Currently, over 40% of websites are built using WordPress. Due to its widespread use, there are countless WordPress themes available online. However, the quality varies greatly. For many new users, finding a beautiful theme isn’t difficult, but finding an excellent and fast theme is quite challenging.
At the top are themes created by professional WordPress development teams, which are, of course, the most outstanding. Everyone has different requirements for themes, but if you want to build a stable, fast, highly customizable website, this article can help you. Next, I picked 6 of the most popular and professional Freemium fastest WordPress themes in this article. Truly outstanding themes don’t require too many choices; a few selections are enough.
What is Freemium?
Freemium” is a business model that combines “free” and “premium.” In this model, a product or service is offered in two versions: a free, basic version, and a premium, paid version. The free version typically comes with limited features or functionalities, while the premium version offers additional features, benefits, or an ad-free experience.
The main idea behind the freemium model is to attract a large user base with the free version, and then offer an upgraded, paid version to a subset of those users who are willing to pay for enhanced features or an improved user experience.
The Advantages of Professional WordPress Themes
- Free – Providing a free version allows the theme to reach a larger audience, including users who may be on a tight budget. This can help build a broader user base and increase the theme’s popularity.
- Responsive – They are built with responsive design in mind. This means your website will look and function well on various devices and screen sizes, improving the user experience.
- Fast Speed and high performance – These themes are optimized for speed and performance. They are lightweight and efficiently coded, ensuring website loading faster. This is crucial for user experience and SEO.
- Easy to Use – Professional themes like Kadence and Astra often include starter templates that can jumpstart your website design. These templates are professionally designed and can be customized to suit your brand.
- Compatibility – Professional themes are designed to work seamlessly with popular plugins and page builders. This ensures that you can add various functionalities to your site without compatibility issues.
- SEO-Friendly – These themes often follow best SEO practices, making optimizing your content for search engines easier. Proper SEO can improve your website’s visibility and ranking in search results.
- Customizable – Professional WordPress Themes, like Kadence and Astra, provide extensive customization options. You can easily tailor your website’s appearance and functionality to match your exact needs and branding. This level of customization allows for a unique and professional-looking site.
1. Kadence
We use Kadence for our website. This theme is lightweight and user-friendly. It follows a freemium subscription model, and the free version is typically sufficient for starting a small to medium-sized new website.
The free version of Kadence includes two types of page editors: the built-in Gutenberg module editor and the Elementor page editor, both of which are drag-and-drop. Currently, there are dozens of templates available. If you’re using Kadence, I recommend choosing the Gutenberg editor because it’s included with WordPress and doesn’t require additional payments. Of course, if you’re using Elementor Cloud Hosting, you can also opt for the Elementor page editor because it’s entirely free in Elementor Cloud Hosting.
For beginners, Kadence is very easy to use. Just select the template you need, import template data, and then replace the template’s content with your own as needed.
Kadence is considered lightweight because it has a small file size and uses a progressive code structure for modern PHP. It only loads the resources used on each page, and it doesn’t require any additional plugins. Apart from its two built-in plugins, you can build a complete e-commerce website using only the WooCommerce plugin. This contrasts with many other themes that include numerous plugins to appear feature-rich, but this can slow down the theme’s loading speed.
Additionally, Kadence’s header and footer are both drag-and-drop and divided into three rows. You can freely add widgets and customize their layout, allowing you to create your preferred theme layout. Many themes have fixed header or footer layouts that limit your options, but Kadence provides more control over the elements’ positions, making your website more unique.
You can also customize the page layout, including fonts, colors, social icons, and dropdown menu options. The theme offers transparent and sticky header options as well.
Kadence Theme includes Kadence Block, which contains modules for creating forms, tabs, FAQs, and more. In the past, you might have needed to install separate plugins for these features, but with Kadence Block and the Gutenberg editor, these functionalities are integrated into a single module.
For more features and details, please check out their demo templates. If you’re looking for a free WordPress theme for your e-commerce website, Kadence is undoubtedly the best choice for beginners. It offers speed, SEO optimization, and essential features. Moreover, it’s worth considering an upgrade in the future as your business grows.
2. Astra
Astra is one of the most popular WordPress themes in the world. According to data, over 1.2 million websites use Astra to build their sites. It comes in both free and premium versions. Astra is a lightweight WordPress theme, with less than 50KB of front-end code. It’s fast, fully customizable, and visually appealing, making it suitable for blogs, online stores, and business websites.
Once integrated with Schema.org schema code, Astra can utilize native AMP (a technology optimized for mobile) which is very friendly to search engines. Astra offers many distinctive features and professionally designed templates, fully compatible with page editors like Elementor, Visual Composer, SiteOrigin, Divi, Gutenberg, and more.
Because Astra’s front-end resources are less than 50KB, it significantly reduces website loading times. It uses Vanilla JavaScript to prevent blocking rendering issues with jQuery, ensuring optimal performance. Astra uses default WordPress data and follows the best coding standards to optimize every piece of code. With all these optimizations, Astra loads in less than 0.5 seconds.
You can use custom options to change the layout and width of your website, including headers, footers, blogs, single pages, articles, and more. It also includes dedicated sidebars, allowing you to create page-specific sidebars that override the default ones on your website. You can easily design every section of your website with Google fonts and unlimited colors. Astra’s built-in widgets allow you to add modules with information lists anywhere on the page. The Address widget lets you highlight and display your company’s address anywhere on the page. You can select the social networks you need and easily add social icons to your website through the Astra theme itself.
Astra is fully compatible with their own designed Ultimate Gutenberg Blocks, so you don’t need to install many other third-party plugins. It’s also a responsive theme, adapting to different resolutions and screens. Using Astra is straightforward: install, import, and update content. They offer many free templates, but later on, Astra is a theme worth upgrading, much like Kadence.
3. GeneratePress
GeneratePress is a lightweight responsive WordPress theme that focuses on speed and usability. It comes in both free and premium versions, with the free version offering robust features. Data shows that GeneratePress has been downloaded over 3 million times, and more than 300,000 active websites are using it, which is an impressive number. GeneratePress is so lightweight that when you freshly install this theme, it adds less than 10kb of data to your website. Therefore, GeneratePress delivers high performance and exceptionally fast website loading times.
Starting with minimal overhead is beneficial for any website. As mentioned earlier, GeneratePress not only adds minimal data to a fresh installation but also optimizes site loading speed further. For instance, it has no dependencies, which means it won’t load any data or modules that are not needed, including jQuery. Instead, it uses clean native JavaScript. This eliminates rendering-blocking issues. GeneratePress follows the latest and most stable coding standards, and its code is independently reviewed by responsible members of the WordPress community, ensuring it’s secure and stable.
GeneratePress adheres to accessibility standards, ensuring that any website using it can be accessed by all, so you won’t leave anyone out when people browse your site. The design team leverages WordPress’s new modular editor (Gutenberg) to give you better control over content creation. GeneratePress is also fully compatible with all major page builders, including Elementor and Beaver Builder, and works seamlessly with well-coded plugins like WooCommerce.
GeneratePress is fully responsive, optimized for search engines, and has been translated into over 25 languages by its user community. It also fully supports RTL languages. It offers additional features like microdata integration, 9 widget areas, 5 navigation locations, 5 sidebar layouts, layout controls, hooks and filters, dropdown menus (click or hover), navigation color presets, unlimited website colors, and Google fonts.
This theme is not only the lightest but also feature-rich, making it a valuable tool for beginners looking to create e-commerce websites, with excellent support for woocommerce.
4. Blocksy
Blocksy is a fast, lightweight WordPress theme created using the latest web technologies, and it comes in both free and premium versions. In my experience, the free and premium versions are quite separate. Most free themes are closely tied to their premium counterparts, promoting the premium version by limiting free features. However, Blocksy is different, just like Kadence. Besides the name and the paid version, the functionality you get for free is not restricted.
This theme is built on the concept of the Gutenberg editor and offers many options to make it expandable and customizable. You can easily create various types of websites, such as business agencies, online stores, companies, educational sites, restaurants, blogs, portfolios, landing pages, and more.
According to their development team, Blocksy is written with the cleanest code, with each line of code carefully considered and open to modification and feature additions. By using support for dynamic imports through Webpack, your website loads JavaScript behavior only when needed, reducing loading times significantly.
Like Kadence, you can use Blocksy’s drag-and-drop editor to build custom headers and footers with three rows where you can freely add widgets. Additionally, you can customize all content with Blocksy, giving you control over layout settings, sidebars, pagination, single pages, and more. Blocksy offers multipurpose starter templates built for different business types and industries, making it easy to install and import templates to create your website.
You can also build your website from scratch because it’s 100% compatible with the Gutenberg editor and modules. It’s also compatible with other popular WordPress page builders, including Elementor, Visual Composer, Beaver Builder, and Brizy. With its responsiveness and adaptability, it supports various device sizes, offers translation support for different languages, and comes with built-in WooCommerce integration for creating online stores. The theme is SEO-optimized and can help increase visitor engagement.
This theme is quite similar to Kadence, and the price for their premium version is actually reasonable. If you plan to start with a free theme, Blocksy is worth a try, and the cost of upgrading later is not high.
5. Zakra
Zakra is also a free, lightweight, modern, and multifunctional WordPress theme with over 100 starter templates and more templates in development. It’s flexible and loads quickly. With Zakra, you can make your website look very attractive and professional. Zakra is suitable for personal blogs, portfolios, e-commerce online stores, business websites, and niche market websites like spas, cafes, charities, yoga, health, weddings, dentistry, education, and more.
Zakra uses a lightweight framework that significantly improves your website’s page loading speed. In testing, Zakra themes have shown outstanding results in various website speed testing tools. With its customization options, you can easily design the header, content layout, and footer, making any changes to your website a breeze. You can freely adjust the website’s width, colors, and choose from hundreds of fonts.
This theme is also compatible with Elementor, Visual Composer, Brizy, and other major page editors, allowing you to create any layout you need. You can start your website with one of over 10 different industries and type templates and design it with your favorite page editor. Zakra also supports multiple languages and right-to-left language modes.
Zakra is fully optimized for SEO and supports major SEO plugins. It’s a responsive theme, adapting to different screen sizes, making it a great choice for beginners building e-commerce websites.
6. Neve
Neve is a super-fast, easy-to-customize WordPress theme with both free and premium versions. It is produced by the well-known themeisle and is a versatile entry-level theme. It’s perfect for blogs, small businesses, startups, agencies, companies, online stores, and portfolios (albums, photography portfolios, photos, product collections…), as well as websites and most types of projects.
Neve is also a theme created to be lightweight, without sacrificing flexibility, with a fresh WordPress installation size as small as 28KB. Its development team prioritizes speed to ensure that all websites using Neve run quickly. In a default installation, Neve loads in less than 1 second (0.6s). The theme offers dozens of free templates that you can easily import and then customize and set up your website. You can customize the header and footer layout with drag-and-drop components, and you can also freely change the page layout and width.
This theme is compatible with Gutenberg and almost all popular page builders: Elementor, Brizy, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, SiteOrigin, and Divi Builder. What’s more, Neve has additional features like one-click rollback to a previous version. In case an update doesn’t work as expected, you can use this feature.
Neve is an AMP-optimized and fully responsive theme, perfectly adapting to any viewing device. It’s lightweight, with a minimalistic design, highly extendable, and features SEO-optimized code that ranks well in Google search results. Neve provides RTL and multi-language translation support and is optimized for WooCommerce online themes. It’s undoubtedly a WordPress theme made for freelancers or hobbyists who seek flexibility and easy setup.
Other Options for Premium themes with a one-time payment
All of these themes coexist with both free and premium options. Typically, you can start with the free version and then upgrade to the paid version, but the paid version is usually on a subscription basis. Are there one-time payment options available? Yes, there are.
There are also many themes with affordable one-time payment options. Specialized theme marketplaces like ThemeForest, similar to eBay, allow designers or teams to establish a store and continuously create and list new themes. Generally, these themes are available for a one-time payment, with lifetime usage and ongoing updates, typically for around six months or a year.
On Themeforest, most themes come with some premium plugins that you can access as long as you activate the theme. However, you can only use these premium plugins in conjunction with the theme you purchased. These themes tend to have a lot of third-party plugins, making them a bit bulkier and slower to load. Still, their overall price is lower, making them suitable for budget-conscious users. Additionally, there are options like Template Monster and Creative Market, which are quite similar.
If you decide to purchase a premium theme, I’m not a big fan of Themeforest. While a few are well-optimized for SEO, most of them rely on various plugins for beautification. Of course, some are good, but they can be challenging to find. I believe that the paid versions of the themes recommended here are more professional (although they are indeed a bit pricier) and better suited for building websites. This is just my opinion, provided for your reference.
More Thoughts for Fastest WordPress Themes
Finally, I want to remind you that it’s best not to search for third-party, low-cost professional WordPress themes(like resellers of Astra or Kadence) online. Firstly, it’s a waste of time, and these versions may make your website insecure. Secondly, these versions can’t receive ongoing updates. When certain themes’ built-in premium plugins are updated, you won’t get the latest features. In the end, you might still need to purchase the paid versions from the official websites. For the sake of saving a few bucks, I don’t think it’s worth it. So, it’s best to purchase from the official website.
