Top 10 Free Themes For WordPress
Looking to start a #blog, or just want to change your wordpress #website design? Here's 10 free #wordpress #themes you should consider
Building a wordpress site nowadays is pretty easy compared to what it was before. People and companies have developed themes, site builders, templates and other shortcuts to make it easier than ever to set up and design pages, which ultimately forms an entire website. This is great because anyone can do it without having IT-education or being a UI design pro.
This list of the top free themes for wordpress contains 10 of the best free wordpress themes I know of. They are hand picked after trying them out myself, and with some important features in mind:
They had to be user friendly, have good customization features, and be somewhat minimalistic in their design. These themes integrate smoothly with drag-and-drop site builders such as Elementor, Gutenberg, Brizy, Beaver Builder etc.
Note: These themes are all free, but offer the opportunity to buy the pro versions that unlocks more professionally designed templates and features that will make your website more engaging and interesting for the users. I’ll include some discount codes at the end of this post if you decide to upgrade.
1. Astra
Astra is a popular and responsive, dynamic theme that is very user friendly and a good choice for beginners. It’s a popular theme chosen by many because of its user friendliness and how easy it is to integrate good looking starter-templates that you can tweak to fit your own style.
Make sure you’re choosing to get started with starter templates, and you should be able to choose between all the templates the theme makes available for you.
Choose your template, import it to your wordpress site and start customizing your website.
Astra offers the ability to customize the header to a certain degree, giving you some different layouts for it in the free version.
Integrates with several website builders such as Gutenberg, Beaver Builder and Elementor.
The free version includes a limited featured WooCommerce, but you'll of course get the full featured version with the pro version.
If you upgrade to the pro version, you would get a full featured Astra theme which could be really powerful for creating a highly professional site.
It’s worth mentioning some key features included in the pro version of the Astra theme:
And much, much more….
you can check out the entire feature pack of the pro version of the Astra theme here
2. Hestia
Hestia scores greatly on all the key features used to pick the top free wordpress themes for this post. It’s super easy to use, super easy to customize and you can customize the theme to basically look how you want it to look.
Hestia also supports WooCommerce in the free version, which is a free wordpress plugin that lets you build a store section on your site if you’re into e-commerce.
Here’s some of the features included in the Hestia theme:
Optimizer WP is one of few free themes for wordpress that has a front page editor. This makes it very easy to use. In combination with it’s vast options to customize fonts, colors and other design elements of your site, Optimizer WP are serving as a good choice for beginners. It even has built-in video instructions inside the theme.
Through it’s customization capabilities Optimizer WP can serve as one of the best free minimalist wordpress themes out there, if you’re into minimalistic designs.
Optimizer WP supports WooCommerce as one of the best themes in combination with it.
Upgrading to the pro version of Optimizer WP would be a great choice as it gives you access to all of the themes features, such as:
The Blocksy theme might be one of the better free wordpress themes for bloggers in this list.
As a related digression, if you’re looking to start a blog you should be building an email list.
Related: Top 8 email marketing services
The theme is packed with lots of customization features. Very user friendly and great for beginners. Blocksy needs to be used with a website builder such as Brizy, Gutenberg, Beaver Builder or Elementor.
The free version of the Blocksy theme offers a couple of cool features through it’s Header and Footer customization builder, and the ability to customize and change elements in contact forms through what they call “form elements”. These are two features that often require the pro version in other themes.
Blocksy integrates smoothly with WooCommerce making it possible to use the theme for e-commerce as well.
As with other themes, upgrading to the pro version will get you a lot further when it comes to design, responsiveness, dynamics and features of your website. Even though you get a lot in the free version of Blocksy, upgrading to the pro version is a very good decision.
Why pro?
These are just some of the features you’ll get with the pro version og Blocksy. You can check out all the pro features here
If you’re not satisfied with how the pro version supplements the free version, but are more than satisfied with the free version, Blocksy offers a 14-day money back guarantee. You can try it out and request a refund, and the Blocksy team will refund your money no questions asked.
5. Neve
A great free theme by ThemeIsle. This is another great free theme for wordpress, especially if you’re starting out building sites. This theme comes with 300 different starter templates that integrate with many different page builders such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, Brizy, Gutenberg.
Neve comes with a great header and footer builder which works great. You can add elements, drag them around and adjust the size of the different elements you want in your header or footer. Highly recommended theme.
The pro version of Neve is even better, which allows you to have different headers for individual pages which is really cool. There are also 10 starter templates for the page-builders Divi and Thrive in the pro version.
6. SUKI
Suki is a wordpress theme that is very user friendly, minimalistic and has a high customization rate for what you can customize with the free version of it. Several different starter-templates are ready for you once you install it.
Suki is also one of the free themes that comes with a lot of features in the free version that other themes often hide behind a paywall. The header and footer builder are great and lets you design it the way you want them. You also get total control over your fonts, style, spacing, line height, with no limitation in colors either. This is rare in a free theme.
I really like the customizer of the Suki theme. It is very user friendly, slick and lean - making it very easy to learn and navigate in.
Upgrade to the pro version?
Suki, as with most free themes, also offers a pro version. The pro version is of course better and offers more possibilities for the responsiveness and dynamics of your page. This includes:
OceanWP is another free theme for wordpress which many would argue is the best free multi-purpose theme out there.
This one is also great for beginners, as the user interface and customizer are user friendly and easy to start using right off the bat. It even comes with it’s own starter guide to help you get started.
In contrast to the other themes that have integrations and starter-templates with several page builders, OceanWP integrates with Elementor.
OceanWP made the list because it’s a free theme for wordpress which you can use for several different types of websites, and includes a lot of features that are normally included in the paid version of themes. Also comes with a great number of different starter-templates, supports WooCommerce and offers some cool extensions in the free version, which is really cool.
Extensions. are plugins developed by the OceanWP team that you install on your site. The plugins are customized for the theme, which is powerful.
One cool extension worth mentioning is the “Stick anything” extension, which lets you make any element of your page, except the header and footer, sticky. That is included in the pro version.
If you choose to make a side widget sticky for example, it will follow along as the reader scrolls down the page, making it visible for the reader at all times.
This can be great when offering lead magnets in the sidebar, to get people to sign up to your list.
OceanWP is a highly recommended theme for anyone that wants a fast, easy to use theme which serves as a multi-purpose theme.
8. Phlox
Phlox is a cool and minimalistic free theme for wordpress, with a lot of great features that gives you a tremendous customization specter in the free version. It’s very easy to use and has a lot of neatly designed starter-templates that are ready for you to start customizing right away.
The starter-templates of Phlox are, by the way, incredibly good looking! Definitely something that makes the Phlox theme stand out.
Phlox checks off all the criterias which this post argues are very important in free themes for wordpress with ease. Highly recommended for both beginners and experienced site builders.
If you choose to upgrade to the pro version of Phlox you will, as with all the other themes, get a much better version of the theme with a great amount of additional features and possibilities.
In addition to the free features:
9. Zakra
Zakra made the list because of its practical efficiency. Zakra is a very simple to use free theme for wordpress that gives you some basic editorial options which is enough to set up and get a website going. If you just want a good looking website which is quick and easy to set up, simple to use and without too many options that has a higher learning curve, Zakra is the choice for you. What's great about it is that it’s a multi purpose theme, which makes you develop the theme to fit your needs, regardless of which type of site you want to build.
Comes with several different layouts for WooCommerce, and some free starter-templates for the page builder Elementor. Zakra also supports other page-builders.
The pro version comes with more options to customize the header, footer and overall pages, as well as access to their whole library of templates. You can check out the pro version here.
10. Shapely
Shapely has a minimalistic and neat design which makes it styleful and enjoyable for the eyes. Probably among the most minimal free themes in this list. However, minimal in a stylish way, but huge when it comes to customization possibilities and ease of use. The Shapely wordpress theme is a great choice for beginners, as it’s very easy to edit and play around with.
Some key features of the Shapely theme includes:
- Responsive Design
- One Page Design
- WooCommerce Compatible
- Unlimited Colors
- Footer Copyright Editor
- Header and Footer Styles
- Discussion Boards/ Forums
- SEO Friendly
You can read more at the Colorlib Shapely theme features page
The Shapely theme is developed by a company named Colorlib, which offers several free themes to suit several different types of websites. You can check them all out here
Thats it for the top 10 free wordpress themes post. I hope it contributed to make your choice a little bit easier when it comes to which wordpress theme to choose.
All these themes are free but also have pro versions that unlock features that will make your website more engaging and interesting.
As with most free products you get more features and higher performance if you upgrade to the paid version. If you're interested in optimizing your theme, check out The Marketing Onions recommended page and read more about Themify
Do you know of any more free wordpress themes? Feel free to let us know in the comments. Thanks!