There’s no shortage of options available when it comes to choosing a WordPress theme, and a theme for every occasion out there too. There are generic themes available to quickly launch a new site to share thoughts and opinions, niche themes set-up for all manner of interests too.
When wading through the waters of WordPress themes, however, the biggest difference between many will come from Paid Vs Free, and for somebody setting up a WordPress site for the first time, it can be difficult to understand what is really being paid for. We’ll take a look at different price points, different features, and much more to show why one option may be better than another depending on the scenario.
A huge variety is key – When looking through the many different theme directories, there are thousands of options to choose from across as many different niches, but when filtering down there are significantly fewer free options and significantly fewer differences between the free options too.
This is where paid options becoming much more desirable, with bigger differences and a lot more variety in the number of options, even more budget friendly choices can be a great place to start. That isn’t to say the free options can’t be a fantastic starting point, as there are many great free options out there, but more variety will be found in paid versions.
Features are a key asset – Perhaps the biggest difference between the two categories of paid and free options come with the included features, most free versions will come with very basic tools or plugins but premium versions available at an additional cost, but paid versions come with more custom options.
Paid themes often come with custom designed features specific for the niche they’re made for, in the case of things like affiliate sites these will be custom link cloaking, others like esports betting platforms like Cloudbet have become more popular and theme with custom tables to show odds are another option for example.
On-going theme support – With the way online platforms work today, updates issue constant change, and over time this change can be extremely significant. This can quickly lead to themes and plugins becoming outdated, and with a lack of support, a theme that no longer functions correctly.
With paid themes, support is often ongoing for an extended period of time guaranteeing the theme will be updated for a longer period of time, ensuring that a site running this theme will stay online without issue and without being outdated.
Ultimately, the choice of whether to go down the road of free or paid depends on the type of site being built, free options can be a fantastic place to start walking before running, a proof of concept, or simply as a learning experience. Paid options come in a huge range of different price points, some available at just a few dollars increasing to a significant cost for something of a more bespoke nature.
Choosing the right theme can determine the difference between a successful site and one that isn’t doing so well too, a significant difference in visual quality, a different in background performance, and much more all need to be considered, and can all be a major factor behind how and when to choose the right theme for the right site.