Every fourth site you came across on the web is made on WordPress. More than 60 million websites are running the popular CMS to present ideas, promote services or sell products. Bloggers, designers, corporate entities, news magazines, banks, NGOs and many other individuals and organizations rely on WordPress to maintain an online presence.
Launched 13 years ago, the modest blogging tool became a flexible, fully-fledged solution trusted by millions of developers, designers and users around the world. Frequently compared to Joomla and Drupal, WordPress managed to take the lead thanks to its sophisticated simplicity. Naturally, the rise to ascension was accompanied by the proliferation of an incredible ecosystem of plugins and themes that extended and improved WordPress’s core functionality.
Here are some of our favorite commercial themes. Whether you are looking for inspiration or searching for the best theme for your next project, we hope that our list will prove to be useful in your quest for the ultimate WordPress theme.
Best WordPress Themes of 2016
TheGem
If you want an exquisite theme, look at TheGem. With more than 40 unique multi-purpose design concepts, 150 demo pages, eight navigation settings in over 20 styles, plus flexible page layouts, TheGem is suitable for creative agencies, businesses, freelancers, architects and digital artists, etc. It is the definition of the multipurpose WordPress theme.
The theme is out-of-the-box compatible with the most popular plugins from the WordPress directory. It’s fully responsive, mobile and retina ready. It has two built-in mega menus in two beautiful styles. No coding knowledge required is required to use this theme as it includes Visual Composer, drag-and-drop functionality, pre-built pages for quick start, easy-to-use page options and an intuitive portfolio and gallery management. With practically unlimited colors for design and content elements, your site will be as good as you want it to be.
Grimag: AD Optimized Magazine
If you are looking for a magazine template that is built for content monetization, then Grimag should be your choice. The code is neat; the design is beautiful and customizable. You can choose from light and dark skins, or you can opt to customize the skins for an entirely unique and classy aspect. The theme also comes with powerful shortcodes for creating engaging content that stands out.
However, what sets apart this theme from other magazine or news themes, is the fact that it’s built to help you monetize your creativity. With its carefully designed and strategically placed advertisement areas, your ads will feel natural and unobtrusive. The theme is tuned for responsive AdSense, so, unlike your competitors, you’ll never have to worry about broken layouts.
All in one, AD Optimized Magazine is a marvelous theme, developed by a top tier author, with excellent support and a surprisingly low price tag.
Truemag: AD & AdSense Optimized Magazine
By the end of the day, you won’t believe the progress you’ve achieved in a few hours. Additionally, truemag will help you monetize your content thanks to its intelligent ad area design. The theme is WooComerce optimized so building a beautiful online store is an easy task. Just take a look at the demo, you’ll love this theme.
DizzyMag: Ad&Review ready magazine with portfolio
Building a product review site is a daunting task. Creating engaging content, reviews and product showcases is time-consuming, especially when there is a lot of media content to be managed. While DizzyMag won’t create content for your, this elegant WordPress theme will make thing simpler for you. You have two templates to choose for displaying your content. Each template layout is carefully designed to promote your products in an engaging way.
Along the lines, monetization hotspots are included, with options to embed banners, AdSense or affiliate code. The built-in sortable multimedia portfolio comes with a nice 3d effect and supports both embedded and self-hosted media. DizzyMag is 100% compatible with bbPress and BuddyPress, so if you are planning on growing your audience using these plugins, you’ve chosen the right theme.
Attitude: Multimedia Portfolio for Media Artists
The video gallery supports both embedded, and self-hosted videos and, if you are an audio artist, the easy to use multimedia gallery will echo your tunes seamlessly. It’s an SEO friendly theme, so you shouldn’t have any issues reaching the top. Literally.
Recital: Portfolio & Blog for Creatives
This theme will reflect your creative mood. The one click update and the ability to import/export theme settings are recommending this theme for those who focus on spending their time creating rather than wasting their time reading complex documentations. By the way, the developer is user-friendly, so if you encounter any theme related issues, he’ll gladly help you sort them out.
Shockmag – Ad Optimized Magazine with Powerful Advertisement System
With eight post formats, including audio and video formats, custom widgets and a lightbox module, Shokmag will suit even the most demanding needs. The theme comes bundled with ADS PRO, a powerful plugin that helps you manage, sell and display your advertising space. We had to double check the theme price as ADS PROS alone is 36$, and yes, the theme is sold with a 56$ price tag.
Taking into account that Shokmag is actively developed by the author, with new features added frequently, this theme is an excellent choice.
Uncode
Uncode is a pixel perfect multi-purpose WordPress theme based on Visual Composer designed with attention to details, flexibility and performance. It implements a clean modern layout, suitable for almost any need. With an innovative grid system and more than 30 premade styles, building a layout has never been easier. It includes carousels, adaptive images, media galleries, content slider, interactive tabs and accordions, etc.
Uncode comes packaged with six different menu styles with advanced options and effects. An impressive media library helps you build content for a wide audience. The cutting age admin interface won’t get in your way making even the most tedious tasks to seem like a walk in the park. The only thing that this theme fails to implement is an AI intelligence to take care of everything. (But who would want that?)
Photography
Photography is a WordPress theme specially tailored to showcase a photographer‘s portfolio. To help you get started, there are 24 examples to assist you in building a unique and distinguishable web presence. Eight menu layouts, nine single portfolio templates and 10 blog designs are more than enough to unleash your creativity so your website would be as unique as your photographs.
For optimal results, the theme includes a live content builder so you can see your page on the go. The built in responsive preview helps you view your page from a diversified user perspective. The content is added and managed visually, with a focus on efficiency and agility. The bulk image uploader will save time. The 70+ gallery and portfolio layouts are easily customizable so you can show your work in a unique way.
Listable
Listable is a WordPress theme that will allow you to build the ultimate directory site. Listable implements a powerful and easy to use card listing system. The style presets are easy to customize with your colors or fonts, so you can get the exact look you want. The drag-and-drop interface induces a robust and efficient workflow, without limiting your creativity. By doing usability studies, the team behind Listable developed a theme built for users by users.
Education
Trusted by 12,000+ schools and educators, Education is the ultimate WordPress theme if you are looking to build an e-learning site. Focused on delivering an easy to use learning experience, Education is optimized for teachers and students. The intuitive course builder will allow you to share your knowledge with the world. Whether you choose to share it for free, on a pay-per-course basis or a subscription model, Educations has you covered with seamless integration with WooCommerce. And because learning is all about sharing, Education will help you build an interactive community of educators and scholars.
StartIT
The next best start-up could be yours. If you are planning on revolutionizing the world we live in, then you should spread the revolution with the right tool. StartIT is a theme designed with start-ups in mind. It’s easy to use, SEO optimized, translation ready and extremely customizable. The 21 available homepages are designed with a focus on your product.
Consulting
Consulting is based on in-depth research into the field of business, finance and consulting. It’s tailored to suit your needs and meet customer expectations. Edit content and compose page layouts with a drag and drop page builder. Four color skins and four header layouts offer a perfect frame for content. A choice of templates, pie charts, graphs and progress bars offer you a range of dynamic and compelling options to display for data. Consulting is WPML compliant and translation ready.
Massive Dynamic
Massive Dynamic is the fastest way to start from scratch. With more than 40 premade sites, you should be up and ready with a few clicks. No more lorem ipsum while you work on your content. It includes 76 unique shortcodes with cool CSS3 animations to assist you in fast content creation. There are 15 unique header styles with various options including three different scroll behaviors. With the Live Portfolio Resize feature be prepared to showcase your most successful projects. The custom MegaMenu gives you the option to use background images and icon fonts in your menu. With advanced typography options for h1-h6, paragraphs and links your content never looked better. The five different blog post formats including standard, quote, video, gallery and audio and the three pre-made portfolio detail layouts plus the functionality to create custom layouts will help you avoid getting caught by deadlines.
Pitch
Pitch is a marvelous WordPress theme built for creative agencies looking to impress. Easy to implement and adapt, boosted with case studies templates, Pitch will stir your clients and convince them that they are in good hands. The theme is vivid and includes animations, interactive infographics and parallax effects.
Bimber
If you are looking to build the next best viral website, then Bimber is the theme of choice. Optimized for Google PageSpeed and compatible with caching plugins, Bimber is made for viral content. Popular, hot and trending lists, fancy badges, paginated posts with big, bold navigation, visibility thresholds for shares, views and comments, are essential features for a site centered on viral content. Bimber has them all. It even has fake share counts for viral newbies. Plus, you can place ads everywhere. Bimber is compatible with Snax – Viral Front-End Uploader plugin, the dedicated solution for submitting viral stories, images, galleries, embeds and open lists.
Motors
Built as a cutting edge classified listing WordPress theme, Motors is optimized for selling, buying or leasing vehicles online. From cars to boats and bikes to trucks, Motors is the smart solution. The integrated inventory management and marketing platform WebManager will reduce manual entry and optimize user experience. You can seamlessly import an inventory database in CSV or XML format directly into the WordPress theme, saving valuable time on manual input and getting listings posted in just a few simple steps. The multiple filters and vehicle comparison tools will help your customer to search listings and find exactly what they’re looking for.
The Landscaper
The Landscaper is a WordPress theme designed for landscaping companies, lawn services business, groundskeepers, landscape architects, gardeners, florists, agriculture and companies that offer related services. The pre-built pages will get your site up and running in minutes. Use the drag-and-drop page builder and customizer to change the visual style of the theme with a few clicks. The theme comes with Essential Grid and ACF Pro so you can add content with ease.
FWRD
FWRD is WordPress theme for the musician in you. It’s a sleek, fast and beautiful theme build for outstanding visual and audio experiences. With four different styles, including an infinite scroll, unlimited layouts and a customizable header, native integration of video backgrounds and a dedicated mp3 player, you are set to reach the top. The fully working AJAX/PHP/MySQL newsletter form and the integrated live Twitter feed will keep your fans in touch with your newest creations.
Broker
Broker is a great theme for financial-oriented companies or small businesses. Solid and performance oriented, Broker focuses on providing a nimble experience for customers. Broker is designed to look great on smartphones and tablets. It’s easy to match the theme to your brand identity with options for colors and typography. You can choose from a boxed or full-width layout, with options for either a pattern or a photo background. The premade pages will quickly introduce clients to your products or services.
Houzez
Houzez is a WordPress theme designed for real estate agents and companies. Houzez is a unique property management tool which allows you to own and maintain a real estate marketplace, coordinate your agents, accept submissions, etc. Engage visitors and potential customer with Visual Composer modules, 360-degree tours, parallax and video backgrounds, header options, maps, different listings and property templates.
The flexible navigation bar combined with an extensive advanced search will help your users and potential clients to easily find properties. Also, the theme has excellent support for front-end property submission. With the built-in monetization system, you don’t need to install any additional plugins to handle transactions. Send and receive payment straight out of the box.
WP Rentals
WP Rentals is a multi-featured WordPress theme with built-in booking functionality that allows you to publish and offer properties for rent. You can also allow users to sign up and post listings. When submitting a new property, users can set up custom daily prices, discounts, minimum/maximum number of guests, minimum days of booking and calendar availability for each property. The theme comes with an internal system that handles messages between registered users.
BASEL
If you are looking for a fast, responsive theme built to create a modern, powerful e-commerce website, then BASEL is a good choice. Using the popular Visual Composer, with plenty of theme settings and options, premium sliders and the WooCommerce plugin, you are able to create a store that looks great on any screen resolution. Built with Ajax, the theme is lightning fast. The quick view and the 360 view features will drive sales. With more than 1,500 sales, Basel is used for selling clothes, electronics, furniture, accessories, flowers, etc.
Superlist
Another contender for the best directory theme is Superlist. With focus on code quality, this theme delivers a fast experience. The predefined listing post type will help you get started, and you can easily add your custom fields. If you have a CSV/XML, the included WP All Import plugin will import your data saving your time. The native statistics plugin will help you conveniently track how many searches per day have been executed, price searches, locations and categories, etc. The bundled map widget will assign your listings on the map.
Listings sliders, banners, images and video, a smart sorting module, and an intelligent rating system, your directory site will look great. Superlist is intended to be future proof. Based on a responsive layout with a wide/boxed layout with sticky/fixed headers, with an extensive developer documentation and a prepared gulpfile for SASS automatization, you can rest assured that your directory site has a bright future.
Barcelona
Barcelona is a fresh, simple and easy-to-use news and magazine WordPress theme. The simple and clean page builder interface lets you combine 11 different page modules with six different featured post styles. You also have plenty of theme options to customize categories, posts, pages, search results and so on. The theme also includes five post styles and three sidebar positions. It also comes with seven ready to use widgets.
Herald
Herald is a modern, responsive WordPress theme for news portals and magazine websites. It offers more than 500 variations for article listing layouts, customizable single post layouts, unlimited sidebars, sticky sidebars, easy branding and unlimited color choice combinations, smart image sizing, modular headers, four pagination types, custom widgets and many other outstanding features.
