Short answer
In Elementor 4 you change URLs in Elementor › Editor › Tools › Replace URL: enter the old URL and the new one, then click Replace URL. The tool swaps that address in every page and template built with Elementor and clears its CSS. It doesn’t touch WordPress settings or pages built without Elementor, it doesn’t show what it will change, and it can’t be undone, so back up first.
Where Replace URL is and how to use it
- In the WordPress dashboard, go to Elementor › Editor.
- In the left panel, open Tools and the Replace URL tab. If your version has no Editor menu, it’s under Elementor › Tools.
- Under Update Site Address (URL), enter the old URL in the first field and the new one in the second. Both in full, with
https://. - Click Replace URL. Elementor reports how many rows it changed, for example “12 database rows affected.”
From the command line, wp elementor replace-urls https://old.com https://new.com does the same.
Elementor recommends it for changing domain, moving from http to https, and moving the site to another folder or a subdomain.
What it does under the hood
Replace URL swaps one string for another in the _elementor_data field, where Elementor stores each page as JSON. Before searching, it writes the slashes in your URL the way that JSON stores them (https:\/\/old.com), which a general database search and replace doesn’t do. When it finishes, it deletes Elementor’s CSS files so they’re rebuilt with the new address.
The change goes straight to the database, bypassing the editor. That’s why it creates no revision, and the page’s History can’t undo it. It also changes every occurrence at once without showing you which ones.
What Replace URL doesn’t change
| Where the old URL lives | Changed? | How to change it |
|---|---|---|
| Text, buttons, links and images in pages, posts and templates built with Elementor | Yes | — |
| WordPress Address and Site Address (Settings › General) | No | By hand in Settings › General, or in wp-config.php if you can’t reach the dashboard |
| Pages and posts built without Elementor, menus, theme widgets and other plugins’ settings | No | With a whole-database search and replace that handles serialized data, such as wp search-replace |
| Elementor page settings and site settings, stored separately | No | Same as the row above |
For a full domain change, this is the order:
- Back up files and database.
- Change both addresses in Settings › General.
- Run
wp search-replace(or your host’s tool) across the database. It won’t find Elementor’s URLs, because it searches without escaping the slashes. - Run Elementor’s Replace URL for those.
- Clear your caching plugin, your host’s cache and your CDN. Step 4 already cleared Elementor’s.
- If you use Elementor Pro, assign the license to the new domain from your Elementor account.
If you migrated with a migration plugin, steps 2 and 3 may already be done: check before repeating them.
Three cases where it gets it wrong
The old address is part of another one
It searches for the exact string. If you replace https://shop.com with https://new.com, a link to https://shop.com.au ends up pointing to https://new.com.au. Before running it, check that no link to another site starts the same way as yours.
The URL has accented characters
Elementor stores non-ASCII characters escaped: /café/ is saved as \/caf\u00e9\/. The tool only converts slashes, so an address with an accent typed as it reads won’t be found.
You only want to change one link
It needs two full, valid URLs: with /contact it replies that one of the URLs is invalid. With full addresses it can change a single page’s URL, but without showing you the links it touches first. Replace https://mysite.com/services/ with https://mysite.com/what-we-do/ and https://mysite.com/services/design/ becomes https://mysite.com/what-we-do/design/, which breaks if that page doesn’t exist.
Changing links after seeing each one
To update links to a page whose slug changed, or the old domain only in some places, you need to see every match before changing it. That’s what a search and replace for Elementor does: it shows each link with its page, section and widget, changes only the ones you tick and accepts relative links like /contact. It saves through Elementor, so every changed page gets a revision, and the last operation can be undone in one click. For many addresses at once, like the 200 old URLs of a restructured site, the Pro version (in the works) takes a CSV list.