By now, you probably know that having a fast loading website is no longer optional. According to Google, page speed is now a ranking factor which affects the position of your site on search engine page results. What’s more, numerous studies have shown that faster loading times lead to more conversions, whether you want to sell more products, get more client inquiries, or convert visitors into loyal subscribers.
But, with a plethora of themes available for WordPress, finding a theme that not only has an appealing design but also loads fast can be a time-consuming task. That’s why we rounded up the fastest loading WordPress themes so you can make sure your Google Page Speed score doesn’t hurt your business or your rankings.
While browsing and comparing themes, we used the following criteria:
- Page Speed score rated as A or B with Pingdom Tools
- Attractive and responsive design
- Themes that can be used for various niches as well as niche-specific themes
- Regular updates and support along with high user and community ratings
- 1 1. Fusion
- 2 2. Mag
- 3 3. H-Code
- 4 4. Socially Viral
- 5 5. The7
- 6 6. Church and Events
- 7 7. CheerUp
- 8 8. Atelier
- 9 9. Fit+
- 10 10. MH Magazine
- 11 11. SEO WP
- 12 12. Bimber
- 13 13. EasyWeb
- 14 14. Travelista
- 15 15. Marco
- 16 16. uDesign
- 17 17. Aerious
- 18 18. Pillar
- 19 For Elegant Themes Members
- 20 Final Thoughts
1. Fusion
Fusion is a multipurpose theme geared for creative professionals such as designers, illustrators, architects, and creative agencies. The theme comes with 15 demos ready to be used and you can easily modify them and create new layouts with a drag-and-drop page builder. You’ll also find more than a 100 templates and numerous icons to highlight your services, team members, and more. You can use the Google Maps widget to show your physical location and add an online store easily with WooCommerce integration.
Price: $49 | More Information
2. Mag
Try the Mag theme if you want to make sure your online magazine loads fast. The Mag theme has a modern and bold design with plenty of ad space so you can easily add Google AdSense or other third-party ads. Visual editor allows you to see the changes instantly both on the front end and the backend and tons of customization options make it easy to change fonts, colors, style individual page titles, and more.
Price: $49 | More Information
3. H-Code
If you run an online business or want to showcase your portfolio, consider the H-Code theme. With impressive page load times, various premade demos, and plenty of customization options, the H-Code has everything you need to get your site up and running quickly.
Price: $60 | More Information
Socially Viral is an excellent choice for news, magazine, and entertainment websites. With built-in social sharing features, the theme’s primary goal is to encourage your visitors to share your content, increase your traffic, and boost your search engine rank. On top of fast load times, the theme offers the ability to feature trending stories, add Google AdSense, and integrates Schema markup for better SEO.
Price: $69 | More Information
5. The7
The7 theme is a multipurpose theme that’s not only optimized to load fast but it was also optimized for SEO. The theme’s unique page template system allows you to choose header, sidebar, and footer for each page individually and even add landing pages to your site. This theme includes more than 30 premade demos as well as a drag-and-drop page builder and easy-to-use theme options panel that lets you style every element on your page.
Price: $39 | More Information
6. Church and Events
The Church and Events theme is well suited for charity, events, and church websites. It features four demos and loads extremely fast, but that doesn’t mean it skimps out on the features. You’ll find support for popular plugins such as Gravity Forms and WooCommerce, as well as the ability to promote your upcoming events and sell tickets directly on your site. The theme is easy to customize and you can even add various icons for extra visual appeal.
Price: $69 | More Information
7. CheerUp
Give the CheerUp theme a try if you’re looking for an elegant blogging theme. The theme has several premade demos and includes over 300 layout combinations and style options for endless customization possibilities. Other notable features include Pinterest and Twitter integration, unique header styles, and custom MailChimp subscription widgets.
Price: $33 | More Information
8. Atelier
The Atelier theme features a clean design, perfect for e-commerce websites. This theme comes with an elegant slider so you can feature your best-selling products as well as a grid layout to showcase the most popular categories and products in your store. Your customers can save items for later and filter products using prices, categories, and more.
Price: $59 | More Information
9. Fit+
The Fit+ theme is sure to make your gym and fitness website stand out thanks to full-screen background videos and catchy sliders. The theme includes several blog layouts, a drag-and-drop page builder, premade color schemes, and more. Additionally, the theme has been optimized for SEO and is translation ready.
Price: $59 | More Information
10. MH Magazine
A modern design and a grid layout that’s perfect for showcasing as much content as you want on the front page of your online magazine are the main qualities of MH Magazine theme. Several advertising areas are available so you can monetize your site and you’ll also find custom widgets, endless color possibilities, and an easy-to-use theme options panel.
Price: $49 | More Information
11. SEO WP
If you own a digital marketing or an SEO agency, check out the SEO WP theme. The theme comes with a demo that you can import to your website and have it ready in a matter of minutes. All the fonts and colors are easy-to-customize using the theme options panel and SEO WP comes with several built-in plugins designed to help your readers share your content, sign up for your email list, and even pay you for your services directly on your site.
Price: $59 | More Information
12. Bimber
The Bimber theme is another theme that’s perfect for magazine and news sites that would like to increase the chances of their content getting shared. With built-in social share buttons, the ability to showcase popular and trending topics as well as a featured author widget, the theme makes it easy to launch a powerful magazine site. You’ll also find a MailChimp subscribe widget, plenty of styling options, and plenty of ad space.
Price: $39 | More Information
13. EasyWeb
EasyWeb is a great choice for web design and hosting companies that want a modern design. The theme comes with several demos, an integrated live chat feature, live customizer, and an easy-to-use drag-and-drop page builder. Thanks to various modules, you’ll be able to showcase your team members and support staff, display your pricing plans, and showcase testimonials from past clients to build your reputation.
Price: $59 | More Information
14. Travelista
The Travelista theme is suitable for any type of travel blog and features a clean and modern design with large featured images, perfect for showcasing your destinations and must-see sites. The theme comes with support for all post formats, making it easy to share not only regular posts but also galleries, videos, and audio posts. You can choose between eight blog layouts and customize every aspect of the theme, from typography and colors to individual styles for pages, headers, and footers.
Price: $29 | More Information
15. Marco
If you’re on the lookout for a restaurant theme, be sure to check out Marco. The theme is suitable for both restaurants and cafes or any other website that’s in the food industry. The theme features several demo layouts which are ready to import with a single click. You can integrate various reservation platforms and it supports advanced menus with filters so your customers can browse all the items and find the exact meal they want to try.
Price: $59 | More Information
16. uDesign
The uDesign theme is a responsive, multipurpose theme that lets you create any type of website. On top of several layouts and a fast loading time, the theme was built with SEO in mind. It also has a user-friendly interface suitable even for complete beginners. You can customize every aspect of your site, customize the layout of your homepage with widgets, and import custom page templates to speed up the setup process. The uDesign theme is also translation-ready.
Price: $59 | More Information
17. Aerious
The Aerious theme is lightning fast thanks to its lightweight design, however it does pack quite a punch under the hood. The theme is suitable for a variety of niches and includes more than 40 premade sliders which are perfect for showcasing your products, team members, company, services, articles or anything else you want to show to your potential customers. Several premade layouts are available each time you create a new page but you can also create a completely custom layout from scratch. Additionally, the theme is fully customizable and optimized for SEO.
Price: $29 | More Information
18. Pillar
With more than 110 demo pages and over 160 sections which can be used to create both multipage and one-page WordPress websites and landing pages, the Pillar theme is truly impressive. If you can’t find the layout you’re looking for, you can simply use the drag-and-drop page builder to roll out your own layout and customize everything from fonts to colors. On top of that, the theme integrates with WooCommerce, MailChimp, and Campaign Monitor.
Price: $59 | More Information
For Elegant Themes Members
For Elegant Themes members, the following two themes are included in your membership and will allow you to create any type of website that loads fast. And if you’re not a member, not only does the membership give you access to those two themes but also to our plugins; Bloom and Monarch for your email and social media marketing needs as well as regular updates and premium support.
19. Divi
If you’re looking for a versatile theme that’s suitable for any niche, Divi is the right choice. With premade templates for home pages, portfolios, landing pages, and more along with dozens of content modules for calls-to-action, buttons, and contact forms, Divi has everything you need to create a powerful business website as well as a beautiful portfolio or a blog. You can see all the changes you make in real time thanks to the Visual Builder and customize every aspect of your site. And thanks to recent performance optimizations, Divi now has an improved Google Page Speed score so you can be sure it will load fast.
20. Extra
Consider the Extra theme if you run an online magazine or a news website. With a beautiful grid layout focused on content and the ability to add ratings to your articles, the Extra theme is a great choice. It comes with several premade layouts and you can also create your own unique layout, if you wish. The theme comes packed with multiple category modules, endless customization options, plenty of advertising space, and more.
Final Thoughts
While there’s a lot you can do to improve your website loading times, switching to a fast loading theme is a great first step in the right direction. The themes featured above not only load fast but they also cover a variety of niches, making them suitable for almost any type of website you need to create, so be sure to check them out. If you know of any other fast loading themes, be sure to let us know in the comments below
Article thumnail image by Stmool / shutterstock.com
A ‘how to speed up Divi’ would be great!
how to customize divi subheader in woocommerce all pages?
I have used a lot of WordPress themes and recently started using Divi and I am impressed with it’s loading time. Image size is one of the biggest drags on a site. Of course a good caching plugin is needed, but I am starting to like Divi overall.
I tend to build long, feature rich pages with Divi. And despite the size, the pages still load quickly. Very impressive on many levels.
i really don’t know what is divi but as i went through your article the interfaces or the themes considered in your article is eye catching. i look forward to this blog again as i am thinking to add a theme to my website. Though it looks shitty right now.
I am confused. Why would you post other themes on a site which sells Divi? Doesn’t make sense to me??♀️
Are you trying to drive business away !!
Any theme can be fast if not faster if optimised and not loaded with clutter.
As an ET life member it disappoints me to see opposition on the ET blog.
I come to the ET blog to read about ET and ET and also ET !!
Why not write a useful post about some of the other 80 or more themes ET has available to members and the Extra and Divi flag ship themes.
Why promote competitors themes….. I don’t get it! 🙂
I would love to see some Divi optimalisation tips and best practices on how to speed it up.
That “Miranda” looks so cool, thank you for the share! I’m definitely thinking about to change.
Best Regards
Adolfo
Have to say, this is one of the most self-serving, incomplete, and inaccurate ’round-up’ posts I’ve ever seen. The number of themes well-known for speed that were omitted, the failure to publish test conditions, actual load times, or any real data, and the choice of a single test tool, all combine to do more to give Elegant Themes a black eye for this sham of a post, than they do to make any of us feel good about Divi’s load speed.
Signed, A Divi Lifetime subscriber…but, one who tells the truth about Divi’s page payload.
Astra Theme w/ Beaver Builder.
Lots of good themes out there. I’m trying to stick to one (Astra Pro) and get proficient with it. I’ve tended to jump from theme to theme based on reviews and figured out if I got good with one theme, that’s the way to go.
PS. my review site uses UDesign – which I’ve had for several years and like. But for new sites, sticking to Astra & BB.
Interesting that every one of these themes is a paid theme. Why isn’t OceanWP in the list since it is both very fast and extremely flexible. I don’t have a vested interest but as a WP user of close to eight years standing, I’ve made the commitment to standardize both my sites and client sites with a single theme – OceanWP. And before anyone assumes that they would all have a common look, nothing could be further from the truth. The better you know a theme, the better you become at ‘polishing’ it.
Just saying…
Got to say it again.
Google PageSpeed Insights scores – or scores on any speed test do not indicate improvement in actual speed or ranking. Only measuring milliseconds of load time indicates a real difference. Other free alternatives include: WebPagetest.org (also owned by Google), Pingdom.com, and GTMetrix.com.
With GTMetrix, you can disable ads to see how they’re affecting your load time. Select the AdBlocker function before running the test.
Never trust testing a demo page. They’re usually tricked out with “extras” for speed.
Hi, Brenda. I’d like to add another vote for GeneratePress. It’s a fairly lightweight theme that loads fast yet has a lot of options out of the box — both the free and premium versions. Also, I’m not sure how lightweight MH Magazine really is. in real world environments, my PageSpeed score improved significantly when I replaced it with Elegant Themes Extra. Perhaps MH Themes has made some significant code improvements since I switched….
Greetings Divi team.
Do you plan to create a lightweight version of Divi?
Or do you have recommendation how to cut down unnecessary features which can cause slow downs?
Thank you, your fan Lukas
Hi, thank you very much for including our popular MH Magazine WordPress theme, it’s much appreciated.
PagePipe.com has tested MH Magazine for speed. It is fast loading but you can abuse the theme by adding too many unoptimized images. Keep it simple.
I’d really love to know how to speed up divi as well. I have installed some modules for tweaking, but almost everything i try causes the site to break or look awful. A tutorial for basic optimization would be most appreciated.
I try to speed up divi with:
* Cache Enabler (currently disabled)
* JCH Optimize (currently disabled)
* My Above The Fold CSS (currently disabled)
* ShortPixel Image Optimizer (works great, but not free)
* WP Fastest Cache
Thx!
We’ve found that Divi and associated page builder plugins are usually 55 percent of a sites page weight. There is no way to make your site load in under 2 seconds if you use Divi. And Google PageSpeed Insights test scores do not determine page ranking or SEO. Google doesn’t use them in their algorithm. It’s an exercise in futility.
I found the culprit as to what is slowing my Divi websites…I’m getting about 2 sec or under according to pingdom. I have some ways to go…
Hi, Steve. Your site PagePipe.com is pretty slick and has earned a bookmark from me. I’m not using your plugins, but I just tested one of my Divi sites on PagePipe and got a 1.6 seconds Fully Loaded Time on GTmetrix. This site is hosted on a shared server on HostGator and uses 25 plugins. It took me a while to find the right mix of optimization plugins that work for me, but less than 2-second load times using Divi theme are possible.
WOW! 25 plugins?! That’s crazy! The most I’ve ever had was probably 15 plugins tops…
Yes, I know. And I know better. But I think I might have hoarder tendencies….
So Divi is the slowest one concering exact load times. Well They work on speed too don’t they. Did you test also with any kind of caching?
Any advice on how to speed up Divi? Any plugin advice…which combination of plugins works with what?
Divi really bogs down the more complex the design. Obviously, but it shouldn’t be that bad right?
We use WP Rocket and it makes our Divi sites scream.
Baloney!
We’re screaming alright. PagePipe just tested two Divi sites. One in France and another in Africa. Because of Divi, they load very slow – even with WP Rocket installed. More than half of page weight is the Divi theme.
Also, we used 5 free plugins replacing WP Rocket making the site load just as fast – and without WP Rocket’s annual “rent.”
Multi-function WP Rocket adds 31.9 milliseconds to every page and post of your site. The combination of free discreet plugins add only 4 milliseconds total. Try it yourself.
Read about the plugin alternatives:
http://pagepipe.com/duplicate-wp-rocket-plugin-features-without-a-49-annual-license-fee/
I’ve had excellent results using Cache Enabler by KeyCDN, Autoptimize, and EWWW Image Optimizer. With Divi theme, Cache Enabler gives me the best speed bump — similar to WP Fastest Cache but without some of that plugin’s quirks. It gives me a better speed improvement over WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache. I’d give Autoptimize 10 stars if I could. And I went with EWWW over WP Smush because it has many more options and provides better smushing at the free level.
Out of your list, I’m only aware of autoptimize. I do use the pro version of wp smush. I’m definitely going to look over the other 2 plugins.
Thanks!
I’ve never used the Pro version of WP Smush, but have the free version installed on a few client sites. I like the plugin and the pro version looks like it would do an outstanding job. EWWW Image Optimizer does the same thing as WP Smush, but the free version of EWWW offers more options than the free version of Smush. The tradeoff is that EWWW does its magic on your server, not off site like Smush does.
Cache Enabler by KeyCDN is one of the fastest caching plugins I’ve used — free or otherwise. So far, I’ve had zero conflicts or cache issues with it. In the past, I’ve used WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, and WP Fastest Cache.
Autoptimize is just awesome. I can’t recommend it enough.
Your results may vary, but I’ve had great results with these.
We do mobile speed optimization of WordPress at PagePipe.com. We test plugins and themes all the time. Divi is one of the worst for speed in every case we’ve tested. I can’t believe this list. Some of the fastest themes are free such as GeneratePress version 2.0. They are not included here. Plus there isn’t any speed test results in milliseconds of load time on this article. Test scores are meaningless. It’s milliseconds that count.
Pagepipe’s test results from pingdom is the highest I’ve seen ever. That’s amazing!
Hello. Thrive themes are very fast too. I am surprised that they didn’t make it to your list.
I agree, DIVI would be a much better theme if it loaded quickly.
I hope DIVI is aiming to be a top ten contender. This would make DIVI even more irresistible.
I don’t think the list is in order of speed.
I’d like to see a detailed explanation on how these themes were tested.
How I read this, the themes were tested on their own locations – hosted on different servers, locations, and god only knows what other different resources between them.
Would testing a theme on localhost using Chrome inspector/network and taking note of the number of requests, transferred data size, total time etc give a more (not perfect) accurate result between themes?
Thank you Brenda.
Sticking with the first criteria, “Page Speed score rated as A or B with Pingdom Tools”, it would be helpful to see which ones are the top 3 performers of first 18 themes.
Next, it will be really interesting to see how Elegant Themes’ DIVI and EXTRA perform.
Perhaps a simple comparison of all 20, in the form of a table, will be really useful.
Thanks
I’m curious to understand how you made the tests….
Honnestly, I can build a list of hundreds themes which score A or B from the demo websites.
It is another story when you put them side by side on your own hosting solution.
I miss 3 important themes those days : OceanWP, GeneratePress and Astra. All 3, in their “light” versions, are available for free on wordpress.org. My preferred being OceanWP.
Even the themes which are listed here, I test some of them on google and find out that either some are not even under green section or those which are under green section of google speed test score they either broken layout or CSS not loading altogether.
So in short they are listed here without actual test.
I agree with Eric! We only use Astra(Free) or BB Theme(not free).
I agree. OceanWP and Astra (Pro) are my favorites now
Good points Eric, every website should be optimized. Unless that comparison was done in the same “environment” with identical sample data it is a bit useless. Another thing which is bothering me, is themeforest the only place to find quality wordpress themes? 😉
I totally agree ! Those 3 should have been there.
I have used Mag theme after reading this blog, I am completely satisfied.
Thanks for sharing
I’m currently on the Extra theme but want to switch over to Mag. How do you like using Visual Composer vs Divi Builder? Does anybody know if we can use Divi Builder with a Mag theme?
Super helpful post. Thanks.
Well, what makes you say that Divi is a fast loading template?…
Divi in genaral is a agreat template but on each of my sites I have performance issues, especially regarding loading time.
Divi is just as quick as others if well optimised.
Help! What is “Well optimized”? I am running Divi Extra and page speed absolutely sucks at 12.95. NOT a developer, have limited understanding of coding and optimization but just delving into this topic (I figured out some corrective actions such as removing google maps API and a few other tweaks that I will try). Failed on “Combine external javascript” (score of 0) but I have no idea how to go about combining jQuery files as corrective action. Is Divi the culprit or is it easily optimized for a non-tech. In other words…should I invest time in learning how to optimize Divi or switch to a lighter theme and seriously streamline plugins? **Side note – had a serious server issue last year with Divi visual builder redlining shared-hosting server causing website to be shut down at server. Website had to be rebuilt. Nothing new was added to website, I only activated visual builder so I absolutely stay away from visual now. But makes me a little concerned about this platform and page loading.
I noticed your site is currently running on HostGator. I think almost everyone here can agree, moving away from any Endurance International Group (EIG) Hosting is a good idea.
@Patricia, I would suggest checking the size of the images first. I see new sites sometimes with more than a MB of images on the home page. Another easy suggestion is to add a caching plugin. My understanding is that Comet Cache free version in the WP repo is pretty good. The only thing to keep in mind with that is when you make changes you might have to clear the cache to see them. Caching plugins will often handle the bundling of JS and CSS files for you also. Good luck, have fun.
Have you tried disabling the Visual builder and recheck load times?
If it makes a difference, maybe turn it off after you’ve completed the website build and until you need to use it again?
I hate to tell you this…this is why people hire professionals or do tons of studying for find this out. This is not a simple task. Though go to Google PageSpeed Insights and it will give you some pointers with helpful advice as a starting place of where to look. Autooptimize I have seen work well with Divi to reduce the amount of calls and files.