Elegant Themes Review: Beautiful WordPress Themes for Business

Elegant Themes Review: Beautiful WordPress Themes

The following statement might seem like an obvious but, having the right WordPress theme is crucial to your websites success. First impressions count. If you don’t capture your visitors attention in those first few seconds, they’ll hit the back button and leave.

• Like me and probably everyone else, you’ve spent countless hours browsing and possibly even trying, the many hundreds of free WordPress themes on offer. None of which suit your needs. Maybe free WordPress themes are free for a reason?

So where are all the best WordPress themes? Ideally you want to combine your excellent content with a superb, professional web page design. Although they cannot help you with the content, Elegant Themes can provide the superb, professional design in the most cost effictive way possible.

Elegant Themes, founded in 2008 by Nick Roach, is a membership site which gives members full access to all their WordPress themes and Plugins for a small membership fee.

• Nick is an expert WordPress premium theme developer and graphic designer and created all of the themes found on elegantthemes.com.
• As of 2014 there are 87+ themes and over 233,000+ happy customers. With more of both on there way.

As a member of Elegant Themes you are free to use their themes on as many website as you like. They do not place any restrictions on how many times you can download or use a theme, nor do Elegant Themes limit the number of domains that you can install their themes to.

You’re probably reading this Elegant Themes review because you want to update or create a WordPress based web site and want a unique look which you can be proud of. Hopefully, Elegant Themes can provide a solution to your needs and put an end to your search.

Of course what you really want to know is how the beautiful wordpress themes supplied by Elegant Themes actually look and feel. Well, you can quickly see and review them yourself if you wish in the Elegant Themes Gallery.

 

Product:	Elegant Themes
Headline:	Beautiful WordPress themes. Satisfaction GUARANTEED or your money back!
About:	Elegant Themes was launched by Nick Roach in 2008 with just one theme, Blue Sky. He was a student studying graphic design at the time. Up until July 2003 Roach was the companies only designer. Roach now manages a team of 20+ support crew and developers.
Price:
Upgrades:	The upgrade policy is very simple. You can upgrade at any time after signing up. When you log in you will see a notice regarding your current package and instructions on how to upgrade should you wish to do so.
Guarantee:	30 day money back guarantee. Elegant Themes offer a no-questions-asked refund within 30 days of your purchase.

 

Top 10 for Beautiful WordPress Themes, Functionality and Usability

Elegant Themes is ranked in the top 10 for beautiful wordpress themes, functionality and usability because of their high resolution graphics and brilliantly considered color schemes which are great to see, yet are not too distracting for those browsing the content of your site.

The page header, which your visitors see first, is one of the most important part of your website so this has been given special consideration. It’s designed to be stylish and distinctive to grab your visitors attention. This combined with well thought out navigation encourages browsing.

The page background selection, which nobody every consciously notices, offers tranquil effects to encourage your readers relax and enjoy their visit.

You do of course have full control over the choice of images and colors used on your site using the built in options. The adventurous can also dive into the code to create their own perfect palette. You’ll find there is an excellent balance in all of the beautiful WordPress themes produced by Elegant Themes, between high-end design and user customisation depending upon your individual needs.

With 87+ expertly made, beautifully designed themes to choose from I think you’ll find just what you’re looking for with Elegant Themes.

Themes Developed by Elegant Themes

When you scroll through the Elegant Themes libarary you’ll find a wide variety of offerings. The themes library is arranged in date order (newest to oldest) and not alphabetical order as you might expect. What follows is just a few highlights of what’s on offer.

Divi Theme – the Latest from Elegant Themes

Divi is a new kind of theme, it’s the smartest and most flexible responsive theme in Elegant Themes collection.

With the Divi theme, page design elements are broken down into building blocks that can be customised and arrange in a multitude of ways. You then use the drag?and?drop builder to edit the structure of the page without touching a single line of code.

There are no limitations on how elements can be customised and arranged, making Divi the most flexible theme, Elegant Themes have ever created.

Divi ships with 18 pre-made layouts that allow you to quickly jumpstart your development. These are completely customisable and can be used as a great starting point for creating your own designs.

Nexus Theme

The Nexus is one of the latest themes from Elegant Themes and offers a clean design in keeping with the latest design trends. It is a fully responsive magazine style design with custom widgets and content modules.

Most of the magazine themes I’ve seen are just too complicated. The Nexus Theme on the otherhand looks like a magazine styled theme that’s actually under control unlike a lot of the magazine style free wordpress themes which are just plain chaotic.

“The challenge of any magazine theme is to take massive amounts of content and present it to the reader in a clear and structured manner. Nexus achieves this through a strict grid, typographical hierarchy and a clean layout that gives each element just enough room to breath”. [elegantthemes]

Blue Sky Theme

The Blue Sky theme was Nick Roach’s fist theme design and it shows. Although it’s been updated, it’s still looking a little dated. That having been said it’s still a very useful theme.

“Bluesky is a great wordpress theme for those looking for a smooth and elegant design for their blog. This template takes advantage of custom fields to allow for integrated thumbnail images, as well as various plugins to help take your site to the next level. This theme comes advertisement ready, featuring an unobtrusive integration of google adsense. Refer to the list below for the full range of features”. [elegantthemes]

Theme Demo’s, Previews and Documentation

There are a couple of nice features on the Elegant Themes site. One is the ability to preview every theme, as you would expect. The other is the ability to test run each theme using the demo feature.

All themes come with documentation on file plus, documentation is also provided in the “Docs” section of the Members Area which includes a comprehensive list of videos tutorials, articles, troubleshooting tips and other resources.

Theme Pricing

Elegant Themes was the first theme company to use a club model where all themes are made available to members. That’s a lot of value for your hard earned money. Consider how much you would need to pay to have just one custom WordPress theme designed.

Compared to most of the top premium WordPress theme providers, ElegantThemes offers the most economical prices on the market today. The current pricing structure is given above.

I find it strange that the Developer option is the most popular choice as the Lifetime Access option is clearly the better value if you intend to use more than three themes over a number of years. The no yearly fees for all themes and plugins (both current and future) with full support and updates is the key to the great value for the Lifetime Access option.

If you just want access to all the themes from Elegant Themes then the Personal option is the one to grab. This works well for those who only intend to use one or two themes for their blogs or business site.

At just $0.79 per premium WordPress theme this has got to be the best value you’ll ever find. After all, where else can you get so many premium WordPress themes for such a low price?

Theme Support

For those new to premium WordPress theme installation, who may have questions during the installation process, Elegant Themes customer support is always available to offer assistance.

• Those who have installed premium WordPress themes before will not have any problems.

Support is handled through the support forum where you can post your queries and questions. It’s best to browse the forum category for your theme first as your question has probably already been asked and answered.

The response time for forum questions to be answered by support members seems to be between 5 minutes and 12 hours. The time obviously depending upon who’s available and how busy the forum is at the time you ask your question. Questions can be answered by other members almost immediately.

Elegant Themes Pros

• Large collection of quality premium WordPress themes.
• Wide variety of uses, including blogs, business, eCommerce, magazines, multimedia, personal, portfolios and apps.
• Membership plans offer very affordable pricing.
• Friendly, easy to use members support forum.

Elegant Themes Cons

• Getting answers via the forum can be a little slow. It woud be nice to have email, live chat or telephone support.
• Some of the older themes still not updated with features such as responsive design.

Is Elegant Themes a Scam, Hype or Does it Work?

Definition, SCAM: A person, company, organisation etc. who steals your money without giving you anything in exchange. A fraudulent business scheme; to defraud, a swindle.

• Given the above definition, Elegant Themes is not a scam.

With Elegant Themes, you will receive the product for which you are paying.

Refund and Cancellation Policy

Elegant Themes offer no-questions-asked refunds to all customers within 30 days of your purchase. If you are not satisfied with our product, then simply send them an email and they will refund your purchase right away. Elegant Themes state, “our goal has always been to create a happy, thriving community. If you are not thrilled with the product or are not enjoying the experience, then we have no interest in forcing you to stay as an unhappy member“.

If you cancel your subscription, then your account will remain active for the remainder of your one year term. After that, you will lose access to the members area and all new themes, theme updates and tech support. You may continue using the themes you have already downloaded forever.

Can I Use the Themes for My Clients?

Elegant Themes have very few restrictions. You are free to use their themes to build websites for your clients. Elegant Themes state, “we love providing developers with beautiful and functional design choices for their clients“.

Can the Themes be Used with WordPress.com?

Unfortunately WordPress.com does not allow the use of custom themes other then the WordPress.com hosted themes, i.e., you cannot upload your own themes. Elegant Themes has two premium themes featured in the WordPress.com theme store – TheStyle and Nexus.

If you would like to use a custom theme of any kind, you will need to purchase your own hosting account and install the free software from WordPress.org. If you are looking for great WordPress hosting, see my article, Where to register domain names.

User Friendly Theme Coding

The core of a theme lies in its functions and CSS coding. Of course your theme needs to look good with a clear, user friendly structure and strong design, but this will be wasted without good functionality.

To assist with theme design, each theme has an options panel called ePanel. Here you can customise virtually every element of your website. Customise features such as; general settings, navigation, layout settings, ad management, colorization, SEO, integration. Enabling and disabling each function is merely a mouse click away. Simply include what you love and exclude the rest.

To tweak the colourisation of your web site there is a live colour picker which allows you to choose colours for each elements on your website and see the results immediately.

There are also theme options to enable the addition of tracking codes, changing navigation and much more.

• ePanel: Using this control-panel you don’t have to know ANY coding at all.

Elegant Themes provide a excellent structure for their themes and the code is also well-structured and optimised. However, you will need to be very conversant with coding if you intend to change the underlying code. Luckily their tech support and user forum are there as backup should you have problems.

• If you’re not into coding and you cannot find a theme which exactly meets your needs you can of course hand your customisation requirements to a designer/programmer.

Each theme is fully equipped with a widget-ready sidebar, custom thumbnail images, search bar, and is gravatar ready. A few special features included in each theme are three level dropdown menus and automatic resizing of images, plus many themes are now fully responsive.

Some themes come with extra features, such as custom widgets, advertisements areas, Google Maps integration, a slider and a visitor ratings system.

Elegant Themes Support Forum

Elegant Themes provides really good supports for their customers through a members support forum. Getting assistance is simply a case of stating your problem or query by opening a “thread” in the right category of the forum and waiting for a moderator or member to help you. This is a very fast, active forum with support not very far away.

• Buying a theme is just the beginning of the story, you need a good support from both moderators and community to set up your website properly, this is especially important for those with minimal computing and/or programming skills.

If you download themes intending to personalise them you should know that the support crew does not provide support for customizations. There is a forum dedicated to customizations for users to seek help from other members, but it comes with the warning that support is not guaranteed.

Personal and Developer and Photoshop Files?

Elegant Themes offers two standard packages: Personal and Developer. The Personal Subscription is ideal for the average user while the Developers License is meant for experienced designers who wish to customize their themes using the original Photoshop files. Photoshop files are the original design files that were used to create the theme. They can be opened using Adobe Photoshop and edited, and prove very useful for customers wishing to change their theme’s design in some way.

• A PSD file is an Adobe Photoshop Document file.

Full design .PSD files are included in the Developer and Lifetime Access packages.

Can I Purchase a Single Theme?

Elegant Themes, themes are only available as part of the membership, so to obtain a single theme you would still have to purchase membership, which of course would entitle you to download all the themes. So if you only intend to use a single theme from their collection you will have to decide if signing up for membership is good value.

I think you will find Personal membership is an incredible deal and half the price some of Elegant Themes competitors charge for a single theme download.

Elegant Themes, What’s in the Future

When you purchase Elegant Theme membership, you not only get all of the current themes but also, all future themes. More importantly, you get the themes updated to keep in line with WordPress updates.

Elegant Themes Review Conclusion

Considering the quality, usability and price for these premium WordPress themes my overall rating for Elegant Themes has got to be 10/10. This theme provider is excellent and highly recommended for both personal and business use.

Elegant Themes offer a large collection of quality designs at affordable prices. The themes are cleanly designed and ideal for a wide range of applications, from casual bloggers, to businesses, eCommerce, magazines, multimedia, personal, portfolios and apps.

• My only proviso is this; their membership packages are best for those who intend to have multiple WordPress sites. That’s the advantage of having access to loads of unique professionally made themes.

For those planning to use the themes for their clients’ websites, Elegant Themes has the advantage, as you can use their themes on an unlimited number of personal or client sites at no additional cost.

Why not join over 233,000 Elegant Themes happy customers and get access to their complete library of themes and plugins with their 30?day, 100% satisfaction guaranteed or your money back offer!

• Click here for the official Elegant Themes web site.

Well, I hope you found something useful and enjoyed this Elegant Themes Review. Tell us about your experiences in the comments section below.