People often ask me why we need a paid Theme for our WordPress blog; A free theme can do the task for me. But the reality is, a paid theme can give you more features, a better performance and a responsive design for all type of devices. In this post, I am going to explain what are benefits of paid themes and why you should buy it. I will also suggest some of the best themes for your blog.
To begin with, let me tell you what is a WordPress theme?
According to WordPress,
Sounds very technical. So in a simple term, a theme is a skin for WordPress blog. It contains files ( Php code, CSS files, HTML) and decides how your blog looks like.
You can customize the different aspect of a blog like a menu, post, pages, background color etc.
A good and responsive theme can attract more readers to your blog and make it look professional.
When a blogger start blogging, they generally preferred a free theme to start with.
They look to Google to find some cool free themes or follow the recommendation from other bloggers.
Why you need a Paid theme?
#1 Professional look –
A paid theme comes with more feature compared to a free theme. Whether it is the menu, post options, ad placements or positioning of components. It also keeps on adding new features and tools. These features make your blog look professional and sleek.
#2 Cross-browser and device support –
Most of the time free theme does not look good on all browser or devices.
That means they are not responsive and you as a blogger have to customize or change the code to keep things in place. You are a blogger and not a theme designer.
A paid theme will take care of all this burden for you. You do not have to worry about cross-browser support.
They mostly create themes with HTML 5 support to make it look great on all devices and browsers.Their developers also supply regular updates to keep it compatible all the time.
#3 Security –
This is the biggest reason why free themes are not good for a longer run. They are normally created once and rarely got updated. They also have major loopholes, which can be hacked and used to damage your blogs. Once your blog is hacked, it is very difficult to revert it to older status.
On the other hand, paid themes have a better security. They offer a regular update for new WordPress release. You never have to worry about security with a paid theme.
#4 WordPress update –
This is a major problem with the free themes. WordPress regularly supply the updates to keep their security up to date. Sometimes when you update WordPress, you blog will stop working as a new update may interfere with the themes.
I often observed blogger with free theme hesitate to update WordPress as they do not want to mess with their blog.
A paid theme will take care of all these problems in the background.
So you never have to worry about updating your WordPress.
#5 Better Performance –
Paid theme make sure their code is optimized and hence they load faster. This reduces your overall load time and improves blog loading time. A free theme just looks good in design but never optimized. So if you wondering why you site is still slow after all optimization, the reason could be a free theme.
A free theme just looks good in design but never optimized. So if you wondering why you site is still slow after all optimization, the reason could be a free theme.
#6 Concept of a child theme –
This feature only comes with a paid theme. A child theme means you do not have to touch original theme to customize the design of your blog.
Whenever you want to make changes, create a child theme and make changes on top of that. This will also make sure your SEO and Google page ranking will not get affected.
#7 Full control –
A free theme requires you to change CSS or PHP files to make changes in your design. This requires some technical knowledge.
A paid theme makes it easier to change or customize the theme. For example menu or background color can be changed by drop down color choice option.
A free theme requires many plugin to get things done because a paid theme comes with all of it naturally.
#8 Advertisement ready –
A paid theme comes ready with the option to place ads anywhere in your blog. The same things are little difficult in free theme as it requires some technical knowledge. Paid theme gives you full control to place ads at suitable or anywhere in the blog. You can start earning revenue from day one.
#9 Phone and online support –
A paid theme provides you support on phone or email. Whenever you have an issue with the theme, you can take help from them. It is very useful for people who are not technical and stuck with some error on WordPress. Some WordPress theme provides help 24*7.
Some of the recommended paid themes:
Conclusion –
A free theme is good for beginners, but certainly it is not good for a longer run. If you wanted to grow as a professional blogger, sooner or later you have to opt for a paid theme.
Are you facing a problem with you free theme? Do you have issues when you update theme or WordPress?
Do you face issues while adding a new functionality through a plugin?
Please do share your thoughts. What do you think about paid theme and which one is your favorite?
