Looking for a Divi Web Designer?
I’m Tommy Oddo — a Divi web designer and developer with over 25 years of professional graphic design, web design, and web development experience. Based in the USA, I partner with small- and medium-sized businesses to design and develop custom WordPress themes and websites using Elegant Themes’ Divi framework.
Whether you’d like to build a new custom website from the ground up or need an expert to realign and optimize your existing Divi website for the high-performance Divi 5 architecture, I can help.
Table of Contents
About Divi
Is Divi the Best Choice for Your New Website?
Already Using Divi? Can't Stand It?
What is a Divi Web Designer?
Custom Divi Websites I’ve Created
From Strategy to Performance
Getting a New Custom Divi Website
Pricing for New Custom Divi Websites
Getting Your Existing Divi Website Customized (or Fixed)
Pricing for Customizing (or Fixing) Your Divi Website
How to Hire a Divi Web Designer
About Divi
In case you’re wondering, Divi is a comprehensive website building framework by Elegant Themes that significantly reduces the manual coding typically required to build and manage a WordPress website.
Divi includes an extensive library of pre-coded, highly-configurable modules that can be dropped into position and customized via a graphical user interface (GUI). These include specialized modules for Text, Buttons, Contact Forms, Images, Sliders, Testimonials, Videos, and many more.
The Specialist Advantage — While Divi is designed to diminish the need for routine coding, it does not preclude a skilled Divi web designer from writing and implementing custom code.
Whether your project requires a custom plugin or a technical solution that Divi cannot handle by default, I use my 25+ years of experience + AI to extend the framework’s core capabilities.
Is Divi the Best Choice for Your New Website?
If you’re considering Divi for your next website — you’re looking at one of the most widely used WordPress frameworks available today. It’s popular for a reason. But whether it’s the right choice depends less on the tool itself — and more on how it’s implemented.
Visual Editing — Control Without the Complexity
One of Divi’s biggest advantages is its visual editing experience. You can view and edit your pages in real time — which makes it easier to manage content without relying on a developer for every small change. For business owners and marketing teams, that often means: faster updates, fewer bottlenecks, and more control over your content. For blog content and ongoing publishing, WordPress’ built-in editor still plays an important role — while Divi handles the overall design structure behind the scenes.
Faster Builds — When Done Right
Because Divi is an all-in-one system, it allows for efficient design and development without relying heavily on a complex mix of themes, plugins, and custom code. That efficiency can reduce both build time and cost. However, speed only helps if the underlying structure is sound. Without a clear strategy, it’s easy to end up with a site that looks good on the surface — but falls short in usability, clarity, or performance.
Efficiency — Powered by Divi AI
With the integration of Divi AI, the design and development process is on the verge of becoming even more agile. In the hands of an experienced Divi web designer, it has the potential to handle production-level tasks based on strategic input — with incredible speed. While the technology is still evolving, I’m actively exploring how to best apply it so that, as it matures, it can accelerate execution without compromising the quality, nuance, and intentionality that good design requires.
Already Using Divi? Can’t Stand It?
Common Complaints About Divi
Sluggish Performance.
None of the performance issues I’ve investigated had anything to do with Divi.
Budget hosting, unoptimized images, the lack of a content delivery network (CDN), and excessive plugin use all contribute to slow-loading sites.
With the release of Divi 5, the framework is faster than ever; I focus on resolving these external bottlenecks to ensure your site is truly high-performing.
Ugly, Bloated Code.
It’s true that front-end code from many page builders is verbose.
However, Divi 5 represents a foundational rewrite of the framework that completely eliminates the use of shortcodes.
This results in a much cleaner, higher-performance backend that is significantly easier to manage. While I always adhere to writing succinct, well-organized custom code where necessary, I believe that coding manually just for the sake of it — when a framework like Divi can handle it efficiently — is an unethical waste of my clients’ budgets.
Lack of Flexibility.
Like WordPress itself, Divi is extraordinarily flexible in the hands of an experienced Divi web designer.
When combined with other strategic tools and techniques, I find it offers more creative freedom than restrictive, proprietary platforms.
If it weren’t flexible enough for professional execution, I would not use it for my own sites or my clients’.
All Divi Websites Look Alike.
If a designer is incapable of deviating from default settings, a site will naturally look uninspired. Divi is not a web designer — it is a professional tool.
Today’s market is flooded with automated, AI-generated designs that lack the strategic foundation required for effective visual communication.
I use my design training and proprietary strategic prompts to ensure every site I build is custom-tailored to differentiate your brand — providing the strategic foresight that automated tools and pre-made templates simply cannot replicate.
Poor Support.
Elegant Themes support is as good as any I’ve experienced.
As a licensee, you have access to their tech support, but when you hire me, you won’t need to reach out to them.
Most complaints I’ve seen are actually due to a lack of web design experience by the user rather than a failure of the platform. I serve as your primary point of contact for all technical and design needs.
Unstable or Difficult to Manage
The "instability" often attributed to Divi is almost always the result of a “Frankensite” — a site built with conflicting plugins, broken layouts, and legacy code left behind by unskilled builders.
This accumulated technical debt makes a site feel unmanageable.
I specialize in auditing and resolving these underlying issues, cleaning up the backend so your site is stable, manageable, and ready to evolve alongside your business.
Note: For sites that don’t need a rebuild but do need steady improvement and oversight, Divi website support through WPSimplifyd focuses on stabilizing, optimizing, and evolving what is already there over time.
What is a Divi Web Designer?
According to Dictionary.com, a web designer is “a person who plans, designs, creates, and often maintains websites”. In other words, a professional web designer is not a person who simply assembles websites. This may seem like a trivial distinction, but hiring someone who relies exclusively on Divi layout packs or pre-designed templates as a crutch often turns out to be a costly, frustrating experience. I am frequently hired to fix these “frankensites”.
Classically Trained Design — Strategically Driven Results
I am a classically-trained graphic designer who spent a decade refining my talent and skills as a visual communicator. At design school, and during subsequent employment with several internationally-recognized graphic design firms, I learned the finer points of ideation, color, composition, typography, illustration, and photography — all before I began designing and coding websites in 1994.
Today, my process has evolved to prioritize strategy over mere aesthetics. While I am a specialist in the Divi framework, the tools I use are secondary to the strategic foresight I bring to each project. I utilize proprietary strategic prompts and deep audience profiling to ensure your site isn't just a collection of pretty pages, but a functional tool designed to achieve specific business objectives.
Experience That Never Ends
By the time I created my first Divi website in 2015, I had already spent the prior decade learning how to extend WordPress functionality by writing custom code and fixing broken websites I did not create. This learning process never actually ends.
Above all, a web designer designs websites — regardless of the tools used to create them. Divi just happens to be my favorite web design tool — one that I’ve used exclusively to create new websites for over 5 years.
Custom Divi Websites I’ve Created
Just a Few Examples
Every project shown here was designed and developed exclusively using the Divi framework. These examples represent a range of solutions — from full-scale custom builds to the strategic realignment of existing websites that previously failed to meet business objectives.
By moving beyond standard layout packs, I focus on creating high-performing, unique digital experiences that are technically stable and strategically sound.
My goal is to deliver a custom site that not only differentiates your brand but also significantly improves the user experience — ensuring visitors can easily find what they are looking for while incorporating the content and structure necessary to improve your SEO.
From Strategy to Performance.
Every project I take on is shaped by the same four phases of thinking — whether it's a full new build or a targeted refinement to a Divi site you already have.
Phase 1: Clarify Direction
Before anything is designed, we define what success looks like for your site. I work through your business objectives, who you want to attract, what matters to them, and how the site should perform. This gets captured in my Focus Brief — a structured foundation that guides every decision that follows.
Phase 2: Understand Your Audience
A website isn't for everyone — it's for the right people. Using my Audience Profiler, I develop detailed profiles of your ideal visitors: how they think, what they need, and what builds their trust.
I handle the research and bring you the initial draft. You review and refine. No long discovery meetings, no exhaustive questionnaires.
Phase 3: Structure the Experience
Navigation and site structure determine whether visitors can actually find what they came for. My Audience-Based Sitemap maps the site's structure to how your audience is likely to think and navigate — grounded in the profiles from Phase 2. The result is a clear, intuitive path forward for your visitors, not an org-chart imposed from the inside out.
Phase 4: Design & Deliver
With strategy and structure locked in, I move into Divi to design and build the site. Every decision in this phase traces back to the earlier work — the messaging, the audience, the structure, the brand. The result is a site built for clarity, usability, and long-term stability.
Modern tools, including AI, are part of how I work through these phases. The judgment about what to trust, what to question, and what's actually right for your business comes from experience.
For new builds, every project runs these four phases in sequence. For existing Divi sites, the same thinking gets applied selectively — focused on the phases where your site has actually drifted, so the scope matches the need.
Getting a New Custom Divi Website
Divi is packed with over 100 pre-designed "website packs" to help do-it-yourselfers and aspiring designers jumpstart the building process. While these templates serve a purpose for some, my clients are looking for a more intentional result. They realize that a new custom-designed website is an opportunity to create a personalized experience for their target audience and better differentiate their products or services.
As Stephen R. Covey famously said: “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster”. My battle-tested design process is built to determine exactly where to “place the ladder” before a single module is styled.
Instead of relying on rigid templates, I utilize proprietary strategic prompts and advanced AI tools to rapidly generate comprehensive content outlines and wireframes. This modern approach allows me to visualize the site's architecture with precision — ensuring the structure is optimized for both user experience and search visibility before moving into production. By prioritizing strategic discovery over mindless assembly, I provide a clear roadmap to take your project from a blank page to a high-performing, live custom website.
Pricing for New Custom Divi Websites
Every project is unique, which is why I work on a transparent hourly basis at $100/hr. This ensures you only pay for the actual time spent on your project, rather than a “buffer-heavy” flat fee designed to cover every possible unknown.
Investment Range
While every scope is different, most custom website projects I handle involve a total professional fee between $5,000 – $15,000 (USD).
A Note on Total Costs: This range reflects my professional fees for strategy, design, and development. It does not include external costs such as premium third-party assets, specialized stock photography, or paid plugins.
Why There’s No “Instant Quote”
I don't provide “instant quotes” because they are almost always inaccurate. To give you a reliable estimate for the full build, we start by completing the first three phases of my process:
- Phase 1: Clarify Direction
- Phase 2: Understand Your Audience
- Phase 3: Structure the Experience
This initial work typically requires 5 to 15 hours ($500 – $1,500).
Think of this as a standalone strategy project. While this serves as the foundation for my final estimate, you are under no obligation to move forward with the full build.
Upon payment for these hours, all strategy assets and sitemaps are yours to keep. You can take them to any developer — or even use them yourself — ensuring your investment provides immediate value regardless of how the site is ultimately built.
What You Get Before Committing to the Full Project
By the end of Phase 3, you’ll have:
- Focus Brief: Your strategic foundation, ensuring every design choice aligns with your business goals.
- Audience Profiler: A clear map of your ideal visitor’s needs, motivations, and trust triggers.
- Audience-Based Sitemap: A streamlined, intuitive site structure built for effortless navigation.
- Formal Estimate: A clear, informed project estimate for the remaining build.
Ways to Control Project Scope
Since I work hourly, the total investment is largely driven by the volume of content and complexity. We can often manage costs by choosing a strategic starting point:
- Refine Instead of Rebuild: If your current WordPress content is already strong, we can leverage and polish what you have rather than starting from zero.
- The “Core” Build: We focus on a high-conversion custom homepage and a set of flexible, reusable interior templates. This allows you to launch faster and expand the site yourself over time.
- Iterative Development: Instead of one massive “big bang” launch, we can work in focused blocks of time. This is ideal for businesses that prefer to improve their site through ongoing design direction, custom code, and Divi support as they grow.
The Power of “AI-Amplified” Strategy
A common bottleneck in web design is the weeks of back-and-forth meetings required to find clarity. I’ve solved this by combining my 25 years of experience with proprietary AI workflows.
By using custom-engineered prompts built from decades of real-world insights, I can condense Phase 1–3 into a fraction of the traditional timeframe. This means:
- Less Friction: We move from “vague idea” to “strategic roadmap” without endless discovery calls.
- Higher Precision: AI helps uncover audience trust triggers and structural patterns that guesswork often misses.
- Human-Led Direction: AI is the engine, but my experience is the steering wheel. You get the speed of modern tech with the nuance of a veteran strategist.
The Bottom Line
Starting with strategy isn’t an added expense — it’s the safeguard that prevents wasted time and unnecessary costs. Every decision we make is backed by a process refined over two decades and powered by the latest efficiency tools. The result is a high-performing business asset delivered with more clarity and less complexity than ever before.
Getting Your Existing Divi Website Customized (or Fixed)
Many clients reach out to me because of a single, glaring issue or a general sense that their website is underperforming. While no framework is perfect, the “instability” often attributed to Divi is usually the result of a poorly constructed backend. Whether you are dealing with a “Frankensite” or simply need to modernize an aging design, I can improve your existing Divi site in ways you might not imagine.
Strategic Auditing Over Immediate Rebuilding
Just as I do with new builds, I apply the Covey principle here: I make sure the ladder is leaning against the right wall before we start climbing.
Many clients assume they need a brand-new website when, in reality, they simply need a specialist to resolve technical debt and realign the design with their current business goals.
Rescuing Your Digital Asset
By auditing your existing site, I can identify where a previous builder may have cut corners or implemented conflicting code. This diagnostic approach allows me to make major design and functionality improvements that often save my clients from the unnecessary expense of a full rebuild. Instead of starting from scratch, I utilize my strategic process to stabilize your current site — cleaning up the backend and refining the user experience to ensure your existing Divi website finally becomes the high-performing tool it was meant to be.
Pricing for Customizing (or Fixing) Your Divi Website
Because every existing website comes with its own history, I work on a transparent hourly basis at $100/hr. This allows the work to scale naturally — from resolving a single issue to refining and improving the site more broadly — without inflating costs to account for unknowns that may never materialize.
No Assumptions — Just Starting Points
Some clients come to me with a clearly defined task, while others know their site isn’t performing but aren’t sure why — both are completely normal.
Sometimes the work begins and ends with a quick fix. Other times, that initial request reveals opportunities to improve the design, structure, or overall effectiveness of the site — including small but meaningful changes that can increase visibility, engagement, and conversions over time.
We simply start where it makes sense and take it from there.
How Work Typically Unfolds
- Simple issues are handled directly — no extra process, no unnecessary steps
- Less defined problems may require a bit of investigation inside the site before moving forward
- Larger improvements naturally build on that understanding, whether it’s refining the design or reworking key areas
Along the way, it’s not uncommon to run into underlying factors — such as hosting limitations, outdated components, or missing safeguards like reliable backups — that need to be addressed to create a stable foundation for the work. Taking care of these early helps avoid unnecessary troubleshooting and keeps your time (and budget) focused on meaningful improvements.
There’s no rigid structure being imposed — just a practical, conservative approach based on what your site actually needs.
Strategy — When It’s Useful
If the goal is to improve how your site performs (not just how it functions), I may apply the same strategic thinking used in my full builds — clarifying direction, aligning with your audience, and improving structure. This isn’t a requirement. It’s simply available when the situation calls for it.
What You Can Expect
- Clear, straightforward communication, so you always know what’s being done and why
- Thoughtful improvements, with clear guidance on when a quick fix is sufficient and when a more durable solution will save time and money
- Steady, cumulative progress, where each step builds on the last
If something turns out to be more involved than expected, I’ll flag it early so you can decide how you want to proceed — without surprises or unnecessary work.
The Bottom Line
Some projects stay small. Others evolve into more meaningful improvements over time. Either way, the goal is the same — make smart, efficient changes that improve your existing site, focusing on meaningful results and prioritizing the work that will have the greatest impact.
Hiring a Divi Web Designer
Most of my clients are seasoned business owners or marketing professionals who understand that a website is a strategic investment, not just a technical expense. Whether you are leading a small business or managing a department within a larger organization, you likely value the direct accountability and agility that comes from working with a senior-level specialist rather than a multi-layered agency.
The Bridge Between Low-End and Bloated
My clients typically fall into one of two categories: they’ve outgrown the “DIY” phase, or they’ve had the frustrating experience of hiring an unskilled freelancer who delivered a “Frankensite” rather than a business asset.
While a large agency might be a luxury you don’t need, you recognize that a "low-ball" estimate is often the most expensive path you can take.
What I Look For in a Partner
I thrive when working with collaborators who respect the craft of custom design and strategic development. My ideal clients:
- Value Expert Guidance: You are looking for a partner to tell you what you need to hear, not just a “yes-man” to push pixels.
- Understand Investment: You recognize that spending $100/hr for a veteran strategist saves thousands in the long run by preventing costly mistakes and technical debt.
- Prioritize Results: You are ready to move beyond templates and “mindless assembly” to create a personalized, high-performing experience for your audience.
If you are looking for a collaborative, long-term relationship based on transparency and professional insight, we are likely an excellent fit.
