What is a Cheap Theme in WordPress? Is it Worth?

When buying a WordPress theme, each person has different budgets to pick up a theme. For example, a big company can spend a huge amount of money to design and buy an expensive template while a non-professional blogger tends to buy a low-price WordPress theme. If you're about to have a cheap theme, let take a look at this article to know what a cheap theme in WordPress is and if it's worth buying.

Mentioning that issue, I wonder how you think of a cheap WordPress template besides its price. Hence, I bring in some aspects that you should think of a cheap theme to know if it’s worth:

• The range of price
• Design and feature
• Enclosed plugin
• Update and support
• Theme license

In this post, I will analyze these aspects so that you can wisely choose a cheap theme worthy theme.

The Range of Price

As far as my experience, I short the price into four ranges:

• Under $20: Low price
• From $21 to $50: Medium price
• From $51 to $70: Upper medium price
• Above $70: High price

So I will consider a theme that costs no more than $20 is a cheap theme. Buying that kind of theme helps you save a lot of money. However, if you just look at the price without considering the theme’s quality, I’m not sure that your theme is good enough for you. That’s why I asked the questions: Is it worth and how to buy a cheap and good theme?

What You Need to Know When Buying a Cheap Theme

Before buying a theme, it’s necessary that you should know some factors when choosing a theme, then you will understand what you need to know when buying a cheap theme.

Does It Have Features and Design You Need?

First, you need to check the theme’s design to see if it’s good and suitable for your site. You need to know if it has any pre-built demo, layout options, and contains all the needed elements like header, footer, sidebar, …

A simple and outdated design theme with very few pre-built layouts and design elements will need extra editing to be fitted with your website, which costs your time and even money to hire a professional developer. That problem is more likely to happen with a super cheap theme.

However, I know some have good design despite the low price. Even more, in some cases, a simple-designed theme is what the minimalists are seeking. Hence, you should review the cheap theme’s design you will buy first to see if it’s really what you need it.

Second, a cheap theme often just includes basic features for a blog or business website. The low price themes, especially the under $10 one aren’t compatible with some advanced features for a complicated website so you have to buy and install plugins to support them. Even when you use free plugins, they can slow down your website speed. But on the other hand, including basic features mean that this theme is easy to use.

As for the medium-price themes and above, they have more so you can save money from buying extra plugins. But they’re more complicated to use. Therefore, buying a cheap theme appears to be a good choice for beginners or non-professional users.

Does Your Cheap Theme Is Frequently Updated?

Sometimes, the low price of a theme means that it’s probably old and may not receive frequent updates, leading to problems while using. A theme that lacks updates often has poor security and doesn’t have bugs fixed. You should check the ChangeLog and information before buying any theme, not just a cheap theme.

Plugin Enclosed

An above-70-dollar theme is often compatible with many advanced plugins like premium page builder (you can refer to this list of theme for page builders), eCommerce plugins, ... It’s even packed with that kind of plugins or you can get a discount for them when buying that theme. Moreover, you may not need all the features from the plugins so having them enclosed with your theme package is more economical than buying plugins individually.

Meanwhile, a cheap theme may not be compatible or enclosed with these plugins. So if you really need premium plugins to adapt your website’s functionality, you have to buy them separately. After calculating, you can see that the sum of money you spend on a cheap theme and premium plugins can be equal to a pack of premium plugins and a high-price theme. But if you don’t need any extra premium plugin, feel free to buy a low-price theme without enclosed plugins.

Theme Support

Theme support is very important during your use because it’s difficult to avoid having some questions, mistakes, or problems with your theme. Regardless of cheap or expensive themes, don’t buy a theme without any support, or poor support.

If you have a cheap theme from an unknown or non-prestigious source, you may not receive good support from the author. That’s why you should check this factor carefully to avoid getting stuck in a mess and desperately waiting for the response of the theme shop.

Pay Attention to Theme License to Know If It Is Really Cheap

You will surprise with a beautiful, feature-rich theme like Canvas, Limo, … that are under $17. But it’s the price of the regular license, which means that you're limited to use it on just one website. If you are an agency and will use this theme on multiple websites for your clients, you have to buy an extended license to save your money.

Looking closely at the license price, you will find the most suitable theme for your demand.

For example, the Limo theme with the regular license cost $19 but the extended license is $2200. So it isn’t different from a theme that costs $50 for the regular license but only $1500 for the extended license.

Besides, there are some other models like subscription-based theme sales which means you have to pay every year so as to continue to receive updates. Depending on the price of each license and your demand, think carefully if it’s costly or not.

Which Cheap Themes Should You Buy

Sometimes, there are some new-released good themes at a low price to attract users. They cost only from $15 to $20 for a regular license like Ekomart, Limo created at the beginning of 2020. They have various prebuilt demos, are compatible with a lot of plugins like Elementor page builder, WooCommerce 3.9.x, WooCommerce 3.8.x, WPML, …

With $30 to $50, you can find good themes like themes from GretaThemes, especially for your blog and business website, this range of price is reasonable. You don’t need any more dime to build extra elements and resolve the theme’s problem.

If you have a low budget but still want to use a superb theme, you should take advantage of many good deals and coupon codes on some special discount occasions like Cyber Monday, Black Friday, Halloween. The price of medium themes that time can be reduced to only $20. However, theme shops often discount the bundle, which means you have to buy all the themes one time, even when you don’t need them.

Normally, the bundle price is always cheaper compared to buying single themes. That’s why you should consider purchasing the bundle to save money only when you’re an agency or tend to use all of the themes.

Final Thought

I have rambled a lot, and now it’s time to recap.

As you see, a theme with too low price, lower than $10 is more likely to be a basic theme, and you sometimes need to pay more to build other elements or install plugins.

Everything has its own price so you have to accept some weaknesses to use a cheap theme as long as you check it carefully. By evaluating the weaknesses before buying, you can know your theme clearly in order to reduce and find solutions for the disadvantages.

But don’t worry too much about that because not all the cheap themes have these problems. It’s just more possible to happen with cheap and unqualified themes. You can still have many good themes at a low price. Besides, a low-price theme has its own advantage like the ease of use for beginners and the simple design that suitable for the simple personality.

Otherwise, picking a free theme is not a bad idea as you can find many good free themes with reviews. Good luck!