Highly customizable Wordpress theme recommendations?

[stymie]

Hey all! Long story short, I am forming a partnership of sorts with a colleague in the merchant accounts space who plans to give free websites to new customers in exchange for letting him handle their credit and debit card processing.

What I need is a theme that:

• offers a lot of built-in looks for different types of businesses
• allows me to offer products
• makes it easy to change colors, font, etc.
• allows me to quickly add the payment processing info
• sends a text to the business owner when a purchase is made (I know this may require a separate plugin)

I know there are quite a few out there that match this criteria, and I was considering Astra, but wanted to pick the brains of members here that have experience with kicking out simple WP sites for brick and mortar businesses in bulk.

Any recommendations? Themes to stay away from?

 

[NetZero]

I can recommend Kadence Theme for most of your requirements (the last one, I think would be through Woocommerce plugin or another shop plugin). The theme is fast, has starter templates, and is very easy to manipulate for someone not a designer. I have used Astra as well and I cannot remember why I decided to go with Kadence (I've been with for years, and prior Astra as well). I'm certain there is others out there that are good, but when you find a great one, you stick with it, until something fails.

 

[Zyzz]

Highly recommend generatepress. Most of the features you listed will be handled by plugins though.
1. GP has starter templates for e-commerce stores.
2. It's WooCommerce-friendly
3. You can edit those.
4. You may need a WooCommerce extension for this.
5. Again, a WooCommerce extension is needed.

 

[stymie]

I can recommend Kadence Theme for most of your requirements (the last one, I think would be through Woocommerce plugin or another shop plugin). The theme is fast, has starter templates, and is very easy to manipulate for someone not a designer. I have used Astra as well and I cannot remember why I decided to go with Kadence (I've been with for years, and prior Astra as well). I'm certain there is others out there that are good, but when you find a great one, you stick with it, until something fails.

I was looking at the Kadence theme, and it looks solid. Do you think for my needs I can get by with the free theme? I don't mind paying a flat fee for a theme, but hate that most of them now have annual plans that gouge you for years on end.

 

[NetZero]

I was looking at the Kadence theme, and it looks solid. Do you think for my needs I can get by with the free theme? I don't mind paying a flat fee for a theme, but hate that most of them now have annual plans that gouge you for years on end.

I did buy the lifetime pro plugin years ago. It's worth playing around with the free features and templates. I use the free templates and they are a good start (colors, layout, fonts, images) and then I replace with my content/images.

 

[Staircase]

I was looking at the Kadence theme, and it looks solid. Do you think for my needs I can get by with the free theme? I don't mind paying a flat fee for a theme, but hate that most of them now have annual plans that gouge you for years on end.

I've been using the free theme for about a year and I'm a fan. Fast, lots of free templates, easy to change most settings. I haven't had any reason to upgrade yet.

Most of what the Pro options offer can be done with the free theme plus some programming. Or just finding a plugin that offers the feature you're missing from pro. You will need a separate plugin to send SMS updates, but otherwise Kadence free version meets all your requirements.