3 Reasons ElegantThemes Wins

As of June 2012, elegantthemes.com has 77 themes that I can choose from some with latest features like responsive design. See sections below my ElegantThemes review for detailed features list.  In this section I will focus on helping you make your decision if ElegantThemes is right for you. Here are my top 3 reasons to choose ElegantThemes.  1) Features 2) Cost and 3) Support.  First, features I think that are important are SEO, Analytics, and setup time to take a site online. Here’s how they stack up:

SEO

Search Engine Optimization matters and ElegantThemes makes it easy by giving me access to the meta data from their control panel. I can configure meta options for the homepage, my posts and my pages in their respective sections within the epanel.

Analytics

I use Google Analytics so it is important to me that all pages are appropriately tagged with the JavaScript provided by Google.  Within the epanel, it is as simple as copy/paste and Save.  Note here is that the epanel recommends you add it to the body but Google says to put it in the head section.  I use the head section and it works wonderfully to capture data.  The epanel makes both of these sections accessible so it’s a trivial matter.

Setup

If you’ve used WordPress before, you simply upload your theme after downloading from the members section and you’re set.  If you go through the instructions, ElegantThemes gives you access to sample data so you can see how things fall into place.  Here’s one area I think they can do better.  That is, rather than giving sample generic data, why not pack their demo data from their site? I’m a very visual person and I’d love this because then I can see what I want to modify and easily find it within the WordPress and ePanel administration.  When I first started using ElegantThemes, I was also new to WordPress so I had to setup my own data and learn WordPress at the same time. It took me a day or two before I could fully understand how everything works for a new theme pages, posts, navigation and widgets.

My goal was to setup sites as fast as possible that are presentable to the public.  I am very pleased with how much faster I can do this right now.  I give ElegantThemes 4 out of 5 stars on features because I want dummy data that truly makes a theme shine. This will make it outrageously simple for complete newbies on WordPress and ElegantThemes to spend a few minute process to plug and play and hack and slash posts and pages to see how everything fits. Then they can turn off or remove what they don’t use or want.

Next is cost and an easy point to cover.  I’m not a graphic designer by trade so when it came to spending 39 dollars for a whole year of membership for all the design already done for me, I was sold. I give ElegantThemes 5 out of 5 star on cost. What this means is that, for one year, I can download all their themes (and the new ones they release) all I want.  If I decide to not renew my membership that is fine as well.  It simply means I don’t get access to members area anymore.  I can continue to use everything I’ve downloaded during my membership.  Another area that I’m highly interested in but didn’t go into too much is doing work for clients.  Their licensing allows developers to customize and create sites for customers with a developer license.  This license is more at 89 dollars so I decided not to get it unless I had a client already lined up.

And lastly, we should talk about support. I’m pretty handy and comfortable with finding my way around code but I wanted to be sure if I needed help I could get it.  ElegantThemes doesn’t have a phone number I can call but I do get access to the members technical support forum.  I wanted this for piece of mind because if you’ve toyed with software long enough, you know that things always find a way to go wrong.  And when it does, I want the safety of being able ask for help and get feedback on how to solve my problem.  If you want to make a lot of custom changes, you should know your way around code.  If not, you could face some frustration having to work with posts back and forth to resolve your issue.  I have a developer background but I don’t want to have to use it.  I want to just be a user and just have some place to fall back on if I get stuck.  Developer skills are only necessary if you want to do highly customized themes. Some people want much higher level of support than this so if you want that then be prepared to pay a much higher price. I give ElegantThemes 3.5 stars for support just to be cautious and safe for newbies.  I’ve never had to open a support ticket because the product just worked to me so my personal support experience is excellent from reading their documentation and forum posts.

Overall, I’m very happy with ElegantThemes and I will continue to subscribe to their yearly membership.  If you have a specific question I don’t cover below, just ask and I’ll try to answer from my experience.

Detailed Information about ElegantThemes