At more than a quarter of a million users, WooThemes is one of the largest and most widely used set of premium themes today. The company’s services provide a good balance between price, functionality, and theme support. They offer a wide array of themes designed for various website types such as commerce, blogs, magazine, portfolio, and multimedia. In total, there are more than 90 themes to choose from. This number is increasing at a rate of about one new theme per month.

Pricing

There are two main categories, the Package and Club Subscription. Each category further divides into two main subcategories, Standard and Developer. All of these categories allow the customer to use these themes in an unlimited number of concurrent domains. The customer may also choose from a number of bonus themes that are also included. It is important to note, however, that the bonus themes that the customer may pick are limited to non-app themes and non-child themes.

The Standard Package, which costs $70, allows the customer to use one theme plus two additional bonus themes, also of the customers choice. This package allows access to support and theme updates but does not include access to the layered Photoshop document (PSD) files. These PSD files may only be used through the Developer Package, which costs $150 and has three bonus themes. There is an additional category called App Themes. The price of these themes varies from $100 to $200 depending on the advanced functionality the customers chosen App theme has. What is good about these packages is that they do not expire.

Those who want access to all 90+ themes may opt to purchase a Subscription. The cost entails a start-up fee and monthly subscription fees. The only feature present in the Developer subscription but absent in the Standard package is access to PSD files. Similar to the packages, only the Developer subscription allows use of the PSDs. Start-up fees are $125 and $200 for the Standard and Developer subscriptions respectively. The monthly fees are $20 and $25 for Standard and Developer correspondingly. This is rather expensive and adds up to a minimum of more than $480 a year.

The company has no return policy. Once a package or subscription is purchased, the customer has to work with it regardless of any complaints or dissatisfaction with the product.

Theme Features

There are several features common in almost all themes developed by WooThemes. First, all themes have an attached blog. This is an essential feature for search engine optimization these days. At least one or more sliders are available per theme. These sliders can be configured in a variety of different styles to suit the purpose for which the slider is going to be used as well as the taste of the customer. The themes can also be integrated easily with the various widgets available for download on the Internet.

The various themes available on the website are also highly customizable. This makes a website appear to have a unique theme in comparison to others using the same WooTheme product. The general setting alone can help attain this unique feel by allowing the customer to adjust, to a certain extent, the themes style, header, typography (fonts), layout, homepage slider, image sizes, and footer. Social media integration and the placement of advertisements can also be easily modified using the requisite options.

All the themes can make use of the WooCommerce plug-in with some additional integration. About a quarter of them, though, are already optimized for use with this plug-in. This allows the user to easily configure the theme to accommodate shopping carts, billing, and payment gateways such as PayPal, Amazon, Google Checkout, and the like.

Theme Support

All products purchased from WooThemes enjoy lifetime support even if the subscription is cancelled. The support they provide is in the form of separate member and public forums. These forums do not have a private messaging feature common to most theme companies. They also do not provide email support like their competitors PageLines and Elegant Themes.

What the company has is a large staff numbering more than 20. The majority of these are support technicians or designers who also assist with customer support in the forums. This ensures that a large portion of the questions and problems posted get answers or fixes. Some do get overlooked and some fixes fail. But considering the number of clients they have, this is understandable. The majority, however, appear to be satisfied with the level of support they get. This is what makes their theme support one of the best around.

In Summary

WooThemes is an excellent choice for websites developed to sell products on the Internet. You can also look at some comparison of the framework before making a pulling the trigger on their themes. The cost of their Theme Packages may not be the cheapest around, but it is reasonable and affordable. The Club subscriptions, however, are a bit exorbitant and would only be attractive for medium- and large-scale web developers. Despite their support being limited to forums, this appears to be their most attractive asset.