Avoid Using Free WordPress Themes | Website design has become easier when you have WordPress. As WordPress is the best CMS if you are about to start a blog or website. With its unique features and designs, it has become one of the popular choices.
It owns a wide variety of themes, templates, and plugins bringing the best of web design. And they help increase functionality without much user interference. The themes and plugins are available in the free and premium versions.
While most designers tend to invest in the free ones in the beginning. And that is obvious as you try to build a good audience by investing less.
However, this may not work if you know the consequences of using free themes. It’s not offending that free themes are not good, they are good. But, you must know its disadvantages too.
And so, this article will help you find out the reasons why should you avoid using Free WordPress Themes.
Top Reasons to Avoid Using Free WordPress Themes
Lack of Updates
Free versions are suitable for web design but not for a longer run. They only serve you for a less time and soon you will start facing update issues. Yes, it happens often with Free WordPress Themes. They do not support the latest updates or updated software versions. You have to purchase the paid versions to get advanced updates easily.
Like our mobile phones, themes also need updates to accept the latest features and functions. And with this, your website works seamlessly fast and responds quickly. While this feature sometime gets missing when you use Free WordPress Themes. This happens because the developer does not own the proper resources to embed in the Free versions. So, it is recommended to avoid using Free WordPress Themes.
Lack of Support
This is obvious that not every free thing gives you advanced care or support. The same goes for the free themes and plugins. Mostly free themes are owned by small developers or companies that start their design careers. So, do not expect much support or advanced care from the free themes.
Not every theme comes with all benefits or features for users. There might occur come challenges that lead to getting support from professionals. However, many of them use free themes, professionals may not respond to you quickly. Or they may be busy building more free themes. So, it is recorded that free themes have less professional support than premium ones.
Lack of Security
Surviving in this digital world is not more than a challenge to secure your website. You know very well that security matters the most when regular threats are crossing your way. But if you are using a Free WordPress Theme, you may get easily trapped. As WordPress is the easiest trap for hackers with being the most popular and open-source CMS. Even, reports have concluded that 70% of WordPress websites are facing vulnerable threats every minute. And most of the threats occur due to the free downloading of themes, plugins, and content. This may cause bigger damage and can cost you a lot to fix all the vulnerabilities.
To avoid all this, you can switch to buying or upgrading your free themes to paid ones. Paid themes give advanced protection and secured layers to protect your website.
Issues of Ethics
Free themes often become a direct gate for other developers to steal your content and make money. And you will find such corrupt and duplicate theme providers on the web. They use copies of the actual content of your theme which can be malicious and a threat to your website.
This will not affect the stealer as you will become a criminal for stealing others’ content. This sounds unusual as by just downloading a free theme, you will face a lot and impact your ethics. A better way, you must go for the premium themes.
You do not get the advantage of SEO
Do you know that the themes affect your website’s performance? Yes, that’s true. It highly impacts the ranks when crawlers find your website not willing to get higher ranks. It is because the free themes you choose might affect the speed and load time.
And if your website’s speed is not as per the users’ expectations, it may rank under poor websites. The search engines will avoid your website from the top ranks. The slow loading of pages occurs as free themes can sometimes block the CSS resources.
You may face Encryption issues
One challenge you will surely face with the free themes is getting encrypted links in the footer area. The creators also include hyperlinks that direct traffic to their websites. This can affect search engine rankings for your website as the links will direct users to other pages. This will further hurt the amount of traffic reaching your website.
Sadly, you cannot do anything to remove the hyperlinks coming with the free themes. As they come along with the terms and conditions when you download them. Every time the users will click on that hyperlink, it will range down the page rankings.
Access to fewer features
This is a valid point that you get what you pay for. And that is what goes for the free themes. As you are not paying them, you will have access to fewer features and designs. As compared to the premium ones, you do not get access to plugins or page builders or any other features. It’s just a simple theme you get to design a website for your niche. Not much impactful, but you will end up having a direct impact on the traffic you need. If you have an E-commerce website, you will be unable to integrate third-party platforms for payments. At that time, you will have to take help from the developer to write codes for you.
But, that’s not a thing for a lifetime you will go with the basic functionality. You will need to upgrade your functionalities and even the designs. This time you need to integrate more features which can cost you a bit more.
Mobile Responsiveness
This is the most vital concern of letting your website in top positions. You cannot hold a grudge for not having a mobile-responsive website in today’s world. As 70% of the users access the internet or websites on their mobile phones. And so, most developers are still working on designing mobile-responsive themes.
Unfortunately, some themes are not mobile-responsive. And if you choose them, you may face a lack of traffic and lower search engine ranks.
And so, using paid themes will have mobile-responsive designs. That will help your site to get better traffic and good ranks on search engines.
You cannot access the Theme options panel
When you have premium themes, you get a theme options panel for easy modifications. But with Free themes, it lacks this feature and sometimes it becomes challenging for blog creation. While with the paid versions, you get easy custom features with single-click changes on your website. Luckily, you will find one or two themes having the theme options panel for easy customization.
Compatibility issues
Another found issue while using the free themes is the compatibility issues. Developers are working hard on this to develop themes with enough compatibility features. There might be some compatibility issues while integrating plugins. Or it may not work properly on the cross-browsers. Even if some themes prove compatible, you will have to spend on developers to write codes for this. While with the paid themes, you get enough compatible features with plugins as well as browsers.
The Free Themes are not unique
Uniqueness is the ultimate key to getting noticed in this digital media. And when you use free themes, you cannot ace this factor. Free themes use basic and used designs that tend not to be unique for your website. Nor you will be able to access the custom features even if you know coding skills. You have to pay to access the premium features.
It’s all about creativity that attracts various users to the website that has unique features. While some themes may allow to access plugins but not the templates to access the designs.
They are not Niche-Specific
With the free themes, you will not a particular Niche-specific themes. Either you will find fewer niche themes, or you will get the generic themes to access. But with the paid ones, you get a wide variety that you can use for a particular niche website.
Free Themes are Poorly Coded
A theme’s codes decide the functionality and the appearance. And the actual problem arises when some free themes are poorly coded. You will not be able to use the website properly. Several features may stop working or not respond well. This is because the free themes are developed by amateurs and that is why they build it just for their experience. While the premium themes are well-coded giving great functionality.
You must be thorough with the above facts. Using free themes is not a bad thing as some of them are good when you begin with web design. But soon after getting used to time, it can create some issues which you must be aware of. And so, we have listed them so that you must check while going with the Free WordPress Themes.
