Best Free Themes for your WordPress Blog

Choosing the right theme for your website is kinda difficult when you don’t know where to begin. There are a few things that you need to keep in mind when selecting a theme. So before I show you the best themes for your WordPress blog, let’s get to know them so that you won’t feel like a lost kitten.

Difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org

For those that don’t know, you cannot use any of the below-mentioned themes if you are using a WordPress.com site!

There is a huge difference between a wordpress.com and wordpress.org website. You need to purchase hosting & buy a domain name before you can use build your very own website.

WordPress.com manages your hosting so you don’t have to but at the same time, it leaves you little room for freedom.

You can’t monetize it nor can you design it the way you want not to mention it’s hard to transfer to a WordPress.org site without losing your data and traffic.

So it’s highly recommended to get a hosting that is cheaper than your average coffee and get maximum freedom.

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Difference between Premium and Free Themes:

This question is often asked. And when I was starting out I had the same question in mind.

I mean if I can have a free theme why should I buy a paid one?

There are a lot of sites that just trash free themes so that you can buy the paid ones. Truth be told, there isn’t much of a difference except the quality of service.

Free themes made by reputable designers are of no problem. You can have a crappy-free theme as well as a crappy premium theme. There is no telling how good a paid theme will be if you don’t buy it from reputable sources.

Paid themes come with:

• Better Customer Support: Some free themes provide basic support (if any at all) but premium themes provide support for you if you need help with something. Paying for one will enable you to have premium support for up to 6 months to a year.
• More Customizing Tools & Features: Many themes lock up customizing tools & features for premium versions. So free themes feel limited sometimes. You can’t really design the website you have in mind. To overcome this restriction, many people choose to upgrade (and for the right reason of course).
• Frequent Updates: Since premium themes receive payments, they are more likely to maintain their theme and remain upgraded.

A free theme lacks all of those qualities. 

When should you buy a theme?

You will know when you need to buy one. You need to access your needs and your budget first. For beginners, free themes are just fine. And even if later you don’t find the need to buy the paid ones, you don’t have to.

Best free themes for your WordPress blog

Here are the best themes from reputable designers that make great blogs or just any WordPress website in general.

It is TOUGH to find your pick from thousands of themes present in the WordPress directory. Not to mention that many of them are poorly coded or just a hassle to work with. If you have the strength to search for your pick, well kudos to you, but most people including me don’t.

So, let’s get started!

Astra

Astra is a lightweight theme (50KB) that is designed to be fully customizable and multipurpose. It works well with popular page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, etc.

The best thing about it is that it has many demos to pick from if you don’t want to build your site from scratch (which is a hassle). Giving a few tweaks to the demos would be enough to get you going. Currently, Astra has over 1 million+ download.

Features:

• Fully customizable
• Lightweight
• Works well page builders
• Many demos
• 1 million+ download
• SEO friendly
• User friendly, no coding knowledge needed
• Multipurpose( build any website, not just blogs)
• Woo-commerce ready

Astra pro addon (paid) unlocks many advanced features and support, so for many people, it’s worth it. But free version is also more than enough to get started.

Generatepress

It’s a very lightweight free and responsive theme (30 KB) like Astra if not more. Speed-wise it’s the best theme out there. Design-wise it’s very simplistic because developers were more focused on its productivity than its design.

But they provide great customization options from the native WordPress customizer to build any site you want. But for any reason, if you still aren’t satisfied then you can use page builders to customize your site the way you want it to. It also has very good support if you need any help.

Features:

• Fully customizable
• Lightweight (30KB)
• Works well with page builders
• SEO friendly
• User friendly
• Multipurpose
• Woo-commerce ready
• Translation ready
• 300,000 active websites

It also has yearly and lifetime access for premium add-ons and extensions.

Ocean WP

Ocean WP is another very popular theme that has over 600,000+ active installations. Like the Astra theme, OceanWP is a very lightweight fully customizable theme, and also it offers some things for free that most themes include in their premium plans. In short, it’s a VERY customizable theme.

Features:

• Fully customizable
• Lightweight
• Works well page builders
• 700,000 + active installations
• SEO friendly
• User friendly, no coding knowledge needed
• Multipurpose( build any website, not just blogs)
• Woo-commerce ready
• Edit the settings on tablet & mobile

I didn’t state its demos even though it has many. The reason is that many people have had issues with the demo versions but not with the theme itself.

You might lose your site data if you choose to import the demos and later want to shift to another demo or theme.

You can build your site by using wp ocean customizer or import templates that completely design your site in a few minutes and use page builders like Elementor.

So the good thing is that demos aren’t really needed. Ocean WP also has premium add-ons if you feel the need to buy them.

Hello Elementor

Hello Elementor is another very fast and lightweight theme that is fully compatible with elementor page builder since they are from the same company. It’s a pretty bare-bones theme with full freedom for designing and customization. When you install the theme you just get a blank canvas to design your website with a page builder. You can use Gutenberg, Beaver builder, or Elementor (recommended) to build your website.

Features:

• Fully customizable
• Lightweight (6 kb)
• Works well page builders
• Woo-commerce ready
• User friendly, no coding knowledge needed
• Multipurpose( build any website, not just blogs)
• Blank canvas
• 700k installs

It’s better to use elementor pro with this theme to get full customization freedom.

Neve

Neve works great with the Gutenberg editor and is a very lightweight simplistic free theme. Even though it’s new but it got popular in a very short amount of time. The reason is that it looks pretty clean and customizable out of the box.

Features:

• Fully customizable
• Lightweight
• Works well page builders
• Many demos
• SEO friendly
• User-friendly, no coding knowledge needed
• Multipurpose
• Woo-commerce ready
• Translation ready
• Amp optimized
• Fast speed

Blocksy

Built with Gutenberg editor in mind, it is a very fast and lightweight theme that works great on all devices. It’s also fully compatible with major page builders like Elementor and Beaver builder.

Features:

• Fully customizable
• Lightweight
• Works well page builders
• Many demos
• 1 million+ download
• SEO friendly
• User friendly, no coding knowledge needed
• Multipurpose
• Woo-commerce ready
• Translation ready

Moreover, it supports lazy loading to increase your site speed.

Kadence

Yet another powerful and responsive theme like blocksy. It seems to be pretty popular with developers along with Astra and Generate press. Kadence theme also offers blocks that you can import to ease your blog designing process.

Features:

• Fully customizable
• Lightweight
• Multipurpose
• Woo-commerce ready
• Translation ready
• Offers kadence blocks (page builder)
• SEO friendly
• User friendly, no coding knowledge needed

Hueman

Hueman is a very popular free magazine-style WordPress blog theme that has a multi-column layout to showcase your content. It’s a very content-focused theme for blogs.

Features:

• Mobile friendly
• User friendly
• Clean and minimalistic
• No coding knowledge required
• Great for blogs
• 2 column layout
• Free

If you plan to publish a lot of content, it’s a very ideal theme for you.

Poseidon

Poseidon is also a magazine-style WordPress theme that has a featured image slideshow to showcase your post. It’s a very content-focused theme just like Hueman.

Features: 

• Mobile friendly
• User friendly
• Clean and minimalistic
• No coding knowledge required
• Great for blogs
• Wide & spacious layout
• Multiple page templates
• Free

How to find your pick?

If you have scrolled through the list you might have noticed that most themes offer the same features and if you are just beginning you might not know which features are more important to you.

Themes like Poisedon and Hueman offer fewer features in comparison to Astra and Ocean WP. And there is a reason for that. It’s because the former even though they are built with reputable designers, are free themes.

While themes like Astra offer premium add-ons and extensions. So it makes more sense to create more features since the premium theme market is very competitive.

All themes listed here have their own pros and cons, so in the end, it all depends on your needs and preference.

If you are very keen on speed then Generatepress, Hello Elementor, and Astra might be the ones for you. They are multipurpose and overall great to build any website or blog. Blocksy, Kadence, and Neve are also extremely good, especially for Woo-commerce and company websites.

If you like to control full customization of your site then Ocean WP is a nice pick. Poisedon and Hueman are best for magazine-style or news blogs.

Conclusion

This list pretty much sums up the best free themes for WordPress. These themes are tried and tested, but of course, people have different opinions as to what suits them. There are hundreds of good themes out there but in my opinion, these are the best ones.

Comment and tell me your pick! Also, share this post with people who you think would benefit from it!

*there are some affiliate links in the post. That means if you click through them and purchase something, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Happy blogging!