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Best WordPress theme builders

7 Best WordPress Theme Builders (2024 Expert Picks) 

Written By: author avatar Joella Dunn
author avatar Joella Dunn
Joella is a writer with years of experience in WordPress. At Duplicator, she specializes in site maintenance — from basic backups to large-scale migrations. Her ultimate goal is to make sure your WordPress website is safe and ready for growth.
     Reviewed By: reviewer avatar John Turner
reviewer avatar John Turner
John Turner is the President of Duplicator. He has over 20+ years of business and development experience and his plugins have been downloaded over 25 million times.

Are you looking for the best WordPress theme builder to customize your site?

If you don’t know how to code, a theme builder can help you build a WordPress website. The right tool gives you everything you need to adjust your site’s look and feel without any complicated coding.

In this post, we took a closer look at some popular WordPress theme builders to see which one has the best features and user-friendliness!

What Is a WordPress Theme Builder?

A WordPress theme builder is a tool that simplifies the website creation and customization process. Instead of needing to master confusing code, theme builders give you a more user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface to create your website. 

When you use a theme builder, you’re in the driver’s seat. You can change up the layout, colors, fonts, and other design elements without any fuss. Think of it as your digital Lego set — you can build pretty much whatever your heart desires. 

Key Features to Look for in WordPress Theme Builders 

There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to theme builders. What you need will depend on your specific requirements.

Whether you’re a blogger, e-commerce store owner, or anything in between, here are some key features you should be on the lookout for: 

  • Drag-and-drop interface: This is a must-have for any theme builder. It should be easy to use and require no coding knowledge at all.
  • Responsive design options: You’ll need to make sure your website looks excellent on all screens.
  • Pre-made templates: A good theme builder should offer pre-made templates to kickstart the design process.
  • Customizable: The tool should allow you to get creative and make a website that’s reflective of your personal or brand style.
  • SEO-friendly: Some theme builders have integrated SEO tools to help you optimize your website’s content.
  • Customer support: Good customer service is always a plus. Look for providers that offer timely and useful support.

7 Best WordPress Theme Builders

In our extensive review process, we’ve put some of the most popular WordPress theme builders to the test. We’re excited to share our experiences with each one! 

1. SeedProd

SeedProd plugin

SeedProd is a powerhouse among the best WordPress theme builders. Our experience has shown SeedProd is naturally intuitive and easy to navigate for beginners.

We particularly enjoyed the vast array of professionally designed templates. With SeedProd, you can instantly build entire websites at the click of a button.

Select SeedProd theme

Plus, you’ll find tons of landing page templates. These can help you set up sales pages, lead magnets, maintenance pages, and other helpful features.

SeedProd opt-in form

What sets SeedProd apart from its competitors is its simplicity and ease of use. We found that even someone with no coding background could craft visually appealing web pages. 

After choosing a template, you can easily edit the default design. There are many drag-and-drop blocks available to add any type of functionality to your website. Each of these blocks can be customized with your unique brand colors and style. 

SeedProd e-commerce blocks

What We Liked About SeedProd 

  • Many pre-designed templates
  • Intuitive and beginner-friendly interface
  • Mobile-friendly to adjust to different size devices
  • Drag-and-drop page builder for creating maintenance, coming soon, login pages, and other landing pages
  • Easily add dynamic content
  • Advanced features like animations

What We Didn’t Like About SeedProd 

  • SeedProd has a free version, but it doesn’t support the website builder

Why SeedProd Is Our Top Pick 

SeedProd’s simplicity, coupled with its extensive template designs, was enough to take the title of the best WordPress theme builder. Furthermore, the focus on speed optimization ensures that your pages not only look good but load quickly and smoothly, providing an excellent user experience.

For a closer look at SeedProd, be sure to read our full review!

2. Thrive Theme Builder

Thrive Theme Builder

After you install Thrive Theme Builder, you quickly realize you’ve found a great tool. It’s designed to provide an intuitive, visual, and drag-and-drop design experience.

Unlike other options on this list, Thrive Theme Builder has a beginner-friendly onboarding wizard that walks you through every step in the web design process. You can easily set up your logo, brand colors, and entire pages without any confusion.

Thrive Themes onboarding wizard

Along the way, you can pick from a variety of pre-made templates. You won’t have to know how to create headers, footers, or any other complicated elements.

Thrive Themes header templates

After finishing the onboarding process, you can further customize typography, specific branding, and page templates. Thrive Themes makes it as simple as possible to get a beautiful website online.

Thrive Themes typography

What We Liked About Thrive Theme Builder 

  • Templates that adapt and update content across your entire site
  • Launch your site in under 15 minutes
  • Integrates with third-party tools like Drip, HubSpot, and Zapier
  • Variety of Thrive Themes plugins like Thrive Architect, Thrive Leads, Thrive Apprentice, and more

What We Didn’t Like About Thrive Theme Builder 

  • There’s no free version
  • Compared to other theme builders, there are more limited template options

Why We Chose Thrive Theme Builder 

We’ll be frank: we love the overall flexibility Thrive offers. Its dynamic templates make quick work of designing beautiful, cohesive websites – an asset for both beginners and pros. Plus, Thrive Themes has tons of other products like quiz builders and email marketing tools that easily integrate with the theme builder. 

3. Elementor

Elementor theme builder

In our journey of exploring the best WordPress theme builders, we had to mention Elementor. With a simple drag-and-drop interface, you can customize everything from fonts to colors. This helps you create unique layouts in no time.

Elementor Pro stands out because of its website kits. These templates come in handy when you don’t want to start from scratch. Just pick a design you like, tweak it a bit, and voila, your website’s up and running! 

Elementor Kit library

You can use Elementor’s theme builder to customize your entire website design. You’ll be able to build headers, footers, 404 pages, and anything else you might need. 

What We Liked About Elementor 

  • Drag-and-drop builder
  • Pre-made full website templates
  • Set display conditions to customize when an element is shown

What We Didn’t Like About Elementor 

  • Slight learning curve for beginners
  • No undo/redo opinions
  • You don’t have much coding control

Why We Chose Elementor 

Our choice of Elementor boils down to its pre-built templates. If you’re a beginner and want to experiment with web design, Elementor is worth giving a shot. However, you might need some time to learn how to use it. 

4. Beaver Themer

Beaver Themer

Beaver Builder is a popular WordPress page builder plugin that is a favorite for developers and more experienced WordPress users. The company also makes a theme builder add-on called Beaver Themer

With Beaver Themer, you can create page templates, or Themer layouts. Use the page builder functionality to drag and drop any element into the template. Beaver Builder supports a variety of modules, including content sliders, contact forms, and pricing tables.

Beaver Builder modules

Once you design templates, Beaver Builder allows you to decide exactly where to display them. This gives you the freedom to set specific location rules for certain layouts.

Beaver Themer layout

What We Liked About Beaver Builder 

  • 30+ drag-and-drop modules
  • Landing page templates for online stores, portfolios, blogs, and more
  • Supports dynamic data like text, media, and code

What We Didn’t Like About Beaver Builder 

  • Not very beginner-friendly
  • Limited theme templates
  • Expensive

Why We Chose Beaver Builder 

Beaver Builder can be a good option if you’re a developer or you want a theme builder that can handle coding edits. Beaver Themer offers more flexibility than other options, but beginners might find it difficult to use. 

5. Divi

Divi theme

Divi by Elegant Themes has become very popular due to its versatility and broad range of features. It’s both a page builder and a theme, allowing you to create virtually any type of WordPress site. 

The Divi builder comes with thousands of pre-made layouts, making the design process easy. You can live preview entire themes and even apply just one page layout if needed.

Divi layouts

You’ll have full control over how your pages look and function. You can add new modules, rearrange them, edit settings, and save reusable modules to your library.

Divi visual editor

What We Liked About Divi 

  • Highly customizable with many design options and settings
  • Many templates and website packs to jumpstart the design process

What We Didn’t Like About Divi 

  • The pricing plans can be slightly over budget for some users
  • Divi is heavier than other theme builders, which could cause performance issues

Why We Chose Divi 

We chose Divi because of the control it gives over every design element. Its range of features, flexibility, and ease of use give it a spot on our list. It has Divi theme templates for businesses, non-profits, and blogs so that anyone can find the right layout for their website. 

6. Visual Composer

Visual Composer website

Visual Composer is an easy-to-use theme builder that works alongside your current WordPress theme. Like other theme builders, it provides a lot of starter templates.

Visual Composer templates

You can add new elements and blocks to truly make your website your own. Visual Composer supports everything from FAQ toggles to raw JavaScript and CSS.

Visual Composer elements

With Visual Composer, you can customize every part of your website. This includes the menus, logos, headers, footers, and sidebars.

What We Liked About Visual Composer 

  • Cloud marketplace with many templates
  • 300+ content elements
  • Enable custom layouts globally

What We Didn’t Like About Visual Composer 

  • The free version of Visual Composer is quite limited
  • Interface is slower than other theme builders

Why We Chose Visual Composer 

Visual Composer’s extensive library of elements and templates made it easy to create a unique and vibrant website. It had the occasional lag, but the overall functionality was impressive enough for Visual Composer to make it on this list.

7. Themify Builder Pro

Themify theme builder

Themify Builder Pro is another WordPress theme builder with drag-and-drop functionality. It allows you to build completely custom WooCommerce pages, 404 pages, headers, footers, and other parts of your site.

Themify editor

Whatever templates you create are automatically associated with your theme. If you decide to switch themes, the same templates will exist, except with a different design. This makes it easy to instantly redesign your site or migrate a new design to your client’s website. 

Themify templates

What We Liked About Themify 

  • WooCommerce templates to avoid hooks/filters, child themes, and custom PHP functions
  • Display conditions
  • Dynamic content
  • Works with any WordPress theme

What We Didn’t Like About Themify 

  • It has a steeper learning curve compared to other theme builders
  • The interface can be a bit clunky at times

Why We Chose Themify 

Because Themify keeps your templates intact through theme switches, it can be a valuable resource for developers or agencies that redesign clients’ websites.

Which Is the Best WordPress Theme Builder?

Now that we’ve given you a run-down of some of the best WordPress theme builders on the market, it’s time to pick a winner. While they all have their own unique pros and cons, we believe that one builder stands head and shoulders above the rest – and that’s SeedProd

SeedProd’s capabilities are truly impressive. Its drag-and-drop editor is beginner-friendly while also offering advanced customization options.

The variety of templates allows you to create professional-looking websites without breaking a sweat. No coding experience required!

Let’s not forget the advanced features like landing pages, opt-in forms, social sharing buttons, and email marketing integrations that can take your website to the next level. SeedProd really shines in delivering a comprehensive all-in-one solution for WordPress site building. 

Alternatives: Brizy, SiteOrigin, and Oxygen are all popular choices for WordPress theme builders. We eliminated them from this list to prevent you from getting choice paralysis. 

FAQs About the Best WordPress Theme Builders

What is the difference between a WordPress theme and a theme builder?

A WordPress theme gives your website its initial look. A WordPress theme builder, however, lets you transform that look into precisely what you want. While a theme is a pre-designed set of styles for your site, a theme builder allows you to take those styles and turn them into your unique creation. 

Think of a WordPress theme as your website’s wardrobe. It’s the overall aesthetic and layout of your site. 

A theme builder is like your magical wardrobe stylist. It allows you to customize, tweak, or completely revamp your WordPress theme.

Unlike themes, which are pretty set in their design, theme builders give you the ability to change and adapt that design to your specific needs and brand. It’s like having your own personal Coco Chanel or Giorgio Armani on hand to help with custom designs! 

Do you need a theme builder for WordPress?

Whether you need a WordPress theme builder entirely depends on your unique needs and objectives. If you’re just getting started and have a simple, basic blog or business website, you might find that a standard theme delivers what you need. But when it comes to customization, personalized branding, and interactive functionality, that’s when the true magic of theme builders shines through. 

One of the main advantages of using a WordPress theme builder is the freedom it provides. Instead of being tied to a pre-set theme, a theme builder lets you modify every element of your website’s design. 

From the header to the footer, and everything in between, you’re in the driver’s seat. This is especially handy if you have a specific vision for your website and cannot find a pre-existing theme that aligns with it. 

Which is better: Elementor or Divi?

Elementor has a user-friendly interface and fully designed website kits, making it suitable for beginners. It has a free version, but some essential features are limited to the premium version. 

Divi is a two-for-one tool: a theme and a page builder plugin. This ensures you can edit every part of your website, including the headers and footers. 

However, there’s no free version to test out Divi before you buy it. The Pro version has some lifetime plans available, which can save you money in the long run. But, you might not want to make a large purchase right away.  

At the end of the day, it boils down to your personal preference and requirements. So, it wouldn’t be right to crown one as the winner. 

What is the best free WordPress theme builder?

Most theme builders aren’t free, but you can use a free page builder to customize your WordPress pages. For example, SeedProd’s free version allows you to create custom maintenance mode and coming soon pages. However, we’d recommend upgrading if you want to edit other parts of your site like headers and footers. 

A truly free WordPress theme builder is the built-in Full Site Editor. It’s not a drag-and-drop builder, but you can use it to design page templates for your website. Like theme builders, the FSE shows you what the page will look like on the front end. 

What’s the difference between a WordPress page builder and a theme builder?

A WordPress page builder focuses on individual page layouts, allowing you to design content easily. On the other hand, a theme builder controls the overall design and structure of your entire site, including headers and footers.

For example, Gutenberg (or the Block Editor) in WordPress is what you use to create new pages and posts. If you want to design the layout of these pages, you’ll need to use the Full Site Editor. 

An easier way to design pages is to install a page builder plugin. Some of the best WordPress page builders are SeedProd, Beaver Builder, Thrive Architect, and Elementor. These provide widgets or modules that you can drag and drop onto a page, easily customizing your content. 

Some of these also replace the FSE, acting as a theme builder. With SeedProd Pro, you can use a visual editor to design templates for blog pages, single posts, archive pages, category pages, and more. 

Conclusion

We hope this guide helped you find the best WordPress theme builder for your needs!

While you’re here, you may like these WordPress tutorials:

Do you want to avoid losing your newly customized theme to crashes and errors? Download Duplicator Pro to start scheduling automatic backups!

author avatar
Joella Dunn Content Writer
Joella is a writer with years of experience in WordPress. At Duplicator, she specializes in site maintenance — from basic backups to large-scale migrations. Her ultimate goal is to make sure your WordPress website is safe and ready for growth.

Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. We only recommend products that we believe will add value to our readers.