What are the best free WooCommerce themes?

By Towhidul Islam
Theme performance analysis

When preparing to launch an online store, your first priority should be selecting a theme or template that fits your client’s current content and future strategy. There are a number of free WooCommerce themes that can do the trick well.

There is a misconception that the more features a theme is packing, the better. Reality is quite the opposite; you don’t want to run a bloated theme with many features you’ll never use.

There are gazillions of free WordPress themes out there that claim to support WooCommerce, but unfortunately not all themes are created equal. For a developer not as familiar with WooCommerce, it can be tough to filter out themes from your search that weren’t developed following WooCommerce standards.

Popularity is not an indicator of a theme’s plugin compatibility.

 

Check out this article by WooCommerce Specialist Danny Santoro for some surprising inclusions of popular themes doing it wrong.

To help your clients find the best free WooCommerce themes, I ran some tests and comparisons based on various factors, including page generation time, memory usage, database query time, database queries, and WooCommerce developer guidelines.

Best free WooCommerce themes: The methodology

Since finding the best free WooCommerce themes can be seen as objective, I went to the WordPress.org theme directory and used the Feature Filter to include only eCommerce themes. At first I planned to test all themes that fall under eCommerce, but I back pedalled on that idea once I realized there are so many themes out there that use the eCommerce tag.

As an initial filter, I ran all the themes in themecheck.org to find out which themes followed the WordPress guidelines. From there, I selected the themes that scored 95 or above.

I ended up with 43 themes, with the addition of Storefront (since it’s a theme developed by WooCommerce) although it scored low in Theme Check plugin.

Here are the themes included in this review:

  1. Accelerate
  2. Agama
  3. Aqueduct
  4. Arise
  5. Awesome
  6. Base WP
  7. Bellini
  8. BlogoLife
  9. ColorMag
  10. E-Comme
  11. Edge
  12. EightMedi Lite
  13. Enigma
  14. Esteem
  15. eStore
  16. Fabulous Fluid
  17. FitClub
  18. Fluida
  19. Freesia Empire
  20. GeneratePress
  21. HappenStance
  22. Iconic One
  23. Illdy
  24. Inventor
  25. Level
  26. Make
  27. Movers Packers
  28. NovelLite
  29. Onepage
  30. Optimizer
  31. Pixgraphy
  32. Regina Lite
  33. Revolve
  34. SG Window
  35. Shop Isle
  36. SKT Design Agency
  37. SongWriter
  38. Spasalon
  39. Stained Glass
  40. Store WP
  41. Storefront
  42. Terminal Lite
  43. Tiny Framework
  44. WP Portfolio

For each theme, I did the following:

  1. Installed and activated WooCommerce plugin in a fresh install.
  2. Imported the WooCommerce-supplied demo content.
  3. Installed and activated the theme.
  4. Activated Query monitor.
  5. Went to WooCommerce Shop page.
  6. Wrote down the stats supplied by Query Monitor.
  7. Activated WP Reset plugin to reset WordPress.
  8. Erased everything using WordPress Reset and moved onto the next theme.

For my testing environment, I used a localhost — WAMP on a Windows machine. I used WordPress version 4.6, equipped with WooCommerce, Query Monitor and WordPress Reset. The only limitation of this test is that I’ve only tested the WooCommerce store or shop pages. Another thing to consider is that on live server performance data might vary a little bit.

I captured the data and pulled it into spreadsheets for comparison. You can check out the raw data here. I omitted the themes which used woocommerce_content to display content, as developers are encouraged by WooCommerce to use Hooks instead of WooCommerce_content.

Top 10 themes by page generation time

Theme name Page generation time (seconds)
Optimizer 0.512
Bellini 0.5829
Revolve 0.5959
Storefront 0.6156
ColorMag 0.6168
EightMedi Lite 0.6192
Esteem 0.6313
GeneratePress 0.635
Agama 0.6663
eStore 0.6703

 

Top 10 themes by page generation time

  1. Optimizer: 0.512 seconds
  2. Bellini: 0.5829 seconds
  3. Revolve: 0.5959 seconds
  4. Storefront: 0.6156 seconds
  5. ColorMag: 0.6168 seconds
  6. EightMedi Lite: 0.6192 seconds
  7. Esteem: 0.6313 seconds
  8. GeneratePress: 0.635 seconds
  9. Agama: 0.6663 seconds
  10. eStore: 0.6703 seconds

Top 10 themes by lowest memory usage

Theme name Peak memory usage (kB)
WP Portfolio 19,912
Accelerate 20,067
Esteem 20,133
Storefront 20,149
Bellini 20,222
EightMedi Lite 20,312
ColorMag 20,359
GeneratePress 20,417
eStore 20,455
Revolve 20,577

Top 10 themes by lowest memory usage

  1. WP Portfolio: 19,912 kB
  2. Accelerate: 20,067 kB
  3. Esteem: 20,133 kB
  4. Storefront: 20,149 kB
  5. Bellini: 20,222 kB
  6. EightMedi Lite: 20,312 kB
  7. ColorMag: 20,359 kB
  8. GeneratePress: 20,417 kB
  9. eStore: 20,455 kB
  10. Revolve: 20,577 kB

Top 10 themes by database query time

Theme name Database query time (seconds)
Shop Isle 0.0229
Make 0.0238
Bellini 0.0267
ColorMag 0.0287
Storefront 0.0298
Optimizer 0.0313
eStore 0.0348
EightMedi Lite 0.0363
Agama 0.0365
WP Portfolio 0.0439

Top 10 themes by database query time

  1. Shop Isle: 0.0229 seconds
  2. Make: 0.0238 seconds
  3. Bellini: 0.0267 seconds
  4. ColorMag: 0.0287 seconds
  5. Storefront: 0.0298 seconds
  6. Optimizer: 0.0313 seconds
  7. eStore: 0.0348 seconds
  8. EightMedi Lite: 0.0363 seconds
  9. Agama: 0.0365 seconds
  10. WP Portfolio: 0.0439 seconds

Top 10 themes by database queries

Theme name # database queries
Shop Isle 31
Make 31
Revolve 31
Bellini 32
EightMedi Lite 32
eStore 39
ColorMag 42
Agama 42
Esteem 42
Storefront 43

Top 10 themes by database queries

  1. Shop Isle: 31
  2. Make: 31
  3. Revolve: 31
  4. Bellini: 32
  5. EightMedi Lite: 32
  6. eStore: 39
  7. ColorMag: 42
  8. Agama: 42
  9. Esteem: 42
  10. Storefront: 43

Top 10 themes by Theme Check score

Theme name Theme Check score
Bellini 99
Shop Isle 98
ColorMag 98
Esteem 98
Revolve 97
eStore 97
Agama 97
WP Portfolio 97
Accelerate 97
GeneratePress 97

Which theme holds the top spot?

Here are the best 14 free WooCommerce themes that scored high in one or all of the criteria (in no particular order):

Optimizer

Optimizer is a multipurpose theme that will help you create full-blown websites with just drag-and-drop widgets. It’s extremely flexible and appropriate for creating landing pages, small business, portfolio, photography, corporate, personal and eCommerce websites.

Free WooCommerce Themes OptimizerBellini

Bellini is theme developed for creating eCommerce or online shops. You can easily launch an online store with minimum effort. Built using Bootstrap, Bellini features many customization options for WooCommerce product and shop pages.

Free WooCommerce Themes BellinieStore

eStore is a clean, beautiful and easy-to-use WordPress theme. It offers many options for creating an online store.

Free WooCommerce Themes eStoreShop Isle

Developed by Theme Isle, the company behind the popular WordPress theme Zerif, Shop Isle is suitable for building clothing, electronics and almost any kind of store website.

Free WooCommerce Themes Shop IsleStorefront

The folks at WooCommerce developed Storefront — so you can be certain this theme will always be compatible with WooCommerce. Like WooCommerce, Storefront follows the add-ons model. That means that when you’re ready to upgrade, you can buy only what you need.

Free WooCommerce Themes StorefrontColorMag

ColorMag is appropriate for creating a magazine-style eCommerce website. The theme is flexible and mobile-responsive and it has lots of options.

Free WooCommerce Themes ColorMagRevolve

Revolve is an elegant and creative WordPress theme for creating WooCommerce-compatible portfolio, photography, store, arts, freelance and creative websites.

Free WooCommerce Themes RevolveEightMedi Lite

This responsive theme by 8 Degree Themes is ideal for creating websites for the medical industry, including WooCommerce-compatible sites for doctors, surgeons, health centres, hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and more.

Free WooCommerce Themes EightMedi LiteEsteem

A multipurpose, responsive theme by Theme Grill, Esteem is designed to create business, portfolio and blogging websites.

Free WooCommerce Themes EsteemAgama

Agama is a multipurpose WordPress theme that is suitable for a web agency, corporate business, personal and parallax business portfolio, photography websites and more.

Free WooCommerce Themes AgamaGeneratePress

GeneratePress is a fast, lightweight, add-on based WordPress theme. It is compatible with plugins like WooCommerce, Beaver Builder, Elementor, WPML, BuddyPress, bbPress and many more.

Free WooCommerce Themes GeneratePressWP Portfolio

WP Portfolio is a simple, clean WordPress portfolio theme that supports WooCommerce. It’s especially designed for designers, photographers, artists and creatives.

Free WooCommerce Themes WP PortfolioAccelerate

Accelerate is a multipurpose WordPress theme by Theme Grill. It’s suitable for building portfolio, business, blog, personal, travel, corporate, and business services websites.

Free WooCommerce Themes WP AccelerateMake

Built by The Theme Foundry, Make is a flexible theme with a robust customizer panel. Along with WooCommerce, it’s compatible with Gravity Forms, Contact Form 7 and Jetpack.

Free WooCommerce Themes WP MakeLearn more

As always, your selection of a “winner” is based on what you factor value most. You can check out this detailed spreadsheet if you want more data regarding this WooCommerce theme performance analysis.

Image by: terren in Virginia Flickr via Compfight cc