Detailed Feature Comparison of Etch vs Bricks
Trying to understand the meaningful differences between Etch and Bricks? This page should help.
Feature
Does the builder allow viewing, editing, and authoring of the HTML?
Etch: Yes
Etch users can fully view, edit, and author HTML. You can even copy and paste HTML from an external source and Etch will parse it properly into blocks.
Bricks: No
Users can’t view or edit the HTML generated by Bricks. The only way to author HTML is via a manual code block, but this is separate from the builder-created HTML.
Feature
Does the builder author everything you build to editable core Gutenberg blocks and keep the block editor in sync with the builder? Do users get the benefit of full data liberation and easy client editing?
Etch: Yes
Etch authors everything you do to core blocks in Gutenberg, including templates, patterns, components (as synced patterns), loops, and conditional logic. Clients can use Gutenberg for easy editing and all data is liberated from Etch.
Bricks: No
Bricks is working on authoring components as blocks, but it’s an opt-in feature and it’s unclear what value component authoring will have by itself if the entire page isn’t authored. There’s no client-editing experience and no data liberation.
Feature
Can you add and style any valid CSS selector?
Etch: Yes
Etch has a full selector system that allows you to add and style any valid CSS selector including complex selectors and compound selectors.
Bricks: No
Bricks only has a class and ID system, so users are limited to styling classes and IDs unless they want to write custom global CSS.
Feature
Can you loop through posts, users, taxonomies, JSON, and third party APIs?
Etch: Partial
Etch has support for posts, users, taxonomies, and raw JSON. We’re working on adding support for third party APIs.
Bricks: Partial
Bricks has support for posts, users, taxonomies, and third party APIs, but lacks support for raw JSON.
Feature
Does the builder support dynamic data for templating, content insertion, loops, and logic?
Etch: Yes
Etch allows the injection of dynamic data anywhere, including WordPress custom fields and offers dozens of modifiers to manipulate the data output.
Bricks: Partial
Bricks has above average support for dynamic data, but users can’t pass dynamic data via WordPress custom fields and the options to modify the data are more limted.