Neve WordPress Theme Review: 1,200+ Five-Star Ratings Can’t Be Wrong…or Can They?

So in this review, I’m going to give you the details that I’d want to know if I was deciding on Neve versus some other theme(s). We’ll review what Neve does well – including some of its lesser known features – and then I’ll break down the differences between the free version and the Pro version. But first, let’s begin with a quick overview.

Neve at a glance 👀

Number of doswnloads	over 5.6 million
Average user rating	94% (1,255 reviews)
Pre-built starter sites	110+
Default loading timeAs measured by GTMetrix on a default Neve installation.	0.6 seconds
Page builder compatibilityNeve has been tested and works with Elementor, Beaver Builder, Brizy, Visual Composer, SiteOrigin, and Divi Builder.	✅
Global color palettes	✅
Translation and RTL ready	✅
Adobe Typekit fonts	✅
Custom backgrounds	✅
Support	✅
Free version	✅
Pro version	3 plans (Personal, Business, Agency)
Check it out	Go to Neve

As you can already see, Neve brings a lot to the table, but there’s so much more underneath the hood once you install it and start playing with it. Let me show you some of my personal favorite aspects of the theme.

What Neve does really well 👍

Right off the bat, what I love about Neve is how intuitive it is to navigate and how transparent everything is.

As someone who’s used and tested hundreds of WordPress themes (I once tested 60+ in 20 hours), I can’t tell you how frustrating it is when a theme involuntarily turns me into a detective. Even worse is when advertised starter sites aren’t available unless you upgrade or when claims of being “one of the fastest themes” are just meaningless marketing slogans.

With Neve, there is none of that.

Let me walk you through Neve’s startup process and also some recent speed testing that I did so that you understand exactly what I mean.

Easy-to-follow startup wizard

From the moment you install and activate Neve, a helpful digital hand is extended to you in the form of a temporary window that invites you to explore Neve’s starter site library:

If you happen to be more of a do-it-yourself type, then you can simply click on I want to build this website from scratch and have at it. However, I suspect most of you reading this will probably want to use one of the pre-built sites – and that’s irrespective of your website-building skill level.

I say that based on the three most recent months of internal data that I got my hands on by bugging our Product Manager on Slack. 😁 Here’s the skinny:

Of those who took advantage of the startup wizard, 66.06% were beginners, 24.6% were intermediate level, and 9.34% were experts. Beginners were clearly the frontrunners, but as you can see, there was representation from all skill levels across the board.

So assuming you follow the pack, and click on Explore Templates and Start Building Now, you’ll be taken to the almighty startup wizard:

Using the wizard, you can either click on one of the suggested categories, or search for one that’s more specific for the website you plan on building.

Wide selection of pre-built sites

On the next screen, you’ll see all the available starter sites for the category you chose or typed in. There will be some that are available for free and others that will be clearly marked with PRO in the upper righthand corner. These require you to purchase a Neve Pro plan.

You’ll also be able to toggle between starter sites that were built using the WordPress block editor and ones that were built with Elementor:

Once you decide on a template, click on it, and you’ll be brought to the next step. Here you’ll be able to select your global color palette and optionally upload a site logo image:

The last step before everything gets imported to your site is the optional plugin selection screen. This screen will look somewhat different, depending on the specific starter site you choose.

For example, if you pick a site that’s geared toward education / online learning, then you’ll see Masteriyo there. However, if you go with something like ‘food’ (as I did in this example) then you’ll get different suggestions.

Customizer

At first glance, access to the Customizer might not seem so special, since this is a default feature of all classic (non-block) WordPress themes.

However, once you click into it, you’ll quickly realize how feature-rich Neve’s Customizer actually is.

There is so much there that I can’t possibly cover it all (or this would turn into a whole knowledge base library), but three of my personal favorite highlights are:

• Header and Footer modules that let you map out what you want these two areas of your site to look like – down to the smallest of details.
• Typography settings that go above and beyond what you get with most WordPress themes. You can choose from font presets or tweak everything manually. There’s even a toggle that lets you host your fonts locally.
• Global settings that let you adjust your colors, page layouts, container layouts, the look of your buttons, form settings, and more.

Spending a bit of time with the Neve Customizer will allow you to have everything in place the way you want it. And when you start adding new pages or posts, they will automatically look good. If at some point you want to make further changes, you can always go back into the Customizer and do that as well.

Performance

Neve is fast.

And yes, I know that nearly every WordPress theme writes that on their marketing material but not all of them live up to their claims.

I’ve personally tested Neve numerous times over the course of the past three years under a variety of conditions and it always comes through with solid scores – whether using GTmetrix, Pingdom Tools, or some other speed test.

The test site that I whipped up for the purposes of this review is no exception:

Keep in mind that as good as it scored, that this was also without me having activated Optimole – which is a plugin that gets installed when you check the Image Optimization choice during the startup process, as I recommended. If I had turned on Optimole, the result would most likely have been at the A+ level.

💡 Note: If you’re curious what those abbreviations mean, they are part of Google’s core web vitals, and are used to measure website performance.

Regular updates

Beyond being fast and easy to use, Neve is also continuously updated. Thanks to Neve Pro’s paying customers, the guys over on the development team are able to regularly work on Neve to add new features and keep it up to date with the latest web standards.

If you go to the Neve development log, you will see under the Age column that they are constantly making updates to it, which improves the user experience.

Extensive documentation and support

The Neve knowledge base is like a library. Big credit goes to our former colleague Andreea Cristina Rădăcină who spent countless hours putting together many of the pages you’ll find there.

Pretty much any topic you can think of related to using Neve can be found there. But if you ever encounter an issue where self help isn’t getting you anywhere, then you can always tap our support team.

Neve offers help for both free and Pro users, though only the latter receive dedicated support.

• Free users can open up a ticket in the WordPress repository support forum, post in our Neve Facebook group, and more.
• Pro users can log into their accounts and open up a support ticket, and the highest tier users even have access to live chat.

💡 Learn all the resources and ways you can get help as a free Neve user.

Wait, Neve can do that too?!? 😲

Despite being a longtime top ten WordPress theme, there are surprisingly still many aspects of Neve that fly under the radar. Probably the biggest three are:

• Neve codex
• White labeling
• Content restriction

The Neve codex

I think the Neve Codex largely goes unnoticed simply because of how much focus there is on Neve’s beginner friendliness. It gives the impression that the theme is focused only on beginners, when in reality, it caters to users across skill levels (as I highlighted earlier with our internal data).

For developers building custom Neve sites, the Neve Codex is an enormous time saver. Instead of having to dig through theme files trying to find the right hook or function, a quick Codex search brings exactly what you need – complete with implementation details.

So, for example, let’s say you wanted to work on some kind of an Instagram integration, you would simply type Instagram into the search bar and browse through the results to get the code you need:

What makes the Codex even more valuable is its detailed organization. Each entry includes parameters, return types, source file locations (with line numbers), and even Used By references showing implementation examples. The “View on GitHub” links take you directly to the source code for deeper investigation.

White labeling

Neve’s white labeling feature is very useful for agencies and for that reason, it’s restricted to the Agency version of the Pro plan. This also probably why many people don’t even know it exists. And while it is a niche need, for the right type of user, it’s nice to have.

Content restriction

Restricting content is another niche need, but one that has an arguably wider use case umbrella. It’s available in Neve Pro on all plans. You can use it to restrict posts, pages, or categories and also choose what logged out users see when they attempt to access any of the categories that you decide to restrict:

Pricing 💰

Neve has a free version and three Pro plans. The Pro plans are priced as follows:

• Personal: $69.00
• Business: $149
• Agency: $259

All prices are per year.

Differences between Neve free and Neve Pro 🎭

If you’ve read along this far and didn’t skip to this section, then you’ve already gotten a glimpse of some Neve features that are only available in the Pro version, but let’s take a deeper dive to give you the bigger picture.

We’ll start with the key features offered by Neve across the board, regardless of whether you use the free version or one of the three Pro plans. Then I’ll highlight the differences and wrap it up with a quick summary of which version you might want to go with – depending on the type of site you plan on building.

Core features of all Neve plans

• Fast loading, lightweight, and SEO-optimized
• Responsive design for mobile devices
• Header and footer customization (Pro has more advanced options)
• Access to pre-built starter sites (Pro offers more of them)
• Integration with popular page builders (Elementor, Beaver Builder, Brizy, Gutenberg)
• Suite of optional powerful plugins to enhance your website
  • Optimole
  • WP Full Pay
  • Masteriyo
  • Super Page Cache
  • Otter Blocks
  • Hyve Lite

Key differences

Feature	Neve Free	Neve Pro
Header customization options	Limited	✅Create transparent header, sticky header, multiple headers, page headers. Add additional header components like social icons, translation switcher, breadcrumbs, custom HTML, and more.
Footer customization options	Limited	✅Edit copyright information. Add social icons, payment icons, dividers, and custom layouts.
Custom layouts	❌	✅
Blog layout booster	❌	✅30+ new options for blog/archive pages including list, grid, and cover layouts, advanced styling controls, masonry layout, card styles, and custom spacing options.
WooCommerce booster	Limited	✅⚠️Available in Business and Agency plans only. Custom shop layouts, sticky add to cart, off-canvas product filtering, card image effects, custom cart sections (cross-sell, upsell), conversion-focused checkout styles.
Elementor booster	❌	✅Add extra widgets (flip card, review box, share buttons, team member, progress circle). Use content protection with user restrictions. Add particle animations and advanced visual effects.
White label	❌	✅⚠️Only available in the Agency plan.
Scroll to top	❌	✅
Restrict content	❌	✅
Support and updates	Basic	✅

Who should choose which version?

• Neve free is ideal for beginners, personal blogs, or simple business sites needing a fast, lightweight theme with basic customization and an easy-to-navigate interface.
• Neve Pro is recommended for businesses, agencies, ecommerce stores, and anyone needing advanced design options, more starter sites, and premium support.

In summary, the free version of Neve does the basics really well. It has some advanced features too, but Neve Pro really takes the advanced features to another level. Its design options can significantly enhance your website’s functionality and appearance, but you really can’t go wrong with either version. It all depends on what kind of website you’re trying to build.

Final thoughts on Neve 💭

The WordPress theme market is massive. There are 13,400+ available in the WordPress repository alone, not to mention countless others in private theme shops. The fact that Neve has been able to maintain a consistent spot in the top ten in an ocean that massive is truly impressive.

It speaks to both the hard work that the dev team puts in behind the scenes, and also the awesome user community that’s developed around the theme.

I hope that this review gave you the additional insight that you needed. If you still have any lingering questions, please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments below. Otherwise, go ahead and take Neve for a test spin and let me know what you think.