Among many great WordPress themes, one that stands out is Kadence Theme. It has many great features that not many free or pro themes have. And it becomes more popular day by day.
Not only it is fast and lightweight, but it is also one of the most customizable themes out there. It allows you to tweak almost everything you want and has other great options.
In this Kadence theme review I will show you how amazing it is, what features it has, and also what I don’t like.
So let’s start.
Table of Contents
Kadence Theme Speed
One of the most important things in WordPress themes is speed. It doesn’t matter if it is a free or a pro theme. It must be fast and lightweight.
It may have great features but if it is slow, then no one will use it. And the Kadence theme is very strong here. It is a very fast and lightweight theme.
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As the score on GTmetrix shows, it is a very fast WordPress theme. Has a great performance test and it has no unnecessary code. So, it makes it very lightweight.
It can be fully loaded in 1.5s but all this also is depended on the hosting and other factors. But it is a fast theme because 1.5s is a very good score for speed.
And another great thing is that its total page size is only 43KB which is almost nothing and out of the box it has only 10 requests.
This test shows that the Kadence theme is the very lightweight and fast theme.
Kadence Customization Options
Also, very important and crucial aspects of free themes are customization. How customizable are they? What do they offer new?
I can say that Kadence is one of the greatest if not the greatest theme for customization options. You can change almost everything.
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You can change colors, fonts, widgets, page layouts. Choose different layouts and tweak different options for posts & page templates.
All these are done in a very good fashion. Navigation in the customizer is very easy. It is very tidy and not complex. You can find anything you want in seconds.
But the options that stand out are header & footer builder, and color palette. Not many themes offer these options and many recently started to implement them.
It is very easy to build a header & footer. You can create almost any kind of style for your header or footer. You get three rows for each one and you can add as many as you want.
Another great feature is the color palette. With the Kadence theme, you can create up to three color palettes for a website and easily change from one to another. Each palette contains nine different colors.
This is a very convenient way to test different color variations for a website. You no longer need to change the colors of different elements separately. Also, you can switch between light and dark color schemes.
With Kadence you can choose different layouts for pages, archives, and single posts. Different layouts for images, headings, etc.
Kadence is a very versatile and customizable free theme that is fast.
Kadence Page Builder Performance
Ok. It is fast and customizable but how does it perform with page builders like Elementor or Gutenberg. Well, the good news here. The Kadence theme works great with both page builders.
It is built to work with these page builders. It doesn’t break or anything like that. Integration is very smooth and gives us an awesome performance.
For example, this is the performance score of the page built with Elementor. Beautifully done page with lots of images and it works without problems.
This page had the size of 1.53MB and 62 requests and was loaded in 2.0s. This is a great score for Elementor and this amount of images.
Also, consider that you can add cache and image optimizer, the score will be much better.
So, Kadence is a great theme and because it works great with Gutenberg & Elementor, many people can use it.
Kadence Starter Templates
Many modern WordPress themes offer ready-made templates to start and Kadence is no exception. It offers more than 15 starter templates and the library is always growing.
You can use different styles of templates for websites like blogs, eCommerce, learning, business, etc. Some are free and some are membership-only.
The only downside of templates for me is that they do have not so many pre-made designs and the designs themselves are not as beautiful as some other themes are offering.
They are not bad but they can be improved. For example, Astra & Blocksy offers more beautiful designs.
The team behind Kadence should work more and improve their designs and also add more to their library.
Also, Kadence has free plugins which I love. The first plugin is Kadence Blocks which adds additional blocks for Gutenberg. You get blocks like row layout, tabs, form, infobox, etc. Also, you can create website wireframes with Kadence Blocks plugin.
Another plugin is WooCommerce Email Designer which is a great option to create beautiful emails for your eCommerce websites.
Kadence Free VS Pro
If you want to get more features, the Kadence theme offers a pro version with great benefits. You get not only the features but plugins and other good stuff.
They offer two plans – yearly and lifetime. You can use it on unlimited websites, get access to pro themes and plugins.
With a membership plan, you get Kadence Blocks Pro, their pro themes, and plugins. These plugins list includes Kadence AMP, Woo Extras, Page Transitions, etc.
You can find full features here.
You don’t need to have a pro version. With the free version, you can do all you need but if you want a little more, then you should buy a pro plan.
Conclusion
Kadence theme is a great option for any kind of website. You can build amazing blogs, corporate, or eCommerce websites. It is free, fast, customizable, and works great with Gutenberg & Elementor.
If you want to add more features and options, you can buy a pro version but it is not mandatory.
