Let me guess, you run a web design agency by building websites for clients with Elementor, and you are wondering “what theme should I use for my clients websites when using Elementor?”
“What if this theme makes the website slow?”
“What if this theme is the reason the website is getting low scores on pagespeed insights?”
“What if this theme breaks the website and the client wants a refund?!”
I have built websites with Elementor that get over 80,000 visitors a month and I have learned through the painful experience of a client calling me at one hour past midnight…swearing me! because their website “magically” got broken and now I have to jump out of bed and spend hours after midnight fixing their website. (NOT fun!)
Luckily for you, I am going to tell you exactly how to avoid this kind of nightmare from happening in your life, and how you can avoid your clients websites getting broken or being too slow.
Oh, and did I mention that the theme is FREE?! lol
What themes are everyone else using for Elementor websites?
First of all, I am not going to make a list of 20+ themes to review for you. Why tf should we waste time looking at 20+ themes when we know only 5 of them are worth using?
The most common themes used with elementor are Layers WP, GeneratePress, Hestia, OceanWP, Zakra and Astra.
Let’s dive deep into each of these themes and see which one will suit your web design agency best!
11.) OceanWP
Ocean WP is a veteran when it comes to WordPress themes, they are actually the 2nd most installed theme on WordPress websites. Long story short, this theme is one of the “big boys” when it comes to WordPress themes, It comes with 15 free templates for Elementor, integrates easily with Woocommerce and even has built in SEO tools whilst also loading surprisingly fast.
The Ocean WP theme comes with many different layouts for sections that also have different container sizes. They give you a lot of customization options for the website pages but unfortunately they are lacking when it comes to header and footer design options, which means you will definitely need the paid version of Elementor Pro to create headers and footers that your client will be happy with.
If you are a beginner, this theme might annoy you with how overwhelming the customization options are. Overall it has everything you need for a basic WordPress website.
My opinion: Do NOT use this theme with Elementor, some idiot told me to use this theme because it’s “the fastest theme” and my clients website broke! I then found out that there are a ton of web designers in Facebook groups who have said that Ocean WP was the most problematic theme they used with Elementor.
Even if they fix the bugs, in order to use the cool features you have to install plug-in extensions which just makes the site more slow and easier to break. So WTF?!
I hope that Ocean WP can fix their theme in future but as of 2022, I recommend you do not use the Ocean WP theme on Elementor websites.
10.) Layers WP
In 2019 Elementor bought this theme and they basically killed it.
Their website is broken and it looks like shit. Why are you still using it? It’s 2022. Stop it.
9.) Zakra
Zakra is great if you just want to get started with a website. It comes with container styling options and allows you to create a secondary menu. It also has styling options for your header, which is great for people who are using the free version of Elementor since you can only customize headers and footers with the paid Pro version of Elementor.
To make your life easier, Zakra comes with 25 free templates that you can use with Elementor. You can import these templates quickly with just one click.
This theme also has layout options for Woocommerce Product pages and single product pages.
8.) PHLOX
This is a special theme no doubt! It’s super clean, the options are easy to understand for beginners and the templates are magnificent!, the best in my opinion.
What’s so amazing about this theme is that it gives you different animation options for each page and it even allows you to add preloader images, which is something Elementor Pro can’t even do.
There is also a progress bar option that you can add and even change the colors. The theme offers different page layouts, different post layouts and also different layouts for your woocommerce products.
Wait, there’s more lol…The phlox theme also comes with 25 beautiful templates that are free! I’ll say it again, these are the best templates on this list in my opinion.
Even more, the theme adds 40+ widgets to your Elemntor panel free of charge!
The only disappointment is that they don’t have a header and footer builder which might make the theme useless to most designers. However you can solve that problem by using Elementor to build the header and footer alternatively.
The other con is that you need to have good web hosting with above average memory, because this theme is quite heavy.(which is understandable due to the amount of design options it gives you.)
7.) Suki
This theme is so underrated, you are going to thank me for telling you about it lol.
So this theme actually has a footer and header builder which allows you to customize the elements more in-depth than any other WordPress theme on this list. You can even build different headers for different devices. This is very interesting if you like using Elementor because the free version of Elementor does not allow you to design headers and footers.
Suki also has dynamic settings for the post page, 404 page and the archive page in the free version. On top of that you also get some free templates that you can use with Elementor and Woocommerce.
You get different product layouts, Woocommerce optimization and also an off-canvas menu for your shop page which is a special feature for sure.
That’s awesome right! So what’s the catch?…Well unfortunately you can’t customize the colors in the header unless you buy the Pro version of the theme, which is why this theme did not make it to the no.1 spot on this list.
Why buy the Pro version of this theme? when you can just buy Elementor Pro and get everything you will ever need from just one plug-in? Lol
6.) Hestia
Here is the only cool thing about this theme, It is built for one-page websites.
So if you are building a Landing Page for a client, you might want to try this theme out as it comes with free templates you can use with Elementor.
The Hestia theme is well made, I don’t have anything bad to say. It did not slow down my website and it hasn’t broken any websites in my experience.
However I see no reason to use Hestia since there are better options out there.
5.) GeneratePress
I struggled to write a review on this theme because there is nothing special about it…at the sametime, it’s such a good choice!
I’ve had the majority of my web design friends tell me to try out this theme and I have to say I was pretty impressed. The theme is not flashy or cool in any way, but what it does so well is reliability!
The theme is stable af, it never broke, it never slowed down my website and it works so well with Elementor. This theme is all about what really matters when it comes to websites…User Experience!
Generate Pass comes with special layout options that help you customize the website more better for mobile devices in collaboration with Elementor. And to add icing on top of the cake, the theme does not slow down your website at all!
I have nothing bad to say about this theme. It’s a quality product!
4.) Neve
This theme was built for Elementor in my opinion. It’s so easy to use and it is built with such clean code! Truly a premium quality theme.
It comes with 100+ free starter templates and a Header & Footer builder. You can shrink and rearrange elements in the header which is really convenient and again, you always get free templates that you can use if you are feeling lazy to build headers from scratch.
This theme also has the ability to build different headers for different pages which can be a real lifesaver if you are building blog websites or landing pages.
What really impressed me is how fast and lightweight this theme is.
- It can get scores of 90+ on Google page speed insights.
- On a default wordpress install, the theme loads in under 1 second! (0.6s).
- On a default wordpress install, the total size of the theme is as tiny as 28KB.
The Neve theme is one of the best themes you will find out there today. It has a very clean code and I have not heard any web designers tell me that they have ever had a problem with this theme.
If you are building Woocommerce websites for your clients, this theme is one you should definitely test out for yourself. It has so many options for Woocommerce product designs that I can’t cover all of them in this post.
3. Bloxy
How this theme is not more popular is beyond me! This theme gives you the most free features of any themes on this list.
Bloxy is easy to understand for beginners and the theme comes with an amazing header and footer builder. You can have a transparent header and also create different headers for different pages which is an incredible feature for a theme that is free.
You can also design a sticky menu separately and create an off-canvas menu that you can fully customize!
You can also build clean and professional blog websites with the impressive blog page design options and even add a sticky sidebar for affiliate marketing adverts.
Furthermore, this theme also has a ton of impressive options for Woocommerce websites. You can customize the product designs almost as in-depth as Elementor Pro, which is f**kin impressive considering that this theme is free to install.
2.) Astra
Okay, everyone was waiting for this lol. You all know the popular Astra theme, This is the theme most people use with the free version of Elementor and it’s actually the most common wordpress theme in the entire depository!
The reason why this theme is so commonly used is because it comes with over 100+ free templates that you can easily use with Elementor at the click of just one button.
This theme does not have a lot of customization options like the previous themes we talked about but with Elementor, you wont need to worry about that anyways.
If you don’t know why this theme is so beloved by Elemetor users, it’s because with over 100+ free templates, You don’t need the paid version of Elementor to create beautiful headers and footers, you can just use the Astra free templates to fix that problem for free.
1.) Hello Elementor
This theme does not come with cool design layouts for your website, It doesn’t come with any customization options for Woocommerce either-No, as a matter of a fact…this theme comes with no special features at all. lol
Wait…so why tf is this theme ranked number 1?
You see, here’s the thing…when you are building a website with Elementor, you don’t need any of the features all those other cool themes give you.
Elementor is a theme builder! It gives you the power to build your own theme, however you like. So in other words, all those cool features on other themes are a waste of space because you won’t use them anyways.
You don’t need a fancy powerful theme with Elementor, what you need is actually the opposite! What you need is an empty lighting fast theme that does not break your website. And that is exactly what the Hello Theme was specifically built for!
The Hello Elementor theme is actually the fastest wordpress theme ever!
This theme gives you the freedom to create your website however you want without worrying about Elementor breaking our theme updates being incompatible with Elementor.
On a default wordpress install, this theme loads in 0.4 seconds, that’s faster than you can blink! The theme only uses 6KB of resources and requires only 2 server requests!
No distractions, No useless features slowing down your website. No losing sleep because your clients websites got broken, The Hello Elementor theme was built for you to get the best speed performance and creative design out of your website.
Summary:
Most blog posts are written by people that just did research on themes for Elementor so they can publish content and get traffic to their site, I am someone who has the experience of actually building websites with Elementor, so my opinion is based on the experience of working with real clients that pay me $5,000 per website.
Since using the free version of Hello Elementor, I have had 0 clients complain about my work. And that is why I recommend you do the same!
Please note: You should be using the paid version of Elementor ($59).
If you think you can run a successful web design business with the free version of Elementor, you might as well just quit now.
