In this article, we’re going to present the best WordPress themes differentiated by type. Before we do that, we’re going to answer a very frequent question: what is the difference between a WordPress theme and template?
A lot of web design systems refer to the overall site design as a template. In terms of WordPress, a theme is the whole site’s design, while a template is a page layout that’s available within a theme.
The template is the layout of a single page on the site, not the entire site. Most sites have at least a few pages: about us, history, products, contact, etc. If you are interested in building your website on WordPress you can obviously try to do it on your own or use the help of specialists such as Acclaim Agency.
Best Minimal WordPress Themes: Anders and Lily
Our short list starts with Anders, which means “different” in German. It offers a highly flexible theme that you can use to make a minimal business site, a portfolio, a blog, or a shop. It comes with 15 remarkable and diverse homepage designs including agency, portfolio, shop, project showcase, vertical slider, carousel, and interactive link styles.
You can choose from 12 portfolio lists, 6 header styles, and multiple style blog layouts to come up with the perfect design for your site. Anders is perfectly designed for showcasing your portfolio online. It has pricing sections, team sections, and everything else you may need. The theme is compatible with WooCommerce, WPML, and other popular plugins.
Lily
Try this theme if you are looking for a cleaner design, better performance, faster load speed, and a more dynamic experience. There are 10 different layouts to choose from for your home page, author pages, archive pages, tags, search results pages, and categories.
You can use various options to style your blog. The theme is powered by HTML5/CSS3/Bootstrap and very easy to use. Sticky navigation will provide site visitors with fast access to any data on your site. Lily includes .pot files and is translation ready, so your site has all the makings of a global resource.
Best WordPress Magazine Themes: Camila and Bookworm
The magazine-themed Camila places intense focus on text readability. It can also be used as a personal journal or blog. Camila is content-first theme, making it a great choice if you don’t want the design to prevail over your content.
Photographers can create beautiful galleries to show off their highest-quality work without needing to know anything about coding. It’s an amazing theme to show off your talent if you are an artist or another creative.
Bookworm
Bookworm caters to authors and others in the publishing industry. The full-screen web design will help visitors see your personal details and works quickly. The clean, minimal, responsive layout makes it easy to present recent or upcoming book releases on your site. What is more, Bookworm boasts features like author’s blog, profile, and previously published book or magazine sections.
Bookworm is bold and elegant, a scintillating manifestation of style. It features custom widgets that make it easy for readers to keep up with your current work. Custom portfolios and theme galleries also make adding videos, audio files, and images child’s play.
Best WordPress Photography Themes: Volta and KEO
Volta is a mobile-friendly, creative photography portfolio. It’s the go-to choice to display your photos in a visually appealing layout. It looks great on all screens and devices, including mobile, desktop, tablet, and notebook. Its available variations are content slider, image background, and video background.
Here are some of the best features:
- Fullscreen Background Slider
- Fullscreen Background Video
- Fullscreen Background Images
- Fully SEO Optimized
- Mobile-Friendly Layout
- Easy to Customize
- Well Documented
- CSS3 Content Animations
- Valid HTML5 / CSS3
- jQuery Enhanced
- Superb Support
The album portfolio supports videos, images, sliders, YouTube, Vimeo, and SoundCloud. The theme is compatible with Safari, Firefox, IE 11, Chrome, and Opera.
KEO
KEO is a creative and responsive theme that’s perfect for magazines, web agencies, shops, photography studios, and startups. It was developed on Qoob, an intuitive and user-friendly builder with a myriad of customization functions. You can make a brand-new website from scratch using online documents and this builder.
This powerful, professional theme features beautifully designed demos that look striking and work without error across different browsers and gadgets. Any problems you experience along the way with be solved with the help of tutorials and round-the-clock support.
Features
The theme offers over 16 templates for all business purposes, neat and contemporary design, all key site blocks on a single page, and a retina-ready feature. The site looks sharp and vibrant on Retina displays.
The theme is fully customizable. Unique design elements are only a few clicks away. The design is responsive thank to solid Bootstrap framework. Any device will depict your website flawlessly.
Best WordPress Real Estate Themes: Eagle and Webion
Designed for real estate and related agencies, Eagle is fully responsive minimal WordPress theme with a clean design and blog. Any real estate business, solo professional, interior design or architectural firm, creative agency, or photography studio can easily promote its business or work.
Shortcodes, configurable theme options, and one-click demo import functionality make it easy to quickly change pretty much everything.
Webion
A vast number of icons and photos and a large variety of pages and sections combine with each other in perfect harmony. When you visit a site, you’re met by full-screen size carousel. Your visitors are acquainted with your profile quickly.
The template features a contemporary design, which includes everything for great presentation. You can see lots of widgets like tab, icon list, and images layout when you scroll down the home page. They are used together to create a modern design for a business’ website.
Features
In the right-hand corner of the design header, there is a smart menu with the names of pages, your card, and a search button. In the left-hand one, there is the company logo.
On the home page, the first thing that you see is a big carousel with brief company information and photos. When the visitor clicks on it, they’re taken to the ‘About’ page, where there is a short icon list. Information about the company can be added here too.
The box with text and a button that says “view our work” is the last widget that you can find on this page. Click on the ‘Service’ page to open it. It will display more information on this topic.
Best Feminine WordPress Themes: Divi and Hazel
Divi is charmingly embellished theme with tons of options for layouts, custom colors, ads, and more. It is based on a simple grid, perfect for showcasing your imagery. Visitors can see your work on mobile, tablets, and desktops because the theme is fully responsive. With its pro visual builder technology, Divi takes WordPress to a whole new level.
This theme is more than just that (a WordPress theme). This platform will enable you to build websites in a completely new and unheard-of way. For one, the standard WordPress post editor is replaced with a far superior visual editor. Newcomers and design professionals alike can use it efficiently, giving them the power to create spectacular designs with surprising ease.
Hazel
This clean, minimal, feminine, and modern WordPress theme is packaged with an inbuilt mega menu, superb premium plugins, typographic options with over 900+ Google fonts, unlimited customizability, full WooCommerce design integration, different portfolio types and styles, custom page options (for multipage sites), WPML and translation ready, a lot of pre-configured layouts and useful visual page builder elements, and a solid admin panel with hundreds of options for personalization.
The theme includes all the pages presented. You can start your site after importing them all. Hazel features a fantastic collection of page builder modules, which can be used to create new sections or pages.
The theme features more than 320 sliders, 10 beautiful demos, page builder templates and sticky nav, header / menu options, more than 60 page builder components, centered menu style, a plethora of designed pages, and the following:
- Update Theme trough WP Dashboard
- Revolution Slider Included
- Ready for WordPress 5.3+ Tested and Approved
- WP Bakery Page Builder Included
- Cube Portfolio Included
- 100% Responsive Layout
- Ultimate VC Addons Included
- Retina Ready
- WooCommerce 100% compatible
Best WordPress Ecommerce Themes: Neonix and Narya
Neonix is a business WordPress theme ideal for ecommerce stores, startups, web studios, digital agencies, personal blogs and portfolios, SEO expert blogs, and digital marketers.
It is ready to translate and fully responsive, so your visitors won’t be limited in terms of device or location. If you want to create a website using this theme, you don’t need any coding knowledge. Just use the sample demo to build a site in just minutes.
Here’s a short list of the theme’s pros:
- Translation Ready
- Valid Code
- ACF Pro premium plugin
- Convenient theme option panel
- One click demo install
- Google fonts
- Fully Responsive
- Google map
- Retina Ready
- Great support
- Well documented
- Widgets ready
- FA icons
- Botstrap grid
Narya
This theme includes ecommerce, social media, ad management tools, visually appealing galleries, and everything else to cater to your creative needs. Share buttons are integrated with close attention to style and detail. Typography is elegant without being obtrusive. Sliders are featured to present your content in the most remarkable way.
This theme includes a Theme Options Panel for easy changes in case you want to tweak a small setting to suit your brand’s style. Don’t worry if you need to override a master setting. You don’t even have to edit the stylesheets. To add your own custom CSS to the part of the theme you wish to change, just use the Theme Option panel.
Managing Installation
The best way to manage your WordPress installation is by using a Child Theme with all of this custom functionality in mind. This is also the best way to make smaller tweaks like CSS overrides. In the download, a Child Theme is included. You use it to make any and all changes necessary.
Best WordPress Church Themes: Kerygma and Prayer
Our first choice (Kerygma) has been crafted by hand to give your church a powerful, intuitive site that is easy to get up and running. It is easy to customize with your colors and branding. It is fully responsive, so it works very well on mobile devices.
What is more, Kerygma has remarkable podcasting support, with support for video and audio messages along with integration of strong message series throughout the theme. You can bring your own colors, logo, and backgrounds, visually customize the site with the theme customizer, and choose from over 600 of the best Google fonts.
Features
Kerygma uses Site Origin’s free and excellent Page Builder, used to make the layout on the homepage. The theme comes with robust podcasting and the option to host your own videos. Alternatively, you can use a service like Vimeo or YouTube. There are plenty of internal message links to keep your visitors on your site.
The theme was made for mobile and the site will look great on all screen sizes thanks to the fully responsive design. Navigating the site is simple on a tablet or phone with the mobile navigation menu. Mobile visitors can watch or listen to your messages with support for HTML5 audio and video.
Prayer
Prayer is a visually appealing, modern WordPress church theme. It allows you to easily post events, sermons, slider info, galleries, and staff info. The theme features multiple color schemes. You can choose a different one for each page. Other features include translation ready, a flexible homepage layout, easy theme options panel, and custom widgets for social profiles like Twitter and Instagram. Here are some details about them. For other church WordPress themes.
Complete Sermon Management
Upload audio, attach a video, and add transcripts of your sermons and let users download files to listen offline among other options.
Flexible Homepage Layout
You can add any widget you want and toggle recent sermons. The widgetized areas of the front page are customizable to create a unique layout that suits your needs.
Custom Widgets
Custom widgets mean greater functionality. Among the options available to you are social networking, content widgets, Twitter, and Instagram.
5 Content Types
There are 5 content types: events, sermons, slider, galleries, and personnel post types. The theme is SEO optimized to improve your search engine rankings.
Select from a large number of carefully chosen color schemes or assign different ones for each of your church website’s pages.
Best Free WordPress Themes
The Elegant WordPress Theme
Elegant is a completely free GPL business and portfolio theme that can be used for free or commercial projects. The tidy, classic design of this theme makes it appealing and modern. It is a great choice for bloggers, small businesses, or freelancers.
The theme’s amazing features makes it easy to create any website. It’s simple to add content to your staff page, portfolio page, or homepage with built-in custom post types. To add a new post for each feature, portfolio item or staff member, navigate to the custom post type from your WordPress dashboard. To add new slides, just add new posts. The homepage slider uses its own post type.
Pronto
This minimalistic, clean jQuery Masonry WordPress theme is great for displaying your posts in a grid like fashion, which is adjusted based on your visitors’ browser size. You install, add posts, and are ready to go. The theme is set to work right out of the box. It features a custom logo upload field, support for the popular Symple Shortcodes plugin, options to disable various functions of the theme, post thumbnails support, threaded comments, and more.
This WordPress theme was designed with simplicity in mind. It is very quick and intuitive, being just several KB in size. This is the best choice if you are looking for a clean look for your site and a site that loads fast. The fact that it requires practically no setup is a bonus. What is more, the theme doesn’t put you at risk with malicious code or hidden links unlike other free themes available.
Neve
Neve will allow you to build a classic and clean site. The beautiful, free theme is fast, lightweight, and compatible with most page builders out there. Among the builders it is compatible with are Divi, Gutenberg, Brizy, Elementor, Beaver, Visual Composer, and Site Origin. Your site will look great on any device because the theme is mobile ready.
If you want additional features, such as custom boosters for Elementor or WooCommerce, white labeling, scroll to top, and blog and header customization, an upgrade to Neve Premium is worth taking into account. This is the case even if you’re looking to build a minimal site. Depending on the plan, these features will be included.
Astra
This fast, fully customizable, and visually appealing WordPress theme is suitable for business websites, blogs, WooCommerce storefronts, and personal portfolios. It features absolutely unbeatable speed and is very lightweight, being under 50 KB on the front end. Astra comes with Schema.org code integrated and was built with SEO in mind. It is Native AMP ready, so Google will love your site.
It offers special templates and features so it works perfectly with different page builders, including Divi, Elementor, Beaver, Site Origin, and Visual Composer.
Other notable features include responsiveness, WooCommerce readiness, translation, extendible with premium addons, regular updates, and Brainstorm Force design, development, maintenance, and support. Look no further than Astra for the perfect free base theme.
FreeNews Magazine
FreeNews is, simply put, an amazing modern theme. You can create professional websites using it. It is easy to personalize for all kinds of review, news, blog, newspaper, magazine, publishing, or other media sites. It also includes important features like responsiveness, cross-browser compatibility, high performance, and SEO readiness. The theme supports RTL.
It is one of the best options if promoting your site is high on your list of priorities. There are social media icons to reach the highest possible number of readers. The responsive sliders impress visitors with lively, appealing, eye-catching images on your banner section. You also get free support with this theme.
Olsen
Olsen is an elegant and stylish blogging theme with a focused layout, whose refined fonts create fluid and relaxing reading ambience. Its minimalist design and sophisticated color palette make it perfect for fashion and lifestyle bloggers who need their images to stand out next to their content.
The premium theme comes with a Featured Content slider, which can project as many as six hand-picked posts. Show off your best work and draw in visitors’ attention with a Featured Image. The slider displays prominently on the home page above the rest of your posts.
In the Footer Widget area, the theme includes custom styling for the Instagram Widget. Your latest images will now appear in a single row bigger than usual. This layout makes the theme the perfect method to help display your work, drawing each and every visitor’s attention.
Best Responsive WordPress Themes
Photo
Photo is a responsive photo and gallery WordPress theme. This simple theme is perfect for a web design site, a photography blog, graphic art, or any other art collection that you’d like to share with the general public. The clean and sleek layout attracts attention to your work, while the bold header emphasizes your brand or logo. In general, this theme is a great option for a professional or personal portfolio.
Single posts feature full-style layout so it’s easy to insert large media (videos or large photos) into your posts without a sidebar getting in the way. There are no footers, no sidebars, and no cluttered widget areas. The theme was made for those who really want to display their content and not worry about anything else. Many will love the minimalist approach.
Reveal
Reveal has a magnificent, responsive, filterable portfolio. The theme is minimal and clean so your work stands out. An impressive extra is the elegant ajax viewing. The theme also includes custom widgets, slideshow options, buttons and more – anything one would expect from one of the best minimal WordPress themes.
Apart from this, the theme boasts the following features:
- Shortcodes
- Portfolios
- Theme options
- Support
The shortcodes enable you to create slideshows, tabs, buttons, columns, and toggles. Hover effects and smooth filtering animations will give your portfolio projects an amazing look. The responsive layout looks great on any screen size. The many theme options make it possible to set your own color scheme, logo, custom CSS, and many other options to give your site a unique look. Last but not least, the localization support feature lets you translate the theme into any language.
3. Chela
Our third choice is a minimal, super lightweight, and modern theme perfect for freelancers and agencies alike. It looks amazing regardless of the device you view it on and it is fully responsive. Chela features Advanced Custom Fields, which is the perfect choice for any WordPress website that needs CMS and other flexible data sources. The integrated Owl V2/Carousel touch enabled jQuery plugin makes it possible to create a unique, beautiful carousel slider.
- Advanced Custom Fields PRO (save 25$)
- Fully Responsive
- Page Header with background image
- Front Page Slider
- Sticky Header
- One-Click Demo Import
- Masonry Portfolio Layout
- Grid Portfolio Layout
- Masonry Blog
- 2 & 3 Columns Portfolio
- Clients Carousel
- Classic Blog with Sidebar
- Sliding Skill Bars
- Infinite Scroll
- Contact Form 7 Support
Best Premium WordPress Themes
Bridge is a WPBakery or Elementor Builder enabled theme that lets you build the way you choose. It includes 4 premium plugins worth over $100 –Slider Revolution, WPBakery Page Builder, Layer Slider, and Timetable Responsive Schedule.
At the Qode Help Center, you’ll find the answers to lots of FAQs in the extensive knowledge base. Alternatively, the support will provide assistance.
Bridge has a vast amount of straightforward and flexible options, allowing you to change anything you want with just a few clicks.
The premium theme is fully equipped with everything a user may need to make just about any type of website, including listings, shops, magazines, and more.
Last but not least, the Qode Interactive YouTube channel features detailed step-by-step tutorials if you happen to be struggling with Bridge, which is not likely.
Newspaper
This is one of the bestselling magazine and news style themes for WordPress. The theme has a built-in template for all types of content you may be publishing on your website, from travel blogs and culture, fashion, and recipes to serious articles and reports.
There’s a big chance that your news or magazine website will have a feel and look that is ideal for the type of content you are publishing with so many different demos to choose from. You can use the detailed customization settings to adjust the design to ensure it matches your vision after you’ve chosen a demo from the available options.
The newspaper theme comes with a brand-new page builder of the drag-and-drop type, designed to help you customize your site. They have built the tagDiv Composer specially for media websites. To make sure each article has the right look, there are over 100 elements to choose from.
The Gem
The Gem is our final choice, a relatively new addition to this collection of the best premium WordPress themes. It is a multilateral theme with over 80 creative concepts to choose from. You can use it to create almost any type of website with WordPress. Each of the Gem’s website demos spans multiple categories and design styles and was built to a very high standard. You could even say that each of these demos could be sold separately. If you choose the Gem, you get access to a highly impressive library of website demos.
The Gem makes it very easy to import this content when setting up your website. After you do this, you can then choose from over 400 creative templates for the inner content and homepage. Customizing your site will never be an issue. The options available help explain why the Gem is one of the best premium WordPress themes on the market.
Frequently Asked Questions
Our last section will answer FAQ about WordPress themes. Look for your question below.
Are WordPress themes mobile friendly?
Not all WordPress themes are mobile friendly. Apart from the ones specifically reviewed as mobile friendly in this article, some of the best WordPress mobile friendly themes are Kalium, Uncode, Gillion, Jevelin, Soledad, X Theme, and Webify.
Where do I buy WordPress themes?
From WordPress or third party retailers.
Are all WordPress themes responsive?
Not all themes are. To find out what the best responsive ones are, check the relevant section in this article.
Are WordPress themes a one-time purchase?
Technically, WordPress themes are a one-time purchase. Any theme you purchase is yours to use and modify as you want according to the General Public License that governs all WordPress software. Please note that some developers may charge more for support and ongoing updates.
Should I buy a premium WordPress theme?
All WordPress premium themes are paid, and many of them are expensive. According to data of CodeinWP, a premium theme costs just under $60 on average. A premium theme could make for a speedy WordPress website if yours does not employ the use of a lot of plugins. This will improve your technical SEO.
How do I choose a WordPress theme?
Choose a responsive theme, not a “bloated” one, and make a list of the features you want ahead of time. Keep color in mind and don’t choose a theme with a font that’s difficult to read. Test the theme thoroughly. Look for the following, if possible:
- Advanced Footer Options
- Unlimited Colors & Styles
- Clean & Modern Design
- Multiple Blog Designs
- Advanced Customization / Theme Options
- Advanced Blog Options
- Multi-Lingual / RTL Ready
- Advanced Search Options with AJAX Results!
- Multiple Premium Slider Options
- Compatible with Many Popular Plugins
- Built with HTML5 & CSS3
- Multiple Portfolio Designs
- Photo gallery with pop-up and full screen support
- WPML Ready
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