First impressions mean everything and in this digital age that oftentimes means your website. With hundreds of places to find free WordPress themes on the internet today, it’s important to select the right one for your business.
No pressure, right?
As the preferred content management system (CMS) on the market, WordPress is a great choice for supporting your blog or business website. With its extreme versatility, it’s no surprise that a wide variety of both free and premium themes exist that offer easy set-up features and seamless designs.
The truth is, there’s most likely a WordPress template to address all of your website needs. The tough part is trying to find a theme and understanding it’s functionality when there are so many sites to choose from.
Free WordPress Themes vs. Premium WordPress Themes
By now, you have probably read about the debate between premium and free WordPress themes. Yes, you can play the safe route and pay for a premium WordPress theme that offers clean code and constant support.
But, there are free WordPress themes for businesses and blogs that are worth the risk.
It’s important to note that there is risk involved with anything free, but it doesn’t mean your website will suffer in the end. Using a free WordPress theme can get the job done while saving you money.
Win-win!
Free WordPress themes need to include exceptional appearance and functionality for any plugins you may need to add in the future. Additionally, they need to adhere to search engine optimization (SEO) standards, have a responsive design and offer some sort of technical support.
For example, you can have a website that looks fantastic and is user-friendly but lacks the necessary features such as opt-in mailing lists and SEO capabilities.
A beautiful design won’t help you in the long run if the functionality isn’t where it needs to be.
Finding the Best Free WordPress Themes
While credible companies will review and test code themselves, it’s still really important to do your own research to ensure the template will meet your individual needs.
In good practice, pay attention to reviews, sales, and ratings before installing a theme into your website. You can learn a lot from past customers and their overall confidence in the theme company.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re not alone.
Luckily, there are a lot of places to pick your free WordPress template from. These companies and their developers have earned credibility through quality themes, customer reviews, and consistent support.
We’ve put together a list of where to find the most popular free WordPress themes that offer beautiful designs and powerful functionality to make you reconsider paying for your template.
Without further ado, follow along for 15 places to find the best free WordPress themes.
1. WordPress Theme Directory
If you’re looking for a company you can fully trust, you can always select themes directly from the WordPress Theme Directory.
Their templates are reviewed and verified by WordPress itself and you can easily confirm the effectiveness through other customer reviews.
2. Graph Paper Press
Graph Paper Press creates both premium and free WordPress themes targeted to artists and photographers. With their great minimal designs, the themes let your work shine.
Graph Paper Press templates include a ton of great features such as customizable layouts, automatic updated, e-commerce integration, mega menus and more. These are recommended as the best free WordPress themes for blogs.
3. ThemeGrill
ThemeGrill hosts many popular free WordPress themes that are easy and flexible with advanced capabilities. Even better, you can upgrade free themes to the premium version down the line if you’re looking for more functionality.
Features include drag and drop page builders, widget areas, Google maps, customized blocks and SEO compatibility.
4. MyThemeShop
MyThemeShop supplies both premium and free WordPress business templates with clean designs and 24/7 technical support.
With around 350,000 customers, you can feel confident with these well-established developers. Use the customizable theme for multiple website domains and expect updates for one year, secure code, and a 30-day money-back policy if you are not happy with the design.
5. CSSIgniter
If you’re looking to build a website with minimal coding, CSSIgniter is a great choice. With both free and premium options, these themes have more than 80 customized settings that are SEO-optimized.
With great WordPress themes for businesses, you can expect responsive designs with color, typography, and social options.
6. Themes Awesome
Themes Awesome has produced a wide array of WordPress beginner-friendly themes that can be installed in a matter of minutes. The templates offer modern designs with powerful customization for many business applications.
While most of their designs come with a cost, you can try their ‘lite’ versions in the WordPress Theme Directory or download from their site directly.
7. Athemes
Athemes offers over 20 free WordPress themes that include clean design aesthetics for a variety of business purposes. Many of the themes include carousels, social sharing, layout customization, and e-commerce plugins.
Additionally, Athemes regularly releases theme updates, translation services, and fast customer support.
8. Colorlib
Colorlib has 15 different free WordPress templates to choose from, all customizable with a premium look. Carefully labeling each theme from an app landing page, lifestyle blog, e-commerce shop, wedding theme and more, you’re able to select the theme that best fits your website needs.
Colorlib also offers a free support team, responsive designs, and customization.
9. WPZOOM
While WPZOOM only offers two free WordPress themes for blogs, their templates are known to be professional quality and used by brands such as Bloomberg and Groupon.
Built for both WordPress beginners and developers, these themes have an easy installation process and responsive support team.
10. Press75
Press75 has created striking templates and offers one free WordPress theme. Their theme ‘So Simple’ demonstrates a minimalist design that lets the blogger focus on their words instead of complex layouts.
Press75’s WordPress themes offer translation services, customized options, SEO-friendly elements, and video tutorials to help with troubleshooting.
11. ThemeFurnance
ThemeFurnace templates excel in both site speed and SEO performance by focusing on streamlined, efficient designs.
With 22 free WordPress themes, you’re able to choose from business, ecommerce, portfolio, and personal website layouts. Expect good plugin compatibility and customization.
12. ThemeZee
Specializing in magazine-style themes, ThemeZee is known for more complex layouts that display a lot of content all at once. You organize the content and layout with the WordPress Customizer, making ThemeZee templates extremely user-friendly.
This company offers some of the best free responsive WordPress themes with custom widgets, clean code, and more.
13. Slocum Themes
Slocum Themes are best known for their user-friendly themes and outstanding support team to help with tricky troubleshooting issues. Their themes also integrate top plugins such as WooCommerce and Gravity Forms.
Additionally, you have the option to upgrade your free WordPress template to a premium version for even more capabilities.
14. ThemeIsle
ThemeIsle is well-known in the WordPress community for their beautiful designs and coding quality. With over 30 free WordPress templates and almost 500,000 customers, these templates are versatile and trusting for a variety of website needs.
ThemeIsle offers live customization, one-minute installation, custom backgrounds, and optimized speeds.
15. RocketTheme
Offering three free WordPress themes, RocketTheme templates are built on Gantry 5 framework to provide user-friendly, customizable, and plugin-compatible designs.
With the combination of top-quality theme and Gantry core features, RocketTheme also offers great technical support.
Next Steps
Finding your first WordPress theme is a big decision and shouldn’t be a rush job. You have a lot of pros and cons to consider theme designs and features before the final installation.
After you’ve decided to go with a free template over premium, you have to be careful when reading over the details, reviews, and the fine print. You need to consider site speed, installation hassle, SEO, technical support, code quality, and third-party plugin integration.
Phew, that’s a lot!
However, with great risk comes great reward and that can certainly be the case with free WordPress templates. The companies listed above all offer the best free WordPress themes for businesses and blogs to excel in the digital world.
Just remember to find the right fit for you. Happy hunting!
Where did you find your free WordPress theme and were you happy with the results?
Post in the comments below!
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