I’m listing only those WordPress theme companies, which are very popular and constantly updated. You can pick any theme from the following theme club.
Also, many of them offer child themes which will help you to give a custom design to your site.
Before we move ahead with the list of best WordPress Themes, there are a couple of things that you should know:
There are many themes that you will get online for free, and they will be tagged as “Free WordPress Premium Theme”.
A premium theme with so many qualities is difficult to get for free. Of course; you can get free premium “like” themes with less quality but why compromise with your blog and theme quality?
Before you buy any theme, I suggest you look for a couple of essential features such as:
- SEO optimized Theme.
- Inbuilt Design option.
- Inbuilt setting option.
- Easily Import/Export Settings option.
- Easily customizable.
- Ad Management.
- HTML5
- Responsive Theme
- WordPress Compatibility
- Support
- Price of theme
This is something which we expect in every time, and almost all the major theme club offers such option as inbuilt, or their support forum is full of such WordPress theme tweaking tips and tutorials.
Disclaimer: This article does contain affiliate links. If you purchase a tool through one of the links, SML will receive a small commission for coffee ☕️, at no additional cost to you.
Top WordPress Themes list based on performance:
- Astra
- Newspaper theme (For News sites)
- Genesis Theme
- ElegantThemes
- ThriveThemes
- ThemeForest
Best Premium WordPress themes :
I will start the list with the theme club I have used and have experience with their support and the most important theme itself regarding design, Speed, and usability.
1. Astra Theme
Astra theme is built by the team behind many popular plugins and this is perhaps the fastest WordPress theme out there.
This theme has been around for many years and the free version has more than 600,000+ downloads and 3100+ 5-star ratings. Astra theme is ideal for individual bloggers or agencies. It is compatible with all popular WordPress page builder plugins and is very light-weight (Below 50Kb)
The theme is priced reasonably and for only $59 you can buy Astra pro. If you are a WordPress agency, you can buy the mini agency bundle for $169.
The agency bundle is ideal for companies who are offering WordPress services as it comes bundled with plugins like Convert Pro, Schema Pro, and many other benefits.
2. Newspaper Theme
When it comes to WordPress magazine themes, there’s one name that stands out – Newspaper. This multi-purpose theme is well suited for news websites.
With over 93000 sales at ThemeForest, Newspaper is one of the most popular WordPress magazine themes of all time
Key features of Newspaper theme:
- Optimized performance – around 2.2 second load times for a full demo site in my own performance tests.
- 90+ importable demo sites – choose between importing demo content or just demo theme settings.
- Visual, drag-and-drop design – customize demo site templates and build your own designs using the bundled tagDiv Composer page builder for the frontend.
- 1,000+ importable section templates – choose from over 1,000 article and page templates to import to the tagDiv composer.
- Header/footer builder – design your own custom headers or footers.
- Mobile-friendly – you get responsive design, Google AMP support, as well as a bundled (and optional) mobile theme plugin.
- Integrations – Newspaper integrates with WooCommerce, Instagram, bbPress, BuddyPress, and more.
- Built-in banner ad spots – easily insert AdSense or other banner ads on your site. You can also include your own ad placements with the tagDiv Composer.
Read Newspaper theme review to learn everything about this popular theme.
3. Genesis Theme
I’m a huge fan of the Genesis theme because it offers all the latest features you can expect in a premium WordPress theme. Moreover, it works great with the popular SEO plugin “Yoast SEO”.
What I like the most about Genesis is, that no coding knowledge is required to use this theme.
All you need to do is, get the Genesis theme framework, select the skin you want to use, and simply configure your new theme.
This is as easy as it sounds, and your blog will have a stylish theme. Recently, popular WordPress managed host: WPEngine acquired StudioPress themes and now this one is actively developed.
This adds more reason for anyone to use the Genesis theme. Genesis is what I use as a base theme at ShoutMeLoud with a customized skin.
If you are looking for a single recommendation, I would suggest you browse themes at Genesis and pick one which suits your taste.
4. Divi by Elegant Themes
If you are planning to set up multiple blogs with different designs and at an affordable price, the Elegant theme club should be your choice. They are one of the cheapest premium WordPress theme companies, which offers 87 unique premium WordPress theme design for $89/year. Elegant themes offer access to all their Premium WP Themes for $89.
This is like a one-time investment, and you can use different themes on your WP Site. Apart from existing themes, you will also be getting free access to all new and updated themes.
5. ThriveThemes
ThriveThemes is going places in 2024 with its great suite of WordPress themes & page builder plugin. Personally, I admire their voice WordPress theme which is idle for anyone who wants to create a blog for personal branding.
Thrive themes are created for speed & conversion. Needless to mention the SEO feature of it, as all the theme clubs that I have listed on this page are SEO friendly. With Thrive Themes, you can lower down your plugin usage as all themes have inbuilt features such as related posts, and social sharing buttons.
Overall, from the feature & pricing point of view, ThriveThemes is an ideal option.
6. Theme Forest
If you are someone, who is hunting for an entirely unique and latest WordPress theme, my recommendation is to try ThemeForest. Unlike other theme clubs, ThemeForest is a place for freelancers and WordPress designers to sell their themes using the Themeforest marketplace.
They have their set of quality guidelines and all themes on ThemeForest are unique and up to date. If you are shopping for a design theme, you should check our ThemeForest themes once.
Well, a list of such WordPress Premium theme sites is endless, and I will keep updating the list with any new Premium theme club or marketplace that comes out to be useful.
All the above websites provide attractive and quality themes for your self-hosted WordPress blog.
Do share with us, from which website you bought the WordPress theme for your website or blog?
Here are a few hand-picked guides for you to read next:
- 7 Helpful Tips To Choose A Great WordPress Theme On ThemeForest
- Why Anyone Can Download Premium WordPress Theme For Free?
- How Much Does it Cost to Start a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog?
Genesis has always been my favourite but elegant theme looks like what I have been looking for. Thanks dear for this cool list. BTW the Mytheme link is not working.
Theme junkie support is best, they replied within minutes.
Thrive themes has many features like inbuilt shortcode, image optimization and much more.
Both my favorite
i am not saying that Elegant or Theme Junkie and the other are not great but in my mint the guys from ThriveThemes rock! :)) i just love their work!
The listing feature of theme above is great for designer but for SEO the theme should optimize to make load faster.
Hi harsh, you point some good wordpress themes club. I like theme junkie themes they offer very good theme with comprehensive price and there theme is seo optimize too.
Thank you for the article. I took the plunge and signed up with thrives theme. I just purchased a handful of xyz domains and I am looking forward to having some fun, cheers!
Sir can you tell me about Flexithemes that it is good or not,I am thinking to buy theme from them
Hi, How about Templatic? These guys are having very good themes.
Does all the themes from themejunkie are SEO optimized?
Genesis and Elegant are far better than Thrive. While Thrive has a good SEO package, it will cost you. It is not $60 or $70 as expressed–that is only their introductory fee at a discount to rope you in. Be especially wary of their “automatic renewal” scheme, hidden. The annual fee is now triple that, with no notice to the customer of any automatic renewal (they renew even though your website is non-existent or ended–gosh, one would think they would check if one’s website still exists!! (thinking their SEO rankings here).
Thrive customer service is childish and horrible, nose thumbed up without care for the customer. Good technicals, but poor financials, and non-existent customer service.
Genesis = easy; Elegant = better themes.
Genesis framework would be great to use. Great seo tools as well.
Hi Harsh,
I just purchased my first premium WP theme – Genesis. As always, I kind of follow your suggestions like Bible. I was contemplating getting the theme right from the begininning, but there are so many things to take care of… ! I used your link for the purchase – my two cents for the inspiration & support from you.
Cheers,
Rupak
HI Harsh
wonderful post just when I was researchin paid themes.
I want to buy a genesis or the thrive theme (really loved the look of that)
but I don’t have credit card or Paypal (my banks don’t allow paypal payment ).
Can you suggest something which can be bought using netbanking or PAYUmoney?
Mythemeshop is another best free and premium themes designer with very affordable price
harsh, thanks for all these great links but i want to know that if we are opting to hire a web designer, will it be a good option coz then we can customize the blog design by our own only. Tell your opinion on this thing and others are also free to share their ideas.
Hi Harsh, It was great article. I’m planning to use genesis framework with third party child theme. should I use SEO by yoast or let genesis theme to control the SEO?
Hi Gaurav, It is always great idea to Yoast, because genesis basic SEO settings are just too limited eventually!
You should use SEO by Yoast along with it.
Thanks for the great list. My favorites are Themeforest (huge number of themes) and the Dottoro Theme (several useful features and its visual editor is awesome).
Very good information for Blog theme. It will be very helpful for new blogger. Every thing very is not always good. You have mentioned so many theme sites but cost of themes provided by them is also important.
I like themesforest and solestream… I make use of solestream for my blog
Theme-Junkie is what i recommend ,they are awesome