Quick answer: A premium theme suits you if you need a good looking site quickly, your budget is tight and your needs fit what the theme already does. A custom WordPress theme suits you if your site is central to how you win business, you need specific layouts or features, or you care about speed, long term maintenance and not being locked into a page builder. Many businesses start on a premium theme and move to custom once the site becomes important enough to justify it.
The theme controls how your WordPress site looks and much of how it behaves. Choosing between buying one off the shelf and having one built is one of the first big decisions in any WordPress project, and it affects cost, speed and how easy the site is to change for years afterwards.
What we mean by each option
Premium theme
A theme you buy, usually for a one off fee, from a marketplace such as ThemeForest or from a theme company directly. Popular multipurpose themes come with dozens of demo layouts, a theme options panel, a page builder such as Visual Composer or a built in builder, and bundled plugins such as sliders.
Custom theme
A theme designed and coded for your site alone. It includes only the templates and features you need, built around your content and brand. It is often based on a lean starter theme such as Underscores, or built from scratch by a developer who knows the WordPress template hierarchy well.
There is a middle route too: a child theme on top of a well made framework such as Genesis, customised by a developer. We cover that below.
Comparing the two
Upfront cost
Premium themes are cheap to buy. The real cost is in the time to set them up, adjust them and fit your content into their layouts. Even so, they are usually the cheaper way to launch.
A custom theme costs more upfront because design and development time go into it. How much depends on the number of templates, the features and the design work. Our guide on WordPress website cost breaks down what drives the price.
Design and brand
A premium theme gives you a design that many other sites also use. You can change colours, fonts and layouts, but the structure tends to stay recognisable.
A custom theme is designed around your content, your customers and your brand. Layouts are built for the pages you actually need, such as service pages, case studies or a product finder, rather than squeezing content into demo layouts.
Performance
This is where the gap is often largest. Multipurpose themes are built to suit thousands of different sites, so they load code for features you will never use: several sliders, icon fonts, animation libraries, extra CSS for every possible layout. That weight slows the site down, especially on phones.
A custom theme loads only what it needs. It is much easier to keep it fast, and speed affects both user experience and search rankings.
Flexibility
Premium themes are flexible in the ways their authors expected. If you need something outside that, such as a custom booking flow, a filtered resource library or an unusual page layout, you end up fighting the theme or stacking plugins.
With a custom theme, new features are built into the theme or a site specific plugin in a way that fits the rest of the code.
Ease of editing
Premium themes with page builders let non technical staff create new layouts without a developer. That is a real benefit for some teams.
Custom themes can be just as easy to edit, but in a different way. Instead of a drag and drop builder, editors get structured fields, often built with Advanced Custom Fields, for each part of the page. This keeps pages consistent and prevents layouts breaking when someone edits them.
Lock in
This is the hidden cost of many premium themes. Page builders often store content as shortcodes. If you switch themes later, your pages can turn into a mess of bracketed codes that need rebuilding by hand. Theme specific features, such as portfolio post types or custom sliders, can also disappear when you switch.
A well built custom theme keeps content in standard WordPress posts, pages and fields, with custom post types registered in a plugin rather than the theme, so your content survives a future redesign.
Security and updates
Premium themes need regular updates, including any bundled plugins. Some themes ship third party plugins that the theme author must update for you, and delays have left sites exposed in the past. Check the update history and support record before buying.
A custom theme has a smaller code base and no bundled extras, which means less to attack. It still needs a developer to keep it compatible with new WordPress versions, though this is usually light work if it was built to WordPress coding standards. For the wider picture, see our WordPress security checklist.
Support
Premium theme support usually covers bugs in the theme, not your customisations. Custom theme support comes from the developer or agency who built it, which is more personal but depends on that relationship continuing. Make sure you own the code and that it is documented.
The middle route: frameworks and child themes
A child theme on a solid framework such as Genesis, or on a clean, well coded premium theme, gives you some of the benefits of both. The framework handles the basics and gets updates from its authors. Your developer adds the design and features in the child theme.
This works well when:
- Your design is relatively standard but needs to look like your brand.
- You want lower cost than fully custom.
- The parent theme is lightweight and does not rely on a heavy page builder.
It works less well with large multipurpose themes, because you inherit all their weight and lock in.
How to choose
Ask yourself these questions.
- How much does the website contribute to revenue? If most leads or sales come through it, investing in a custom theme usually pays back.
- Do you need specific features? Booking, member areas, product configurators and complex filtering are easier to do well in a custom build.
- How fast does the site need to be? If speed matters, multipurpose themes start you on the back foot.
- Who will edit the site? Teams that build lots of one off landing pages may prefer a builder. Teams that want consistent pages tend to prefer structured fields.
- How long will this design last? If you expect to redesign within a year, a premium theme is a sensible stopgap.
- What is your budget right now? A premium theme launched well beats a custom theme you cannot afford to finish.
Choosing a premium theme well
If a premium theme is right for now, choose carefully:
- Check the update history and the date of the last update.
- Look for compatibility with the current WordPress version (4.4 at the time of writing).
- Test the demo on a phone and run it through a page speed tool.
- Avoid themes that bundle many plugins you do not need.
- Prefer themes that use standard WordPress features, such as the Customizer, rather than complex proprietary panels.
- Read support forum threads to see how quickly the author responds.
FAQ
Can I start with a premium theme and switch to custom later?
Yes, and many businesses do. Keep content in standard posts and pages where you can, and avoid heavy use of builder shortcodes, so the switch is easier.
Will a custom theme help SEO?
It helps indirectly. Clean code, fast loading pages, sensible heading structure and good mobile layouts all support SEO. A theme on its own will not rank a site, though.
Is a free theme from WordPress.org a good option?
For small or personal sites, a well reviewed free theme can be fine. Themes in the official directory go through a review process, which is a good baseline.
Do I own a custom theme?
You should. Make sure your contract says the code is yours and that you receive it in full.
Not sure which way to go?
We build custom WordPress themes and also help businesses get the most out of the theme they already have. See how we help sites turn visitors into customers.
