Kadence Theme Review 2024 – Is it Worth All the Hype?
Kadence theme is a prevalent theme for WordPress. If you’ve been around the WordPress environment long enough, you will indeed have heard about Kadence. Like the other popular themes, Kadence also has a free version and a premium version. In this post, we’re doing a Kadence theme review and examining whether it’s worth all the hype. We will look at the features, ease of use, pricing, and some other aspects of the theme.
Kadence comes with a lot of different features to help you build the WordPress site you want. Kadence is one of the most popularly used themes on blogs, portfolios, e-commerce, LMS, and many other types of WordPress sites. We will check out the features of Kadence, some starter sites, eCommerce features, integrations, and much more.
In this Kadence WordPress theme review, we will also discuss the pricing and support of the theme. There are many features in the theme some of which we might not explore. But we created a WordPress site using Kadence. This gave us a pretty good idea about the theme. So, here’s our Kadence WordPress theme review.
Kadence Theme Overview
Kadence is a widely used theme on WordPress. With the Kadence theme, it is possible to quickly build a website by importing a starter site and changing the global colors and fonts. There also is a design library that you can use to import various sections to your pages. Kadence has 200,000+ active installations on wordpress.org with 5-star ratings from 180 users (and counting).
Kadence also has a drag-and-drop header and footer builder similar to Blocksy and Astra. Kadence has all the things that you need to build a WordPress site efficiently. Here are some of the steps to create a site effectively:
- Install a theme and import a starter template
- Customize the design with a page builder
- Add more features with plugins or add-ons
- Get support at any time
These steps are included on the Kadence website. If we look at the Kadence theme, it does have all these features included. You can import starter templates, and customize the design using Kadence blocks. Kadence also offers tons of plugins that you can use to add different functionalities to your website. Also if you need support, the premium support of Kadence is always available to you.
The Kadence theme is also optimized to give you better performance. The size of the Kadence theme is 41.9 KB which makes it really fast. The theme is planned, tested, and retested to ensure that you have least accessibility issues. It also has a fast and smooth setup. If you’re importing a starter site, then all you have to do is change the texts, global colors, and font family. That’s all you need to create a website using the Kadence theme.
Kadence Theme Review
In order to make our Kadence theme review as effective as possible, we used Kadence to build a WordPress website. We imported an eCommerce starter site and customized it in order to understand the usability and different features of Kadence. We will check out the advanced header and footer builder, Kadence blocks, starter templates, and much more.
Kadence is also a preferred theme for LearnDash users. If you’re building your LMS site with LearnDash you’ll see that LearnDash recommends using Astra or Kadence. We will check this out later on. But first, let’s start our review by exploring some of the advanced features of the Kadence theme.
Features
Kadence is outfitted with the most advanced features that you’ll need in order to build the perfect WordPress site. From the starter templates to Kadence blocks everything is there to help you build your site as effortlessly as possible. We’re going to take a look at some of these features.
Starter Templates: Kadence has 30+ starter templates in its library. Some of these themes are only available in the pro version but there are many free templates as well. The starter templates are located in the Appearance option on your WordPress dashboard. You can choose which templates will be displayed- free, pro, or both.
Kadence starter templates are primarily built for Gutenberg and Elementor. These two plugins are popular page builders that you can use to edit your WordPress website. You can choose your favorite page builder and the relevant templates will be displayed on the library. Once you like a design, you will be given the option to choose a color scheme and fonts you want to use on that template. It will also tell you what plugins are required to use that template.
There will be 2 import options “Single Page” and “Full Site”. If you just want to import a single page of that demo site you can do that, or you can click on the “Full Site” button to import the whole site. Once you click the button, it will only take a few moments to fully import the starter template.
Clicking on a color palette will immediately change the template’s color. This will allow you to see how your theme will look in that color pattern. The same goes for the fonts. You can change these settings later on but this basic customization is a good approach.
Using a starter template really makes your work a lot easier. You only need to change the texts, and logos, build your custom header and footer, and you’re done! You have a WordPress website ready for the world!
Transparent Header: Transparent headers make a website look a lot more advanced. We are discussing this because some designers use a separate plugin in order to display the transparent header. So if the theme has a transparent header option, this makes our lives a lot easier.
The transparent header can also be customized such as the color of the buttons, dividers, search bar background, etc. We can also choose where we want to display the transparent header. Also, there is an option to use a different logo on the transparent header. So this is a nice option to have. Oh, there’s also a sticky header option if you’re wondering.
Header builder: Kadence also has a drag-and-drop header builder much like Blocsky and Astra. You can click on Appearance > Customize to open up the Theme Customizer. From there you can open up the header builder.
You can grab the available items from the left side and drop those onto any of the 3 rows. This will place the element on your header in real-time. We can also click on these elements to edit those. For example, if we want to change the logo, we can click on the logo element and upload our own logo.
Footer Builder: The footer builder is similar to the header builder. Just like the header builder, you can grab the available items from the left sidebar and place them on your footer builder. The changes will be applied immediately so you can quickly design your footer.
The footer mainly consists of widgets that you can arrange and customize through the footer builder. That’s the primary difference between the header and footer builder. The widgets can be added from the footer builder, or from the WordPress dashboard.
Global design options: Global design options are seen on many popular themes today. This allows you to quickly customize your website. For example, if you want to create a website quickly, you can simply import a starter site, go to the global color options, change the color, customize the global typography settings, set the global button design and you’re done.
This method of customizing websites is very handy if you’re in a rush of creating a WordPress site- and the Kadence theme accommodates you with these features.
Kadence Block: Kadence theme comes with the Kadcence Block which is a Gutenberg block plugin. It adds several Kadence blocks to your existing Gutenberg blocks. So if you have experience building sites with Gutenberg, then you can also use Kadence blocks. It makes your Gutenberg a lot more powerful.
Building sites using Kadence blocks means that your WordPress site will be fully responsive. Also, there’s a design library that consists of various sections you can import to your site. This allows you to quickly build your pages.
There are several Gutenberg themes out there that you can use to build your WordPress sites. A great advantage of using the Gutenberg theme is that your website will be responsive on all devices. Again, Gutenberg is considered to be the future of WordPress, many advanced features such as Full Site Editing are always being introduced to this page builder.
Ease of Use
A theme has to be easy to use. If you’re struggling to install the theme, set up everything, customize, etc. then it will be difficult for you to use. For our Kadence theme review, we wanted to see how’s the installation process, how easy it is to customize our site with Kadence block, and much more. No matter how many features there are, if the theme is difficult to use, you’ll be struggling more than building.
Like all the other themes, you can install Kadence right from your WordPress dashboard. Simply go to Appearance and click on the “Add New” button. Search for Kadence and install and set it as your current theme by clicking on the ‘Activate’ button. Right after you install the theme, you’ll see a notification on your WordPress dashboard about Kadence starter templates.
Kadence theme does a good job of directing the user on what to do after installing the theme. This is a plus in our book.
Let’s talk about the customization menu for a bit. If you go to the theme customization options, you’ll see the typical customization options. However, on some other themes such as Blocksy, there are titles added to the customization menu in order to help the users find what they’re looking for.
But Kadence does have some subtle design changes in the menu that caught our eyes. For example, if you want to access the global color, typography, and button design, all these are placed in one section called ‘Color and Fonts’.
Also if you look at the overall menu, it’s really small compared to other themes. This is a good thing as some themes flood the customization menu with options. The arrangement of the options in Kadence seems much more optimized.
Integrations
We all need more than a theme to create a WordPress site. We need to install different plugins and addons to add different features to our site. So let’s talk about the Kadence theme integrations. For page builders, we’ve already seen Kadence supports Gutenberg and Elementor. But you can use other page builders such as Brizy, Beaver Builder, WPBakery Visual Composei, etc. But the issue with that is, you have to build your site from scratch.
It’s easy to build a website from scratch with Kadence, but you already have access to so many starter templates. Gutenberg and Elementor are two very widely used page builders. But if you’re used to a specific page builder other than those two, you might not be able to use a starter site.
In the case of other plugins, Kadence has a plugin library which is basically bundles consisting of different features and functionalities. For example, the Shop Kit is a bundle for WooCommerce sites. This bundle offers 15 powerful modules to build your eCommerce site. It is a robust WooCommerce extension.
Kadence has good compatibility, so you can also use other plugins. If you want to use forms you can use your favorite WordPress form-building plugin, or you can buy a full bundle that will add the Kadence CAPTCHA plugin. This will allow you to build a comment form, login form, registration form, WooCommerce checkout, and much more.
You can also use third-party plugins if you want, but these bundles are available if you purchase any of the Kadence plans. Kadence also has a full plan that includes all the products.
Support
For every WordPress theme and plugin, there should be a reasonable support team. Support is something that most of us consider unimportant until it’s needed. Then it becomes the most important thing. Because Kadence is popular you can get help from the following methods:
- Blog
- Podcast
- Knowledgebase or Documentation
- Support ticket
- FAQ
The support ticket is only available for premium users as it will allow you to get help from Kadence’s professional support team. You can submit a ticket at any time to get the premium support. You can also post questions on the official support forum on the wordpress.org theme repository. Kadence also has a Facebook group where you can get help from.
Because of Kadence’s popularity, there are several places where you can get support if you’re not a premium user, you can read their blog, documentation, and FAQs, or ask your question on the .org support forum. Because of all these, we can say that Kadence has widespread channels for support.
Price
What kind of Kadence theme review would this be if we didn’t talk about the price. When looking at the price, you might be a little shocked. Although the theme has a free version that includes starter templates and Kadence Blocks, the premium versions, on the other hand, are a bit pricey. Let’s first take a look at the pricing of the Kadence theme.
- Free Forever – Free
- Essential Bundle – $129/first year renews at $149 annually (can be canceled)
- Full Bundle – $199/first year, renews at $219 annually (can be canceled)
There also is a renewal fee for each year which is also high. There also is a Lifetime full bundle that includes all the Kadence products and lifetime support plus updates. The price for the lifetime bundle currently is $699.
If we compare the Kadence theme with Blocksy, we see a huge difference in the price. There isn’t much difference in the features you can say. Kadence is a premium-level WordPress theme but the price is comparatively higher than its alternatives. But the difference really adds value.
Conclusion
So that brings our Kadence theme review to an end. What we’ve seen is that Kadence is a really amazing theme. It offers numerous advanced features for a free theme. It is easy to use and has tons of starter templates for you to work with. The design of the theme is really modern and optimized to give you the best performance.
Also, there are lots of ways to get support from if you’re ever stuck. Of course, if you’re a premium user, you can submit a support ticket and get premium support. The overall customization, usability, features, integrations, etc. make Kadence one of the best themes in the WordPress environment today.
However, compared to other premium themes, Kadence is very pricey. If you’re interested in Kadence, we will say go for it. But before you do, make sure to compare it with other premium themes like Blocksy pro.
So that’s it for today. We hope you liked our Kadence theme review. If you have any questions, let us know, we would love to hear your thoughts.
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