The 10 Best Website Template Providers
Where Can You Get the Best Website Templates?
With so many new technologies and lots of user-friendly software, it's easier than ever to create a website. What's not so easy is navigating functionality, responsiveness, shopping carts, and effects for that website. For those things that truly make a website your own, you still need the skills and expertise of creative designers and coders who can put their knowledge together to create a user-friendly, appealing website that will meet your needs.
You have two choices: to hire these creative experts individually or to find great website templates whose creators have already done the heavy lifting and can make it possible for you to customize a template into something that reflects you or your company. Website templates can help you accelerate your website development or bypass most of it altogether for a fraction of the price you'd pay developers.
Wednesday, December 4th
2024 Website Template Provider Reviews
Divi
Divi is not just a website template. It is the only solution most users would ever need to create a website that is professional, elegant, and at an incredible price point. Customer service and support can help anyone, from the completely non-technical user to the advanced coder, in a painless, headache-free experience of creating a beautiful custom website. Even out of the box, it is already more ADA and WCAG compliant than most websites, and it can be adjusted to be in full compliance. Its drag-and-drop visual builder, hundreds of modules, and thousands of layout packs make it the perfect website theme creator. Go take a look at their layout library - its live demos will show you that what a non-technical user thought was impossible is not only possible but easily customizable for a price your pocketbook will love. Add to that its built-in responsiveness, out-of-the-box integration with WooCommerce, and the robust community of developers, professionals, and users that offer even more to love about Divi, and you'll understand why it was a no-brainer to put Divi as the top pick among website templates.
Envato
Envato is one of the larger, more well-known digital marketplaces online. It's not just a place for website templates - it has everything you would need to develop a really beautiful online presence. From fonts to a very robust audio library to images and videos, you will have no shortage of resources to not only design a beautiful website but to create digital content for your site and your social media channels. Envato also offers free classes and tutorials on website template designs free of charge. They offer discounts for students and nonprofits, and their simple pricing structure and great customer service make this one of our top recommendations for website templates online.
Elementor
Elementor is a page builder for WordPress that was launched in 2016 on the idea that drag-and-drop web design along with live editing capabilities would allow almost anyone to create beautiful and functional websites. With their 100+ highly customizable website template kits, Elementor has succeeded in making website design accessible for almost anyone. If you are opening an online store, Elementor has integrated WooCommerce into many of their themes, which makes it almost ready to go live straight out of the box. Elementor may have a steep learning curve in understanding its pricing structure and workflow design, but it makes up for it with a robust and very helpful community, lots of documentation, and 24/7 support for paying customers. We highly recommend Elementor as a source of website templates.
One Page Love
One Page Love is all about simplicity, and as the website name suggests, it is focused on one-page and landing page website designs and templates. Since 2008, its owner Rob Hope has been curating the most beautiful one-page and landing page designs and templates into one repository, where he carefully reviews each recommendation, along with live demo and download links. With templates designed for almost any major platform or software and a stunning collection of inspiring designs, this is a clutter-free space to find the best of the web's offerings for website templates. One Page Love offers templates for many platforms while partnering with Webflow, which offers a builder for your website. With its tight focus on single-page websites, its curated templates aren't for everyone, but the design inspiration is.
Template Monster
Template Monster is a huge website template marketplace boasting over 24,000 website templates for a variety of content management systems. It has a flexible price structure, which makes it pretty affordable. Because it's so large, there can sometimes be inconsistent quality of website themes, but if you're savvy and take a little extra time to make sure you read all the details for each website template, you can really find a great design for a good value. Customer reviews are mainly positive, and with all the different kinds of pricing, you can find one for your budget. We are confident that Templates Monster is an above-average website template provider.
Bootstrap Made
Bootstrap Made offers 94 website templates built using the Bootstrap framework with both free and paid membership plans. It offers support only to paying customers, and it also offers a front-end, drag-and-drop style builder for those who are willing to pay for a quarter, annual, or lifetime premium license. Unfortunately, the website is very unclear and contradicts itself, and while they boast 94 templates, most of them are for a business or company, and many of them look similar to each other. Before using these templates, you'd have to speak to customer service to clarify the licensure and plans, which would be unnecessary if they were more clear. It may be a good fit for some people, but generally we cannot recommend Bootstrap Made as a top-of-the-line choice for website templates.
Canva
Canva is a very well-known content design solution. Their goal is to allow anyone to design anything, and they boast that websites can be created almost instantly. But, in trying to be everything to everyone, Canva spreads itself too thin - instead of delivering a few things with excellence, they've created a platform of mediocrity. Canva suffers from having too many choices that all look basically the same and boasting of "ease” with website template design when actually, its design options for websites are very limited and below average. If you are only using Canva to design a website, we cannot recommend it as a good solution.
Creative Market
Creative Market is a great concept: provide artists and designers a place to sell their digital products with little hassle and give consumers millions of choices in assets. Unfortunately, due to poor quality control, a subpar search feature, and less than stellar customer service, Creative Market just doesn't deliver. Creative Market's website templates are a small part of its massive repository of assets, and there is a lack of oversight there. Themes and templates end up for sale on the website that are missing files, broken, or don't work for a myriad of reasons. When customers are understandably upset after purchasing these defective assets, customer service doesn't seem to want to respond. What used to be a great concept that was pretty well executed has now become a cumbersome, time-intensive experience with no guarantee of quality. We cannot recommend Creative Market as a website template provider.
Dream Template
If you are teaching the history of the internet, the Dream Template website might be good to show an example of what website templates were like at the turn of the century. The fact that there is a working shopping cart is an embarrassment for this dinosaur of a service. You can pay $59.95 for access to outdated software that most likely has some spyware mixed in, too. Reviews of this company are absolutely abysmal, with customers complaining that they never received their downloads and could not contact customer service after multiple attempts. Most ended up getting charges reversed with their credit card companies. We could not find one positive review. We would suggest keeping your website far away from Dream Template.
Templates
After close examination, Templates is merely a front for redirecting people to outdated designs at Template Monster. It also redirects its ads for hosting to Siteground or Bluehost. It may have once been a legitimate template provider, but now it's a very sketchy website that is most likely collecting personal data about you. Customers have been complaining since as far back as 2010 that they never received the products they paid for. We absolutely don't recommend even visiting the Templates website.
Continued from above...
That being said, the world of website templates can be complicated and difficult to navigate. For example, website templates are not your website; they are more like the "dressing” of a website. Most websites need a platform. Think of a costume - lying on the floor or hanging in the closet, it cannot keep its shape. In order to keep it from losing its shape, we find a form or mannequin on which to put the costume. Website templates need a form in order to function, and that is generally a content management system. It is up to you to find out if the templates you like come with a CMS or if you have to install that before you use your template.
You also need to ask if the website template comes with a page builder. A page builder will take your website design to a new level without having to use coding. Most page builders employ the use of drag-and-drop visual editing. Some page builders are better than others when it comes to flexibility and generating responsive design.
And, don't forget hosting. When planning a website, you will need to decide where the website information is stored and broadcast to the internet. Some website templates offer compatible hosting service included, some have suggestions for hosts that understand their templates and platform, and still others don't have any recommendations.
Plus, keep in mind that the modern web is an entirely different experience from the origin of the internet. In the beginning of the world wide web, people experienced the internet from a desktop computer screen. Modern users, however, almost always access the internet via multiple devices, primarily mobile phones. Modern web design usually has built-in functionality that will be responsive to the type of device the end user is operating to access your website. If a template "breaks” on a small phone, then it's not a good template.
Finally, a website template marketplace is full of separate vendors. Don't forget that "marketplace” websites are full of separate vendors with their own way of designing and their own skillsets. Some might be extremely skilled and reasonably-priced, while others might border on being a scam. Be sure to research the individual vendor. Often, marketplaces become so large that quality control just can't investigate each vendor. It's up to you to do your own research.
Here are some criteria you can use to make comparisons and ultimately decide on a website template for your site:
- Software needed. Which content management system will you use? WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Shopify, Wix…these are just a few of the choices out there. Do you need other plugins or software to run your site, or does the website template vendor provide them?
- Variety. If there is definitely a "sameness” to the website templates from a certain vendor, you will most likely want to look for a different vendor. We would suggest gravitating to website template vendors that have a high variety, a certain "wow” factor in templates that make them unique, and who have a good mix of classic and modern styles. We also suggest staying away from designs that resemble the turn-of-the-century internet experience.
- Support and size of community. Especially if you haven't had much experience designing or developing a website, the community should be a key factor in determining what website template you choose. Website template vendors with a large community base often have robust forums or social media groups where you can ask a question, get help when you're stuck, or get free advice. Make sure to check out what support you will receive. A website is on 24 hours a day, so you want to have responsive support, too. Does the website template vendor have a lot of positive reviews? What about quick and reliable response time? Does the vendor have a live chat option?
- Cost. What you think might be a great deal can end up as a broken template with missing or outdated code, or it could require an expensive add-on to actually work. Most template vendors have demos you can test before you buy, so make sure you do a lot of testing and research before taking the plunge.
To assist you in finding the best website template, Top Consumer Reviews has evaluated and ranked top vendors on the market today. We're confident that this information will make finding a website design and template a fun rather than frustrating experience.
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