I Spent 20 Hours Testing 60+ Niche WordPress Themes, and There Are Some Elephants in the Repo

I simply could not find enough genuinely good free themes to feature in the article. And it’s not that I have an issue with developers asking for money for their pre-built demo content. After all, we sell premium starter sites and block patterns on our flagship brand website as well. It’s an honest business – when you’re being honest. But that was my main beef with most of these themes – lack of transparency.

After I was done, it got me thinking about other niches. My gut feeling was that fitness themes were not an anomaly and that other niches were also affected by the “shiny cover, empty box” syndrome I encountered. So I decided to put my theory to the test. I fired up a test instance of WordPress on TasteWP and went through 31 different travel themes. The results of my analysis and my thoughts on the implications of the research are below.

My criteria and process briefly explained 💬

I’d like to mention a few quick things before we dive into the details. First, is that I intentionally avoided testing any child themes, and second, with very few exceptions, I avoided themes that had not been updated some time within the past calendar year.

In addition, in between each theme install, I did the following so that each install would be clean:

• I deleted all plugins that were installed with the previous theme.
• I removed any FSE patterns and layouts installed by the previous theme.
• I re-activated the default WordPress theme, deleted the theme I had just tested, and then installed the next theme.

Finally, if for some reason a theme loaded and appeared to be broken somehow, I installed another instance of it on WP Sandbox to see if the issue persisted on a fresh install there.

And that’s it. Let’s get into it.

⚠️ Note: If you’re a data person and want to check out my complete spreadsheet, where I kept track of all the themes as I was conducting the testing, you can see it here. If you want to see screenshots of the live demos and compare them to the actual installs, I’ve collected all of those in this Google Drive folder.

Key findings 🗝️

• Travel themes in the repository (at the time of research): 1,174
• How many tested: 31
• Of those tested, how many were labeled as commercial theme: 5
• How many provided the full demo site as shown: 16
• How many provided partial demo content: 5
• How many were empty (or almost empty): 8
• How many were broken: 2

The one drawback of my research is the sample size. Because there are more than a thousand travel themes in the WordPress repository, it means that the 31 themes I tested amounts to only about 2.6% of all of them.

That’s a really low number, but nonetheless, I still believe the sample size is representative enough to make some observations and draw some inferences. This is corroborated by the fact that I observed similar phenomena while doing research for the fitness themes post.

Although I didn’t track the hard data in the same way that I did here because my intentions were completely different (i.e., I was simply trying to make a “best of” list), if I was guess-timating, the results were roughly the same, if not slightly worse. And in the case of fitness, the overall possible sample size was much lower (334 vs 1,174 for travel).

This is why, despite the smaller sample size relative to the group, I believe it’s still adequate enough to paint a picture of what’s happening in the world of niche WordPress themes.

And it ain’t pretty.

Issues, problems, and other discoveries 💡

Based on my research, these are the issues that I uncovered and why, if you care about WordPress, you should care. Even if you’re not a WordPressaholic but you simply want the internet to be better than what it’s turned into lately, then you should still care. I’ll also share some actionable advice you can take at the end.

Poor transparency from too many developers

The “commercial theme” label has become functionally worthless

The problem with the commercial theme label is that while its intentions are noble, it seems like only developers who operate in good faith apply it to themselves. As you saw in the key findings above, of the 31 themes I tested, only 5 of them were labeled as commercial.

But do you how many of those 31 offered a paid / pro / premium / upgraded version of their theme?

23!

Now listen, I know full well that according to the guidelines, having a paid theme doesn’t necessarily mean that it needs to be labeled as commercial in the repository. As long as the free version offers substantial functionality and adheres to the WordPress theme repository guidelines, it can still be listed without the commercial label even if a paid version exists.

Unfortunately, based on my research, it appears that some developers are exploiting this technicality. They’re essentially using the free theme as a trojan horse to get their foot in the door, then bombarding users with upsells, locked features, and pushy marketing tactics. This practice not only undermines the spirit of the WordPress repository but also creates a frustrating experience for those who download what they believe to be a free theme, only to find it’s either partially usable as advertised (at best), or an empty shell (at worst).

But it gets even worse.

Of the 8 themes that loaded as empty or near empty in my tests, not a single one is labeled as commercial as of the time of this writing, yet 7 out of 8 offer the full site shown in their demo content if you upgrade to the paid version.

How are these themes getting away with not being labeled as commercial?!

To Elementor or not to Elementor?

Beyond this, I also found that several developers built their demo content using Elementor and prompted you to install Elementor as part of the setup process in order for you to edit the theme, but didn’t disclose this or make it clear.

Others were blatantly misleading. To share one example, I tested a theme that mentions on its repository page that it’s:

“…compatible with Elementor and Gutenberg, offering more flexibility to customize your website.”

But what happens in practice after you actually install the theme is a different story.

First, it immediately includes Elementor and two other Elementor add-ons as part of its “recommended plugins.” Note the adjective choice – recommended, not required:

To test what would happen, I intentionally installed only the non-Elementor recommended plugins and continued with the process of importing the demo content.

Notice the paragraph above the “Import Starter Templates” button. There is not a single word about the fact that you are required to use Elementor for the demo content to work or be imported. In fact, there is still the same lingering message from the previous screen, telling you that the Elementor plugins are recommended.

So I clicked on the action button and moved forward with the process.

I then had to choose whether I want to import the entire demo site or only the homepage template. The Elementor recommendations were still hovering above. I chose to import the complete site.

This is where things got frustrating.

As part of the demo import process, the importer tool installed all of those Elementor plugins automatically!

At no point did it tell me it was going to do this. There was nothing mentioned about having to use Elementor to use the demo content. It only kept saying that Elementor was “recommended.”

Of course you can argue that technically this is accurate, since you don’t have to use the pre-built starter site and can build your site from scratch using Gutenberg, but I reckon that 99% of people aren’t downloading this theme so they can build their site from scratch. The demo content is the main draw here.

Out of curiosity, after I uninstalled the theme and all associated plugins, I decided to reinstall it, but this time import only the homepage template rather than the complete site. The result was slightly better. It actually gave me advanced notice that it was going to install Elementor and other plugins as part of the process.

So why not give this same warning when importing the entire demo site?

It seems like that would make sense.

What would make even more sense is disclosing to potential users in both the repository and on your website that in order to make use of the theme as you’ve presented it, that they’ll need to use Elementor. Instead potential users see this:

Scroll down a tiny bit and there are four more wasted opportunities to say something about it:

Keep in mind that this is only one example, but it wasn’t the only one I came across. Transparency is an issue.

Too many plugins to make a theme work

As you saw in the previous section, in order to take full advantage of a theme, some themes will prompt you to install plugins as part of the setup process. In many cases, these plugins serve a specific functional purpose and make sense.

To use the example that I just discussed, if a theme’s starter site was built using Elementor, then installing Elementor is obviously a necessity.

However, some themes inject your website with so many plugins at the onset and they don’t always make it clear which ones you really need for the theme to work, and which ones are genuinely optional but recommended. I came across one theme that prompted me to install seven different plugins just to get started, with another four after you finished setting up. That’s a total of 11 plugins to use this theme!

In my opinion, that’s overkill.

There’s no standardized demo content import tool

Another issue that I came across, which is more of something that I wish the WordPress Core team could add in a future WordPress release, is lack of a standardized demo content import tool. I think this would significantly improve the WordPress user experience for people who frequently work with multiple themes.

It’s not that any of the demo import plugins that I used were that difficult to figure out, but it’s that I constantly had to re-orientate myself to what I was doing. And there was one theme and import tool in particular that – while not confusing for me – I could see how it would confuse a first-timer to the point where they might give up on using WordPress (or at least that theme) altogether.

The theme prompts you to download the demo content:

It downloads as a zip file, which contains three other files inside of it:

You then need to scroll a little further down and upload those files in their respective areas:

Again, it’s not terribly difficult at all, but it also doesn’t explain it anywhere. For someone like maybe a typical Squarespace user who’s deciding to give WordPress a shot, it could feel confusing.

If WordPress Core included a standardized demo importer that was user friendly, it could streamline demo content imports for everyone.

Having said that, I also realize that from a technical perspective, attempting to create a tool like this could get messy. Importing demo content involves handling various types of data, including posts, pages, media, custom post types, taxonomies, menus, and widget settings. Ensuring compatibility and proper import for all these elements could get rather complex. Even with just the difference in block themes versus classic themes and how they are built would possibly require two tools.

I do think that if the installers omitted auto-installation of plugins and forced users to install and activate their plugins manually that it would make the idea more feasible. However, I’m still not dismissing how challenging the task would be. My suggestion is from the end user perspective only.

Developers’ websites are not always well maintained

I might catch some flack for this one, but hear me out.

I’m not expecting everyone’s website to be 100% flawless with every single thing up to date. I get it. People are working on other things and most companies don’t have a dedicated website auditor who is watching every element, every day.

But when you have a developer with 13 themes that they’ve built, I would hope that the demo page for each theme at least shows the theme.

Having an entirely different theme on the page, with even the live preview link going to the other theme feels careless to me.

I mean someone manually updated this page, right?

Luckily, this issue was not as widespread as some of the others, but I did come across it here and there.

So what’s the solution to all of these problems?

Well, I believe that it is up to all of us who care about WordPress and the internet as a whole to do our part to make things better. Below are my suggestions on how we can do that.

My parting request to theme developers and WordPress users 🙏🏻

At the risk of coming across as overly preachy here, I’m going to share my thoughts on what all of us can do, depending on what hat we’re wearing at any given moment.

For developers

First, to all the theme developers out there, I’d like to say that you greatly inspire me with the amazing creations you come up with. But addressing the issues I’ve raised in this article (if they apply to you) would make a world of difference in improving the WordPress ecosystem:

• If your theme is a commercial theme, be up front about it. Don’t offer blank shell themes by dangling demo content that’s only available behind a paywall.
• Many people love Elementor, but many people is not everybody. If your starter site was built with Elementor, and the user is going to need to use Elementor to build their site, then disclose it. Make it crystal clear. Do it at the top of the funnel, not in the middle or bottom after the person has already invested time installing your theme.
• Create a neat divide between plugins that are required for your theme to work and those that are only recommended. Don’t just bundle them all into one suggestion and prompt people to download and install them all. For minor functions, try to build them into the theme.
• Maintain the important parts of your websites. I understand it’s tough to keep everything up to date all the time, but having the right theme on the right page is a pretty basic ask.

If you go on the starter sites page for our flagship theme, Neve, you will see that we make it easy for our users to search for both Elementor-based demo content and for demo content that we built with Gutenberg (the WordPress editor).

In addition, we label any paid demo content with a “Pro” tag so you know which starter sites are available in the free version of Neve and which ones you need to upgrade to get access to.

Nothing is ambiguous.

This is not only transparency in action, but it’s good practice that wins people’s business.

There’s an SEO agency that I came across randomly not too long ago. I don’t remember the exact context of how or why I ended up on their page, but they made an impact on me with their blunt core values. I’m talking about the first one in particular:

And in a nutshell, that’s what it boils down to.

The only thing I would add to the sub line is “…and our users.”

Care about your users. Stop throwing together low effort niche themes just for the sake of targeting search terms. I know you wouldn’t like it if you were on the receiving end, so why would you give another person that same kind of experience? It’s bad internet karma. Cut it out.

For WordPress users

If you’re reading this, then it’s highly likely you use WordPress in some capacity. And as a WordPress user, you can make a difference with small (or optionally, big) gestures to help developers that actually care about their users.

If you use a theme or come across one that you’re testing out and it’s both good quality and transparent, then leave a positive comment in the repository. This will help other users (just like you) who are browsing for themes that don’t suck, and it will let the developers of the theme know that you appreciate the work they put in to make a solid theme.

Share it on your social media if you think it will help others in your circle. If the developers have one of those “buy me a coffee” things on their site, then consider throwing some coins their way if you can.

These are small actions that won’t take a lot of your time, but they will be appreciated by other WordPress users and developers.

And that’s it. Thanks for taking the time to read.

Do you agree with my observations? Is there anything you’ve observed about WordPress themes that you think could be improved that I didn’t mention? Let me know in the comments.