GeneratePress - Best and Fastest WordPress Theme

I’ve been using the GeneratePress theme since it was officially released in the WordPress.org theme directory. Being an Old user and experienced WordPress Developer, I should share my experience with you about the GeneratePress WordPress theme. So that, you may use this best WordPress theme in your blog or business website.

I believe that my review will help you to choose the best WordPress theme for your next blog or business website.

In this review about the GeneratePress theme, I am going to explain everything you need to know about this highly recommended WordPress theme to see if it is worth buying its premium version or not.

New to WordPress?

You do not have technical knowledge, but you want to make a website simply and intuitively. Then, WordPress is the best solution for you. You can create your desired website using WordPress without having much technical knowledge.

Do you make websites for clients?

You need a flexible WordPress theme to adapt to your client’s needs (structure, colours, typography etc.) without modifying the code.

With GeneratePress, you can change the structure and style of the web from the WordPress customizer, seeing all the changes live. And for more advanced things, you can use different hooks that the theme has by default.

If you are looking for a WordPress theme that does not give you problems and makes it easy for you if you doubt, GeneratePress theme is the best option that you should consider.

Main features of GeneratePress theme

GeneratePress theme has gained popularity quite quickly as author Tom Usborne has done things very well.

Fast and light WordPress theme

Undoubtedly one of the strengths of GeneratePress is its optimization in terms of loading speed. It makes very few requests to the server, and the CSS and JS files it loads are pretty light.

If you add that together with its simple design and the addons that you can activate or deactivate according to your needs, you get one of the fastest themes for WordPress.

Below you have some performance tests with more information about them.

100% Responsive WordPress theme

GeneratePress is a WordPress theme that works very well on mobile devices and has many mobile-only settings.

For example, specify the mobile version logo, changing the font size, sticky menu, slide-out menu, etc. It will make the user experience very good on mobile devices.

Good HTML structure

The GeneratePress theme’s code is clean and follows all the good practices of WordPress Codex so that Google can perfectly read your website and index it.

It also uses microdata from schema.org that improves communication with search engines.

Compatible with the most popular plugins

GeneratePress works perfectly with the most popular plugins like Woocommerce, bbPress or WPML, among others.

In addition, it is compatible with the majority of visual page builders available for WordPress and works perfectly on different internet browsers. It means that you can create from a simple blog to an online store or forum using the Generatpress theme without any problem.

Wide customization possibilities

Undoubtedly one of the strengths of this WordPress theme is ease to customize, which I will explain later in detail.

Changing the aesthetic Appearance of the theme makes it an ideal choice for first-time users who are just starting to use WordPress.

All the adjustments are made directly from the WordPress customization settings or the page or post options you are editing. You even can check the changes in the live preview.

User Reviews about the GeneratePress theme

GeneratePress reviews

User review is always essential. And the judgment that users have about GeneratePress could not be better.

More than 200 thousand active installations and an average rating of 5 out of 5 stars. Hard to get over.

Another fact to take into account is that GeneratePress receives an average of about 2000 downloads per day.

GeneratePress downloads

GeneratePress Free vs Premium

GeneratePress is a free theme, but all the potential features are in the paid addons.

I consider buying the GeneratePress premium addons because the free version will not give you much. It can be used to make a basic blog, but create something more advanced website; you should get GeneratePress premium addons.

When I bought the GeneratePress premium, there was an option to buy GeneratePress addons separately, but now they can’t. Now they make a single plugin call GP Premium and included all addons into it.

👉 Preview GP Premium Features

GeneratePress premium Price

Since the end of 2020, GeneratePress Premium has had two types of licenses. Before, I only had the annual plan.

generatepress pricing

GeneratePress annual license costs $59. And you can use it for a single website.

A lifetime license costs $249. With this license, you would have access to support and updates for life. Also, you can use it on an unlimited website.

The lifetime plan seems a bit expensive to me. I think there are better options for that price. But if you build so many websites for you and your clients, then the lifetime plan will be the best and minimal costing solution for you.

In short, this is what the premium version of GeneratePress includes.

All 14 addons are available now, and all the future addons they will release in the future will be added to it.

License usage on up to 500 sites: You can activate the GP premium license on 500 domains. I think it is more than enough, although other themes offer 1000 or unlimited use directly.

One year of support and updates: You will receive all the improvements and bug fixes plus support. If something does not work for you for 12 months, you have to renew the license to continue receiving the new updates and support.

Forever: once you buy it, you will have it forever even if you don’t renew after a year. It will not be erased, deactivated or anything. If you do not renew the license, you will not get the updates or the premium support, but you can still use it anyway.

30-day refund:  If you don’t like the template for whatever reason, you have 30 days to get your money back without asking questions.

👉 Get Your GeneratePress Premium

GeneratePress Premium in detail

Addons are the key to the success of the GeneratePress theme.

Here are the videos about each of the addons to get an idea of ​​everything they allow you to do.

Colours

Colors are undoubtedly the first thing you start to change on a website.

An essential addon that will allow you to adapt the colors of each element of your website without touching any code.

These are the elements that you can use:

generatpress colors addons

As you can see, the possibilities for customizing colors are extensive. You can even change the colors of the forms.

Typography

Typography is another essential part of a website. With the typography addon, you can use Google Fonts and change the font and style of all these elements:

  • Post titles and pages.
  • Set a font type and style for each H1, H2, and H3 tag
  • The titles and text of the widgets
  • Menu typography.
  • The footer.

You can use a different font for each element of the web.

Sections

This addon is one of the most interesting because it lets you layout your pages by creating a series of sections, each with its style.

You can change the following parameters for each section:

  • Change the background color.
  • The color of links and text
  • Set a background image.
  • Use the parallax effect.
  • Add padding-top and bottom.
  • Create full-width sections.
  • Add custom CSS.

Plus Menu

It offers you different settings related to the menu, such as activating the “sticky” menu or better known as the sticky menu, that stays on top when you scroll.

You can add a logo to the menu and even set a different menu in the mobile version.

I do not know if you have seen that the menu is displayed from the side of some websites’ mobile versions.

This menu type seems much better for mobile devices than the typical one that opens vertically with all the menu items.

All these options combined allow improving the usability and the user experience on both desktop and smaller screens.

That is why it is one of the best WordPress themes that work perfectly in the different screen sizes.

Elements

It is the new functionality that they have launched with version 2.0 of GeneratePress.

Within Elements, they have grouped Hooks,  Headers and added Theme Layout.

With this new functionality, you can now insert hooks and headers conditionally specifying which web pages and to which users it will be shown.

It is missing since before inserting a hook, and it appeared throughout the web unless you limited it with PHP code.

It was not the most comfortable, especially for beginner users.

Another thing to note about Elements is that now you can create a Theme Layout to say that all pages are full width, do not have a sidebar and do not show the title.

Elements are pretty helpful because before, you had to do it page by page.

Blog

With a couple of clicks, you can hide the following elements of your posts:

  • The author
  • The date
  • Categories:
  • Comments
  • Tags
  • and more.

Besides that, you can change the way of displaying your articles.

For example, you could show the articles in several columns or use a masonry layout to load your posts as if they were Pinterest pins.

I highly recommend that you look at the video to see the full potential of this addon.

Backgrounds

It gives you the possibility to change the background to all these elements:

  • Body
  • Header
  • Content
  • Sidebar Widgets
  • Footer Widget Area
  • Footer
  • Navigation
  • Navigation Item
  • Navigation Item Hover
  • Navigation Item Current
  • Sub-Navigation Item
  • Sub-Navigation Item Hover
  • Sub-Navigation Item Current

You can change the background to almost any element of the theme.

Spacing

Spacing is a very interesting addon since it allows you to change the space ( padding) between the different elements of the web.

Typically, changing this type of property tends to give headaches because, many times, something is out of the box.

With GeneratePress, that does not happen. It allows you to change the spacing very quickly without having to touch any code.

Generate-Spacing-addon

Secondary Menu

Do you need an extra menu? No problem.

With this addon, you will add an extra menu in multiple positions and customize it to your liking by changing the colors, typography, spacing, etc.

It is helpful to place links to phone, email, social networks, customer area or any other secondary link that does not have to be in the main menu.

Secondary Menu

Copyright

It is a very simple addon, and the only thing it allows you to do is to modify the Copyright that appears in the footer of the web.

This field allows the use of HTML and shortcodes.

Also, you have some pretty helpful variables.

  • % corrent_year% so that the year is updated automatically.
  • % copy% to place the copyright symbol ©.

GeneratePress copyright

Disable Elements

It is a handy addon because it allows you to hide some elements on each page individually.

You will get a great advantage from this addon while creating a landing page using the GeneratPress theme.

Since these usually do not have a navigation menu, sidebar, or any element that facilitates the user’s exit from the page.

Hooks

Since version 2.0 of GeneratePress, the hooks are integrated into Elements.

Hooks could be defined as points or locations to insert content, plain text, HTML code, scripts or PHP code.

It is something that you can get a lot of benefits from. An actual example would be to insert the Google Analytics script in the head using a hook.

These are the main hooks of GeneratePress:

  • wp_head
  • Before Header
  • Before Header Content
  • After Header Content
  • After Header
  • Before Content
  • After Entry Title
  • After Content
  • Before Right Sidebar Content
  • After Right Sidebar Content
  • Before Left Sidebar Content
  • AfterLeft Sidebar Content
  • Before Footer
  • Before Footer Content
  • wp_footer

In the GeneratrePress documentation, you can see the rest of the available hooks.

GeneratePress Premium + WooCommerce

Earlier, there were no addons for WooCommerce in Generatpress premium. Before I had nothing for WooCommerece, I left it as it comes by default.

But that is a thing of the past, now GeneratePress has many configuration options focused on WooCommerce so that you can create your online store using this template without a problem.

I leave you a video so you can see the settings it has.

This addon adds some style improvements to the store and a series of options to adapt WooCom to your liking.

Things you can do with the WooCommerce addon:

  • Add the cart to the menu before you had to add it through another plugin. You can also hide it if you don’t want it.
  • Show or hide the breadcrumbs.
  • Choose the structure of the store page with a sidebar on the right, left, with two sidebars or without a sidebar.
  • Image and text alignment: left, center and right.
  • Products by page.
  • Hide product sorting.
  • Hide the number of total outcomes.
  • Hide the product title.
  • Hide the text.
  • Hide the price.
  • Hide the offers.
  • Hide the product image
  • etc.

With all these options, you have plenty to customize your store without having to touch code.

More Infor 👉 GeneratePress Premium

GeneratePress + Elementor Page Builder

Elementor Pro

As I said before, GeneratePress works very well with the different Page Builders on the market, especially with Elementor.

Elementor is a very intuitive, easy-to-use and free visual editor. It also has a premium version. And it is one of my primary tools in the projects I do.

👉 GeneratePress + Elementor is a lethal combination !! 🔥🔥

On the other hand, you have a lightweight template without unnecessary styles or functionalities. Elementor is a powerful visual editor that allows you to shape the content of your website without touching code.

With this combination, you can make all kinds of websites, from a simple blog to doctors, lawyers, photographers, news websites, portfolios, and even online stores.

Currently, this combination seems to be one of the best there is to create your website.

GeneratePress 2.0 loading speed test

As you may already know, loading speed is an essential factor, and templates are usually one of the factors that include the most in this regard.

One of the main improvements of GeneratePress version 2.0 is the optimization of loading speed.

I have done the tests using Hostgator hosting with a live WordPress website.

Hostgator is a cheap hosting that is doing quite well. If you want more fast hosting, then you may consider using FastComet or Kinsta which is quite expensive rather than Hostgator.

If you need help choosing the best WordPress hosting, you can read my comparing post on 5 the best Web hosting for WordPress.

You can check out my test result on GTMetrix.

You even can see my own website speed testing result here:

wordpress speed optimziation

You can read this post from the theme author in which he explains how to improve the loading speed of GeneratePress.

GeneratePress, a WordPress theme for everyone

As you have already seen, thanks to the addons, the possibilities are enormous.

Advantages for beginners

1. Thanks to the fact that everything is configured from the customization options, you see the changes live, which helps and speeds up the process of creating your website.

Even if you are a beginner user, it should not cost you much to adapt the template to your liking.

2. It has become a pretty popular topic, and there are even Facebook communities just about this template.

3.  A solid foundation. You get a versatile, lightweight template with a good HTML structure that will help the SEO of your website.

Advantages for web designers

1. You save time. Most of the layout adjustments can do using the Generatpress theme without modifying the CSS by hand.

And in case you have to, being a template with a simple style makes it much easier to apply your CSS.

In addition to the flexibility, it gives you when modifying the web structure: with a sidebar, without a sidebar, with two sidebars, with a header, without a header, a menu on the right, menu below the header etc. the possibilities are enormous.

Not forgetting the hooks with which you can easily insert code in certain places in the template.

2. Export your designs. You have done some tests locally, and you liked how the web has turned out. Export that style and import it to another website whenever you want.

3. Unlimited license. As I have said before, you can use  GP premium on all your websites and activate those clients’ websites with your purchase code.

As it is a very flexible theme, it is easy to adapt it to clients’ needs. In most cases, without touching code.

How to install GeneratePress Premium?

GeneratePress is a free theme, but the paid version is a plugin called GP Premium which, when installed, unlocks all the features that make this theme so unique.

Being a plugin, some users get confused and try to install it as if it were a WordPress theme, and of course, they get an error. I have already come across several such cases.

Since GP Premium is a plugin, You need to install GeneratePress Premium as you install a plugin in WordPress, not as a WordPress theme.

Once the GP Premium plugin is installed, you have to go to Appearance -> GeneratePress to activate the license and the addons you will use.

Download GeneratePress Premium ✌️

Add-on plugins from the author

Tom (the author of the template) has also created several plugins that complement the template. I leave you the list in case you want to take a look.

Lightweight Grid Columns

Do you remember that you could not create columns in the sections? Well, this plugin allows you to do exactly that.

Create columns adapted to mobile (responsive) using shortcodes and insert the content you want inside.

Lightweight Social Icons

Links to social networks are something that can not be missing on any website. Lightweight Social Icons allows you to insert your social media icons into a widget.

You can change the color, the alignment, open the links in a new window, etc. I use it in the sidebar of this blog.

WP Show Posts

A straightforward and lightweight plugin that allows you to display the latest blog posts wherever you want using a shortcode.

GenerateBlocks

GenerateBlocks is a new and very fast theme builder for the GeneratPress theme. GenerateBlocks works all the themes for WordPress but it works best with the Generatpress theme.

Final Opinion on GeneratePress

My final opinion is that the Generatpress theme is an excellent WordPress theme that works out of the box. It is a good option for both novice and professional WordPress users. Its configuration options and addons allow you to create very different websites without modifying the theme code in most cases.

There is a thread with more than 90 pages in the support forum where you can see websites made with GeneratePress by users. It can help you get ideas and see everything that can be developed using GeneratePress Premium.

I can’t tell you much more, I’m delighted. I encourage you to try the Generatpress theme because it will not be a bad investment. And definitely, you will say thanks to me for suggesting the Generatpress theme.

Get GeneratePress Premium 👈

So far the that was my review and opinion on the GeneratePress theme. I hope it has been helpful to you.

Please leave me your opinion or questions in the comments, and I want to know what you think of this WordPress theme.