One of the major benefits of using WordPress for your website is you can choose from thousands of free and premium themes to give your site the look you want it to have.
While it’s true there are plenty of stylish, free WordPress themes you can download from the WordPress.org Theme Directory, premium themes help make your site stand out from the crowd of lookalike WordPress sites.
Here are some of the biggest reasons why you should consider switching to a premium theme:
1. Better quality themes
Most free themes are generally well-coded, however, these are often not SEO-optimized. Premium themes, on the other hand, are usually up-to-date and adhere to standard coding practices.
Better theme code reflects on your website’s page load speed. And because of this, websites with premium themes generally rank higher on search engines than those using free themes.
2. Better support
Most free theme developers have no incentive to provide support to their users. More often than not, support can be found in WordPress forums with the developer answering questions when they feel like it.
With premium themes, however, you get priority support from developers. You have access to them via chat, email, forum or ticket support, and you can expect to receive a response in a timely manner.
3. Extensive documentation
Having a well-documented theme is important. Free themes rarely include documentation, and you’re usually left on your own to figure out how to use a theme.
With premium themes, however, most developers and theme shops include extensive documentation. This makes it easier for them to support their customers as they can easily direct them to the knowledgebase article or tutorial that will help solve their specific problems. This means less time answering support questions and more time developing even better themes.
4. Customization options
While you can customize free themes, your options are very limited especially if you don’t know how to code. Even if you do, it will still take you hours editing code just to change a few elements on your web page.
With premium themes, you often have a range of options to choose from. You can easily design your site to make it look unique by using different layouts, fonts, colors, images, etc. And it won’t take you hours to do all these on a premium theme – with just a few clicks, you’ll have a gorgeous website at your fingertips!