What about Monarch?
Sometimes I receive questions or see comments referring to our plugin like, “What about Monarch?”
My reply is quite simple. “Well, what about it? There’s no comparison!”
Elegant Themes, the company that creates Divi, originally created a totally separate social sharing plugin called Monarch that is available with your Elegant Themes membership. But to be honest, it’s not very useful for Divi users. I can think of some majorly lacking features compared to our Divi Social Sharing Buttons Maker module.
- There is no Divi module
- It is very limited in how and where you can add the icons
- There are no design customization options
- The plugin seems forgotten without updates
- It is complicated to use
- There is no integration with Divi
- There are not even any shortcodes
- No layout options
- No responsive settings
- No social sharing options for custom image, title, text, or links
Take a look at this table below. I tried to be as fair as possible.
| Feature | Ours | Monarch |
|---|---|---|
| Divi Module | ||
| Divi Integration | ||
| Divi Theme Builder Compatible | ||
| Use Anywhere In A Divi Layout | ||
| Design Settings | ||
| Responsive Settings | ||
| Icon Design Settings | ||
| Custom Button Text | ||
| Familiar Interface | ||
| Custom Sharing Image | ||
| Custom Sharing Title | ||
| Custom Sharing Text | ||
| Custom Sharing Link | ||
| Active Development + Future Plans | ||
| Floating/Fixed Position | ||
| Choose Colors | ||
| Social Networks (so far) | 29 | 20 |
| Orientation/Layouts | 5+ | 3 |
| Target Audience | Divi | WordPress |
| Live Share Counts | ||
| Triggers | ||
| Statistics |
Does Monarch have some features that ours does not? Absolutely! But are they necessary? Hmm, maybe not.
Our social sharing module is meant to work seamlessly and beautifully with Divi, whereas Monarch is made for WordPress in general. That right there should be a bit of a red flag.
Keep in mind that our module can be added anywhere, such as in a Theme Builder template. But there’s does not even have a shortcode!
Admittedly, we don’t have quite as many social networks yet, but adding more networks does not mean more value. We add the networks that are the most popular. If you would like to see a network we do not have yet, just let us know!
One of the few things that Monarch has that ours doesn’t is live share counts. But this is intentional, please check our FAQ page for some very valid reasons NOT to have share counts.
Have we missed something? We want to continue making this plugin better and better, so let us know any feature ideas!