When you’re starting a WordPress site – whether for a personal or business venture – it’s always tempting to keep costs down as low as possible. With plenty of free WordPress themes available, why would anyone pay for premium WordPress themes?
There is nothing inherently wrong with free WordPress themes, depending on the purpose of your site. We’ll look at this in more detail further on.
For now, let’s dive into our list of the top 7 benefits of premium WordPress themes.
Access to Tech Support
Having access to ongoing and on-demand tech support is one of the primary benefits of a premium WordPress theme. No matter what theme you choose, you’re sure to have questions along the way. The developers of free WordPress themes, similar to those who offer free WordPress plug-ins and tools, usually provide limited support through a web forum but are not known for providing fast and comprehensive answers through support tickets or emails.
At Fuel Themes, full support is offered as part of the price of our premium WordPress themes. This means that if you have a question, you can open a support ticket and be confident that you’ll get a quick reply and that we won’t stop working with you until your concern is resolved. It’s part of what you’re paying for when you purchase one of our premium themes. If you chose a free WordPress theme, however, you would likely need to browse through page after page of support forums, hoping that someone else had asked a similar question in the past and that a helpful response had been given. How would your time be best spent?
Always Up-To-Date
Perhaps the most important benefit of a premium WordPress theme for security, premium themes will include regular updates, ensuring ongoing compatibility with the latest WordPress updates. Running an outdated theme – or worse, an outdated copy of WordPress – leaves your site vulnerable to malicious attacks.
Built-In SEO
A common feature of premium WordPress themes is that inbuilt SEO features help your website rank higher on Google and other search engines. SEO best practices change over time, making it important that the SEO features within your theme stay up-to-date. A free WordPress theme which hasn’t been updated for a year or more will be all but useless when it comes to helping your site rank today.
Easy to Customise
Premium WordPress themes will include a theme options panel, allowing you to make easy customisations to fine tune the look and feel of your website without ever touching the underlying code.
Responsive Design
Today, people are increasingly accessing websites from mobile devices rather than desktop computers or laptops. We all know how frustrating it can be when the site you’re trying to look at on your phone just doesn’t display properly. Today, all premium WordPress themes will offer full responsivity, ensuring that your valuable content looks just as good on a tiny mobile screen as it does on a larger tablet or anything in between. A responsive WordPress theme like Bronx will ensure that your website visitors stay on your site, rather than flicking over to your competitor’s site in frustration.
Totally Unique
You know that list of free things shown to you when you first set up your WordPress site? That same list is shown to everyone else setting up their WordPress sites, which means that there are a lot of websites running the same theme. In fact, some of the more popular and nicely designed themes have over a million downloads. Premium themes, on the other hand, are used by a far greater proportion of the WordPress population, because the payment requirement acts as a barrier, stopping the vast majority of people from using the same thing. Besides, premium themes are easily customisable, making your website truly unique.
Value for Money
The initial cost of purchasing a premium WordPress theme usually pays for itself within the first few months of running your site. The inbuilt security features and ongoing updates of a premium theme mean that you won’t have to urgently hire a developer or WordPress expert to recover your site should it end up hacked or become the victim of a malicious attack. Similarly, the inbuilt SEO features of a premium WordPress theme could save you the cost of hiring an expensive SEO expert.
Choosing Between Free and Premium WordPress Themes
This is not to say that free WordPress themes are inherently wrong or that no one should use them. It will depend on the purpose of your site and what you hope to get out of your theme. Here’s a very quick guide to helping you decide between free and premium WordPress themes.
- If you’re starting a personal blog and have no plans to monetize your site in the future, a free WordPress theme and free WordPress plug-ins and tools will probably provide everything you need.
- If you want to differentiate your site from your competitors with a unique look; you need access to different features and functionalities; you want to be able to customize and fine-tune your site; you need access to ongoing tech support and advice; or if your site will be an e-commerce site or monetized with ads, you’d probably be better off making the initial investment of a premium WordPress theme.
To find out more about how a responsive WordPress theme like Bronx could benefit your business, contact us today. The team at Fuel Themes is always ready to answer questions about how our themes can help you launch the perfect website for you.