Hi, April! Thanks for sharing your thoughts and frustrations. We’ve all been there, me with some other themes (some you mentioned in your list). It’s clear you’re not very happy with the theme; I chalk that up to a preference thing, because there are plenty of people who prefer Enfold over the other themes you listed (including me). The ratings for Enfold (and those other themes, mind you) speak for themselves.

As far as the image creation goes, yes, Enfold creates lots of images, probably to enable you to choose the ideal sized image for each application so your site loads faster. Does it take up more server space? Sure. But, most people don’t care about that, as most of us have virtually unlimited space with our hosts.

To be honest, when you’re asking Kriesi to disclose pretty much everything, the amount of up-front disclosures make the market copy way too long! To satisfy someone in your position, you’d need a demo account to try it out for yourself before you buy. And very few authors are doing that for themes.

I’ve been developing websites full-time for almost four years now (mostly using the Genesis Framework, but more recently on some of the themes you’ve mentioned above). So, I’ve tried Visual Composer, Elegant Themes’ builder, another one I can’t remember the name of, and the Avia Layout Builder. In my opinion, the Avia Layout Builder is the most user-friendly.

I’m also surprised that after using 37 other themes, you’re put off by having to do some CSS to pad an H1. I’m glad I don’t have every possible styling option for every element in my design. For every H1, do we need fields for margin, padding, text-color, background-color, display, visibility, text-decoration, font-style, text-transform, letter-spacing, font-weight, font-family, and on and on? If not, someone’s got to decide which ones of those to offer in the layout builder. And, that’s the author of the theme.

Make it easy on yourself and set up a child theme to begin with. Your development will go much faster. Keep your code editor open while working on the site. Add the declaration (one line, not hundreds) and save. Your change will then apply to every special heading H1! Here’s the code (you’ll have to change the numbers to fit what you need, of course):

.av-special-heading h1 { padding: 15px; }

If Enfold’s lack of Visual Composer is the issue, either buy a theme that comes with it or purchase it here. It would be outlandish to claim that Kriesi should disclose that Visual Composer is not the same as the Avia Layout Builder. Different builders are different. Same with plugins…you can’t expect all your All-In-One Events to transfer over to The Events Calendar. Most plugins (and Visual Composer and Avia Layout Builder are basically plugins) work that way. If they had the same codebase, they would cause conflicts if both were installed.

My advice is to find a framework or parent them you like, learn to develop under it, and become an expert. Whether that’s Enfold or Avada or one of the 37 you listed above.

Lastly, you started by complaining that the theme is bloated. But, then, you are asking for every element to have numerous options to create all your heart desires without having to do any CSS. If Kriesi were to add all those options in the Avia Layout Builder, my friend, then you’ll know what a bloated theme is. And, that is what many of us don’t want.

I sincerely hope you can figure out the issues you’re having and launch the site you’re working on soon. Sounds like it’s costing you money at this point.