First things first, if you are new to blogging, you need to make sure you are on the best blogging platform. A self-hosted WordPress.org is a perfect platform to start your blogging journey because it gives you a lot of freedom, flexibility, and control.
As a beginner in blogging, one often faces the dilemma of choosing the right theme for their WordPress website. This dilemma manifolds if one has to decide between free and premium themes. The free WordPress theme’s biggest benefit is that it requires zero investment, thereby lowering the barrier of entry to start a blog. But the word “Free” often makes people cautious.
Often people think that free themes are risky as they are not supported well and are developed by amateur developers. Well, this is true to a certain extent; hence you need to ensure that your free WordPress theme is a quality design with decent support, regular updates, and quick customization.
WordPress.org offers tons of free WordPress themes that could make your website look like you hired a professional web designer. These free WordPress themes are not to be missed out on, for some of these free themes provide functionality better than most of the free themes.
You have thousands of free themes to choose from, and I know it can be overwhelming about what to pay attention to and what to do, but don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.
In this article, I’ve curated a list of the 11 most popular WordPress themes, free of cost, along with their features, ratings, and active installments (at the time of writing this article). This article is every beginner’s guide to choosing free WordPress themes for kickstarting their blogging journey.
Whether you are looking for the best WordPress themes for blogs or your business, these powerful themes will fit your every need.
Table of Contents
Free WordPress Themes – A beginner’s guide
1. OceanWP
Rating- 5 stars
Active Installments – 700,000 plus
Features:
- Responsive design
- Lightning-fast page load time
- 13 different demos
- Full customization control
- E-commerce ready
- Multi-purpose design
This lightweight theme tops our list for it is the best multi-purpose and customize WordPress theme. You can use it for creating any kind of blog or website, including e-commerce or membership sites. This theme looks beautiful on mobile and tablet screens. It is a great free WordPress theme that’s fantastic for e-commerce, blogs, portfolios, etc., and works well with page-building plugins like the Gutenberg block editor as well as Elementor. The free version gives you just a lot of control over the look and feel of your website that a lot of other themes kind of block behind a paywall. On top of that, they come with their starter guide making it easy for anyone to easily download this theme and get started.
2. Astra
Rating- 5 stars
Active Installments – 1,000,000 plus
Features:
- Superfast performance
- Customize without codes
- Built-in header layouts
- Multiple sites and blog layouts
- Full customization control
Astra is a feature-rich theme. It is the most popular multi-purpose theme that focuses on performance. It is a lightweight theme but still manages to have tons of features and lets you customize WordPress themes using WordPress customizer or other page builder plugins you like from Elementor, the Beaver Builder, the Gutenberg Block Editor, etc. It features great ready-made starter site designs that can be imported with just a click. It’s fast and light and you can use WooCommerce with it. The theme is optimized to work with popular plugins in the WordPress world. You can design a full-featured website with no limitations. It is a really impressive free WordPress theme.
3. Hestia
Rating- 4.5 stars
Active Installments – 100,000 plus
Features:
- Responsive design
- Slick material design
- Integrated WordPress Customizer
- WooCommerce design ready
- Optimized Speed
- Page Builder Compatibility
A clean and beautiful free theme that can be used for a wide variety of niches. There is full integration with WordPress plugins and ensure easy customization. It has a one-page design with smooth scrolling and a modern look. This modern theme is fit for startups, small businesses, creative businesses, freelancers, and more.
4. GeneratePress
Rating- 5 stars
Active Installments – 400,000 plus
Features:
- Responsive design
- WooCommerce design ready
- Search engine optimized
- Accessibility ready
- Page builder friendly
- Color and layout control
It is one of the fastest-loading, lightweight free WordPress themes. This theme is mobile-friendly and built to fit in corporate and small business sites with a focus on usability and speed. It is very much similar to Astra and OceanWP. It is one of the SEO-optimized WordPress themes with built-in schema.org structured data.
5. Neve
Rating- 5 stars
Active Installments – 200,000 plus
Features:
- 30 plus ready-made sites
- Multiple demos
- Responsive design
- Lightweight
- SEO friendly
- Overlay content blocks
- Page Builder Compatibility
Neve is a popular multi-purpose free WordPress theme that is a great option for freelancers, agencies, personal portfolio sites, and other businesses. This feature-rich free theme allows you a lot of advanced customizations that can give your website a fresh, eye-catching look with super fast speed. It has a multi-purpose design and hence is an appropriate choice for anyone who is starting with WordPress. Furthermore, it works perfectly with all the plugins and is an SEO-optimized WordPress theme. Like a lot of these more premium free themes that have the free version and the pro version, they come with built-in templates for beginners to take full advantage of the templates. So you have enough features and options with the free version of Neve to begin designing your website, or you can just use a starter theme.
6. Sydney
Rating- 5 stars
Active Installments – 200,000 plus
Features:
- Responsive layout
- Widgetized footer
- Translation ready
- Google fonts
- A slider or static image header
- Plenty of customization possibilities
Sydney is a popular free WordPress theme that is a great option for both businesses and freelancers. It has built-in content blocks, which means you can easily customize your homepage design. It features smooth scrolling and beautiful animations. This fast theme is fully compatible with Elementor and gives you various customization options such as a sticky header, logo upload, Google fonts, layout control, and more.
7. ColorMag
Rating- 5 stars
Active Installments – 100,000 plus
Features:
- Responsive Design
- WooCommerce design ready
- One custom menu
- 15 plus widget areas
- Advanced typography
ColorMag is a responsive magazine style free WordPress theme that features a neat multi-grid layout and includes pre-built sections to house banner ads. It is an appropriate option for any type of publishing sites, such as news websites or magazines. The theme has an elegant look with colorful buttons and an intuitive content structure.
8. Zakra
Rating- 5 stars
Active Installments – 60,000 plus
Features:
- 10 plus ready-made sites
- Multiple demos
- Responsive design
- Lightweight
- SEO friendly
- Page Builder Compatibility
It is a flexible, fast, and multi-purpose free WordPress theme. You can customize the design to fit your needs for whatever type of website you’re trying to design, either a WooCommerce store, business website, portfolio, personal blog; Zakra can be customized as appropriate to meet your needs. Furthermore, it comes with a demo importer so you can just download a demo content, then customize it from there. This responsive theme is SEO-friendly and works well with every major page builder and other plugins.
9. Kale
Rating- 5 stars
Active Installments – 20,000 plus
Features:
- Banner and slider options
- Multiple sidebars
- Responsive design
- Mobile friendly
- Minimalist interface
- Custom background color or image
This elegant and uncluttered WordPress theme is an appropriate choice for food, travel, lifestyle, or fashion blogs. It features nicely structured content blocks and widgets with WooCommerce integration. Simple yet beautifully designed, clean, and feature-filled.
10. One Page Express
Rating- 5 stars
Active Installments – 20,000 plus
Features:
- Responsive layout
- 9 different demos
- 30 plus page content sections
- Live content editing
- Google fonts
- Video and slideshow backgrounds
As the name suggests, it is a one-page WordPress theme that helps you build your page using a simple drag and drop. It has a user-friendly interface and comes with colorful buttons and sections. The modern animations, coupled with lazy loading effects, make it look very elegant. You get a predesigned homepage along with 30 ready-to-use content sections.
11. Twenty Twenty-One
Rating- 4 stars
Active Installments – 1,000,000 plus
Features:
- Responsive design
- Easy customization
- Classic layout
- RTL language support
- Footer widgets
It’s a nice and simple, basic theme that gives you a lot of customization over the look and design of your website. In addition, Using page builder plugins, you can add additional functionality and a little bit more customization to your website over specific aspects like header, footer, blog posts, etc. If you’re looking to start any type of blog and you want a minimalistic design the Twenty Twenty-One theme is a good choice.
CONCLUSION
I tried out all these free themes and they’re all really good in their unique way.
They do have some sort of specific limitations that you need to be aware of, so I suggest just trying them all out to see which one you like best.
I recommend you go through these popular themes as listed above and choose the one that best suits your need and niche.
These top-notch free WordPress themes are sure to give your site a beautiful and elegant look.
Remember that although these themes are free, these are high-quality, fast, and SEO-optimized themes available in the WordPress theme directory created by talented and experienced professionals.
So, leave all your worries and get set with your site with these popular WordPress themes that require zero investment.
If you liked what you read, do share this article.
Feel free to leave any suggestions or feedback.
If you need any help with other topics related to WordPress, check out our WordPress section.
