“I’m building on a budget. Why would I pay for a theme when there are free ones available?”
I hear this all the time, and I get it. But choosing your theme is the first decision that changes everything about your build, and most people get it wrong before they’ve even started. Here are six reasons I put a premium theme on almost every store I build.
1. Free themes are harder to customise
Free themes are built to be versatile. They’re designed to work for everyone, which means they’re complicated to customise for anyone.
Even as a professional developer, I spend significantly more time building on a free theme than I do on a premium one. If it takes me longer, imagine how long it takes someone who is just starting out.
2. Free themes push you into apps
Free themes don’t come with enough built-in features. So the moment you want something slightly beyond the basics, like a sticky header, a custom cart or a bundle section, you start looking for apps.
You install one app. Then another. Then another. Before you know it you’ve got six apps running in the background of your store that you barely understand, all charging you monthly and all adding code to a site that gets slower by the day.
What you thought would improve your store does the opposite: slower load times, a messier experience and a harder build.
3. You only pay for a premium theme once
A decent premium Shopify theme costs anywhere from about $100 to $400 USD (roughly $154 to $615 AUD). That might sound like a lot right now, but it’s a one-off cost, not another monthly subscription.
4. You don’t pay until you publish
Here’s the part most people don’t know. You can install a premium theme, build on it and work on it for as long as you need, completely free. The money only changes hands when you’re ready to publish it and go live.
5. The design work is already done
When you install a premium theme, it arrives looking exactly like it did in the theme store. The sections are laid out. The fonts, the spacing and the structure are all there.
All you need to do is swap in your images, update your copy and add your logo.
6. You could launch the same day
If you’re happy with how it looks once your content is in, you could launch that same day. That’s the secret a lot of agencies would rather you didn’t know: you can do this yourself.
Your action for this week
Go and browse the Shopify Theme Store and find a premium theme that looks like your ideal brand. You don’t have to buy it. Install it into your theme library and have a look around the customiser.
Next, before you build a single page, map out your collections. Skipping that step is the reason so many stores end up being rebuilt.
Want a hand?
If you’d rather learn the whole build process in the right order, that’s what I teach inside From Stuck to Selling. If you’d rather hand it over, I build and retheme Shopify stores, and every build includes a premium theme up to AU$300. You can get an instant quote in a couple of minutes.
Written by Kiah
Founder of Kida Digital, a Sydney-based Shopify studio. Over 10 years building Shopify stores for small Australian businesses.
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