GeneratePress Review – Lightweight WordPress Theme

In this GeneratePress review, you'll find more information about its features, pricing, pros and cons and why you should consider using it.
8.9/10 (Expert Score)
Product is rated as #15 in category WordPress themes
8.9Expert Score
The perfect foundation for your WordPress website

GeneratePress is light weighted and extremely customizable WordPress theme. This is the first option for top bloggers and web developers. It serves you almost each required feature in its free plan. However, if you wish to go ahead, then it provides you with two plans: the one you can buy on an annual basis and the second you can buy for a lifetime.

Customer support
9
Value for money
10
Ease of use
8
Features
8.5
Pros
  • Fastest and lightest WordPress theme
  • Page builder support
  • Great customer support
  • WooCommerce integration
  • Extensive documentation
  • Developer-friendly code
  • Site library (50+ ready to use templates)
  • Really great pricing (cheap)
Cons
  • Limited features (without GenerateBlocks)
  • Difficult to use (with Gutenberg)

It is not too often you encounter a free WordPress theme with a forum, a knowledge base and a complete support.

Nonetheless, the rare premium developer makes a free theme based on a premium theme of their own in an effort to encourage people to test it out and purchase the pro version.

As of 2021, there are more than 570 million blogs on the internet

FirstSiteGuide

That’s why you should stand out from the crowd to flourish in blogging. You should capture your site visitor’s attention right away after you visit your blog. But how can you do that? One excellent way is to utilize an attractive website design.

However, here’s the thing: it costs hundreds of dollars to create an attractive website from scratch. A lot of newbies cannot afford it.

Here’s where the WordPress themes such as GeneratePress come into handy. They are not just reasonable but offer you all the features to personalize your website no matter how you like.

This review will talk about GeneratePress more in detail, what it is, its features, pricing, and many more. Without further ado, let’s dive in!

Click on “open” if you want to see exactly what we will talk about in the rest of this article.

Quick Overview

What is GeneratePress?

GeneratePress Review - WordPress themes #Ciroapp

GeneratePress is a multi-purpose WordPress theme that is designed on clean and lightweight code. It is the perfect WordPress theme that concentrates on performance without sacrificing design and functionality. It is somewhat awesome to know that it is a five-star rated theme with hundreds of thousands of active installs.

In case you didn’t know yet, the GeneratePress theme is a free, lightweight, and simple theme. As for the design, it reminds us of some of the child themes you can see for the Genesis Framework. Overall, that theme is clearly trying to make things a little easy for the developers.

You can selectively allow the functions you need for designing your aspired website. With the GeneratePress theme, there’s no limit to creating only particular types of websites. You can also make any type of website, from a business website to an eCommerce store, in no time.

GeneratePress provides lots of starter templates to get your new site off to a great start. Further, you can tailor those templates with a plethora of adjustable elements. In such a way, your site meets your goal.

GeneratePress specifications

FeaturesWordpress theme
Best suited forIndividuals, Freelancers, Small businesses, Mid size businesses, Large enterprises
Website languagesEnglish
Website URLVisit official website
Support linkSupport page
Live chatNo
Company addressN/A
Year founded2017

Pricing

GeneratePress pricing: How much does GeneratePress cost?

GeneratePress Premium used to provide only one plan that costs $49.95 for unlimited websites. You can also find a forty percent discount when you renew but no lifetime licenses. However, in November 2020, they have adjusted their pricing structure to provide lifetime licenses and add to the annual one. Still, there’s still one plan. Nonetheless, the annual price is raised to $59, and the renewal discount is gone as well. Now, there’s a usage limit as well: 500 sites.

Pricing rangeFrom $59 to $249 per year
Pricing typesAnnual subscription / Lifetime payment
Free planYes
Free trialNo
Money back guaranteeYes, 30 days
Pricing page linkSee plans

GeneratePress pricing plans

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As mentioned earlier, GeneratePress is a free theme for WordPress websites, but they also have paid versions. The free versions come with limited features, but it is great enough for many beginner sites. If you like to unlock all the features, you must go with their Premium version that comes in two pricing plans that are listed below:

Yearly plan

That is the ideal option for those who are on a tight budget as it costs you simply $59 per year. Here is what you will receive with the Yearly plan.

  • 30-day money-back guarantee
  • Use on up to five hundred websites
  • One year of premium support
  • One year of updates
  • Full access to the Site Library
  • All premium features

Lifetime plan

Would you like to get access to lifetime support and updates? That plan is simply for you. It costs only $249, which is a one-time payment. Here’s also what you will receive with the Lifetime plan:

  • 30-day money-back guarantee
  • Use on up to five hundred websites
  • Lifetime premium support
  • Lifetime updates
  • Full access to the Site Library
  • All premium features

Once you buy the Premium version, there is no need to renew your license annually to keep using it. More essentially, you can utilize your copy of the premium version on as many websites as you like. However, you should renew your license after one year if you still need priority customer support or like to continue receiving some updates. You can also request a money-back guarantee within the first thirty days of purchase, especially if you are not happy with GeneratePress.

Who Should Use It

Who Should Use GeneratePress?

Who would we tell to go out and get GeneratePress? You see, it is not a bad idea for a small business owner, given that it has options for banners and showcasing your services or products. You can also create a beautiful sleek eCommerce store with the theme.

However, we cannot imagine up that fast with such as basic theme.

The people we think who should use GeneratePress is the simple blogger. This is somebody who is fed up with complex customization tools on the backend. A blogger needs a good way to get their content produced and posted right away.

Also, a blogger needs stunning post types without too much clutter. Finally, this is perfect for those content creators who are in search of a theme without any coding issues that will weigh their website down.

Who is eligible to use GeneratePress?

Are you really new to WordPress? Then you might be dissatisfied by installing GeneratePress. At first, it might look pretty basic and without any interest. That’s often the case with most themes—you need to configure it so your website looks amazing.

That’s the purpose of the options accessible under the Appearance > Customize tab of every WordPress website. The benefit here is that GeneratePress does not simply provide a broad spectrum of options, but it also simplifies the job.

Only the most vital options are there, and the best part of all, they’re well categorized to understand on which part of the website you are acting. Thus, you can easily say that GeneratePress is made for people who are concerned with the SEO and performance of their WordPress websites.

This is also the perfect theme for people on a tight budget. That’s because the Pro version is provided at an affordable price: $59 every year for an unlimited number of sites. You’ll also get a forty percent discount when you renew it. How cool is that?

Even though GeneratePress has become easier to use, it looks stripped down when you first launch it because of its pre-made site database. You will also have to go in and configure everything to make it look as you want it while it offers a massive benefit when it comes to customization.  

Features

GeneratePress features: What can you do with it?

The major reason we jumped for GeneratePress is due to its simplicity. The theme is totally clean, yet you still have the option to include add-ons and incorporate them with some of the most advanced plugins on the market.

On top of that, you don’t have to search around the WordPress backend to look for the right tools to make basic customization.

The Customizer

A lot of people used to WordPress understand all about the default customizer. Nonetheless, other basic themes prevent this tool for regular changes, which makes it more challenging to locate the settings to make fast adjustments.

Free themes must utilize the WordPress Customizer to their gain. That way, your customers only have to stick around in one area, and the advanced users could speed up their development times.

For instance, you can immediately tap into the typography tools for changing things such as line-heights, font sizes, and font weights. The default tabs in the Customizer include Menu, Widgets, Blog, Site Identity, Colors, and Layout.

Thus, you stay in the Customizer when exploring your menu, then navigate to a totally different party of the dashboard. To sum up, the Customizer has most of the tools and settings you need, and the more experienced developers still have the opportunity to add their custom CSS.

Access to sleek add-ons

Generatepress Access to sleek add-ons

The add-ons could be accessed via the WordPress customizer. It is not often you see a lot of add-ons provided through the free theme. They are not precisely offered for the free theme, as you should pay for the premium version to access them.

That’s a bummer, but you will still love the setup, as you could get a taste for the free theme and decide whether or not you would wish to upgrade all the wonderful add-ons. You will love the spacing add-on, as it enables you to help your content breathe. The background is helpful as well, and you could access some unique add-ons for disabling elements and producing hooks.

Widgets, font awesome, and translations

Generatepress Widgets, font awesome, and translations

It is obvious that the GeneratePress developer had a longing to make the quintessential blogging them. The post formats look amazing, and the sidebars and columns support widgets perfectly. For instance, you would have no issues adding a social media widget in the sidebar.

The same thing applies from text widgets to recent post lists. On top of that, the theme has more than twenty languages. That count continues to increase, so you know that languages such as German and Spanish are all possible with the theme.

The best part here is that more than 600 Font Awesome icons are packed into the theme. Those fonts are also managed through the WordPress Customizer, allowing you to make all your typography look stunning and bold or elegant and simple.

WooCommerce support and plugins

Generatepress WooCommerce support and plugins

Have you already taken a look at GP’s demo? If yes, you may have already noticed a WooCommerce store loaded with demo products and some ratings for each one. You see, the theme integrates with different free and premium plugins. They all look amazing when enabled.

Some of the other plugins listed for compatibility are bbPress, WPML, and all major Page Builders. Thus, you can use a drag-and-drop page builder if you wish or create a full forum to support your customers.

One of the key reasons this theme receives a lot of great reviews online is that the users have limited problems with conflicting plugins. As you may already know, free themes are more likely to have trouble with one or two random plugins. Thus, it is good to hear when a theme is well-coded.

Block-based theme builder

Generatepress Block-based theme builder

GeneratePress provides the first-ever block-based theme builder! It’s a mix of GenerateBlogs plugin (free) and GeneratePress Premium. What is the advantage of using a block-based theme builder, you ask? For starters, you don’t need to touch the code to personalize or tweak your website.

On top of that, even if you are not a tech-savvy person, you can still personalize each element of your site, including the footer, header, single posts, author boxes, 404 error pages, and so much more.

Excellent support forum

An active support forum is one of the major strengths of GeneratePress. We would often get stuck many times while configuring the theme of one of our blogs. Most of the time, we could find the needed answer without even opening a new topic or ticket. We could simply look for the forum and find the solution.

Given that the forum has more than 30,000 topics, chances are other people have already answered your concern. But what about if you like to open a new support topic? In that case, someone from the support department will answer you within one to two hours.

Fast and lightweight

A minimalist approach is obvious inside GeneratePress. Most of the premium plugins are tens of megabytes when compressed, but GeneratePress is only around 900KB.

The best part here is that the loading speed will not be a problem with the platform. It has no other dependencies, such as jQuery, which keeps the number of requests to a minimum.

Sites Library with a page-builder support

Generatepress Sites Library with a page-builder support

Apart from offering decent levels of customizations, GP provides a ready-made demo site. That means if you’re making a new website, you don’t need to begin from a black page. Those demo sites are divided into three parts based on the page builder they utilize: Beaver Builder, Elementor, and Standard.

The sites in the Standard Category utilize the WordPress block editor. The categories in those sites are designed using the GenerateBlocks plugin, a mess-free Gutenburg block plugin from the same creators. Those are around fifty sites.

On the other hand, in the Elementor group, you will find more than ten sites. You can utilize the demos along with the free version of the Elementor page builder plugin.

When it comes to the Beaver Builder category, the options are quite less. You will also need a pro version of the Beaver Builder plugin to personalize such demo sites.

Conclusion

GeneratePress review: Why you should use it?

There’s no doubt that GeneratePress beats many other WordPress themes out there because of its features, functionalities, performance, support as well as pricing. All those factors make it nothing else but a great option.

No matter if you are creating a basic website or a professional one, it is the perfect theme for you. On top of that, there is hardly any learning curve that comes along with the theme. It can be as complicated or as simple as you take it. Even though it’s a multi-purpose theme, it still does not make a face baked-in functionality like other themes out there.

In case of any problems, it provides a support forum, a Facebook group, and excellent documentation. Thus, there is always somebody to help you out there.

Also, you don’t have to stress about using page builders with it. It enables you to make content and create anything in a fast way. Hence, if you like to use any page builder such as Elementor Beaver Builder for creating your WordPress site, GeneratePress plays quite well with those.

In short, if you are searching for a feature-packed, fast-loading WordPress theme, which provides unlimited website use and flawless support, the GeneratePress premium version is worth a pick.

What are the advantages of GeneratePress?

Some of the most appealing benefits of using GeneratePress are the following:

Many adoption options for WP customizer in real-time

Above performance, the customization options for GeneratePress are another aspect that does great. It employs the WordPress Customizer, which is helpful for you to know all the improvements you made in real-time. The free version provides good alternatives, but you can configure quite anything about your platform if you have the premium.

Optimized performance and quick page load times

GP also focuses on remarkable efficiency and safe coding in all its applications. The entire theme is under 30KB, which is simply as small a WordPress theme you will ever find. Many other WordPress-optimized subjects are 200KB+ now. GP also has no dependence on code to avoid the Google Page speed insights from reported render-blocking fault.

Made it simple to create your platform from pre-made starting pages

In the past, GP pages had to be made from a black page irrespective of whether the theme was challenging for average users. Nonetheless, before 2018, the developer launched the latest Web Library functionality that effortlessly imported one of the more than twenty-five pre-release sample sites for users of GP premium.

Added helpful pro extensions and a modular approach

Apart from offering added style controls in the WP Customizer, GeneratePress Premium has a lot of other practical features such as:

  • Sections, a form of lightweight page design, help you make individual pages of your grid and column settings on a page.
  • Page header where you can make a particular page header per page
  • Elements are a unique feature enabling you to make personalized headers, hooks, and templates for page layouts.

Page-level settings have detailed monitoring of every piece of content

Many of the themes are based on similar settings for every website and post. You have some custom formats or templates. However, beyond that, you don’t have too much control.

To sum up, the GeneratePress theme is one of the most stunning and free WordPress themes we have encountered in a while. We would recommend it to most businesses and bloggers.

Alternatives

GeneratePress Alternatives

Before subscribing to GeneratePress, it’s always a good idea to check out the competition and find the best wordpress themes for your needs. You can find the GeneratePress alternatives here.

Here are some versus to compare GeneratePress with its competitors:

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8.9 / 10