Advanced Editor Tools Plugin Review: Features, Pros & Verdict

March 13, 2026 by Jay Patel

Plugin Slug: tinymce-advanced | Author: Andrew Ozz | License: Free / GPLv2+ | Active Installs: 2+ million | WP.org Rating: 4.3 / 5

1. Overview

Advanced Editor Tools – formerly known as TinyMCE Advanced – is a free WordPress plugin developed by Andrew Ozz and distributed through the official WordPress.org plugin repository. It has accumulated over two million active installations, which places it firmly among the most widely deployed editorial plugins in the WordPress ecosystem. That number alone makes it worth a serious look, even if the plugin’s scope is narrower than the flashier page-builder alternatives.

The plugin occupies a specific and somewhat unusual niche: it does not aim to replace or compete with Gutenberg (the block editor introduced in WordPress 5.0). Instead, it bridges the gap between two eras of the WordPress editing experience. On one side you have users who built their workflows around the old TinyMCE-powered classic editor and are not ready – or simply unwilling – to migrate to Gutenberg’s block-based paradigm. On the other side you have those who have adopted Gutenberg but find its native paragraph block lacking in formatting depth. Advanced Editor Tools serves both audiences.

The plugin achieves this primarily by introducing a Custom Paragraph block – called the Classic Paragraph block – that runs the TinyMCE editor engine inside the Gutenberg interface. Writers get a word-processor-style toolbar inside a Gutenberg post while still being able to use all other Gutenberg blocks on the same page. This hybrid approach is the core selling point of the plugin, and in practice it works considerably better than most users expect.

2. Background & Context

To understand why Advanced Editor Tools matters, it is useful to briefly understand the context in which it was created.

When WordPress shipped version 5.0 in December 2018, the classic TinyMCE editor that users had relied on for over a decade was quietly replaced by Gutenberg. The community reaction was polarised. Many experienced content creators, bloggers, and site owners had spent years building muscle memory around TinyMCE’s toolbar-based interface. The jump to block-based editing felt foreign and, in some workflows, genuinely slower.

Andrew Ozz, the developer behind Advanced Editor Tools, had a long history with TinyMCE in WordPress. The original plugin – released under the name TinyMCE Advanced years before Gutenberg existed – was focused entirely on extending the capabilities of the classic editor by unlocking additional TinyMCE plugins that WordPress had disabled or hidden. After Gutenberg arrived, Ozz reoriented the plugin significantly, renaming it and rebuilding it to serve the transition period.

The plugin was renamed to Advanced Editor Tools with version 5.0 to reflect its expanded scope. It is now officially listed on WordPress.org under the slug tinymce-advanced, a legacy of its origins that is unlikely to change. The plugin has also earned a formal endorsement from the TinyMCE team itself, which references it as the recommended way to use TinyMCE within WordPress.

3. Installation & Setup

Installing Advanced Editor Tools follows the same process as any plugin on WordPress.org. You can search for it directly from the admin dashboard under Plugins > Add New, or download the ZIP file from the repository and upload it manually. No account creation, no API key, no paid subscription required – the plugin is entirely free.

After activation, the plugin starts doing something immediately without any configuration. It enhances the native paragraph block in Gutenberg by automatically adding a few extra tools – most notably a Clear Formatting button and controls for subscript, superscript, and text underline – to the toolbar dropdown. This is a useful change on its own.

The settings panel lives under Settings > Advanced Editor Tools in the WordPress admin. The interface has two main configuration tabs depending on whether you are working in the block editor (Gutenberg) or the classic editor (if running alongside a plugin like Classic Editor). Within each tab, the configuration is handled through a drag-and-drop toolbar builder, which allows you to pull formatting buttons from a pool of available options into up to four rows of toolbar slots.

The setup process is intuitive enough that most users will not need documentation to understand it. The drag-and-drop nature of the builder makes experimentation low-risk – you can try different arrangements and simply click Save to apply them. There is also an import/export function introduced in version 5.5 that allows you to backup and transfer your settings to another installation, which is genuinely useful for agencies managing multiple sites.

Quick Setup Tip
After installing the plugin and saving your toolbar settings, clear your browser cache before testing the editor. Several users in the support forums have reported confusion when toolbar changes did not appear immediately – this is almost always a caching issue, not a plugin bug. The plugin documentation acknowledges this and suggests holding Shift while reloading the page if changes seem slow to appear.

4. Features Deep Dive

4.1 The Classic Paragraph Block

This is the centrepiece of the modern version of the plugin. Once installed, a new block type – the Classic Paragraph – becomes available in the Gutenberg block inserter. Unlike Gutenberg’s native paragraph block, the Classic Paragraph block runs TinyMCE as its engine, delivering a toolbar-based editing experience that looks and behaves like the pre-Gutenberg classic editor.

Within this block, you have access to the full set of tools you have configured in the plugin settings: font family selectors, font size controls, text and background colour pickers, a table editor, list style controls, search-and-replace, and more. The block renders a miniature editor environment within the Gutenberg canvas, and switching between this block and native Gutenberg blocks on the same page works without issues in most cases.

There is also an option in the plugin settings to make the Classic Paragraph the default block type – meaning every time you press Enter to create a new block, the editor will insert a Classic Paragraph rather than a standard paragraph. For users who are managing mostly long-form text content, this setting eliminates the need to manually select the block type each time.

4.2 Toolbar Customisation

The toolbar builder is where the plugin earns its reputation for flexibility. By default, WordPress gives you a lean set of formatting controls in both Gutenberg and the classic editor. Advanced Editor Tools effectively unlocks 15 additional TinyMCE plugins that the WordPress core deliberately keeps dormant.

The following formatting tools can be activated and placed on the toolbar:

Font Family – lets writers specify typefaces directly in the editor
Font Size – pixel-level size control, not just the block-level heading scale
Text Colour and Background (Highlight) Colour – inline colour control per-selection
Subscript and Superscript – essential for academic, scientific, and legal content
Strikethrough and Underline
Blockquote
Non-breaking Space insertion
Print button – triggers the browser print dialog from within the editor
Source Code view – lets you inspect and manually edit the raw HTML
Emoticons / Emoji
Horizontal Rule insertion
Insert Date/Time
Anchor links – for creating in-page navigation targets
Clear Formatting – strips inline styles and formatting tags from selected content
Mark (text highlight using the HTML <mark> element)

You can also configure buttons to appear not just on the inline toolbar, but in the Gutenberg sidebar (Inspector panel) – useful for controls you use occasionally rather than constantly.

4.3 Table Editor

The classic WordPress editor had no native table creation capability. Advanced Editor Tools has long included a table plugin powered by TinyMCE, and this remains one of its most appreciated features among content editors.

The table editor supports creating tables with a specified number of rows and columns, and provides a right-click context menu for common operations: insert or delete rows and columns, merge cells, split cells, and access detailed properties dialogs for the table, row, and individual cells. You can control borders, background colours, cell padding, alignment, and width properties through these dialogs.

From version 5.2 onward, there is also an advanced settings section specifically for table behaviour. This includes an option to disable the use of inline CSS styles on table elements. By default the plugin applies inline styles when tables are created, which makes them resizable in the editor and gives predictable visual output. If your theme applies its own table styles and inline styles would conflict, the option to disable them is genuinely useful. However, as the documentation notes, disabling inline styles does remove the ability to resize tables by dragging their borders in the editor.

The table functionality is not as powerful as a dedicated table builder plugin, and it cannot produce responsive tables with any built-in mechanism. For sites publishing a lot of data-heavy content where responsive table behaviour is critical, you may still want a purpose-built table plugin. But for typical editorial use – comparison tables, simple data grids, reference tables in articles – the included table editor is more than sufficient.

4.4 List Options

The default Gutenberg block editor handles unordered and ordered lists reasonably well, but the range of customisation is limited. Advanced Editor Tools expands list functionality through TinyMCE’s list plugin, giving you access to options like lower-case and upper-case alphabetical numbering, disc and square bullet styles, and Roman numeral ordering. You also get options like increasing and decreasing list indent levels more precisely.

This is an underappreciated feature for anyone producing structured editorial content – particularly instruction-based content, legal documents, or educational material – where fine-grained control over list presentation matters.

4.5 Search and Replace

A Find and Replace tool is accessible via the Tools menu in the Classic Paragraph block toolbar. This is a genuinely useful editorial feature when editing long-form content and needing to correct a recurring error or update terminology across an entire post without manually scanning the text. It supports case-sensitive matching and whole-word matching options.

It is worth noting that this feature is only available inside the Classic Paragraph block or the classic editor – it is not available in native Gutenberg blocks.

4.6 Block Conversion

One of the more technically interesting features is the ability to convert between block types. You can select one or more standard Gutenberg paragraph blocks and convert them into a single Classic Paragraph block. You can also do the reverse – convert the content of a Classic Paragraph block back into individual standard blocks.

This two-way conversion functionality is valuable for sites that are gradually migrating content between editor paradigms. Content that was written in the classic editor can be brought into Gutenberg as a Classic Paragraph block and then incrementally converted to native blocks over time. In practice the conversion is not perfectly lossless for all formatting, but it handles the common cases – bold, italic, links, basic lists – correctly.

4.7 Classic Editor Compatibility

For sites running the Classic Editor plugin (the official WordPress plugin that restores the pre-Gutenberg editing experience), Advanced Editor Tools integrates fully. In this mode the plugin restores its original behaviour: configuring the TinyMCE toolbars for use in the full-page classic editor rather than within a Gutenberg block.

The two-tab settings interface handles both modes. The Gutenberg tab configures the block editor experience, and the Classic Editor tab configures the toolbars for when the classic editor is active. If you only use one or the other, the second tab is simply irrelevant.

4.8 Import/Export Settings

Added in version 5.5, the ability to export and import plugin settings as a file is a small but practical feature for anyone managing multiple WordPress installations. An agency setting up a specific toolbar configuration once can export the settings JSON and import it on every subsequent client site, rather than manually recreating the configuration each time.

4.9 Privacy & Data Handling

The plugin collects no user data, sets no cookies, and makes no requests to external servers. It works entirely within the self-contained WordPress and TinyMCE environments. This is explicitly documented on the plugin’s WordPress.org listing and is a meaningful point for sites that need to maintain strict GDPR compliance without adding complexity.

5. Performance Impact

Advanced Editor Tools loads its assets only within the WordPress admin editor environment. Nothing is added to the front-end of the site – there are no scripts or stylesheets loaded on published pages for site visitors. This means the plugin has zero direct impact on page speed metrics, Core Web Vitals, or any front-end performance measurement.

On the admin side, loading TinyMCE as an editor engine does introduce some additional JavaScript compared to a lean Gutenberg setup. The plugin loads approximately 15 TinyMCE sub-plugins alongside its core functionality. In practice, on any reasonably modern hosting setup, this adds negligible load time to the post editing screen. On slower shared hosting environments or when the admin panel is already loaded with many other plugins, some users have noticed a slightly longer editor initialisation time, but this is rarely significant in absolute terms.

There is one indirect performance consideration worth noting for technical SEO purposes. The Classic Paragraph block stores its content as a single unbroken block of HTML rather than as distinct, individually addressable Gutenberg blocks. For most sites, this is entirely irrelevant from an SEO perspective – Google reads the HTML output the same way regardless of how the content was structured in the editor. However, if you are relying on block-level metadata or specific block classes from a theme for structured data markup, using Classic Paragraph blocks will bypass that system.

6. Compatibility

The plugin officially supports WordPress 4.9 and later, which covers essentially all sites running any reasonably up-to-date installation. It is tested against the current WordPress release cycle and has maintained compatibility across major versions including the transitions to Gutenberg and subsequent full-site editing (FSE) improvements.

However, compatibility is also where the plugin’s most significant friction points live:

Gutenberg Full Site Editing (FSE)

The plugin is designed around the classic editor workflow and the transitional period between TinyMCE and Gutenberg. It does not extend or integrate with Gutenberg’s Full Site Editing features – the site editor, template parts, patterns, and the like. Users building block-theme-based sites or working heavily in the site editor will find the plugin irrelevant to most of their work.

Page Builders

The plugin has documented compatibility issues with some visual page builders, most notably Divi. Divi uses its own editing engine and does not interface with TinyMCE in the way that standard WordPress content areas do. Users who build most of their pages inside Divi will find Advanced Editor Tools largely non-functional within that context. Similar friction exists with other heavily customised page builders that replace the standard WordPress post editing area entirely.

WooCommerce

Some users in the support forums have reported conflicts with WooCommerce, particularly on product description fields. These issues appear to be version- and configuration-specific rather than systematic, and many WooCommerce users report no problems at all. If you run a WooCommerce site, testing on a staging environment before deploying the plugin to production is advisable.

Classic Editor Plugin

Compatibility with the Classic Editor plugin is explicitly designed and reliable. The two plugins were built to work together, and the combination is the most stable configuration for users who want a completely non-Gutenberg editing experience.

7. Pros & Cons

Pros

Completely free with no premium tier, upsells, or licensing fees
Over 2 million active installs – a signal of broad real-world reliability
Maintained by a long-standing WordPress core contributor with a strong track record
Zero front-end performance impact – no assets loaded on the public site
Zero data collection, no external connections – fully GDPR-friendly by design
Drag-and-drop toolbar customisation is intuitive and accessible to non-technical users
Classic Paragraph block allows hybrid use of TinyMCE within Gutenberg
Powerful table editor for editorial use cases
Source Code view for HTML-level editing without leaving the admin
Supports up to four toolbar rows – highly configurable for power users
Import/export settings streamlines multi-site and agency workflows
Officially recommended by the TinyMCE team as the WordPress integration path

Cons

TinyMCE is aging technology – the underlying engine is no longer actively being developed for WordPress core
Not compatible with most page builders, particularly Divi and similar drag-and-drop systems
Limited or no relevance for Full Site Editing (FSE) and block-theme environments
Search and Replace only works inside Classic Paragraph blocks, not native Gutenberg blocks
Block editor toolbar customisation is more restricted than classic editor customisation – WordPress 5.2+ limited button arrangement options in Gutenberg contexts
Tables created with inline CSS may conflict with some theme stylesheets
Support is community-driven; no commercial support tier available
Update frequency has slowed in recent years as the WordPress ecosystem moves further from TinyMCE
Occasional compatibility reports with WooCommerce product fields and some third-party plugins
Settings interface is English-only, though TinyMCE itself supports multiple languages

8. Scorecard

Category	Score	Notes
Ease of Use	9 / 10	Drag-and-drop setup, minimal learning curve for non-developers
Feature Depth	7 / 10	Excellent for classic/transitional workflows; limited for FSE
Reliability	8 / 10	Stable on standard setups; occasional conflicts with builders
Performance Impact	10 / 10	Zero front-end impact; negligible admin overhead
Compatibility	6 / 10	Great with Classic Editor; poor with Divi and FSE-focused setups
Support & Maintenance	6 / 10	Active developer historically; update pace has slowed
Value for Money	10 / 10	Free, no upsells, no data collection
Overall	8 / 10	Strong plugin for its intended audience and use case

9. Who Should Use This Plugin?

Advanced Editor Tools is not a universal recommendation – its value is highly context-dependent. Here is an honest breakdown of which site types and users will benefit most, and which will not.

Well Suited For

Content-heavy sites where writers spend most of their time working with long-form text – blogs, news sites, editorial magazines, documentation portals, and similar properties.
Sites that migrated to WordPress 5.0+ but want to retain a familiar TinyMCE-style editing experience without abandoning Gutenberg entirely.
Sites running the Classic Editor plugin where the goal is to restore and enhance the pre-Gutenberg editing environment.
Content teams where non-technical editors need word-processor-style formatting tools (font sizing, colour control, table creation) that Gutenberg does not expose by default.
SEO agencies and freelancers managing multiple WordPress installations who want a consistent, configurable editing environment across clients.
Academic, legal, medical, or technical publications that require subscript, superscript, specialised list numbering, or precise HTML control for content formatting.

Less Suited For

Sites fully committed to block-based Gutenberg editing and Full Site Editing workflows – the plugin adds little value here and may add unnecessary confusion.
Sites built primarily with Divi, Elementor (in the page-builder canvas), or other visual builders that replace the standard WordPress editor entirely.
WooCommerce-heavy stores where product content is the primary editorial concern – testing is strongly recommended before committing.
Development teams building custom Gutenberg blocks or FSE themes – the plugin is irrelevant to block development workflows.

10. Alternatives Worth Knowing

If Advanced Editor Tools does not fit your workflow, a few alternatives are worth evaluating:

Classic Editor (WordPress.org)

The official WordPress plugin for restoring the pre-Gutenberg editing experience. If you simply want to ditch Gutenberg and return to the classic editor, Classic Editor does that job cleanly. It does not, however, add any extra capabilities on its own – it restores the default TinyMCE toolbar without enhancements. Pairing Classic Editor with Advanced Editor Tools is the most common setup for teams who want the old editing experience with greater formatting control.

Advanced Classic Editor

A separate plugin that takes a similar approach but additionally adds Bootstrap-based UI elements, icons, buttons, and alert components. Reviews suggest it has slightly quicker development response times for bug fixes, and it provides a broader set of visual components than Advanced Editor Tools. Worth evaluating if you need Bootstrap shortcodes in addition to formatting tools.

Gutenberg with Custom Blocks

For sites committed to the block editor, the long-term path is typically to extend Gutenberg directly – either through custom block development or through a block library plugin (like Ultimate Blocks or Stackable). This approach requires more technical investment but is more aligned with the direction WordPress is heading, and integrates better with FSE, patterns, and the site editor.

11. Final Verdict

Advanced Editor Tools is a well-built, free, and genuinely useful plugin that solves a specific problem: giving content editors richer formatting control in a WordPress environment without committing fully to Gutenberg’s block paradigm. For a large portion of the sites that make up the WordPress ecosystem – particularly the long tail of blogs, content-driven businesses, and editorial sites that run on shared hosting with non-technical editors – this is a very relevant problem to solve, and the plugin solves it well.

The free pricing, clean privacy posture, minimal performance overhead, and high install count are all meaningful positives. The drag-and-drop settings interface is accessible, the table editor is capable for most editorial needs, and the Classic Paragraph block concept is a genuine innovation that manages the Gutenberg transition period gracefully.

The honest caveats are equally worth stating. TinyMCE is no longer the forward direction for WordPress, and the plugin’s future relevance will diminish as the ecosystem moves further toward block-based and full-site-editing workflows. Compatibility with page builders and WooCommerce is imperfect. And for developers or site owners building modern block-theme sites, the plugin is largely irrelevant.

Our recommendation is straightforward: if you or your content team are running a text-heavy editorial workflow and find Gutenberg’s native tools frustratingly sparse, Advanced Editor Tools is one of the first plugins worth installing. It is free, proven, and adds meaningful capability without adding technical debt or privacy risk. If you are building forward-looking sites anchored in FSE or page builders, spend your evaluation time elsewhere.

Bottom Line
Advanced Editor Tools is an 8/10 plugin for its intended audience. It is not a tool for every WordPress site, but for content-focused sites managing long-form editorial workflows, it remains one of the most reliable and risk-free enhancements available in the WordPress plugin repository. Recommended.

12. At a Glance

Field	Details
Plugin Name	Advanced Editor Tools (formerly TinyMCE Advanced)
Plugin Slug	`tinymce-advanced`
Author	Andrew Ozz (long-standing WordPress core contributor)
Price	Free (GPLv2+)
Active Installs	2,000,000+
WP.org Rating	★ 4.3 / 5
Best For	Content editors, bloggers, editorial teams, classic editor users
Not Ideal For	FSE / block-theme sites, Divi users, WooCommerce-heavy stores
Our Rating	8 / 10 — Recommended for eligible use cases

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