CSS Hero Review 2023: Live WordPress Theme Editor

A website is a crucial marketing tool for any business, as it’s often the first impression potential customers have of your company. A well-designed website can attract new customers and keep them coming back.

If you’re looking to improve your website’s user experience, consider using CSS Hero. With most page builders, you can easily customize your website visually.

However, not everyone likes Elementor or WP Bakery and may find CSS to be a headache if their WordPress theme doesn’t have the editing capabilities they need.

That’s where CSS Hero comes in – it automatically generates the CSS code for your WordPress site without you having to touch a line of code.

I’ll be sharing my thoughts on this awesome tool and how to make the most of it. You can also read a comparison between CSS Hero and Yellow Pencil to see which is the best for you.

CSS Hero Review: A Quick Introduction

CSS Hero is a visual CSS editor that helps you manage and customize the appearance of your website theme. It offers many tools to create custom styles and apply them to specific elements on your page, with real-time previews of their effects.

One of these tools is CSS Classes, which lets you add common and custom styles without writing any CSS code. Unlike a page builder where you create or edit elements from scratch, CSS Hero allows you to tweak them.

The undo and redo feature is helpful for beginners to upgrade any WordPress theme without breaking it. The visual editor lets you click on elements and see changes in a live preview.

CSS Hero adds all the codes in a separate file, so you don’t have to worry about losing CSS properties if you make changes. You can even add custom CSS property changes in a Child Theme and use them on other websites.

CSS Hero Key Features Quick View

CSS Hero is a visual CSS editor that doesn’t require any coding knowledge. It’s perfect for both beginners and experienced CSS developers, offering a wide range of features to meet everyone’s needs. Some of these features include:

• A user-friendly interface
• Extensive customization options
• Pre-made styles
• The CSS Hero Inspector
• The ability to create complex CSS styles
• An inbuilt color picker
• An animator
• Generated CSS
• A light footprint
• The ability to add background images
• Live mobile and tablet previews
• Over 600 fonts
• The option to add video backgrounds to any section
• A visual JS editor
• Live previews
• Built-in snippets
• A color palette library
• The ability to edit any part of your website
• The option to design your login page
• A workflow history

In addition to these fantastic features, premium subscriptions also come with some extra perks:

• Media Query Manager: This allows you to set different media for different devices.
• CSS Code Exporter: This enables you to export codes from your stage site to your live site.
• Hover Mode: This lets you preview hover effects before implementing them on your website.

How to Use CSS Hero Plugin?

Installing CSS Hero on of my WordPress sites was a game-changer. Just like using the Elementor page builder, I had to manually install the premium plugin.

Once installed, all I had to do was open the page I wanted to edit and click on the “CSS Hero” button.

With a click of that button, a convenient left sidebar appeared, offering helpful documentation. I took the time to read through it and get familiar with the basics of CSS Hero.

It’s essentially a powerful WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) advanced CSS editor WordPress plugin designed to make advanced theme customization a breeze.

Now, here comes the exciting part. Clicking on any item on my page brought up a range of customizable options on the left side and bottom of the screen. It was incredibly intuitive to use.

I could change the background, play around with fonts, adjust padding, add eye-catching animations, create gradients—pretty much anything I desired to give my website that unique touch.

One feature that I particularly loved was the snippet feature. It allowed me to create hero buttons for any link effortlessly. But it didn’t stop there.

I could add drop shadows, dividers, and even button icons. CSS Hero really took customization to a whole new level, and I appreciated how easy it was to achieve the desired results.

Oh, and did I mention animations? With CSS Hero’s visual CSS editor, adding animations to elements was a breeze. I simply clicked on the elements I wanted to animate, headed over to the left sidebar, and here it is! I had the option to add captivating animations to make my website truly stand out.

CSS Hero truly transformed my website editing experience. It has a user-friendly interface and powerful features that made advanced customization a joy.

I highly recommend giving it a try and unlocking the full potential of your website’s design.

A Basic Look at the Interface:

CSS Hero doesn’t have a dedicated settings area. Instead, it uses a simple frontend interface that mainly consists of a live preview of your site.

After clicking on the “CSS Hero” button, you’ll see the Menu and Inspector Tool on the left. The top center contains all the responsive view tools, while the top right has options for undo, redo, history, and tools.

At the bottom, you’ll find the JS editor and video integration, along with other features. Hovering your cursor over an element will show the content area, and either right-clicking or left-clicking will open the settings tabs.

Overall, the user interface is very beginner-friendly and not overwhelming. You won’t get lost in a sea of settings.

CSS Hero Review: Features Overview

Customization Options/CSS Hero Editor:

When you dip into the CSS Hero menu, you’ll find three key customization settings that open up for editing all possibilities: Properties, Snippets, and Animation. Now let’s take a closer look at each of them and discover the fantastic editing features they offer.

The Properties tab is where the bulk of the editing magic happens. Here, you have the power to customize various aspects of your design.

You can effortlessly change the background color, play around with different font styles, and adjust the background color (yes, you can customize it separately!).

Even experiment with transformations to give your elements a unique look and feel.

But that’s not all! The Properties tab is a treasure trove of editing options. You can add padding to elements, create eye-catching borders, fine-tune the spacing between different elements, choose whether to display or hide specific elements, precisely position your elements, and even take accurate measurements of various elements.

With all these editing capabilities neatly organized under the Properties tab, you’ll have everything you need to perfect your design.

Snippet tab

This little gem holds a collection of pre-made buttons, drop shadows, dividers, background art, and more. It’s like having a treasure chest of design elements at your disposal.

The best part? You can mix and match different snippets to create unique combinations and truly make your design shine. The Snippet tab opens up endless possibilities for adding those extra touches that make your website stand out from the crowd.

Animation tab

This is where you can breathe life into your design by adding captivating animations.

With just a few clicks, you can incorporate stunning effects like fade in or fade out, bringing a touch of dynamism to your website. The Animation tab is an excellent tool for creating engaging and interactive experiences for your visitors.

Responsive Preview:

CSS Hero offers an impressive range of responsive design settings, providing flexibility for your website across different devices including desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.

But it doesn’t stop there. CSS Hero takes responsiveness to the next level by allowing you to customize your design for both landscape and portrait modes on mobile and tablet devices. This ensures that your website looks fantastic, no matter how users are viewing it.

Another handy feature is the ability to hide specific sections for certain devices. Let’s say you have a captivating video in the hero section of your website, but you want to prioritize fast loading on mobile devices.

With CSS Hero, you can easily hide the video for mobile devices, ensuring a smoother and faster browsing experience. Similarly, you can hide certain elements, like a call button, on the desktop version of your website to optimize the design for larger screens.

Media Query Manager :

CSS Hero simplifies the process of making your website responsive across different devices by automatically handling all the necessary code adjustments. However, if you prefer manual editing, CSS Hero has you covered with its Media Query Manager.

This powerful tool allows you to have full control over the responsiveness of your design. Let’s say you want to display an image exclusively on desktop devices but hide it on mobile.

With the Media Query Manager, you can effortlessly achieve this by customizing the media queries. You can specify the conditions under which the image should appear or disappear, ensuring that your design looks perfect on each device.

Not only can you control the visibility of elements, but you can also fine-tune the dimensions of images or sections specifically for mobile devices. This level of customization enables you to optimize the visual experience for users on different screens.

CSS Hero Inspector Tool:

The CSS Hero Inspector Tool will be a valuable asset for web developers. It allows you to refine your CSS codes. However, it may not be as useful if you’re not already skilled with CSS selectors.

This feature is only available with the Pro plan and above. If you’re not particularly concerned about keeping your CSS code clean, you may not need it.

CSS Code Exporter:

This is an awesome feature for website developers. You can edit the demo or staging website and export all the code in a file.

You can export files to import to the live website, and all the CSS is fixed without keeping the site under maintenance.

Undo/Redo Revision History:

While editing your website with CSS Hero, you may come up with designs that you don’t like at first but want to revert to later. That’s where the undo and redo buttons come in handy.

If you make a mistake, one click on the undo button will fix everything. And if you want to compare changes, the redo and undo features work like a charm in the live CSS editor.

Also, one of my favorite features is the history button. Suppose you want to go back to a specific part of your editing while checking your progress. You can click on any part of the CSS selectors and see the changes you’ve made up until that point.

CSS Hero Integrations:

With the new updates in version 5, the plugin has become more than just a WordPress CSS editor plugin. You can now handle JS code and integrate it with many JS libraries. There’s also a Page Inspector feature that shows you the HTML code behind the scenes.

In addition to these features, CSS Hero now comes with built-in integration with Unsplash and Coverr. Unsplash provides unlimited royalty-free images, while Coverr provides videos.

CSS Hero Performance:

When it comes to improving search engine rankings, loading speed can be a big concern. However, in my experience, CSS Hero doesn’t significantly slow down your website.

This is because CSS Hero uses a single static CSS file, so it doesn’t take up much space. In fact, it includes its codes in your existing CSS sheet file.

Overall, CSS Hero won’t slow down your site’s loading speed like some other page builder plugins. So you can use it without worry.

CSS Hero Review: Pros & Cons

It’s widely known that CSS Hero is one of the best WordPress CSS editor plugins. However, like everything, it has its strengths and weaknesses.

One of the great things about the plugin is that you don’t need to know CSS code to use it. Here are some of the things I like and some things I’m not much satisfied with this plugin.

Pros

• Simple click and edit elements from the sidebar popup
• Works on almost any WordPress theme for customization
• Supports Multisite for WP
• Doesn’t make any CSS mistake
• Add extra custom live CSS editor
• No need for learning CSS code
• Premade style sheets to work faster
• Beginner-friendly hero menu and documentation

Cons

• Missing live support
• No feature to add or create a new CSS layer

CSS Hero Support & Documentation

While the plugin doesn’t offer live support, but its documentation is well-detailed and organized. You’ll find everything you need in easy-to-navigate sections.

The “Getting Started” section helps you understand and install the plugin correctly, while the “Feature Highlight Videos” help you get familiar with the settings.

Each article also comes with a tutorial, and you can access free videos on their YouTube channel.

How Much Does CSS Hero Cost? 

The CSS Hero WordPress plugin is available at 4 different price points. The starter pack starts at $19 per year, while the lifetime deal is $179. For a single business, the $19/year option is a good choice, while agencies may prefer the other deals.

Take a look at its price range:

Starter Pack	$19/year	Basic support	1 site
Personal Pack	$39/year	Basic support	5 sites
Pro Pack	$79/Year	Multisite support	999 sites
Lifetime Pro Pack	$179 (one time)	Multisite support	999 sites

Note: While writing the review, they were running a discount offer with 100% money back within 30 days from the purchase date. You can buy any plan of CSS Hero using your PayPal account.

CSS Hero Alternatives

There are a few alternatives that can compete with it. Some of the top CSS Hero alternatives include:

• Yellow Pencil
• Siteorigin CSS
• Microthemer

These are its direct competitors. However, CSS Hero offers a somewhat better deal compared to others.

CSS Hero Review: Final Thoughts

Many users of CSS Hero have shared amazing reviews about the plugin. I also appreciate its price and features. As a beginner who doesn’t know much about CSS coding, CSS Hero makes it easy to edit and design my website.

You don’t need to be an expert developer to use the tool because it’s almost self-explanatory. The only thing missing is live chat support. But if you’re someone who’s managing your website on your own, CSS Hero will be a great investment.