A Comparison between Free and Premium WordPress Themes

Fakhri Server Hosting April 5, 2016

Today, more and more consumers use the internet on daily basis to search for the products or services they need. Your business will gain more credibility by having a well designed website. To have that, you will have two options to choose; either to create new website from scratch or to use CMSs to make your job easier and faster. In our previous blog we discussed about most popular CMSs nowadays (WordPress vs. Joomla) and their differences. In this article we will focus more on WordPress Themes as well as its advantages and disadvantages.

WordPress “theme”.

In CMS world theme defined as “a collection of code files and (usually) images that determine how a CMS web site looks”. Mainly, WordPress has two type of themes available in market, Free and Premium. In both, there are thousands of themes developed to use and still developers are developing.

FREE vs PREMIUM, Pros and Cons.

Generally, many WordPress theme developers create free themes only for fun; on the other hand, many Premium theme providers may release free themes to attract their visitors. If you are only a blogger, it is safe to use a free wordpress theme, but if you are to run a small business site, in order to build a safe site which can bring you maximum benefit, you need to be careful when you choose a free theme or even a free premium wordpress themes. Before make your decision, there are mentioned some advantages and disadvantages of free and premium wordpress themes.

Advantages of FREE themes:

Free. It do not cost you anything.
Support. Though it’s free, still can find good support about the queries from forums and some developers.
Plugins. You still can use from thousands type of plugins available on wordpress.
Experimentation. Since it’s free, you download as much theme you want and experiment them until you find the best suit for your needs.

Advantages of PREMIUM themes:

More updates. It typically updated more often to improve quality of theme.
Less recognizable design. Premium themes are less common compared to free designs.
Better documentation. Most premium themes include a detailed PDF explaining how to get the most out of them.
Ongoing support. Usually developers offer the best support through live chat and an email ticketing system.
No attribution links. Many free themes often require a link to appear theme’s author in footer, but in premium it’s under your control.

Disadvantages of FREE themes:

No warranty or assurance of working well.
Not unique. Can find similar themes look like each other.
Spam links. Some free themes may come with spam links. The safest way to download free themes is to download from reputed provider.

Disadvantages of PREMIUM themes:

The price. You’ll have to invest anywhere between $50 to $200 in a premium theme.
More configuration. Most premium themes have their own custom administration panel.
Unwanted features. Premium themes tend to include a lot of bells and whistles, but still they are customizable and removable in you don’t want to use.

Conclusion

One of the best things you can do when choosing a theme is to learn about the person or company who made it. If they have a reputation to live up to, then their themes will undoubtedly having higher quality than developers who don’t.

We hope that this article helps you understand what is a WordPress Theme in brief, and if you should use it or not. If you think we missed something, then please let us know in the comments.

blog posts