When searching for the best places to get paid WordPress themes online, it quickly becomes clear that the overwhelming popularity of the blogging and site-buildingsolution has spawned an entire theme-building industry of its own.
Known best for its low price, ease of use and powerful functionality, WordPress’ chameleon-like nature — the ability to change the design and layout of a website simply by switching between themes — is one of its most compelling features. Thanks to the literally thousands of themes available, it can also be one of the most challenging.
To guide you through that challenge, and to help you find the right theme for your website, we’ve created a list of the 25 best places to get paid WordPress themes online. Before we jump into the list however, let’s review two key points:
Themes: Free vs. Paid
While our list below focuses on paid themes for WordPress, there are also a number of free themes available for you to use. There’s nothing wrong with using a free theme for your website however, you do need to understand some of the tradeoffs between paid and free.
Design and Layout Options
While many paid themes boast beautiful designs and layouts that are easily changed without coding, free themes often feel dated and have fewer built-in design and layout control options.
Security
You need to be able to trust the source of a free WordPress theme as the theme may contain code that can be harmful to your customers and business. One example is a hidden program that captures and emails credit card information to an identity thief when a purchase is made on your site.
Support and Updates
Theme creators often offer support for paid themes, something that is uncommon for free options.
In addition, WordPress’ frequent new feature and bug fix updates necessitate the development and roll out of theme updates as well (or a theme may break). This is something that paid theme creators do with much more regularity than free theme creators.
WordPress: Hosted vs. Self-Hosted
WordPress comes in two flavors:
Hosted
When you create your WordPress site over at wordpress.com, you’re using the hosted option. While not as customizable as the self-hosted option, it’s the perfect platform if you want to get up and running quickly.
While far fewer than the number for paid themes available to self-hosted WordPress sites, there are currently more than 140 paid templates available for hosted sites.
Self-Hosted
If you decide to create your WordPress website over at one of the many available hosting companies, you’re using the self-hosted option. Infinitely customizable, there are literally thousand of themes available for self-hosted WordPress sites and that’s a good segue to start our list of the best places to get paid WordPress themes.
Best Places to Get Paid WordPress Themes
We’ve broken our list of the best places to get paid WordPress themes into four sections:
Full-Serve
This section is for you if you’re looking for sites that offer beautiful themes with:
- Lots of design and layout options
- Helpful support
- Free feature and bug fix updates
- Responsive web design (If having a responsive site is important to you, make sure to select that option when searching for a theme on one of the sites in this section — as shown below. Some even offer the ability to preview the theme using different devices. Here we’re previewing a site in landscape on a phone.)
Most of these sites also offer a “club” option where you can get access to all of their themes for one super-discounted price that is great for designers and developers as well as for those who want to choose from a variety of themes.
Lastly, the themes at many of these sites include custom shortcodes; special blocks of text that, as you can see in the example below, add useful design and functionality to your site’s posts and pages.
Framework
These sites offer themes that are built on top of a framework built on top of WordPress. While a framework can add lots of features and functionality to your site, it also makes it harder to change to a theme that’s not built on top of that framework. Make sure you look into the tradeoffs before making your decision.
App
These themes offer specific functionality right out-of-the box and can be very useful if you want to get a certain type of site up and running fast.
A la’ Carte
These sites act as marketplaces where individual developers sell their themes. Some themes are better supported than others so pay attention to:
- Which versions of WordPress the theme works with,
- Whether customer questions are being answered and issues resolved,
- How often the theme is updated (does it keep up with WordPress updates?), and
- The ratings and reviews of past customers.
Best Places to Get Paid WordPress Themes: Full-Serve
Themes Kingdom
Theme Kingdom offers a good-sized collection of themes. As with many of the sites in this section, the site divides its themes into categories as shown below:
Organic Themes
If you’re looking for an interesting design, you’ll find a small but impressive set of themes here.
Elegant Themes
You’ll find a solid set of themes at an amazing price here. If you’re looking for responsive Web design, make sure to use the theme filter.
FrogsThemes
The folks at FrogsThemes focus on niche sites for small businesses (think accounting, plumber, florist, etc.). Their club price is low and, as you can see below, they offer add-ons to help get your site up and running more quickly.
ThemeFuse
This site features reasonably priced, beautiful themes. What else can you ask for? How about the ability to try the theme before you buy? That’s a good thing.
SoloStream
SoloStream offers a broad selection of responsive themes on its site. If that’s important to you, then give them a look.
Obox
You’ll find a lot of unique and creative designs here — a definite must-see destination when you’re shopping around for a theme.
MyThemeShop
MyThemeShop offer a large, varied and very well-priced set of themes, each one of which is bursting at the seams with added functionality such as Google fonts, custom post types, testimonials and more.
Template Monster
Offering thousands of themes, this site is a monster! They also offer a nice set of add-ons to help get your site up and running more quickly and they’ll throw in the right to use the stock photos shown in the site preview. And, if you want to be the only business that uses one particular theme, they offer the option to purchase an exclusive license meaning that no one but you can use that theme.
WooThemes
Best known for their wildly popular e-commerce plugin, WooCommerce, you’ll find a ton of useful themes here, all of which, as you might expect, work perfectly with WooCommerce. They also offer the Canvas theme — a very customizable theme that can be changed without coding.
Press75
Press75 offers clear and airy themes at a great price — what’s not to like?
cssigniter
You’ll find a good-sized selection of beautiful themes here, many of which are designed for a specific purpose (e.g. a portfolio site, a travel guide site, a hotel site, etc.).
Swift Ideas
Swift Ideas offers a small but unique collection of themes to an impressively large number of customers. The site definitely worth a look if you want a solid, versatile theme.
InkThemes
Offering a well-designed set of responsive themes, these folks also have a marketplace where you can shop for themes submitted by others.
Gabfire
The Gabfire collection is made up of beautiful, eye-catching themes that are versatile and responsive. They focus on providing “no-coding necessary” themes and they’ve done a nice job building a control panel that covers almost every change you might want to make.
TeslaThemes
Certainly the coolest-named site on this list, TeslaThemes offers clean, responsive themes stuffed full of features and functionality that you just have to see.
MH Themes
Though their heaviest focus is on news and editorially-based looks, this site offers a small selection of other themes as well. Of course, if you want a news or editorially-based theme, this site is a must visit.
Themezilla
The words for this site are clean and functional and if that makes you sit up and take notice, then you’re going want to visit them today.
ThemeTrust
The last entry in this section offers a wide variety of well-crafted and good-looking WordPress themes. If you’re looking for something a bit different, look here.
Best Places to Get Paid WordPress Themes: Framework
StudioPress
This site is the home of Genesis, a popular and well-designed framework with powerful features and a nice-sized collection of themes. They’ve put a lot of work in here and it shows.
Headway
Headway is best known as the “drag-and-drop” theme and that’s just what it provides. Want to change your site’s layout — just drag and drop the page elements around. Want to change your site’s theme or add a new type of “block” (e.g. a gallery, an online community, etc.)? Just pay to extend your Headway account and you’re off to the races. This is the ultimate “no-coding necessary” solution.
Best Places to Get Paid WordPress Themes: App
AppThemes
Do you want to create a fully functional job-posting site? How about a classified site or a business directory? You can have all three and more right out of the box, and for a reasonable price, over at this site.
Templatic
These folks offer fully functional themes all set up for e-commerce. If you want to sell classified ads, tickets for an event or real estate, then surf, don’t walk, over to this site.
Best Places to Get Paid WordPress Themes: A la’ Carte
ThemeForest
If you want a huge selection, this site is the spot for you. With over 5,000 WordPress themes for sale, there’s something for everyone here.
MOJO Themes
MOJO Themes is another huge site. And you’ll find themes for all types of businesses and purposes here, from restaurants to portfolios.
Image: Organic Themes
