As stated on the home page I use worpdress for all my sites. I have used pure HTML 5 and CSS but the upkeep for these is very expensive, although they can be blisteringly fast.

WordPress is used on over 40% of all of the worlds websites. So it is pretty dependable for a free platform. Due to its volumes that can only help with reasonable security, plugin development etc. There is pretty much a plugin for anything you might want to do.

As for Elementor about 13% of websites are using it these days, and about a quarter of all wordpress sites. I have a 1000 site licence so I can include this as part of the charges for the website. The benefit of it is that it is continually update and additions made to it, but also at a certain level it is really quite easy to use. so customers can do simple updates themselves. It also has great flexibility as you can still control the CSS and add in raw HTML when required. Not to mention a little bit of PHP or Javascript as required.

Designing websites can be quite an iterative process. So I encourage clients to get involved and come up with their own ideas. I have also had clients uses programs such as Canva to design their websites, and then I implement that design in Elementor. Also, things change with time, so it is never an issue to go back to a website and make small changes and upfates. In fact this is a good thing for SEO, as it shows the website is regularly maintained.