There are literally tens of thousands of WordPress templates out there, both free and paid. Very few stick their head above the crowd. But Avada, from ThemeFusion, is definitely one that does. It is the most sold WordPres theme ever on ThemeForest, and there are many good reasons for that.

I have been using Avada from almost the very start. I think I bought my first copy a few weeks after they launched. I liked the look of it, and I took the plunge. I now use it for virtually all of my sites, including this one. The last time I checked, I think they have sold over 350,000 copies, and it’s still #1 on ThemeForest after 5 years!

Choosing a theme for a new WordPress website is a difficult chore if you are not an experienced WordPress user. It’s hard to know what to try and evaluate. The overall design is important, yet you can (and should be able to) change the design enough to make the site unique anyway, regardless of the theme. No one wants their site to look like the demo site of the template…. More difficult things to evaluate are the back-end tools and admin section and the team behind the product. But these are probably more important than anything else.

What sort of customization options are there, is the admin panel laid out in a user-friendly way? What premium plugins are included? But even more important than this is the support available for the theme , and it’s a very difficult thing to evaluate before you have used it.

Avada absolutely shines in this regard. Made by Theme-Fusion, originally a partnership of an American designer and a Pakistani developer, this company had user support in mind from day one. Many themes get popular and then fall over when their client base is underwhelmed by the support offered. Avada has flourished because the team has both increased and improved the support in sync with the growth of the theme. Apart from the official support ticketing system, there is also the flourishing Avada User Group on Facebook, which currently has over 11,000 members (I am an admin there). In fact, I would go so far as to say that the reason for Avada’s phenomenal success lies almost equally between their great design and functionality, and their carefully considered approach to customer support.

Another thing you have to remember is that Avada is a multi-purpose WordPress theme. There is literally nothing you can’t do with it. But the flipside of this is that it means it’s not a pared back framework like Genesis. It’s designed for WordPress Designers and Consultants, and end users, NOT developers (though I know many developers using it). It’s a kitchen sink of a theme, designed to be able to swing the bat, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bloated mass of code. Quite the opposite. With the latest major release of 5.0, the theme was largely rewritten, and there are many options within the theme to turn off scripts and features you are not using. In the end, the proof of the pudding is load times, and a well configured Avada site loads very fast and scores very well indeed.

Avada review
Avada review

Another revolutionary feature that came with the latest release is the complete redevelopment of the built-in page builder, Fusion Builder. It is now a stand-alone plugin, and will shortly be available for use with any theme. This page builder has revolutionized the way I work and has cut my production time dramatically. It’s simply amazing. And Luke and the team never rest on their laurels. They already have an ambitious list of new features to implement, including adding front-end editing to the Fusion Builder.

But time and time again, I come back to the support and documentation. Not just the official website, and the community forum there, or the unbelievably extensive documentation for Avada itself and also the newly released Fusion Builder documentation. It’s the community around this theme that is truly amazing. I have been a member of the Facebook group from the start (I think I was member #7). I have seen it grow, in just over 5 years from a few keen users to over 15,000 people from around the world, developing a great community around the theme. Even if your official support has expired, there is still help to be had, 24 hours a day.

But really, the best reason to buy Avada is that it is an absolutely awesome theme. You can build ANYTHING with it, and the ecosystem and community around it is simply the best. I cannot recommend it enough! Go Avada!