Choosing a WordPress theme may seem difficult for the creation of a website. Indeed, they are becoming increasingly powerful, increasingly ergonomic, and increasingly numerous. And yet, there are many important criteria to take into account. To help you make your choice, here is our selection of the best free and paid WordPress themes.
What Is a Theme?
A theme is made up of several PHP, Javascript, CSS, and other files that are added to your WordPress. What is it for? It allows administrators of a WordPress site to edit their WordPress more quickly, more easily, but also to create beautiful visuals without programming knowledge. It is even possible for your theme to handle part of your SEO, the visual of pages generated by WooCommerce (modifying the cart, etc.), and much more. Using a theme is therefore ideal for creating a WordPress site.
Today, the most powerful and best-known WordPress themes cater to all types of activities. That is to say, they are multi-purpose. Whether you are a blogger, an e-retailer, a plumber, or a videographer — it does not matter!
Not to Be Confused With a Builder Plugin
A builder or visual builder is a page builder. It allows easy and visual page editing. The vast majority of themes, such as all those mentioned in this article, have an integrated visual builder (or one to download additionally). For example, Elementor is only a plugin, not a theme.
The Divi WordPress Theme
All WordPress experts and even novices know Divi (Elegant Themes) and its integrated visual builder plugin well. And for good reason — whether you are in the field or not, Divi is an incredible theme for anyone. After having tried many themes and plugins, Divi is for me a personal favourite in terms of user experience. Very easy to understand and use, it is certainly the best choice for beginners. But it also has an enormous number of interesting facets for professionals, such as integrated A/B testing. The only negative point being the available settings for easily modifying the visual appearance of pages generated by WooCommerce.
Divi starts from $89/year or $230 for life (lifetime). (Theme + visual builder plugin). We also love that these plans include unlimited licences for all your websites!
GeneratePress, the Hidden Gem
Less well-known than Divi, GeneratePress is nevertheless one of the best WordPress themes on the market. When reducing 1 second of loading time from 3 seconds of page loading allows a 27% increase in conversion, one wonders how fast your theme will be. If Divi and Elementor are fairly equal in terms of performance (speed), GeneratePress is a phenomenon. And that is precisely why we love it. You will not find a better theme that focuses so much on your site’s speed — that is, after all, the very purpose of this theme (and its visual builder). While it has a visual builder that allows interactive page modification, it will have fewer design and animation features than Divi or Elementor. I still want to clarify that the vast majority of websites using these 2 technologies never use all the very modern features of these builders. Moreover, if you do not want to create scroll effects on your site or complex parallax effects, go for GeneratePress! Even more so if you want to create a blog.
GeneratePress starts from $59/year or $249 lifetime. It is also available for free in WordPress plugins, although it is obviously less comprehensive in this plan — it can help you get started.
Hello, Elementor’s Theme
Finally, the developers who improve WordPress’s possibilities are increasingly thinking about site speed. And Elementor understood the future — they developed a theme made entirely for their Elementor plugin that is super ultra-lightweight. And guess what, it is the fastest theme. On the other hand, there is nothing in it — the settings are almost non-existent — but paired with the Pro version of Elementor you will not need a more comprehensive theme. Hello is therefore for me the theme to prioritise, if and only if, you know you are going to switch to the pro version of the Elementor plugin.
Hello is a completely free theme! It therefore has no paid Pro version.
Elementor
Elementor is a plugin — I include it in this theme selection because ultimately it comes close to all the themes that integrate their visual builder and perfectly completes this article with its Hello theme. Indeed, Elementor is only a builder, allowing interactive modification of your site’s pages. However, nothing prevents you from combining it with a comprehensive theme to multiply its power and be able to easily modify your WordPress beyond the pages themselves. In short, it is entirely possible to use Elementor with GeneratePress or Astra — it works wonderfully. Once again, if you choose Elementor Pro, its page builder will be better than Divi and you will also be able to do without a resource-heavy theme. If you cannot afford it, the best choice is probably to combine Elementor and GeneratePress in their respective free plans.
Elementor has a free plan. Handy for trying out. As for its Pro version, there is no better builder in terms of design. From $49/year for a single website — no lifetime plan available.
It is also possible to spend $89/year including Elementor Pro with their own web hosting, which is rather good (much better than if you are on OVH or O2Switch or a hosting not dedicated to WordPress 🙂 ).
Astra
Astra is one of the many well-known themes — for good reason, it generally meets the needs of a standard WordPress site fairly well. Easy to use, fairly fast, but… We prefer GeneratePress, or Elementor Pro + Hello. Or simply Divi! Nothing prevents you from browsing their templates if something catches your eye — they have some very nice ones.
Astra is available for free and has a Pro version starting from $59/year ($187 lifetime).
Avada
Not to be confused with Astra, is a theme available on the major ThemeForest marketplace — it is the most downloaded theme. And for good reason: the theme is very comprehensive and easy to use. Just like Divi, GeneratePress, and the others, Avada also has its own internal page builder (visual builder).
Avada is available on ThemeForest for $60, for a single website.
Free WordPress Themes
Here are the best free WordPress themes:
- GeneratePress
- Astra
- Hello
To be combined with the Elementor plugin, which also has a free version, to perfectly complement your theme.
In Summary: Which WordPress Theme to Choose?
I think you have already formed an overall idea of what you need. For example, if you are a webmaster who creates many sites, Divi is probably more practical in terms of its offers. Knowing that Divi is one of the best WordPress dressers, slightly less good than Elementor in terms of design-side features. It also has its own qualities that Elementor does not. It is very easy for beginners… Very interesting for experts… Choosing Divi can never be a regret.
As for Elementor, if you choose it and have no money to spend, using Elementor + GeneratePress both in free plans is a very good solution.
If you have a bit of budget, go for Elementor Pro with their Hello theme — that would be a very, very good idea.
Ultimately, the choice of your theme will depend enormously on your experience with it. Someone switching from Divi to Elementor will have difficulty because they have got used to one, and vice versa. If you have always been familiar with a theme, you can always switch but it may not be worth it.
If you are a fan of fast sites or that is a primary need for you, take only GeneratePress. And if you are wondering how to get a 100 score on Google Page Speed Insights, combine GeneratePress and Kinsta for an average loading time well below 350ms.