Changed my mind about paying for WordPress themes after a client disaster

I always argued free themes were fine, then last month a client's site broke after an update and the free theme dev took 9 days to reply. Spent $79 on one premium theme and the support chat answered in 4 minutes, so now I tell everyone to just pay for it. Anyone else have a cheap choice cost them more in the end?

2 comments

2 Comments

ericschmidt28d ago

...and honestly that's the thing, free themes aren't the problem, it's the person running them who thinks they don't need a backup. I've seen paid themes break just as bad after updates, the difference is you pay for the privilege of someone telling you it's a plugin conflict. Nine days is slow, sure, but you could have spent those nine days rolling back the update or pulling a backup, which you should have anyway. The real cost isn't the theme, it's not knowing how to fix your own site when things go sideways. I've run free themes on client work for years, the only disasters I've had were from people who skipped the basics and then blamed the price tag.

reese8625d ago

Man, you just reminded me of that article I read last week about how most site downtime is actually user error, not the tool. It was some hosting company's blog, so take it with a grain of salt, but they said like 80% of support tickets come from people who never made a restore point. And your point about paid themes is spot on, I watched a buddy pay $60 for a theme and it still broke after a plugin update, the support just told him to disable everything and figure it out himself. The free theme community is actually more helpful in my experience, people post fixes on forums all the time. Nine days is ridiculous though, but at some point you gotta look in the mirror and ask why you didn't just hit the rollback button on day one. Everyone wants to blame the theme but the real problem is usually sitting in the chair.