When you start creating a new website using the WordPress platform, the first decision you have to make is which theme to use. Large numbers of WordPress themes are available on the internet. One of the first things needed is a comparison between Free Word Press Themes vs Paid Themes. Both free and paid WordPress themes have their advantages and disadvantages. I have tried to list down some important Pros and cons of free vs Paid WordPress themes.
Free WordPress Themes
There are thousands of free WP themes available. Some good themes are also there in free themes. If you are having a personal website, an experimental website as a student or as a web designer, or trying to learn website designing, free themes are the best option.
PROs
- Cost: It’s Free
- Easy to Operate: Adequate color schemes and layout options are available to choose from.
- Use of Plugins. The good thing about open source and word press is that its plugin is free. Even with paid themes, you have to use many free plugins. The availability of free plugins like weather, security, weather, etc. can make your website attractive.
Cons
While Free WordPress themes are beneficial, these also have some disadvantages.
- Support: One of the major cons of free WordPress themes is that they have minimal or no customer and developer support. Mostly you have to understand how to install/configure, and use a free WP theme on your own. There is no surety that free themes will always work well, so a lack of support may cause problems.
- Compatibility issue: Being a fast-growing platform WordPress frequently updates. Your website theme must be compatible with the latest version of WP. But most of the free themes developers do not update their themes thus becoming incompatible with WP.
Paid WordPress Themes
While there is the availability of a huge number of Free WordPress themes “why should I go for Paid WP themes”?.
PROs
- More Features: Paid WordPress themes offer better quality than free WP themes which makes your WordPress website more sophisticated and attractive. Paid WP themes are developed keeping users’ needs in mind. For example, an eCommerce theme comes with all the features required for eCommerce. Good loading speed, Seo friendly, support for all browsers, and responsiveness are common features in all paid themes.
- Well-supported: Since they are earning, the theme developers provide support to their customers.
- Latest Updates: WordPress is updated with its new version in 8- 12 weeks. So your theme must be compatible with current versions of WP. Paid WordPress themes are always updated by theme developers to keep up with the latest version of WordPress. These updates are also helpful to fix the bugs in themes and catch the latest design trends.
- Low-Security Risk: Some of the Paid WP themes use security plugins like the security pro plugin to keep the security of the theme at the highest level.
- Easy Customization: Paid WordPress themes are very easy to customize, you can design the layout of your choice within no time. Paid WP themes to offer an easy options panel in your WP dashboard from where you can play with your color schemes, logo, and font of your WP theme. Theme developer provides full documentation of theme for their setup and customization.
Cons
- Cost. License prices may vary from 25$ to 250$ which is not affordable for everybody.
- Configuration may Become Complex. Even though documentation or support of Paid themes is available, it’s not easy to configure themes. Since paid themes are with the multiple options panel. It takes much time to configure.
Conclusion
If you are trying to decide between free and Paid Word Press Themes you must consider it as per your budget vs requirements. If you are a student or beginner and desire to learn to blog, free WordPress themes are best. Furthermore, if you are running small a business website and you are not in a position to invest in themes you can go with a free WP theme. But if you are running a large corporate business WP website you should have to purchase Paid WordPress themes to enjoy their Premium features for the long term.
