education is variables and classes, because you can create your own custom classes here, put a class name and add hover states and put all that stuff in there. And then there are block defaults. So you can set your block defaults. And then there’s a cheat sheet that will help you make these classes. This is definitely going to take a little wrapping your head around.

And then when you throw down something, for example an accordion, you can see right there where you can apply global styles to it. So you don’t have to waste any time styling. It’s just all globally linked. You would just add an additional global style. The way it would work is that for someone distributing a child theme, you would have this all configured for the person, the colors, the spacing, any block defaults and any custom classes. So all the user has to do is go in there and use it, and it would just look how it’s expected to look.

And also the free version of Spectra includes a pop-up builder, but it’s not just popups, you can use it for lots of things. And they do have this site builder, and this is essentially Kadence Elements. All the themes have an elements feature. This is the same thing, but it’s done visually, which is nice, that there’s a visual aspect to it. It’ll pull down previews and stuff like that. So if you design something and it’s something that you’re inserting based upon a rule, stuff like that.

Can No-Code WordPress Users Avoid CSS Classes in 2026?

Now after this preview, I was feeling really optimistic, but also a little skeptical because I don’t write CSS and I don’t love having to leverage class-based systems. But as I dig into more of this research, I’m starting to wonder if I can even get away from CSS classes in 2026. When Ben was building Kadence, he was really trying to protect the no-code user from ever having to think about a class and just give them the code-free tools, which I always felt like was Kadence’s competitive advantage. But with the way that AI is going, maybe there’s no future where you don’t interact with code in some way, even if you’re not a coder or that tech savvy. Maybe that’s just something that I have to come to grips with. I don’t know. The jury is still out. There’s still a lot of advancement to happen in the AI WordPress space.

Should You Pay for Spectra Pro Before the Free Version Is Ready?

But I did go and try to test out their global styles, but that’s apparently a pro feature. Now, hear me say, I am not opposed to going pro. I actually think that businesses shouldn’t rely on free web building tools alone if they want the best website possible. But like I’ve said, before I go any deeper into the pro features, I need to feel the free foundation is in a solid place first. And right now, it doesn’t feel like that to me.

My Verdict: Can Spectra V3 Replace Kadence Blocks?

Okay, at this point you may be thinking, wow, you’re being awfully critical of Spectra. And I hate to make videos where I don’t say many positive things about a brand, but you have to remember that the question I’m specifically trying to address is, can Spectra V3 replace Kadence Blocks? Again, without even installing or testing pro features at all, I feel like there are just too many areas that Spectra is missing right now to make switching worthwhile, especially since I don’t know how to code and I am looking for code-free tools.

Now, I have a deep deep respect for Adam from WP Crafter and of course he’s the co-founder of all of the Sure brands. I am actually a customer of many of the Brainstorm Force product suite including SureDash, SureCart, Autokit, SureMember, CartFlows, and a ton more. So I know that this team is capable of building really good products. So I’m not exactly writing Spectra off. I just think that V3 needs more time in the oven to genuinely be a contender against Kadence Blocks.

One day I would love to get to a point where our team at DIY Dream Site can build and sell Astra child themes that are also made with Spectra blocks. And when Spectra has more time to make some improvements, I will be open to coming back and testing it again.

But I’m wondering if you are on a similar journey and you’re evaluating tools for your own website. Drop a comment and let me know what you’re testing and also what page builder I should test next. And if you’re wondering what we currently use and recommend, including hosting, theme, and plugin recommendations for your next website build, be sure to check out our free toolkit below:

Of course, if anything changes in my recommendations from my research, I will be sure to let you know.