Free vs Paid WordPress Themes Which is Better for Your Site

Free vs Paid WordPress Themes Which is Better for Your Site

Once you start running a WordPress based website for your business you have two options to choose from. Having a 100% custom built site developed, or using a free or premium theme.

 

From these two, a custom website that is built from the ground up by a design/development company can cost a couple of thousand dollars (let’s say starting at $1,000 and sky ’s the limit). The next in line is a paid WordPress theme which can be purchased on ThemeForest, or from any other of the numerous WordPress theme shops, from around $10 to $100, and that’s the very high-end. The cheapest solution is – you’d never guess – using a free WordPress theme.

Which One to Start with?

Most of the website owners prefer using a theme at the very beginning, as a startup doesn’t often have too much money to burn. There comes the old debate: What is the difference between free and premium (paid)?

If you have already made your research on the Internet or even asked anyone who you consider a veteran or an expert in this topic, you already have the answer: when you start an online business, a free theme is the first thing to start with. I agree. As there are thousands of free themes available on the market, and most of them are as stylish and beautiful as the paid ones, why would you spend even 40 bucks for a premium one? A visitor won’t see the difference, and you won’t feel the difference either. At first.

A free WordPress theme is perfect for you to learn how to use a theme, and how wide is the range of options for you to revamp your website to your own liking. All in all, free themes from developers are great gifts for starters. You can learn the basics of editing a website, so to speak you can get a better insight into a designer’s work. If you are a newbie and decided to go the free route, here are the most popular themes (both considering the number of downloads and their ratings) to choose from.

Later on, when you already learned handling and editing your site and you’re not a newcomer in the world of WordPress anymore, you’ll discover the limited possibilities of free themes step by step, and you’ll soon weight your opportunities up.

Learning the Disadvantages

Let me state, that I’m not against free themes. I also started to learn the basics with the help of them. The truth is, they’re fantastic, because they are free. But there are some detriments I must mention. First of all, free themes usually use simple design and structure. That’s not necessarily a problem until you don’t dig yourself into the latest web design trends, don’t search on the Internet all day and find more and more beautiful websites, and don’t realize – either from own experiences, or form your visitors’ feedback –  how you exactly want your website to look like. But when it comes to this, free themes with their limited options and lack of bells and whistles will be simply not enough for you.

The other disadvantage that needs to be declared is that free themes usually don’t come with a customer support in reality. As WordPress is regularly updating its technology, your theme always has to be compatible with the latest updates and upgrades. In case of free themes, as they are usually built as side projects of a developer or a framework company, you’ll have to wait long months or even more to get an updated version of the theme, if you’ll get one at all!

Customer support also involves helping users with the settings or fixing bugs. Because the fact is, there would be a need for this quite often, as in most of the free themes there’s much room for improvement code wise to be honest. However, developers are usually not serious about providing this kind of support you might need while you’re utilizing the theme.

So talking about free themes, you might want to ask yourself a question. Considering all the time end effort put into improving your site to meet your needs (which, as you’re getting a pro, are more and more sophisticated), are free themes really free? Experience has shown that using paid themes can save hundreds of dollars for a website owner in the long run.

Going for a Premium Theme

Paid WordPress themes come with a price tag. Site owners usually get confused when it comes to choose a paid theme, as there are so many out there. So before you get lost in the maze, let me give you two important advices on how to make a choice.

1. Define what your website is about

Either you have a food blog, a photography website, a real estate site or a news site, you’ll need some special features that a.) differentiate you from other niche, b.) help you stand out from the crowd (that is to say others from your niche). Getting a theme that fits your business type is crucial, as the layout and features will be specialized for your certain purposes. Either to market your product, showcase your work, tell your stories or focus on information.

ThemeForest the largest theme marketplace helps you find the category easily, so you can only concentrate on the themes’ reviews, ratings and finally the design and elements you wish for.

2. Plan/imagine the design you’d like to have on your site

When you go search for a theme to purchase but don’t have any clear idea of how it should look like, then in the sea of premium themes, everything will look nice. So it’s a reasonable idea to know what you are searching for design-wise. If you have already used a free theme before, you might have learned what you would like to have but didn’t/couldn’t. It’s a careful choice to write a list before you start looking into the theme designs. This way you’ll bear in mind during your search that you clearly don’t want to have a slider on your site, but will definitely need a gallery, featured posts, a built-incomment section, a dropdown menu, or various layout templates for the homepage because you love split testing.

Conclusion

You’ll learn that only because a theme is free, it isn’t necessarily bad, and a theme that costs money doesn’t mean it’s unequivocally good. You have to examine this question from the aspect of your needs and knowledge of WordPress, and budget available. However if you are a beginner and just want to start running your site you’d better consider using a free theme at first, so you’ll be able to learn the small tricks needed to make your site custom – without wasting money unnecessarily during your „apprenticeship”.

Article Source: https://kinsta.com/blog/free-vs-paid-wordpress-themes/

Free vs Paid WordPress Themes Which is Better for Your Site