The Ultimate WordPress Theme Showdown: Check Who Is The Winner!

Elegant Themes vs Thrive Themes vs StudioPress vs MyThemeShop

When I recently wrote a detailed Elegant Themes review, I got a boatload of queries from readers who wanted to know how Elegant Themes stand in the sea of premium WordPress themes.

Elegant Themes have been one of the best selling and offer some of the best WordPress blog themes of all times but they do have some serious competition from other top WordPress theme providers like StudioPress themes, MyThemeShop, Thrive themes, beaver builder etc.

Almost every theme has it’s own plus points and negative points but I know you can’t afford to try all out just for the sake of finding out which is the best WordPress theme for you.

That is why, I thought of bringing up this comparison guide cum review article on Elegant themes (DIVI) vs StudioPress (genesis themes) vs Thrive Themes vs MyThemeShop.

We’ll have these themes face-off against each other in terms of features, affordability, ease of use, updates, support and last but not the least, unique selling point (USP) aka what advantages they can give your site than the other competitors.

If you’re confused about what theme you should choose for your blog, this ultimate WordPress theme showdown article is exclusively for you.

Are you ready?

Quick Navigation (Click on a link to jump to that section)

Elegant Themes (DIVI) vs. Thrive Themes vs. StudioPress Themes vs. MyThemeShop

Our Top WordPress Theme Contenders (The Introduction)​

➜ SOLO REVIEWS OF ALL WORDPRESS THEMES

1. Elegant Themes DIVI v3 Review​
2. Thrive Themes Review
3. StudioPress Genesis Framework (and child themes) Review
4. MyThemeShop Themes Review

➜ THE ULTIMATE FACE OFF

1. Which Theme Has The Best Usability And User Experience?
2. Which Theme Is More Optimized For Conversions & Sales?
3. Which Theme Provides The Best Customer Support & Regular Updates?
4. Which Theme Is The Most Affordable & Best value For Money?

➜ The Winner of The Ultimate Theme Showdown (Which Theme Should You Choose?)

Elegant Themes (DIVI) vs StudioPress Themes (Genesis) vs Thrive Themes vs MyThemeShop (Why Do You Need Them?)

If you’re planning to earn long-term from your blog you got to invest in premium marketing tools and themes that help your blog in better design, usability and conversions.

Why Do You Even Need a Premium WordPress Theme?

Aside from other tools like lead generation plugins, themes also play an important role to boost your blog’s performance. here are some of the reasons why you would want to use a premium theme on your blog:

• Helps in branding: Most free themes lack the features that makes your website look full-fledged. When you invest in your blog, it boosts your blog’s credibility and trust factor. People know that you are here to stay.
• Increases user engagement: Premium themes have a lot of features like related posts, special notification bars, content builders or visual composers to give your post a customized look and feel.
• Increases time spent on site: A good theme makes it easy for your reader to breathe. White space, uncluttered design, professionally experimented layouts etc help your readers stay more on your site.
• Conversion optimization: All the above points make a theme conversion optimized. However, some themes like Thrive themes have tons of features that make your site a power-horse in terms of affiliate sales and lead generation.
• Ad-optimized: Premium themes like Ad-Sense theme by MyThemeShop, are very optimized for ads. They help you in notifying ad-block users to deactivate the extension for them to view your blog. Thrive Themes on the other hand have Thrive Clever Widgets which help you target ads/banners on a page level by simply click and select method.
• Support and Updates: No free theme comes with support. When you buy premium themes, you get support of the developers that assist you in issues you face while installing/running them on your site. They also help you in customizing a bit (Elegant themes, for example help a bit while Thrive themes do much more and assist you like your personal designers).

Our Top Picked WordPress Themes For Comparison

Let’s take a look at our top contenders for the best WordPress themes in this mega comparison post. All the themes contenders taken into account are very popular, mobile responsive WordPress themes.

Elegant Themes (DIVI V3.0)

With almost 400 thousand users Elegant Themes stand undisputed as one of the best WordPress theme providers. They are designed for business people in mind and come with 87 beautiful themes & a few plugins.

Their USP is Divi which is a visual page builder that helps you design unlimited landing pages, customize the look of your blog, all without touching the codes.

Read Short Review | Read Full Review | Visit Site​

StudioPress Themes (Genesis Framework + Child Themes)

Probably one of the best looking and most loved WordPress themes on the planet. They are optimized for speed, clean coding, SEO optimization and branding like no other.

StudioPress or Genesis child themes are designed for branding, simple to use right off the download.

Read Short Review | Read Full Review | Visit Site​

Thrive Themes

Thrive themes are built with only one thing in mind; conversion optimization. Their themes are lightning fast, come with in-built image optimization, landing pages etc.

Their main USP is the thrive content builder that makes it more than easy to make interactive content that’s good on the eye and conversion optimized (without touching codes).

Read Short Review | Read Full Review | Visit Site​

MyThemeShop Themes

MyThemeShop has slowly but steadily evolved itself into a new option for themes that are brandable, light-weight, feature-rich WordPress themes. With over 366K active users, 95 premium themes and 16 plugins, MyThemeShop is a strong competitors to the league.

Read Short Review | Read Full Review | Visit Site​

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WordPress Theme Features: Mini Reviews Of All Above WordPress Themes

Now that you know what importance using a good theme holds for your blog, let’s have a quick introduction of each of the themes along with their features, what they have to offer, what are their pricing policies and what are the features they lack.

After this section, we’ll compare all the themes (Elegant themes aka DIVI makers, StudioPress aka Genesis themes, Thrive themes and MyThemeShop) one on one.

1) Elegant Themes (DIVI) Mini Review

No featured image this time, let the video do the talking!

Elegant Themes are probably the most beautiful WordPress themes that suit you for any niche you’re blogging in. If you in a hunt for attractive themes for WordPress that are budget friendly?

If that’s a yes, Elegant themes is the right option for you. If you are a new WordPress user, then you can create custom websites without ever having to look at a single line of code.

They have 87 very beautiful and different themes that cater to specific website types. However, their latest DIVI theme and Extra theme are the only themes you will be using because they single-handedly come with umilited design and layout options.

That is why, most developers and website designers choose Elegant themes as their base framework when creating a new client website than from building from scratch. They are far better to build a completely new theme than create a new framework and a child theme on it.

DIVI Visual Builder V3.0 Review

Divi is undoubtedly a versatile website building tool that you can create blogs and business homepages to eCommerce stores and everything. Read my complete Divi 3.0 theme review to get a more detailed overview of Divi.

Divi is truly multipurpose WordPress theme that has the ability to create just about any type of website. It has a set of high-quality templates and the powerful drag-and-drop page builder tool.

The Divi layouts gives you a quick way to start your website and the improved Divi Builder can be used to customize these layouts through an intuitive front-end drag-and-drop user interface.

In order to create custom page designs, you can use the Divi builder’s point-and-click interface. With the Divi Builder, there is nothing you can’t create as it is a fun and easy way to build gorgeous websites.

Here is what you can do:

• You can create all kinds of creative layouts and adjust a row’s column structure with a couple of clicks.
• Add elements like stylized portfolio items, buttons, email forms, testimonials, accordions, you name it.
• Any element on the page can be instantly duplicated.
• If you don’t want to display a seasonal promo banner or anything on the front-end, you can simply disable it instead of deleting.
• You can lock any section or disable editing functions to make sure that certain elements do not get modified by your clients.
• The Divi Builder allows you to copy items from one page to another.
• You can control the spacing between the objects on your page using the Divi Builder.

While Divi is a multipurpose theme, Extra has been designed for blogs, online magazines, and other content-rich websites that also includes many of its best features.

It’s layout gives you the ability to display your best or most recent content in a stylish grid format and includes an image-focused homepage layout that uses the featured images from your articles to draw attention to your content.

It also includes the powerful Divi Builder tool, you can customize any of the theme’s templates through a front-end drag-and-drop user interface.

Note: Elegant themes membership package comes up with the bundle of other various plugins which are popular and useful for the buyer. Most notable ones are:

• Monarch: The social sharing plugin which lots of features to boost your blog’s social shares.
• Bloom: Email lead generation plugin to collect subscribers email address.

Elegant Themes Membership Pricing

Elegant themes are competitively priced in the market. Below are there most popular pricing plans:

1. Yearly Access: $89 per year for 87 themes and all plugins (that’s like less than $1 per theme!). You have unlimited usage but can’t use it on client sites.
2. Lifetime Membership Access: $249 with unlimited lifetime access to everything including building client sites on it.
3. You can also access Elegant Themes coupons on this page.

» View Live Themes» Visit Official Website

2) StudioPress Themes (Genesis Framework) Review

StudioPress themes are the products by Copyblogger media which are the industry leaders when it comes to content marketing. Like Copyblogger, StudioPress themes are the most used WordPress themes in the world with almost every infleuncer using them.

Their fans are not only limited to marketing and blogging niche expert bloggers like QuickSprout.com, Backlinko.com, or Problogger.com but also in every other niche like PinchOfYum.com for food blogging niche and so on.

Important StudioPress Themes Features:

• The goodness of Genesis framework: All StudioPress themes run on the genesis framework and that is why StudioPress themes are also called genesis themes. The genesis framework gets regular updates, is clean coded and rock-tight secure.
• Since, it gets all the updates,it also protects the customization of your child theme.
• Tons of child themes: StudioPress sites have a plethora of child themes for you to choose. All their themes are top notch in terms of looks, and the purpose they serve. They are geared towards businesses and online sellers. However a lot of their themes are multipurpose themes meaning they can be used for affiliate marketing, ad-based websites too.
• SEO benefits: StudioPress themes are very much SEO optimized. They mobile responsive WordPress themes and are are clean coded and most of the themes are below 500 kb while most others in this list weigh nearly 15-20 MB (as much as twice WordPress as a software itself).StudioPress themes are schema markup enabled help you in getting higher ranks on search engines. (We ‘ll discuss this later!)

StudioPress themes Pricing:

On the pricing front, StudioPress themes are a bit (or you can say a bit too much) costlier as compared to all other contenders. However, they do offer more features in that.

Genesis framework pricing: The framework itself costs $59.95. This is a standalone theme in itself. You can use it as is or design a custom child theme of it (not recommended for beginners).

Single Genesis Child Theme Pricing: All of Genesis child themes can be bought individually and they cost anywhere between $79-$130 based on the design and features.

Pro-Plus All Themes Package: This comes with unlimited access to all themes. plus support plus future themes by StudioPress for lifetime. This is the best plan you should opt for if you’ve multiple sites or are a web designer for client sites.

» View Live Themes» Visit Official Website

3) Thrive Themes Review

Thrive themes have been my personal favorite and as you see I use them on this site. Themes by Thrive, are designed for conversions & SEO. Thrive Themes are light-weight, includes in-built image optimization features (compression), and content optimization features (lots of short-codes to design your content for increasing engagement without even using Thrive content builder).

Thrive Themes Features:

• Personalized Themes: Thrive themes have less number of themes but they still have each theme designed for specific niche. They are multipurpose themes that fit all your needs no matter what niche you are blogging in. Themes are very clean coded and have some very crucial features that secretly help you boost your SEO rankings. (We ‘ll discuss this later in the article, stay tuned.)
• Image Compression: Might seem like a small feature, but this isn’t available in any other themes I know. They have in-built kraken.io API which helps you compress the image simultaneously while you’re uploading them to WordPress. They reduced my image sizes from maybe 500+ kb to a below 70 Kb which is a huge savior. Sure you can manually compress images before you upload them via other themes but that is another pain and uploading edited images-compressing them-downloading them and then again re-uploading them to WordPress is a productivity hindrance.
• Landing pages: Each thrive theme comes with it’s own inbuilt, brand matching landing pages for lead generation and sales. These work independently even if you do not have Thrive landing pages plugin.
• Apprentice feature: Not many of you need to create courses on your sites but to those who want, you can use the inbuilt apprentice feature of thrive themes to create a membership/course module right on your site.

Thrive Themes’s Conversion Optimized Tool Set:

If you buy Thrive membership, you get access to all conversion optimized tools like:

• Headline analyzer: Practically helps you choose the best headlines for your articles by A/B Split testing.
• Thrive Content Builder: Probably the biggest benefit of using Thrive themes. With this visual editor you get to design your blog posts, add unlimited button designs, add tables, cal-to-action, pricing tables, drag & drop layouts, stylized bullet points, custom content areas, hidden content sections and lot lot more.
• Thrive landing pages: The market leader in landing pages that can be customized with drag & drop features. They also come with ready-made 157+ ready-to-use landing page templates so that you can use them for course creation and everything.
• Thrive Leads: These are the best lead generation plugin in the market. You can set up exit intent popups, content upgrades, two-step optin forms, email subscriber widgets, welcome mats and what not! This is the only plugin you’d need if you’re considering boosting email subscriber count of yours.
• Other notable plugins include Thrive ultimatum(countdown timers to boost sales), Thrive clever widgets, Thrive ovation (excellent testimonials plugin) etc. All free within the membership.

Thrive Themes Pricing:

Thrive themes cost reasonably appropriate and are even cheaper if you consider the products they give you along with the membership. If you want only the themes as compared to other theme shops here, you get them at $49 each.

However, you got to have the membership package to use any of the thrive products on client websites which is indeed a cheap deal.

» View Live Themes» Visit Official Website

4) MyThemeShop Themes Review

MyThemeShop is one such theme house that offers you a large variety of WordPress themes and some of them are the best free WordPress themes you’ll ever find. With almost 96 themes and plugins MyThemeShop has a more general appeal including themes that are more focused towards magazine blogs and blogs focusing on advertisement as a revenue.

Having said that, some themes like the schema theme have been quite popular as the perfect theme for affiliate sites.

MyThemeShop Themes Features:

• SEO Friendly themes: Most MyThemeShop themes are lightning speed and clean coded. They have more focus towards content and user experience. They are fully SEO optimized along with schema markup. As most of the MyThemeShop themes use a quality code, visibly identified content, fast site loading times and inbuilt review approach, they are considered as SEO friendly WordPress themes.
• Fast loading themes: Most MyThemeShop themes are optimized for speed. They have the MyThemeShop schema theme which is the fastest theme I have come across even with normal blog content. Apart from that, come with lazy -loading feature which significantly reduces your blog’s loading time by delaying the loading of images and videos until the users scroll to that p[art of the content.
• Other MyThemeShop theme features: Other MyThemeShop features include inbuilt social sharing buttons, support for over 600+ custom Google fonts, easy background and font change option, in-built ad management settings and choosing from different layout for certain themes.

MyThemeShop Pricing:

On the pricing front, MyThemeShop has a bit tricky pricing plan that costs you $89 for the first month for the extended membership plan (the one that gives you the rights to use their themes for client sites too) and then a recurring $19 every month for the rest of your life.

Single MyThemeShop theme or plugins cost anywhere between $29-$59 per for the first year and $19 per year for the continued updates and theme support. You can also get MyThemeShop discount coupons here.

» View Live Themes» Visit Official Website

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DIVI Vs. Genesis Vs. Thrive Themes Vs. MyThemeShopTHE ULTIMATE FACE OFF

After the reviews of each of our contender themes, I am sure you got an idea about the features of each of the themes, what you get when you purchase the premium theme package and what features these themes offer.

In this face off section, we will take the standard parameters of gauging WordPress themes that I’ve listed above. This is the section where you will get your clear individual answers to DIVI vs genesis or DIVI vs thrive themes or Thrive Themes vs StudioPress and if all these WordPress themes vs MyThemeShop.

Let’s continue with the face off.

1. Usability And User Experience (Ease of Use)

When purchasing a WordPress theme, one of the most important aspect to look is the user experience. You will spend most of your time crafting posts, doing design changes on your blog and will very often try to tweak some features based on your need.

Hence, you need a theme that makes it easy and less time consuming for you. Let’s check how our WordPress theme contenders perform against each other in terms of user experience.

Elegant Themes (DIVI 3.0): User Experience Review

Elegant Themes already has a ton of themes for different niches or blogging genres. Each theme functions However, the DIVI theme of Elegant themes is a charm to work on. I have it enabled on a couple of my niche sites and they need to line of code to do any work you can imagine.

See how smoothly you can add text, images, customize their font, colors and even new page elements with DIVI visual editor

The DIVI theme itself has 2 panels:

• Theme Customizer: Which is the default WordPress customizer but powered with more featured you’ll love. For example, it has the import and export option for the customizer settings and also tweak the mobile layout/appearance of your site.
• Module settings: This part is the actual power of DIVI where you get to customize the various individual features of what Elegant Themes has to offer like the font and look of pricing tables, testimonials or profile section or portfolio element. The changes you make here will be adapted to throughout the site.
• The DIVI Visual Builder: DIVI visual builder is what you can compare with Thrive’s content builder. It is the visual composer that helps you build the custom page layouts, landing pages and add various other visual elements like portfolio, grids, social profiles, call to action buttons etc.

Verdict: Easy to use with minimal learning curve.

Thrive Themes: User Experience Review

Thrive themes are ready-to-use out of the box. They are just like any other themes but have inbuilt premade landing pages (like homepage templates, lead generation templates, thank you page etc) and all other elements (like CTA button) You can fire off a site without requiring any other custom settings after installing and activating Thrive themes.

However for further customizing, you’d have to go the “thrive dashboard” in the WP dashboard of your site. Click general settings and you are ready to further customize your theme, add codes, lazy load comments, check your blog layout and overall site color schemes etc.

With the Thrive content builder, it is much more easier, you have more elements to add, more intuitive environment. The most important factor that makes me feel Thrive themes win the thrive themes vs DIVI war is, the fact that the control panel.

The control panel or visual editor lies in one place for you to grab elements unlike DIVI visual builder where it hovers all around the place creating a mess out of it.

Verdict: Very easy-to-use and newbie friendly user-experience.

StudioPress Themes: How User Friendly Are Genesis Themes?

StudioPress or Genesis child themes on the genesis framework are the simplest themes that you’ll ever come across. They have very less customization option and would require you coding skills to even change the logo size, the font or the link color.

Having said that, Genesis themes are the best when used as is. you hardly need to change anything in their themes because they are designed keeping users in mind. This is also the reason why they have a variety of themes for each type of blogs.

Apart from that, even though you might need a bit of coding knowledge to change or customize genesis themes, there are 100s of free genesis customization tutorials online, genesis forums and their own support who execute everything on behalf of you. I don’t know coding myself and this is how I customize my genesis themes for free.

Verdict: Easy to use but for any customization you need coding skills.

MyThemeShop: Are They More User Friendly Than the other themes?

MyThemeShop is that modern theme shop that sits somewhere in between StudioPress and Thrive (or Elegant themes). They do have some easy customization settings to change the font of almost any text area, color schemes, background images and much more through their dashboard.

Integrated dashboard to manage every setting in one place.

Winner

We have a tie here between Elegant Themes and Thrive themes.

» Visit Thrive Themes» Visit Elegant Themes

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MyThemeShop themes have a very easy-to-manage interface and you can also manage your ad placements directly from the dashboard without needing any other WP demonetization or AdSense plugins.

Verdict: Though, not feature-rich as the first two contenders, nice dashboard with sleek user experience. Everything is customizable with drag and drop interface and a separate basic shortcode plugin.

2. Which Theme Is More Conversion Optimized?

The most under-rated yet the most important WordPress theme feature is undoubtedly it’s ability to convert visitors into leads, leads into sales or prospects into buyers.

When you launch an online business, you have a strategy as to what you are going to do with this blog, what you’re going to achieve out of the website, right? This can be anything like:

• Getting more affiliate sales out of your blog,
• Selling your digital course or book,
• Getting more people to hire you for the services you offer,
• Ad-clicks if you’re focusing on a ad-revenue based viral site,
• Get more subscribers to your site so that you can do email marketing,
• Create an online funnel (landing page) for your offline business like a salon, car repair business or consultant business or even to get online users know about your dentist clinic offline.

If these are all your end-goals from your website and you should choose a WordPress theme that helps you achieve the maximum results out of it.

A perfect WordPress theme would be the one that helps you get one step closer to your aim of funneling more leads or affiliate/product sales via your blog.

Let’s see how these mega WordPress themes compare on conversion features and which theme is the best for you.

Elegant Themes: Are They Conversion Optimized?

When it comes to features Elegant themes has no competitors in the theme market. The DIVI theme and visual page builder has all you need to create a conversion optimized site.

They have tons of options to create a unique theme, apart from that I’ll just highlight the top things DIVI can do (I’m saying highlight because detailing all the features will require an additional 5000 words so let’s leave it for another DIVI 3.0 review article).

• Realtime front-end editor which makes it easy for designing your homepage, landing pages and sales pages.
• Instantly add page design elements like accordions, contact form builders with conditional logic, page dividers, number counters, portfolios, videos, testimonials etc to boost content engagement and add social proof. Each element is customizable right from the color to the font.
• Save and export your own layouts for faster experience.
• DIVI leads split testing: DIVI comes with DIVI leads split testing which can help you conduct A/B split testing on your landing pages. And based on powerful insights DIVI leads let’s you choose the best converting landing page. This is a feature even Thrive Themes do not have as of yet (they announced something similar in the coming Thrive Themes V2.0, though).
• Powerful theme with right to left (RTL) language support.
• You get bloom email optin plugin which is a great tool to capture leads and email subscribers (it is nowhere close to what Thrive leads does, though).
• Monarch plugin for social sharing.

Verdict: Quite good. Elegant themes can single-handedly help you convert your website visitors and generate affiliate sales or subscribers.

Thrive Themes: Conversion Optimized Features

Thrive themes are built for conversions. They call themselves conversion focused WordPress themes and plugins and are rightfully so. Each theme of theirs comes with proven layout that is designed to get more leads or sales.

Thrive themes are simple business blogging themes that do not support much fancy themes. Here are some of their features:

• Each theme comes with it’s own set of landing pages that can be edited like a breeze.
• All themes are clean with a lot of white space and optimized for speed. 
• Thrive themes have built-in image compression API which means images losslessly compress as you upload them to your posts.
• If you are someone who cares about website speed and compresses images manually before uploading it to a site, you know what a savior Thrive themes can be.
• They have targeted focus areas that can be used to show offers to relevant visitors.
• They cut down on plugins like image compressors, related posts, social sharing (inbuilt), pricing plugin, tablepress, table of content plugin and font manager plugins to name a few.
• Thrive leads is the industry leader in email list building plugin with options like exit intent popups, content upgrade option, two step optins, welcome mats and A/B split testing features.
• Thrive Ovation takes adding testimonials on your website to a whole new level of automation.
• Thrive ultimatum makes it easy to add countdown timers in your header bars, blog posts, sidebar widgets and sales pages to boost sales via scarcity marketing principle.
• Thrive content builder is the best drag and drop content builder I have come across so far. You can add page sections, animations, call to actions, testimonials, post grids, pricing tables, tables, content reveal (which means it reveals right at a time you want your lead to convert. This can be after a certain time, on a mouse hover, when an element comes into view port and much more).
• Thrive landing pages have builtin, ready-to-deploy landing pages for almost every type of landing/sales page you can imagine. Not only the 162+ prebuilt landing pages you can also custom build landing pages as per your needs using their drag and drop interface.
• Thrive Quiz builder makes it easy to create highly shareable quizzes you see on sites like Buzzfeed and what they do extra is, you can pitch a highly relevant offer or email optin based on the answers they give on the quiz. Such a easy way to get targeted subscribers/buyers and segment them into various categories.
• Thrive themes are the best and most used WordPress themes for affiliate websites and amazon niche sites.

Verdict: Thrive membership is the only thing you need to build an online business that sells. They have everything you need to create a conversion optimized business website. Feel free to check out our Thrive themes pricing review.

StudioPress Themes: Are They Conversion Optimized Themes?

StudioPress themes are WordPress themes that are easy to use and simple to maintain. They are built for speed and are minimal or messy based on the purpose you choose them.

Each theme of theirs is relevant to certain niche of blogging and you should choose a theme based on your exact needs. StudioPress themes have the following conversion optimized features.

• Clean and most SEO optimized WordPress themes.
• Different themes for different purposes like you have magazine pro for ad relying blogs while you have Foodie pro theme that is optimized for food blog themes and so on.
• The one limitation to this as I see is, you get restricted with the theme you purchase (unless you are buying the full package). You cannot use it on a different blog or once you decide to change the initial focus of your blog.
• If you compare StudioPress genesis themes with Thrive or DIVI theme it stands nowhere close to they theme features the latter offers for your blog. Clearly in the war of Thrive vs genesis, Thrive wins the title and same happens with DIVI vs Genesis too.

Verdict: Very professional themes but lack conversion optimized features as our other contenders.

MyThemeShop Themes: Do These Boost Sales On Blog?

MyThemeShop themes are very close competitors to Elegant themes and Thrive themes if not at par with them. They do have some really conversion optimized features that I love about them. Let’s see what features they offer apart from beautiful themes.

• Clean and fast loading themes.
• Each theme is optimized for the task or blog niche it is made for.
• They have music themes, feminine WordPress themes and themes for ecommerce, journalism and photography you name it.
• They offer a lot of free themes and plugins which isn’t the case with any of the WordPress theme developers discussed here.
• They have content locker plugin which helps you boost social shares in return for giving access to certain part of your post.
• Link shortener plugin, quiz plugin, my WP backup pro are some of the best plugins that come with the MyThemeShop membership package.
• The notification bar and WP subscribe pro plugins by MyThemeShop help you collect leads, showcase call-to-action buttons and much more, even if they aren’t anything advanced as Thrive leads is.

Verdict: Has a lot of conversion optimized featured. If you’re a newbie or looking for stylish WordPress themes this should be your best option otherwise Thrive themes offers better tools for the same price.

Winner

Thrive themes are the clear winner here closely followed by Elegant themes as the most conversion optimized WordPress themes.

» Visit Thrive Themes

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3. Which Theme Provides Regular Updates & Customer Support?

Getting proper updates and timely support is something you should definitely check out before buying any WordPress product (may it be hosting or themes).

While using a WordPress themes, we may break the codes, require a bit of customization, edit some CSS styling which might be beyond our skills. At this time, having a responsive and prompt customer service is very essential.

Similarly, getting regular theme updates ensures you WordPress theme is aligned with recent changes, bugs are fixed promptly and they also have the latest SEO compatibility.

Let’s see how Elegant Themes, Thrive Themes, Genesis and MyThemeShop all fare against the ideal customer service and update scenario:

Elegant Themes (DIVI): Support & Update Review

Elegant Themes have a large base of users of their themes and hence they need a might team of customer care for solving theme issues fast. I did have a good response rate when I first used their themes sometime ago.

As far as theme updates areconcerned, Elegant themes promptly releases constant minor updates that make your site optimized for latest WordPress version or Google algorithm updates. They also release major updates which make your themes more powerful with brand new features just like the recent DIVI 3.0 which brought a revolution in WordPress themes and visual content builders.

Verdict: Decent customer service.

Thrive Themes: Do They Offer Best After Sales Service?

All of Thrive themes users can safely vouch one thing and that is their customer service. I use Thrive Themes most often on most my sites because of the conversion optimized features they have and so I know deal a lot with their customer service. They are just the promptest guys I have ever seen.

Their are millions of support questions (from day 1) on their support forum which are answered within hours and sometimes minutes after their posting.

What I like the most is, most support questions aren’t about support, they are about customization and special requests which they are not compelled to answer but they do answer.

I myself have asked so many customization questions and they assisted me with the codes and made sure it works on my site. If you’re curious I would have paid an extra $1000 for those mini theme customization to a designer and they did it for free.

Apart from all these, they do have well documented resources, webinars, members only special templates and hacks that make us use their theme to the fullest.

Thrive themes also release regular updates of all their themes and plugins; sometimes to solve bugs and other times to introduce new features to them.

Verdict: Best customer service. They go out of their way to help users.

Genesis StudioPress themes: Customer Service And Update Review

StudioPress themes, as I said earlier, are the most used WordPress themes backed up by the very professional and industry leading Copyblogger media. Hence, all their themes and products come with that credibility and professional after sales support which you’d expect.

Support section is filled with experts and developers helping you tweak your genesis themes, solve any broken piece of code, set up theme theme features properly like the newsletter widget and so on.

As far as updates are concerned, Genesis themes are just dope. You get updates to the parent Genesis framework which means your child theme remains intact with all the customization you have made. This is something I’d want to see with thrive themes and MyThemeShop.

Verdict: Nothing less than 5 stars for them.

MyThemeShop: Theme Support

MyThemeShop themes are also very professional and that is why they are amongst these industry leaders. Their support forum too is filled with requests that have gotten prompt support and been solved.

MyThemeShop also releases constant updates that are 1-click install able and make your theme up to date with all the latest security and SEO standards.

Verdict: Great customer care service and updates.

Winner

All the four themes are excellent when it comes to support and updates. 

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3. Which Theme Is The Most Affordable & Best Value For Money?

With all those lucrative features that gives your content wings and your online business more leads and sales you also have to look at one more aspect while buying a theme, i.e., pricing.

You can get a heckload of features but you also have to consider the affordability and return on investment with the themes.

Let’s see which of these themes (DIVI or Genesis , Thrive or MyThemeShop) are the most affordable with the maximum features they provide.

Elegant Themes: Are They Worth Your Investment?

Elegant Themes membership pricing costs $89 per year or a one time lifetime access pricing of $249 which provides you the ownership of tall their themes and plugins and future updates at $250 forever. Quite a deal to steal I must say.

Verdict: The best value for money WordPress themes.

Thrive Themes: Are They value For money?

Thrive themes membership access is by far the most affordable theme plan amongst all our contenders. In fact, it makes me wonder why would anyone give away so much for so less price. I’m loving them for this.

You get unlimited lifetime membership access to Thrive Themes, all their plugins, future releases and can use them on your client sites everything for just $228. This is something I am yet to find a competitor in the whole WordPress ecosystem.

Just imagine each plugin of theirs, if bought separately from a different vendor, would cost up to $100 alone (read optin monster) and they offer everything for just $228. I am definitely not trying to sell you off but yes I am trying to show you that this IS the ultimate deal.

Verdict: A WordPress theme package worth every penny. It boosted my conversions and earnings. 

StudioPress Themes: Affordable WordPress Themes?

StudioPress themes recently upgraded their pricing policy and they now charge a unbelievable $499.95 for their membership access. I know StudioPress themes have the most beautiful themes of all our WordPress theme contenders but their pricing isn’t logical in my personal view.

Specially considering you get no other plugins that will help you boost your site conversions with them as in the case of other contenders.

If you’re solely a fan of simple, clean and magnum opus WordPress themes that can brand your site to the best you can imagine and you don’t care about email optin or list building or designing lading pages etc you can definitely go for it.

Verdict: Definitely worth it if you’re fans of StudioPress and beautiful WordPress themes. 

MyThemeShop Themes: Cheap WordPress Themes?

MyThemeShop also has a lot to offer in it’s membership package and they are surely one of the best modern-looking theme providers out there.

The pricing of MyThemeShop is a monthly subscription based model where you pay $87 upfront for the first month and $19 each month perpetually till you ant their updates and support.

This looks a bit dicey because I wouldn’t want something to linger on forever no matter how times are for me. While both Elegant Themes and Thrive Themes are providing lifetime access at just a nominal amount I wouldn’t want to commit to a theme with a monthly subscription based model.

Pricing: Elegant Themes vs MyThemeShop: It stands nowhere close to the one time payment of the former.

Pricing: Thrive Themes vs MyThemeShop: It costs more Thrive Themes even for the first year and given the fact Thrive Themes gives access to more advanced and better conversion tools than the latter.

Verdict: Not the cheapest WordPress themes around. You should buy it for the best designed themes, other than that I’d recommend Thrive or Elegant Themes for better features with less price. 

Winner

When it comes to best budget WordPress themes, Elegant Themes is the clear winner. However, if you want advanced tools too like email optin plugin, landing page builder or everything that Thrive themes offer, they are clearly a steal deal.

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Final Verdict: Which Is The Best Premium WordPress Theme? (Showdown Winner + Our Recommendations)

With this massive WordPress theme showdown, we saw the best theme contenders fight against each other for the crown of the best premium WordPress theme.

We know it is impossible to come to ​blunt end saying this theme is better than that, after all it depends not on theme features but on your skill level and what you want to accomplish with the theme on your site.

That is why, we came up with this guide to help you understand the pros and cons of each of the themes and see which theme has the options you want.

​We did our best to cover an unbiased Elegant Themes (aka DIVI) vs Thrive Themes vs StudioPress themes (genesis framework) vs MyThemeShop.

And now it is result time​!!

If you’ve ever thought to yourself about which theme is perfect for me? Take full advantage of this massive guide to find the best theme for you.

I WANT BEAUTIFUL WEBSITE

• Create best looking websites using drag& drop builder.
• Affordable price.
• Beautiful social share plugin and email plugin.

CLICK TO REVEAL

You Don’t Need Anything Beyond DIVI!

View Themes➜

I WANT TO BOOST SALES ON MY WEBSITE & DESIGN BLOG POSTS TO CONVERT

• Want to design blog posts like this one and build landing pages for sales.
• Make websites lightning fast by cutting down almost all plugins.
• Boost your affiliate/product/services’ sales.
• Build your email list faster.
• Never pay for any other product other than hosting.

CLICK TO REVEAL

Thrive Themes is Best For You!

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I WANT SIMPLE THEMES AND NOT WORRY ABOUT CONVERSIONS

• Modern looking themes.
• separate plugin for each task.
• Don’t design blog posts like this one and just write.
• Not that keen in email list building or conversions into sales.

CLICK TO REVEAL

MyThemeShop Is Perfect For You

View Themes

So that’s it!

What feature did you like of all these themes or better yet which theme did you find suitable for you? 

If you have a hard time deciding the perfect WordPress theme for you, let us know in the comments and we’ll try to help you get sorted.

 If you like this post and appreciate the sheer hard work behind it, please share it.