Are you looking to start your own writing site? Then you need a good WordPress theme that best represents your brand.
In 2023, there are 59,000+ WordPress themes, most of which aren’t useful for writers who want a simple site with a portfolio and a few landing pages.
I have used at least a dozen WordPress themes in the past decade, both free and premium. From this experience, I have learned a lot.
That's why, in this article, I have analyzed the best five WordPress themes for writers who want to create a professional website.
Let’s get started.
What Makes a Great WordPress Theme for Writers?
Design
A great WordPress theme has to have a modern, elegant design. Most specifically, it should adapt to the current design trends, which include:
- Flat design. Objects lack shadows, round corners, and brightness.
- Minimalistic design. The focus is on white space—the space between objects—large photography, dramatic typography, high contrast between objects, and intuitive navigation.
- Asymmetrical shapes. It involves broken shapes which shape the attention to the object in question.
- Big, bold, clear fonts. Typography doesn’t just represent the shape of letters; it represents the identity of a website. Your WordPress theme should have access to Google fonts and other options that you can import on your own.
- Clear visual hierarchy. The visual hierarchy shapes the user experience, prioritizing those objects that the user should focus on (e.g., think of a call-to-action or a menu).
An amazing WordPress theme doesn’t have to meet all of these design criteria as they are intertwined. Flat designs are minimalistic by nature; they allow for a better visual hierarchy, and so on.
Still, the WordPress themes I will show you all have modern designs that will convey a professional look to your freelance writing business.
Speed
After your blog hosting, your theme is the next element that defines the speed of your website. Your WordPress theme has to be fast to load; it has to be optimized for speed by default.
What defines the speed of a theme is the quality of its code. I won’t get into the details of it, but the simpler the website and the code that builds it, the faster a theme will load.
To measure this factor, I ran each demo site in Pingdom’s speed testing tool from their Washington DC’s servers. They provided better results than the servers from Asia and Europe.
In my analysis, I will ignore the overall scoring; instead, I will focus on its load speed and page size. I have also checked whether each theme developer shared any performance indicators.
Templates
A great WordPress theme should provide you with everything you need without installing any plugins or doing any custom work. That’s why you want to buy a WordPress theme with templates that adapt to your writing business.
These templates are pre-designed layouts for different pages, including:
- Home page.
- About page.
- Blog page (i.e., where you present your latest posts).
- Blog post layouts (i.e., the number of columns a page has).
- Blog post formats (e.g., for written content, for audio, etc.).
- Contact pages.
- Landing pages.
- Portfolio pages.
The more of these templates you have, the faster you will be able to set up your writing website and put your online presence in place.
Customizable
Your WordPress theme should look unique; it should adapt to your brand and business. Relying on templates alone will mean your website will look like thousands of others who use them too.
A WordPress theme should offer many easy-to-use customization options. You shouldn’t rely on a developer to customize your writing website. You shouldn’t need to do any extensive HTML, CSS, or PHP manipulation, either.
Ideally, it should include a page builder. At a minimum, it should offer widgets and shortcodes that save you money and time on plugins and coding.
Reviews
You want to do your due diligence before you buy your theme. The best way to do so is by purchasing a WordPress theme with consistently positive reviews. You want to read both the positive and negative reviews to see what patterns arise.
We will use Trustpilot and ThemeForest reviews (ThemeForest is the most popular platform for WordPress themes).
Price
Last but not least, the theme has to be cost-efficient. Most WordPress themes cost anywhere between $30 to $150, depending on their complexity.
Those themes that come with extensive features, like a page builder and multiple templates, will be more expensive than simpler ones.
While an investment over $100 may be prohibitive for some, remember that it becomes amortized as you use it.
- If you plan on using a theme for two years, which is a pretty conservative measure, you will be paying $4 per month.
- If you use it for four years, it will cost $2 per month.
The more you use it, the less you will pay. So forget about the price and focus on its benefits.
If you still have no budget, in the end, I will show three free WordPress themes you can use in your writing site. These are basic but acceptable.
Is WordPress Good for Writers?
WordPress is the most popular CMS—content management system—on the web. Hundreds of millions of websites use it because it’s free, easy to install, and relatively easy to use.
As a freelance writer, you need a website that represents your brand and showcases your business. You can avoid relying on freelance marketplaces like Upwork and sell directly to customers.
The only viable option you have right now to create a website is with WordPress. Other website builders like Squarespace or Wix are other great options. But for a beginner, WordPress is the best option to start a writing website.
Best WordPress Themes for Writers
Authority Pro by StudioPress
Authority Pro is a WordPress theme built for professionals. Its design is modern and offers enough features that allow you to launch your website in a matter of days—if not hours.
The developer, StudioPress, is one of the largest companies in the WordPress theme industry. Currently owned by hosting giant WPEngine, StudioPress provides a positive balance between usability and price for freelance writers.
- Design: ⭐️ 5
- Speed: ⭐️ 5
- Templates: ⭐️ 3
- Customization: ⭐️ 2.5
- Reviews: ⭐️ 5
- Price: $129.95
Design
Authority Pro has a clean, minimalist design with asymmetrical and flat elements. It uses lots of negative space, emphasizing the visual elements and typography.
What makes this design so useful, especially its homepage, is its focus on conversions. There are many options to add static opt-in forms, either with buttons (CTAs) or sign-up forms. If you want to generate leads, then you will love AuthorityPro.
Overall, the design is simple but modern. Its strong focus on conversions puts it above many themes that emphasize design alone.
Speed
Authority Pro boasts one of the best performances from this list, with a loading time under 400 microseconds and a page size below one megabyte.
I can imagine a big part of its performance is due to its lack of features, unlike its competitors, and its efficient coding. If speed is a priority, then Authority Pro is a fantastic choice.
Templates
Authority Pro comes with several template pages, including:
- Author page.
- Blog page.
- Category page.
- Contact page.
- Landing page.
- Pricing table.
- Post page.
Compared to its competitors, these pages look simple, even disappointing. But for a writer who wants to put their content above else, this is a blessing in disguise.
Sadly, Authority Pro doesn’t come with a portfolio template, which is a bit of a bummer. But if you follow the advice I laid out in my writing portfolio guide, you can easily overcome this issue.
For this category, Authority Pro underperforms, especially if you check its competitors below.
Customizable
Authority Pro comes with a theme customizer that allows you to alter:
- The colors.
- The banner.
- The hero section.
- The site layout (add or remove columns).
AuthorityPro comes with the option to add static opt-in forms in:
- The homepage.
- The category page.
- The blog posts.
- The footer.
You also get access to a few shortcodes, like:
- Content boxes.
- Buttons.
- Quotes and testimonials.
The customization options are standard, nothing to rave about. If you are looking to create a website that’s unique to you, then AuthorityPro isn’t ideal. The other themes allow for a complete overhaul of their designs, which this one doesn’t.
But if you are like me and you tend to overspend your time creating “the perfect” theme for you, AuthorityPro’s limitations become a blessing in disguise. You can’t do much with it, forcing you to put your energies in writing persuasive copy that commands your visitors’ attention.
If you are just getting started in your freelance writing career, then AuthorityPro’s limited customization options will fit perfectly. As the saying goes, “done is better than perfect.”
Or, as I would say here, “a writing website done today is better than a perfect one done in three months.”
Reviews
I couldn’t find any reviews on Trustpilot or any other reviews site. While this can be worrisome, StudioPress has a reputation that precedes itself. They have been for over ten years and work under one of the largest WordPress hosting server companies.
If you Google for other reviews, you will not be disappointed to see they are mostly positive. And as a former user, I can also tell you that their theme is among the best.
Price
AuthorityPro isn’t a theme on its own, but one that belongs to a framework called Genesis. When you buy AuthorityPro, you get both the theme and the framework.
For a one-time fee of $129.95, you get:
- The AuthorityPro theme.
- The Genesis framework package.
- Unlimited updates.
- Unlimited usage (i.e., you can install it in as many sites as you want).
- One year customer support.
- Access to its extensive documentation.
Other Great Themes from StudioPress
StudioPress has many great themes you may want to check out along with Authority Pro. They offer similar features, design, and speed performance. While their layout isn’t as modern or appealing as Authority Pro, they are still great options to consider.
- Digital Pro Theme: I used to use it. It has a clean design, although it’s not as elegant as Authority Pro. Check it out here.
- Breakthrough Pro: It has a minimal design in a sleek, modern layout. It gears towards marketing agencies. Great portfolio page. Check it out here.
- Maker Pro: Lots of white space. Great fonts. Flat design. It has three template page. Great portfolio page. It’s a third-party theme, not made by StudioPress. Check it out here.
Get StudioPress Themes for Free
If I told you could get unlimited StudioPress themes for free, would you believe me? Well, you should, because if you sign up for a Flywheel plan, you get the Genesis Framework and 35+ StudioPress Themes for free. That’s over $2,000 in value.
All you need to do is sign up for Flywheel’s tiny plan for $15 per month, and you will get all of StudioPress’ themes for free.
Divi Theme Builder by Elegant Themes
Divi is a theme builder developed by Elegant Themes, another big player in the WordPress theme industry. Unlike its competitors, Divi isn’t a theme, but a theme builder. With a theme builder, you can make your own themes from scratch with the help of a visual editor—no need for coding.
Even if you don’t know how you want your writing website to look, you can use its many premade layouts. With over 701,600 customers, Elegant Themes offers one of the best products in the website design market.
- Design: ⭐️ 5
- Speed: ⭐️ 5
- Templates: ⭐️ 5
- Customization: ⭐️ 5
- Reviews: ⭐️ 5
- Price: $89 (yearly) or $249 (one-time)
Design
Divi states that they offer over 1,300 pre-made designs—which they call “layouts”—and over 170 website packs, which work as collections of layouts designed for specific purposes.
Since Divi is a theme builder and not a theme, your design options are almost limitless. You can play around as much as you want and come up with a unique theme for your brand. What's more, their premade layouts have modern, sleek designs.
Fortunately, Divi has three templates perfect for writers who want to build a professional website.
Copywriter Layout
Freelance Writer Layout
Web Freelancer Layout
Speed
Since there’s no one-size-fits-all Divi theme, it’s hard to measure its speed reliably. As a reference, I have found an analysis from WP Rocket, which found that a basic Divi theme loads in under 2 seconds. While this performance is far from incredible, it’s acceptable.
You can expect to cut these times if you use a fast blog hosting service and optimize the speed properly. Also, the fewer blocks you add, the quicker it should load.
Templates
Divi calls their template pages “layouts.” Even though there are 1,300+ layouts available, most belong to a few types of pages, including:
- Home page.
- About page.
- Blog page.
- Contact page.
- Landing page.
- Portfolio page.
- Pricing page.
- Service page.
Besides the layouts offered, there are no standard “templates;” you can build your own with Divi’s Dynamic Content drag-and-drop system. Let me repeat this: there's no coding needed to add and change your theme, except for highly specific HTML and CSS changes.
Customizable
Divi offers an unlimited amount of options for customization. Among the dozens of options available, you have:
- Hover effects, which let you alter the hover effects of your links.
- Filters and effects, which allow you to change and improve the look of any element using filters and effects, like hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, invert, blur, opacity, and sepia.
- Animations, which help you add animations using Divi’s animation presets or build your own by altering the animation type, speed, and direction.
You also get over 40+ modules, including:
- CTAs.
- Sliders.
- Testimonials.
- Galleries.
- Forms.
As a customer of Divi, the options can overwhelm you; be careful. Use the layouts from the list above and customize them as you want, but avoid getting bogged down into details that make no ultimate difference in your design.
Remember: it's better a website done today than one in three months.
Reviews
Elegant Themes has incredible reviews in Trustpilot, with a rating of 5 out of 5 stars out of 8,400 reviews.
97% of reviews consider their product as “Excellent,” with 2% find it “Great.” This is a fantastic performance unparalleled to anything I have ever seen in this industry.
Price
Divi is one of the most popular theme builders in the WordPress market, and for a reason. With the number of layouts available, the customization options, and the design, Divi is the perfect option for any writer who wants a uniquely-designed theme without incurring the costs of a professional developer.
For a yearly fee of $89, or $249 one-time, you get:
- Access to Divi theme builder, and their plugins Extra (magazine theme), Bloom (email opt-in), and Monarch (social sharing).
- Over 1,300 layouts that adapt to almost any need.
- Unlimited product updates.
- 24/7 support.
- Unlimited website usage.
- 30-day risk-free guarantee.
Salient by ThemeNectar
Salient by ThemeNectar is a “multipurpose theme,” which means it has several layouts, templates, and features that you can use to create a unique theme from scratch.
While the company behind it isn’t as well-known as StudioPress or Elegant Themes, they currently have one of the most popular themes in ThemeForest, the largest WordPress themes marketplaces.
Created in March of 2013, Salient is an adaptation of WPbakery’s Page Builder plugin with a new interface design. This means that you get a wide range of designs that adapt to the need of almost anyone, including freelance writers.
Design
Salient overall aesthetic is modern, with a wide variety of fonts, layouts, and visual hierarchies. Salient comes with pre-built websites, some of which are perfect for a writer. All of its themes are retina ready and responsive for mobile.
Here’s a shortlist of the best WordPress themes for freelance writers:
Corporate Theme
Agency Theme
One-Page Business Theme
If you like any of these themes or some of the other ones the company offers, you can easily import them in a few clicks.
Speed
Salient performs moderately well, with a load time of 1.14 seconds despite a page size of 6.5 megabytes.
The company states that its performance is among the best in ThemeForest, with a GTMetrix PageSpeed score of A.
In the report, the load time is the same as the one I found previously, but their page size is reduced to 1.16 Mb.
It seems that Salient load time is quite fast. Their page size is something to consider—some of the pages felt a bit slow when I used them, which may be due to the number of images, animations, and blocks.
Templates
The company boasts of offering over 330 professional templates that can be split up into 15 filterable categories. These categories include:
- Blog page.
- Call-to-actions.
- Hero section.
- Pricing page.
- Services page.
I have checked some of these templates, and they all look great. With a few clicks, you can import any of these templates to your site and start using them immediately.
Customizable
As I mentioned before, Salient is a customized version of WPBakery’s page builder, which means you can customize your pages as much as you want. You have over 55 elements that you can use to personalize your templates.
salient elements image
With these elements, you can customize:
- Your blog pages, using full-width, one-column, or two-column sidebars.
- Your blog post layouts, which include the “classic”, “fullscreen", and “minimal” designs.
- Your portfolio pages, which includes seven styles with unlimited layouts for each one.
Reviews
In ThemeForest, Salient has an average score of 4.80 out of 5 stars based on 5835 ratings. A large number of reviews with a high score explains why Salient is one of the most popular themes in the marketplace.
Price
Salient is one of the most widely sold themes in ThemeForest. Its wide range of options, modern design, moderately good speed performance, and customizations have made it the choice for thousands of sites.
For a one-time fee of $60, you get:
- Access to Salient multipurpose theme.
- Future updates.
- Six months-worth of support from Theme Nectar.
- Theme hosting offer.
- (Optional) A discounted 12-months support extension for $18.
- Design: ⭐️ 5
- Speed: ⭐️ 4.5
- Templates: ⭐️ 5
- Customization: ⭐️ 5
- Reviews: ⭐️ 5
- Price: $60
Billey by ThemeMove
Billey is another highly popular WordPress theme by ThemeMove. Despite having less than a year since its launch, it has garnered over 540 sales. It has even won an honorable mention in the awwwards competition, a prestigious online web design competition.
According to the company, they created Billey for “creators, creative agents and creative of all industries and forms: designers, artists, stylists, freelancers, photographers, engineers, writers, etc.” A truly multipurpose theme, indeed.
- Design: ⭐️ 5
- Speed: ⭐️ 3
- Templates: ⭐️ 4.5
- Customization: ⭐️ 5
- Reviews: ⭐️ 4.5
- Price: $59
Design
As the newest theme on this list, ThemeMove applied the latest design trends that emphasize typography, bright colors, white space, and flat elements. This gives Billey a modern, sleek look; in my opinion, the best from this list.
From the 20+ pre-made themes Billey offers, you can pick some of the following, which are the most relevant for a writer:
Freelance Designer
Digital Agency
Business
Speed
Billey has one of the worst performances of this article. According to Pingdom, Billey’s load time is 2.31 seconds, with a page size of 4.7 megabytes.
Billey’s mediocre performance may be caused because it's new. Many times, companies prioritize launching a theme over speed and code efficiency (i.e., lack of bugs).
Also, Billey’s demo page—the one I used to analyze its speed—has many elements in place as the company showcases everything the theme has to offer. I can assume that if you took out some of these massive blocks, the theme would get much smaller in size, and at the same time, increase its load time.
Templates
As I said before, Billey offers over 20 premade website templates, many of which are perfect for creatives.
Billey also offers 26 portfolio layouts. All of these layouts are heavy on images, so if you want to showcase your writing clients, you may have to use the client’s logo or featured image.
Billey comes with nine blog layouts, nine showcases, and five post formats, all of which look professional.
While the company doesn’t say it publicly, I also found it offers:
- Three “About Us” page templates.
- Three “Contact Us” page templates.
- Three “Service” page templates.
Overall, Billey has a lot of useful templates. While they are not as numerous as its competitors, I found Billey’s templates to be the cleanest of all. Unlike its competitors, these templates look like they wouldn’t require much work to have them published—a big time saver.
Customizable
Billey offers over 85 custom widgets and shortcodes, including:
- Buttons.
- Counters.
- CTAs.
- Progress Bars.
- Testimonials.
All of these elements look clean and useful, perfect for anyone who wants to customize a website.
Reviews
ThemeMove has found one review in Trustpilot, which is not favorable. But this is far from statistically significant, so I can’t use it.
In ThemeForest, Billey fares an average of 5 stars out of 13 reviews, another unreliable measurement. The lack of reviews can only be explained by the fact it has been recently launched.
Price
Billey is the newest theme on this list, so it’s hard to tell whether it’s as good as it seems or if it’s just a mirage. Right now, the theme looks promising. Its design is the best from this list, and the templates look on-point. Since it integrates with Elementor’s page builder, you can customize Billey as much as you want with little effort.
For a one-time fee of $59, you get:
- Future updates.
- Six months-worth of support from Theme Nectar.
- A theme hosting offer by ThemeForest.
- An optional 12-months customer support extension for $17.63.
Bridge by QODE
Bridge is a multipurpose WordPress theme that adapts to the needs of every type of freelancer. Launched in April 2014 by QODE, the theme has generated 143,000 sales, making it one of the most widely sold in ThemeForest.
- Design: ⭐️ 4.5
- Speed: ⭐️ 1.5
- Templates: ⭐️ 4
- Customization: ⭐️ 5
- Reviews: ⭐️ 5
- Price: $59
Design
As the company states, “Bridge is here if you need a superb website for your hotel, travel tour, church, wedding, shop, SEO digital marketing agency, or if you are into photography, architecture, fashion, design, organic food, music or offer any type of service out there.”
So it seems the company targets Bridge to anyone. I can’t speak for the other verticals they mention, but for a writer, their design is modern, featuring all the elements described previously (i.e., minimalism, flat elements).
From the 500+ demos Bridge has to offer, some of their best ones for freelance writers are:
SEO Agency
Consultant
vCard
Speed
Bridge showed another mediocre performance, with a loading time of 3.56 seconds and a page size of 4.3 megabytes.
To repeat what I said with Billey, the bad performance may be due to having a demo page filled with heavy content blocks.
A speed test for their SEO agency theme also fared poorly, with a loading time of 2.64 seconds and a page size of 2.8 megabytes—still, a mediocre result, one of the worst from this list.
Templates
Bridge offers 24 layout concepts, which range from standard site layouts to authentic and innovative designs.
Among its portfolio pages, you have seven different portfolio single layouts and seven different portfolio list layouts. These portfolio pages are ideal for designers and photographers. For a freelance writer, you have a few options available.
Bridge also offers an extensive collection of blog layouts. Their designs are clean and elegant, but nothing to rave about.
All in all, Bridge has a good number of templates to offer, but not as impressive as the other themes.
Customizable
The best part of Bridge is that it offers more than 115 practical and unique shortcodes, some of which include:
- Banners.
- Buttons
- CTAs.
- Sliders.
- Testimonials.
You can customize almost everything, like the header, the animation styles, the colors, the menu, the footer, and more.
In this section, Bridge performs in par with its competitors.
Reviews
Bridge has received a review rating of 4.78 out of 5 stars, from over 6,100 reviews. This score speaks of the quality of Bridge’s theme. It also explains why Bridge has become one of the best-selling, most popular themes in ThemeForest.
Price
Bridge is an appealing option that includes everything you would need in your freelance writing website. The templates and customization options are extensive and beautiful. If you are willing to overlook this issue, then Bridge is a wonderful theme to buy.
For a one-time fee of $59, you also get:
- Future updates.
- Six months-worth of support from Theme Nectar.
- An optional 12-months customer support extension for $17.63.
Best Free WordPress Themes for Writers
If you want to launch a simple business-friendly website for your freelance writing services but have no budget to buy a WordPress theme, then there’s one thing you can do.
You can use a free WordPress theme.
Fortunately, I got you covered. Here are the best free WordPress themes for writers in 2023, which will help you create your writing website and save money in the process.
While I think the next themes look great, I can’t guarantee they work equally well.
I believe spending a few dollars on getting a professionally-made theme is the way to go. These themes lack most of the advanced—and I’d say, necessary—features the premium themes have, so use them at your own peril.
Author by Ben Sibley
According to its developer, the Author theme was “designed for publishers who want readers.” With over 5,000 installs, Author is an excellent option to consider with:
- A fast, responsive, readability-friendly design.
- Scripts and stylesheets optimized for performance.
- A simple yet modern web design.
OceanWP by OceanWP
OceanWP is a popular theme developer that offers both premium and free themes. With over 600,000 installs and a rating of 5 out of 5 stars from almost 4,000 users, OceanWP is a great free WordPress theme. According to the developer, OceanWP is:
- Lightweight, fast, and responsive.
- Translation ready.
- Optimized for SEO.
- Compatible with the most popular page builders as Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi, and more.
The two best templates you want to consider are the Architect theme and the Coach theme.
Twenty Twenty by WordPress
Last but not least, you have the standard theme WordPress pre-installs to all its users. With over one million installs and a score of 4.5 out of 5 stars, Twenty Twenty is an option that any freelance writer can use. You don’t have to install any theme, and it can be customized to fit the needs of a freelance writer.
I just need to warn you: this theme is everywhere. For this reason, it will be hard for your business to stand out from the crowd. I’d consider this theme as the last resort option or to test your copy skills before you buy a premium theme.
5 Best WordPress Themes for Writers Compared
| Theme | Price | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Authority Pro Theme | $129.95 | ⭐️ 4.5 |
| Elegant Themes | $89 (yearly) or $249 (one-time) | ⭐️ 5 |
| Salient | $60 | ⭐️ 4 |
| Billey | $69 | ⭐️ 4 |
| Bridge | $69 | ⭐️ 3.5 |
Get Your Writing WordPress Theme
With all this said, it’s time to summarize everything said here.
The best WordPress theme for a writer is Divi Theme Builder from ElegantThemes. Divi has become one of the leading WordPress theme builders due to its quality and performance. Their theme builder is intuitive and offers a lot of room for customization. Their premade layouts have perfect options for writers who want to create a modern, professional website.
The closest second is AuthorityPro from StudioPress. Authority Pro represents a great starting point for any freelance writer who wants to get started quickly without overlooking their brand appeal. StudioPress is one of the leading companies in the industry, and their product quality precedes them. Compared to its competitors, however, AuthorityPro looks a bit too simplistic. If you want a simple, professionally-looking website, then AuthorityPro is your choice.
In the third position, we have Salient from ThemeNectar. Salient is one of the top WordPress themes in ThemeForest, thanks to its extensive library of templates and customization options. Salient offers many options for writers who want to create an optimal website for their freelance business.
In fourth place, we have Billey from ThemeMove. Qode is a newcomer in the industry with one of the most visually attractive designs in this list. Their features put it on the same level as its competitors. Since it’s less than a year old, there may be problems still to be seen. However, their design is the most modern from this list, so if you are willing to take the risk, Qode is a fantastic theme to buy.
Finally, we have Bridge from QODE. Their theme is as beautiful as its competitors, filled with useful features. If you are willing to disregard its potential speed issues, or if you are eager to optimize your site’s speed, then Bridge is a wonderful theme to buy.
Writing this article taught me a lot about WordPress themes and design in general. I hope you have learned a lot on the way.
Do you have any questions? I’d love to know your doubts in the comments below.
