WordPress has an incredible number of themes. The competition is fierce, and the themes that stand out are often among the most powerful. As a result, it becomes difficult to make a choice. Here is a classification of the 15 best Wordpress themes, both free and paid, that you can find this year.
Top free WordPress themes in 2023
If you are a beginner, it will be best to start with a free WordPress theme. Later on, you could move towards premium tools if you may be looking for more advanced features. In the meantime, you can discover some good free themes for your website that will serve you effectively. Here are a dozen of the best ones available.
Astra
This theme is one of the best you will find. In addition to providing you with many templates, it is free. Among the many templates that already exist, you will inevitably find some that will meet your needs whatever they are. It can be an online store, a showcase site or a blog. Moreover, concerning this last point, if you wish to use WordPress to design your blog, the best is to opt for Astra. You will then have every chance of having a quality blog. Astra has a great performance that allows it to have the advantage over the majority of its competitors.
Indeed, you have the possibility to customize this theme by changing the menu, colors, etc. For a free Wordpress theme, Astra is light, powerful and fast. Moreover, this theme allows you to use several site creation tools. This is the case with Elementor, Woocommerce, etc. However, it should be noted that Astra has a premium version. Therefore, it is not surprising that the free version is somewhat limited in terms of performance. So, with the premium version of Astra, it is possible to bring even more customizations. It is also possible to have a more optimal management of the navigation menus for example.
Neve
Among the top rated free themes on most active installations available on WordPress, there is also Neve. Its use is suitable for beginners, but also for experienced bloggers, web agencies or even companies. Indeed, it is user-friendly, flexible and easy to use.
Neve is also very fast as a theme and light. Very easy to use, it is really the perfect tool for a beginner. Thanks to Neve, creating a professional WordPress website will take just a few minutes. In addition to being free, it is very well adapted to AMP format and it offers good mobile compatibility. Neve also allows for better SEO site optimization, as each step is done in a well-organized manner.
OceanWP
It is not possible to list the best WordPress themes without mentioning OceanWP. It must be said that there was a time when it was competing with Astra for the first place among the best. What made OceanWP lose the first place is probably because this theme seems less practical than its biggest competitor. Despite this, it is one of the most sought after themes with no less than 3 million downloads. It has excellent templates that will allow you to achieve as much as possible the theme you are looking for for your site.
Even if its free version is very good, the paid version of OceanWP is excellent. This last one will give you access to more advanced features, including access to premium extensions. You will also have access to better templates. You will also be able to better manage your menus, your widgets, etc. Nevertheless, you don't need to opt for the paid version. The free version of the OceanWP theme is very good for a beginner who wants to create a simple WordPress website.
Hestia
Although it is a free WordPress theme, Hestia offers you very professional templates. It's perfect for anyone who is just starting out in website design. Hestia offers a pleasant and easy to manage navigation, thanks to its simple configuration. It allows you to do without a page builder, which will not prevent you from designing beautiful things. To modify and customize the homepage of your WordPress site as you wish, all you have to do is use the control panel of your Hestia theme.
Note that even if you don't really need a page builder, you can always use a plugin like Elementor for example. However, this is only a possibility and not an obligation. So it's up to you!
Airi
Equally free, Airi is also a good theme. With this performance, this theme is perfectly suited for a WordPress website. Already, you can be sure that it doesn't slow down your website. Indeed, Airi is not bulky as a theme. It is rather light and will allow you to offer an interesting user experience to the Internet users. Moreover, Airi will allow you to get a good SEO ranking to your WordPress website. All this is very important, because it is not interesting for a site that users have to wait more than 3 seconds for the loading to take place.
In this kind of situation, a good portion of Internet users will tend to leave before the site is fully displayed. With this WordPress theme, you will have a site that loads quickly. Although it is free, Airi is also suitable for professionals. Thus, a business can use it for professional use. It can also be used for a freelance mission, etc. In order to facilitate its use, this WordPress theme provides you with several documentations and support. Airi is also suitable for WordPress extensions including Elementor, Woocommerce, etc.
Sydney
This theme is more suitable for professional activities or a personal blog for example. Even in its paid version, Sydney allows you to use well-created templates. Also, you have the possibility to create your own templates if you wish. One interesting thing to note is that the WordPress theme is recommended by Elementor. With more than 600 Google fonts, Sydney is perfectly compatible with mobile devices. All this makes it easier to translate. As for the updates of the theme, they are regular and every time, we discover new fixes about the small bugs.
Likewise, there are also new features that enrich this free WordPress theme. This is noticeable with each new update. For once, Sydney, even if it is free, also has a paid version. Thanks to this one, you will have the possibility, as with the others, to access many more interesting features. Thus, you will have to pay to be able to enjoy additional templates. It is the same to be able to customize your pages or your articles on your site in a more advanced way. It is also in the paid version of Sydney that it is possible to get additional options to configure the theme.
GeneratePress
This WordPress theme is just as excellent as all the ones we have mentioned so far. However, unlike the others, GeneratePress puts more emphasis on its paid version than on its free version. Therefore, to get the best of these performances, you'll have to switch to the paid version. Nevertheless, the free version of GeneratePress offers some modules, even if it's quite limited. It's true that the performance remains good and the site is light. Regarding the search engine, you can optimize your WordPress site.
Also, generatePress has a great compatibility with almost all WordPress plugins. However, the paid version is more interesting with all the premium modules at your disposal. You will also benefit from a personalized customer support, a maximum of templates already existing, etc.
Storefront
In fact, this WordPress theme is the one officially used by Woocommerce. Completely free, it is perfectly suited for online stores. For merchants who want to design a commercial site, this is the WordPress theme for them. Indeed, Storefront is a very intuitive theme, in addition to being flexible and responsive. These different templates make this WordPress theme the best for designing an e-commerce website.
Thanks to it, you will have the possibility to proceed with the customization of your online store. You can enjoy all this with the free version, but you also have the possibility to get more with the paid version of Storefront. While it is already fast as a theme, discover Storefront in its paid version otherwise. You will then get even more interesting additional options. However, it should be noted that even in its free version, this WordPress theme is already excellent.
Shapely
If you are looking for a WordPress theme that will give you the ability to customize several aspects of your site at once, then Shapely is it. Besides being free, this WordPress theme is also responsive and perfectly suited with Woocommerce. One of its special features is that it allows you to automatically manage your images.
Shapely is a WordPress theme that allows you to really have fun changing the aspects of your site. To do so, you just need to go to its configuration settings. From there, you can modify the footer, change the color of your site at will, customize the header, etc. If all this seems complex enough, you can simply go to the Shapely theme website. Once you are there, you will find a demo. This will give you all the tools you need to change and customize your site at will.
ColorMag
If some WordPress themes are more generalist, others are more specific. This is the case of ColorMag. Indeed, it is more suitable for creating a website or a news blog on WordPress. This theme stands out from the others thanks to its design, but this is what allows it to stick very well to the theme of news. It has a paid version, which does not prevent it from offering up to 15 different templates in its free version. Thanks to this, even with the free version of colormag, you can very well find a suitable look for your website.
Of course, in order to benefit from more themes, you will have to subscribe to a Premium membership. This way, you can benefit from a much more advanced technical support. ColorMag offers you excellent loading performance. In fact, the loading time of your website with this theme will be practically under a second. Moreover, it is fully compatible with all major web browsers. Better yet, it also offers good compatibility with reputable page builders like Gutenberg, Brizy, Elementor, etc.
The Best Paid WordPress Themes in 2023
In reality, there are no completely free WordPress themes. As you may have noticed, the majority of the themes we mentioned above that are free also have paid versions. These are fremium WordPress themes, which means that they have a limited free version. Even those that seem to be completely free, have paid add-ons. In this case, you usually have to pay a few dozen euros.
Alternatively, you can opt for a custom designed WordPress theme. However, this could cost you a few thousand euros. The proper maintenance of a theme requires financial resources from its creator. This is how he can regularly work on fixing bugs and developing new features. All this allows him to improve his work. This is done through the implementation of regular updates.
To have the opportunity to use a full-featured WordPress theme, here are some paid themes you could try.
Divi
It is undoubtedly one of the most popular in the world. Much more than just a theme, this is largely due to its page building feature that is unlike any other. When you purchase a license for Divi, you will have over 800 templates at your disposal. That's a huge selection that will allow you to produce web pages with elegant, modern designs that look like you. This WordPress theme is among the top rated ones, it was designed by ElegantTheme.
Avada
ThemeFusion is the author of Avada. This WordPress theme offers far less templates compared to Divi. However, it still offers you up to 80 templates, which is not bad. So, you'll have plenty of choices to design your website pages. Easy to use, Avada remains the best selling WordPress theme to date. It has over 600,000 sales.
Hello Theme
Hello theme is the official Elementor theme, best suited for working with Elementor website builder. It is a popular WordPress theme, used on over a million websites. It is lightweight, fast and allows you to build professional websites using Elementor's drag-and-drop visual editor seamlessly. The Hello theme allows you to create and adjust every part of your website, including the header and footer, to suit your design and business needs.
With the Hello theme, you have full customization options and can enjoy the freedom to build any type of website, taking advantage of all of Elementor's features to create stunning websites that display perfectly on any device .
Hello is designed for optimal page speed, performance and SEO, improving your search engine rankings by providing an excellent user experience and reducing bounce rates. It is open source, RTL compliant and written in clean code, so you can design and develop Hello the way you want.
The7
Looking for a WordPress system that you can customize at will? You've come to the right place. In addition to being fully compatible with Woocommerce, Elementor, etc., The7 provides you with up to 60 templates. Allowing you to create your website in a few clicks. So take advantage of the excellent base that this WordPress theme offers. It is also one of the best selling and most popular themes with over 200,000 sales.
Enfold
This WordPress theme has managed to generate over 200,000 sales as well. It also offers a wide selection of templates. One of its advantages is that it can be used for designing all kinds of websites. It can be a blog, a corporate site, e-commerce, portfolio, etc. Enfold is clearly one of the most popular themes at the moment.
Extra Magazine Theme
The title of this WordPress theme already indicates that it is mostly used for magazine and blog design. In its field, Extra Magazine Theme is undoubtedly among the best. As a proof, it accumulates more than 800,000 downloads to date. Extra magazine allows its users to design a simple and easy to use website. It can be perfectly adapted to the specificities of magazines, while helping them to highlight their content.
The 15 best Wordpress themes: summary
With the multitude of themes available, it is not at all easy to make a choice. If some WordPress themes are free versions, others are rather only paid. However, when choosing, you should take into account the complexity of the WordPress site you want to create. Indeed, it could be that one of the best free WordPress theme versions, will suit you perfectly. So you won't need to spend a single cent on a paid version of a theme.
However, depending on the specifics you want for your site, a paid version of a WordPress theme may be necessary. Whatever your choice, you're bound to find what you're looking for among the 15 best WordPress themes we've just listed. So it's up to you!
