Having a website that looks great and performs remarkably well doesn’t have to cost a pretty penny.
I have put together a list of 10 amazing and high-performing WordPress themes that will take your website to a new level.
In the spirit of free themes, I’ve made sure to pick those that are usable, responsive, and with decent features in the free version.
Let’s get started!
1. Astra
Fast, lightweight, high-performance, and immensely popular, Astra is amongst the best free themes for WordPress.
It comes with a whole lot of options that allow users to work with powerful options even in the free version.
Should you want to go beyond the customization options offered in the theme, it also works well with popular page builders and the WordPress Editor.
2. GeneratePress
GeneratePress is amongst the simplest, lightweight, and fast themes. The free version is fairly powerful and leaves enough room for users to allow decent website customization and addition of features.
The theme starts with a minimalist, simple, and clean design. You could use it as is, or hop into the customizer and change the design to suit your preferences.
3. Neve
Neve puts its focus on being fast, mobile-friendly, and responsive. The theme is designed with a mobile-first philosophy, which makes it especially high-performing for mobile devices, which is a great plus for modern websites.
It’s also great for customization and works with the WordPress customizer and other well-known builders.
4. OceanWP
OceanWP is another theme that has been around for a while and has quite the dedicated user base.
It’s fast, responsive, and full of options that open the doors to a lot of customization so that you can make the theme and design your own.
And should you decide to buy the theme and go pro, the list of features and options increases even further. This theme is excellent performance and value overall.
5. Twenty Twenty-Four
Yes, I went there – recommending the default WordPress theme. Up until a few years ago, the default WordPress theme used to be some bland design that was never really good enough for use on a “real” website.
Even though that’s no longer true, the tradition to get a different theme has stuck.
WordPress Twenty Twenty-Four is a well-made, powerful theme that basically comes with a whole range of options, patterns, designs.
It’s lightweight, responsive, quick to load, and works like a charm with full site editing (FSE).
In my opinion, as things stand, many “pro” (paid) themes can barely hold a candle to Twenty Twenty-Four. It has a lot more value for those comfortable with FSE.
6. Ollie
Ollie is another simple and elegant theme, but with the options that let you take your website to the next level.
This theme also supports FSE, and it comes with some very pretty and modern patterns here, which make the whole experience extra special.
Should you prefer to do things the conventional way rather than FSE, the theme is fully compatible with most popular website builders and block editors.
7. Elementor Hello
The plain, flexible, and fast Hello theme is extremely popular with users of Elementor page builder, though others find it pretty useful as well.
Since the theme is basically plain and built to be flexible and customizable, it keeps the bloat at bay and works remarkably well with page builders.
Of course, since this theme is associated with Elementor, many users feel more confident working with the Elementor builder for this theme. To be fair, the combination does deliver pretty amazing results.
8. Kadence
Kadence theme is another great option to look at when you want a free, but feature-packed theme to do your bidding. The theme is efficient, fast, and well-built.
You might find yourself looking at Kadence Blocks to make the best of this theme, since these offer more options and designs for customization. Thankfully, they also offer Blocks for free.
Should you decide to buy the Pro version, more features and options get unlocked. However, Kadence Theme and Blocks are quite usable in the free version as well.
9. Blocksy
Fresh, fast, and built for modern WordPress styling, Blocksy is quite the free theme for your website. Its appearance goes towards the minimalist side, but it has features enough to add all the designing and styling you might want.
The theme embraces WordPress Gutenberg and works great with the blocks, perhaps that’s where it derives its name. That said, it isn’t oblivious to other design needs either.
Blocksy works well with most popular builders, but works quite well with Elementor. Their webpage shows quite a few samples, showing where the design was built solely with Blocksy/Gutenberg and which ones employed Elementor as well.
10. Frost
Frost is a fast, minimalist theme with a clean design that was developed to harness the full potential of the WordPress FSE (full site editor).
Though designed to be simple, Frost has a powerful feature set, allowing it to fully lean into the FSE capabilities and develop further.
It’s also an excellent starting point for those who want to customize the theme further, making the design and theme their own.
Frost theme does offer a few layouts and patterns to get you started, and should you want to go further, FSE makes it easy to design your own!
Hi, I’m Cindy! I’m an online blogger passionate about helping people discover easy and effective ways to make money online.