Free Theme or Premium Theme? Advantages and Disadvantages
People ask me: why pay for a premium theme if I can download hundreds of them for free? Well, that is probably because you don’t care as much for your blog as the rest of us.
Let us see what are the advantages and disadvantages of using a free theme or a premium them for your blog.
I remember the ol’ days when the Internet wasn’t as big as it is today, way before Google and Digg. There was no BitTorrent, there was no P2P, there was (almost) nothing.
Now, in those days, for people like me, who were only learning about the Internet, there wasn’t much to do: read some news, join a forum, waste time on IRC, etc.
Almost every web-site that you would visit would look like crap, especially small web-sites. Thus the era of “web designers” began: teenagers and students started ripping off companies for ugly sites done in Microsoft Frontpage and other site building tools. All was well.
Some years passed and BitTorrent took the world by storm. One of the side-effects of that is not as popular as the video/music sharing. It is that of sharing web-site templates.
Now web-designers had to face a small decline in job requests, as basically any kid with some basic knowledge of HTML editting could download via BitTorrent full packs of professional templates ripped off from sites like TemplateMonster.com. I had a bunch of clients who preferred paying 200$ for a full (buggy) flash site instead of developing a very own identity on the web.
The same thing happens now with the Free vs Premium themes for WordPress and the rest of the available CMSs. Well, both free and premium themes are here to stay.
Free Themes
Advantages:
- They are free (duh).
- You can change them as often as you like, without getting slapped in the… wallet.
Disadvantages
- Usually they lack support from the designer/developer (don’t expect updates).
- If the theme is good, you will see it often on other blogs, so you will not stand out in the crowd.
- Most free themes are not high-quality, sometimes the features are crudely implemented.
Premium Themes
Advantages:
- Developers of good Premium Themes will always provide full support and maybe offer to implement it on your blog, thus saving you time and headaches.
- If you bought an exclusive theme, you know that you’re the only one using the theme (if it doesn’t get ripped).
- You can ask the developer/designer to make some custom adjustments to the theme, so that it better suits your needs.
- Just like buying something at the Mall, you feel some amount of satisfaction
Disadvantages
- You have to pay for it, usually by PayPal. For people from some countries in the world, that is a problem, as they don’t have access to PayPal.
Having a premium theme is the same as having a web designer work on your site: it is done by a professional (hopefully), you can proudly advertise your site/blog, without worrying about what people will think. Invest a couple of bucks, that surely worths it.
Have something to say? Leave a comment :)
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2 Comments
I don't think you care more about your site than I do just because you are using a premium theme. I have a free theme, but took quite a bit of time to customize the look so that it is uniquely my own. Customizing free themes is not terribly hard to do. Just replacing the graphics with ones sized the same as the ones in the theme can do most of the trick. Tweaking the html and php a bit can further customize the theme for a unique look and feel. People who offer free themes also provide some support in varying degrees. The author of the theme I'm using has provided some support and I know Lyndi at nice2all.com provides extensive support on her themes all of which are free. Just because someone offers a free theme, doesn't automatically mean they produce shoddy or poorly coded products. To even hint that this is a fact is a slap in the face to those who believe in open source (which by the way, Wordpress is -- free that is -- slipshod coding there??) Surely you can find other reasons for supporting premium themes than to resort to insulting those who code and/or use themes offered freely.
@Margaret: thank you for your comment. I would like to point out that I did NOT say that ALL free themes are bad. Most of them are, that does not mean that they are badly coded. Also it seems that another thing has been misunderstood (my fault): by a "free theme" I mean the ones you just unpack and activate. If you customize a couple of things on it - that is a different thing. The free theme becomes an unique free theme, which I salute. I did not intend to insult my fellow WP'ers whom I respect very much. So if somebody felt insulted - have mercy :)
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