Are you looking for a new website for your business? Do you familiar with the name WordPress? Now the question arises which type of theme is best for your business, custom theme or commercial theme?
In this article, I will completely guide you on how you can choose the best WordPress theme for your business.
Why WordPress?
From the beginning of this article, I am telling this word repeatedly, WordPress. Now if you are a newbie then you may think why WordPress?
Listen, my friend, WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that can help us to create websites easily at a low cost. There are lots of other benefits involved in using WordPress, they are:
- Free to Use
- Lots of free plugins available (I will tell you about the plugin)
- Quick Delivery
- Minimum Maintenance Cost
- Comparatively low development cost.
Today the total number of sites in WordPress is 1.3 billion on the web and the number is increasing day by day.
A plugin is an online software build specially for WordPress which can help to enhance WordPress capabilities. I am not telling more details about it because you are here to determine custom or commercial which type of theme is best for your business, right?
Do you know the initial steps of website creation? The steps are:
- Select & Buy the domain
- Buy the hosting
- Start the development
For the domain and hosting, I personally prefer Hostinger. This is a very cheap, well-performed hosting service provider & they also provide great support. I personally use this hosting provider.
At the time of development, remember there are also other development platforms available other than WordPress, like Wix, Weebly, Webflow, and lots more.
But most of this software is comparatively costlier than WordPress and they are not easy to manage.
So we suggest WordPress at the time of development.
Now before starting the main comparison between custom themes and commercial themes I want to tell you what are custom themes and commercial themes.
A custom theme is a totally custom design and coding-based platform and the commercial theme is the pre-build theme for WordPress.
Now here are the various factors to consider before choosing Custom Theme or Commercial Theme:
Cost: How it is important for deciding between custom theme or commercial theme
The development process has some stages. Like gathering information about your business, creating a design & then starting the coding based on the WordPress framework. If you choose custom theme packages, you will get custom design and development. But if you choose or buy a commercial theme then you can buy a prebuilt theme from any popular theme store like Themeforest. So I think a custom theme is more expensive considering a commercial theme.
Flexibility
Maybe the custom theme is costlier than a commercial theme in the initial stages but no doubt a custom theme is more flexible than a commercial theme. You can easily change the website layouts, colors, fonts, and images if you use a custom theme. But in the case of commercial themes, there are too many limitations to doing these. If the theme providers provide you with that option then you can do this, otherwise, you have to accept the layout.
Loading Time:
Commercial WordPress themes come with many prebuild resources. Like they have some plugins, scripts, and sections and in many cases, they have demo data for this. So it is clear to understand that these resources take time to load and display on the full website. But in the case of a custom theme, the developer uses limited resources as required for this theme. I think a custom theme is quick to load than a commercial theme. Generally, it is recommended 4 seconds to load a full website. You can easily check the loading time of your website by using Google Page Speed Insight or GTMetrix.
SEO:
When we are using WordPress there are some plugins available for SEO use. Like Yoast, Rankmath etc… Now from the SEO point of view custom theme is the first preference. Because you can easily install the above plugins and add alt tags, title tags, or any other tags like Google Tags to your website, in case of the commercial theme if the theme gives the access to use all those stuff then you can do this otherwise be happy with this theme :(. You can check your website seo score by websiteseochecker.com.
Yearly Cost:
If you are using a custom theme no doubt initially it is expensive but considering the yearly cost, it is much cheaper than a commercial theme. The most commercial theme has two types of license plans, annual and lifetime fees. As an example, if you buy Divi theme then the annual fee is $89 and lifetime access is $249.
Support:
From the support point of view, again custom theme is winning the race. If you developed the theme from any reputed company like us then they can provide 3 months to 6 months of support free of cost. But in the case of commercial themes, they provide support as permitted by the theme. Any local development team can give you any time support but most of the commercial team support persons are available only in the US timing.
Also read: How to Choose Best Web Design Packages for your Business?
Future Enhancement:
You can easily modify your custom WordPress theme. As an example, if you want to add another services page then you can contact the development company and add this at ease. If you want to create a landing page for Google ads purposes you can easily tell this requirement to your development team. But for a commercial theme if the theme provides the option then you can do this otherwise hire any developer and if the theme permit then you will get the desired results.
Website Size:
If you start a website with basic 4-5 pages then you can use the commercial theme. But if you start with 4-5 pages and have a plan to include more pages like 20-30 pages then a custom theme is always preferable. It can be systematically managed if you are using a custom theme. If your commercial theme has this option to manage lots of pages then you can buy this commercial theme otherwise not.
eCommerce:
Assume you are using a commercial theme but in the future, if you want to introduce an eCommerce facility that means if you want to sell products or services through your website and your theme does not support these options then what to do? Will you again buy another theme or hire a developer for this? The better option is a custom theme. If you want eCommerce then your developer team or company can easily integrate this option.
Maintenance:
In many cases, the owner has no time to update the site or the owner is not totally familiar with how to update the site. In some other cases if the owner running an eCommerce website needs some external support, what they will do? If they build the custom theme then the theme development company can provide them support for this. They can update content, images, or products as required. On the other hand, if any problem will occur then a custom theme development company can help them to solve it. These options are not available for commercial WordPress themes.
Content Creation:
If you appoint any custom theme development company then you can ask them for other services. Today without content a website is nothing. So you can ask the company for content creation for different pages of your website. There are lots of other services are available which can help you to maintain your website like Google Ads setup etc… But in the case of a commercial theme, you have to hire separately for each and every job.
Conclusion:
The commercial theme is like a rented apartment where everything is restricted by the owner. But custom themes like your own apartment where everything is controlled by you. So for a better online business perspective custom theme is always advisable.
Senior UX Designer and Google Certified Digital Marketer. Started my career as a full-time employee in different reputed companies and later established my own brand Bharati Technologies.
