Why I recommend Divi Theme for WordPress

New times, new technology, new innovations

After I bought a couple of themes and realized that I was throwing away my money, I started to look for a better theme, that could solve most of my design desires without using code and doing it in an easy way. The good news is that for the last two or three years, the Internet technology has progressed very fast. Now you can make a business website without writing a line of code. Yeah!

I started to search for a theme on the Internet and found several themes that could do the job in an easy way. It is always good idea to read comparison charts and theme reviews before buying one. Sometimes the reviews are not that impartial because these persons earn money being an affiliate and recommending them. That’s why you must read several reviews and comments from the users. What was I looking for? A theme that allows me to design a quality website with a set of easy to use tools. A theme with plugins and add-ons so I wouldn’t have to install that many plugins.

My research about my WordPress Premium theme

I was looking for:

• Drag & Drop Builder
• Responsive design,
• Fron-end and Back-end Usability (Easy of use),
• Visuals Design Tools,
• No coding needed for extra styling,
• Good integrated plugins,
• A big package of add-ons,
• Big amount of support documentation available on videos and text,
• Big support community,
• Fast response time on support forums (less than 24 hours, for example),
• Templates available for different page or site designs,
• Extra valuable themes included,
• Compatible with ecommerce plugins and translation plugins ( I wanted a multilingual website),
• Demo availability,
• Good user comments reviews on forums and posts,
• Good price package (including updates and support).

After checking and reading several premium themes reviews and comparison charts, at the end of 2015, I found the following themes to be fit my features list:

• Divi from Elegant Themes,
• Avada from Theme Fusion – Envato Market-,
• Genesis Framework from StudioPress.

A year ago, I discarded Genesis because it is a framework, you have to code in some way much more than with the other themes. Maybe later.

Pros and Cons for Divi and Avada

The final selection was for Divi from Elegant Themes. As you can see from the table, both themes have fairly the same features. The big difference from a developer point of view is the price. With Divi Elegant Theme, for a really good price, $243, you can have unlimited support, Updates and can be installed on Unlimited Sites. Cool, Eh?

With Avada you have to pay $18 every 6 moths if you want support from them, apart from buying the theme for $60. That means that in a year time woud be $78 and $36 every additional year of support. After five years you’ll pay $222 for only one site with unlimited updates and support for five years. Every site has need a license, and if you want support, you need to pay $36 every year.

Apart from the price, Divi has a opt-in plugin (Bloom), while Avada doesn’t. I want the install the minimun external plugins possible, and if the theme comes with a plugin, the better, because that means that the plugin and the theme work seamless.

Another reason why I prefer Divi over Avada is the support. I prefer Divi Support. With the developer license I have unlimited support and it is a forum’s support ticked based. That means that I can search in their forum for questions that may already been answered. I like the opportunity to be in a community. On top of that, there are many companies and communities that are dedicated to solve any kind of Divi problem. It is a lot easier to look for answers on Internet. Avada has only Email support ticket. It is more personal but I prefer to look for answer in a forum before posting a question. I may get the answer quicker.

I bought the developer license and don’t regret it. It comes with several themes, but the only ones that really matter are Divi and Extra Themes. Also comes with plugins and a lot of modules to design all sort of pages.  But, I am not going to lie to you. You need to spend many hours learning how to use it, the same as you are learning how to use Excel or Power Point or any new software. You also need to be curious and patient to look for new ways to solve what the theme does not. The support forum works very well, as well as other community support groups like the Facebook Divi group. At the end, you learn how to modify some design styles applying css changes to your theme.

Some people say that once you go into Divi, it is difficult to change to another theme. But as a web designer, there is no straight forward process when you change themes. If you want to change themes, you have to consider many parameters and it is like redesigning the website. So, for me, this is not an issue.

On the other side, Divi has now a tool that allows you to edit the design directly on the webpage while you can see the changes (front-end) a Visual Builder Editor, that makes some changes a lot easier. That’s super useful. And the plugins for sharing social networks (Monarch) and doing opt-ins (Bloom) are super handy.

My Divi Themes Sites

I show you some of the websites I have made with Divi Theme.