I love block collections, and Qubely was apparently one I missed in my reviewing. Right up front, it adds a big IMPORT LAYOUT button up to the left of the content editor window, which is where they have links to various block patterns / mini layouts. There aren’t many free ones, but a lot of PRO ones are listed. That’s usually a huge red flag for me — an app that serves basically to market their other services.
The collection is large with 29 separate blocks. Let’s work our way through them one by one:
Accordion: Nothing flashy but totally functional;
Advanced List: In all fairness, it does give you some nice options for styling an ordered number list (like light-blue circles around the numbers or colouring the rows, but I was REALLY hoping it would do more advanced list things like letters;
Advanced Text: More controls than a paragraph block, with built-in Title / Heading and sub-heading options, as well as basic animation;
Animated Headline: I haven’t seen anything like this in any other collection. You can write a sentence fragment like “I am a ” and then put a series of adjectives in a list of words to rotate like great, funny, sincere, etc. and then put a sentence fragment like “cheerleader” as your last part of the sentence. And it will show the words I AM A GREAT CHEERLEADER as the opening, then change the word GREAT to something else, all animated. It’s pretty good. I have ZERO use for it, but it’s impressive;
Block Wrapper: Yep, it’s a container / wrapper to go around blocks to give more control, add some grouped animation, etc;
Button: It comes with layout options that look great, and nothing resembling it once imported;
Button Group: Did you like the Button Block? How about side by side in columns?;
Contact Form: Basic contact form layout, no better or worse than those that come with Contact plugins;
Counter: Simple count up block, set the number and the duration;
Divider: At first it seemed kind of basic, until you click on the line, and see another 27 different tweaks of the line with curlicues, leaves, etc. None that I would probably use, or not many, but at least there are options;
Google Map: The Map block is either really odd or really amazing. It asks for a Google API key like every other Map block does, but then it shows you a live map without it, even though it limits what you can do to style it without the API. That’s worth the price of admission right there, as there are some issues with configuring a Google API, with lots of people having little to no success getting it right;
Heading: Nothing flashy but allows you to have a sub-heading;
Icon: Basic block, with options to wrap icon in a circle that is filled or open;
Icon List: Good list with options for hover animation, lines, borders, etc.;
Image: Pretty simple options, extensive configurations although all pretty basic;
Image Comparison: Good functionality, comparing two images side by side with a slider to show the changes;
Info Box: Basic box with graphic, multiple types of lines, simple layouts, typography options, etc;
Pie Progress: Basic styling but mostly an ad to buy the pro mode;
Post Grid: This one is very odd…it puts in the main posts, and then paginates the entire rest of your site. Which for me is 350 pages, all showing as clickable blocks;
Pricing: A pretty good pricing block with just about every option you could ever want including currencies, discounts, badges, colours, typography, etc.;
Progress Bar: Nothing fancy, but it does allow striping to the bar (most don’t) and some animation for the block;
Row: Basic single row layout with multiple configurations for # and layout of columns;
Social Icons: Surprisingly ugly layouts compared to other options like Share Any or Jetpack;
Tabs: Basic functionality, nothing exceptional;
Table of Contents: Same functionality as most, with a few extra styling options for background images, hiding the titles, icons, etc.;
Team: Standard profile box with image, name, description / title, and social media icons;
Testimonial: Great box, has all the basic options plus an option to add a rating with stars;
Timeline: Decent functionality for vertical timeline, with titles, dates, icons for the connectors, etc.; and,
Video Popup: Good options, with ability to choose internal / local or external videos, but not to add closing buttons to the popup or back buttons.
Overall, none of them are ones that I “must have”. Advanced List, Animated Headline, Divider, and the Pricing Box stand out as offering options that not all the other collections offer. But the real question mark is Google Maps. I don’t NEED it on my site, but if I did, this is the one I would use since it can run without an API key. Somehow.
