15 Market Leaders of Premium WordPress, Joomla and Drupal Themes

by CMS, Drupal, Joomla, Templates, Web Design, Wordpress

Thanks to the active opensource CMS community, especially the big three (WordPress, Joomla and Drupal) website development cost has dwindled down to affordable levels. The more you understand how to use a CMS the better you can control development cost and best make use of your site to promote your products or services.

For people like me who has close to zero code nor design skills the most important thing when creating a new site is to get content published very quickly, it should look professional and also be very usable for visitors. Because I’d rather want to spend time on content and website optimization and not on learning advanced coding.

If customization is not of top priority for you, just search for the innumerable free templates for your content platform and you can have a site up and running ridiculously cheap. But for owners who don’t really want to have their site look very like thousands of others they are looking for a professional looking template and then have someone tweak around until it fits their requirements.

Below is a list of 15 players in the theming industry that I personally can vouch for as they offer unique products and services. Basically there are three types of businesses that offer ready made CMS themes. Either you buy single themes on markets or from shops, or you can join a theme club and get full access to all designs on offer. Then if you need some grade of customization you will contact a web studio or a freelance developer to get your design tailored to your needs.

Theme Markets

Generally these markets function as places where lots of designers showcase their collection of themes that can be purchased one on one. They are popular for the sheer endless amount of stand-alone-themes you can choose from, though quality is really of varying levels.
Professional support and bug fixing is not provided by the market owner. The creator of the template himself is responsible for upport and in most cases speed and availability is limited if you report a problem. Some quality theme markets you should know (ordered by Alexa):

ThemeForest


A well respected bazaar, where only high class work can be uploaded as TF has very upper-market conditions in terms of quality standards. Known for having very unique themes for WordPress and Joomla created by thousands of talented designers.
ThemeForest →

TemplateMonster


The oldest and biggest market place if we compare quantity of themes on offer and traffic numbers. Besides themes for CMS you can purchase loads of templates for other uses.
TemplateMonster →

Mojo-Themes


A great alternative place to buy and sell not only WordPress themes but also for Tumblr, a very popular blogging platform.
Mojo-Themes →

ThemeGarden


A relatively new spot in the market area. They are right now only offering WordPress themes, but this could change quickly once more buzz has been created.
ThemeGarden →

Theme Shops

These providers develop themes and frameworks and sell only their products, either as single item or offer a flat fee for accessing the complete collection. These shops are pros in terms of design standards.
As theme shops are professional developers they offer more dedicated support than the one-man-designer. Also there are real good tutorials for customers to get more out of the product. Some prominent theme shops you should know (ordered by Alexa):

Studiopress


Creator of the Genesis Framework, a really versatile and popular framework. Only selling themes for WordPress.
Studiopress →

DIYthemes


Creator of Thesis theme framework, that provides a sophisticated UI to build your own WordPress themes with drag and drop and little configuration. Really easy to use without coding.
DIYthemes →

JoomlaShack


Selling great templates for Joomla, Drupal and WordPress. Very popular for the service JoomlaShack University “the #1 source for online Joomla training!”


JoomlaShack →

GorillaThemes


These guys shine with the perhaps best Real Estate/MLS/Residential theme solutions for WordPress anyone can find. Great looking and ready to go.
GorillaThemes →

FusionDrupalThemes


FusionDrupalThemes →

Theme Clubs

If you are power user or a little advanced with CMS you really want to join so called theme clubs.
On template clubs it is not intended that you buy a single template. You subscribe to a yearly membership plan and gain access to all club themes, often bundled with custom written extensions. They focus on creating high quality prototype templates and frameworks that are turnkey solutions with lots of functionality and options.

If it comes to support, professional clubs provide much better and faster service as on the other places. Within 24 hours or even 12 hours after opening a support ticket, common problems are normally solved already. All themes have extensive documentation and tutorials. Some prominent theme clubs you should know (ordered by Alexa):

WooThemes


Great modern designs for WordPress and Drupal CMS serving lots of different purposes. You can purchase one theme like in shops or join membership if you want to use more than only one theme.
WooThemes →

ElegantThemes


This site lives up to it’s name, providing eye-catching themes with simplicity and elegance in mind.
ElegantThemes →

RocketTheme


One of the oldest and most respected theme clubs offering over 130 Joomla, WordPress and Drupal templates, highly functional extensions and a very active forum.
RocketTheme →

JoomlArt


Creators of T3, one of the most downloaded frameworks ever and totally free under GPL. Over 120 Joomla, Magento and Drupal themes coming with complementary extensions. Active community with over 200k members.
JoomlArt →

YooTheme


1st-class Design from Germany. They clearly have the best looking Icons built-in their themes, making it really stand out.
YooTheme →

Gavick


Gavick designs very innovative Joomla templates, especially distinguished are their news and corporate templates with great attention to typefaces.
Gavick →

Conclusion

I would say there is no best option where to buy premium themes and which theme provider model is the superior one. It depends on a lot of factors such as purpose of your site, individual taste, number of sites you are managing, web CMS knowledge and development skills and more.

Overall you can generally say people who are less code-savvy and just want to set up one particular site will search a suitable theme on those template markets or shops. Whereas advanced web developers, freelancers and design studios will purchase membership in theme clubs to get bulk access to all products.

Obviously most professional developers do not really start from scratch. In order to reduce time and costs and win projects, they choose a theme or a framework as a starting point. Then they customize styling, add features to meet the different client requirements. Those developers rely on a library of high quality designed, functional and versatile templates which is the reason why markets aren’t the best options for them. If there is no active community around, upgrades to newer versions and support can be slow or non-existing

It’s important to know that a theme that looks good is one thing. Adaptivity, functionality and usability is totally another thing that many designs simply are weak at.

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  • http://charmingwp.com Ahmad

    I cant consider Template monster market leader nor Themegarden Wpzoom and Solostream worth to be included Also Themify They are more rep than the two above

    • vignesh

      who is this solostream and wpzoom and themegarden… always Template monster is the market leader…..

  • http://gorillathemes.com Carlos

    Thank you for including Gorilla Themes in this great list.

  • Yak

    To say that ThemeForest has high quality standards is a joke. They say that in the TOS but a lot of the themes I’ve purchased from them have been coding nightmares.

    • Arvind

      I would agree with you. Quality assurance on Theme Forest is more dependent on the theme developer and I found Theme forest report system blunt and rude.
      They asked me to get in touch with the developer of the theme, especially when it was a copyright infringement case.

    • Martin

      I agree. The developers are rude and slow to reply. I’m one of the ones that got burned, and since then I only buy from shops and clubs.

      These guys are teams who understand that support is as important as the product itself!

      Be aware of purchasing from ThemeForest!

  • http://webtom.me Tom Ly

    This post gives you just a quick summary of the whole market:

    1. There are different business models co-existing in the template producing industry, serving different clientele with varying technical skills, using different CMS – not only WordPress and so many more factors.

    2. Each of the different business types I found some great representatives doing quality work or having a strong platform within their niche. There is no value in showing a list of 100 providers for this niche, so a restriction to 15 great places makes it not easy to include them all.

    @Ahmad: From a standpoint of a user, who needs premium wordpress themes, and knows a bit how to customize things, I totally aggree with you.

    But without context, you cannot compare apples with oranges. Templatemonster and themegarden are representative theme markets where designers can sell to end users – which is great. Whereas WPZoom is a pure theme store and Themefy a hybrid WP club. So it would make more sense if you’d say: I prefer Themefy over WooThemes for example, isn’t it?

    Also, what if you are not using WordPress but Drupal, Joomla or even Mamboo? Templatemonster has it all.

    @Carlos: For another project I have tested several property listing solutions for different CMS’s. Your Residence Real Estate is really great out of the box solution for newbies. Your other themes simply look great.

    [Note, I am not affiliated ;) .. yet]

    @Yak: Yes, that’s exactly the drawbacks found on markets. Themes have varying levels of quality in terms of coding and documentation.

    So much the better, if you are good developer you’ll find it easier to make a name there. With quality work, people will follow.

    • Yak

      I think most people buying themes from TF won’t know the difference :(

      There are some fantastic devs there, but overall for quality and innovation WooThemes seems to be consistently a cut above the rest.

      Gorilla does some really nice work, so does Elegant Themes.

  • http://www.designstudio16.com saurabh Shah

    Nice list.
    It is worth to include demo.cloudaccess.net for Joomla ! Themes. They have nice elegant themes.

  • http://www.dzinepress.com Dzinepress

    woothemes have fully SEO compatible themes.

  • Henning

    … loving my Rocketthemes I must say!

  • http://fr.linkedin.com/in/thierryhoreau Thierry Horeau

    I would have mentioned ThemesBell as well. They sell stock themes and on Flabell they sell Flash Components.

    I think the quality and the superior support they offer stands to it’s name.

  • Eddie

    Gavick suck for support and templates are mostly just skins for JoomlArt who steal code.

    YooTheme are nice and RocketTheme are excellent all round.

    JoomlaShack are awful too and TemplateMonster are the worst

    • http://blog.elimu.pl Paul

      About Gavick I don’t agree, they have their own style :)

      • Marco

        Gavickpro suck a lot in my opinion: I had a subscription and they released 10 versions of Corporate 2 template.
        They do not test nothing.. sections and categories didn’t work.. all sample data was made to hide bugs.
        Avoid!

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  • bomane

    I am more of a fan of graphic heavy design and did like RocketTheme’s templates at the first glance, but sadly could not get my content and images well into AKIRAKA template. http://demo.rockettheme.com/feb09/. Tried JA Teline III template from JoomlArt, it did the trick, in 3 days i could manage it well and not to talk about the design and powerful T3 framework.

    When you choose a template/theme, don’t be amazed by the first look of some stunning graphic but try to workout and foresee how your content will fit in.

    I have been around for a while and i must say JoomlArt has picked up a lot over the others. RocketTheme used to be on the top in terms of large userbase and good support from Joomla community as Andy is the founder, there is a lack of quality and fresh design approach. Comparison with recent releases surely puts JoomlArt above all the others. Its a winner, atleast it converted me into one. Just checked their blog, T3 framework based template download stands at over 170K, thats an impressive figure to talk about.

  • miko

    Joomlart, i can see why they are included in this post as market leaders, Rockettheme to much bloat (heavy graphics, lots of java script, to much wizz – bang effects to bring in the sales, not great for use on a serious web site)

    Joomlashack, are you seriously saying the templates Joomlashack release are of the same quality and offer the same functionality as some of the other template clubs, come guys Joomlashack are way down the list when it comes to market leaders.

    • http://webtom.me Tom Ly

      JoomlArt and RocketTheme both are first runners and have built a big community – which is besides templates production only a great place to learn and share. Usability and convenience of products vary for the one or the other developer, but its out of question, RT is a leading address in the industry.

      In terms of JoomlaShack, they add value by providing great services with their popular “university” section, helping thousand of newbies to better understand how to make use of Joomla CMS and how to customize. Therefore its justified in my opinion to call them one of leading sites around template production.

      @Thierry, ThemesBell sounds new to me, but great that you share it for checking.

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  • http://www.sooperthemes.com peach – sooperthemes.com

    Not sure but I believe my website is the #2 Drupal themes seller after topnotchthemes.com:
    http://www.sooperthemes.com

    I guesstimated the comptetion from looking at support forum activity and seeing how many registered members they have. Also, topnotchthemes.com used to list the actual numbers of themes sold on the product pages so I have recent and accurate sales data from them. A few months ago I counted 583 sales at an average price of 275 usd.

    My shop launched a few months after TNT which is now moving to fusionthemes.com, but they have grown much more in the past few years then I have.
    I hope to gain some more popularity by releasing some free themes this winter. If anyone wants to give any feedback to my shop feel free to use the contact form.

  • http://www.proactivefinancialconsultants.com Rich Goddard

    Not a fan of template monster at all, got to agree there.

    I’ve started using a few of the Themeforest wordpress themes, excellent to use as starting points for someone like me who only has small experience in php!

  • http://wpengineer.com Alex

    Hey Hilde,

    instead of using just a Premium Theme, where you are limited to one layout unless you change the code, I would recommend to use a WordPress Framework.

    We just released the WordPress Framework Xtreme One with the complete flexibility to create your layout with just some clicks and drag and drop, no coding required.

    It saves you tremendous time in coding and you can focus on your design and functionality.

    It also includes many features, like 12 unique widgets, including 6 different sliders easy to implement. More details and a complete list the features can be found on

    http://xtreme-theme.com

    I hope you and your readers going to enjoy Xtreme One!