Kadence Theme Review

UPDATE March 2021: Update on the Kadence theme being sold to iThemes. I personally think ithemes is a reputable company that has proven themselves to have great wordpress products and to be trusted. I do see the kadence theme having a brighter future with the team at ithemes. Good luck to them.

The Kadence theme is a lightweight WordPress theme focused on ease of use and fast loading times. The theme also works with Gutenberg and Elementor which means you can create any type of website without having to learn code. 

The Kadence theme also offers extensive customization options and it integrates with WooCommerce so you can use it to create an online store. It touts itself as the most powerful WordPress theme on the market. But how good is the Kadence theme really? That’s precisely what we’re going to be exploring here today in this full Kadence theme review. 

1. Kadence Theme Ease of Use – 3/5

To kick things off, we’ll go through the theme installation and setup process to see how easy it is to use the theme. 

Theme Installation

To install the Kadence theme onto your website, login to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Appearance > Themes. Click Add new and search for Kadence. Then, press Install and wait for the installation to complete. Once the theme has been installed, click Activate. 

Theme Setup

After you activate the theme, you’ll see a notice in your dashboard that Starter templates are available. Clicking the Install Kadence Starter Templates button will start the installation process for premade templates. 

You’ll have to choose between Gutenberg and Elementor and then you’ll be able to see all the premade templates that will work with your chosen plugin. 

Clicking the template allows you to preview it and from there, you can do some minor customizations before importing the template. This includes changing the color scheme and the fonts used in the template. 

Once you’re happy with how your chosen Starter Site looks, you can import it onto your site. You have two options: importing a single page or importing a full site. To import your design, click the Start Importing button and wait for the process to finish. 

Two things worth mentioning here are that additional plugins might be installed during the import process and importing a full site will override any customizations you’ve previously made on your website. The options at time may be confusing, so you will need to mess with the theme customizer options. 

Once the import is complete, you can view your site and customize it to your liking. 

It’s worth mentioning that importing a starter site is not necessary as the Kadence theme will work fine without it. However, if you’re in a hurry and want to speed up your website design process, importing a starter site is recommended. 

2. Features – 4/5

Now that we’ve covered the installation process, let’s talk about the core features of the Kadence theme. 

Customization Options

When it comes to customization options, the Kadence theme doesn’t disappoint. It offers a plethora of styling options for every aspect of your website which is not often found in free themes. 

You can customize general settings like the layout, colors, and fonts used throughout your website. But the Customizer also offers options for styling your header, footer, blog posts, and even WooCommerce products. 

Keep in mind that additional customization options are available if you’re using Elementor with the Kadence theme as Elementor offers its own style settings for each element on the page. 

Starter Templates

Even though the Kadence theme offers starter sites, this is one area where it falls short when compared to other themes. For starters, it only offers templates for Gutenberg and Elementor which means you won’t benefit from them if you’re using a different page builder plugin like Beaver Builder or Brizy. 

Secondly, the number of templates is very limited. Currently, 4 templates are available for Elementor while there are 8 templates for Gutenberg. You’ll need to make sure you’re installing the correct starter site for your page builder if you decide to use them. 

The starter sites feature a modern and clean design and as mentioned earlier, you can even do some basic customization before importing the template. This allows you to see how the template would look with your choice of colors and fonts. It’s worth mentioning that you can change the styles later on so you’re not stuck with a premade color scheme and font combination. 

Page Builder Integration

Out of the box, the Kadence theme offers premade starter sites for Gutenberg and Elementor. Despite that, it can be used with other page builder plugins such as Brizy and Beaver Builder. The only difference is that if you’re using one of those page builders, you’ll need to create your website from scratch. 

On the upside, building a website with Kadence is fairly straightforward so even creating everything from scratch shouldn’t be too difficult. Just something to keep in mind if you’re looking for a theme that has a large collection of ready-made starter sites to work with.  

WooCommerce Integration

When it comes to WooCommerce integration, the Kadence theme doesn’t offer any extra features such as Ajax Add to Cart on the free version. This feature, along with other eCommerce features such as side cart or custom shop page, are available with the Premium version of the theme. 

Even so, the free version of the Kadence theme offers plenty of customization options for your product pages. You can customize the layout for single product pages as well as store notice, product catalog, product images, and more. 

You can even customize the checkout page and the account page both in terms of settings and design. 

Header And Footer Builder

The Kadence theme comes with an easy to use header builder. You can create a custom layout for the header of your site using drag and drop editor and several different header elements. 

The Kadence theme makes it easy to customize the header for desktop and mobile devices. 

Currently, you can add 8 different elements to the header on the free version of the Kadence theme. These include logo, primary and secondary navigation, button, search bar, cart icon, social links, and HTML. The premium version of the Kadence theme includes 19 additional header elements such as accordion, contact elements, extra buttons, and more. 

Other header options include the ability to set the header to be sticky (ie. always visible, no matter how far down a visitor scrolls) as well as set it to be transparent. 

As far as the footer options go, you have six different widget areas to play around with. You can add any widget into those areas as well as your social links and a custom copyright notice. 

The Kadence theme also supports footer navigation so you can easily add less important pages to your footer instead of cluttering up the main navigation. This is especially useful for linking to your site’s policies, disclaimers, and other similar pages. 

Other Notable Features

 In addition to the features listed above, the Kadence theme offers the following features: 

• Accessibility-Ready — coded with the latest accessibility standards in mind and has the needed markup that makes your site accessible to screen readers.
• SEO-Friendly Code — built with the best SEO practices in mind to help you rank better in search engines.
• Fast Loading Times — lightweight and optimized to load fast to improve user experience.
• Built-in Social Links — you can display your social links in the header or the footer and build an engaged following.
• Scroll To Top Button — make it easy for your visitors to return to the top of the page without scrolling.
• Multiple Widget Areas — sidebar and footer widget areas to add various widgets and engage your website visitors.
• Support for LMS plugins — the Kadence theme integrates with plugins such as LearnDash, LifterLMS, and Tutor LMS

3. Reliability – 4/5

The Kadence theme has more than 20,000 active installations on the official repository and features 5-star ratings. In terms of features and design, you can create a good-looking website fairly quickly thanks to the Starter templates.

You can use the Kadence theme to create any type of website, from business websites to yoga or course websites. The customization options are surprisingly thorough for a free theme and you can customize every aspect of your site to your liking. 

Even without the starter templates, you can create a website fairly quickly with Kadence but if you want to save even more time, a starter site is the way to go. 

One of the most important features of the Kadence theme is that it loads fast and is very lightweight. This is crucial nowadays when site speed is used as one of the ranking factors by search engines like Google. 

Considering that the Kadence theme places a great importance on loading times and ease of use and the fact that it offers extensive customization options, it’s a reliable theme that works well with Elementor and Gutenberg. 

4. Support – 4/5

When it comes to support, you have several options. For starters, you can browse and post your question in the official support forums on the WordPress.org Theme Repository. 

The official website for Kadence has a thorough documentation that walks you through the process of installing, setting up, and working with the theme. 

If you’ve bought the Premium version, you can submit a ticket 24/7 via their ticketing system. Lastly, the Kadence theme also has a Facebook group where you can meet and network with other users as well as post your questions and participate in conversations.

5. Pricing – 1/5 ( Overpriced)

The premium version of the theme includes the ability to add header and footer scripts into the theme, new options for WooCommerce stores, mega menus, extra header addons, and more. There are two plans to choose from:

• Kadence Pro — The Pro plan allows you to install the theme on an unlimited number of websites and includes a year of support and updates if you choose the yearly plan for $136. There’s also a lifetime plan which is available for $269.
• Kadence Full Membership — this plan includes every feature mentioned above as well as access to a few additional plugins such as Kadence AMP, Kadence Blocks, and access to all the company’s current and future themes and plugins. This plan costs $169/year and allows you to install the theme on an unlimited number of websites and a year of support and updates. A lifetime membership plan is available for $599. 

Final Thoughts – 4/5

Overall, the Kadence theme offers a decent set of features for a free theme. It’s easy to use and has a clean, modern design. You can customize colors, fonts, and every other aspect of your website and get it to look exactly the way you want. 

However, there is a noticeable overlap in the features between the Kadence theme and various other wordpress themes. There may be some instances on where Kadence could be the better alternative, but for the price we think you can find a much better deal elsewhere.

Having said that, if you use either Gutenberg or Elementor, the Kadence theme can be a good choice if you’re looking for an easy to use theme with decent loading times,  customization options, and support for WooCommerce.