In the last 10 years, I have bought and used these premium themes – Newspaper, Genesis Framework, Astra, Themify Ultra, and Codilight. As of now, I am using the Blocksy free edition. What made me switch to a free template? Are free themes worth using? Let’s find it out!
Free themes are the ones that don’t come with any price tag or usage restriction. They are available for download for free in the WP repository. Although you don’t have to pay a dime to use them, the templates come with some limitations. You may face the following issues with them:
Poor or lack of support: Not all WordPress users are HTML, CSS, and PHP experts. When you encounter an issue, there are two options for such users- create a new thread in the WP support forum or look for a solution on the web. There are a few active communities of developers where you can post your query for free. To name a few, StackOverflow, StackExchange, and Reddit PHP/WordPress subreddits are online forums where you can post your technology-related queries. These sites are used by seasoned developers and most of the questions posted on them have been answered. If you have a code-related query, use StackOverflow else post your question on StackExchange.
Updates: If a software product doesn’t get popular, a developer may stop working on it. The same thing applies to WP templates. If a theme built by a developer doesn’t get popular, it may not get updates in the future. This drawback isn’t applicable to free items only. Let’s take the example of the Genesis Framework. StudioPress, the developer of the Framework and one of the leading WP development companies, was sold to managed hosting service provider WP-Engine. Before the business was sold, the Genesis Framework was updated on regular basis. After WP Engine bought it, the Framework didn’t get updates often. In fact, the template hasn’t been updated since August 2021.
Security risk: PHP code written by a developer may have vulnerabilities. If a template isn’t updated for a long time, your site may get hacked or infected by malware. If your WP portal is hacked, you’ll have to ask your hosting company’s support staff to reset the login credentials. In the other case i.e. if the website is infected by malware, you will have to find and remove the malicious code from the PHP scripts yourself or hire someone to do this job for you.
Features: Only a handful of free themes in the WP repository are feature rich. A template that claims to be feature-packed may have ads. The advertisements are nothing but locked modules. You can unlock these modules only after entering the template’s license key on its settings page. If the theme you’re using doesn’t have the feature you want your website to have, you’ll have to buy a new one, use a plugin that will add the missing function, or hire someone to do the job. Some of the themes may have links in the footer that points to the developer’s official website. These links are easy to remove if their code is in the footer.php file else the users will have to find the code manually and get rid of the URLs.
Why did I ditch the premium templates? Newspaper, available on ThemeForest, can be used on a single site only. If you want to use it on another site, you must purchase a new license. Codilight developer modified the subscription model. Themify Ultra’s license expired and I wanted to try out another theme. WP Engine made StudioPress Genesis Framework open-source. They also stopped rolling out updates. I chose Blocksy because its free edition offers most of the features you will find in Astra premium.
Precautions you should take while using a free theme: Use a free template only if it has more than 60k active installations and a good number of positive reviews. If you want to avoid headaches, don’t use one which isn’t popular, or has more ads than features. Before installing and activating one, test its performance with Google Page Speed Insights. If the score is poor, find another one that has good Google PSI and Core Web Vitals score.
