When shopping for a WordPress theme you will almost certainly come across a common name: ThemeForest. Without question, ThemeForest is the world’s largest marketplace for WordPress themes, but in my opinion you absolutely should never buy a theme from them.

In this article I will explain why the last place you want to buy a theme is ThemeForest.
 

The Problem with ThemeForest

First off, I want to say that I don’t have anything against Envato, the company that runs ThemeForest. In fact, I am a regular customer at many of their other marketplaces. As shown in my profile, I have been buying items from these marketplaces since 2009 and I’ve purchased over 100 items.

However, I do NOT shop at ThemeForest. I do understand how compelling their themes can look, especially if they were designed for your particular niche (for instance, you might be starting a podcast and ThemeForest offers multiple podcast themes that look fantastic). But in a lot of cases (if not most cases), the underlying theme simply does not live up to expectations.

Here are some of the reasons why:
 

Most ThemeForest themes are created by individuals.

Now, I’m all for entrepreneurship, and I’m not trying to say anything bad about “solopreneurs” (entrepreneurs that work alone), but it is a really bad idea to stake your entire online presence on one person located in some country far away from you.

What if your website goes down and the theme developer is on vacation? You’re out of luck.

What if you need help with something but your developer decides to stop supporting the theme and moves on to another career? You’ll have to start your website from scratch with a new theme.

What if a WordPress update causes a conflict with your theme that crashes your website, but time zone differences, coupled with bad response times, make it nearly impossible to have a complete conversation with the developer? You could lose days, if not weeks, of business.

When working with a reputable company (like Elegant Themes, the theme company we recommend) you know that they are going to have people on staff, they will continue supporting their themes, and they will respond quickly when you need assistance.
 

The individual developers on ThemeForest can code in different ways.

Whatever business you are in, you’ve probably looked at something that a competitor has done and said to yourself, “Why did they do that like that? I would have done it much better.”

Well, that’s how developers are too. Everybody thinks they know the best way to code. Plus, coders come with a wide variety of skill levels. That means you never really know what you’re going to get.

I’ve seen it happen far too often where a developer has used some unique code that works great, but then WordPress updates their core software and suddenly the way that the developer wrote their code is no longer compatible and your website goes down.

Working with a reputable theme company ensures that they are using experienced developers that are coding with best practices in mind at all times.
 

Individual developers on ThemeForest can be slow to update their code.

WordPress updates their core software on a regular basis, which is incredibly important, especially for security reasons. Unfortunately, many individual developers don’t do anything until after the update comes out, and if they don’t have people complaining about their websites breaking then they do nothing at all.

This behavior can put your website at risk, even if your website seems to be working fine.

Quality companies don’t act like this. They request advanced “beta” versions of any upcoming WordPress updates and use them to thoroughly test their themes to make sure everything works perfectly. If an issue is found, they will actually update the theme before WordPress does their update, ensuring you have a seamless experience.
 

ThemeForest isn’t very helpful, and there are no guarantees.

One of the problems with the themes at ThemeForest is that you can’t really see how it’s built until after you’ve bought it. All you have to go off of is comments and ratings by other people. And if you look closely at the comments, you’ll see that a lot of them, if not most of them, are from other ThemeForest developers that are just wishing them good luck on their sales.

That means that it’s difficult to tell if it’s a horribly-built theme pre-purchase. You just have to roll the dice.

So what happens if you buy a theme and then realize it’s really a pile of garbage? Not much. ThemeForest will only offer you your money back if you can prove that the theme is fully broken. The fact that it was built like crap isn’t a good enough reason for you to get your money back.

In most circumstances you’ll just be out the money you spent and you’ll have to go and find a different theme to work with.

This is one of the reasons we recommend Elegant Themes and, more specifically, their Divi theme. Not only is it a world-class theme powering hundreds of thousands of websites, but they even offer a 30-day guarantee so you can rest assured that you will get your money back if you don’t like it.
 

Conclusion.

At the end of the day, ThemeForest only exists to showcase products and facilitate a transaction. I’m not saying all of the themes on ThemeForest are bad, but your website is your online reputation. It is your “home” on the web and typically the only thing that potential clients or customers will ever see. It’s simply too important to take a chance on the themes sold on ThemeForest.

If you’ve found this information useful, and you’re considering using Divi or another Elegant Themes theme, then I would appreciate it if you would use one of the affiliate links on this page to make your purchase. This will help me to continue to provide useful information to you and others.

And if you don’t yet have a hosting plan, I’d appreciate you using this link to get a new hosting plan from our one and only preferred hosting company.