The 27 Best Free WordPress Themes + Plugins to Get You Started

Last updated on March 18th, 2024 at 09:45 am

If we could give you any advice as you start building your website, it’s this: Start with a simple theme and focus on creating great content. WordPress has lots of free themes and free plugins that will help you to get started right away.

WordPress can be intimidating for beginners. Having too much flexibility and choice becomes a disadvantage if you don’t know what you’re doing. Our goal is to help you cut through all the noise and focus on what you need to do.

For instance, don’t get stuck on tutorials and WordPress courses. The easiest way to learn website building is through experience. Just pick a free theme, build a few pages, and solve problems as they come.

Luckily, WordPress has tons and tons of free resources and friendly communities to help you out of any jam.

For our part, we’re empowering business owners to build an online audience. This is the sixth part of our Websites Explained series where we’ll list the best free WordPress themes plugins. We also have some advice to help you get started.

What Is a WordPress Theme?

If WordPress were a house, the theme would be the interior design style that gives the house its unique look and feel.

A WordPress theme is a framework that determines how your site looks and feels to visitors. Think of it as the design template that shapes the overall appearance of your website.

Just as different houses can have various themes like modern, traditional, or minimalist, WordPress themes define the visual appearance and functionality of a website, including the layout, color scheme, and design elements.

Themes come in all shapes and sizes, offering different features and customization options. Some are free, while others are premium (paid). Choosing a theme is a bit like picking a style for your home – you want it to reflect your personality and make visitors feel welcome.

When you’re just starting out, it’s best to begin with a simple, user-friendly theme. This way, you can focus on creating content and getting comfortable with WordPress without feeling overwhelmed by complex design choices.

As you become more familiar with WordPress, you can explore different themes to give your site a fresh look or add specific functionalities.

Just remember, the key is to find a theme that not only looks good but also enhances the user experience and aligns with your website’s purpose. WordPress gives you the flexibility to change themes whenever you want to refresh your site’s look.

WordPress themes vs WordPress templates

If WordPress is a house and a theme is its interior design style, then a template would be the layout for a room within that house.

Just as a theme sets the overall look and feel of the entire website, a template defines the structure and design of individual pages or sections within that website.

Templates provide a framework for displaying content and determining how elements like headers, footers, sidebars, and posts are arranged on a particular page.

In essence, templates are like blueprints that guide the layout and presentation of specific areas within the broader design theme of a website.

Sometimes the word “template” and theme are used interchangeably because WordPress themes also control the layout of pages. However, it’s important to note that you can templates for specific sections or pages within the theme itself.

Expert tip: One theme can have different template designs depending on the site it is intended for. For example, OceapWP has different templates for e-commerce stores, agency sites, portfolios, restaurants, coffee shops, and many more.

27 Best Free WordPress Themes for Beginners

WordPress has lots of themes–over 11,700 are in the WordPress theme repository alone. Many others are available on Theme Forest, Creative Market, and other online markets.

With all these choices available, you want to make sure that you download and use the best WordPress theme for your site. The ideal WordPress theme is lightweight, clean, and mobile responsive. It should also pass testing and receive approval from experts.

Every theme on the WordPress repository passes these requirements, but themes found elsewhere may not reach these standards.

Even on the official repository, the themes available vary wildly in quality, performance, and features. Some are much more responsive, others are full of nice features, and some are just gorgeous to look at.

One of the most popular free WordPress themes is OceanWP. It’s a gorgeous and lightweight theme with lots of flexibility, and responsiveness, plus it’s very easy to use.

We love OceanWP because it is lightweight, fully responsive, robust, and comes with great features, such as WooCommerce integration.

Other popular themes for beginners, in no particular order, include the following:

For portfolio themes, check out Bold Photography, Virtue, Tracks, or Modern. 

Expert tip: WPBeginner is a wonderful free resource you can use to get started with WordPress. For example, this free WordPress theme guide is the best we’ve seen yet. The site also offers WordPress solutions for some of the most common challenges you’re likely to encounter, such as building pages, integrating forms, SEO, and more.

How to Choose a WordPress Theme for Your Website

If you’re wondering how to choose a WordPress theme, we have a few tips for you.

First and most important, use a popular theme with lots of downloads and positive reviews.

Highly popular themes assure you that developers will continue to provide support and maintenance. It also means the theme has been tested and proven many times over, and most of the bugs will have been worked out.

Better still, popular themes have large forums and communities of users where you can find help and information in case you get stuck. A good rule of thumb is don’t use a theme that has less than 10k downloads.

Secondly, don’t choose a theme because of the way it looks. It’s easy to change aesthetics with a little bit of training—typography, colors, and layout can all be customized (usually). 

Look for functionality, user-friendliness, and performance over style. These are the important things to look for:

• Theme responsiveness – This means how the site adapts to different screen sizes, improving readability and usability. As themes control how a site displays, this is one of the most important features
• User-Friendliness: Use themes that are easy to use and customize without extensive CSS modifications
  • The easiest themes to use include Hestia, OceanWP, Divi, Neve, Kadence, Blocksy, Sydney, Astra, GeneratePress, Total, Agama, Total, and SeedProd
• Separation of functionality: Keep functionality separate from design by using plugins instead of themes for added features
• Regular updates from the developers to keep up with security, bugs, and other issues
• Functionality, such as navigation buttons, accessibility features, and cross-browser compatibility
• Performance – a good theme is lightweight and loads fast (under 3s) for a positive customer experience
  • The fastest WordPress themes, according to one test, are Hello Elementor, Neve, Astra, GeneratePress, OceanWP, Zakra
• SEO-Friendly: Opt for themes optimized for search engines to improve indexing and visibility on search engine results pages
  • The top picks for SEO-friendly themes include Astra, Divi, Neve, GeneratePress, Kadence, OceanWP, and Hello Elementor
• Quality: Select a high-quality theme with positive customer reviews
• Compatibility with Plugins: Check that the theme works well with essential plugins you plan to use on your site

You can already see a pattern here. The best themes for SEO, performance, user-friendliness, and ease of use are the ones that rank best overall. That means they receive the most developer support and have the largest communities, so you’re better off starting with one of them.

Also note that some of these themes have premium features that you may need to subscribe to down the road. This freemium model is common in the WordPress ecosystem.

Expert tip: It may sound counter-intuitive, but the best themes have the least in-built functionality. Themes are meant for aesthetics and responsiveness. For functionality, use plugins and extensions. Doing this gives you more flexibility because you can change the way your website looks without affecting functionality.

Can You Build a Website for Free?

So long as you purchase a domain name and pay for hosting, you can build a starter website for free. WordPress allows you to build a website free of charge using free themes, free plugins, and various free tools.

WordPress can be a trap if you don’t know how to navigate the ecosystem. There are lots of tools that are meant to be free but are actually only free trials. When starting, it’s super important to choose the right plugins and extensions to help you achieve maximum functionality at zero cost.

Expert tip: If you’re building a WordPress website, make sure you use WordPress hosting. It costs about the same as regular hosting, but it’s more user-friendly and you get special features that help your website run faster and more reliably.

Best free WordPress plugins for beginners

You’ll need some basic plugins to achieve basic functions like SEO, security, analytics, e-commerce, email, and building pages. Here are our top recommendations:

E-commerce plugins

• WooCommerce – top e-commerce plugin that transforms your site into a store with features like product management, order handling, payment gateways, and customizable checkout processes
• Bigcommerce – seamless e-commerce integration, such as catalog management, payments processing, order fulfillment, enhanced security, scalability, among others
• Shopify – a Buy Button for WordPress; buyers can sync product details, create product detail pages, and enjoy an enhanced shopping experience
• Easy Digital Downloads – sell digital products with features like unlimited file downloads, flexible payment options, customizable discount codes, and a full-featured shopping cart

Security plugins

• WordFence Security – security plugin that protects websites from threats like malware, hacking attempts, and unauthorized access using features such as firewall protection, malware scanning, login security, and real-time threat defense
• Sucuri – website protection from malware, hacks, and other security threats through features like security activity auditing, file integrity monitoring, remote malware scanning, real-time alerts, blacklist monitoring, and post-hack security actions
• All In One WP Security & Firewall – user-friendly security plugin for WordPress websites, with features like secure login, firewall, content protection, as well as protection from brute force attacks, spam, and more
• Akismet Anti-Spam – uses machine learning algorithms to analyze comments and trackbacks to block spam content from being published on websites; has features like comment filtering, spam detection, and real-time protection against malicious content
• Really Simple SSL – simplifies SSL and automates tasks like redirecting HTTP to HTTPS, fixing mixed content issues, and ensuring a secure connection

SEO plugins

• AIOSEO – a top SEO plugin with features like sitemaps and SEO modules to help you optimize pages, track SEO metrics, and save time with automated link-building
• RankMath – another top SEO plugin that offers advanced features like AI SEO tools, on-page optimization, structured data control, and more
• Yoast SEO – top plugin for on-page and technical SEO that does content optimization, rich results, readability analysis, SEO meta box, and more

Analytics plugins

• Google Analytics (GA) – most popular way to monitor website performance, allowing you to track traffic, conversions, engagement, GDPR compliance, and more
• MonsterInsights – simplifies Google Analytics integration, offering essential data for enhanced performance tracking
• SeedProd – a page builder, theme builder, and landing page builder, offering features like drag-and-drop functionality, pre-built templates, customization options, and seamless integration with email marketing services without any coding skills needed

Page builder plugins

• Elementor – one of the top drag-and-drop website builders with a user-friendly design interface, SEO, and various features like popups, templates, and more
• Thrive Architect – If you use a theme by Thrive, use this builder. It offers easy drag-and-drop page customization, an extensive library of page elements, and is optimized for high conversion rates
• Oxygen Builder – an advanced drag-and-drop page builder focusing on performance and responsiveness; it has the huge advantage of editing Gutenberg blocks, in addition to other powerful design features and an extensive page element library

Plugins for links and redirects

• Redirection – manages redirects so you can easily set up 301 redirects, monitor 404 errors, and check for broken links according to the conditions you set
• Broken Link Checker – monitor and detect broken links and missing images automatically to improve SEO and user experience
• Pretty Links – provides link management solutions, such as creating, tracking, and managing links; shorten, beautify, and track URLs, as well as link redirection and detailed click tracking reports

Website performance plugins

• WPOptimize – website performance plugin for caching, image compression, database optimization, and minification features to boost website speed
• WPRocket – a powerful website caching plugin, with features like preloading, database optimization, GZip compression, browser caching, Google Fonts optimization, lazy loading, minification, CDN integration, and more
• Smush –  image optimization plugin for WordPress that enables users to compress, resize, and optimize images for faster loading web pages
• WP Super Minify – combines, minifies, and caches inline JavaScript and CSS files to enhance page load speed; smaller code files can significantly increase load speed

Backup and restoration plugins for WordPress

• UpdraftPlus – backup and migration plugin that offers scheduled backups, easy restoration, and migration features
• Duplicator – one of the best backup plugins offering on-demand or scheduled backups, remote cloud storage support, AES-256 encryption, 1-click restore, and recovery points for easy rollback
• Solid Backups –  formerly known as BackupBuddy, this is a powerful backup plugin with features like secure backup, offsite archives, database rollback, scheduled backups, malware detection, and one-click restore, and integrates with cloud storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox

Plugins for creating forms in WordPress

• WPForms – simplifies the creation of forms on websites, with features like drag-and-drop form building, integration with popular email marketing and CRM software, payment forms (Stripe, PayPal, etc), and the ability to import/export forms
• Formidable Forms – create a variety of forms, including contact forms, surveys, calculators, and more

Other important plugins for new WordPress websites

• Jetpack – a versatile all-in-one plugin for security scanning, performance optimization (including CDN), social sharing, backups, and more 
• TablePress – create, manage, and embed attractive and interactive tables on your site with features like live sorting, pagination, searching, and the ability to import and export tables in various file formats
• TranslatePress – translate website language for users from the front end, with full support for WooCommerce, complex themes, and various site builders

There are many more WordPress plugins, but these will get you off on the right foot. The most important functionality you’ll want to have is security (WordFence), backup (UpdraftPlus), anti-spam (Akismet), SEO (Yoast or RankMath), and page builder (Elementor or use a Block theme)

You will be tempted to download plugins for everything, but resist it. The more plugins you use, the more site maintenance becomes intensive. Additionally, plugins can become a security risk if they become outdated, and they can slow down site performance.

Our recommendation is to have no more than 20 plugins running at the same time, and fewer if possible. 

Expert tip: If you learn HTML, CSS, PHP, and jQuery, you can even replace free and premium plugins by doing a bit of coding and building the functionality you want in your site. You can also change aesthetics if you learn a bit of HTML and CSS. WordPress allows you to get into the nitty gritty of your site, which is why it’s so popular. 

Are WordPress Websites Really Free?

You’re probably wondering, what’s the catch? Surely you can’t get a website completely for nothing.

You’re right, there’s a catch. With WordPress, it’s maintenance. We should probably say that WordPress isn’t actually free, it’s open source. It’s an ultra-flexible platform with lots of great developers who have built free tools and plugins to support WordPress. 

WordPress makes it far easier and cheaper to create a website compared to creating your own from scratch or hiring a developer to do it for you.

However, as your site grows, free plugins will become inadequate for your needs. You’ll want better analytics, automated updates and backups, and other premium features. As you start to pay for upgrades, you may discover that the costs add up quickly.

By this point, your website should be generating enough revenue that paying for extra features will make sense. A well-built and maintained website should generate some revenue within months of going live, either directly or indirectly.

Build a Truly Free Website With Olitt

If you want to build a truly free website, you have a few options. For example, you can generate a free blog on WordPress.com, but it will only be suitable for blogging.

A better idea is to use our Olitt website builder on the free plan. You don’t even need a domain name or to pay for hosting when you use Olitt.

Although the free plan doesn’t give you a custom domain or premium features it is a great way to start experimenting with websites before you can commit to a more practical paid plan.

As your website grows and generates revenue, you will then upgrade to a premium package that gives you more options, such as unlimited storage, customizable templates, and social media integrations.

Continue learning more about websites in this series.

• Website Fundamentals: What Is a Website and How Does It Work?
• Website Fundamentals: What is HTML, CSS, PHP, HTTPS, and SSL?
• Websites Explained: Easy Guide to Domains, TLDs, and DNS
• Websites Explained: Website Hosting Advice for Beginners
• Websites Explained: Simplified Guide to Web Design and Layout