Piotnet Grid is a new plugin that helps you visually create filterable grids and cards to display all types of WordPress content, like posts, terms, and pages. In this article, we're going to take a look at features, usability, pricing and integrations of this plugin.

There are several tools, like BetterWP's FilterWP plugin, and GridBuilderWP (read our review here) that are already established in this market, so lets see how Piotnet's newest grid builder stacks up in 2024.

Before we get into this review, it's worth noting that Piotnet has two very popular plugins with large user bases:

• Piotnet Forms, Piotnet Forms Review: Better Than Legacy Competitors
• PAFE (Piotnet Addons For Elementor)Unlimited Elements VS PAFE Piotnet Addons

With that said, let's take a look at the new Piotnet Grid plugin.

Piotnet Grid Features

Piotnet Grid is a tool that you can use to build frontend displays for content on your WordPress website. You use it to design cards, build grids, and add facets and filters.

The plugin has three main sections - individual cards, grids that display these cards, and facets that filter the content within the grids. These are all separate elements that can be added to the frontend in any combination.

All aspects of the plugin are controlled in the backend builder. For those who have used Piotnet Forms, the design and UX of this builder is very similar, and reminds us of Elementor or Bricks Page Builder.

In this example, we're building a simple card that will display the featured image of a post, wrap it with a link, and show the title and other dynamic information at the bottom.

Each element has a settings panel, where design and data can be tweaked. The dynamic data that you can populate is essentially anything that you could access as a WordPress dev using PHP (see integrations for more info).

The builder is responsive to mobile design (with breakpoints), and you also can add global JS and CSS.

All in all, the interface is easy to use, though it is in it's early phases. For example, when hovering over an element, all containers get highlighted. This is definitely something that'll get fixed in future releases and by no means should deter you from thinking about picking up this Grid Builder.

Facets and Grids are built with the same builder. For each aspect, there are different choices of elements that can be used. Everything is drag and drop, and works really well.

For the grids, there are a myriad of features. You can build a complete custom query, manipulate the layout (there are options for masonry grids), animate cards, set up caching for speed, and edit the no results found alert.

Everything is displayed on the frontend via shortcode.

It works well, is logical, and doesn't require a ton of technical knowledge to build complex grids and cards, and apply facets.

Something that sets Piotnet Grid apart from other solutions on the market is a heavy focus on Ecommerce. There are three main subfeatures that make it an interesting choice for somebody building a WooCommerce shop: Quick View, Wishlist and the Full Text Search.

This packages functions that previously required other plugins to add to a digital shop. The quick view and wishlist are nice card features that could help inspire customers to make a purchase. The full text search is quick and works well for WooCommerce. It also eliminates the need for a plugin like SearchWP or FiboSearch.

The search and filter feature that Piotnet Grid is backed up by caching, allowing results to display almost instantly. This is similar to many of the other leading filtering tools, like GridBuilderWP.

Another feature that makes this offering stand out from competitors is the built in Analytics panel. Facet and filtering tools have been difficult to track traditionally as it could be difficult to set up Google Analytics events with them. In the past, we've used third party plugins like Exact Metrics to make this process easier for us and clients - but with Piotnet Grid, we no longer need to do this.

The analytics panel is robust and will show you actionable data so you can understand exactly what your visitors are looking at and searching for.

Powerful Integrations

Piotnet Grid integrates with all major custom field plugins, which are ACF, Meta Box, Jet Engine and Pods. This means that you can pull dynamic data from any custom field framework and display it on cards and filterable grids. You can also use this to filter content with the Facets.

Piotnet Grid primarily uses shortcodes to add grids and facets to the frontend of a WordPress site. However, it integrates with Oxygen Builder and Elementor already, with promised future development offering even deeper integration.

In terms of working with Oxygen, there are dedicated elements that can be used in the builder, once you've built them using Piotnet Grid:

One thing to note if you're using Oxygen - currently you'll need to make a template for Piotnet Grid to work.

Piotnet Grid Pricing

Note: as pricing matures (as well as the plugin as a whole), we will update this article.

Piotnet Grid offers annual subscriptions as well as a LTD. For 1 site, it costs $39/year, for 100 sites, it costs $79/yr, and for 1000 sites, it costs $175/yr.

The LTD gives you lifetime updates and support for 100 sites at the one time price of $95.

For launch, the prices are discounted by 20%. You can get a further 20% off if you're a current Piotnet customer (PAFE or Piotnet Forms). Check the slashed out prices for more standard prices.

The Verdict

These prices, especially with the launch discounts are very fair. While it is a new product, it works well and has a solid documentation for something in v1.0.0. We found it easy to set up, use, and expand. Compared with more mature solutions like GridBuilderWP, it's a bit cheaper and offers similar features. It also offers an active LTD; GB occasionally runs an offering but doesn't currently have one public.

The roadmap is promising, the current product is worth its price (with the launch discounts applied), and we're excited to see how this product progresses in the future. The one downside for us which will likely be fixed with time is the fact that you need to create a template for it to work perfectly with Oxygen - and if you compare it with other tools, the integration with our favorite page builder isn't as robust.

Welcome to the Grids Builder, Search & Filter market, Piotnet Grid!