Giuliomax Menu Builder vs UpdraftPlus

📖 Full Documentation → What if the best menu plugin didn’t cost anything? You’ve seen the pattern: install a menu plugin, get excited, then hit the paywall. The mega menu? Pro. The cart icon? Pro. The nice themes? Pro. Giuliomax Menu Builder breaks that pattern. Every single feature is free. Not a teaser version — the whole thing. Build a navigation bar that looks like it was custom-designed for your brand, in minutes. Pick one of 50 designer themes and go live in one click, or fine-tune every pixel with the visual editor. Drop the MenuX block into your header in the Site Editor, or paste [menux] anywhere. Desktop, tablet, phone — it just looks right. Need a footer too? The built-in Footer Builder produces those polished, multi-column footers you normally only see on custom-coded sites — built visually in under a minute with a guided wizard. 💎 Why “free” actually means free here No watermarks. No ads in your dashboard. No “Upgrade” buttons taunting you next to locked features. No newsletter blackmail. Everything below works the moment you click Activate: Navigation ✅ Mega menus (4 columns, 20 industry templates) ✅ Multi-level dropdowns ✅ Visual drag-and-drop builder ✅ Import from WordPress menus ✅ Sticky header with shrink-on-scroll ✅ Built-in menu & page search Conversion ✅ CTA button items ✅ Announcement bar with live countdown ✅ Badges (“New”, “Hot”) & notification dots ✅ Live WooCommerce cart with mini-cart ✅ Smart visibility (role, device, page, schedule, campaign) Design ✅ 50 one-click themes in 10 style categories ✅ 70+ Google Fonts with live preview ✅ Visual gradient picker ✅ Hover & entrance animations ✅ Logo placement with pill/circle shapes ✅ Dark mode (Light / Dark / Auto) ✅ Scroll progress bar ✅ Scroll spy (auto-highlight current section) Mobile ✅ 4 opening styles (dropdown, fullscreen, left/right drawer) ✅ 3 hamburger icon styles ✅ Mobile-specific text colors ✅ Overlay with blur effect ✅ Accordion submenus Footer ✅ Visual Footer Builder with guided 4-step wizard ✅ 7 section types: About, Links, Contact, Newsletter, Social icons, Opening hours, Custom HTML ✅ 21 curated footer themes (Midnight, Carbon Gold, Deep Ocean, Bordeaux, Sapphire, Aurora, Editorial, and more) ✅ Live style preview as you edit — colors, typography, social icons, spacing ✅ Bottom bar: copyright with {year} placeholder, legal links, social mirror ✅ Scroll-to-top floating button ✅ Per-column “hide on mobile” toggle ✅ Footer Gutenberg block + [menux_footer] shortcode Platform ✅ Gutenberg block for FSE themes ✅ Shortcode for any builder (Elementor, Divi, WPBakery) ✅ WPML / Polylang / TranslatePress support ✅ WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility ✅ One-file export/import ✅ Real-time 3-device preview That’s 40+ features other plugins split between Free and Pro — here they’re just… features. 💰 One plugin instead of five Other plugins split these features across separate paid products — a mega menu add-on, a cart widget, an announcement bar, a sticky header, a styling pack. Each one costs money, loads its own scripts, fights the others’ CSS and needs its own update cycle. MenuX replaces all of them with a single consistent plugin. $0. If it saves you time or money, a small donation keeps development going — that’s the whole business model. 👤 Who is it for? Shop owners — live cart in the menu, countdown sales bar, “Offers” badge on the promo category. Your navigation becomes a salesperson Restaurants & local business — show “🍕 Lunch Menu” only between 12:00 and 15:00 with time-based visibility. Yes, really Agencies & freelancers — style a menu once, export the config file, import it on every client site. Minutes instead of hours, on every project Bloggers & creators — 50 themes mean your nav matches your brand without hiring a designer; the scroll progress bar keeps readers engaged Marketers — CTA buttons, campaign-targeted menu items (UTM visibility), countdown urgency — A/B test your navigation like a landing page Membership & community sites — different menus for logged-in members, per-role items, login/logout aware navigation out of the box 🚀 Launch in 60 seconds 50 one-click themes — from sleek dark navs to playful gradients, filter by mood (Dark, Minimal, Vibrant, Glass, Corporate, Retro and more), preview live, apply with one click. Your menu goes from default-theme-boring to “wait, what plugin is that?” instantly Import your existing menu — already built a menu in Appearance → Menus? One click pulls it into the builder, sub-items included. Nothing to rebuild A bee shows you around — first time? Our 🐝 onboarding guide walks you through setup so you’re never staring at an empty screen 🎯 Built to convert, not just navigate Your menu is prime real estate — the one element on every single page. Make it work for you: CTA Button items — turn “Book Now”, “Get a Quote” or “Start Free Trial” into a real button with its own colors, hover effect and rounded corners. It sits right in your menu, impossible to miss Announcement Bar with live countdown — run flash sales with a ticking timer that creates real urgency. Dismissible, brandable, clickable Badges & notification dots — highlight “New” or “Hot” items so visitors’ eyes go exactly where you want Smart visibility — show different items to logged-in customers, mobile visitors, specific pages, certain hours of the day, or traffic from a specific campaign. The right menu for the right person, automatically 🛒 Your shop’s command center — free Other plugins charge for this. Here it’s included: Live cart icon — cart, bag or basket, with a count badge that updates the instant something is added. No refresh Running subtotal — shoppers always know where they stand Mini-cart dropdown — peek at the cart on hover or click, straight to checkout in fewer clicks Fully brandable — icon style, position, colors, badge — all yours Zero config debt — no WooCommerce? The cart silently waits and activates itself the day you install it ⚡ Mega menus like the big brands — free The multi-column dropdowns you see on Apple-sized websites, built visually in your dashboard: Up to 4 columns of links, headings, dividers, images, shortcodes or blocks — yes, you can embed forms, latest-posts widgets or product grids via shortcode Icons + descriptions per link — visitors know where they’re going before they click 20 industry templates — SaaS, E-Commerce, Agency, Restaurant, Travel, Healthcare, Real Estate, Law Firm, Finance, Fashion, Hotel, Nonprofit, Events, Automotive, Gaming and more, loaded in one click Every mega menu unique — per-menu backgrounds (solids or gradients), spacing, colors and corner rounding from a dedicated 🎨 Appearance tab Forgiving hover — the panel waits for the mouse instead of vanishing mid-journey Mobile-smart — choose how it folds on phones: a stacked accordion list, a compact 2-column grid (perfect for category menus), or hidden entirely 🦶 Professional site footer — without the page builder The Footer Builder lets you create those polished, multi-column footers that normally require a custom theme or a premium page builder. Build it visually and drop it anywhere with one block or shortcode: 4-step guided wizard — layout → theme → content → bottom bar; a complete, populated footer in under 60 seconds with zero configuration required 7 section types — About/text, Link list, Contact info (address, phone, email with tel:/mailto: links auto-generated), Social icons, Opening hours, Newsletter signup, and Custom HTML. Mix and match freely Newsletter signup section — configure the form action URL (Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Brevo or any list manager), placeholder text, button label and an optional GDPR consent checkbox; no server-side code, no API keys 21 curated themes — from Midnight (deep navy), Carbon Gold (black + gold luxury) and Bordeaux (wine + gold, fine-dining) to Aurora (indigo-violet gradient), Porcelain (clean light) and Editorial (monochrome), plus Slate Steel, Navy & Linen, Obsidian Copper, Stone & Gold, Arctic and more; each hand-tuned for contrast and harmony, apply in one click, every color remains editable afterwards Live admin preview — the right panel renders the footer in real time as you change sections, colors and typography; what you see in the admin is exactly what visitors see on the front end Style control — accent top bar, vertical/horizontal padding, column gap, max width, link hover effects (slide right / animated underline / color only), heading typography, social icon styles (circle badge / rounded square / plain icons), bottom bar colors and divider line Scroll-to-top button — an accent-colored floating arrow that appears after 300 px of scroll; toggle from the settings; animated with CSS transitions Per-column mobile control — mark any column as “hide on mobile” to show a clean 1-column layout on phones without removing content from desktop Place it anywhere — MenuX — Footer Gutenberg block for FSE/block themes, or the [menux_footer] shortcode for Elementor, Divi, classic themes and widget areas 📱 Mobile menus people actually enjoy 4 opening styles — classic dropdown, immersive fullscreen, or a drawer sliding from either side 3 hamburger icon styles — Classic, Modern, Minimal — in your brand colors, on a guaranteed-transparent button (we fight your theme’s CSS so you don’t have to) Mobile-specific text colors — normal, hover and active states, independent from desktop Overlay magic — tint it, fade it, even blur the page behind your menu Accordion submenus — optional one-at-a-time expansion keeps long menus tidy ✨ Design without compromise Visual drag-and-drop builder — every item expands into clean labelled sections. You will never touch code 70+ Google Fonts — searchable picker with live preview; size, weight, spacing, transforms Gradient picker — paint with rich gradients using a visual compass — no hex codes, no CSS Hover animations — Lift, Scale, Glow, Underline and more; plus entrance animations with stagger Sticky header — stays visible on scroll, mirrors your menu automatically or gets its own shrink-on-scroll look Your logo, your way — drop it in the bar, position it, round it into a circle or pill Dark mode — Light, Dark, or Auto-follow the visitor’s system Built-in search — a magnifying glass that searches your menu and the text on the page Real-time preview — desktop, tablet and mobile views while you edit, before anyone else sees it ♿ Accessibility is one switch away Flip the master toggle and get full WCAG 2.2 AA: keyboard navigation, visible focus rings, skip links, ARIA labels, comfortable touch targets, reduced-motion respect and high-contrast mode. Inclusive by default, not as an afterthought. ⚡ Light by design. Private by default Server-side rendering — your menu is plain HTML and CSS generated on the server. No React bundle, no framework tax, no layout shift Zero external requests — Font Awesome is bundled locally; nothing loads from a CDN. Google Fonts connect only if you explicitly pick one GDPR-friendly out of the box — no tracking, no analytics calls, no cookies, no data sent anywhere. Nothing to add to your privacy policy Cache-plugin native — static output that WP Rocket, LiteSpeed and W3TC can cache aggressively 🌍 Works with your stack Site Editor / FSE themes — drag the MenuX block into any header. Done Page builders — Elementor, Divi, WPBakery: paste [menux] in a shortcode element WPML · Polylang · TranslatePress — a label per language on every item, detected automatically Caching plugins — server-side HTML, friends with WP Rocket, LiteSpeed and W3TC Theme switches — your menu lives in the plugin, not the theme. Change themes, keep everything Move between sites — export the entire setup to a file, import it elsewhere in seconds 🔌 Get started Open Giuliomax Menu Builder in your admin sidebar Add items in the drag-and-drop builder — or import your existing WP menu in one click Apply one of the 50 themes, or style it yourself Drop the MenuX block in your header (or paste [menux] anywhere) Optional: enable the Mega Menu, WooCommerce cart, Announcement Bar or Footer Builder from the sidebar That’s it. No license keys, no account, no credit card field hiding in step 5. Still deciding? Install it, click one theme, and look at your site. That’s 90 seconds. If it’s not for you, deactivate — your theme’s old menu is exactly where you left it, and deleting the plugin removes every trace from your database. There is literally nothing to lose. ☕ Keep it free This plugin is free and always will be. If it saves you time or money, a small donation keeps development going: 👉 https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/giuliosw Every contribution genuinely matters. Thank you. External Services This plugin may connect to the following external service: Google Fonts (optional) If a Google Font name is entered in the Style panel (Typography tab), the plugin loads that font’s stylesheet from Google’s servers at https://fonts.googleapis.com. This request is made only when a Google Font is explicitly configured by the site administrator. The font name and the visitor’s IP address are sent to Google as part of the standard HTTP request. Terms of service: https://developers.google.com/terms Privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy Font Awesome icons are bundled locally within the plugin and do not load from any external server.

The UpdraftPlus Backup & Migration Plugin is trusted by the WordPress community to backup, restore and migrate their WordPress websites. UpdraftPlus is actively installed on more than 3 million websites around the world. Backup with UpdraftPlus UpdraftPlus is the world’s highest ranking and most popular scheduled backup and migration plugin. Backup to your preferred storage location and restore in just three clicks. Backup to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 (or compatible), Rackspace Cloud, FTP, DreamObjects, Openstack Swift or email. The paid version also allows you to backup to Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Backblaze B2, SFTP, SCP, pCloud, WebDAV or UpdraftVault, our integrated storage option for UpdraftPlus. Backup manually or schedule to run every 2, 4, 8 or 12 hours, daily, weekly, monthly or fortnightly. Restore with UpdraftPlus Your WordPress website is vulnerable. Your site may get hacked. Something could go wrong with an update or your server could crash. You might need to reverse a change made or a mistake caused by human error. Whatever the reason, you can restore your WordPress website in just a few clicks with UpdraftPlus. Choose which components to restore (e.g. plugins, themes, database etc.), click again to restore, then click again to return to the main screen. Migrate with UpdraftPlus It’s easy to migrate your WordPress website to another web host, server or domain with this free version of UpdraftPlus. To migrate, simply download your database, plugins, themes etc. from the source site, then upload them into your destination site. When migrating, a built-in search-and-replace engine identifies old strings and replaces these to reflect the new location. UpdraftPlus saves you time and reduces the risk of broken links or missing files associated with manual migrations. Why UpdraftPlus? Writing a reliable backup and migration plugin that ‘just works’ consistently across millions of different WordPress deployments is hard. UpdraftPlus is relied upon to do exactly that. We’re trusted and actively deployed on more websites around the world than any other WordPress backup and migration plugin. UpdraftPlus: Backs up, migrates and restores Offers a huge number of remote storage locations Allows you to schedule backups, so you can ‘set and forget’ Is comprehensive and easy to use Is proven to work on over 3 million sites. UpdraftPlus Premium The free version of UpdraftPlus will back up and migrate your website perfectly well. However if you need more features and options you can purchase our Premium version. Backup and Migrate with UpdraftPlus Premium, and: Get automatic backups before updates. Restore the very latest version if a WordPress or plugin update breaks your site. Backup Incrementally. Changes are added to the master, saving server resources vs repeatedly backing up in full. Get more remote storage options including Microsoft OneDrive, SFTP, Microsoft Azure, WebDAV, Google Cloud, SCP, Backblaze and pCloud. Get 1GB of integrated storage with UpdraftVault for 99.999% reliability, redundancy and scalability. Get more control over how many backups are stored in a specified interval. Restore from other backup plugins including BackWPup, BackupWordPress, Simple Backups and more. Run backups at set times e.g. during periods of low traffic. Backup to more than one location for added protection. Get detailed reports. Includes cryptographic checksums so you can verify the integrity of the backup files and more. Get Premium migration. Migrating to the destination site is more direct and can be done from the source site. Get Multisite / multi-network compatibility. Backup non-WP files and databases e.g. tables belonging to your e-commerce store or customisations to WordPress core. Get database encryption. Manage your backups and migrations from the WP-CLI. Get Premium Support. Find out more on our comparison page. UpdraftPlus Premium is available for purchase here. Managing multiple websites? UpdraftCentral is a powerful remote control dashboard for WordPress that allows you to manage your backups, as well as updates, users, pages, posts, plugins and themes from one central location. Choose between: UpdraftCentral (free, self-hosted) UpdraftCentral Premium (paid-for, self-hosted) UpdraftCentral Cloud (paid-for, fully-hosted) Optimize your sites centrally by combining the power of WP-Optimize and UpdraftCentral or manage your backups centrally by combining the power of UpdraftPlus with UpdraftCentral. Need to create a temporary clone of your site? UpdraftClone makes it quick and easy to create a temporary sandbox for changes you want to try out. Simply select the versions of WordPress and PHP that you want, and we’ll do the rest. More about UpdraftClone The full suite of plugins from Team Updraft and friends UpdraftPlus. Backup, migrate and restore. Rated 5* on the plugin directory and trusted by more than 3 million WordPress website owner WP-Optimize. Clean the database, compress images and caching. Optimize your WordPress website. 5* user rating. 1 million + active installs. All-In-One Security (AIOS). Secure your WordPress website. Comprehensive, feature rich and easy to use. 5* user rating and 1 million + active installs. WP Overnight. Quality Extensions for your WooCommerce store. 5* rated invoicing, order and product management, customer management solutions and more. Easy Updates Manager. Take control of updates. Lots of features for free, and a Premium version with even more – over 300,000 users. Internal Link Juicer.Boost your SEO. Automate internal links within your WordPress website. Save time and rank higher in the search engines. For other useful, free plugins see our lead developer’s profile, here. Are you multilingual? Can you translate? Do you want to help people that speak your language to backup, migrate and restore their WordPress websites? The UpdraftPlus backup, migration and restoration plugin is ready and waiting. The translation process is easy, and web-based – please go here for instructions: https://updraftplus.com/translate/. Or, if you’re already an expert WordPress translator, just pick out the .pot file from the wp-content/plugins/updraftplus/languages/ directory – if you scan for translatable strings manually, then you need to get these functions: _x(), __(), _e(), _ex(), log_e(). Many thanks to our existing translators. License Copyright 2011-24 David Anderson This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA Non-English translators are provided by volunteers, and wordpress.org does not give plugin developers control over their translations; thus relying on them is at your own risk; UpdraftPlus cannot guarantee that translations from the original English are accurate. We recognise and thank those mentioned at https://updraftplus.com/acknowledgements/ for code and/or libraries used and/or modified under the terms of their open source licences.