Top 5 FREE & Best WordPress Themes

What's going on guys? In this video we're going to be talking about the top 5 free and best themes for WordPress. And I'll be listing all of these themes in the description below so that you can check them out as we go along. I'll be rating these themes based off of three different things. Ease of use, clean design, and customization. So depending on whether you're a very beginner and you just want an easy theme or you're looking to get the most customization out of your free theme, I've got your back. And if you haven't already, smash that subscribe button if you want the best website tips, tricks, and guides on YouTube. Alright, let's get started. Coming in at number 5, we've got Shapely. Shapely is an awesome theme. Super clean design. I love this. It's got this parallax effect here. I love these big dividers. It's very clean. You can get right to the information, which I really like. Too much clutter can be a bad thing. So this theme really gets rid of that. And I also like that there's multiple buttons. So you've got a button for pretty much anything you want to put on here, which is really cool. And the menu kind of sticks to the top as you can see up here, so that's pretty cool. So I tested all of these themes myself. And for Shapely, I found that you have a lot of color options. Actually full color control over buttons and for your text. So that was really cool. And it's also very easy to edit. All you have to do is just click on this little pencil icon and it brings you right to this front page editor to edit that section. Now the con that I found with this theme is that you cannot change the font and you also cannot change the color of your header. So it has to remain white. But generally white is a good color to stay with because when you have obnoxious colors like purple and blue headers and things like that, it can get a little overwhelming. So black and white is a good way to stay. I didn't really mind that con at all. So with ease of use, I'd say it's about a 9. It's pretty high. As well as clean design. And for customization, I'd leave it around the middle, say around a 5. Overall, very beginner-friendly theme and I would recommend it to anyone just starting out. Coming in at number 4, we've got Mesmerize. Mesmerize is pretty cool. It's got this very colorful button design to it. Everything is really popping. I like the nice bold action buttons because it allows people to find exactly what they want very quickly. So Mesmerize won't look exactly like this. I actually gave it a test so that you could see what it looks like and what it's like to edit. So when you activate Mesmerize, I highly, highly recommend that you select a preset and put in all the sample data that it asks you to put in. So it'll just give you this cool little menu setup and ask you, do you want to start with a preset? You just click yes. Go through it. Really simple. And what I found was really cool is that Mesmerize has a ton of design options. You can change the dividers to like a million different types of dividers. You can even add like a colorful line to it, change the color of that line. You can change your button icons into any icon that you want. The only thing I found was that you could not change the color of the buttons. So you kind of have to stick with the color of those buttons on whatever preset that you pick. But you can set your background images and all that. And after you pick a preset, you also have individual presets for different sections. So if you have an about me section, you can pick all these different types. If you have a header or let's say a features section, you can choose presets and just pop them right in. So my rating for Mesmerize would be about a seven on ease of use. I'd give it about an eight for clean design. It may not be the cleanest, but it flows together really nicely. And for customization, I would say about an eight. You have a lot of options for customization, especially whenever you start with a preset. So as long as you're okay with the button color, this is a great theme to go with. This is the limitation that you have with free themes. You want to have 100% control, except for one theme, which I will show you. I think it's number two, actually. Coming in at number three, we've got Optimizer. Optimizer was pretty awesome. I found it to be one of the easiest themes that I've ever worked with because it has a front page editor. So if you scroll down, you can see it's 100% mobile responsive, which all of these themes are that I'm showing you. It's pretty fast, search engine optimized. It's also very good. So whenever I was editing with it, like I said, it's got a front page editor. It's got full color options for buttons and backgrounds. The header can actually be any color that you want. It can also be transparent if you want, so that's pretty cool. Text can also be any font, as well as any color. And the whole theme actually supports WooCommerce, which is an extra added bonus. Now the small con that I found for this one is that it's not fully customizable. You're actually limited to about four different widgets. It's like an about me section and so on, like advanced text. But luckily, when you drag those in and create sections for your page, you can get away with quite a bit if you've got a little bit of creativity. I messed around with it and created a fake website, and I thought it was pretty cool. So I would give this theme a full 10 for ease of use. I would give it an eight for clean design, and I would give it about a seven for customization because you do have a lot of color and font options. Coming in at number two, we've got OceanWP. This is one of my favorite themes. I actually use it for my e-commerce tutorial where I show you how to create an online store completely from scratch. And if you do want to check out that video, I will also put that in a link in the description. But OceanWP is fantastic. It's got full customization, and I actually only use OceanWP for the header and possibly the footer. And I can change all the colors, the text, and so on. It's 100% customizable. And what I do is use a page builder called Elementor. And Elementor is a front-end page builder where you can just drag and drop these different widgets and create a whole website just section by section. It is fantastic. I highly recommend it. You can change text, colors, images, buttons, add buttons all over the place if you want. It's fantastic. Did I say it's fantastic? It's fantastic. And with Elementor, you can also get preset templates that other users are creating and putting online. And you can drag those in, and then you can just kind of rearrange, drag and drop the way that you want. I would give this one ease of use, about a seven, because yes, beginners can learn it, but it might take a little bit of time to work out. And I would give this one a 10 for clean design, and I would give it a 10 for customization because endless opportunities with a page builder. So if you're going to get OceanWP, you need to get Elementor. So if you go to your WordPress dashboard and search for new plugins, you can just search Elementor and find it like that. And number one for the top five free themes is called Hestia. Hestia is fantastic. I've actually used it for other tutorials on my channel, like about how to make a website from scratch. So if you want to learn that, I will also put a link in the description to that video. But anyway, Hestia is awesome. It's super clean design, very easy to edit, super beginner friendly. Just look at it. I mean, it even supports WooCommerce, which is pretty cool. And if you go all the way down, so you've got your team, clients, subscribe to the newsletter. And this one will ask you to install a few companion plugins. And companion plugins basically just add these cool sections to your website that would not normally be there when you first get the theme. And you also have a contact form, which looks great. Hestia is super easy to use. So you actually just have to click on the pencil icon and you can edit any section. You can change the text, you can change backgrounds, you can even change the accent color. So whenever you change the accent color, it'll change this action button here, as well as the colors down here for your contact page. So it's just made for beginners. And in my how to make a website from scratch tutorial, I'll show you a couple little hacks where you can put an image here that's actually clickable, and it'll take you to whatever link that you provide. And it's a one page design. So if you just click on one of these sections like this, it'll just take you to that section. So let's do subscribe. Bam, just jumps all the way down. So I would give this theme a 10 for ease of use, a 10 for clean design, and let's say like an 8.5 or a 9 for customization. You can get away with a lot with this theme. And if you'd like to check out any of these themes, they will be in the description in order. So feel free to activate some of these themes, start playing with them, see which one fits your website the most, and please comment below what your favorite one is. I would love to hear from you guys. Alright, so if you like this video, please smash that subscribe button if you want to see more like this. And so it's been said, for every new subscriber that I get, a dog has another birthday party. Alright guys, thank you for watching. I will see you on the next video.