When you start selling online there are many concerns, not long ago you would have had to ask for a bank loan to hire a developer, but fortunately today you have WooCommerce to create an online store, all the software base you need, which is free.
Next you must consider the tools that your online store should have, such as if you need a booking system, or if you want to sell by weight or in bulk, depending on the type of business. And here come the WordPress plugins, of which there are thousands, many free, or else specialized at prices that do not involve a significant outlay.
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The difficult task of choosing a WordPress theme for your online store
And finally, before you start creating your products, the last step would be to choose the WordPress theme that will display your products in the best possible way.
Here the temptation to buy a premium theme with layout is big, because a simple search initially leads you to pages with paid themes, which invest heavily in search engine optimization precisely for this purpose.
But it turns out that this is not always the best option.
I am not saying that there are no good paid themes for online stores, just that in my experience it is not usually necessary. After many years creating online stores I have come to 4 realities about WordPress themes for online stores with WooCommerce:
- Paid online store themes are usually an elaborate combination of theme and plugins, offering you an all-in-one without you having to search for those plugins on your own.
- Paid online store themes usually sell their virtues with well-designed demos that involve importing lots of pages, menus and resources that you will never need, and that don’t reflect reality as soon as you install the theme.
- Free online store themes usually offer the basics needed for your store, relegating advanced features to the plugins needed by each store.
- There are paid themes that offer very limited free versions, and this has fostered the idea that free themes for online stores are bad or insufficient.
The last point has been (and is) especially relevant to users’ perception of free themes for online stores, and lately it has caused the WordPress theme directory to decrease a lot in quality, and consequently in users’ trust.
But is this just the way it is? Are there no good free WooCommerce themes left?
I have good news: There are many good free WordPress themes for WooCommerce online stores, sometimes even much better than the paid ones.
If you then need to add a megamenu plugin, pay-per-step or whatever, then you also have plenty of free and paid options, without having to rely on the one that comes included in the premium theme package.
That said, I have made a selection of what, for me, are the best free WordPress themes for WooCommerce online stores that are currently available, and I assure you that they will surprise you, because all of them are much better than most paid themes, offer more customization settings and, in almost all cases, are updated more, better and offer more and better specialized features for WooCommerce.
Out of all the free WordPress themes available for WooCommerce online stores I have chosen these 4, which in my experience are the best.
The main criteria I take into account when rating a free WooCommerce online store theme are as follows:
- Enough customization settings to not need a paid version.
- Good performance, optimization and loading speed.
- Customization settings on each page, regardless of the global ones.
The rest is a matter of personal taste.
Yith Proteo
Description
Did you know that Yith, the famous WooCommerce plugin company started out as a WordPress theme design company?
Yes, and their first successes were precisely themes for online stores created with WordPress.
This is a part of the business that they had quite relegated until not long ago, but recently they have resumed this work, offering one of what for me is one of the most complete free WordPress themes for online stores WooCommerce currently available, if not the most complete.
With more than 2,000 installations it is a surprisingly unknown theme, something that I hope this guide will remedy soon, because Proteo is ahead of the rest of themes for WooCommerce for its many virtues and features.
Installation and first steps
As soon as you install the theme Yith Proteo takes you to its first steps page, where you can import some of its demos for online stores if you don’t know where to start, install the Proteo Toolkit plugin, visit the documentation, the forums or start customizing it.
It is a very well designed page, simple and clear, with everything important, and nothing unnecessary.
Especially recommended is to install the plugin Yith Proteo Toolkit, because it adds a number of improvements that will be useful:
- List of recommended (free) plugins.
- Configuration wizard.
The plugins are mostly useful for some of the demos, but in any case it is best that you activate the configuration wizard from the theme’s configuration menu, newly created by Proteo Toolkit.
This wizard will help you to…
- Install recommended plugins
- Create a child theme and one-click automatic activation
- Install demos and demo content
The plugin, once used, you can deactivate it and even delete it whenever you want.
Global customization
The customization settings available in Yith Proteo are very complete, with special sections for settings for mobile devices and tablets, a must in this day and age.
There is virtually no element of your website and online store that you can not modify and customize from the WordPress customizer, being far above in terms of options of any WordPress theme, free or paid.
Customization for WooCommerce
Within the customizer, the specific settings section for WooCommerce opens up another world of customizations, absolutely stunning, leaving nothing to chance or unconsidered.
In addition, on each page, there are settings that you can configure independently of what is globally defined in the customizer, such as header visibility, sidebar, footer and even custom icon.
Performance
The theme’s speed and optimization for Core Web Vitals delivers fantastic results, so this won’t be a problem.
Outstanding features
Among the highlights of the Yith Proteo theme these would be its great virtues:
- 1-click child theme creation.
- 1-click demo import, recommended plugins included.
- Full customizer: fonts, mobile, sidebars, headers, colors, sizes, etc..
- Customization at each page level.
- Great integration with all Yith plugins, in fact it is the theme currently used for all their plugin demos.
- Very frequent updates, it is a very active development.
- No premium version, its goal is to offer the best possible free theme for WooCommerce.
I think it will have become clear to you that it is an awesome free WordPress theme, which I hope I have discovered, because it is a jewel that very few people know yet, and it is one of the best there is by far, if not the best among the free ones.
Astra
Description
I think you will not be surprised that in this list is the Astra theme, and it is simply because it deserves it.
I’ve already talked a lot about Astra but today we will focus on its virtues – in its free version – for WooCommerce online stores.
With more than 1 million installations, it must have something good, right?
Installation and first steps
As soon as Astra is installed, it adds a very complete configuration and first steps page, with some extras that stand out, such as …
- Direct links to the main settings in the customizer.
- Plugin importer of starter templates.
- Header and footer layout.
If you don’t want to start from scratch, the template importer is a great option, as it creates impressive pages made with WordPress blocks and really interesting designs for various types of websites and online stores.
You have 53 templates to choose from, of which in principle only 7 are indicated for Ecommerce, but in reality you can use any of the available ones and then add product blocks to them at will.
Global customization
Astra’s customizer is very complete, and although at first glance it doesn’t impress, when you open each section it gets interesting.
However, as there is a premium version of the theme, I recognize that where it really hits the mark and becomes an absolute winner, is in the premium version, especially with the special settings it introduces for WooCommerce.
However, the free version will not disappoint you, because it is very complete, it does not have as many settings as Yith Proteo but it does have the fundamental ones.
Something I’ve always found great about Astra’s customizer is that it separates the general WordPress settings (Menus, widgets, CSS, home page) from the theme’s own settings, something that is appreciated, in order to facilitate the task of customizing.
There are settings for just about everything, and if there’s one thing that stands out, it’s that you can customize just about every desktop, tablet and mobile setting by clicking on an icon in each section.
Also impressive are the customization possibilities for breadcrumbs, among other things.
Customization for WooCommerce
As for specific customizable settings for WooCommerce you have a good amount.
Also, as with Proteo, on each page you can customize aspects independently of the global customizer setting, such as the transparent header, visibility of all page elements and even container appearance.
This is always something that Astra has excelled at, and it’s just perfect.
Performance
Were you expecting any surprises? The Astra theme is a winner, with 100% optimization, performance, speed and Core Web Vitals compliance.
And it’s not a landing page with 4 texts and a couple of photos, it’s an online store front page with the product catalog, so it has even more merit.
Outstanding features
There are many features that could highlight Astra as a free theme for WooCommerce, but these I think define it:
- Speed, always above its competitors.
- Customization settings for each type of device at the click of a button, without leaving the section.
- Full customization of breadcrumbs.
- Independent customization per page.
- Free header and footer layout.
The layout of headers and footers, as I explained, is very easy to use and opens the door to a complete customization of your online store.
OceanWP
Description
The OceanWP theme is perhaps the one that has surprised me the most in terms of its possibilities for WooCommerce.
I’ve always liked it, and it is one of the themes that I always have in mind for websites and blogs, but the day I discovered its possibilities for online stores I was shocked, and now it is one of the themes that I always have in mind for Ecommerce.
With more than 700 thousand installations it is one of the most popular themes, and surely you already know it, but I’m sure you will be surprised by its virtues as a free theme for online stores.
Installation and first steps
As soon as you activate OceanWP recommends you to install the Ocean Extra plugin, and yes, it is totally recommended, not mandatory, but almost.
There isn’t installation wizard or settings page except in the customizer, but this changes as soon as you install and activate OceanWP Extras, because it encourages you to start its wizard, and here the thing changes.
Once the wizard is launched, it will help you choose a demo (3 available for online stores) and even customize the main aspects of the website (logo, title, description, etc.).
Global customization
The OceanWP theme customizer is one of the most impressive things you’ll ever see in a WordPress theme.
I’ve seen almost no theme, free or paid, that beats it, only maybe Yith Proteo comes close to overshadowing it in terms of available options, but I assure you it’s even overwhelming.
And this only in the free version, in the paid version is even more overwhelming the amount of customization options offered.
And this, curiously, shows you one of the things that I have always liked the least about the OceanWP customizer, and that is that it takes a long time to load, probably because of the amount of options it has, but it is clearly slow, always.
However, once it is displayed in all its splendor is impressive the amount of settings you can customize at the click of a button, there is no equal.
If you are one of those who like to tinker I assure you that customizing OceanWP can take hours, so many settings you have.
I just hope you don’t go crazy, you know that so much power without control can lead you to just the opposite of what you were looking for.
Customization for WooCommerce
And, of course, the settings section for WooCommerce is not far behind, it is equally impressive.
Among the multitude of settings you can customize, I have always found memorable the ability to reposition the image gallery and each of the elements of the product page.
And, it also stands out from other themes in that, from the customizer, you can make the cart and checkout pages the distraction-free type, plus you can use the step-by-step checkout without additional plugins.
But, in addition, it also excels in everything it offers in page-by-page customizations, with a complete box of settings in the editor.
Performance
This is the only aspect in which it fails with respect to the rest of the topics analyzed, as it is the one that obtains the worst scores in performance and speed.
Outstanding features
There are many virtues of OceanWP as a free theme for WooCommerce online stores, but I would highlight these:
- Cart and checkout without distractions from the customizer.
- Step-by-step checkout from the customizer.
- Overwhelming, endless customization settings.
- Customizations on every page.
If your priority is the possibilities of customization to the smallest detail and you do not mind spending hours on it OceanWP is a theme that is for sure going to surprise you.
However, this has its counterpart in that it is the one that offers the worst performance in terms of resource consumption and loading speed.
StoreFront
Description
Who does not know the StoreFront theme? Logical, it plays with advantage, because it is the one that WooComerce offers you to install after the plugin installation wizard, so many people choose to use it.
And no, it is not a bad theme, it is not a bad choice, it has many virtues, let’s see.
Although it has 200 thousand installations, much less than Astra and OceanWP, despite the starting advantage, it is a very good theme for online stores, what do you expect?
Installation and first steps
As soon as StoreFront is installed if you don’t have them yet, it offers to create a home page and sample products, so that we can see it correctly, something great, which I recommend.
Something not very well solved is that the home page is created, yes, but without the elements you would expect, because for that you have to edit it and change the template to the appropriate one.
From here we’ll go to the customizer, one of its strong points, you will see why.
Global customization
There is something in the StoreFront customizer that many other themes should incorporate, even WordPress by default, and that is the wizard through markup, to follow a logical sequence of customization.
As for the customization settings, don’t expect something like what we’ve seen in previous themes, this is much more simple.
There are quite a few sections of settings, which initially seems like it’s going to be enough, but then within each section, the customization possibilities are infinitely smaller than with the themes we’ve seen previously.
It certainly disappoints quite a bit, compared to the other free WooCommerce themes we’ve seen in this guide.
Customization for WooCommerce
The same is true when we move on to the customization sections of WooCommerce.
The only thing to note in these sections are a couple of interesting features on the product page:
- Previous and next product navigation via side tabs.
- Add to cart fixed, which fixes the cart and follows you as you browse.
In terms of customizing specific pages, it only allows you to choose the full-width template, so as not to show sidebars.
On the other hand, you can’t customize sidebars by page type as in the other themes, nor headers or anything else.
Performance
In this aspect it stands out, as its results are comparable to those of the Astra, but with much less customizations.
Outstanding features
Is there anything to highlight about the Storefront theme? Well sure, a few things it has that, while not making it perfect, other themes could inherit:
- Add to cart functionality that follows you around the page.
- Help tabs in the customizer.
- It is a very optimized and fast WordPress theme.
It is not much, but it is a functional theme, with which if you do not have high customization requirements can serve you perfectly.
What is the best free WordPress theme for WooCommerce online stores?
If you want me to get involved, in my opinion, the theme that has a better balance between functionality and speed is Yith Proteo, and the best thing is that the company is very open to continue improving it, and to remain always a free theme, so everything will get better, so I consider it a safe bet.
