Whenever you are about to choose a theme, among the many questions that hit you, a common one is, whether to use a custom WordPress theme or a free theme. To make this decision easier, we bring you pros and cons of using both the WordPress themes.
Let’s start with the free WordPress theme:
Pros:
- The first best thing about these themes is that they are free. It is easy to find them too. They are located in your WordPress admin panel.
- Free themes are compatible with a variety of plugins as compared to the custom themes. Why? Because they are in the official repository and they have met all the standards of approval.
- Free themes are leaner as compared to the premium themes. You can easily find a theme that meets all your needs and you won’t have to deal with extra features which come the custom themes.
- When you are downloading a free theme from the WordPress official repository, they will go through an official review process to make sure the theme is compatible with the idea of your website. Such type of evaluation is not present in custom themes.
Cons
Now let’s have a look at the cons of free WordPress themes:
- The free themes do not update that often. It is frustrating that you cannot update your WordPress because if you do so, it will break your theme. That can put your website to a lot of security risks.
- Most of the free WordPress themes lack user experience and that is both from the creator and visitor’s side.
- Like mentioned above, free WordPress themes have security vulnerabilities. Some of the themes are particularly designed to carry malicious code. If you happen to use such a theme, your website is going to go down.
Now let’s have a look at the Custom WordPress themes:
Pros
- The quality of custom WordPress themes is much higher as compared to the free themes. Since these themes generate revenue, the developers make them in premium quality.
- The premium themes come with advanced functionality. They have an advanced admin panel that let you customize and configure the website in a lot easier way.
- The premium themes are more responsive when it comes to updates. Whether it’s small bugs or security issues, you won’t have to worry about anything.
- Everything about the design of the premium WordPress theme is better. You will be dealing with premium templates and premium menus which will make it fun for you to work on WordPress.
Cons
Everything about the custom WordPress themes seems great right but they have a few cons. Let’s have a look at them too:
- The custom themes do not go through the official WordPress review process.
- You are often flooded with so many features and functionalities that you don’t know what to do about them.
- The author of custom theme might discontinue his product at anytime which means your theme will stop updating and you won’t get a good customer support.
Now that everything about the custom and free WordPress themes is clear to you, go ahead, make a sound decision.
