WordPress Themes: Free Vs. Premium - is There a Difference?

Everyone should be familiar with the old adage "Nothing good in life is ever free." And while the world of WordPress offers many free themes, plugins, and widgets to their users; there is certainly some truth to statement, as there are some downfalls to using a free WordPress theme.

What's Lurking in the Background?

The first concern with using a free theme is the possibility of having hidden and embedded code built within your theme. As a business owner, or a blog writer, the last thing you want to do is attach potential spam to your clients or site visitors. Unfortunately, a large number of free WordPress themes do have some sort of spam built into the theme. In addition, some of the more elaborate theme creators have embedded the spam to a point that if you try to remove it, your entire site will fail.

Premium themes are usually free of spam. After all, would you knowingly pay for something that could cause damage to your site or your visitor's computer? Nah, I didn't think so.

Support

Another concern with free themes has to do with support. Since anyone can design a free theme and make it available, many times the designers are not interested or concerned with helping you with questions or comments regarding use of their theme. WordPress has attempted to help with this issue by creating web forums and other avenues to seek help, but fixing or changing the site is entirely up to you.

Since the designers of premium themes are earning a fee for their design, most times they are available though a dedicated web forum or some other avenue to their customers.

Sometimes your WordPress theme just won't support the widget or plugin that you need. You have looked through the forums and online help discussions, but to no avail; you have had to find a way to work around the issue.

With premium themes the designers are in contact with their users and listen to the issues that their clientele are experiencing. To keep their users happy, more times than not fixes or upgrades are made available. Since the designer is aware of the users that have purchased their theme, they can send the notification of the fix or upgrade out to everyone with the appropriate instructions for resolving the issue in the theme. (Not so with free themes. They only know how many people have downloaded the theme - not who downloaded the theme).

Let it be clear that I'm not stating every free theme out there is full of spam. As a matter of fact, there are even some membership sites that create themes for their users which are perfectly fine. I'm simply stating that, like anything online, you should be careful and do a bit of research before jumping on the first free theme you come across.

Granted if you are a new business owner or blog writer, sometimes downloading a free theme is your best solution to test your site and get it up and running. As the blog grows, or business makes money, consider upgrading to a premium theme and having a site that is more user and owner friendly without the worries of spam, support and more.