Article Summary:
Page 1: Magazine3, Theme-Junkie, Theme Forest, Elegant Themes, InkThemes
Page 2: Theme Shift, Theme Fuse, WPNOW, Themify.me, Theme Trust
Page 3: Mojo Themes, Templatic, Frogs Themes, Obox-Design, Theme Labs
Page 4: DIY Themes, StudioPress, Dream-Theme, App Themes, UFO Themes,
Page 5: , Lizard Themes, Themezilla, Organic Themes, Page Lines, Woo Themes, BONUS: CodeCanyon
21. Lizard Themes
Not much is known about Lizard Themes (the first theme they introduced was on May 27, 2013), but as we can see they offer some pretty cool themes to play with. All of the themes are powered by the Lizard framework, which makes customization and documentation easy → suitable for coders and people who have never coded a thing in their life. This framework makes it super easy for newbies to move their boxes around, and most of the themes are also responsive.
As far as costumer care is concerned, they offer personal help, as well as an extensive documentation for frequent questions. Lizard Themes currently owns approximately 20 themes, which are suitable for any type of site. The “My Estate” theme is completely free, so is the “Medicine” theme, and the other themes can be purchased for 29.95$.
Here are our favorite themes by them:
BEST THEMES
[highlight color=”black”] VEIL [/highlight]
[highlight color=”black”] GRASS [/highlight]
[highlight color=”black”] MY ESTATE [/highlight]
[highlight color=”black”] iTheme [/highlight]
22. ThemezillaThemes
Themezilla was launched only one year ago, on May 2012, as a shop window for a successful ThemeForest business. You should learn a little bit about the founder, Clark, here. All themes are sold through ThemeForest for 50 dollars flat, and they can be used on multiple domains.Themezila boasts the best flat-web design themes, which have a clean and elegant design. They are easy to set up, and they give up basic customization features. ThemeZilla offers a clean, modern and elegant collection of themes that are fast, easy to use and relatively cheap. Customer support is timely but not all that personable.
Theme Functionality
From the 22 themes, only six of them are responsive, but they are all works of art. We have enjoyed the minimalist, flat design that Clark promotes on Themezilla. Furthermore, the themes are fully integrated with SEOMoz API, complete with automatic links, SEO optimization, and sitemaps with the help of the WordPress Infinite SEO Plugin. All themes work with the help of the ZillaFramework, which provides styling, general and homepage options.
Customer Service:
Customer service is available to verified customers, in the Theme shop’s forum. You can also make suggestions via Twitter, Facebook or email, but you will be redirected to the forum. Living in another timezone will not make your attempts to contact the company any simpler. Customer support isn’t the best in these conditions, but the answers given on the forums are very useful.
23. Organic Themes
Four years ago, in the idyllic sorroundings of Lahaina, the Hawaiian Island of Maui, David Morgan and Jeff Milone decided to combine their talents. One of them was a former IT employee, and the other a designer. In February 2010 they officially launched their business, and since then they have catered to the needs of over 45.000 customers. Their themes may sound a bit pricey at first (69 dollars), but you are paying for quality, and this means minimalistic, responsive designs which are very well optimized for SEO. The company also offers web-hosting capabilities. Let’s take a look at them before discussing the themes and customer support:
Just Me – $20 a month – Free domain Included, automatic WordPress installation, automatic Organic Theme installation, cloud hosting environment, varnish caching, 30GB of bandwidth (30K visitors per month), 99.9% uptime, 3GB of diskspace, 20 POP3 email accounts, 2 domains, 10 subdomains, SFTP Access, cPanel control.
My Business – $50 a month – Free domain included, automatic WordPress installation, automatic Organic Theme installation, cloud hosting environment, varnish caching, 200GB of bandwidth (200K visitors per month), 99.9% uptime, 20GB of diskspace, 50 POP3 email accounts, 10 domains, 50 subdomains, SFTP access, cPanel control.
My Enterprise – id=”mce_marker”50 a month – Free domain included, automatic WordPress installation, automatic Organic Theme installation, cloud hosting environment, varnish caching, 1TB of bandwidth (1M visitors per month), 99.9% uptime, 100GB of diskspace, 1000 POP3 email accounts, 50 domains, unlimited subdomains, SFTP access, cPanel control.
Theme Functionality:
At the moment there are not very many themes to chose from, mainly because the company is new, and also because developers are relentlessly working to better the already existing themes, so instead of leaving them as they are, they are always tweaking them. Most of them have responsive design and are compatible with modern browsers such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera and IE8+. Theme categories include eCommerce, business, non-profit, photography, art, music, blogging, and portfolio. While there are not very many options for business people, the gallery type themes are excellent for artists and designers.
All themes developed by Organic Themes are easy to customize, even if one does not have knowledge in HTML or CSS codes. Features include widget ready sidebars, gravity form integration and auto-resizing of images. Furthermore, all themes are properly coded for SEO, and the blog page templates allow you to display the featured blog on your site. As far as theme graphics are concerned, Organic Themes offers high-resolution, amazing-quality images. Granted, they may be one colored, but they have been inspired by the flat web design trend → special fonts, beautiful color palettes, perfectly blended, emphasize on the blog title, and impeccable tastes in symbols. Organic Themes believes in the beauty of simplicity and they promote user-customization of their themes.
Customer Support:
One thing we did not like about Organic Themes is the fact that they only offer support during US working time (from 9 A.M. ’till 6 p.m). This doesn’t mean that they won’t reply to emails after hours. Replies to emails usually come promptly, and the team is extremely friendly and willing to help with any problems. One word of caution though: the forums are like the enchanted forest, it is very easy to get lost.
Text-based tutorials with images are included, and they are pretty comprehensive, but videos can save time and make things easier to understand when it comes to WordPress development. (Source: WP Themes)
Pricing and Plans:
As we said before, the prices may be a bit spicy, but you are actually paying for quality, and support that comes with it (support will only be available 12 months after you buy the theme, and after that you must renew your subscription). There might also be a catch, if you only purchase the theme you might have to also purchase a plugin afterward, which is 39 dollars. There is also an enterprise option, which is worth 249$ and it includes all themes. Considering that there are approximately 30 themes, it may be a bargain you should make.
We recommend that you read this honest review about Organic Themes before proceeding further.
BEST THEMES
ADVENTURE THEME
NATURAL THEME
SEED THEME
SHOP THEME
PROFILE THEME
RESPONSE THEME
TECH THEME
HEALTH & BEAUTY THEME
24. Page Lines
Page Lines is an incredible competitor in its own right. The first, and most striking thing about it is that it only offers five themes, which pales in comparison to services that offer 20,30, 50 or hundreds of themes. In an interview, Andrew Powers explained that he wanted to put out a product that he would be really be proud of. His team wanted to create a product that is better, faster and easier to use than any other theme out there, and while this may seem impossible, they actually managed to do this.
Theme Functionality
The Page Lines themes are without a shadow of a doubt the best, most stable and functional themes we have ever laid eyes upon. They have recently released a true plug-and-play/drag-and-drop theme, called PlatformPro, but more on this later. From the first moment you install the theme you will be overwhelmed by the incredible amount of options in the dashboard. They held true to their promise: no coding will be needed, because everything can be done from the dashboard. Reformatting footers, sidebars, adjusting the width and length of the site, navigation bar, widgets etc. has never been easier.
Customer Support:
The support system must also be touched upon. The most basic Pagelines package comes complete with a one year subscription to the support forums (as well as framework updates). But if you purchase a Plus Membership plan, you get the full support experience, with the addition of live chat and ticket support. It is clear that support is a huge priority for Pagelines – with a focus on providing a quick and easy theme design solution, they must excel at producing results for their customers.(Source Manage WordPress)
Pricing and Plans:
There are two sets of flavors, each with two price points. The pricing is very easy to understand: because it is a framework it will give you exactly what you need, depending on whether it is meant for personal or professional use. There are no recurring fees, and if you simply wish to have the framework you will have to pay a little extra, but you will also receive a plethora of additional features in return.
Page Line’s DMS
Although we were a little skeptical about it, especially because the release was delayed for a while, and because there were many videos announcing it on the blog, the final release of Page Line’s DMS was impressive. It is a free theme, which you can download and test from their homepage.
KEY POINTS:
WordPress’ Theme Customizer is disabled (understandably)
DMS stands for “Design Management System”
It has a responsive, drag & drop 12-column grid system.
You adjust grid columns by clicking the left and right arrows
There are a number of free sections you can place into your site
There are also a number of Pro-only sections, and other paid addons in the Store
They’re definitely not shy about asking you to upgrade to the Pro version (which starts at $8/month)
Overall, it’s pretty cool, and you should at least try it out locally (like I did in my video)
Source: ThemeLab
BEST THEMES:
HEADLINES THEME
SOPHISTIQUE THEME
FLATTEN THEME
TEAMMATE THEME
CORPORATION THEME
25. Woo Themes
Adrian Pienaar, entrepreneur, designer and developoer, also known as Adii Rockstar is the genius mind behind WooThemes. Adrian said that he loves to design because he enjoys the freedom of creativity which comes with the design of a WordPress theme. Like the previous example, Woo Themes is also a provider of premium WordPress themes, that focus on variaties such as portfolio, gallery, business and personal styles. As a matter of fact, his company has already become one of the staple WordPress Theme providers. The name is a combination of w00t with WordPress and themes.
Theme Functionality:
At the moment, Woothemes offers a collection of over 80 themes for all type of websites: magazines, business, app, WooCommerce, personal and multimedia. Each of them works with the help of the Woo FrameWork. However, it seems that some of them have been retired (approximately 59), and you will not receive support for them. You are on your own!
Most themes have a solid framework, which is continuously being tuned and tweaked in order to better suit users. The great thing about them is the fact that they offer a lot of control, without having to use coding. They are extremely functional, and new features are constantly being added (eg. SEO inbuilt options and Woo custom navigation). In terms of theme graphics, most of them are very beautiful: they have artistic headers, beautifully blended colors, and excellent readability. In general, the graphics are very pleasing, compared to competitors.
Plans and Pricing:
There were a few “scandals” with this company, especially after they decided to change their pricing and plans. The life-time options were no longer available, and the prices became a little spicy. Many customers were very upset with the changes.
Standard Package – $99 – Unlimited domain usage, two bonus themes, one year support and updates
Developer Package – id=”mce_marker”79 – Unlimited domain usage, three bonus themes, one year support and updates, layered Photoshop PSD
Club Subscription:
Standard Club Subscription – id=”mce_marker”99 startup fee + $29 a month. Includes access to all WordPress themes, minimum one new theme per month, support access, regular theme updates, unlimited concurrent domain uses, does not include Photoshop files
Developer Club Subscription – $299 startup fee + $39 a month. Includes access to all WordPress themes, minimum one new theme per month, support access, regular theme updates, unlimited concurrent domain and includes Photoshop files
Customer Support:
We were particularly pleased by the customer support for Woo Themes. They offer full documentation, previously resolved issues, and links to all discussion. Furthermore, they also offer personal support via member’s forum. They believe that it is essential to create relationships with the customer and this is also why they use Twitter and Blog posts to communicate.
BEST THEMES
MAXIMIZE THEME
ON TOPIC THEME
MEMORABLE THEME
ATHENA THEME
BONUS:
21. CodeCanyon
CodeCanyon is an Envato Marketplace. It works pretty much like ThemeForest: developers and users can purchase or sell scripts, and other components of different frameworks and languages like JavaScript, PHP, ASP.NET etc. The usual prices are between 3$ and 25$, according to complexity, quality or overall appeal. You can browse through over 7000 scripts and snippets that have prices starting from id=”mce_marker”.