Disclaimer
You are on a website of my free theme with purchasable extra features, which is the reason I put this article together. So please forgive me for including my own theme in this selection.
Few rules for this selection:
- The themes are actually minimalist, meaning there are no crazy animations, no unnecessary design elements, basically just a structure for your content.
- They follow 2024 WordPress standards.
- Mobile responsiveness is a must.
1. Minimalio
I wanted my theme to have the most necessary capabilities for showing personal portfolios and nothing more. It’s as simple as it gets, when it comes to adjustability and the designs. In the end, it’s mostly just possibilities of a structure.
My aim was to create a free theme, with possibilities of a premium theme. So there are demos you could easily import, you can purchase support from me and I am also making loads of tutorial videos that will help you understand how things are done.
Advantages:
- You can get the capabilities and support which is standard for premium themes for very little money
- importable demos
- tutorial videos
Disadvantages:
- The designs are really super simple and mostly dependent on you making your content cool
2. Hello from Elementor
https://wordpress.org/themes/hello-elementor
Elementor is the biggest builder in WordPress and even though the default WP editor (Gutenberg) is getting more and more capable, up to the point that I would not really see a reason to use something else, Elementor is certainly not a bad option. Obviously, they want you to subscribe to their service and pay them quite a lot of money for their Pro features.
The theme itself is truly minimalist, because it’s pretty much empty and everything has to be done from the Elementor plugin. Once you do that, you realize most of the options are after the paywall, but if you are okay with the simplest design, Hello is a good choice, no doubt.
Advantages:
- since Elementor is the biggest, the possibilities are endless, but rather sooner than later, you would get frustrated by them asking you for at least $5/month.
- the theme is really well done from the programming perspective and it’s really fast
- you could be certain that this company is not going out of business any time soon
Disadvantages:
- If you really want a nice website, and you don’t want to write your custom code, you will have to pay, and honestly, it’s a lot.
- There are so many options, that you will have to take a week off to learn and understand what’s going on.
3. Themes by Alexander Agnarson
I have recently discovered this guy and his work is impressive. He has done more than 48 themes and all of them seem pretty nice. I obviously didn’t test them all, but they are all probably done pretty much the same way.
It seems to me that Alex just likes to do themes, I didn’t really find anything where he would ask for money, which seems great, but be aware, if somebody does something completely for free, you can’t complain and with WP themes, you often want to.
Advantages:
- The themes are all published within the last two years, so Alex is obviously very active and the themes are well done.
- The designs are nice, although you might have to adjust them quite a bit to get true minimalism.
- The theme options are in the customizer.
Disadvantages:
- The options of the themes are quite limited, and you might have to adjust your content for the theme, which of course isn’t the ideal scenario.
- You might have to learn a little bit of CSS to adjust things.
- You can’t purchase any support, you are on your own.
4. Themes by Wpshower
I used a theme from Wpshower ten years ago, and I am pretty happy they are still there. And yes, they are pretty old, but when it works… The themes have been obviously well done back then and I think that’s mostly because, there are pretty much no options for customization. You just get one design and without code, you can’t adjust anything.
Advantages:
- they have lasted 10 years, they probably will last another 10
- the designs are truly minimalist
Disadvantages:
- just no options whatsoever
- no possibility of support
- they are old
5. Themes by Anders Norén
Anders seems to be a very skilled programmer who likes to do WP themes in his spare time. The themes are really good-looking and done with the latest WP capabilities. He seems very much involved with WP itself, so, the themes might be sort of a testing ground for the latest WP technologies, who knows.
The themes are adjustable within the new WP editor/style editor, which I think is still a little in its infancy, and I am usually very confused by it. On the other hand, I am sure it’s only going to get better, and it’s a sign of a good code. On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be that many options, so, the designs are not very adjustable.
Advantages:
- really well done code from a real professional
- great designs
Disadvantages:
- not much adjustability of the themes
- no possibility of support
