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Author: Christina Gwira

  • 15 Best Magazine WordPress Themes in 2023 (Compared)

    Are you looking for the best magazine WordPress themes? Then you’ve come to the right place. We have searched the web and done the research. If you’re looking to swap themes or just starting, one of these magazine themes should meet your needs.

    Choosing the ‘best’ themes for a collection is a subjective task. We’ve followed some guidelines for this article to help with the selection process. All the themes in this article are from trusted developers and marketplaces. They have received positive reviews and ratings and have been kept up to date since their original release.

    The design and features of themes have also played a significant role in their selection. However, please bear in mind that what you may deem an attractive design or essential feature in a theme isn’t necessarily what the next person considers stylish or necessary. Hopefully, though, there’s something to suit everyone in this collection.

    The Best Magazine WordPress Themes

    So now you know how the themes in this collection were chosen, let’s get started!

    1. Extra

    Extra, the best magazine WordPress theme

    Extra, one of our themes, is a magazine theme powered by the Divi Builder. Apart from the Divi Builder’s extensive features, it also contains extra modules making it a perfect fit for creating an online magazine.

    Extra's category builder

    The new category modules include a post carousel and featured post slider, helping display your content at its best. Extra also lets you monetize your site through its advertisement module. You can also improve ad engagement by placing ads directly into your post feeds.

    Extra and the Divi Builder

    Additionally, Extra uses the powerful Divi builder, equipping you with drag-and-drop functionality making it easier to create custom post and category templates for your magazine website. Extra also comes with advanced mega menus that show recent posts, favorite posts, and anything you desire! Extra also features a trending article. As a magazine theme, you get the most customization options with Extra.

    Key Features:

    • Drag-and-drop dedicated category builder
    • Divi Builder powered
    • Built-in ratings and reviews system
    • eCommerce ready
    • Seven different post formats

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $89

    Get Extra

    2. Felt LT

    Felt LT Magazine Theme by Pixel Grade

    Felt LT is a magazine theme geared towards bloggers by Pixel Grade. All Pixel Grade themes come with a powerful customization tool called Style Manager which allows you to set the branding for your website. Also, Gutenberg works flawlessly with Felt LT for building your pages and posts. The theme also includes several news-centric widgets to help you display your blog posts aesthetically pleasingly.

    Felt sponsored ad widgets and sections

    For the blogger or media outlet wanting to monetize their site, Felt provides dedicated widgets and widget areas for ad placement. Whether you want to monetize via PPC or want more control over promoting blog posts, Felt allows you to display advertisements on your site simply and effectively.

    Key Features:

    • Homepage hero carousel and slideshow module
    • Customize the homepage with a library of modules to filter and categorize posts
    • Use predefined color palettes or create your own
    • eCommerce ready with WooCommerce
    • Dedicated module and widget for display ad monetization

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $75 per year

    Get Felt LT

    3. Bucket

    Bucket a news/magazine WordPress theme

    Bucket is another magazine WordPress theme from Pixel Grade. This news-focused WordPress theme comes with various homepage layouts so that your best stories can be showcased beautifully to your readers. Bucket comes with a custom review system so that you can quickly write reviews of restaurants, music, and more. It includes a score breakdown pros and cons list, which can be customized to match your branding.

    Bucket's eye catchng mega menus

    Bucket’s mega menu system is another place to highlight popular articles within your online magazine. Your mega menu can feature cards, sliders, and submenus beautifully. On top of that, Bucket follows good SEO practices, so your articles will rank well in search engines, generating more eyes for your online publication.

    Key features:

    • Multiple homepage layouts
    • Mega menu builder with feature post sliders and cards
    • Native drag-and-drop builder with news-centric modules
    • Built-in review system with scorecards plus pros and cons lists
    • Fast loading, SEO friendly, and mobile responsive

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $75 per year

    Get Bucket

    4. Pressbox

    Pressbox, a WordPress magazine theme

    Pressbox is a magazine theme flexible to work with online publications, media companies, affiliate marketers, and more. The theme is GDPR friendly as well as mobile responsive. Optimized for performance, this magazine WordPress theme boasts near-perfect scores with GTMetrix, Lighthouse, and Chrome’s Performance Insights tools, which is quite impressive. It has several unique, magazine-specific features like a native affiliate disclaimer, displaying post update dates, and sticky headers, which can help build a standout magazine website for your brand.

    Pressbox block patterns

    Pressbox was built with Gutenberg mind. As such, it supports and has a few block patterns you can use to build your magazine website. The theme includes several demos, so getting your online magazine up in no time isn’t an issue with Pressbox.

    Key features:

    • Compact search form
    • Multiple styles for blog archive pages
    • Display taxonomy descriptions with subsequent HTML for better SEO
    • Display featured image captions for photo credit
    • Lazy loading

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $85 per year

    Get Pressbox

    5. MH Magazine

    MHThemes MH Magazines

    MH Magazine is a well-versed and fast-loading theme designed to impress SEO experts. The code was written with the best SEO practices in mind. The theme is SEO optimized with a strong focus on SEO fundamentals ranking well on search engines at the forefront. The theme is a widgetized template with multiple widget areas and many custom widgets you can place anywhere.

    It’s an excellent choice for any magazine, blog, or content SEO-focused agency. MH Magazine is one of the best SEO WordPress themes for those who want to build an online news or media platform focusing on content marketing.

    Features include:

    • Clean code with valid HTML5, CSS3 and PH
    • SEO optimized
    • A solid foundation for SEO rankings
    • Mobile responsive
    • Strong navigational aid tools

    Pricing: $49 per year

    Get MH Magazine

    6. Public Opinion

    Public Opinion, one of the best Magazine WordPress Themes available today

    Public Opinion is another CSS Igniter Theme, similar to Neuton. It is a flexible magazine WordPress theme with areas for ads, a breaking news ticker, and multiple homepage options. Public Opinion is powerful to work with most online publishing needs. It has a mobile-focused design, with support for translations and WooCommerce. Additionally, you can create custom archive pages. When used in tandem with its custom posts block, you can create different looks and layouts for the various tags, categories, or archives used on your media site.

    Noozbeat is an alternate style included in the Public Opinion theme. It is a fully responsive, beautiful skin for news and magazine websites. Easy to use, this theme provides unique layout options, helping you publish articles that will stand out. Multiple category layouts, custom widgets, and unlimited color variations are some other features offered with this skin.

    Key Features:

    • Theme Options Control Panel
    • 2 Theme styles included
    • Advertising Space
    • Numerous Layouts
    • Flexible Widgets
    • Unlimited Color Options

    Price: Paid plans start at $49

    Get Public Opinion

    7. Newspaper

    Newspaper WordPress Magazine Theme

    Newspaper is one of the highest-rated magazine and blog themes on the Themeforest marketplace. It is jam-packed with all you need to build a high-performing, visually appealing online news or magazine site. From its native opt-in builder to more than 25 WooCommerce-specific modules, this powerful theme is rightfully named one of the best magazine themes on Themeforest for a reason.

    Locked content creator

    Boost lead generation, enhance conversion rates, and attract subscribers by leveraging opt-in content lockers and subscription lists. With the Newspaper theme, you can utilize its native Opt-In Builder to effortlessly craft enticing content lockers, providing your visitors with a compelling incentive to unlock valuable content. This can help you easily monetize your website without using additional plugins on your magazine website.

    Key Features:

    • 120+ one-click pre-built websites
    • Monetize content through paywalls, subscriptions, and more
    • Custom field support
    • Native form builder system
    • Directory and listing system

    Pricing: $118 per year

    Get Newspaper

    8. JNews

    JNews News and Magazine Theme

    JNews is another Themeforest theme, one of the best magazine themes in its marketplace. Aside from building a feature-rich online magazine site, you can build sites for your podcast or even a video-focused website similar to YouTube or Vimeo. You can do all this while efficiently monetizing your written, audio, and video content with JNew’s native tools. Indeed, JNews is one of the best magazine WordPress themes for those who want to do more than have an online magazine.

    JNews frontend editor submission

    For those looking to build their media empire on WordPress, consider using JNews, especially if you plan on hiring a team of writers for your site. Give your writers the ability to submit articles, posts, and media to your site without logging into the WordPress backend. Your admins or editors can then approve the status of submitted posts, and you can protect your site while making it easy for your team to contribute to your blog.

    Key Features:

    • 250+ homepage demos to download
    • AI writing assistant JegAI Assistant
    • Integrates with Google Web Stories
    • Payment tracking and relationship management for blog writers
    • Custom podcasting and video management system

    Pricing: $118 per year

    Get JNews

    9. Magazine Pro

    Magazine Pro by StudioPress

    Magazine Pro from StudioPress has an up-to-the-minute look and feel. This professional yet sleek design will wow your viewers without detracting from your content. The theme’s versatility will enable you to display articles at their best. Magazine Pro’s ease of use will ensure your website is created and up and running within no time. It comes with three homepage widget areas that you can use to showcase your latest articles and more.

    Magazine Pro Post Layouts

    Magazine Pro also has six unique post layouts, allowing you to fully customize how your articles are displayed. Additionally, the sidebars in this theme make it easy to showcase various widgets like your latest categories, comments, search, and more.

    Key Features:

    • Three custom page templates
    • Three homepage widget areas
    • Six unique blog post layouts
    • Theme Customizer with customizable header
    • Includes the Genesis Framework

    Pricing: $360 per year

    Get Magazine Pro

    10. Sydney (News)

    News, a Sydney child theme by aThemes

    News is a starter site for the Sydney theme by aThemes. With the pro version of Sydney, you get access to powerful features and 17+ starter sites, including News — a newspaper site with clean serif fonts and beautiful typography. You can quickly redesign your site’s header and footer quickly with the Customizer. There are also several flexible layouts that you can use for your blog posts and archive pages. Sydney also integrates well with Elementor, and WPForms, amongst other popular WordPress plugins.

    The News starter site for Sydney is built with Elementor, which makes building your magazine site a breeze. It also has a set of magazine-specific widgets that make your news site come, including a news ticket, related post layouts, and much more.

    Key Features:

    • Latest news widget
    • Announcement bar widget
    • Lightweight and optimized for performance
    • Built-in social sharing
    • Showcase reading progress time to users

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $69 per year

    Get Sydney

    11. Tribune

    Tribune by WP Zoom

    Tribune is a powerful WordPress magazine theme from WPZoom. Its magazine features make it an excellent choice for online news or another editorial site. Tribune can display featured posts in a slider or carousel on the homepage, helping grab the attention of your visitors. It can also embed videos from other websites, displaying the news as it happens.

    Tribune's featured homepage slider

    Tribune has a prominent homepage section that you can use to showcase your latest posts or hand-picked individual posts in a dynamic slider. Videos can also use the slider. Next to the slider, you can use the widget area to seamlessly incorporate a selection of different widgets or use it as prime real estate for advertisements.

    Key Features:

    • Visual Customizer
    • Featured Content Area on the Homepage
    • Breaking News Ticker
    • Infinite Scroll
    • Ad Ready Theme

    Price: Paid plans start at $59 per year

    Get Tribune

    12. Compass

    Compass by WP Zoom

    Compass is a sophisticated magazine theme enabling you to show off your content in style. This customizable theme, with an easily configurable homepage, will let you create a unique website. It also includes a draggable slideshow with touch support.

    WPZOOM Homepage builder

    Build and customize your homepage layout with custom magazine-specific widgets by WPZOOM. The homepage has multiple widget areas, so you can create enticing and engaging homepages to promote and showcase your website’s most exciting blog posts.

    Key Features:

    • One Click Demo Import
    • Homepage Builder
    • Visual Customizer
    • Touch Slider
    • Logo Input

    Price: Paid plans start at $69 per year

    Get Compass

    13. Neuton

    Neuton by CSS Igniter

    Neuton, from CSSIgniter, is a responsive news and magazine theme. This original and sleek design makes Neuton one of the best magazine WordPress themes. Neuton also boasts powerful features, with page builder support, flexible widgets, and multiple homepage templates.

    Neton, Trending news feature

    For news-based websites, the trending ticker widget is an excellent feature of the Neuton theme. This widget can showcase trending topics, tags, categories, or posts from within your blog. Use this to engage readers and draw more attention to news-worthy information on your website.

    Key Features:

    • Flexible layout options
    • Multiple homepage templates
    • Page builder support through Gutenberg and Elementor
    • Custom category widgets
    • Seven different category layouts, with slideshows

    Price: Paid plans start at $49 per year

    Get Neuton

    14. InsightInsight WP Zoom News Theme

    Insight is a beautiful theme that deserves a place in this collection of best magazine WordPress themes. Minimal and distraction-free, this is an ideal theme for an online magazine where viewers can concentrate solely on the content. Create a stunning homepage with built-in tools to attract visitors and grow your audience.

    Insight homepage style layout

    While a simple theme, Insight allows you to change your homepage’s layout. You can choose a two-column layout, mimicking the columns in physical newspapers. Or, you can choose to go for its default blog view. Either way, your featured images, and titles will be displayed vividly on your website.

    Key Features:

    • Homepage Builder with magazine-focused widgets
    • Theme Options Panel
    • Visual Customizer
    • Homepage post slideshow
    • Numerous Color Schemes

    Price: Paid plans start at $69 per year

    Get Insight

    15. Ultra (Magazine)

    Ultra WordPress Theme

    Ultra is a flexible theme from the Themify family. It has 60+ pre-designed layouts to help you build your magazine site faster. Also, Ultra is powered by Themify Builder, one of many great WordPress page builders, making it easy to build the perfect online magazine for your needs.

    Ultra Magazine WordPress Theme

    The Magazine skin of Ultra allows you to build a beautiful multi-columned blog focusing on news and magazine-style content. Built with users in mind, the layouts provided put your top headlines at the forefront of your readers. Also, monetize your news site using the Magazine skin and Ultra for your new media project today.

    Key Features:

    • 15+ header styles
    • Five single post layouts
    • Five header background options
    • Six archive layouts
    • Preset colors and typography for fast branding

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $59 per year

    Get Ultra

    What is the Best WordPress Magazine Theme?

    You can build beautiful custom magazine sites with Extra and its Theme Builder. The power of the Divi and dedicated category builder will help you build a robust, fully customized magazine website for your publication. If branding and blogging are your strong suits, you’ll love the layouts and styling options that Felt LT gives. Finally, if you want a powerful magazine theme with a dedicated and brandable reviews system, Bucket is the best magazine WordPress theme for you to use.

    Themes Price Free Version
    🥇 Extra $89/year ❌ Visit
    🥈 Felt LT $75/year ❌ Visit
    🥉 Bucket $75/year ❌ Visit
    4 Pressbox $85/year ❌ Visit
    5 MH Magazine $49/year ❌ Visit
    6 Public Opinion $49/year ❌ Visit
    7 Newspaper $118/year ❌ Visit
    8 JNews $118/year ❌ Visit
    9 Magazine Pro $360/year ✔️ Visit
    10 Sydney $69/year ✔️ Visit
    9 Tribune $59/year ❌ Visit
    9 Compass $69/year ❌ Visit
    10 Neuton $49/year ❌ Visit
    11 Insight $69/year ❌ Visit
    6 Ultra $59/year ❌ Visit

    And don’t forget to check out our multi-purpose Divi theme. Although Divi wasn’t explicitly created as a magazine theme, its flexible and powerful features make it an excellent fit for an online news or editorial website.

    What is your favorite magazine theme? Please share, with reasons for the selection, in the comments below.

    Article thumbnail image by Firuz Salamzadeh / shutterstock.com

    The post 15 Best Magazine WordPress Themes in 2023 (Compared) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

  • 11 Best Premium WordPress Themes in 2023 (Reviewed & Compared)

    If you’ve had to search for a WordPress theme recently, you’ve probably realized how many are available. Thousands of premium themes claim to be the best for your site, but many are relatively unproven. With all those themes vying for your attention, some names will seem more familiar. The best WordPress premium themes typically become popular because they work for many customers and are well-supported, so you can generally be more comfortable laying out cash for them.

    This article will look at some of the best premium WordPress themes based on various factors and highlight some of their top features.

    Why Choose Premium WordPress Themes?

    Before we select the most popular premium themes, let’s address the big question: why choose a premium theme when there are so many free themes available? For many people, a free theme seems sufficient and has the advantage of being free; however, premium themes have some advantages.

    Firstly, premium themes are often better quality than free ones because the revenue generated gets funneled back into future iterations. Additionally, premium themes typically come with support, which can help you get the most out of the theme and its features. When you add in the more advanced functionality, higher security standards, and more responsive updates found in premium themes, the advantages are clear.

    Once you decide to go with a premium theme, you need to find one. You have two main options to choose from: marketplaces and theme shops. Marketplaces like ThemeForest and Creative Market have a variety of themes for sale, often categorized and with reviews and ratings to help you find the perfect theme. Theme shops like Elegant Themes (hello!) and StudioPress are more focused but usually provide excellent support.

    Choosing a premium theme requires more thought than just looking at the price to avoid making a mistake. It would be best to consider the reviews and reputation of the developers or theme shop and the support offered. Ensure the theme provides the features you need but doesn’t lock you in, so you can’t change themes in the future.

    We’ve previously written a more in-depth discussion on choosing between free and premium themes.

    How We Chose Our List of the Best Premium WordPress Themes

    First, there is no standard definition of “popular” when it comes to WordPress themes. A theme can be considered popular based on the number of downloads, installs, or sales (i.e., quantitative) or based on reputation or brand awareness (i.e., qualitative).

    Both measures of assessing a theme have their challenges. Using numbers seems like it would be the most objective method, but in many cases, those figures are not available. While marketplaces like ThemeForest do show the number of sales, private theme shops often do not share their figures, making comparisons difficult.

    The other route of deciding on the most popular themes based on name recognition, brand awareness, or reputation is not an exact science. You could try to measure search engine queries for theme names, but some bias is still likely to be introduced.

    Ultimately, there is a significant element of unavoidable subjectivity in identifying popular themes. We’ve used a combination of available figures, other rankings, and overall reputation to create this list of our picks for the most popular premium themes.

    11 Best Premium WordPress Themes

    We capped our list at 11 to keep the post manageable, but many other themes could be included on this list, so your picks might be different. Let’s look at our list of the most popular premium themes without further ado!

    1. Divi

    Divi, premium WordPress website builder plugin
    While we admit to being slightly biased, it is no secret that Divi has become one of the most popular themes. To us, it’s one of the best premium WordPress themes available! The flexibility of the in-built Divi Builder and Theme Builder enables you to create just about any layout you can imagine. It’s perfect for non-technical users but powerful enough for advanced users who want to customize their site entirely.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $89 per year

    Get Divi

    2. Genesis Pro

    StudioPress and Genesis Pro
    The Genesis Framework from StudioPress is a robust theme framework that enables novices and advanced developers to build websites with WordPress. The framework provides a secure, search-engine-optimized platform for severe websites, making it one of the best premium WordPress themes. The variety of child themes (such as the very popular Foodie Pro theme) provides unique starting points for custom sites.

    Pricing: $360 per year

    Get Genesis Pro

    3. OptimizePress

    OptimizePress landing page builder plugin

    While you could use this theme to create general websites, OptimizePress has made a name for itself in high-converting landing pages, sales pages, and membership sites. This makes it one of the best premium WordPress themes for marketers and conversion-conscious website builders. The live page editor lets you view changes immediately, starting from 30 pre-tested templates. You can also get OptimizePress as a plugin, so if you’re interested in another theme, you can still add the OptimizePress magic.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $179 per year

    Get OptimizePress

    4. Responsive Pro

    Responsive by Cyberchimps
    Built on the popular free Responsive theme, Responsive Pro adds powerful customization features to one of the best free WordPress themes on the WordPress Theme Repository. You can modify colors, typography, and other options using the Theme Customizer. The theme includes in-built support for major plugins such as bbPress and WooCommerce. This simple and flexible theme offers a good starting point without all the complexity of some of the other themes on this list.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $47 per year

    Get Responsive Pro

    5. Avada

    Avada Premium WordPress Theme
    Currently the top-selling WordPress theme of all time on ThemeForest, Avada is described as a Swiss army knife of a theme. It includes powerful, easy-to-use tools via its Fusion Core plugin, including a visual page builder, shortcode generator, and mega menus (to name a few). Combine those with advanced theme options, and you can create unique layouts without touching a line of code.

    Pricing: $138 per year

    Get Avada

    6. Flatsome

    Flatsome Premium WordPress theme
    This list wouldn’t be complete without throwing an eCommerce-specific theme in the mix. Flatsome is the top-selling WooCommerce theme on ThemeForest. The included page builder lets you create any layout for your store’s pages. The theme also includes e-commerce-specific features to make your website stand out, such as multiple product grid styles, sale bubbles, and quick-zoom product images.

    Pricing: $118 per year

    Get Flatsome

    7. BeTheme

    BeTheme Premium WordPress Theme
    BeTheme, like several of the other themes on this list, includes pre-made layouts for a quick start. But it claims to be the “biggest theme ever,” with over 190 layouts available. You should have no trouble finding a design to start your project, which you can customize using the in-built page builder.

    Pricing: $120 per year

    Get BeTheme

    8. X and Pro by ThemeCo

    ThemeCo Pro and X Premium WP Themes

    X The Theme and Pro are premium sister themes created by Theme Co. The themes rely on the Cornerstone page builder, another creation of Theme Co. The builder is a live page builder which prides itself on being a true “build in browser” experience. The themes have integrations with the top plugins of WordPress including Modern Events Calendar, ACF Pro, and LayerSlider, to name a few. If you are tired of the page builders out there and are looking for a different way to build websites in WordPress, X, and Pro are the best premium WordPress themes for you.

    Pricing: $158 per year

    Get X and Pro

    9. Bridge

    Bridge Premium WordPress Theme
    Bridge is a beautiful multipurpose theme and is currently a top seller on ThemeForest. With over two dozen layout concepts and over 100 demos, you can choose a starting point to fit any website project. With full typographic control, including font packs and access to custom CSS, you can create a unique design to meet your needs.

    Pricing: $138 per year

    Get Bridge

    10. Enfold

    Enfold Premium WordPress Theme
    Enfold is another top-selling and highly-rated theme on ThemeForest. The high rating is mainly due to the theme’s focus on user-friendliness. From the drag-and-drop page editor to the outstanding support and step-by-step tutorials, Enfold is easy for those just starting. Features like an integrated form builder and advanced options ready it to provide you with a beautiful site in no time.

    Pricing: $118 per year

    Get Enfold

    11. Salient

    Salient Premium WordPress Theme
    Salient aims to provide you with the platform to create beautifully responsive designs with their theme. With over 1,000 icons, over 600 fonts, and unlimited color possibilities, your theme will be unique without touching code. A powerful theme options panel and an advanced page builder enable you to modify your site and page layouts further.

    Pricing: $120 per year

    Get Salient

    What are the Best WordPress Premium Themes?

    Plugin Price Free Version
    🥇 Divi $89/year ❌ Visit
    🥈 Genesis Pro $360/year ✔️ Visit
    🥉 OptimizePress $179/year ❌ Visit
    4 Responsive Pro $59/year ✔️ Visit
    5 Avada $138/year ❌ Visit
    6 Flatsome $118/year ❌ Visit
    7 BeTheme $120/year ❌ Visit
    8 Bridge $138/year ❌ Visit
    9 X and Pro $158/year ❌ Visit
    10 Enfold $118/year ❌ Visit
    11 Salient $120/year ❌ Visit

    Divi is one of the best premium themes to work with for the person who wants absolute control over their website. The Theme Builder and customer support provided make it a world-class theme for those new to WordPress and those who have been building websites for a long time. Genesis Pro is for the web designer looking to use full site editing and wants to stay true to the block editor. Genesis Pro allows you to use any page builder you see fit. Or, you can stick with Gutenberg, the new WordPress standard, and build a powerful website without learning a single line of code.

    Finally, if you want to build high-converting, powerful landing pages and marketing sites, OptimizePress is your premium theme. Creators, entrepreneurs, and marketing professionals tired of using multiple platforms to do the job will love the tools that OptimizePress provides within their premium theme.

    In Conclusion, You Choose the Best Premium WordPress Theme!

    When you need to choose a theme for a WordPress website, and you’ve decided on using a premium theme (which we advise!), the most popular ones are often an excellent place to start your selection process. We have provided you with our list of the best premium WordPress themes based on several factors. The list should give you a headstart for your projects this year if you feel overwhelmed by the number of themes.

    What has your experience been with the themes featured in our list? Please let us know and subscribe to the comments section below!

    The post 11 Best Premium WordPress Themes in 2023 (Reviewed & Compared) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

  • 10 Best AI Art Generators in 2023 (Reviewed and Ranked)

    There are many places where you can find AI at work today. From your GPS to the recommendations of ads you receive, artificial intelligence is everywhere, including art. Whereas in the past, it would take years of training to create beautiful pieces, with the advent of AI art generators, you can create any type of digital art or image at the click of a button. The best AI art generators provide you with the ability to generate digital pieces from a few sentences, and some can do a lot more than that.

    In our list, we want to showcase some of the best AI art generators you can use for work or fun today. But first, let’s look at what an AI art generator is.

    What are AI Art Generators (And What Can They Do for You)?

    AI art generators take simple lines of text or prompts and create digital images. They can create various types of art mediums, such as music, collages, digital art, and more. They use machine learning techniques to analyze existing art styles and compositions to generate new creations digitally. You can now use AI art generators to create logos, flyers, 3D renderings, and more. They can help you cut down time on the creation process. They also can save organizations money in personnel costs.

    The 10 Best AI Art Generators

    Let’s look at some of the top AI art generators and how they could benefit you in your next project.

    1. Jasper Art

    Jasper Art AI Generator

    Jasper Art is a product of Jasper AI, the AI copywriting tool favored by marketing teams and professionals. With Jasper Art, you no longer need to spend hours looking for the perfect images for your blog posts. You can use its simple interface, simple text phrases, and easy interface to create pixel-perfect digital art. Jasper Art creates unique images with various styles, inspired by artists, moods, and art styles that you decide.

    After being fed your prompts, Jasper Art will generate four samples of digitally inspired art based on those prompts. You can then rate, share, download, and use your images in moments. Furthermore, the images created by Jasper Art are copyright-free, meaning you no longer need to invest in expensive royalty-free image libraries. Jasper Art makes a great companion tool for those who want to use AI for their written work and their visual needs.

    Key Features of Jasper Art:

    • Works in 29 languages
    • Choose medium, artist, and mood for art pieces
    • High-resolution 2k px images
    • Royalty-free commercial use
    • No watermark added
    • Unlimited image generations

    Jasper Art templates

    In addition to generating digital imagery from your text, you can use Jasper Art templates to save time when generating imagery. The templates are set styles that come with Jasper Art. You can use these preset templates to match the art style you need for your project quickly. From illustrations to photo-realistic generations, Jasper Art’s templates are just another way that the platform supports you in using AI to make content quickly for your brand.

    Best For:
    For teams looking for a central location for their AI writing and art needs, Jasper Art is the platform for you. Switching between different tools within one account is beneficial for larger teams. If you want to speed up your content creation process for written and visual content supported by AI, join Jasper.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $49 per month

    Get Jasper Art

    2. PhotoSonic

    PhotoSonic Art AI Generator

    PhotoSonic is another AI art generator tool that is a member of a larger ecosystem of AI products. In this case, it’s WriteSonic, another AI writing tool. Like most AI generation tools for art, PhotoSonic uses a highly sophisticated text-to-image AI model to turn plain language descriptions into artistic and realistic images. PhotoSonic’s AI model is based on a type of diffusion. This means that based on the text you feed it, PhotoSonic will adjust a random noise image to match the provided content.

    With PhotoSonic, you can control the quality and style of your generated images to get the images you need for your task. By optimizing your description and restarting the tool, you can create the perfect images for your next blog post, product shoot, and more. The interface is easy to understand PhotoSonic comes with a free trial that you can use to regenerate five images with a watermark.

    Key Features of PhotoSonic:

    • 10+ design and image styles
    • Choose the aspect ratio size of your creations
    • Remove the background from the images
    • Auto face restoration
    • Option to download high-definition versions of images generated

    PhotoSonic image generation output

    PhotoSonic’s “Autocomplete Prompt with AI” is a helpful way to further expand on simple phrases and text given to the generator. In the example above, the term “Toronto skyline” was used. However, with the autocomplete prompt’s help, we generated an image based on the illustration style of James Gilleard. This opens doors for those who may not have a clear idea of the style or specifics of the images to be created. Additionally, with PhotoSonic, you can download your generated images into a neat ZIP folder, making it easier to access your high-resolution images in one place.

    Best For:
    PhotoSonic will be a good fit for users who would like access to an AI art generation tool but don’t want one that is complex. PhotoSonic makes it easy to create images with AI with low barriers to entry in terms of ease of use and product understanding.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $10 per month

    Get PhotoSonic

    3. Shutterstock

    Shutterstock AI

    A popular royalty-free site, Shutterstock’s AI tool is a simple way to generate images for commercial and personal use. It comes with a set number of image styles. But once you click on them, they open up more options for you to use to refine what you’re looking to create. While Shutterstock’s AI tool is backed by its vast library, it does take much longer to generate images than other tools on our list. This could be a downside if you need to batch images for your project quickly.

    The Shutterstock AI tool has been used to create photos, digital art, and 3D art. It also claims to be an ethically designed AI tool, which is good news for those looking for a tool that uses AI for good.

    Key Features of Shutterstock:

    • Input text prompts in 20+ languages
    • Five main image generation styles
    • Save images to public or private Shutterstock collections
    • Generate unlimited variations
    • Images available in 512 x 512 and 1024 x 1024 pixels

    Shutterstock AI style tags

    Shutterstock’s AI art generator does not have as many templates or styles as some competitors on our list. Nevertheless, the tool provides a list of tags you can browse through when you select your chosen style. These tags add further clarity to your submitted text prompts, helping you to get closer to creating your desired AI art creations.

    Best For:
    Users with a Shutterstock subscription will benefit from using this tool alongside other Shutterstock tools. When used in conjunction with Shutterstock’s Creative Flow Suite and Predict – Shutterstock’s AI-powered design assistant – you can easily add AI-generated image content to your workflow, speeding up your creative process.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $49 per month

    Get Shutterstock

    4. NightCafe

    NightCafe AI Art Generator

    A community-focused art generator, NightCafe is a powerful AI art generator that allows you to create beautiful digital art pieces in seconds. Like most generators, NightCafe allows you to generate up to 4 images from one prompt. You can then refine your prompt and regenerate your art piece until you get the image you’ve imagined. NightCafe is a community-driven platform with a large searchable library of images created by users of the generator worldwide. The platform posts daily challenges, which are competitions that encourage you to use NightCafe to create art for a prize.

    The platform is available in a mobile app so that you can take this AI art generator on the go. In addition to its AI art generator, NightCafe Studio comes with an AI face generator tool and an AI art therapy tool that gives you tips on how to use NightCafe to relieve stress and foster creative expression.

    Key Features of NightCafe:

    • 40+ preset styles to choose from
    • Choice of 5 text-to-image algorithms
    • Choice of stable diffusion model
    • Upload images from your hard drive as starting image
    • Choose pictures from Pexels as starting image
    • An advanced public and private search of creations on NightCafe

    NightCafe's advanced prompt editor

    NightCafe’s advanced prompt editor allows you to create your unique style for your AI-generated creations. You can base your styles on one of many from NightCafe’s library. Then, you add modifiers like art movements, artists, genre, and more. Finally, you can save these prompts as your custom style, which you can then use within NightCafe to create unique art pieces custom-made for your use.

    Best For:
    NightCafe is a powerful tool for AI art aficionados. If you are looking for a powerful AI art generation tool with deep customization, NightCafe will be a good tool. Also, out of the tools on our list, it is one of the more affordable tools, especially when you compare its feature set to other generators on the market.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans start from $5.99 per month

    Get NightCafe

    5. CF Spark Art

    CF Spark AI Art Generator

    The CF Spark Family is a collection of online AI generation tools that features a pattern generator, content writer, and the AI art generator CF Spark Art. CF Spark is a text-to-image generator that takes simple and complex statements and generates them into digital art. It has several presets that can be used with your text to make creating digital art easier. The interface is friendly and easy to use, especially for those who want to venture into digital art creation but may be dissuaded by more complex platforms.

    CF Spark Art creates four image variations of your art which you can publish to the CF community, download or remix with the CF ImageMix tool. The CF Spark Art tool is a little slower than its competitors of similar feature sets. However, with paid credits, you can speed up your art creation time and get access to your art faster.

    Key Features of CF Spark Art:

    • Eight art presets
    • Generate art in 6 aspect rations
    • Advanced prompt builder and prompt library
    • A searchable, personal library of generated creations
    • Expert-level, visual prompt builder

    CF Spark Prompt Builder

    CF Spark Art has a powerful prompt builder that allows you to create your own style using a vast library of options. You can choose the lighting, art medium, color, and so much more for your generated artwork. Each option comes with a description and a thumbnail so that even if you’re unfamiliar with the terminology, you can see a visual representation of what each term represents. When you add your selections, it builds a prompt directly into the textbox, to which you can then copy and add your text and content ideas.

    Best For:
    If you want to experience the full breadth and potential of AI-generated art but don’t want to get lost in the technicality of it all, give CF Spark Art a try. The complete Creative Fabrica (CF) suite is an excellent place for those who want to use more AI-generated art in their work. The powerful art generator makes it easy to create AI art irrespective of your understanding of AI or technology.

    Pricing: $9 per month

    Get CF Spark Art

    6. MidJourney

    MidJourney AI Art Generator

    MidJourney is a Discord bot that allows you to use simple prompts to generate digital art with AI. We’ve also used the tool alongside ChatGPT to build a simple landing page with Divi. MidJourney has a vibrant community of creatives on its Discord server, where users share ideas, help each other with feedback, and more. You need a free Discord account to access the free trial credits used by the MidJourney bot to generate artwork. You interact with the MidJourney bot through Discord commands.

    Unlike some tools on this list, there isn’t a set list of presets to help you on your creation journey. Instead, MidJourney works best with clear, concise sentences describing the end result you are looking for. Once you have generated your initial image, you can download your work, upscale it (to make it bigger) or create variations. MidJourney’s main prompt is /imagine. However, you can also use the /blend prompt to upload your own images and blend them together to make new digital art pieces.

    Key Features of MidJourney:

    • Based on Discord, is a Discord bot
    • Can work in your Discord private messages
    • Has a strong community of digital artists
    • Can blend two uploaded images
    • Remix mode to change paraments used in variations

    MidJourney command list

    Though MidJourney is a Discord bot with less flair than its competitors, it still has a place on our list. MidJourney’s command list is a great place to learn how to interact with the bot. These commands can help make your experience using MidJourney easier and more fruitful.

    Best For:
    For those familiar with Discord servers and who want to join a growing and supportive community of AI artists, MidJourney is for you. While it doesn’t have a lot of the bells and whistles that others on our list have, it’s the community and consistent quality art made by MidJourney that make it stand out. It’s a good choice for those who want to plug into a solid digital art community.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $10 per month

    Get MidJourney

    7. DALL-E 2

    DALL-E-2 AI Art Generator

    DALL-E 2 is an image-generation tool from the ChatGPT family. Additionally, DALL-E 2 powers several tools found on our list as well as other AI image-generation tools available for use today. The tool allows you to create realistic images and digital art from text and descriptions. DALL-E 2 can intermingle concepts, art styles, and more. The first iteration of the project was released in 2021. DALL-E 2, the second version, now creates more lifelike art at higher resolutions than its predecessor.

    You can save your favorite pieces and see a history of the prompts used to create your artwork. DALL-E 2 – like its sister product ChatGPT – has a simple interface. This makes it very easy for anyone to access this powerful tool.

    Key Features of DALL-E 2:

    • Simple interface
    • Random prompt generator
    • Generated can in the history tab
    • Save collections of generated art in collections
    • Generates high-resolution art

    DALL-E 2 edit images before image generation

    While in beta, DALL-E 2 allows you to edit your image before you use it in the tool. Unlike other AI art generators, you can erase a section of the image or set an area where you would like image generation to occur within the image you uploaded. You can also expand or shrink the image. As this feature is in beta, it is advisable to remember to save it as you are editing your artwork, especially for more complex edits.

    Best For:
    DALL-E 2 is the simplest of tools on our list and, as such, can be used by anyone. However, it is best for those new to AI art generation, as DALL-E is the backbone of many AI art generation tools today.

    Pricing: $15 per 115 credits

    Get DALL-E 2

    8. Bing Image Creator

    Bing Image Creator

    Bing Image Creator is an image generation tool powered by DALL-E. Using text commands and prompts, you can use Bing Image Creator to make digital creations. The generator is free. However, you do need a Microsoft account to access it. Currently, Bing Image Creator only supports English language prompts and text. As such, you will have an Image Creator profile created.

    Bing Image Creator does not have fancy presets, editing tools, or the ability to upload images. However, for personal use, the tool can be fun to use. All the pictures are generated in a 1:1 ratio (square) and are 1024 x 1024 pixels. The interface is straightforward to use and move around, and you can look at what others have created in a tab on the homepage called Explore Ideas.

    Key Features of Bing Image Creator:

    • Integrated with your Bing and Microsoft account
    • Saves the history of generated content
    • Download generated images without a watermark
    • Save generated images to custom collections
    • Share generated image via a link

    Bing Image Creator Surprise Me Button

    The Surprise Me button on the Bing Image Creator is an exciting way to see the generator’s power. The button randomly generates ideas and prompts you can use and create digital art with. This is also a good way to see how specific terms are translated with the generator so you can get ideas on structuring your prompts for future use.

    Best For:
    Bing Image Creator is there for you as a quick and easy AI generation tool. It has no bells or whistles, but if you want to have fun and create digital art for personal use, give Bing Image Creator a go.

    Pricing: Free

    Get Bing Image Creator

    9. Dream by WOMBO

    Dream by WOMBO

    Dream by WOMBO is an online platform and mobile app for AI image generation. Both the app and the mobile interface are easy to use and come with an abundance of presets that you can take advantage of for your AI creation needs. Unlike many generators on our list, Dream’s free version only allows you to generate one image at a time. Also, generations can only be created on a premium plan.

    Nevertheless, for non-professional users, Dream is a cool app to use. The platform understands common language prompts and generates decent-quality images. It has a vast array of presets, making it a joy to tinker around with. You can also upload your own image and use text prompts and presets to create new art for personal use.

    Key Features of Dream by WOMBO:

    • 40+ image styles and presets
    • Generate four image variations at once
    • View and download video of Dream image generation in action
    • Use text commands to make edits to uploaded images
    • Download creations in two formats: trading card or background image
    • Easily access and create will all previously used prompts

    Dream Remix NFT

    If you have NFTs, you’re in luck. Dream’s AI generation tool has a feature that allows you to use your current NFTs and turn them into something new with the power of AI image generation. You no longer need to go back to the drawing board when creating your NFTs. Hook up your wallet and use Dream’s AI tools to make new creations from your pre-existing artwork.

    Best For:
    Dream by WOMBO is a good AI image-generation tool for personal use. Some of its generations in testing were not as sharp as others on our list. Also, its free plan is quite restrictive when compared to other tools in the market.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $9 per month

    Get Dream by WOMBO

    10. Fotor AI Art Generator

    Fotor Photo AI Art Generator

    Fotor AI Art Generator rounds off our list but is a powerful tool for all your digital art needs. You have the choice to upload an image or to use simple text prompts to create your artwork. The size of your outputted image, as well as the number of images that are generated by the platform, can also be adjusted to your needs. You have a large selection of different presets that you can use for your art. Additionally, aspects like aperture, golden ratio, depth of details, and effects can all be customized from the sleek, dark-mode interface. You have a library where your generated art is saved. Also, your library lets you download past image generations and see what prompts, presets, and aspect ratios are used to create your digital art.

    Key Features of Fotor AI Art Generator:

    • 9+ style presets
    • Three aspect ratios
    • Adjust art styles, composition, light effects, and more
    • Generate up to 5 images per prompt
    • Upload your image to the platform for further customization with AI

    Fotor Image Editor

    A bonus to using Fotor’s AI Art Generator is that you can also use Fotor’s Photo Editing Suite to make additional edits to your generated images. Whether you want to add text, recolor, resize or retouch, you can take your generated images to the next level by using Fotor’s integrated suite of tools in your content creation process.

    Best For:
    Fotor AI Art Generator will be a good fit for those who want to customize their AI-generated art. It’s

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $8.99 per year

    Get Fotor AI Art Generator

    What is the Best AI Art Generator?

    Plugin Price Free Version
    🥇 Jasper Art $49/month ❌ (Trial) Visit
    🥈 PhotoSonic $10/month ❌ (Trial) Visit
    🥉 Shutterstock $49/month ❌ Visit
    4 NightCafe $5.99/month ✔️ Visit
    5 CF Spark $9/month ✔️ Visit
    6 MidJourney $10/month ❌ (Trial) Visit
    7 DALL-E 2 $15/115 credits/month ❌ Visit
    8 Bing Image Creator $0/month ✔️ Visit
    9 Dream by WOMBO $9/month ✔️ Visit
    10 Fotor AI Art Generator $8.99/month ❌ (Trial) Visit

    Jasper Art is the best AI art generator for marketing teams and business professionals. Paired with Jasper AI, you and your team can speed up time spent on content creation with the power of AI. If visual content isn’t at the forefront of your content strategy but is nice to have, consider adding PhotoSonic to your bag of marketing tools. Its simple interface makes embracing AI less daunting. Lastly, if you want to use a simple, professional tool for your AI art generation, the Shutterstock generator will help you simply create AI art for your needs.

    Looking for more AI tools? Check out more of the best tools out there, including:

    Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

    Before we wrap up, let’s answer some of your most common questions regarding AI art generators. Did we miss one? Leave a question below and we will respond!

    What is the best AI art generator?

    Jasper Art is an excellent AI art generator. It allows you to turn text-based prompts into original images. You can adjust the output by modifying the medium, artist, and mood. The AI supports 29 languages.

    Is there a free AI art generator?

    PhotoSonic offers a free plan to generate up to 20 free images. MidJourney is currently in beta and allows you to generate a limited amount of free images using their Discord integration. It’s not particularly intuitive, but the results are stunning.

    How much do AI art generators cost?

    Most AI art generators charge between $20 and $100 per month, with more expensive plans offering additional features or additional image generation tokens. Jasper Art starts at $39 per month and allows you to generate unlimited images at 2k resolution. PhotoSonic provides a similar plan for $25 per month.

    Can you sell AI-generated art?

    That depends on the terms of the AI art generator. Most AI art generators do not place many restrictions on the use of tour AI-generated images. Jasper Art, for example, states in its terms that you are permitted to “reprint and sell the images as your imagination permits.”

    Who owns AI-generated art?

    Depending on the AI art generator, the ownership of the images you generate may be structured differently. PhotoSonic, for example, grants you and the rest of the community rights to use the images you generate. They own the copyright but give you (and everyone else) the rights to use images generated using its platform. There is also a broader and relatively unexplored debate as to whether AI art can be safely copyrighted when the AI model has learned from the works of real people.

    Can you use AI-generated art commercially?

    Most AI art generators permit you to use the images you generate commercially. Jasper Art, for example, doesn’t restrict the types of commercial projects for which its images can be used. OpenAI’s image generator, DALL-E (which also powers many commercial art generators), grants you full ownership of the images you generate.

    How do AI art generators work?

    AI art generators collect data (in this case, images), which are used to train the AI using a deep learning model. The model recognizes patterns, such as the style of certain types of art. The AI then applies these patterns in creating unique images based on a user’s prompt. An iterative process typically allows you to hone in on your desired result by creating multiple images.

    Is it ethical to use AI art?

    This is a complex question that will indeed be debated for some time. AI art models learn from the works of real people, just like real people learn from and are inspired by the works of others. This has led some people to perceive AI art as theft, equating AI art to the “copying and pasting” of protected art. However, AI engineers will point out that this is not precisely how AI art generators work. Is it ethical to use Ai art? The unsatisfying answer is that it depends on your perspective.

    The post 10 Best AI Art Generators in 2023 (Reviewed and Ranked) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

  • 8 Best Directory WordPress Themes in 2023

    Believe it or not, directories are still found on the web. People look for products and services daily on popular directory sites like Yelp, Yellow Pages, and even Google My Business. Building your own directory website is an excellent way to drive traffic to your website and establish brand awareness. In this post, we’ll review the best directory WordPress themes to help you get the directory website you’ve always wanted without all the effort.

    What Features Do the Best Directory WordPress Themes Have?

    While everyone’s needs are different, there are some basics that your directory theme should cover. Firstly, it needs to be searchable. There is no use in having a directory without some form of search feature or plugin. Secondly, your theme should allow you to organize your listings into categories. This will help people navigate your site better. You should be able to edit your site with your branding and colors. That’s a third feature to look out for, customization. Lastly, SEO and extendability should also be considered in your quest for the best WordPress directory theme for your project.

    The 8 Best Directory WordPress Themes

    In our list, we’ve compared some of the best themes for building your own directory website. Look through our list and see if any of these products satisfy your project needs.

    1. GeoDirectory Themes

    GeoDirectory Directory Plugin

    GeoDirectory is one of the best directory plugins for WordPress. The plugin also has dedicated GeoDirectory Themes that allow you to get a powerful directory site up and running with ease. While there is a free version of the plugin and some themes, you’ll get the full experience with the paid version. Firstly, you can access the paid Custom Post Types addon if you want to manage multiple listing types. With this addon, each listing type gets its own set of custom fields, layouts, and more. The Pricing Manager add-on makes it simple to monetize your directory. Give free trials, send payment reminders, and collect funds with over 30 payment processors.

    Geo Directory, one of the best directory WordPress, ft. Supreme

    Some GeoDirectory Themes are based on the Genesis framework (by StudioPress) to help those already familiar with the framework get a directory site underway. Furthermore, users of our very own Divi will be thrilled to know that Geo Directory integrates well with our theme and our powerful Theme Builder. This further expands the plugin’s features by giving you a powerful tool to create your custom online directory entirely.

    Key Features of Geo Directory Themes:

    • 40+ widgets, shortcodes & blocks
    • Works with any page builder like, Gutengery, Divi or Elementor
    • Drag and drop listings tab builder and custom fields
    • Advanced sorting and filtering options
    • Unique custom badge system to show listing identifiers
    • Integrations with Ninja Forms, Yoast SEO, RankMath, BuddyPress, and more

    Geo Directory Plugin Addons

    While the Geo Directory plugin and theme are free, you can amp up the power of your directory theme with the paid add-ons that GeoDirectory has available. The add-ons that GeoDirectory provides make it one of the best WordPress directory themes for users with grand plans for their websites. Extend the core theme by adding extras like a dedicated pricing manager, BuddyPress integration, and event management, to name a few.

    Learn how to create a directory in WordPress with GeoDirectory.

    Best For:

    GeoDirectory is the ecosystem to plug into for an all-around good theme and plugin combo. With a powerful plugin at its foundation and a range of themes to make customization a breeze, the GeoDirectory family is a great starting point for building a directory on WordPress.

    Pricing: Free core plugin and themes available. Paid add-ons and themes start at $19—memberships with all themes and add-ons for $199.

    Get Geo Directory

    2. Directory Theme

    Directory Theme by PremiumPress, a WordPress Directory theme

    Directory Theme by PremiumPress is a theme that helps you build a site like Yelp or Yellow Pages on WordPress. It is a feature-rich theme that works effortlessly with Elementor. This means you have the power of its theme builder and modules to build a stellar directory site. Directory Theme lets you create categories to organize your listings. You can also add custom fields to each category, making it possible to have unique fields and content types per category.

    Directory Theme is integrated with Google Maps, allowing users to share their location on their listings. This also allows for its powerful geolocation settings so that searchers can find listings via zip code and the distance from their current location. Users can create listings with YouTube videos, image galleries, music, and many more content types.

    Key Features of Directory Theme:

    • 150+ design blocks
    • Supports the free version of Elementor
    • Sell listings, membership, and more to monetize your site
    • Advanced Ajax filters and search functionality
    • Dedicated members portal complete with analytics and listing management
    • Advanced user feedback, comments, and review system

    PremiumPress' monetization options

    Directory Theme impressively handles monetization with flair. You can sell memberships to certain countries. You have customization options for invoices. The theme also integrates with over 30 payment processors, ensuring you can get paid. Handle shipping, store credit, payouts, and more.

    Best For:

    Directory Theme is the best WordPress directory theme for owners who want to build a sleek, clean directory that doesn’t sacrifice functionality. Also, builders who want the most flexibility in making money with their directory will benefit from using this theme.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $198 per year

    Get Directory Theme

    3. Listable

    Listable, a WordPress Directory theme

    Listable is a WordPress directory theme for those who want to build a beautiful directory. The theme gives you an expansive range of customization options that will have you designing an attractive directory in minutes, with not a single line of code required! Apart from its design options, Listable has a vast range of features. For starters, its search and filtering system allows users to search by tag, category, region, or any other field that they choose.

    Secondly, you can use its easy drag-and-drop builder to create custom single-listing page templates. You can do this easily if you want a different layout for different listings in various categories. You can also have a beautiful blog on your site and static pages like a contact page, shop page, and much more.

    Key Features of Listable

    • Beautiful style and font presets that can be thoroughly customized
    • Powerful listing cards system for creating engaging listing grids
    • Monetize listings with a fee or revenue sharing
    • Multiple filtering options, including interactive filtering
    •  Drag and drop builder for custom post types like listings, categories, etc.
    • Compatible with WPML, WPForms, WooCommerce

    Listable design customizer

    Listable’s style manager makes creating tailor-made color stories for your site painless. With color adjustment tools like color diversity, shuffle, and more, designing and changing the colors across your site is a breeze. Backgrounds, buttons, titles, and icons can all be instantly changed with a simple click of a button. No code or extra effort to make sitewide edits is necessary. Plus, the simple dark mode toggle adds a nice touch!

    Best For:

    For the most aesthetically pleasing directory, use Listable. Its modern design options make it one of the best-looking directory themes on our list. Additionally, you can easily customize the design of your site with its color swatches, making it uncomplicated to build a beautiful directory.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $85 per year

    Get Listable

    4. Listee

    Listee, a WordPress Directory theme

    Listee is an uncomplicated directory theme that works well with the block editor and Elementor. Given that it is a simple theme, it has the standard functionality expected from a directory theme. For example, Listee uses Ajax to power its search and filtering system. You can search by keywords, location, or categories within your directory.

    As Listee is compatible with both Elementor and the block editor, it comes with several blocks and custom modules that you can use to build custom layouts for the various pages of your directory. Listee is also translation ready and works with WPML, Polylang, and Weglot for translations. Finally, you can use the WordPress Customizer to edit page template layouts, colors, fonts, and more for your new directory.

    Key Features of Listee

    • Easily create landing pages with Elementor or Gutenberg
    • Flexible search functions
    • Frontend user submissions
    • Create custom color schemes
    • Build and global sections with Elementor or Gutenberg
    • SEO and mobile optimized

    Listee frontend submission

    Listee has a simple frontend interface allowing users to submit listings without logging into the WordPress backend. The form will enable you to create your account and submit your listing simultaneously. The user backend interface also lets you see when a post has been approved. You can also edit your listing or delete it from the site quickly.

    Best For:

    Use Listee if you want to build a directory but don’t want it to be a complex process. The theme does not have as many eye-catching features as others on our list, but to build a stable site, this would be the best directory WordPress theme next project.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $49 per year

    Get Listee

    5. ExpertHive

    ExpertHive, a WordPress Directory theme

    ExpertHive is a unique directory WordPress theme by HivePress geared toward service providers. If you want to build a service marketplace, the ExpertHive theme is for you. Powered by HivePress, experts on your site can create a profile, list their services and communicate with potential leads through the in-built messaging system.

    ExpertHive allows you to set custom criteria for each profile or listing type. Because of its deep integration with WooCommerce, payments are a breeze. The ExpertHive expert dashboard allows site users and experts to manage their listings accurately, track orders, and more. And seeing as ExpertHive is powered by HivePress, you can continue to extend your marketplace with its library of add-ons that connect well with each other.

    Key Features of ExpertHive

    • Manage profile and service listings with a private frontend dashboard
    • Powerful private messaging system
    • Project bidding system
    • Accept payments and payouts for successful projects via WooCommerce
    • Monetize through percentage, a flat fee, or featured listings
    • Custom fields and search filters

    Expertify's bid system

    A unique feature of the ExpertHive directory theme is its bidding system. In addition to people being able to reach out to expert listings, site users can create services and receive offers from site experts. Like an auction or marketplace like Upwork, experts can bid on projects, users can accept offers, and a new order is created, which can be paid before work begins.

    Best For:

    ExpertHive is the best WordPress directory theme for those building an expert marketplace. If creating a site like Fiverr or Upwork is your goal, use ExpertPress to get your project off the ground.

    Pricing: $89 per year

    Get ExpertHive

    6. Classipress

    ClassiPress, a WordPress Directory theme

    Classipress is a directory theme that covers all your bases for creating a WordPress website for listing classified ads. It has advanced search features making it easy for your site users to find what they’re looking for. It has various widgets, like its latest ads listing grid, for you to show the most recent listings on your site. Furthermore, Classipress also allows you to create a featured listings section for premium ad spots, which you can charge a premium for and create revenue for your directory.

    Your customers can manage their listings from a dashboard where they can update their profiles and view their invoices. As an admin, you can also see which listings are performing the best on your site without relying on external analytics plugins like the popular MonsterInsights plugin. All in all, the Classipress directory theme gets you a directory website on WordPress with little hassle.

    Key Features of Classipress

    • Multiple pricing models like fixed fees, a percentage of sales, or price per category listing.
    • Create and sell membership packages and bundles
    • Create custom forms with an in-built form builder
    • Choose and edit colors and fonts from the Theme Customizer
    • Email notification system for admins and users
    • Auto-complete & suggest search functionality

    Classipress active homepage map with live listings

    A cool feature of the Classipress theme is its homepage map. The map shows live listings from the site that can be clicked through. Showcase local listings to your site users as they search through your website. Additionally, you could also promote this as a package feature to listings owners.

    Best For:

    Those who want to get a classified listing website up and running quickly will like the ease of use that ClassiPress employs. Easily make your directory website with little fuss but lots of features and functionality.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $69 per year

    Get Classipress

    7. ListingPro

    ListingPro, a WordPress Directory theme

    ListingPro is an impressive directory theme for those who want to build the ultimate directory. The search functionality of this theme is head and shoulders above the rest. It provides autosuggestions, can auto-locate via IP or location, and you can determine whether the search match is broad or precise.

    ListingPro takes filtering seriously. Users can filter listings by myriad options, including opening hours, distance, custom amenities, etc. Thirdly, this is one of the best WordPress directory themes for those wanting genuinely custom listings. The native drag-and-drop form builder gives you a library of fields that you can use to build forms for your users and admins to submit and manage their listings.

    Key Features of ListingPro

    • Expansive library of niche directory child themes
    • Powerful Ajax search and filtering with autocomplete
    • Powerful admin and user dashboards
    • Monetize with free and paid plans, one-time or monthly recurring services, and more.
    • Native drag-and-drop form builder
    • Internal messaging system for leads to connect with listing owners

    Fill-O-Bot

    Fill-O-Bot is a feature of ListingPro that allows your users to pull their Google My Business details to their listing. The Search by Google feature will match their Google listing fields with the signup form. This will provide a better user experience for posters, saving time and energy when creating their profile on your directory.

    Best For:

    To be a powerful, feature-rich, modern directory, choose to use ListingPro. It takes customizations seriously when it comes to the crucial features of a directory: monetization, search, filtering, and user interaction.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $138 per year

    Get ListingPro

    8. Listify

    Listify, a WordPress Directory theme

    Listify provides a directory theme that is deeply integrated with Elementor. If you’re a fan of this page builder, you’ll like building your directory with Listify. Listify provides you with various ways to monetize your website’s features. The theme makes it easy to earn ad revenue from PPC with dedicated ad spaces across the site. You can also charge for access to the site, access to view listings, or access to features like appointment booking and reservations, amongst other monetization features.

    Users of your site can bookmark their favorite listings and contact listings owners. Listing owners can then reply and manage these messages in their private inboxes. Users can also leave reviews, search your site by region and labels (set by you), and use social login to create their account easily on your site.

    Key Features of Listify

    • Custom homepage and listings page with a native drag-and-drop builder
    • Extensive library of style kits for quick brand implementation
    • Message dashboard and system
    • Geolocation informed only to show relevant, nearby listings
    • SEO-friendly and optimized
    • Charge monthly fees for listings via WooCommerce

    Set appointments within your directory

    One of the unique features that you can offer users of your directory is the Appointify addon. Now, listing owners can set and book appointments through your website. They can rapidly create appointments, save events to their calendars, and preview upcoming meetings through a tooltip. Furthermore, all this can then be added to their Google Calendar!

    Best For:

    If you have plans to scale your website, Listify is the best directory WordPress theme for you. With its diverse collection of free add-ons, growing and adding features to your directory doesn’t need to be expensive. With Listify, you don’t need to worry about plugins potentially breaking your site. You can rely on their library of addons you can pull from as your directory expands.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $138 per year

    Get Listify

    What are the Best Directory WordPress Themes?

    Plugin Price Free Option
    🥇 Geo Directory Themes $199/year ✔️ Visit
    🥈 Directory Theme $198/year ❌ Visit
    🥉 Listable $85/year ❌ Visit
    4 Listee $49/year ❌ Visit
    5 ExpertHive $89/year ❌ Visit
    6 Classipress $69/year ❌ Visit
    7 ListingPro $198/year ❌ Visit
    8 Listify $138/year ❌ Visit

    In conclusion, we know that there is a WordPress directory theme out there for you. Geo Directory Themes are the best choice for the one who wants to have the most control over their site. A large feature set supports it and sits at the top of our list. PremiumPress’ Directory Theme comes in second. With its library of 100+ design blocks, you can build your custom directory website with this theme.

    Lastly, Listable’s editing options set it in our top three. Your branding will shine through with this directory theme, from filters to colorization, color palettes, and its dark mode. Ultimately, the best WordPress directory theme is the one you choose to use and make your own. Which one will you choose for your next directory website? Was there a theme that you think we missed? Share it below in the comments section!

    The post 8 Best Directory WordPress Themes in 2023 appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

  • 10 Best Church WordPress Themes in 2023

    WordPress has several powerful themes for churches (free and paid) that can be used to build a beautiful and feature-rich church website. In this post, we’ll review the best church WordPress themes to give you some ideas about what is available for your website. With stunning page layouts, event calendars, sermon management, and more, these themes should have what you need.

    What Features Should the Best Church WordPress Themes Include?

    When it comes to building a website for your church, there are some features that you should note. Firstly, being able to customize your theme is mission-critical. Using your church’s fonts and colors will help solidify your brand with parishioners and new members. Secondly, consider if your theme can handle sermons. In a post-pandemic world, many churches turned digital. So providing sermons online is a great way to stay connected to your membership.

    Thirdly, consider how your theme handles events. If it doesn’t have a built-in events manager, it should be able to integrate with popular event calendar plugins like The Events Calendar or Modern Tribe. Lastly, on integrations, see how well your theme will handle donations. Online giving is a great feature to have on your site and is something that you should be looking into when choosing your church WordPress theme.

    The 10 Best Church WordPress Themes

    Our list of the best church WordPress themes considers a few things. To begin, we look at the overall feature set of the theme. Next, we consider if there is a free version available. Finally, we see if it can integrate with popular plugins like GiveWP and Mailchimp, which are popular with many church marketing departments.

    With these things in mind, let’s get onto the list!

    1. Divi

    Divi, premium WordPress website builder plugin

    Divi is a powerful WordPress theme and visual page builder that will give you complete control over the design and functionality of your church website. It has over 2,000 pre-made layouts that can be combined to build your church’s website, including a stunning Church Layout Pack. With modules like accordions, galleries, and more, you can adjust each layout to your liking.

    Additionally, you can use the power of Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) and Divi’s Dynamic Content to build custom layouts for sermons, ministries, or whatever your church needs. Ultimately, those building for churches will be impressed by the degree to which they can build powerful church websites with this WordPress theme.

    Divi’s Theme Builder is one of the most powerful features of the Divi theme. For a church website, this is where you build completely custom templates for pages, posts, and any custom post type that you create! You can design custom blog templates, headers, footers, 404 pages, and so much more from the Theme Builder. The possibilities for your creativity are unlimited.

    Key Features of Divi:

    • Powerful frontend visual builder
    • 40+ customizable modules
    • 200+ customizable modules
    • 20+ WooCommerce-specific modules for collecting online payments
    • Create custom templates for custom post types with Theme Builder
    • Includes access to Bloom, a powerful email opt-in popup plugin to grow your Church’s email list

    There are also premium child themes for Divi that you can access from the Elegant Themes Marketplace. A popular premium child theme for Divi is Chrysalis. It has 32 layouts plus custom post types for sermons and events. Additionally, it has native styling for both GiveWP and The Events Calendar.

    Chrysalis GiveWP styling

    Divi is best for:

    For those who want complete control over your church’s website, choose Divi. You can easily customize the page layouts found within man a layout pack to support your ministry needs. Furthermore, the power of Divi’s Theme Builder makes it simple to create custom templates for various pages and post types on your website. However, the learning curve may be more technical for Churches looking for a theme that requires a less hands-on approach.

    Get Divi

    2. Kadence WP

    Kadence WP

    Kadence WP empowers you to quickly build a no-code website for your church. The theme prides itself on being built with the best SEO practices for markup and schema. Kadence WP also boasts of being a WordPress theme that is lightning-fast and performance-focused.

    The Church Starter Template by Kadence WP is a great fit for Churches. Out of the box, it has beautiful default styling for both The Events Calendar and GiveWP plugins. You don’t need to worry about CSS classes or custom coding to be able to display your events and seamlessly collect donations on your website.

    Church by Kadence, WordPress Church Theme

    It is easy to select and set your brand colors and the typography you’ll be using on your site. The theme comes with styled dropdown menus and a bold homepage call-to-action featuring the late sermon above the fold. For the best church WordPress theme, the Church Starter Template will get your website up and running effortlessly and on brand.

    Key Features of Kadence WP:

    • Drag and drop builder with live editing
    • Mobile-responsive with controls
    • Native styling and support for GiveWP and The Events Calendar
    • Header and footer builder
    • Global typography, button, and color controls
    • Custom post type support

    Kadence's default styling for The Events Calendar

    Many WordPress themes integrate well with The Events Calendar but fall short when styling the plugin. You’ll need to rely on finding its custom CSS classes and then use code to edit the plugin’s design to suit your site, not with Kadence. In addition to having well-designed modules for the plugin, Kadence also has extensive styling of the plugin to match your site’s design.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $149 per year

    Kadence WP is best for:

    Organizations looking for a beautiful and feature-rich WordPress theme without learning the ins and outs of a page builder plugin will enjoy this theme. Its native support for GiveWP and The Events Calendar makes it stand out among the other themes in our list, as you have to do little styling or integration to have these two essential plugins for churches work and look great on your website.

    Get Kadence WP

    3. Astra

    Astra responsive WordPress theme

    As a performance-focused theme, you can expect fast loading times for your church website with Astra. Astra is considered one of WordPress’ top-tier free themes.

    The Church Starter Template by Astra is a great option for churches looking to build their church website in style. With a bold, dark color palette and exciting font selections, this template is for churches that want to be different.

    Church by Astra

    Plus, you have access to all the powerful core features of Astra for designing your church website.

    There is a mega menu builder, global design options, multiple header and footer options, and much more. Astra also integrates with many high-quality WordPress plugins that can take your church’s website to the next level.  It truly is a good starting point for the web designer who wants to build a quality, custom church website.

    Key Features of Astra:

    • Compatible with leading page builders like Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, etc.
    • Customizable typography and color palettes
    • WooCommerce integration to collect donations and sell products
    • Display your logo on the left or centered
    • Set presets for buttons sitewide

    Header builder by Astra

    The drag-and-drop Header Footer Builder by Astra lets you pick and choose any element you’d like. With no coding required, you can design announcement bars, add a call-to-action for online giving, and more with just the wave of your mouse.

    Pricing: Free, Pro version starts at $59 per year

    Astra is best for:

    Astra’s free version is powerful enough to build a good church website. With its pro version, you can add more features and get creative with your website. The Church starter template is suitable for organizations working within a budget but still want to have a solid base of features and options for their website.

    Get Astra

    4. Vestry

    Vestry, A WordPress Church Theme

    Vestry is a uniquely powerful church theme for WordPress. It is feature-rich and pays attention to the details that a church organization will need in its WordPress template. Vestry is the best church WordPress theme for the congregation that doesn’t want to depend on an external builder for their website. Nevertheless, Vestry does work with some of the big names in page builders, specifically Elementor and WP Bakery. It also has support for the Block Editor.

    The theme comes with a full range of importable page layouts that you can use to start building your site immediately. Vestry has beautiful styling for the GiveWP and The Events Calendar plugins ensuring that your online giving and church events are showcased beautifully.

    Key Features of Vestry:

    • Works with page builders Elementor or WP Bakery
    • Supports Gutenberg blocks
    • Native styling for The Events Calendar and GiveWP
    • Integrates with AudioIgniter for sermon player
    • Includes five blog post types

    Page templates provided by Vestry

    Vestry comes with more than 30 page templates. Easily create a blog page, about, features, organization, and event pages for your site without worrying about creating layouts from scratch. You can customize these templates with blocks or modules from your builder of choice. These templates are great starting points for you as you build your website. This is an excellent feature of Vestry. Lastly, you can access and import these layouts anytime from your WordPress dashboard.

    Pricing: $138 per year

    Vestry is best for:

    If you prefer to use Elementor or WP Bakery as your page builder and want to build a website for your church, choose Vestry. Additionally, being able to import demo pages for standard features like sermons, ministries, and more makes creating your website faster.

    Get Vestry

    5. Elementor

    Elementor WordPress page builder

    Access to an extensive library of modules, third-party integrations, and an exhaustive template kit library makes Elementor a top choice for churches looking for more design tools for their website. As a page builder, Elementor has been integrated with many church themes, even some on our list, including Sacredo, Prayer, and Faith. All can be used in conjunction with Elementor.

    With Elementor, you can build custom templates for various features on your website. Creating a custom header and footer is simple with the Elementor Pro theme builder. The pro version also comes with interesting modules that can help you create unique and interactive pages and posts for your ministry.

    Key Features of Elementor:

    • Expansive library and modules and widgets
    • Lightweight and performance-focused
    • SEO-friendly
    • Integrates with popular plugins like MemberPress, Toolset and Rankmath
    • Native styling for donation plugin GiveWP
    • Native form builder

    Elementor Full Site Kits

    When it comes to building a website fast, Elementor has got your back. With its powerful builder and a large library of complete website kits, you don’t need to start building your church website from scratch. You can edit one of the kits available in the Elementor library and get a headstart on building any page or post that your church needs. From your blog for news to contact forms, a website kit from Elementor will be able to provide beautiful, mobile-responsive, and easy-to-edit resources to bring your vision to life.

    Elementor is best for:

    For church teams that want a visual builder with lots of features, Elementor the tool you need when building the church website of your needs. Powered by an incredible live editor and theme builder, take control of every aspect of your church’s website without having to learn a single coding language.
    Get Elementor

    6. OceanWP

    OceanWP WordPress Theme

    OceanWP states that it is a “free WordPress theme with pro features,” This is fantastic news for churches looking to balance the budget with functionality for their website. Additionally, the theme is Gutenberg-enabled and Elementor-ready. So, if you’re not ready to invest in a separate page builder plugin, you can rely on these two with OceanWP to get your church’s website off the ground.

    Out of the box, OceanWP gives you access to its theme builder, which allows you to set up global page, shop, product, and blog templates, all included in their free version. There are also 7 header styles and 3 mobile menu styles, empowering your church to fully customize its website.

    Church by OceanWP

    The Church Site Template has a friendly yellow theme which carries through the buttons, headings, and other areas of the template. It has three styles for your blog page, list, grid, and masonry. There are also four styles available for the WooCommerce plugin. While the Church Site Template works with GiveWP, if you want it to match your site perfectly, you must use some CSS to make your edits.

    Key Features of OceanWP:

    • Header styling complete with header social menu
    • Footer widgets area with custom footer support
    • Global page layout, form, and button styling
    • Integrated with Google Fonts locally
    • Custom 404 page support and control
    • SERP page control combined with basic schema formatting

    Ocean Images and Icons

    Never worry about looking through scores of images on Google again. Ocean Images is a fantastic feature of select paid OceanWP plans. Through a collaboration with Freepik, you can import graphics, photos, and icons directly from the Freepik library! These assets are now uploaded to your WordPress Media Library for you to use anywhere on your site. So the next time you need an icon for your blurb module, you can quickly pick one from the expansive Freepik library to use on your site. And you don’t have to worry about attribution either; OceanWP has got you covered!

    OceanWP is best for:

    If your church uses a lot of photography, then The Church Site Template is a good fit for you. Having direct access to creative commons imagery right from your website’s dashboard can make content creation, blogging, and web design more manageable, especially for organizations trying to limit the number of platforms used in their content process.

    Get OceanWP

    7. Ultra

    Ultra WordPress Theme

    As a theme, Ultra is flexible, mobile-responsive, and deeply customizable. While you can build many pages and posts from scratch with Ultra, their library of elements and layouts makes it so that you can create effortlessly. For churches who want a simple approach to page building, the Themify Builder that powers Ultra is a benefit. By accessing the library of pre-made skins and sections, you can quickly build stunning pages for your site that are mobile-responsive and functional, meeting the needs of your congregation.

    Church for Ultra, by Themify

    Church is a skin for Ultra that focuses on providing a simple yet clean layout for your church. With a blue and yellow color palette, the theme has a fullscreen image on the homepage with a tagline and call-to-action button, which can be edited with the Themeify page builder plugin. For this skin, the homepage includes a custom-designed timeline module and a donations progress bar element that can track the progress of your fund. These modules and more are available through the 12 bonus add-ons provided through the Builder Pro Bundle that supplements Themify’s Builder Plugin.

    Key Features of Ultra:

    • 60+ pre-designed layouts for quick page builder
    • 17 header styles
    • Five blog post layouts for a ministerial news blog
    • Six header background options
    • Global preset typography and color themes
    • Multi-column mega menu with widget functionality

    Themify's page builder

    A key feature that brings the Church skin to life is the toolbar of the Themify Builder. The builder itself is drag-and-drop, similar to other builders. However, the taskbar keeps your most used and needed tasks at the forefront. This can make building pages, posts, and different custom post types easier for those who may not have much experience using page builders and may prefer a familiar WYSIWYG UI.

    Ultra is best for:

    Churches that want an easy-to-learn, use, and implement page builder will love the Church skin for Ultra. The skin is easy to manage and implement, and the supplemental builder makes editing your website a breeze. The builder also makes it easy to customize elements like headers and footers, which other themes can sometimes make difficult.

    Get Ultra

    8. Sacredo

    Sacredo, a WordPress Church Theme

    The Sacredo theme uses white space and a color palette based on varying shades of blue. The homepage features a hero section that uses typography, followed by an eye-catching button. The theme has a soft page transition that seamlessly takes you from one page to another.

    As the theme is based on Elementor, you can rely on the page builder to give you the tools and modules to build stunning pages for your church. Customizing Sacredo with Elementors Pro means you can add widgets to your footer, create custom page headers, and more.

    Key Features of Sacredo:

    • Supports the Elementor page builder
    • Includes a high-resolution image pack
    • SEO friendly
    • Multilingual support through WPML
    • It comes with pre-designed page sections for events, sermons, about us, and more

    Sacredo fixed sidebar feature

    The ministries, sermons, and events pages of the Sacredo theme feature a fixed right sidebar. This sidebar contains essential highlights of the post type it is on and follows the reader up and down the screen. This is an excellent way to draw attention to event specifics, sign-up links, and more for your church website.

    Sacredo is best for:

    Sacredo is best for the church that wants a modern website. Its use of typography and color makes it one of the more aesthetically pleasing templates on our list.

    Get Sacredo

    9. Prayer by CSS Igniter

    Prayer by CSS Igniter

    Prayer by CSS Igniter is a church WordPress theme for those looking to build a church website fast but with attention to sermon management. The theme has a homepage slider you can customize with images, text, and a button. Next, the default homepage features a sermon widget putting your latest preachings directly on the homepage.

    The theme has a transparent and solid header option and four positions to place your main menu. The theme also comes with 6 page/post templates, including full width, sidebar, and narrow margin options. Also, the theme is compatible with popular plugins like ACF, Toolset, WP Forms, and Mailchimp for WordPress. While not the shiniest of the themes on our list, Prayer is suitable for those who value ease of use with features that get the job done.

    Key Features of Prayer by CSS Igniter:

    • Works well with Gutenberg or Elementor for page building
    • Works well with Polylang and WPML for multilingual support
    • Custom post types for events, team members, and sermons
    • Compatible with WooCommerce
    • Built with SEO in mind and works with popular SEO plugins like Yoast

    Sermon management in custom post type

    The Prayer theme takes sermon management very seriously. The theme comes with a custom post type precisely for managing sermons. You can link to your sermon’s audio file, add a video URL, or even insert a transcript for each sermon. You can also determine whether you want users to be able to download the sermon to their devices.

    Prayer is best for:

    For churches who prioritize sharing their audio and video sermons, using Prayer would be to your advantage. Of all the themes in our list, Prayer takes sermon management seriously by enabling you to manage and share your sermons on your website easily.

    Get Prayer

    10. Faith by Dumitru Brinzan

    Faith is the best church WordPress theme for those with budgetary concerns regarding web design. As a free theme, Faith is much more limited in its feature offering than other players on our list. However, the theme integrates with many page builder plugins like Divi, Beaver Builder, and more. This means you can still be flexible when creating your pages with Faith.

    The theme has a homepage slider to upload up to 5 pages. You can also showcase up to 10 pages on the homepage. If you are looking for a genuinely free WordPress theme for your church, Faith is that theme.

    Key Features of Faith:

    • Select custom colors for the background and fonts with the WordPress Customizer
    • Works well with popular builders like Divi, Elementor, Beaver Builder, etc.
    • Works with the Block Editor
    • Supports custom block patterns
    • Includes homepage slider

    Better Blocks plugin

    The Better Blocks plugin is an addon by the makers of the Faith theme. The plugin extends the WordPress Block Editor with numerous custom block patterns that you can use to add greater functionality to the Faith theme. If you feel that a page builder may be too much for your church to handle, this addon will be perfect for your use with Faith.

    Faith is best for:

    Churches that want a free and simple website theme will appreciate Faith. Its straightforward approach to church themes can benefit teams with non-technical users who still want a web presence built on WordPress.

    Pricing: Free

    Get Faith

    Final Thoughts on the Best Church WordPress Themes

    Plugin Price Free Version
    🥇 Divi $89/year ❌ Visit
    🥈 Kadence WP $149/year ✔️ Visit
    🥉 Astra $59/year ✔️ Visit
    4 Vestry $138/year ❌ Visit
    5 Elementor $59/year ✔️ Visit
    6 OceanWP $54/year ✔️ Visit
    7 Ultra $59/year ❌ Visit
    8 Sacredo $134/year ❌ Visit
    9 Prayer $49/year ❌ Visit
    10 Faith $0 ✔️ Visit

    To wrap it up, Divi is the most powerful theme that you can use to build a solid church website. Its Theme Builder puts all the power in your hands to develop your very-own church website that will scale to your needs. If you would rather have more built-in church features, the Chrysalis premium theme is top-notch.

    For the church that wants to have a good WordPress theme for their church out of the box, the  Kadence WP would be a good choice. With its native styling for popular church features like calendars and online giving, Kadence’s theme gives ease of use without sacrificing aesthetics or functionality.

    The WordPress theme Astra is built for the church that prioritizes performance and speed for their site. With optimized code, this lightweight theme will work well with congregations that want to have a website that loads fast, giving information quickly to users.

    In Conclusion

    Before embarking on building your church website, consider some of these themes. Get a good idea of the features that you want on your site. Then, consider which theme matches your requirements. Were there any themes that you think we missed? What’s your favorite church WordPress theme? Tell us below in the comments!

    The post 10 Best Church WordPress Themes in 2023 appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

  • How to Use AI to Create Amazing Web Design with Divi (Using ChatGPT & MidJourney)

    It’s no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a significant part of our day-to-day lives, from Netflix recommendations to chatbots, and facial detection to text editors. Today, the impact of AI is not only seen on screens but is felt. An arena that is now seeing an influx of AI’s presence is digital design and art. Conversations are sprouting up about the power and people – or lack thereof – participating in this medium. Is it possible to use AI to create amazing artwork while still supporting artists? Can AI be used as a tool to help facilitate better digital creations? We’d like to think so, so we’ll explore using ChatGPT and MidJourney with Divi.

    In this tutorial, we’ll use two AI tools — MidJourney and ChatGPT — to help influence a homepage design in Divi. We will use the MidJourney bot to create the visual aspect of our design. Then we will use ChatGPT to create the copy that we’ll use in our test. Finally, we will recreate the design, using the design from MidJourney and the copy from ChatGPT in Divi.

    Let’s get into it!

    Using MidJourney to Inspire Amazing Web Design

    MidJourney, according to their website, “is an independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species.”. The MidJourney Discord bot allows you to use your Discord account to create four, custom AI-generated images from simple text prompts. You can then use other commands to modify and interact with the images created.

    Create a MidJourney Account

    Before we start using the AI, you will need to create an account on the MidJourney Discord server.

    Sign up or join the MidJourney Discord server

    If you already have a Discord account, you can log in to your existing account and begin using MidJourney right away.

    Sign into the MidJourney Discord server with your current Discord account

    Enter the MidJourney Discord

    Once on the MidJourney Discord, take a quick read through the quick start guide. This will help you familiarize yourself with the server’s guidelines. You will also gain insights into how the bot works and the other cool things you can do once you are comfortable using the bot.

    Read the MidJourney quick start guide

    Remember that the free version of MidJourney allows you to do 25 queries. Once you enter the MidJourney Discord server, you want to look to join a newbies channel. You can see the available channels on the server by looking in the menu on the left-hand side.

    Joining a newbies channel within the MidJourney Discord

    Click on any newbies channel to start generating images.

    Begin Creating with MidJourney

    Now that you’re in your newbies channel on MidJourney, the real fun begins… creating some images!

    Issue Initial Command

    We want to generate some inspiration to create a clean homepage design. To issue your first command, click in the textbox at the bottom right of your screen. You can be as descriptive or concise as you’d like. In our case, we entered, “create a clean, modern and material design homepage template. Included the CN tower. Use the colors white, grey, gray, and gold.”

    Issuing your first command to MidJourney

    This is what was generated from that command.

    Begin your search in MidJourney

    Here’s what it looks like outside of Discord.

    MidJourney generated homepage layout

    Refine Initial Command

    While these layouts are a good jumping-off point, let’s see what happens when we try to refine our AI-generated web design layouts. To do this, we’re going to refine the fourth option from our list.

    Upscale variation 4 of our AI generated image

    Rework AI-Generated Design

    Once you’ve created your first design, MidJourney allows you to upscale (make larger) or create variations from one of your four options. We decided that we wanted to see some variations of the fourth option and to make it bigger.

    Upscale option 4 and create a variation of this selection in MidJourney

    These are the results of MidJourney making variations of our fourth design.

    Second iteration of MidJourney

    Let’s take a closer look.

    MidJourney generated homepage layout versions

    Notice the addition of elements such as menus, icons, titles, and social media icons. From this layout, we’re going to use the fourth option. This is the design that we are going to emulate in Divi.

    Using ChatGPT to Create AI-Generated Web Design Copy

    Now that our design has been created, we’re going to use AI to create the copy to go into our design. We will use ChatGPT to create a headline, a short paragraph, and a call-to-action to use on our button.

    Create a ChatGPT Account

    To begin, we create an account with ChatGPT. If you already have an account, you can log in.

    Login or signup for a ChatGPT account

    To save time, you can also use your Gmail or Outlook account.

    Create your ChatGPT account

    Issue Initial Command

    Once you are logged in, you’ll be presented with this screen. This is the dark mode version, but there is also a light mode version.

    Using ChatGPT and MidJourney with Divi

    Let’s start by creating our first request. In the text box, we’re going to ask ChatGPT to “create a short slogan for a Toronto-based web design firm.”

    Asking ChatGPT to create a short slogan for our website

    This is the result of that request.

    Results of our first ask

    Refine Copy with ChatGPT

    The beauty of ChatGPT is that we can ask many questions and get some great options to use in our copy. Let’s ask for 5 other variations, but let’s ask that each variation is, at most, 5 words. In the textbox, enter, “Make the slogan only 5 words. Create 10 different variations.”

    Refine slogan for ChatGPT

    These are the variations that ChatGPT came up with for our slogan.

    Different slogan options in ChatGPT

    Let’s use option 5 for our slogan. We’re going to repeat the process for our paragraph of text. Let’s enter into ChatGPT, “Craft a 5-sentence paragraph promoting web design services to Toronto business owners.”

    Creating copy for intro paragraph

    This is the result that was created. It’s pretty good!

    ChatGPT generated welcome paragraph

    Instead of asking for more versions of this paragraph, let’s ask ChatGPT to change the tone of the welcome paragraph. Let’s ask ChatGPT to “Make this paragraph more casual, leaning toward light and fluffy.”

    Change the tone of the welcome paragraph

    Notice that the tone of the paragraph has become more casual and is still on track with what one would need to introduce their web design company.

    Casual copy for welcome paragraph with ChatGPT

    To complete our copy, let’s create 10 different versions of call-to-action text that we can use on our button. Our next command for ChatGTP is, “Come up with 5 versions of call to action text that I can use on a button.”

    Creating a variety of call-to-action text for a button

    While these options are great, they’re a little long for a button.

    Button CTA options

    As our final request to ChatGPT, let’s ask it to make our text shorter by saying, “make them shorter.”

    Our final CTA text options

    We will use the last option Launch Now as the CTA for our button.

    Using ChatGPT and MidJourney with Divi

    Now, we have both our design inspiration and the content to use within this design. We can bring these findings to Divi and start building a real-life working homepage layout. Let us proceed to begin using ChatGPT and MidJourney with Divi.

    Create a New Page in WordPress

    Let’s start by creating a new page in WordPress. From the WordPress Dashboard, we hover over Pages from the left-hand menu. Then, we click Add New. This will create a brand new page.

    Add new page

    When your new page has been created, add a title. Then, publish the page by clicking on the blue Publish button. Lastly, activate the Divi Builder by clicking on the purple Use Divi Builder button.

    Title and publish new page before activating Divi Builder

    With the Divi Builder activated, click the blue button that says Start Building. We’ll build our page from scratch but use assets from the layout generated by MidJourney.

    Build page from scratch

    Creating Sections and Rows

    Once the visual builder has loaded, we are now presented with several column structures that we can add to our default row and section. We will delete this section and use a Special section layout instead. Firstly, we click the X button to exit the row selection menu.

    Exit out of the regular section menu

    Then, we click on the blue button at the bottom of the section. This will allow us to add a new section. We want to click the Speciality section icon. This will allow us to add a section that is similar to the layout that MidJourney generated.

    Add new specialty section

    From the options of Specialty sections, we click the second option.

    Select second specialty section option

    With our section selected, we now have the option to start adding rows to our section. When we refer back to the layout generated by MidJoureny, we see a row containing the headline, paragraph, and call-to-action button. Then, we notice that there is a decorative set of columns. So, let’s add a one-column layout that will hold our copy.

    Add row to column layout, first

    Next, we’re going to add another row beneath this by clicking on the green plus icon. We’ll add a two-column row underneath the initial one-column row. This will function as our decorative columns.

    Add second row to specialty section

    With our Specialty section layout now complete, we can now delete the default section from our page. Click on the trash can icon from the section’s menu to delete it.

    Delete regular section

    Adding Divi Modules

    This is what our base layout looks like in Divi.

    Section and row layout in Divi

    We’re now going to add Divi’s native modules to the layout to create our homepage. This will act as a low-fi wireframe.

    Adding the Image Module

    To begin, let’s add an Image Module to the first column of our section. Click on the gray plus icon within the column. Then, select the Image Module icon.

    Add Image Module to column

    Click the green checkmark to save the Image Module in place.

    Exit out of Image Module

    Inserting the Text Modules

    Next, we’re going to move over to the second column of our section. In the first row, we’re going to add two Text Modules. The first one will hold the headline, and the second will hold our paragraph copy. Both of which were generated in ChatGPT. Click on the gray plus icon within the first row. Then, select the Text Module. This is going to be our Text Module holding our headline.

    Add first text module

    We’re now going to add our heading content. However, we’re going to format it to look like our MidJourney design. To do this, break up the text and use the h3 tag to highlight a keyword within our headline. This is an important step, as we’ll be applying separate styling to that part of the text. Click on the green check mark to save our content.

    Add headline text from ChatGPT to first text module

    Now, we’re going to add a second Text Module for our paragraph content. Click on the gray plus icon again, and select the Text Module icon.

    Add second text module

    This time, however, add the paragraph copy from ChatGPT and click the green check mark to save our content. To complete this row, we can add our last module, which is a Button Module.

    Add paragraph from ChatGPT to second text module

    Add Button Module

    We’re going to add a Button Module to this row. To do that, we click on the gray plus icon and select the Button Module.

    Add Button Module

    Add the text from ChatGPT to the button’s text and click the green check mark to save our content.

    Add CTA text from ChatGPT to our button

    Inserting the Social Media Follow Module

    If you look closely at our AI-generated design, you’ll see some icons underneath the image. We’re going to use the Social Media Follow Module to add a few social media icons under our image module.

    Add Social Media Follow Module

    With our Social Media Follow Module added, let’s add a few social media networks to this module. I’ve added 5 to emulate our AI-generated image.

    Add social media networks to the social media follow module

    Click the green check mark to save your social networks. Now, with all our modules in place, we can begin styling our homepage layout!

    Implementing Visual Branding and Design Elements

    For this next section of our tutorial, we will need some external tools to help us utilize the assets generated by MidJourney. While we are using ChatGPT and MidJourney with Divi, these aren’t the only software we’ll use. You will need a tool that will allow you to select the hex codes from the AI-generated image. You will also need an image editor to crop the photo from the image to use in our design. We will also use Google Fonts to replicate the fonts created by MidJjourney.

    The tools that I used to do this were:

    • ColorZilla: An eyedropper Chrome extension that allows you to select and save hex codes from web pages.
    • Photoshop: To crop and make photo edits. You can also use Photoshop to select the hex codes from your MidJourney image.

    Ultimately, use whatever tools are available to you.

    Uploading Your Image

    Open your image editor of choice, and crop the focal image from the original MidJourney image.

    Crop image from MidJourney photo

    Save this image to your hard drive. Then in Divi, edit the Image Module.

    Edit image module

    Click on the gear icon to open the Media Library. This is where you’ll upload your image.

    Edit image module

    Upload your image from your hard drive and insert it into the module.

    Upload image module

    With our image uploaded, we can now move to the Design tab of the Image Module. In the Design tab, click on the Sizing tab. From there, select Yes next to the Force Full Width toggle.

    Set Image Module to full width

    Next, on the docket, let’s style our social media icons.

    Styling the Social Media Module

    To begin, we click on the gear icon of our Social Media Icon Module.

    Edit social media follow button

    Once we have all our social media links presented to us, we will go into each one and remove the background. To do that, click on the gear icon next to each network.

    Edit individual social media networks

    Then, click on the Background tab and delete the background color present. Click the green check mark, then repeat this for all the social media networks you have added to this module.
    Remove social media network background

    After removing the backgrounds for each social media network, click on the Design tab. Set the alignment of the icons to the right-hand side, exactly as it is in the MidJourney image.

    Change social media icon alignment

    Now, let’s add some color to our icons. Click on the Icon tab, and set the icon color to #000000.

    Set social media icon colors

    Finally, we click on the Spacing tab to add some padding to the right of our module. Add a right padding value of 25px. Then, click on the green check mark to save our edits.

    Add right spacing to module

    Styling Our Text

    At this time, we have styled our modules on the left-hand side. We will now move onto the right-hand side, beginning with our headliner Text Module. Click on the gear icon so that we may enter the Text Module settings.

    Edit first text module

    We navigate straight to the Design tab. Next, click on the Text tab. We can slightly make out that the headline text is in all caps. So, let’s set the text font style to All Caps.

    Set text to all caps

    Then, we set the alignment to center and the text color to Dark.

    Set text alignment and color

    We used the H3 tag to draw attention to the middle word in our headline. So, we now click on the Heading Text tab. Then, we click on the H3 heading to begin to style it. Let’s set the font for the heading to Cantarell.

    Begin heading text styling

    Next, let’s increase the font size to 63px. Finally, we’ll set the letter spacing to -5px. Then, we can click the green checkmark to save our text changes.

    Set font size and letter spacing

    For the paragraph, the default Divi settings a similar to that which MidJourney created. As such, we will simply change the alignment of the text. Enter the text settings by clicking on the gear icon.

    Edit second text module

    Then, select the Design tab. Finally, from the Text tab, set the alignment to the center. Save your changes by clicking the green checkmark.

    Set second text module text alignment

    Customizing the Button

    For our Button Module, we’ll use our color picker tool to find the button color from MidJourney. I used the picker in Photoshop and discovered that the background color’s hex code is #c1aa85.

    Select button hex code color from image

    With this information, we can move into Divi and begin designing our button. As always, click on the gear icon to enter the module’s settings.

    Edit button module

    Then, click on the Design tab and then click the Button tab. For the Use Custom Styles for Button Option, select yes.

    Begin to set custom styles for button

    These are the settings that we’ll be using to style our button.

    Button Design Settings:

    • Button Text Size: 14px
    • Button Text Color: #ffffff
    • Button Background Color: #c1aa85
    • Button Border Width: 0px
    • Button Border Radius: 15px
    • Button Font Style: All Caps
    • Spacing:
      • Top and Bottom Padding: 10px
      • Left and Right Padding: 35px

    This is what our Button Module now looks like after using MidJourney to inspire our design using Divi’s tools.

    Button and Text final preview

    Creating Decorative Columns

    The final design piece of our layout is the decorative columns underneath our copy. To create these, we will need a Divider Module in each column. To begin, click on the gray plus icon and select the Divider Icon.

    Add divider module to column

    While in the Content tab of our Divider Module, de-select the Show Divider option under Visibility.

    Remove divider visibility

    Next, move to the Design tab. From there, click on the Spacing tab. Set the left and right padding to 100%. While it looks like there isn’t much happening with this module, all will be revealed when we add our colors and padding to our sections, rows, and columns. Click on the green check mark to save your changes.

    Add spacing to Divider Module

    Duplicate the Divider Module and move it into the column next to it.

    Duplicate Divider Module

    Adding Backgrounds, Spacing, and Padding

    Now that all our modules are styled and designed, we can add the finishing touches to our homepage layout. For reference, this is where we stand.

    Using ChatGPT and MidJourney with Divi, halway point

    A far cry from the design that MidJourney created for us. However, with a bit of color and spacing, we will be successful at using ChatGPT and MidJourney with Divi.

    To start, let’s click the gear icon of our Specialty section.

    Edit section background color

    Next, click the Background tab. Using our color picker, we deduced that the background color for our section will be #e7e6e4. So, set the background color for our section to #e7e6e4.

    Set section background color

    Now, let’s move to the Design tab. From here, click on the Sizing tab. Here are the settings that you’ll need in the Sizing tab.

    Sizing Design Settings:

    • Equalize Column Heights: Yes
    • Use Custom Gutter Width: Yes
    • Gutter Width: 1
    • Width: 100%
    • Inner Width: 100%
    • Inner Width Max: 100%

    Set section sizing settings

    Now, we move to the Spacing tab. We want all the padding and module within the section to be set to zero. Here are the settings that we’ll be using there.

    Spacing Design Settings:

    • Margin:
      • Top and Bottom: 0px
      • Left and Right: 0px
    • Padding:
      • Top and Bottom: 0px
      • Left and Right: 0px
    • Column 1 Padding:
      • Top and Bottom: 0px
      • Left and Right: 0px
    • Column 2 Padding:
      • Top and Bottom: 0px
      • Left and Right: 0px

    Set all spacing within the section to zero

    Once these settings are in place, remember to save them by clicking the green check mark. With these settings, we can already see that our design in Divi is spacing up to look very similar to that which MidJourney generated.

    Spacing, Backgrounds, and Padding for the Second Column

    We now move on to the second column of our section. We begin editing the first row within this column by clicking on the gear icon for the row.

    Edit the first row within the second column of our section

    While in this row, click on the Design tab. Next, we move to the Spacing tab. Set the padding for the top, bottom, left, and right to 50px. We finish off this section by saving our work.

    Add padding to row

    We move onto our final row, again, clicking on the gear icon to enter the row settings.

    Edit second row or second column

    For the two columns that are a part of this row, we will use the background colors #b0b2b1 and #bfb192 for the first and second columns respectively. Click on the gear icon next to each column.

    Edit columns in the row

    Then, set the background color to each column’s respective color.

    Set background color of each column

    With both columns styled, notice that we are getting closer to our end product. To tie it all together, we need to add some final spacing edits to the row where these decorative columns reside. To start, click on the Design tab of the row. Then, set the Custom Gutter Width to Yes. Set the width of the gutter to 1. Also, activate the Equalize Column Height option.

    Row sizing design settings

    Next, move to the Spacing tab and set the margin and padding to 0.

    Add margin and padding of 0 to row

    And with that, we’ve successfully used ChatGPT and MidJourney to create a homepage layout in Divi. Here’s our finished product!

    The results of using ChatGPT and MidJourney with Divi

    Closing Thoughts on Using ChatGPT and MidJourney with Divi

    Using ChatGPT and MidJourney with Divi can help you to brainstorm ideas for your web design faster. Using AI in web design does not necessarily mean the end of digital design as we know it. It is possible to allow AI into your workflow to help speed up processes. AI can also help to bring things to the forefront in terms or concepts that may not have been highlighted. With Divi, it is easy to re-create AI-generated layouts and designs. If you aren’t a natural writer, creating copy for your business or your client’s websites could be difficult. Tools like ChatGPT can help you cover a blind spot you may not have realized you had. Consider using ChatGPT and MidJourney with Divi for your next project.

    Have you started to use AI in your web design business? Would you consider using tools like ChatGPT or MidJourney in your design process? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below. Let’s get a discussion going!

    The post How to Use AI to Create Amazing Web Design with Divi (Using ChatGPT & MidJourney) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

  • 10 Best Ecommerce Platforms in 2023 (Compared)

    The best eCommerce platforms give you the power to sell your products and services online easily. If you’re selling services, physical products, or exclusive access to your content, there is an eCommerce platform that will meet your criteria. However, not every platform is built the same. The right platform for your business will depend on your industry and the products or services you offer. In this post, we’ve provided a list of the best eCommerce platforms you should consider before you start showcasing your talent and expertise in the digital marketplace.

    What are Ecommerce platforms?

    An eCommerce platform is software that allows you to sell physical or digital products online. They can come in the form of a website builder, a content management system (CMS), or a WordPress plugin specifically designed with tools to support online sales. They can help you build your storefront, manage your products, collect payments, and integrate with shipping providers.

    Depending on the eCommerce platform that you choose, they may have third-party integrations that connect to POS systems, mobile devices, or apps, bringing your online store offline into the real world. No matter what you want to sell, there is an eCommerce platform that can handle the job.

    The 10 Best eCommerce Platforms

    The best eCommerce platform for you depends on important factors that you need to consider, including ease of use, features, and, of course, price. Most importantly, you will want a platform that can scale your business. Thankfully, we’ve done the research for you. Check out our list below to find the right platform for you and start building your online store today.

    1. WooCommerce

    WooCommerce eCommerce platform

    WooCommerce is touted as being the top eCommerce plugin for WordPress. This mighty eCommerce platform works on any WordPress website and puts customization directly into the hands of the shop owner.

    There are thousands of paid and free themes that you can use to use your online store. Scrolling through Creative Market alone will show you WooCommerce themes to match any brand, store, or style you could imagine. Using a powerful website builder like Divi also takes your store customization to a whole new level.

    WoCommerce allows you to create digital and physical products right out of the box. Products can have galleries, descriptions, attributes, reviews, and categories. And its powerful CMS makes product management simple and efficient. To collect payments, WooCommerce integrates with PayPal, Stripe, and WooCommerce Payments. Or, you can find a payment plugin that can hook up with your chosen payment processor. WooCommerce also supports a variety of add-ons and other plugins to extend functionality beyond what is native to the platform.

    WooCommerce connects with many third-party platforms for shipping, payment marketing, and more. As the platform is based on WordPress, you can trust that WooCommerce plays nicely with popular SEO plugins like Yoast and Rank Math to help boost your ranking in the SERPs.

    Key Features of WooCommerce:

    • 1000s of free and paid themes
    • 1000s of plugins and integrations
    • 130+ region-specific payment gateways
    • Strong focus on SEO-optimized product pages
    • Automated tax and shipping calculators
    • Sell in multiple currencies and languages

    Divi and WooCommerce custom templates in the Theme Builder

    With page builders like Divi, it’s possible to build custom checkout, cart, and other eCommerce-related pages on WooCommerce. Divi comes with over 30 native modules that can be customized and placed into any design template that you think to create in its powerful Theme Builder. This functionality isn’t just limited to Divi; many other page builder plugins can style WooCommerce to a high degree.

    Best For:

    If you want complete end-to-end control of your eCommerce platform, WooCommerce is your tool. Whether it’s design or integrations, with full access to its code, WooCommerce is an excellent choice for the store owner who values and welcomes customization over all else.

    Pricing: Free, Paid add-ons are available

    Get WooCommerce

    2. Shopify

    Shopify website builder and eCommerce platform

    Shopify is a global leader in the eCommerce space. With more than 2 million stores built, it is considered one of the best all-in-one eCommerce solutions for many store owners. With Shopify, you can create an online store quickly with their simple and easy-to-use website builder. There are an array of paid themes for Shopify both on their platform, as well as on third-party marketplaces. Additionally, the Shopify app store allows you to integrate with apps for everything from shipping to order management and marketing to design tools.

    Shopify is the best eCommerce platform for shop owners planning to scale their stores. Compared to WooCommerce, you won’t have the same degree of autonomy over your website. Nevertheless, you gain a level of peace knowing that all the technical heavy lifting is done for you. You will not need to worry about security, hosting, domains, etc. Plus, you’ll enjoy built-in tools for things like email marketing and SEO. The platform has built-in SEO fields for products and pages, but you may need to rely on an app for deeper insights and control.

    Key Features of Shopify:

    • Clean and simple website builder
    • 100s of mobile-responsive, editable themes
    • Integrates with a large number of shipping, marketing, and order management platforms
    • Extensive management for B2B and B2C customers
    • Native email marketing and payment processing (Shopify Payments)
    • Comprehensive analytics and reporting dashboard

    Tracking profit margin and costs in Shopify

    Ensure your store is profitable by seeing your profit and profit margin by entering your cost per item in Shopify. Tracking this information ensures you are seeing a return on your investment. Furthermore, tracking this type of information will grant you powerful business insights through Shopify’s analytics and reporting tools.

    All in all, if you want to build a store that quickly grows with your business, consider choosing Shopify as your eCommerce platform.

    Best For:

    If you are a store owner with big dreams, Shopify is for you. With this platform, you don’t have to think about security, hacking, or hosting, as they take care of everything for you. Build big, scaleable eCommerce websites with Shopify.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $37 per month

    Get Shopify

    3. Squarespace

    "</a

    Squarespace is an eCommerce platform with a deep focus on aesthetics, making it a popular solution for artisans and creatives. It has a library of trendy and modern templates to make your store look amazing. While it does not have the most extensive integration library, Squarespace has apps available to extend functionality. Your Squarespace website can connect to third-party platforms like Printful, Aftership, and FreshBooks, to name a few.

    The platform allows you to sell a wide variety of products. Memberships, video on demand, physical products, and more can all be sold easily with Squarespace. Regarding SEO, Squarespace allows you to customize page URLs and meta descriptions and connect to Google Analytics, but not much else. However, Squarespace has a directory of experts who can help you optimize your site for SEO and branding, paid ads, and more, should you need further assistance.

    Key Features of Squarespace:

    • Feature-rich page and website builder
    • Flexible product types
    • Custom checkout forms
    • Sell products on Facebook, Google, and Instagram
    • Buy and print USPS shipping labels via the web or app
    • Native email marketing software

    "Custom

    Squarespace gives you the power to add custom fields to your checkout form. Additionally, the form field comes with various fields such as time and date, radio buttons, dropdowns, and much more.

    Best For:

    For the creative, Squarespace’s eCommerce platform will help you easily create a beautiful store. Also, if you are a service provider who relies on paid bookings (think consultants, stylists, technicians, etc.) Squarespace’s Acuity Scheduling is the perfect fit for your business.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at$36 per month

    Get Squarespace

    4. Ecwid

    Ecwid by Lightspeed eCommerce Platform

    With Ecwid, you can sell your products and services anywhere using a flexible eCommerce platform. If you want to have a multi-channel store, Ecwid will be a welcome solution for your business. Whether you want to sell on marketplaces like eBay or want to sell on your own website, Ecwid helps you manage all your sales channels from one powerful platform.

    If you choose to build your website with Ecwid, you can use their themes to help design your online store. Their website builder isn’t as robust as others, but you can quickly build your site without code.

    On Ecwid’s platform, you are equipped with a variety of marketing tools. You can offer promotional pricing, discount coupons, and volume discounts without additional plugins or apps. You can also send out email newsletters or generate ads for Google and Facebook. Taxes are automated with Ecwid, and you can show live shipping rates to your customers.

    Key Features of Ecwid:

    • Build your website in minutes with no code
    • Sell products on multiple sales channels like eBay, Amazon, Google, and Facebook
    • Point-of-sale (POS) tools to sell offline
    • 50+ payment options, including native payment process Lightspeed Payments
    • Offer and manage shipping, delivery, and pickup
    • Multilingual

    Different shipping methods Ecwid

    Ecwid provides you with many options when it comes to shipping, delivery, and pickup of your products. Like other platforms, it connects to shipping providers for live shipping rates. But it also has deeply customizable options for pickups and local delivery. You can set zones where local delivery is possible. You can set schedules for self-pickup. Additionally, you can add a calendar to your checkout page to request pick up dates and times from customers.

    Best For:

    If you manage multiple sales channels across social media and marketplaces, consider building your online store on Ecwid. You will enjoy organizing, managing, and tracking your sales, products, and customers from one platform.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $19 per month

    Get Ecwid

    5. BigCommerce

    BigCommerce eCommerce platform

    BigCommerce is an eCommerce platform that has a comprehensive suite of tools for businesses of any size. It can be used as flexible open source software or as an all-in-one SaaS platform for building your online store.

    With BigCommerce Essentials, their hosted eCommerce platform, you can have full control over your building your online store. Firstly, their page builder comes with many widgets that you can use to create unique pages. Secondly, you can edit the code of the free and paid themes within their library or create and use your own theme if you know how to code.

    BigCommerce’s collection of apps covers everything from design to shipping management, order fulfillment, and more. For SEO, BigCommerce allows you to set your page title, meta description, URL, and Open Graph sharing settings. You can create and manage promotional banners on BigCommerce that show at certain times and locations on your site. Additionally, it is easy to customize your transactional and abandoned cart emails for your customers to increase your average order value.

    Key Features of BigCommerce:

    • Drag-and-drop page builder
    • Upload and use custom page templates and themes
    • Script manager for custom code snippets
    • Personalize B2B and B2C sales with price lists
    • Import customers, orders, products, and tracking numbers
    • Custom gift certificate templates

    BigCommerce's product filters feature

    BigCommerce’s Faceted Search improves your site’s search speed and accuracy (Something not native to other platforms like WooCommerce). Product filtering is available in all BigCommerce paid plans and is automatically generated from your product categories and custom product fields. You can add new categories and bring additional products to the forefront, all through drag-and-drop.

    Best For:

    If you don’t want the complete freedom that WooCommerce provides its users, BigCommerce is a good option. Having the opportunity to customize page templates as well as theme code is made easy with this platform.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $29 per month

    Get BigCommerce

    6. Square Online

    Square Online

    Square Online is an online eCommerce platform by the payment processor Square. It is important to note that Square recently acquired Weebly to merge its platform with the powerful website builder. So, an account on Weebly or Square would lead you to the same interface, with different access rights, depending on the plan you decided to purchase from either Square or Weebly.

    Square Online’s builder is simple to use but has fewer features, widgets, and customization options than the other eCommerce platforms in our list. While it does have an app marketplace, it is not as large as WooCommerce or Shopify. Nevertheless, you can connect with platforms like OpenTable, LinkTree, and GoDaddy.

    With Square being a payment processor, it is at the forefront of equipping its customers with various ways to get paid. Vendors who want to give their customers options like buy now, pay later, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Cash App Pay will love Square Online’s flexibility in collecting payments.

    Square Online provides you with the basics for SEO, like 301 redirects, search engine visibility, and the customary meta title and description for products and pages.

    Key Features of Square Online:

    • Clean and minimalistic store builder
    • Sophisticated machine learning to spot and block payment fraud
    • Sell in-person with cutting-edge POS hardware and software
    • Email and text alerts
    • Quickly make a link, buy button, or QR code to take online payment
    • It can be integrated with other eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Ecwid, Wix, and more

    Square popup maker

    Square Online allows you to create and manage a variety of popups easily and quickly from its interface. Whether you want to offer a coupon code to clients or prevent minors from accessing your site, you can do all this without using additional plugins or code snippets on the Square Online platform.

    Best For:

    Brick-and-mortar stores looking to consolidate their online and offline presence will benefit from Square Online’s tools. With its simple setup and varied ways to capture payment, it is easy to integrate or replace outdated offline payment systems with Square Online’s platform.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $35 per month

    Get Square Online

    7. Wix

    Wix Website Builder

    Wix is an all-encompassing eCommerce platform that covers many bases. For starters, it has a great visual website builder that allows you to design your online shop as you see fit. It has a theme library boasting over 500 designer-created themes that come with a set of pre-designed and editable sections and widgets.

    Regarding external integrations, Wix’s app marketplace makes interconnecting with various platforms around the web simple. There are apps for design, marketing, and much more that can be added to your site with a click.

    Wix takes SEO very seriously. You can edit and set custom URLs, meta titles, and descriptions, and you can add and set values for other meta tags of your choosing. You can add values to your robot.txt files with a click. Creating structured data markup is also supported.

    Key Features of Wix:

    • Sell both physical and digital products
    • Powerful drag-and-drop builder for pages and products
    • Advanced SEO tools and features
    • Built-in loyalty program
    • Native tools for email marketing, Google & Facebook ads, Google Shopping, and more
    • Multi-channel management and selling through eBay, Facebook, Instagram, and more

    Custom product page with Wix

    Wix’s page builder is a standout point of the platform. It is powerful enough to allow you to customize not only standalone pages but product pages as well. You can determine where thumbnails show, what attributes are shown (think price, SKU, quantity, etc.), the text on buttons, and much more.

    Best For:

    Small business owners and users who want various advanced features while balancing the perks of having a hosted eCommerce platform can benefit from using Wix.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $21 per month

    Get Wix

    8. PrestaShop

    Prestashop eCommerce platform

    Prestashop is an open-source eCommerce platform similar to both WordPress and WooCommerce. It comes packed with tools, modules, and features that many of its competitors provide as paid add-ons. Since Prestashop is open-source, you can edit its code, build your modules and design your templates. Apart from WooCommerce, this level of customization and flexibility is unseen among others on our list.

    Prestashop’s page builder allows you to customize most of your site’s pages and hooks. However, it is not a visual builder. Therefore you will not get real-time feedback on the changes that you make to your site. You can install a page builder addon to the platform to add this functionality.

    For SEO, Prestashop emphasizes helping your store get discovered in search. Robots.txt files, schema, and more can be configured and optimized easily.

    Because Prestashop is open-source, you will be responsible for handling your store’s hosting, security, backups, and general maintenance. However, Prestashop does have a hosted option that you could consider if you would rather not deal with these things. It also has a directory of Prestashop Experts that you could reach out to if you would prefer to pay a professional to assist you with your shop.

    Key Features of Prestashop:

    • Open source
    • Deep customization with code and templates
    • Import geolocation packs with regions, taxes, current, language, and units
    • Hande customer support requests and queries within the platform
    • Built-in cache addon
    • One-page checkout

    Caching with Prestashop

    Prestashop’s built-in performance system gives you the same features as some of the well-known optimization and caching plugins of WordPress. You can minify your code or connect to external media services. There’s the option to choose your caching type or disable the use of cache altogether. As with other open-source projects, the choice is yours.

    Best For:

    For shop owners who want an alternative to WooCommerce, consider Prestashop. The same code and platform freedom levels that WooCommerce provides can be found with Prestashop.

    Pricing: Free, Paid addons are available

    Get Prestashop

    9. Big Cartel

    Big Cartel eCommerce Platform

    Big Cartel is an eCommerce platform that (like Squarespace) is geared toward the needs of makers, artists, and creatives. Although Big Cartel’s theme library is the smallest on our list, all their themes are free. And you can make their themes your own with a little bit of CSS. Big Cartel natively supports payment processing by PayPal and Stripe. However, these are the only payment processors that they are connected with. Additionally, Big Cartel does not have an app store, so third-party integrations require more effort than other platforms.

    Unfortunately, Big Cartel does not have many robust SEO features outside of allowing you to customize the slug for your products and pages. Despite being relatively lean compared to other eCommerce platforms, Big Cartel has a place on our list. You can still manage orders, view store insights, create discount codes, and more for your online shop. If you want to start selling quickly and don’t need too many features, Big Cartel makes setting up a functional online store easy.

    Key Features of Big Cartel:

    • Clean and uncomplicated dashboard
    • Easy order, product, and back office management
    • Add custom code to header for Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, etc.
    • Add and edit theme CSS
    • Create flexible, zone-based shipping rates
    • Add individual and group product attributes

    Big Cartel edit product page

    The product screen of Big Cartel is clean and easy to understand. You can add your product descriptions, photos, pricing, and more from it. You can even set and create product attributes and groups from this screen.

    Best For:

    Artists and makers who want a simple online store and who want to support a smaller, niche eCommerce platform provider.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $9.99 per month

    Get Big Cartel

    10. Patreon

    Patreon eCommerce Platform

    Patreon is an online platform that allows creators sell access to exclusive content. This is perfect for those wanting to create a membership-based business. For example, if you have a podcast, but want to share special episodes or content for a fee, you can use Patreon to do this.  The platform provides your own hosted creator page where patrons can see your plans, subscribe and get access to your content. The Patreon dashboard is simple, making it very easy to create your content and build your community. You can create and upload content like posts, videos, audio, images, livestreams, etc.

    Unlike the other platforms on our list, Patreon doesn’t charge a monthly fee but takes a percentage of your sales instead. Surprisingly, Patreon has a nimble app library that connects you to services like Converkit, Zapier, and even WordPress. Because Patreon allows you to only show your content to paying subscribers, SEO is not a highlighted feature. However, you can assign tags to your content to make it searchable for your patrons. All in all, to quickly create a membership site with no headache, use Patreon.

    Key Features of Patreon:

    • Easy to setup unlimited recurring membership levels
    • Create or upload your content with ease
    • Create and manage promotions and limited-time offers
    • Communicate directly with subscribers via email, posts, or direct message
    • Track payments and analytics from the web or mobile app
    • Fraud protection

    Easily create subscription and membership tiers with Patreon

    Patreon’s interface for creating a membership program is simple and causes you to build your site quickly. You set your monthly price, add your content, and determine what benefits users will receive. No need for any additional plugins; the platform does all the heavy lifting for you, making it painless to monetize access to your content.

    Best For:

    Content creators who want to sell subscriptions and exclusive access to their video, text, or audio work would benefit most from Patreon. With strong brand recognition and a simple setup and implementation process, if you want to monetize your content as a creator quickly, consider adding Patreon to your arsenal of tools.

    Pricing: 5% of the monthly income you earn on Patreon

    Get Patreon

    Who are the Best eCommerce Platforms?

    Features WooCommerce Shopify Squarespace Ecwid
    Pricing Free $37/month $39/month $19/month
    Free Version Available ✔️ ❌ (Trial) ❌ (Trial) ✔️
    Free Themes and Templates ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
    Number of Paid Themes 2000+ 2000+ 200+ ❌
    Third Party Integration Library ✔️ ✔️ ✔️(Limited) ✔️
    Drag-and-Drop Visual Builder ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ❌
    Custom Coding ✔️ ✔️ (Limited) ✔️ (Limited) ✔️ (Limited)
    Shipping Calculator ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
    Automatic Tax Calculation ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
    Additional Sales Channels ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
    Native Payment Processor ✔️ ✔️ ❌ ✔️
    Native Email Marketing ❌ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
    Custom & Admin Customer Emails ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
    Order Management ✔️ ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
    Custom Product Page Templates ✔️ ✔️ ❌ ❌
    Sell on Social Media ✔️ (Addon) ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
    Sell on Online Marketplaces (eBay, Amazon, etc.) ✔️ (Addon) ✔️ ✔️ ✔️
    Get WooCommerce Get Shopify Get Squarespace Get Ecwid

    At a basic level, the best eCommerce platforms allow you to manage your products, beautify your store, track your hard work, and ultimately run a successful shop online. The degree to which your platform of choice does these things leaves the answer to the question, “Who are the best eCommerce platforms?” squarely in your hands.

    Our Top 3 eCommerce Platforms

    To begin, we’d be remiss if we didn’t start our list by talking about WooCommece. For shop owners who want to take charge of every aspect of their store, WooCommerce is for you. With a foundation laid on WordPress, the flexibility and freedom you experience building your shop are unmatched.

    If you have big dreams for your online store, Shopify is for you. Consequently, you may need to give up some control in certain departments, like customization and data ownership, but it can be worth it. Shopify powers some of the largest and most popular online brands and stores, and you could join their ranks.

    Lastly, for creatives and service providers who rely on appointment scheduling and bookings, Squarespace may be one of the best eCommerce platforms for you to use. With modern templates and a robust native booking calendar, Squarespace makes selling your time online easy, beautiful, and profitable.

    What are your thoughts on the best eCommerce platforms?

    In conclusion, the best eCommerce platforms are the ones that meet the needs of their user. Do you own an online store? If show, which eCommerce platform did you choose to use? Please share your thoughts in the comments, and let’s discuss!

    The post 10 Best Ecommerce Platforms in 2023 (Compared) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

  • 8 Best ChatGPT Alternatives in 2023 (Free and Paid)

    While ChatGPT is a highly advanced language model, there are other ChatGPT alternatives out there that offer similar and more advanced capabilities. Whether you are looking for AI writing software, virtual assistants, SEO tools, or code generators, there are many advanced AI-based alternatives to ChatGPT to help you achieve your goals. By exploring the options available, you can find the right solution for your business or personal needs.

    With this post, we’ll discover some of the best ChatGPT alternatives, giving you the knowledge to make an informed decision for choosing an AI-powered tool for your distinctive needs and tailored requirements.

    Why Use ChatGPT Alternatives?

    ChatGPT is an AI-based chatbot platform by OpenAI designed to interact with people, providing helpful responses to queries. It uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to understand and respond to users. With ChatGPT, you can write code, plan an event, get homework help, and much more. However, if you’re looking for nuanced or specific uses of AI, ChatGPT may not be the right tool for you.

    As such, there are several alternatives to ChatGPT. These platforms often use similar NLP and machine learning to provide highly customized and engaging conversational experiences for users. But some extend beyond the limited capabilities of ChatGPT, offering more powerful generative AI solutions.

    Each platform has unique features and pricing plans, making it essential to research and compare different options to find the one that best fits your needs and budget. Ultimately, the suitable ChatGPT alternative for you will depend on factors such as the type of interactions you want to enable, the number of queries you may want to run, the kind of content you want to be generated, and your target audience.

    8 Best ChatGPT Alternatives

    If you’re looking for ChatGPT alternatives, the list of tools below should do the trick. They offer powerful AI solutions to fit a variety of needs. Hopefully, these will help you find the right one for your needs and budget.

    1. ChatSonic

    Chatsonic by WriteSonic, best ChatGPT alternative

    ChatSonic is a powerful feature by WriteSonic that is probably the best ChatGPT alternative. It is an AI-powered chatbot (and AI writing tool) that utilizes NLP and machine learning algorithms. Now powered by CPT-4, ChatSonic is able to understand context and nuances at a higher level than the free version of ChatGPT. Additionally, this platform provides users with suggestions for sentence structure, tone, and word choice to create high-quality content quickly and efficiently. Furthermore, Chatsonic can create digital artwork and use voice commands to send tasks to the chatbot.

    ChatSonic is a part of WriteSonic’s suite of AI writing tools. The platform offers many templates and tools to help users streamline their writing process and get started quickly. This can be an invaluable asset for businesses and individuals looking to improve their writing skills and create engaging content with ease.

    Chatsonic Dashboard

    ChatSonic’s library of templates empowers you and your writing skills. You can use the Content Rephrase tool to rehash your content in a different tone or style. Additionally, the library provides AI-generated article ideas that can help you through the brainstorming portion of writing. Furthermore, ChatSonic’s template library can also help you with your ad writing, eCommerce content, social media, and website copy.

    Key Features:

    • Offers a variety of templates for generating content quickly
    • Includes a built-in plagiarism checker to ensure content uniqueness
    • Provides suggestions for sentence structure, tone, and word choice
    • Has an easy-to-use interface for inputting ideas
    • Offers “language switching” to change content language in real-time
    • Integrates with other tools such as Google Docs and WordPress

    Best For:

    ChatSonic is best for those looking for a powerful ChatGPT alternative with a suit of AI writing tools. It extends the capabilities of ChatGPT in a variety of ways. If you write professional content like blog posts, articles, and technical documents, you will love ChatSonic.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $13 per month

    Get ChatSonic

    2. Jasper AI

    Jasper AI, ChatGPT Alternative

    Jasper AI is a ChatGPT alternative writing software that allows businesses, brands, and individuals to create SEO-friendly content quickly and accurately. Those familiar with ChatGPT will particularly enjoy Jasper Chat, which allows you to interact with AI and generate content using natural dialog.  Jasper’s primary focus is helping those developing marketing pieces work effectively and accurately. You can use Jasper for ads, email, blogging, website content, social media, etc. Jasper comes with several AI-powered templates that you can use to start using their platform immediately.

    A unique feature of Jasper AI is its generative AI platform. This platform allows users to quickly generate content tailored to their needs without manually inputting all the information. Additionally, Jasper Recipes are premade sets of text commands that can cause writing in a particular format. This makes it easy for users to create engaging and persuasive content.

    Key Features of Jasper AI:

    • 50+ AI-powered templates
    • 20+ languages supported
    • Jasper Chat
    • Integrates with Sufer SEO to provide SEO-friendly content
    • Generates digital art
    • Create documents directly inside the platform
    • Share documents with team members for collaboration

    Jasper AI dashboard

    Jasper Workflows give you the power to create long-form content in one go. With Jasper Workflows, you can create your email marketing, social media campaign, and blog posts for multiple campaigns in one fell swoop. You can use Workflows to generate hashtags, create email campaigns, write blog posts, and generate Facebook ad ideas from one blank document.

    Best For:

    Jasper suits social media managers, copywriters, content publishers, marketers, bloggers, students, and small business owners.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $29 per month

    Get Jasper AI

    3. Bard

    Bard AI interface

    Google has developed Bard, a highly anticipated AI chatbot that harnesses NLP and machine learning to provide real-time responses to a diverse range of inquiries. Unlike ChatGPT’s dark mode, Bard sports a clean, sleek design consistent with Google’s signature Material design.

    Along with a user-friendly interface, Bard offers numerous convenient features, including the ability to edit prior questions and restart conversations at any point. The chatbot can perform several functions, including generating text, translating languages, crafting creative content, and answering questions clearly and concisely. Additionally, Bard boasts of fast response times, making it an efficient tool for quickly obtaining information and insights on various topics.

    Bard is available to a cross-section of US and UK-based customers. At this time, there is a short waiting list for those who are interested in using the chatbot. But many gain access within a few days or weeks.

    Key Features of Bard:

    • Ability to clear your chat so you can ask a new question
    • Bard activity shows you previous requests
    • Ability to give thumbs-up or thumbs-down responses
    • “Google It” integration to search the web through the search engine
    • Has access to more updated information than ChatGPT
    • Alexa and Google Assistant integration

    Bard AI results interface

    Bard offers three alternative responses as suggested drafts at the top of the answer to your question, providing users with more options. In contrast, ChatGPT provides only one response to a user’s request. This makes Bard useful for those seeking multiple perspectives on a given topic.

    Best For:

    Bard can be used by anyone who seeks to engage with an AI chatbot for various purposes and is partial to Google’s interface design and suite of products.

    Pricing: Free

    Try Bard

    4. The New Bing (Bing AI)

    Bing AI interface

    The new Bing (also called Bing AI) is a conversational AI-powered search engine by Microsoft. Users can enter questions, and Bing will provide answers as found on the web. When you search with Bing, it will provide you with deeply accurate results that are personalized to your queries. It is also possible to use your voice to issue commands to Bing. The search engine reviews and summarizes search results from across the web, so you get what you seek without multiple and sometimes overwhelming answers.

    Bing AI works best with the Microsoft Edge browser and is also integrated with other Microsoft services and programs, such as Microsoft Office and Microsoft Teams, making it a valuable tool for businesses and individuals. If you need multilingual assistance in your search, Bing is helpful. The search engine can translate text and phrases and supports over 100 languages!

    Bing AI video results

    Since Bing is a search engine, it can provide your results in the form of videos and images. Whereas ChatGPT is strictly an AI language model and cannot browse the internet, with Bing AI, you can look up documents, videos, photos, and more that can be found on the world wide web.

    Key Features of Bing AI:

    • Improved search accuracy
    • Personalized recommendations based on user data
    • Voice search capabilities
    • Select conversation style: creative, balanced, and precise
    • Provides insights into user behavior and search trends for businesses
    • Can be used natively on Apple and Android devices

    Best For:

    If you use Microsoft Edge and you’re looking for more profound, personalized search results, using the new Bing as your search engine would benefit you.

    Pricing: Free

    Try Bing

    5. CoPilot

    ChatGPT alternative for coding, CoPilot

    CoPilot is an AI-powered code completion tool by Github that helps developers write code more efficiently and effectively. The platform uses the OpenAI Codex and advanced NLP and machine learning (ML) technologies to understand and analyze code, providing real-time suggestions and predictions to help developers write code faster and with fewer errors.

    CoPilot also autocompletes code based on contextual understanding, meaning it can try filling in the gaps in your work as you code. When a developer starts typing a code snippet, CoPilot can analyze the codebase and suggest relevant code completions that fit the current context. This can help to reduce errors and speed up the coding process significantly.

    Copilot, favorite editor

    CoPilot can easily be integrated into commonly used IDEs and editors as a plugin. Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, and Neovim can all have CoPilot assist you as you type your code.

    Key Features of CoPilot:

    • AI-powered code completion
    • Supports many programming languages, including Python, JavaScript, Ruby, and more
    • Code context analysis
    • Integrates well with several popular IDEs and editors
    • Large codebase support
    • Realtime coding suggestions and predictions

    Best For:

    CoPilot can be helpful for developers of all levels of experience, from beginners to advanced coders.

    Pricing: Free trial with paid plans starting at $10 per month

    Get CoPilot

    6. Elsa Speak

    Elsa Speak ChatGPT alternative for language learning

    Elsa Speak is a useful mobile app for anyone looking to improve their English pronunciation and speaking skills, whether for personal or professional reasons. Available on both Apple and Android devices, with the help of AI, Elsa provides insight into users’ strengths and weaknesses when learning to speak English. The app uses advanced speech recognition technology to provide real-time feedback and corrections, helping users to identify and correct pronunciation errors.

    When it comes to language learning and translation, Elsa is the best ChatGPT alternative. Elsa’s lessons are designed to be engaging and interactive, focusing on practical speaking skills for everyday situations. The app covers various topics, from basic vocabulary and grammar to more advanced topics like business English and public speaking.

    Key Features of Elsa Speak:

    • 7,100+ lessons and 22 essential skills to master English
    • AI algorithms analyze users’ speech patterns to provide personalized learning
    • Detailed analysis of users speaking through assessments and test
    • Daily customized coaching program
    • Tools to track progress and achievements
    • User-friendly interface for easy learning

    Elsa Speaks ChatGPT alternative for language learning

    Elsa Speak has over 7,100 lessons organized into the 22 critical skills needed to master English pronunciation. New classes are added daily. This sets it apart from ChatGPT, as Elsa Speak is a fully featured language learning platform that can provide much-needed structure and real-time feedback when learning English. You can build a profile and track your progress.

    Best For:

    Non-native English speakers who want to improve their knowledge and use of the language would benefit from using this ChatGPT alternative for language learning.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans from $11.99 per month

    Get Elsa Speak

    7. You.com (YouChat)

    You.com ChatGPT alternative for search

    YouChat is an AI-powered chatbot search assistant feature by You.com that allows users to query the internet through messaging. Users can search using natural language input and receive results in a conversational format. YouChat can understand the intent behind user queries and provide relevant answers. It uses a combination of language models and search algorithms to generate accurate and informative responses.

    Users can access YouChat through various platforms, including web and mobile. They can use it to perform multiple tasks, from finding information and making plans to purchasing products and services. Overall, YouChat offers a conversational and intuitive way for users to interact with the internet and get the necessary information.

    Key Features of You.com’s YouChat:

    • Uses AI to understand user queries and provide accurate, informative results
    • Learns from user input to provide more personalized results over time
    • Accepts natural language input via voice or text
    • Presents results in a conversational format
    • Cross-platform compatibility for web and mobile
    • Integration with messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp

    YouChat, You.com ChatGPT alternative

    YouChat can provide citations for its answers, making it useful for research and fact-checking. This is done by incorporating information from reputable sources and providing links to those sources in response to user queries. Additionally, YouChat provides snippets of information and key facts to answer user queries, making it fast and efficient.

    Best For:

    YouChat is best suited for anyone looking for a conversational and intuitive way to search the internet and get information. It can benefit individuals who prefer a natural language input to traditional search engines.

    Pricing: Free

    Visit You.com

    8. Poe by Quora

    Poe by Quora interface

    Poe by Quora is a unique ChatGPT alternative that gives users access to multiple AI chatbots using human language to generate answers to questions and other useful content. In addition to ChatGPT, users can access Sage, GTP-4, Claude, and Dragonfly (with limitations). This makes it useful for those looking to access various AI chatbots created by Open.ai and Anthropic.

    Key Features of Poe by Quora:

    • User-friendly interface
    • Has access to Sage, GPT-4, Claude+, Claude-instant, Dragonfly and ChatGPT
    • Provides grammar, spelling, tone, and style recommendations
    • Integrates with writing tools like Google Docs
    • Provides personalized feedback on writing
    • One-click citation for sources referenced

    Sage by Quora interface

    You can use Sage as a writing assistant that uses artificial intelligence to help users improve their writing skills. It provides suggestions for improving grammar, syntax, and overall writing style. Unlike ChatGPT, Sage can highlight words or phrases in your text that you can expand upon within your writing. By activating Sage, you can quickly identify and improve specific words, phrases, or sentences in your text that may require adjustments for greater clarity, conciseness, or relevance to your target audience. Once highlighted, Sage provides helpful suggestions to help you refine your writing and effectively communicate your message.

    Best For:
    Poe is best for those who want access to multiple AI chatbots in one place. It is a great ChatGPT alternative for those looking for a more advanced writing tool without the extra cost.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $13 per month

    Try Poe

    What are the best ChatGPT Alternatives?

    Tool Starting Price Free Version
    🥇 ChatSonic $13/mo ❌ (Trial) ChatSonic“>Visit
    🥈 Jasper AI $29/mo ❌ (Trial) Visit
    🥉 Bard AI N/A ✔️ Visit
    4 Bing N/A ✔️ Visit
    5 CoPilot $10/mo ❌ (Trial) Visit
    6 Elsa Speak $11.99/mo ✔️ Visit
    7 YouChat N/A ✔️ Visit
    8 Poe by Quora N/A ✔️ Visit

    If you are looking for the best overall alternative to ChatGPT, consider adding ChatSonic to your arsenal. It extends the limitations of ChatGPT and gives you access to a suite of AI Writing tools. For established content creators and marketing professionals, Jasper AI will help speed up your process while maintaining quality. And its Jasper Chat feature is a powerful conversational AI solution.

    Overall, AI and machine learning are rapidly becoming commonplace. It’s good to know there are alternatives and new ways of working with well-established platforms like ChatGPT. Do you know if we missed any ChatGPT alternatives that we should highlight? Let us know in the comments section down below!

    The post 8 Best ChatGPT Alternatives in 2023 (Free and Paid) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

  • 8 Best AI Voice Generators in 2023 (Compared)

    AI voice generators use deep learning algorithms and neural networks to create a lifelike speech that sounds natural. They are an increasingly popular tool for generating voiceovers in various applications. These software programs convert written text into humanlike speech that can be customized to sound different ages, genders, and accents. With the ability to produce realistic voice simulations, they are frequently utilized in creating voiceovers for audiobooks, videos, and virtual assistants.

    In this post, we’ll examine several top AI voice generator tools, evaluating their overall performance, ease of use, and features.

    What are AI Voice Generators?

    Before diving into our review of the best AI voice generators, it’s important to understand what AI voice generators are and what they can do.

    AI voice generators are predominately online tools that use artificial intelligence and machine learning to create speech and audio that sounds natural and realistic. Along with other AI tools for writing and SEO, voice generators are becoming more popular in use in a variety of sections, including marketing, video production, and content creation as a whole. One of the main benefits of AI voice generators is their ability to create high-quality audio content like voiceovers quickly and cost-effectively.

    The best AI voice generators have a variety of voices that can work in numerous languages and accents, making them more accessible and localized for businesses and creators who have a global reach. They are quickly becoming powerful tools for any user who wants to add high-quality, natural-sound speech to their projects.

    The Best AI Voice Generators

    In this blog post, we will explore a range of AI voice generators currently available. We will focus on their features, the ease of use of their interfaces, and overall performance to help you make an informed decision when choosing a tool for your project.

    1. Play.ht

    Play.HT AI Voice Generator

    Play.ht is a powerful text-to-voice generator that provides an efficient way to create high-quality, professional-sounding audio from text. Whether you’re making podcasts, videos, or articles, Play.ht has a wide selection of synthetic voices. With its powerful online text-to-speech editor, you can easily convert your text to audio. You can then customize the audio with speech styles and pronunciations. In many cases, the text-to-speech synthesis is real-time, taking just a few minutes to convert input text into audio.

    Play.ht securely stores and manages your audio files. You can export them in MP3 and WAV formats and collaborate with team members. Moreover, Play.ht offers a podcasting solution, making it easy to distribute your audio content.

    It is also considered to be one of the best text-to-speech plugins for WordPress, allowing you to embed audio widgets on your website to increase accessibility and engagement, which is great for SEO.

    Play.HT Studio

    Key Features of Play.HT:

    • 907 AI Voices
    • Customize and use emotional speaking styles
    • Create conversation-like voiceovers by using different voices
    • Fine-tune rate, pitch, emphasis, and pauses
    • Save and re-use custom pronunciations
    • Listen and preview text before converting it to speech

    Best For:

    If you create video content online and want consistent quality with your voiceovers, Plat.ht is a good choice. Also, if you are a podcaster that wants to embed audio versions of your podcast or show notes online, Play.ht would work best for your needs.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $39 per month

    Get Play.ht

    2. Murf.AI

    Murf.AI AI Voice Generator

    Murf.AI is an AI speech generator that is powerful and versatile. It provides users with a vast selection of natural-sounding voices in many languages and accents. The quality of the audio produced makes it almost indistinguishable from human speech. Murf.AI’s voices can be edited with their pitch, speed, and tone tools. Because of this, the platform is suitable for a variety of uses, including videos, podcasts, and audiobooks, as well as in the creation of virtual assistants and chatbots.

    The online interface is easy-to-use and makes generating and downloading your voice recordings easy. You can adjust settings and preview your audio before generating your final audio file. Finally, Murf.AI is part of a suite of tools to help you create better video content. With Murf Studio, you can natively build explainer videos or presentations within their platform with voiceovers, background music, and more.

    Murf.AI voice generator

    Key Features of Murf.AI:

    • Clean and uncluttered interface
    • 120+ text-to-speech voices in 20+ languages
    • Filter voices by use case, tone, gender, age, and more
    • Import scripts, articles, and large documents
    • Library of templates to use as a starting point for projects
    • Integrates with Google Slides for voiceovers

    Best For:

    If you are a content creator, business owner, or individual who wants to use AI voice generation in your presentations and want an all-in-one suite of tools to help you create content and not just voice, Murf.AI Studio is for you. Murf.AI’s interface was the easiest to use out of all the generators mentioned.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $19 per month

    Get Murf.AI

    3. Listnr

    Listnr AI voice generator tool

    Listnr is an AI voice generator that claims to have some of the best AI voices available. The generator has a vast library of voices that you can use to create voiceovers for online courses, explainer videos, ads, and more. Listnr has the ability for you to record and edit your podcasts directly from their dashboard. Furthermore, you can edit the embed module provided by Listnr within their platform.

    Using Listnr, you can insert a link to an online article or blog post, and Listnr will quickly generate the accompanying audio version for it. You can change the voice style, pronunciations, speed, and audio output from their minimal and easy-to-navigate interface. Audio generated by Listnr can be shared on various social networks like Tiktok, Instagram, and YouTube, to name a few. For programmers, Listnr grants you access to their TTS API so that you can integrate their solution into your application.

    Listnr AI generator dashboard

    Key features of Listnr:

    • 600+ voices and 75+ different languages offered
    • Five different voice styles
    • State-of-the-art text-to-speech editor
    • Unlimited downloads, exports, and audio embeds on external websites
    • Speedy voice cloning service
    • Podcast hosting, recording, and editing

    Best for:

    New podcasters would benefit best from using Listnr as their podcast tools give ample support to new creators.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $19 per month

    Get Listnr

    4. Speechify

    Speechify AI text reader

    Speechify creates high-quality and natural-sounding audio from written text. You can adjust voice speed, choose from different voices, select a variety of accents, and more. For those who prefer a visual component, the platform also can highlight text as it is being read.

    Speechify comes as an app for both Android and Apple devices, in addition to its web-based interface. A favorite among those in the education section, Speechify has the ability to import documents from various sources. On top of being able to read PDFs, emails, and eBooks, you can upload a photo with text to the platform and have it read back to you. All in all, Speechify is a versatile and powerful AI voice generation tool that helps make reading and listening to text easy and accessible.

    Speechify's dashboard

    Key Features of Speechify:

    • 50+ premium voices
    • Sophisticated user interface
    • Works on Chrome, as well as Apple and Android devices
    • Advanced highlighting, note-taking, and importing tools​
    • Change listening and playback speeds to increase productivity
    • Screenshot images with text to audio

    Best for:

    Students, educators, and users who need to digest and listen to a large volume of text will benefit from Speechify’s services.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $11.58 per month

    Get Speechify

    5. LOVO (Genny)

    Lovo.AI / Genny AI Voice Generator

    LOVO is one of the best AI voice generators for video producers and audio engineers looking for deep control of their audio files. It uses natural and human voices to create audio content in various languages and accents. The platform allows users to generate humanlike voiceovers and comes with a video editor that allows you to manage all your content from one dashboard. You can import articles, videos, images, and sounds into Lovo (or Genny) and create engaging content for audiobooks, social media, training videos, and more.

    Lovo’s platform has a library of third-party resources from sites like Pixabay. This lets you add creative commons and royalty-free images, video, and audio to your projects. You can create unlimited projects that you can download without restriction.

    Genny dashboard

    Key Features:

    • 400 voices in 100 languages
    • Can express 25+ emotions
    • Full-featured UI for video editing and audio production
    • Upload your videos, audio, documents, images, and slides
    • Add sound effects and background music
    • Adjust pitch, add emphasis to words, and customize pauses

    Best for:

    Video producers and content creators who want a complete platform to create quality video content. Audio engineers who wish to have granular control over their audio will enjoy using Lovo’s interface in their workflow.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $25 per month

    Get Lovo

    6. Synthesys

    Synthesys AI voice generator

    The Synthesys suite of products allows users to create AI audio content, video content, digital art, and even AI avatars. If you want to create video content but don’t want to get in front of the camera, consider using Synthesys. In addition to generating AI voices in over 140 languages with over 254 different voices, you can create AI-generated videos with their suite of digital avatars.

    Their AI generation interface is easy to use, and you can browse through their list of voice actors to see which one matches your project. You can merge audio clips, improve pronunciation, and add word replacements for special characters, words, or numbers. With the Human Synthesys Studio, you can create videos with human avatars. These avatars can be used in presentations, videos, and more within the Synthesys suite of tools.

    Synthesys AI voice generator dashboard

    Key Features of Synthesys:

    • Unlimited voiceover downloads
    • 35+ real human voices
    • 140 Languages & 374 Voices
    • Lip-synching AI video technology
    • Upload your own voice for voice cloning
    • Choose from a library of AI avatars or create custom avatars based on yourself

    Best for:

    Camera-shy users or those who want to create a virtual brand ambassador for their content will benefit from the lip-syncing technology and AI avatars that Synthesys provides on their platform.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $35 per month

    Get Synthesys

    7. Resemble.AI

    Resemble AI Voice Cloning Platform

    If you’re interested in using AI for your voiceover projects but want to use your own voice, Resemble AI is right up your alley. The web-based platform gives you the tools to upload, type or speak and generate your very own AI voice, birthed from your natural voice. While it does come with a suite of voices for you to use, if you want a truly unique voice, Resemble AI can help you create that.

    You can create your own AI voice from text or your own speech. Their editor allows you to add inflections and emotions and can be converted into various languages, allowing you to create custom and localized audio for your next content piece.

    Resemble AI Voice Cloning

    And, if you want professional help, Resemble AI has a marketplace where you can hire voice actors and use their voices to generate custom voices for your next project.

    Key Features of Resemble.AI:

    • Cross-lingual support in 24+ languages
    • Unlimited projects, users, and audio downloads
    • Quickly clone your voice via the web
    • Generate and create custom AI voices from uploaded audio files
    • Build your own AI-generated voice from the marketplace of voice actors
    • Enhanced emotion control for generated voices

    Best for:

    Users who want a high-quality AI generator service focusing on custom voice cloning will appreciate Resemble AI.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $0.006 per second

    Get Resemble.AI

    8. Clipchamp

    Clipchamp video editor

    Clipchamp is one of the best video creation tools with AI voice generation. The editor allows you to clip, merge, import, and record video clips from the comfort of your web browser. In addition to video editing, their text-to-speech feature allows you to enter text and turn it into AI-generated voiceovers for your video projects.

    After entering your text into the editor, you can fade it in, edit the speed, trim, and clip the audio generated. You can also generate captions from your voice to help create accessible videos for your viewers. Clipchamp is not a standalone AI voice-generating platform, so it does not have the most elaborate tools for editing and using AI voices. Nevertheless, the platform can benefit those who would like AI-generated voiceovers as an option for their videos.

    Clipchamp Video Editing Suite

    Key Features of Clipchamp:

    • 170 voices across 70 languages
    • Control voice pitch, style, speed, and voice
    • Speaker Coach feature gives real-time feedback to improve voiceovers
    • Easy-to-use online video editor
    • Hundreds of video templates to choose from
    • Generates real-time captions to create more accessible videos

    Best for:

    Content creators and users who want an easy-to-use video editor with the option to generate voiceovers and audio with AI will benefit from the ease of use of the Clipchamp platform.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $13 per month

    Get Clipchamp

    What is the Best AI Voice Generator?

    Tool Starting Price Free Option
    🥇 Play.ht $39/mo ✔️ Visit
    🥈 Murf.ai $19/mo ✔️ Visit
    🥉 Listnr $19/mo ❌ Visit
    4 Speechify $11.58/mo ✔️ Visit
    5 LOVO (Genny) $25/mo ✔️ Visit
    6 Synthesys $35/mo ❌ Visit
    7 Resemble.AI $0.006 per second ❌ Visit
    8 Clipchamp $13/mo ✔️ Visit

    As with most review lists, the choice is up to you to decide which AI voice generator is best for your next project. If you want a rock-solid AI voice generator, Play.ht is our top choice. With consistent quality voices, custom pronunciations, and a simple-to-understand interface, it is the best choice for those who want great AI voice generation every single time.

    If you create presentations extensively and use Google Slides, you will love the integration that comes built into Murf.ai. Upload your Slides to the platform and enjoy creating annotations for your work quickly and effectively.

    To wrap it up, for those interested in getting started with podcasting, Listner’s podcast hosting, editing, and recording platform will be of great help to you. Whether you want to use AI to generate your podcast or upload and edit your podcast episodes, Listnr makes it simple to incorporate AI voice generation into your content creation process.

    Were there any tools that you think we missed? Who would you say is the best AI voice generator tool? Let us know down below in the comments!

    The post 8 Best AI Voice Generators in 2023 (Compared) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

  • 12 Best Website Builders in 2023 (Reviewed and Compared)

    Website builders are increasing in popularity every year as more users and companies look for streamlined solutions for building websites. They are designed to make it easy for anyone to get a new website up and running. With built-in templates and drag-and-drop page interfaces, you won’t need advanced technical skills or coding knowledge to use them. However, even the best website builders will have unique strengths and limitations to consider before choosing one for your website.

    In this post, we’ll give a detailed review of each of the best website builders. We’ll compare key features, price, ease of use, flexibility, and more so you can make the best choice.

    What are Website Builders?

    In general, a website builder is an online tool that allows users to build websites. They are usually offered by hosting companies or other hosted Software as a Service (Saas) platforms that provide an all-in-one suite of tools for building a site from the ground up. You can use them to build anything from a simple blog to a large online store equipped with tools for email marketing, social sharing, SEO, and more.

    Also, website builders will give you more control and ownership of your website than some blogging platforms like Blogger or Medium. But they won’t give you as much flexibility and control as a dedicated CMS like WordPress. As such, they are best for those who want enough control over their site to get the design and functionality they want without spending much time on other technical aspects of a website.

    The Pros and Cons of Website Builders

    What makes website builders great is that they are so easy to set up and use. You don’t have to worry about making sure all the pieces or your website are put together correctly. It’s already done for you. You can get a custom domain name, hosting, SEO, security, pre-made template designs, a drag-and-drop visual interface, and a content management system for your pages and posts all in one place.

    The drawback of using website builders is that they can be limiting. This is the tradeoff for ease of use. Website builders are easier to use because the platform does most of the heavy lifting for you. Because of this, you are bound to the limitations set by the platform for things like hosting, SEO, functionality, and design features. Additionally, site builders often require users to upgrade to higher-priced plans to access certain functionalities. So, finding a platform that can scale to your needs as your website grows without breaking the bank is essential.

    Despite any drawbacks, in most cases, the stress-free benefits of website builders far outweigh the limitations. And getting the right website builder can make all the difference.

    The Best Website Builders

    The best website builders provide the complete package for creating your website. But each website builder on our list comes with its strengths and weaknesses. Let’s look at some of the top picks across the web and see how they match against each other.

    1. WordPress

    WordPress.org Website Builder

    WordPress powers over 1/3 of all websites and has grown into a powerful content management system (CMS) that can be used to build just about any kind of website. The software is open-source and available to download for free. It is also self-hosted, meaning it can be installed on any hosting provider.

    Although the creators of WordPress offer an all-in-one hosted service platform at WordPress.com, it is much more limiting than using the .org version. Check out this post explaining their differences.

    WordPress is More Flexible than Other Website Builders

    WordPress is not bound by the same limitations as other hosted website builders. The customization options are virtually limitless. Countless WordPress plugins, themes, and integrations (both paid and free) allow you to build any type of site you want with advanced design and functionality.

    Additionally, the WordPress block editor makes it easy to build websites using a visual drag-and-drop builder. You can also use a visual page builder like Divi to create custom layouts and stunning designs without any coding knowledge using thousands of pre-made templates.

    Divi, premium WordPress website builder plugin

    There are also tons of WordPress plugins for extending the functionality and capabilities of your WordPress website. For example, you can use WooCommerce to add exhaustive eCommerce features to any WordPress site for free. There are high-quality plugins for SEO optimization, eCommerce, memberships, speed optimization, and much more.

    A common drawback of using WordPress versus other website builders on this list is that it requires a steeper learning curve and more technical knowledge to get everything set up. You’ll be carrying more responsibilities when managing and maintaining your site. However, once the work is done, you have complete control over every aspect of your site.

    Although WordPress is free software, the actual cost of getting a complete website up and running will depend on other factors, like hosting and any premium themes or plugins you may need.

    Key Features

    • Blocks-based editing for easy creation of complex page layouts
    • Exhaustive library of plugins and themes both natively and in third-party marketplaces
    • Excellent native blogging platform with commenting system and social media integration
    • Powerful eCommerce capabilities with the WooCommerce plugin
    • Works with popular drag-and-drop page builders like Divi to give you thousands of pre-made layouts and powerful design options.

    Pros

    • User-friendly interface for easy website creation and management
    • Customizable with thousands of themes and plugins
    • Scalable to grow with your website’s needs
    • You have more control over your website than other hosted platforms for security, SEO, and speed optimization.
    • Available managed WordPress Hosting providers that handle all the technical stuff for you.
    • A large community of developers and users

    Cons

    • Steeper learning curve
    • User must find a hosting provider and domain separately
    • The large number of resources and tools can be overwhelming for beginners
    • Requires more hands-on management and optimization

    Best For:

    WordPress is best for any user or company that wants complete control over their website using a drag-and-drop builder that doesn’t have the limitations of other hosted website builders. Although you may need more technical expertise or resources to manage website hosting, security, and backups, you are rewarded with the highest levels of flexibility for your website.

    Pricing: Free

    Start a WordPress Website

    2. Weebly

    Weebly Website Builder

    Weebly is one of the best website builders known for its easy-to-use interface and robust eCommerce platform, making it a popular choice for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and individuals.

    The platform includes several themes and pre-made layouts to jumpstart the design of various types of websites. Online stores, portfolios, personal brands, event sites, and blogs can all be built with the Weebly website builder. You can customize the design of your page using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface with all content elements like forms, testimonials, PDFs, and even Instagram feeds.

    The Weebly page builder

    Weebly for eCommerce

    Weebly’s eCommerce features make it a uniquely powerful builder for online stores. Because Weebly is tightly integrated with Square, the POS service provides much power to online shops built on the platform. With Square POS tightly knit into the Weebly ecosystem, your website integrates quickly with several payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, and Square.

    Weebly allows users to organize and add products to their store with images, descriptions, prices, and shipping options. You can generate a menu PDF with Weebly if you’re a food-based business.

     

    Weebly abandoned cart sequence

    Weebly’s abandoned cart sequence is a feature of their eCommerce platform that allows store owners to automatically send emails to customers who have added items to their cart but still need to complete the checkout process. They also have built-in email marketing tools, including pop-ups. Plus, it has built-in SEO functions that help store owners optimize their stores for search engines. This includes adding meta tags, descriptions, and keywords to products and pages.

    Key Features

    • Sell physical products, services, or food online for pickup or delivery
    • Accept reservations or bookings
    • Automatically sync with Square POS
    • Provides a selection of form templates for surveys, events, and more
    • Manage communications with customers through Facebook Messenger, text and email alerts
    • Create popups with popup builder

    Pros

    • Easy-to-understand and use builder
    • Quick to set up an eCommerce store
    • Sell from multiple sales channels like Facebook and Google
    • Set global styles for your logo, fonts, colors, images, and form fields
    • Manage multiple websites and stores from one account

    Cons

    • Scare number of third-party integrations
    • Limited modules and design options
    • Doesn’t integrate with many shipping carriers
    • Can’t create complex product variations

    Best For:

    Cost-conscious small businesses and individuals looking to build a complete website with a wide array of features and ease of use would benefit from using Weebly as their website builder.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $10 per month

    Get Weebly

    3. Wix

    Wix Website Builder

    Wix is a well-known website builder that allows users to create professional-looking websites. With over 200 million users in 190 countries, Wix has become one of the best website builders on the market. One of the main features of Wix is its visual page builder, which allows users to add and arrange elements on their website easily.

    While Wix has essential elements such as text, images, videos, and buttons in its arsenal, it also boasts some unique modules like in-page menus, member profile cards (helpful if you’re building an online community), forum posts, and more. Wix also provides a wide range of responsive templates that can be customized with CSS and HTML. However, Wix has some limitations when customizing the code of templates that can limit some users.

    Library of Wix's elements

    Wix’s SEO management is more in-depth than its competitors by customizing meta tags, URL structure, site speed, and using structured data. With Wix, it is easy to build an eCommerce store surrounding tickets, products, appointments, and more. Standard features like product management,  inventory, order tracking, and shipments are all available.

    Key Features

    • Visual drag-and-drop page editor
    • Drag-and-drop header and footer builder
    • Create and customize your website’s color and text
    • Library of pre-designed layouts and sections
    • An exhaustive list of essential and complex content elements
    • Add page and element animations and hover interactions

    Wix AI generated homepage and website

    In addition to building your website from scratch, Wix’s website builder can utilize AI technology to create your website. Wix asks users about their industry and preferred color scheme during the setup process. Using this information, Wix’s builder generates working page templates with relevant copy, providing users with a starting point for their website.

    Pros

    • Build your website with zero coding skills
    • Add CMS functions with Wix’s Content Manager
    • Comprehensive eCommerce platform
    • Ability to build a multilingual website
    • Provides personalized content for sections and pages
    • An app store that has many dependable third-party extensions

    Cons

    • Displays its branding and ads on free websites
    • Challenging to migrate to a different platform or website builder
    • Unable to apply a different template to a site you already created
    • Premium plans can be expensive

    Best For:

    Small business owners and non-technical users who seek deep functionality will enjoy using Wix. If you need a website builder that is easy to administer and allows you to expand your website with minimal coding experience, Wix is for you.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $15 per month

    Get Wix

    4. Shopify

    Shopify

    Shopify is an eCommerce platform and website builder that allows users to create and manage online stores. Their builder will enable you to add various modules to the header, body, and footer of set pages on your site. Depending on the template used, your website page could have multiple sections with which you can find a selection of modules to build your pages. While the builder is simple, it lacks complexity compared to other builders on our list.

    Shopify’s template store boasts several hundred free and premium template offerings. Templates are built using a combination of CSS, HTML, and Liquid, which can be customized should you know how to use these coding languages.

    Shopify page builder

    As an eCommerce platform, Shopify stands head and shoulders above the rest with native functionality for simple and complex eCommerce needs. Shipping, fulfillment, marketing, and analytics are built into the website builder allowing the smallest of companies and the biggest of brands to flourish.

    Key Features

    • Simple website builder with several feature blocks
    • Hundreds of free and premium themes
    • Payment processing with Shopify Payments or other payment gateways
    • Order management and inventory tracking
    • Analytics and reporting to track sales and customer behavior
    • App store with a wide range of add-ons and plugins

    Shopify, the eCommerce website builder and the Shopify app store

    You can further expand your store with the apps available on the Shopify app store. Third-party developers create free and premium apps that you can install to add extra features to your site. Shopify’s app store is a valuable resource for merchants looking to enhance their online store’s functionality and improve their eCommerce business.

    Pros

    • Drag-and-drop visual builder
    • Quickly set up an online store with no technical knowledge
    • Simple website management and design tools
    • Payment processing, order management, marketing tools, and analytics
    • Customizable templates

    Cons

    • It can be expensive compared to other eCommerce platforms
    • Limited native design blocks
    • Little control over core code, hosting, and domain name
    • App dependencies and compatibility issues may arise if not properly managed

    Best For:

    Businesses and brands looking to build a stable eCommerce website can benefit from this website builder.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $37 per month

    Get Shopify

    5. Duda

    Duda Website Builder

    Duda is a professional website builder designed for businesses and agencies that want to create and manage multiple websites for their clients. Because Duda is a website builder geared towards agencies and designers, it offers a range of pricing plans to cover your needs.

    Unlike many builders featured, Duda allows users to create custom templates from scratch or import templates from other sources. This gives users a high degree of flexibility in designing their website and ensures it stands out.

    Duda Page Builder

    Duda’s builder has a library of pre-designed widgets you can edit as you see fit. This can help you quickly build and edit websites for you and your clients. The builder also allows you to set global colors and fonts and style content elements like images and buttons.

    Duda offers more robust SEO tools than most builders. Redirects, SSL, Google Analytics integration, and more are accessible and editable within the builder. You can enable local business schema and integration with the WooRank app to add more SEO features to your site.

    You can build various eCommerce stores with Duda, including memberships, physical products, etc. Products, shipping, and payments are easy to manage, and if you sell memberships, you have a separate interface to manage the nuances of building a membership site.

     

    Collect content from client

    A unique feature of Duda is its ability to allow users to collect content from their clients. Directly from their builder, you can gather, organize and insert content clients have sent you into your websites built by Duda.

    Key Features

    • Builder allows for pixel-perfect mobile-optimized design
    • Global styling across custom fonts, colors, and modules
    • Decent library of pre-made templates and content widgets
    • eCommerce functionality for online stores, appointments, digital products, and memberships
    • White-label agency and team collaboration features
    • Built-in website analytics and reporting tools

    Pros and Cons

    • Visually build pages and blogs posts in real-time
    • Hundreds of sleek website templates
    • Builder created with designers and agencies in mind
    • Built-in SEO tools and management
    • Native popup, notification, and announcement bar management

    Cons

    • Duda App Store is smaller than most
    • Pricing is per site, per month
    • Building multiple websites can get expensive
    • You can’t switch templates once the website is built

    Best For:

    Web design and marketing agencies looking to quickly build complex websites for their clients would benefit from using Duda. If you’re a freelancer, who wants an all-in-one platform for managing your clients, hosting, marketing, and web design needs, Duda is for you.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $19 per month

    Get Duda

    6. Squarespace

    Squarespace Website Builder

    Squarespace is a website builder that allows users to create professional-looking websites without coding or technical expertise. The platform is known for its clean and modern designs, making it a popular choice for creatives, artists, and small businesses. Squarespace’s templates are highly customizable and easy to use. The platform is also known for its responsive design, ensuring that websites look great on any device.

    Its drag-and-drop interface allows you to place your elements with pixel-perfect precision. Design blocks included with Squarespace include your typical type, images, and galleries, but also exciting modules like scrolling text, CSS3 shapes, and three different types of charts.

    Squarespace builder

    You can also dip your toe into online selling with Squarespace. You can sell on social media, pull your products from Esty, and more. Additionally, Squarespace provides various analytics tools to track website performance and audience behavior. You can easily handle your online booking calendar with Squarespace’s Acuity Scheduler or run simple email marketing campaigns with its native email marketing solution.

    Squarespace and eCommerce

    Squarespace is known for its sleek and modern designs. However, regarding eCommerce, Squarespace allows you to sell almost any product online beautifully. Whether you want to offer digital downloads, a membership, or create a video-on-demand website, Squarespace gives you the tools to do this in a highly aesthetic way.

    Key Features

    • All Squarespace templates are mobile-responsive
    • Set up an online store with a variety of product and service types
    • Create and publish blog posts on your website
    • Native promotional popup builder, announcement bar, and email marketing solution
    • Includes marketing tools, such as email campaigns, social media integrations, and analytic
    • Integrates with a range of third-party services, including Google Analytics, Mailchimp, and Adobe Creative Suite

    Pros

    • Advanced design and styling options
    • The template library is expansive and uses eye-catching, trendy designs
    • Allows you to sell a variety of product types on your eCommerce store
    • Natively provides scheduling, email marketing, and analytics
    • Ability to password-protect pages and create members’ areas
    • Custom domain name registration and management

    Cons

    • It doesn’t have an app/plugin repository, so third-party integrations are limited.
    • While easy to learn, the builder has a learning curve that may dissuade beginners from website building.
    • Blogging functionality leaves much to be desired
    • Expensive options for some eCommerce functions and support

    Best For:

    Photographers, designers, and creatives who want to build a beautiful website will love Squarespace. If you’re a small business that wants to sell simple products online or take appointments will also enjoy how simple it is to do this with Squarespace.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $16 per month

    Get Squarespace

    7. GoDaddy Builder

    GoDaddy Website Builder

    GoDaddy has been a significant player in the domain and web hosting industry for a long time. And their website builder is one of their most refreshing features, allowing users to start a new site quickly and easily. Their builder offers a user-friendly interface and a range of features to help users design and customize their websites. It comes with a drag-and-drop editor and various widgets for adding content. The platform offers pre-made templates for simple one-page sites and more complex multi-page sites with eCommerce functionality.

    GoDaddy Website Builder with AI

    GoDaddy’s InSight is an AI-powered tool that guides you as you build your website. Directly within the page builder, the device prompts you with ideas and steps to consider as you develop your site. InSight doesn’t just tell you what pages would be an excellent addition to your site. It also helps with marketing, suggesting integrations (like videos, email marketing, eCommerce, etc.) that can better your website as you are building it. This is good for those without knowledge of web design and who would like some hand-holding through the creative process.

    Key Features

    • A library of modern, professional templates
    • Sleek, responsive, mobile-friendly templates
    • AI-powered advice from GoDaddy InSight
    • Built-in tools for SEO, social media, and email marketing
    • Sites include free professional images that you can use freely
    • Build a full-featured online store

    Pros and Cons

    • No coding experience is necessary
    • Consists of a variety of pre-made templates to build your site
    • Easily integrate appointments, eCommerce, and email marketing
    • Integrates with other GoDaddy services, such as domain name registration, email hosting, and online marketing tools

    Cons

    • A limited number of templates, design features, font, and color options
    • Limited storage for media files, basic website analytics, and primitive SEO tools

    Best For:

    Godaddy’s website builder is best for beginners and small businesses looking to start a website quickly and have their domain and hosting managed all in one place. Godaddy has a lot of additional services that scale to your needs. However, the builder will have limited options compared to more advanced website builders.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $14.99 per month

    Get GoDaddy Builder

    8. Webflow

    Webflow Website Builder

    Webflow is known for being a multi-faceted website builder, making it a popular choice for designers and developers. The platform offers eCommerce functionality, responsive templates, web hosting, and collaborative features. With Webflow, users can create fully responsive websites. The builder includes the ability to add custom CSS and HTML. This makes the builder attractive to those who are familiar with coding.

    Though Webflow is a drag-and-drop website builder, it is more geared toward advanced users with a good understanding of website design and development. Nevertheless, it also offers a good selection of free and paid templates to help users get started.

    Though other builders may have more eCommerce features, Webflow offers solid tools for building an online store. For example, you can use Stripe and PayPal as payment processors. And you can create a custom shopping cart and checkout page and even customize the emails and invoices sent to customers.

    webflow website builder tutorial

    As a website builder, Webflow provides much more flexibility than other website builders. But because of this, you may need more technical knowledge to create more complex designs. However, Webflow does simplify the building process for beginners with a 2-minutes walk-through when you start building your first site.

    Key Features

    • Powerful drag-and-drop website builder
    • Custom HTML and CSS
    • Integrates with Mailchimp, Google Shopping, Facebook, and Instagram
    • Has eCommerce and CMS functions
    • WebP support
    • Pre-built interactions and After Effects Lottie integration

    Pro

    • A powerful, flexible design tool
    • The ability to add custom code
    • All templates are mobile-responsive
    • Generates clean code
    • Robust and reliable hosting infrastructure to ensure that websites load quickly
    • Allows for custom templates and themes to be installed

    Cons

    • It has many restrictions when it comes to user seats, storage, eCommerce, and more
    • Coding knowledge can make your experience better
    • The drag-and-drop editor can be intimidating and complex
    • There are limits on the eCommerce plan that could pose a hindrance to those who plan to build large-scale eCommerce stores
    • eCommerce is limited to two payment processors: Stripe and PayPal

    Best For:

    Web designers and developers who want the comfort of no-code design with the option of adding clean code to their projects will love using Webflow.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $18 per month

    Get Webflow

    9. IONOS

    IONOS Website Builder

    IONOS offers a web hosting and website builder service with various features for building and managing a website. With pre-made templates, a drag-and-drop editor, and content management features, it is easy to create a website using IONOS. The built-in blogging platform and social media integration features are also helpful. While the mobile-friendly templates are customizable, there is a limited selection of templates available compared to other website builders.

    However, where IONOS shines is in its SEO capabilities. The website builder provides clean, well-structured code that follows SEO best practices, including semantic HTML and customizable meta tags and descriptions for each page and post. IONOS also includes a site map generator and an SEO analyzer tool.

    For eCommerce, the website builder relies on WordPress’ WooCommerce and the Ecwid platform, which may not be ideal for those seeking a native eCommerce experience.

    IONOS Website builder's multilingual support

    A standout feature of the IONOS website builder is its multilingual support for creating websites in multiple languages. Visitors to your website can select their preferred language from a dropdown menu, and the website content will be translated accordingly. You can use automatic translation through Google or upload your translations through the builder. The IONOS website builder also provides an SEO-friendly architecture for multilingual websites, which allows search engines to understand the different language versions of a website and index them separately.

    Key Features

    • A wide range of widgets, including galleries, forms, and social media icons
    • Customizable headers and footers for consistent branding
    • Integration with Google Analytics for advanced tracking and reporting
    • Image editing tools for resizing, cropping, and optimizing images
    • Advanced customization options with CSS and JavaScript editing
    • Secure payment processing through PayPal and Stripe integrations

    Pros

    • Easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder with unique elements
    • Multilingual support
    • Display and design popups, banners, and announcements
    • Provides access to an extensive library of free images and icons
    • Built-in backup and restore features

    Cons

    • No free option or trial
    • A small selection of website templates
    • Does not have native eCommerce support
    • Limited third-party apps and integrations

    Best For:

    Small business owners who want a website available in multiple languages for an affordable price should consider using IONOS’ website builder.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $9 per month

    Get IONOS

    10. Hostinger

    Hostzinger Website Builder

    Hostinger is a powerful hosting provider that has everything you need to create a website. Their website builder offers a wide range of customizable templates for users to create their websites. The templates cover a range of categories such as business, portfolio, eCommerce, and more. Each template can be customized with different colors, fonts, images, and other elements to create a unique website. Furthermore, the builder includes advanced design tools such as a color palette generator, a background image remover, and a shape divider tool.

    The website builder provided via the Hostinger platform differs from Zyro, Hostinger’s standalone website builder platform. The website builders are essentially the same, but they offer different features and serve different audiences.

    Regarding SEO, Hostinger’s website builder includes built-in SEO optimization tools that allow users to customize meta tags, descriptions, and other SEO elements. The platform also provides users access to Google Analytics and other SEO analytics tools to help them track their website’s performance.

    Hostinger AI writing tools

    Hostinger’s website builder includes AI tools to help users quickly and easily create a website. For example, the AI Writer tool can generate content for a website based on user input. In addition, the AI Heatmap tool can provide insights into how users interact with a website. Moreover, you can also create a logo in seconds with their AI logo maker.

    Key Features

    • Uncomplicated drag-and-drop builder with interesting modules
    • Simple eCommerce builder and features
    • Code editor for advanced customization and coding
    • Image editor for basic image editing and optimization
    • Blogging tools, including a built-in blog editor
    • Contact form builder for creating custom forms

    Pros

    • Simple to use and understand drag and drop builder
    • Global color generator to speed up the branding process
    • Integrated with Google Font library
    • AI-powered website design assistance
    • Includes AI-powered tools for writing, logo design, and heat maps
    • Websites can be migrated to WordPress or another CMS

    Cons

    • Feature set pales in comparison to sister platform Zyro
    • Does not have an app store or extension gallery for third-party integrations
    • Each blog post needs to be laid out individually

    Best For:

    Small business owners, consultants, and service providers who want to create a professional-looking website quickly and efficiently will like the features of Hostinger’s platform.

    Pricing: Paid plans start at $11.99 per month

    Get Hostinger

    11. Web.com

    Web.com Website Builder

    Web.com is a user-friendly and affordable website builder platform for those who want to create a website quickly and easily. The drag-and-drop interface allows users to customize templates fast, making it simple to match your website to your branding and style. The drag-and-drop website builder makes it easy to create a mobile-friendly website. With pre-designed building blocks, access to 2 million stock photos, and custom code blocks, you have everything needed to build your perfect website.

    Web.com’s responsive templates ensure that websites look great on any device. Web.com provides 24/7 customer support through phone, email, and chat, and users can also opt to have a personal website designer who can help them create a custom website.

    Web.com eCommerce website builder

    Web.com also offers eCommerce features, which allow users to set up an online store with a shopping cart and checkout. This feature is handy for small businesses that want to start selling online without investing in a separate e-commerce platform.

    Key Features

    • Free Domain and SSL for one year
    • 150+ responsive templates
    • Advanced eCommerce features
    • Connect to Quickbooks and Xero
    • Sell on Facebook and Instagram
    • Simple Google site verification with monthly SEO checks and to-do lists
    • Built-in customer relationship management (CRM)

    Pros

    • eCommerce features are good value for the price paid
    • Templates are easy to use and mobile-friendly
    • Ability to manage email marketing, SEO, and pay-per-click from one place
    • Built-in SEO tools
    • Customizable forms to gather user data and feedback

    Cons

    • Pricing can increase significantly for additional features or support options.
    • Offers limited storage for your website and its associated media
    • Some customers have reported slow load times on websites
    • Limited blogging features

    Best For:

    Small businesses and individuals who want to build a website quickly. While Web.com’s website builder may offer fewer features than other website builders, it is an excellent option for those who want a simple and affordable platform that includes eCommerce functionality and SEO optimization tools.

    Pricing: Plans start at $14.99 per month

    Get Web.com

    12. Google Sites

    Google Sites

    Google Sites is a free website builder provided by Google that allows users to create basic websites and collaborate with others in real-time. The platform is designed to be user-friendly and straightforward, with a drag-and-drop interface that requires zero coding experience. You can use several elements on your sites: textboxes, images, image carousels, table of contents, social links, and spaces.

    A unique feature of Google Sites is its tight integration with Google’s suite of products. With Google Sites, you can quickly embed your Google Calendar, pull videos from YouTube and connect your site to your Google Analytics accounts.

    If you’re looking to build the most basic of websites, Google Sites is a good option. Creating a complex website with advanced customizations (like eCommerce) is not available with this tool. For building the most basic of sites, Google Sites is an excellent choice, but there are better, free options available, like Wix.

    Google Sites website builder and collaboration tools

    An exciting feature of Google Sites is its collaboration functionality. You and others can efficiently work on your website as quickly as editing documents in Google Workspace. Because Google Sites is a product of Google, the same robust version control you’re used to with Slides, Sheets, and Docs is also present in Google Sites.

    Key Features

    • Easily connect with Google Drive, Analytics, Slides, Docs, and other Google products.
    • Powerful collaboration features allow you and your team to work on your site in real time.
    • Build-in announcement banner builder
    • Build an unlimited amount of mobile responsive websites
    • Connect easily to Google Domains for custom domain names
    • Pull assets directly from your Google Drive, Google Photos

    Pros

    • Free
    • Very easy to build a site in a matter of minutes
    • Deeply integrated into the Google Workspace and Google suite of tools
    • Easy click-and-drop builder
    • Zero coding experience of knowledge required

    Cons

    • Less customizable than other builders
    • Limited themes and design elements
    • Limited access to fonts and colors
    • No eCommerce functionality
    • No ability to add custom scripts or plugins

    Best For:

    Google users and beginners who want a familiar way to create a simple website without all the bells and whistles.

    Pricing: Free, Paid plans start at $7.80 per month

    Get Google Sites

    Quick Overview of the Best Website Builders

    Plugin Price Free Option
    🥇 WordPress Free
    (additional costs required)
    ✔️ Visit
    🥈 Weebly $10/m ✔️ Visit
    🥉 Wix $15/m ✔️ Visit
    4 Shopify $37/m ✔️ Visit
    5 Duda $19/m ❌ Visit
    6 Squarespace $23/m ❌ Visit
    7 Godaddy Website Builder $11.99/m
    (paid yearly)
    ❌ Visit
    8 Webflow $18/m ✔️ Visit
    9 IONOS $9/m ❌ Visit
    10 Hostinger Website Builder $11.99/m ❌ Visit
    11 Web.com $14.99/m ❌ Visit
    12 Google Sites ✔️ Visit

    What is the Best Website Builder?

    For the most flexibility with your website, WordPress is an ideal choice for a website builder. Although it requires more work than other builders to get started, you won’t have to worry about limitations. With its easy-to-use block editor, themes, plugins, and countless integrations, WordPress is the best website builder for those who want complete control over their website. We also recommend using a powerful page builder like Divi, which takes visual, no-code design to a new level.

    For those looking for a hosted website builder solution that is easier to use and manage, you may consider Wix or Weebly to help you build your website. Weebly has impressive features for eCommerce, and Wix is surprisingly flexible to handle any website you may need.

    At the end of the day, the best website builder is the one that matches your needs. Who would you consider to be the best website builder? Did we miss anyone from the list? Let us know in the comments section down below!

    The post 12 Best Website Builders in 2023 (Reviewed and Compared) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.