28 Oct 2025

The Best Free and Premium WordPress Themes of 2019

After reviewing and comparing top CMS’s in the market and finally deciding on WordPress, you’re now exposed to another boggling challenge—choosing from thousands of WordPress themes available at your fingertips!

For anyone thinking of kickstarting their own websites, it’s essential to know the best WordPress themes in the market today. It’ll be so easy to get lost in the sea of themes, templates, and page builders. Typically, a beginner on website building would go for a flexible theme that can serve them many purposes. This is especially true for many who wishes to expand their operations and scale their websites eventually.

In this list, we dived into five of the best WordPress themes of 2019 that experts and users alike have vouched for. In this list, we dissect the following:

1. Divi
2. OceanWP
3. Avada
4. Sydney
5. Astra

Let's now get into it!

Divi

Divi is more than a theme and is pegged to be one of the most powerful website building platforms. Elegant Themes, the theme shop that carries it, calls Divi a superior visual editor that can be enjoyed by design professionals as well as newcomers.

Installation is a breeze and opens the door to unlimited customisation features, all working with superior functionality. What excites even the most seasoned builders about Divi is its drag and drop feature that makes it easy to build the website of your dreams.

With Divi, you have the authority to change everything and customise the layout whichever way you prefer it. The pre-set layouts enable users to upload and release content in less than an hour.

Notable Features

• Has over 100 full website packs and over 800 pre-made FREE website layouts
• CSS Control that developers can seamlessly combine with their custom CSS
• Intuitive visual, design controls that allow one to change website elements like colours, typefaces, and media
• WooCommerce integration that is helpful to anyone who wishes to build an online shop

OceanWP

Next on the list is OceanWP. OceanWP works perfectly well with popular WordPress page builders. It is fully responsive and works well with any type of device where it is viewed. OceanWP offers an array of features that is made better with multiple layout choices to help anyone build a custom website, which makes it one of the best free flexible WordPress themes in the market.

OceanWP is perfect for creating a variety of websites, from blogs to business websites. It has a seamless WooCommerce integration for anyone looking to build an online shop.

Speaking of features, OceanWP has some of the best free extensions that offer builders with control over their websites. Not only that, but OceanWP is also created with SEO in mind, so you’re sure that the content you publish is SEO-ready.

Notable Features

• Has over 2M downloads and called the fastest growing theme for WordPress
• RTL-ready and can be translated to your own language
• Has outstanding, real-time support for issues that may arise
• Highly multipurpose and flexible

Avada

Next up, we have the number 1 selling premium WordPress theme on the ThemeForest marketplace—Avada! Built to easily jumpstart website building, Avada has 41+ pre-made fully-featured websites that help users from any level create their dream websites.

Avada has Fusion Page Options, allowing one to customise individual pages or posts that uniquely stand out from the rest of your website. With Avada, you can create your website without any coding knowledge.

Notable Features

• Dynamic content and options system
• Fully customisable with numerous design elements
• Top-notch, real-time customer support
• Free, regular updates filled with new features

Sydney

Sydney is a multi-purpose theme and one of the most popular WordPress themes in the WordPress.org repository. Like most themes in this list, Sydney offers free and premium versions, with the latter expanding on the capabilities of the existing features of the former. This theme is proving to be highly customisable and lets its users utilise widgets and pre-made templates.

This theme targets freelancers and businesses and gives its users a load of design options with Customizer and has undeterred access to all Google Fonts, colours, layouts, logos, and much more.

With everyone jumping on the Ecommerce bandwagon, it’s important to choose a theme that is ready to accommodate that. Thankfully, Sydney is WooCommerce integration-ready, the best fit for anyone looking to expand their operations online.

Notable Features

• Customisable header with parallax background option
• Rooted on WordPress coding best practices
• Cross-browser compatible and translation ready
• Has a variety of custom widgets like contact widgets, timeline, latest news, etc.

Astra

The power of Astra comes in the fact that it’s fast and lightweight. It lets users build their website the way they want to. It's a multi-purpose theme that comes with a set of demos so builders can easily launch a prebuilt site in under an hour. Demo importation is a breeze; after this, users can start customising the website's look, so it fits their preferences and business needs.

In terms of its most endearing qualities, experts admire Astra for its lightweight, elegant, and stylish website designs. It's a lightning-fast theme that is built-in with powerful SEO. Additionally, it can be integrated into some of the most popular page builders in the market, specifically Beaver Builder and Elementor.

Notable Features

• With easy, simple customisation options and does not require any coding
• Boasts super-fast, unmatched performance
• Allows users to turn off page title and sidebar
• Has pixel perfect ready website demos for starter sites

When choosing WordPress themes, be sure to go with one that is highly scalable, responsive, and SEO-ready.

When choosing WordPress themes, there is a lot at stake. For one, there’s the issue of responsiveness. No matter how beautifully designed a website is, if it doesn’t load properly or give your end-users what they need in the shortest amount of time, then it’s useless. Likewise, a good WordPress theme must consider the latest SEO trends to help websites rank properly. Finally, there’s one of the biggest considerations of all—Ecommerce integration.

A great WordPress theme must accommodate the best Ecommerce platforms in the market today to maximise sales for a brand.