Mar.28.2007
How much would you pay for a WordPress theme?
- Filed under: WordPress
Regardless of how easy or hard, graphic or code intensive, WordPress themes are time consuming. The time it takes to put together a theme ranges from three or four hours to three or four days.
Every WordPress designer has to go through the same process:
- Design
- Code
- Skin for WordPress
- Test
- Correct
- Validate
Some themes are free. Some cost $45 (per download). Some cost $2,000 (completely unique/custom and exclusive). Question is…
How much would you pay for an custom/unique/exclusive theme?
- $100 (36%)
- $300 (18%)
- $200 (17%)
- over $1000 (9%)
- $800 (9%)
- $500 (8%)
- $2000 (4%)
Total Votes: 140
Loading …How much would you pay for a non-exclusive theme?
- $20 (36%)
- $5 (28%)
- $10 (19%)
- $45 (17%)
Total Votes: 139
Loading …
I think $45-50 is a very fair price for a custom design, $2000 for a unique theme is a little insane though. I’m still learning how to code my own themes and its taken me hours and hours so far to put together a theme the way I like it minus any graphics or customizing the css. Its a small price to pay to save me time, I would buy a theme but I get satisfaction of doing it myself and I want to learn to code.
Iuno I’d pay about 20-30$. But only cause I’m poor. The hubby has all the money.
That’s a tough one. For me, personally, I don’t think I’d pay for a theme simply because I’d want others to be able to take the theme I’m using and modify it, if they felt so inclined. If I had to pay for a theme, that means others wouldn’t rightfully be able to download and modify it without paying for it as well, and I feel like that’s a step against WordPress’ open source nature.
That said, I do think that we (Wordpress users) need to donate to our themers more often. I absolutely think themers deserve more than they get. I know that I’ve been a slacker when it comes to donating for themes I’ve used, but I’d feel a lot better about donating to a community resource (a free theme) than buying an exclusive simply because exclusives don’t benefit the community.
I think you’re making it a little more complicated than it has to be. I don’t look at paid themes as a move against open source or growth of WordPress.
Paid themes is a way to I guess… justify the amount of time designers have contributed to the wp themes community.
Um… it’s easy to say that wp designers deserve more and we should encourage donations. Realistically, donations doesn’t work. Even the few users like you, who are willing to donate, often don’t.
Of course, it would help if there was a general way to reward wp designers so they can devote more time into creating free themes. But, there ISN’T a general… cost effective way for users and designers to both benefit from wp themes.
I would probably pay around $20 for a theme if it was designed to my specifications - neat, crisp, original, with a lot of useful plugins and tools
An interesting question. Why should we differentiate between WordPress themers and professional web designers? I think that custom work should be paid for, period. If I ask someone to create a custom theme for my WordPress site, and that theme will not be released for public consumption, then I expect to pay for it in some way, whether it’s money or barter. Now, how much is a custom job worth? I think it depends on the quality of the code as much as the GUI. I would be willing to pay more to someone with a good reputation for putting together quality code AND a good looking design.
@Andrea - Of course, however, this poll is for pay-per-download themes (not unique/custom theme).
[…] Have your say at WPDesigner.com. […]
I’d pay even more for a good Admin theme. WP Admin sucks.
I think the big question is quality. Many may disagree, but I feel that 90% of the free themes available are just awful. Small Potato here is one of the few that seems to be able to make many high quality themes and if they were to remain at that level, then I think paying for them seems perfectly reasonable.
[…] Los 49 Themes de WordPress más descargados de todos los tiempos desde Theme Viewer. Via Blogging Pro. Desde WpDesigner lanzan una interesante pregunta ¿ Cuánto estarÃas dispuesto a pagar por un theme de WordPress ? […]
Personnally, all depends on the theme itself. If it is a theme like the others we see on the net, I would say 45$ not more, even for unique one…or maybe 50…;-) But for a fully modern, complete, professionnal theme I could pay until 300$ maybe more… That is a good article you have here. Very interesting to know what people could pay for one unique theme !!
I also think it depends. The question about the highly cusomized WP Theme is more interesting. The work behind such a theme will always lead to the purpose of the site or blog. If it is complex enough with a lot of custom functions than more than 1000 is a must. If it is “just” another design - 300 seems to be ok for me.
it depends. if i do have time i will take a good theme and modify it to my own liking. and if i dont i will just pay around 200$ to make required changes in some theme.
I would pay definately $45 for a NON exclusive. I would certainly be willing to pay $1000+ for an EXCLUSIVE.
My reasoning is very simple… It’s harder than heck to find a GOOD Wordpress designer. Right Now, I’m willing to pay just about anything.
it really depends on the design, to be honest there are only few designs out there, that make me go.. “WOW”.. the real good designs are the ones on the Authors sites which are not for release.. thus meaning you have to pay the Authors so they can make a theme specifically for you.. I would not pay a dime, I would tho pay for book that will teach you to design themes for wordpress.
If it is for my person website, I’d pay $10 for an non-exclusive theme that I really, really liked and felt I couldn’t figure out how to do it on my own.
Now if the theme was a custom/unique/exclusive theme, especially for a business, I don’t think $2000+ is unreasonable. I work in IT for a very large company and I have done web work for our business clients (that is, people that work in our company on the business side) and all the working and reworking of designs that you do, the time it takes to get things just right and working without errors is completely worth the money.
That “it depends” comment seems to run true. I would pay a few hundred for an exclusive theme. It’s code work, and deserves it.
I kept trying to answer the pay-per-download poll and couldn’t do it. I downloaded probably a dozen themes before I found small potatoes here and was happy with a template. I would have been rather upset if I would have put out even $5 each for ones I didn’t use ($120). That said, if there was a way to drive it around and kick the tires, I wouldn’t object to $20 for the ONE I use.
Since “it depends on quality” is the general consensus here, what is your threshold for a good theme?
Assume the design and code qualities are all there.
I won’t really pay that much, because I can design and c0de themy myself. But shure I could sell WP themes for 30$ or more. Unique designs from 100$ further.
yeah. i think when it comes to bigger sites like an e-commerce site or something then you get into the real dough.. but a theme.. i don’t know.. no more than $50 i guess
It’s depend on customer requirement. Usually I charge around USD 20-30 per page for Wordpress.
If one day I would buy some Wordpress template from anyone, I won’t hesitate to fork out USD 100-200 for the template.
Personally I wouldn’t pay for a layout. I would rather teach myself (if I didn’t already know) how to make a design and make one on my own. But I’m for free templates anyway and make free templates (not for wordpress (yet) though).
[…] o Blogging Pro me deparei com essa insanidade! O grupo WPDesigner lançou uma pesquisa de opinião perguntando se o blogueiro pagaria 5, 10, 20 ou até 45 DÓLARES 80 por um tema “não […]
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I usually pay around $70 for a customised design, I think anything more than that is a bit too steep (unless its really, really very good!).
- MENJ
I think a lot of this has to do with the complexity of the theme. I can see a theme going for $1000 if it has everything in order.
Sheesh, the prices that are being thrown around here are insane! Being a WP designer myself, I normally charge between $50 - $125 for a generic, unique WP theme. For more advanced WP work, I get paid about $200 as a freelancer. So anything above that, seems well excessive.
Small business owners looking to establish a relationship with customers through blogging are usually the ones willing to pay upwards of $2000.
Yes SP - I agree. But I still think anything upwards of $1000 is plain ridiculous, especially considering that there are many of us WP designers out there, willing to work for much less… It would however be a sweet deal getting a design job for that price…
That’s part of the problem. Clients don’t respect the skills it takes to create a WordPress theme because of such low prices. This is also true with general web design.
I can’t say that I haven’t contributed to that problem since I was offering $200/theme for some time. I’m not longer freelancing though…
It would have been interesting to try to pull out any trends between exclusive/non-exclusive prices (is the person just cheap and pays least for both, or something else?)
Personally I feel kind of sketchy about paying anything for a non-exclusive theme, just seems weird. Though I’d pay $300 for a custom design as soon as it’s deemed that a design update would redeem its cost
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It depends on what the them looks like and if it’s unique. I’d pay 10-20 for a good theme that was made available to anyone who wanted it and $100+ for a exclusive theme. For the exclusive theme I think the price depends on the disigner and how good there work is.
[…] How much would you pay for a WordPress theme? Great little poll on average prices for themes (tags: wordpress theme template) […]
I know how much work goes into customising a theme and $100.00 is a fair price in my opinion.
Totally unique, designed from scratch… although it is probably worth about $1000.00, I would be prepared to pay between $300.00 to $400.00. A fair price has to be in line with what the market will pay.
i hope i can sell mine for like $100 lol, it will be custom
$2000 for it would be awesome
It mainly depends on the quality of the theme. Anyway not more then 100-200 $ for an exclusive theme.
I wouldn’t pay for a not-unique one, for the simple reason there are a lot for free with a good quality you could re-arrange for your purpose (if there’s a common license or GPL).
I’m actually using an Andreas Viklund creation, but I’m fascinated by many other themes.
It totally depends upon the potentail and his work. A designer or a developer is not cheap when his work is of quality.
People must look in quality rather than price. so i could not judge and people like small patato are price less.
theme design can be change according to your blog content
also the price
I agree with Greg but I would pay higher for quality theme but not US1000!!! US100-300 is about right. You can charge higher now because the commercial value for internet has gone up, not in the tough time like 2001-2003. For me quality doesn’t mean it’s look good, but it’s easy to browse around, user friendly, look original, of course, the best is it’s achieve the objective, whether it’s high conversion rate, build brand/personality or provide information. That’s my 2cents:)
nice poll with accurate results.i buy themes occasionaly but i never pay more than $25.
I once liked a theme very much and paid almost $45 but that was my highest
50$ is good pay.
I’d pay even more for a good Admin theme. WP Admin sucks
Since “it depends on quality†is the general consensus here, what is your threshold for a good theme?
I also think it depends. The question about the highly cusomized WP Theme is more interesting
40$ is fine for WP theme. But i charge it like 80-100$ and i also satisfy my customers with it. Dude,i only learned it from your site.
themes for Wordpress are ugly (most of time). I would NEVER pay for that, i’d use Dotclear!
This is old but in reading this i just wanted to say i agree custom word is custom work and should be paid for, second the two poll that are set up are very suggestive on what you should pay for theme. but anyways good convo.