WordPress Themes
The WordPress themes featured below have been reviewed by Marketing Channel and are our top recommendations for this technology category.
WordPress themes have evolved to serve many different use cases, most themes are created with a specific role in mind, magazine layout themes are great for news sites, portfolio layouts are great for freelancers and professional layouts are perfect for companies.
Picking the right theme for your project.
This is no small task, there are so many great options in the theme stores, that it can be hard to narrow it down.
Picking a layout type from the list below will go a long way in helping you decide what you are after.
If you have custom or specific layout requirements then drag and drop builder themes like DIVI and Thrive Themes are your best bet.
Blog/Magazine – magazine themes use a lot of visuals and bold headlines to make your content shine
Corporate – clean-cut designs that focus on promoting your business to visitors
Creative – go big with visuals, great for showcasing your work as a freelancer, or for creative agencies
Directory and listings – if you have ever wanted to start you own Gumtree or job listing site, look no further
eCommerce – themes built to help you sell products online, typically they feature Woocommerce integration
Education – built to help you create online courses and training programs
Entertainment – fashion blogs and celebrity gossip sites often use these layouts
Nonprofit – great for raising funds for a cause Real Estate – similar to directory sites but with functionality for renting/selling property
Retail – restaurants, hotels, doctors and more use retail themes
Drag and drop – these themes let you take complete control of the layout of the theme
DIY or hired help?
This is mostly a skill and budget dependent decision, if you have the time to learn how to edit the theme layouts you can do it all yourself, all the theme providers we list have excellent documentation to help you customize your theme.
Best for summary:
Best for serious content creators – Thrive Themes
Best for individuals and agencies – ThemeForest
Best for Anybody looking to build a great site in record time – Divi by ElegantThemes
Best for Industry-specific themes – TemplateMonster
Best for finding a clone of popular sites – MyThemeShop
Thrive Themes is for when you are ready to get serious about your site and your content.
On the surface thrive looks simple, even a little plain at times, but underneath Thrive is one of the most powerful themes out there, and you can create just about any custom appearance for your website with Thrive Themes.
What makes Thrive Themes great?
Thrive is handcrafted by internet marketing professionals, it features everything you could possibly need for presenting and marketing your content.
Many of the features that you would usually require plugins for are built in to Thrive Themes: Drag and drop layout and content builderLead generation toolsLanding pages.
Conversion tracking.
Advanced widget and sidebar functions.
Interactive user quizzes.
Built-in form templates.
Fully responsive (mobile friendly)
Best for:
Content creators who are serious about building a website people love and want all of the bells and whistles to make it happen.
Web development agencies, agencies that want to use one unified theme framework with endless customization abilities to build client sites. Thrive is one of the few providers that actually provide an agency license, meaning you can build client websites in Thrive and charge for them without restrictions.
Primary features:
Theme style options
A Thrive membership provides access to 10 custom built themes, each catering to a specific need so you will definitely find a layout as a starting point for your project. All of the themes are customisable with the content builder for custom tweaks and layouts.
Unbeatable support
Thrive has a video guide for every important theme feature, if you get stuck, the community forums and support will get you going again in no time.
Fully customisable
Thrive offers many different themes, each catering to a specific need but if there is something you don’t like, you can easily change or remove any part of the theme.
Pricing
Thrive is probably the most expensive option on this list, that is why you should be sure about your idea before you invest in something like Thrive. After extensively using countless different theme options we settled on Thrive to run Marketing Channel because the backend functionality blows any other theme framework out of the water.
ThemeForest houses 9,509+ WordPress themes each sold by individual authors, some of the best WordPress themes around are sold on ThemeForest so if you are looking for a one-stop WordPress theme shop, you have found it.
What makes ThemeForest great?
ThemeForest is a great starting point if you are figuring out the look and feel of your website, with so many themes on offer it is a great place to get inspiration.
Some of the authors on ThemeForest rake in over a million dollars a year on theme sales alone, needless to say, they take WordPress themes very seriously.
Best for:
Individuals and agencies looking for well-supported cost-effective themes, ThemeForest is also a great place to do look and feel research while you are coming up with ideas for your next project.
Primary features:
Sales and review info.
Next to each theme is a star rating and a total sales number, only people who have purchased the theme can leave a rating so you can trust the data as an indication of quality.
Great support.
ThemeForest does not directly support themes sold on its marketplace, instead, the theme authors directly provide support to their customers. Our experience with authors on the site has been fantastic, we typically get responses in less than an hour.
Hassle-free returns.
If you are unhappy with your purchase you can easily get a refund.
Sort by price.
If you are on a budget ThemeForest has some cheap but very well made themes on offer.
Demos for everything.
All of the themes have demos so you can see exactly how the theme should look when installed.
Pricing.
Themeforest has themes to suit every budget starting at around 25 USD.
The Elegant Themes membership does come with a few great themes but the star of the show is Divi, hands down. Divi truly is on the bleeding edge of WordPress design trends, featuring big, bold visuals and great styling.
What makes Divi great?
Divi originally started as just another theme in the Elegant Themes library, but soon after release it became the primary reason people signed up for Elegant Themes, the company took note and poured every drop of development experience and time into Divi.
Two years later Divi is their flagship theme and shows no signs of slowing down.
Best for:
Anybody looking to design their own WordPress website without needing to hand-code anything.
Agencies that need to rapid prototype website build on a tight timeline.
One of the reasons we recommend Divi is due to the themes ease of use, once installed you can have a cutting edge website done in a few hours.
Primary features:
Drag and Drop
Divi is truly a drag and drop WordPress site builder, any function, feature or style you can dream up can be done in Divi, with the built-in theme builder.
Design in real-time
No coding experience required, Divi has a real-time design interface so that you can see what the page will look like as you build it.
Pre-built layouts
There are over 20 premade layouts for you to use on your pages, in case you prefer to tweak a ready-made layout.
Fully responsive
Divi will look great on desktop and mobile by default.
WooCommerce ready
Divi features integration for the popular Woocommerce eCommerce plugin for WordPress.
Pricing
Divi is extremely well priced for a single-use license if you need it for agency-related projects, the developer’s version of the license is inexpensive.
TemplateMonster is where you should start when you are looking for a very specific theme for a particular industry.
Best for:
TemplateMonster is perfect for agencies with picky clients that want a very specific look and feel. The primary focus for TemplateMonster is providing themes that are 90% of the way to what you expect the final product to look like, letting you customise the content and get launched.
Primary features:
Industry-specific themes:
Perfect for a starting point for a website upgrade or for creating a website in an industry you are not familiar with.
What you see is what you get:
TemplateMonster provides demo content so that you can have the exact look and feel you see on the demo, live on your server.
Cherry framework:
The Cherry framework powers all of the themes, allowing you to easily customise your theme.
Well documented:
Each theme comes with fantastic documentation to make installation and customisation easy.
Pricing:
TemplateMonster themes start at $75
Ever wanted to start your own Buzzfeed or social site? MyThemeShop has you covered. Besides providing great looking WordPress themes for blogs and news sites, MyThemeShop also caters to anybody looking for a clone of popular sites.
The site also regularly features sales and often provides some of their premium themes free for a limited time.
Primary features:
MyThemeShop fills in all the gaps not covered by the other theme providers, it also boasts a great selection of themes exclusive to their platform. This is a great provider for bargain hunters as there are often sales running, there are many themes on offer free of charge.
Good deals:
Themes are often discounted from their usual selling price.
Free themes:
Many of their starter themes are completely free.
Great support:
The support forums are very active, with other users and the theme developers helping solve issues.
Great Woocommerce selection
MyThemeShop has a great selection of WooCommerce themes not found elsewhere.
Pricing
Themes start at $69 but are often on sale, so check the page out for specials.