Are you looking for the best free WordPress themes to give your website that polished and professional look? Luckily, there are tons of fantastic free WordPress themes that can save you money. While still making your site look like you hired a professional web designer.
In this guide, we’ve done the research for you and hand-picked the best free WordPress themes you can start using in no time.
Are Free WordPress Themes Good for Your Site?
Yes, free WordPress themes are good for your website!
Themes such as Astra even help you with over 200 pre-built Starter Templates. You could choose to create a website of any kind.
If a free version of a theme has everything you need, there’s no reason to move to a premium version.
How to Choose the Best Free WordPress Theme
When selecting a free theme for your WordPress website, you need to consider a few things, and they are:
Updates
Most developers continue to update and provide support for their themes, while some don’t. We suggest working with regularly updated themes.
Compatibility
A compatible theme minimizes risk and helps your site run smoothly. With all your plugins and addons you may have installed.
Active Installation
The more active installations a WordPress theme has, the more people are using it, which is a good sign.
Customization
Flexible customization functionality in a free theme is a must if you want to create a website as you wish. Look for page builder compatibility as a minimum.
10 Most Popular and Best Free WordPress Themes are:
1. Neve
Neve is a great WordPress theme to try out if you want to get your site online quickly. And use an out-the-box design that you can import with a couple of clicks.
It also happens to be one of our very own themes, and despite being newer than some of our other creations, it has grown to become our flagship theme. That’s partially because of how quickly it exploded in popularity on the themes scene. Within a few months of its release, it made its way onto the popular tab at WordPress.org, and it has managed to stay there until today.
The design is modern, optimized for mobile devices, the theme loads fast, and doesn’t take a lot of your web server’s resources. It also offers 20+ free starter sites, and even more of them if you decide to upgrade from lite to the premium theme.
While other themes on this list offer starter sites as well (in the form of various page templates), Neve does a better job of inviting the user to pick one right after installing the theme. This makes it a great solution to build a landing page with. That way, you’re not stuck with the site looking unrefined.
2. Astra
Astra is one of the most popular and also one of the fastest-growing WordPress themes of today.
What sets it apart is that it’s a performance-oriented minimal theme that only gives you very basic features out the box, albeit in a very functional wrapper. You can pick which modules you need and activate/deactivate them accordingly.
Another advantage of Astra’s is that it’s compatible with the most popular page builders on the market (Elementor, Beaver Builder, Brizy), and, of course, the Gutenberg editor. There are also starter sites available for each of the builders. All this means that you can build a website with Astra quickly, and then customize it to fit your needs 100% with unlimited color options and so on. However, the out-the-box design of the theme isn’t much until you import a starter site on top of it.
3. OceanWP
OceanWP is in many ways similar to Astra – the way the theme delivers its features is similar, and the focus on minimalism and performance is also similar.
You use this theme by selecting which features you need and then fine-tune the individual aspects of your site. The degree of possible customization is also similar to that of Astra’s.
Above that, OceanWP is very good when it comes to eCommerce-related features and settings. You can look into this if you’re planning to launch an eCommerce store as it has a WooCommerce integration.
The theme is also compatible with page builder plugins. However, again, the out-the-box design doesn’t look like much.
Are you looking for a fast yet user-friendly theme? If so, you might want to check out Kadence.
4. Kadence
This is a relatively new theme that is both lightweight and fast loading. It comes with a built-in drag-and-drop header and footer builder, a library stocked with starter templates, and extensive integration with many popular plugins.
It’s definitely one of the simpler themes on this list. However, it might be the perfect choice if you’re looking for a beginner-friendly theme that doesn’t come with an overwhelming amount of settings and options.
5. Sydney
The Sydney theme is designed for companies and freelancers who want to present a strong online presence. The customization options are rather expansive, with options for Google Fonts, logo uploads, and more. The full-screen slider works nicely for those who want to show off large images or promotional banners, while the full color control offers the ultimate branding environment. Sticky navigation helps people move through your site, and the front page blocks act as somewhat of a drag and drop interface for professionally designing a clean interface.
The theme is responsive for those who want to view the site on mobile devices, and it comes with over 600 Google Fonts for modifying your typography. Sydney is completely translation-ready for reaching out to those who don’t speak your languages, and the parallax background adds a creative aspect to your site. You can choose between a static image or slider, and implement social icons to send customers to your Facebook and Twitter pages.
