Free themes are being released every now and then, some with high quality that should have been charged pricey and others are just well… free.
Even though you can search endlessly free themes out there, premium themes are also been able to survive the market, most of the times because it was build on complex settings requiring developer support, and many are just too beautiful to be released free.
When to purchase and when to use free theme?
To decide using free themes or purchase premium version, you can try to figure out these things first;
-How many websites out there with the same niche?. if you just want a simple blogging website to share your thoughts and perhaps earn money through it from advertising, and you are certain that there are hundreds or thousands websites exist with similar topics maybe using free theme is not such a bad idea at all, to differentiate you can change the logo fonts, maybe give different colors to some of the dominant part of the theme and voila your site is ready to go.
But if you feel like this website of yours are one of a kind, or serving specific niche or community, or compete with only few out there you should consider premium version, since it might provide better support and the number of websites using the same theme might not as much as the free version.
-How complex is your website? magazine/newspaper or portfolio/showcase/gallery or e-commerce powered website might be little bit more complex in design compare to personal blogging websites. Using free version could mean more work for you. Choosing premium version could help reduce your website launching time.
-How beautiful you want the site? some web designers took long time to build their masterpiece with impressive looks and something they are very proud of, and they want to get something out of that hard works, donation might not be enough for some. So when you need a really fine arts theme where you can impress your visitor with more than just content perhaps you should dig your wallet.
-You couldnt find another love. Well premium themes are usually made with the developer aware that it was their best work and not just a theme they built overnight, so when releasing it as premium theme they realize you couldnt find any theme with that same powerful feeling, so if you already fall in love with that premium theme, and have spent hours or days trying to find the free version with similar look with no results, why dont you just go ahead and buy it.
What is the fair price?
There are no standard price for arts, paintings could cost you million of dollars right? but some new painters could charge just for few hundreds or less, even though their works are probably just as good.
If you look for premium wordpress theme, you could see some developers mostly charge between 70-90 usd for a theme, this sounds like an acceptable range of price for a beautiful or complex design. but if you go to marketplace like webmastertalk, sitepoint, themeforest they usually charge between 30-60 usd with more choices. Some developers also offer theme club where you can download 5-10 themes per month for a price of 1 or 2 theme.
I guess 30-70 usd for non exclusive theme should be considered as good price, check how complex (javascript effects, layouts, images) or beautiful the design and support availability. if a theme cost more than 70 usd it must have a very good feature to offer.
but that’s just me, this question probably bugging lots of developer out there. i’d probably release a premium theme in the coming weeks with 25-40 usd price tag in mind, but what do you think, what is the fair price?
Good article, with a vital topic for many.
I think that the bottom threshold should be 15 and top 35…