Elegant Themes is a popular WordPress theme and plugin company known for its beautifully designed products and exceptional customer support.
Founded in 2008 by Nick Roach, Elegant Themes has grown from a one-man shop into a thriving global business with over 87 themes, 6 plugins, and hundreds of thousands of customers.
In this comprehensive Elegant Themes review, we’ll cover:
- What’s included with an Elegant Themes membership
- A tour of the members area
- Pricing options
- Key pros and cons
- My experience using Elegant Themes as a developer
- Final verdict – who should buy it?
Let‘s start by looking at why Elegant Themes is so popular in the WordPress community…
Why Elegant Themes Stands Out
There are a few key reasons why Elegant Themes is my #1 recommendation for a commercial WordPress theme membership program:
1. Huge Theme Collection
With over 87 themes across multiple niches like blogging, business, magazine, and portfolio sites, Elegant Themes has something for everyone.
The flagship Divi theme alone could justify the membership cost with its extremely flexible drag-and-drop page builder. But you also get the beautiful Extra blogging theme and 85 more choices.
2. Quality Design and Code
Elegant Themes places a big emphasis on creating high quality, polished products that are easy to work with. Rather than churning out themes quickly, they focus on robust code and cohesive design elements across their lineup.
This commitment to quality over quantity has helped build trust with users over the years.
3. Excellent Support
The Elegant Themes support team is very responsive in my experience, providing thoughtful answers to questions quickly, even on weekends.
Between clear documentation, community forums, email ticketing, and access to coding files to self-solve issues, they make it easy to get help when you need it.
4. Regular Updates
With frequent updates across its products, Elegant Themes ensures compatibility with latest WordPress features and fixes any bugs in a timely manner.
So rather than using an outdated theme or plugin that never gets refreshed, membership holders benefit from this ongoing maintenance.
What‘s Included in Elegant Themes Membership
Now that we’ve covered what sets Elegant Themes apart, let’s see everything you get access to as a customer:
Themes
There are currently 87 WordPress themes and 1 Tumblr theme in the Elegant Themes library.
The themes cover various niches and are tagged to help you find options for your site type, such as:
- Blog – Extra, Story, Curated
- Business – Brooklyn, Valenti, Infinity Pro
- Portfolio – Oshine, Lucid, Skylab
- Magazine – Sleeker, Trellis, Gonzo
- Landing Page – Seller, Optimize, Authoritative
The most popular themes currently are:
Divi
Divi is the flagship theme and page builder combo that works as a flexible foundation for all kinds of sites. With Divi Builder integrated, you can create custom page layouts via an intuitive drag-and-drop editor.
Extra
Extra is optimized for blogs and magazines with a bold featured post slider, animated graphics, and sleek design. The built-in SEO tools and social sharing integration make it great for driving site traffic.
Plugins
Elegant Themes membership includes these 6 premium WordPress plugins:
- Divi Builder – Drag and drop page builder that works with any theme. Create custom layouts.
- Bloom – Optin plugin to capture more emails with customizable forms.
- Monarch – Add social sharing buttons to increase follows and traffic.
- Anticipate – Set up "Coming Soon" pages to build buzz for new sites.
- HandHeld – Mobile plugin to make non-responsive themes work on phones/tablets.
- Elegant Shortcodes – Collection of handy shortcodes to use in your content.
So in addition to full themes, you also get plugins that extend functionality in areas like email marketing, social media, and mobile optimization.
PSD Files
Elegant Themes provides the original Photoshop (PSD) source files for every theme in the library.
This allows developers to customize and edit graphics like logo files, fonts, colors, and images on a granular level.
Having these layered PSD files makes advanced customization much quicker compared to editing image files manually.
Let‘s Peek Inside the Members Area!
Now that we’ve covered the products included with membership, let’s take a guided tour inside the members dashboard…
Member Downloads Area
Upon login, you arrive on the main Downloads page which contains all themes, plugins, and PSD files available to members.
Everything is nicely organized into sections to easily find what you need:
Handy action buttons below each product allow you to:
- Download files
- Preview the product
- Access documentation
- View recent changelog
This makes it simple to explore and evaluate options when building your site.
I really like having both written and video documentation readily available here as well – cuts down on support tickets for common questions!
Account Details
The Account section displays subscription details like membership level, billing date, and next payment amount.
Your unique API keys for connecting Elegant Themes products/updates are shown here too.
The pricing we see here leads nicely into our next section…
Elegant Themes Pricing
Elegant Themes keeps it simple with just 2 membership tiers:
- Yearly – $89 per year
- Lifetime – $249 one-time payment
Both options include full use of all products – themes, plugins, PSD files – with unlimited sites.
The lifetime deal is the best value, locking in access for just $249. Considering top WordPress themes sell for $60+ regularly, this is an absolute steal to get 87+ themes.
Yearly also makes sense at only $8/month for those wanting to test things out first. You can always upgrade to lifetime later.
Compared to buying add-ons piecemeal, membership grants use of everything in the catalog for one low price.
Support Forums
Rounding out the main sections of the members area, the Support Forums provide a community to get help from staff and other users about:
- General issues
- Theme questions
- Plugin troubleshooting
- Customization assistance
I‘ll touch more on support quality later, but the team does a good job responding to tickets submitted here with code tweaks, documentation links, or helpful screenshots to resolve issues.
This covers the key pieces of the members area – a clean, organized dashboard to access Elegant Themes products and support channels.
Elegant Themes Pros and Cons Summary
Now that we’ve seen everything included with membership, let’s summarize some of the key upsides (pros) and downsides (cons) based on my experience:
Pros
- Excellent value – Hundreds of dollars worth of premium products for $89/year or $249 lifetime
- Top-notch support – Helpful customer service with fast, thoughtful responses
- Quality code and design – Themes and plugins work smoothly with good aesthetics
- Regular updates – Consistent improvements and added features
- Flexible foundation – Divi theme/builder adapts to any design needs
Cons
- Steep learning curve for Divi – Lots of options for site builder can overwhelm beginners
- Bundled offerings only – No option to buy single themes or plugins
- No money-back guarantee – Memberships are non-refundable
The pros definitely outweigh the cons here in my opinion. And the lone money-back guarantee con is offset by Elegant‘s 14-day free trial (more details below).
While Divi’s flexibilty comes with a steeper learning curve, top-notch documentation helps ease this. And video tutorials continue improving.
The lack of single theme/plugin purchases makes sense as the value comes from the collective library access granting use of everything.
Next let‘s cover my hands-on experience using Elegant Themes products…
My Experience As a Developer
I‘ve used various Elegant Themes products over the past 5+ years in client projects and personal sites, specifically:
- Divi
- Extra
- Bloom plugin
- Monarch plugin
My overall experience has been overwhelmingly positive.
As a developer, I appreciate Elegant‘s clean code, detailed documentation, and mobile-friendly design. I regularly run updates and have never encountered major issues.
Divi stands out for its extremely flexible page builder that empowers clients to modify their own sites without coding knowledge. And the pre-made layouts and modules get sites up and running faster vs. building from scratch.
My few support tickets over the years were handled promptly by knowledgeable staff that clearly communicated solutions.
While no company or product suite is perfect, Elegant Themes checks all the key boxes in my criteria for a premium theme membership that brings value.
Final Verdict – Who Should Buy?
At the end of the day, I can whole-heartedly recommend Elegant Themes membership for:
- WordPress agencies and freelancers looking for polished themes/plugins for client sites
- Bloggers wanting beautiful designs without heavy customization
- Small business owners needing an affordable way to build/modify their own sites
- Developers who appreciate well-coded products with regular updates
The unlimited use across unlimited domains clause is perfect for agencies juggling lots of client projects.
Bloggers get access to the magazine-style Extra theme and specialty niches like food, fashion, travel, etc.
And Divi grants small business owners the flexibility to craft custom pages without coding expertise through its intuitive visual builder.
With a risk-free 14-day trial to test drive the tools and see if the library fits your needs, there’s very little downside in at least checking out an Elegant Themes membership.
You can visit Elegant Themes here to explore more and try it for yourself.
I hope you found this in-depth review helpful! Let me know if you have any other questions.
