It has become increasingly popular to create websites using the default WordPress editor, Gutenberg. And a ton of Gutenberg libraries are enhancing the directory to make the WordPress website flawlessly functional and beautifully designed. Which is the best, though? How to boost your website design experience with the best Gutenberg library?
Today, we will compare Otter vs Essential Blocks, two of the most well-known Gutenberg block libraries, to help you make the best choice possible. Hopefully, after reading this blog, you will be able to choose the best Gutenberg block library for your website. Let us get started.
When Head Starting with Gutenberg, Why Do You Need an Extra Blocks Library?
Since WordPress 5.0, Gutenberg has replaced Classic Editor as the default editor. And from then, its user list has been increasing day by day. Due to its sleek and user-friendly drag-&-drop builder interface, wide collections of default blocks and patterns, and utmost flexibility in designing and customization, it is winning everyone’s heart. But why would you want to add a Gutenberg block library to your website, given all these enhancements? Let us tell you why.
Unlock Advanced Design without the Bloat
Core Gutenberg blocks are great for simple content, true. However, what if you would like interactive accordions, testimonial sliders, pricing tables or animated headlines? Block libraries allow you to use these advanced features directly in your editor. For example, Essential Blocks, Otter, Kadence, etc. Gutenberg libraries come with performance-optimized blocks that elevate your website design and you can customize them as you want without coding.
Faster Page Building Experience
A lot of block libraries include pre-made templates, also known as “block patterns,” which speed up the page-building process. For busy creators, agencies and freelancers, you can use pre-made content sections and modify them to suit your needs rather than creating each from scratch.
Website Performance And Optimization
Some Gutenberg libraries, like Otter or Essential Blocks, are designed with performance in mind. They let you load just the blocks you need, which keeps your pages quick and light. Compared to using bloated page builders or unoptimized themes, this can be a huge advantage.
If you are just starting with Gutenberg, investing in a high-quality block library is one of the best ways to extend what the editor can do. Whether you are building a business site, blog or online portfolio, tools like Essential Blocks, Otter, etc., give you the power to design without limits and code.
Best Gutenberg Block Plugins Compared: Otter vs Essential Blocks
Among Gutenberg block libraries, Essential Blocks and Otter are the two most buzzed-about names. These block libraries are all built to make designing in the Gutenberg editor easier. However, each of them possesses advanced functionalities that will enhance your website. Here is the in-depth comparison between Otter vs Essential Blocks for you.
1. Quick Setup Flow: Otter vs Essential Blocks
Essential Blocks and Otter, both of these Gutenberg blocks come with amazing features and blocks. Let us begin the Otter vs. Essential Blocks comparison by discussing how easy it is for new users to get started with the block plugin.
🔰 Essential Blocks Offers Beginner-Friendly Setup Wizard
Upon selecting the ‘Activate’ button, the plugin will launch the setup wizard right away. You will get a full tour of what Essential Blocks offers, how it functions, what its features and blocks are, what integrations it provides, etc. These kinds of quick setup wizards help new users get a kickstart. With Essential Blocks, anyone can start building websites easily by following the optimized onboarding flow.
🔰 Otter Takes You to Dashboard Directly
After activating the Otter plugin, it takes you to their dashboard. There, you can explore all their blocks and features. This kind of start sometimes leaves new users clueless and delays production. Though when you go to the Gutenberg Editor, you will have a short tour of its blocks.
2. Gutenberg Block Collections: Otter vs Essential Blocks
The best flexibility Gutenberg library plugins bring is a multi-purpose block collection. Which will help you create interactive sections like blog previews, contact forms, FAQs, flip boxes and so on. Take a look at the Essential Blocks vs Otter Blocks collection.
🔰 Essential Blocks Has 60+ Gutenberg Blocks & Patterns Collection
Till now, Essential Blocks has the largest collection of blocks. You will get 60+ blocks of versatile categories, like content, creative, dynamic, eCommerce, marketing, socials and so much more. Complex sections like sliders, stacked cards, offsets, notice bars, action-triggered popups, etc. can be created without any custom coding. All you have to do is search for each functionality and find a block instantly.
All these blocks come with multiple trending designed presets and tons of customization. You can easily add content, customize styling, add interactive animations, etc., with a click. No dependencies with custom codes to modify any part of the block.
🔰 Otter Provides 20+ Gutenberg Blocks And Patterns
On the other hand, Otter comes with 20+ Gutenberg blocks. These blocks will help you design essential sections like accordions, table, blogs, slider, popup, etc. You will find important blocks in this plugin to make your website outstanding.
3. WooCommerce Store Builder Compatibility: Otter vs Essential Blocks
Over 4.6 million active online shops are powered by WooCommerce. Thanks to all of the incredible Gutenberg library plugins, particularly Otter and Essential Blocks, for demonstrating the ability to use Gutenberg to create a full online store. This Otter vs. Essential blocks comparison will assist you in selecting the best plugin for setting up an online store.
🔰 Essential Blocks Comes with All Essential Woo Blocks
Essential Blocks is the perfect choice if you want to build a highly functional and stylish WooCommerce-supported online store. You can design your store from scratch and set up product pages templates. Must-mention Woo Blocks are:
| 🛍️ Product Grid | 🛍️ Product Carousel |
| 🛍️ Product Image | 🛍️ Product Price |
| 🛍️ Product Rating | 🛍️ Product Details |
| 🛍️ Add To Cart | 🛍️ Breadcrumb |
| 🛍️ Taxonomy | 🛍️ Advanced Title |
| 🛍️ Text | …. and more! |
Utilizing these and other 60+ Gutenberg blocks, you can create stunning online stores without coding. You create engagement and skyrocket your store’s performance.
🔰 Otter Helps to Build a Complete WooCommerce Store
The Otter Gutenberg plugin comes with WooCommerce builder. Which helps you to design single product pages with your chosen style. You will get advanced blocks like business hours, checkout blocks, rating blocks, product carousel blocks and others. The goal of every feature is to increase conversion rates and provide additional enhancements.
4. Incorporating AI in Gutenberg: Otter vs Essential Blocks
AI is taking over the world. It is no longer considered an add-on; it is becoming an essential functionality in website creation as well. Keeping up with the world, both Essential Blocks and Otter have brought AI features. Primarily, you will get AI content support with these Gutenberg block libraries. A quick overview of Otter vs Essential Blocks AI functionality comparison.
🔰 Essential Blocks Brings Support for AI Content in Every Block
No need to bring AI-generated content from another platform to your Gutenberg editor. From inside the editor, you can write blog posts, product descriptions and page content with prompts. You can change the content length, tone or even regenerate them with Essential Blocks AI later.
Moreover, you will receive support for AI auto-content generation from within each text field that has blocks included. You can generate titles, subtitles, paragraphs, one-line descriptions, FAQs etc. with AI. You will also receive the Essential Blocks AI support on other RichText Gutenberg blocks. So, you can generate content with AI for all the text blocks on your website using Essential Blocks.
Not only for content generation, but you can also generate AI images right from your Gutenberg editor with Essential Blocks. Now you don’t need to collect AI images from other tools and then upload them to your website. Save your time, create stunning product images, illustrations, backgrounds, logo and so on.
🔰 Otter Offers AI-Generated Content & Forms
Otter is also a pioneer block, like Essential Blocks, which has brought robust AI support. You can generate content for blogs, pages and products easily with AI. Moreover, with prompt, you can generate outstanding forms with personalized content, website structure layouts and so on. Otter aims to make website building easier with AI.
5. Dynamic Tags Support: Otter vs Essential Blocks
You can use either Essential Blocks or Otter as your plugin for dynamic tag support instead of choosing a different one. Here are comparisons of Otter vs Essential Blocks.
🔰 Essential Blocks Provides ACF, Dynamic Tags, Taxonomy, etc.
Essential Blocks is built for power users who want more dynamic and flexible content control. One of its standout features is its robust support for Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), making it a great fit for developers and content creators who rely on custom data fields.
Beyond ACF, Essential Blocks also supports dynamic tags, allowing you to pull in real-time content from your WordPress database, like post titles, excerpts, user info,etc.; directly into your blocks. You will also get access to taxonomy-based display options, which let you tailor content based on categories, tags, titles, meta titles, meta dates, post types, etc. Whether you are building a personalized blog or a highly dynamic website, Essential Blocks provides the backend power you need with the frontend flexibility you want.
🔰 Otter Offers Dynamic Content Support
Otter includes a built-in dynamic content system. You can insert dynamic values like post title, author name, site tagline and current date/time, using a shortcode format. You can pull in data like title, post excerpt, post content, tagline, author name, description, user info, email, date/time, etc.
6. Mobile Responsive Customization: Otter vs Essential Blocks
Providing device-responsive flexibility for your WordPress website is crucial, depending on the present user data. Check out this comparison of Otter and Essential Blocks to see which offers greater design flexibility.
🔰 Essential Blocks Allows to Customize Responsiveness for All
With Essential Blocks’ granular responsive styling support, you can modify layouts, typography, padding and margins independently for desktop, tablet and mobile devices. Go to a block’s settings and then navigate to the Advanced tab. From there, you can configure per-device settings across its range of blocks, backed by asset regeneration for optimized performance.
Not only this, with Essential Blocks, you can set up responsive break-even points. This will help your website automatically adjust based on the viewer’s device type. Another exclusive feature is based on device type, browser type or login type; you can hide or show specific sections of your website seamlessly.
🔰 Otter Supports Default WordPress Responsiveness
Otter is compatible with default WordPress responsive options. There is no custom responsive control for each Gutenberg block. Their section block offers control over padding and margins, but it is insufficient to make your website fully responsive. However, Otter also offers a conditional display feature that lets you show or hide particular parts of your website based on device type or browser type.
7. Designing Blogs to Multi-Purpose Websites: Otter vs Essential Blocks
Every kind of website you plan to create needs a certain set of features. For example, if you want to make a blog website, you need to display the table of contents, trending posts, posts in sliders, posts in a grid or occasionally just the author information or post meta. When building a multipurpose website, you must display content in flexible layouts that complement any category you choose. Let us see how much freedom Otter and Essential Blocks give you when building any kind of website.
🔰 Essential Blocks Is Packed with Exclusive Page Building Features
The largest benefit of Essential Blocks is its extensive collection of blocks; it contains over 60 blocks. Therefore, creating a basic portfolio or blog website or a large, multipurpose website is simple. To launch your entire blog website, you will receive features like a filterable gallery, post grid, post carousel and dynamic tag support.
Moreover, Essential Blocks provides feature-packed form builder, popup builder, query loop builder, multi-column tables, etc. These builders offer you the freedom to design any type of website you want without coding.
🔰 Otter Allows to Design Outstanding WordPress Websites
The section block of Otter is one of the popular ones. Using this, you can create creative websites as you want. As we already mentioned, you can create a stunning WooCommerce website using its blocks. But when you need to create out-of-the-box or multi-functional websites, you may need support from robust block plugins like Essential Blocks.
8. Comprehensive Gutenberg Template Collections: Essential Blocks vs Otter
Ready templates are the greatest choice if you want to build websites with just one click and are willing to forego the design and content creation process. With ready designs, let us check out what Otter and Essential Blocks have to offer.
🔰 Essential Blocks Has 3000+ Gutenberg Template Collections
Essential Blocks offers compatibility with Templately, the largest WordPress template hub for Gutenberg and Elementor. You can access 3000+ Gutenberg templates of different niches. All these ready-made template collections are tailored to specific industries (e.g., fashion, education, portfolios), with powerful global styling and a vast template library.
No more hassle in deciding which block to use while designing a website. Templately Gutenberg templates will help you create stunning websites of your preferred category in one click.
🔰 Otter Has Versatile WordPress Template Collections
Otter mainly provides a core patterns library with premium upgrades, which includes essential sections like headers, testimonials, pricing, CTAs and feature sections. It provides full-page templates for categories like business, fitness, industry, artists, recipes, etc. For basic types of websites, you can go for Otter Gutenberg templates.
A Quick Overview from WordPress Repository: Otter vs Essential Blocks
Besides our tier-by-tier comparison of Otter vs Essential Blocks, let us take a look at what other WordPress users have to say about it. According to the WordPress plugin repository, here is the performance comparison of Otter and Essential Blocks.
| Items | Essential Blocks | Otter |
| WordPress Rating | 4.8 out of 5 | 4.7 out of 5 |
| Gutenberg Block Count | 60+ | 20+ |
| Active installations | 100,000+ | 300,000+ |
| Tested up to | 6.8.1 | 6.8.1 |
Reviewing all the amazing user experiences of both of these Otter and Essential Blocks plugins, they are a great help for newcomers. When users are looking for advanced features, they are going for Essential Blocks.
Design Your WordPress Website with the Best Gutenberg Library
Selecting the best WordPress block plugin between Essential Blocks and Otter is actually difficult. Many of their features are similar, such as interactive animation, conditional display, the ability to save and reuse previously created blocks and more. What Essential Blocks will provide you with more of is global styling and typography. Without relying on a theme, you can quickly change the font and typography of your entire website.
Go with Essential Blocks if:
- You want to work theme-independently. Essential Blocks is compatible with all block themes.
- You want a more extensive and varied collection of website designs, particularly ones that are tailored to a particular industry (e.g., eCommerce, blogs, education).
- You are looking for creative flexibility with 60+ customizable blocks and seamless integration with Templately’s 3000+ templates.
- Supercharge your website with AI. Such as you can generate blog, blocks content, images, background, logos and so on.
- You value visual consistency and global design control, with built-in responsiveness and performance optimizations like Asset Regeneration.
- You are building sites for clients, agencies or niche brands where pre-built design packs save time and deliver polish.
Choose Otter Blocks if:
- You are putting your website together piece by piece using a more modular, layout-driven approach.
- You are looking for sophisticated features like AI-powered block editing, dynamic content (Magic Tags), etc.
- You want an editor that is streamlined and performance-oriented (Especially useful with Neve or block-based themes).
- You feel at ease adding your own styling layer after beginning with flexible sections.
While both plugins extend Gutenberg’s power, Essential Blocks shines as the go-to for users seeking visual impact, speed and variety, especially when working across different site types or client projects. That is all for today. Let us know which one is your favorite Gutenberg blocks plugin and what enhancements you want in the future. If you want to check out more Gutenberg guides, tips and tricks, then subscribe to us. Happy website building.