The 5 Best WordPress Themes for Affiliate Marketing
Want to know what is the best WordPress theme for affiliate marketing straight away? Kadence combines speed, with flexibility and ease-of-use. I use this theme for all of my affiliate sites since 2021 and haven’t looked back since.
The best WordPress themes for affiliate marketing have the following characteristics:
- They are well-coded, light, and fast (passing Google’s core web vitals should be a breeze)
- They are versatile (you should be able to build any kind of website with them)
- They are easy to use
Unfortunately, the affiliate themes many sites recommend screw the pooch on one or more of these characteristics. You’ll see many mainstream websites recommend poorly coded, bloated Envato themes that are barely updated. Just as bad, such themes will often put your affiliate site in a straitjacket when it comes to functionality.
In this article I’ll be only recommending themes which are actually suitable for affiliate marketing. Three of these I’ve extensively tested myself (Kadence, GeneratePress and Divi). Two of them (Blocksy and Astra) I haven’t tried myself (yet), but they have a great reputation among affiliate marketers.
So without further ado, here are the best WordPress themes for affiliate marketing.
Best WordPress themes for affiliate marketing
1. Kadence
Currently I use Kadence for all my (affiliate) websites. While the theme isn’t perfect, it comes pretty damn close. Let me quickly break down what it is that makes Kadence perfectly suited for affiliate marketing:
- It’s fast. There aren’t many WordPress themes with a cleaner and lighter codebase than Kadence. This translates in great website performance out of the box. No need to pull your site through the ringer in order to make it fast. Kadence has done all the heavy lifting for you.
- It’s build around Gutenberg. Kadence is as close to the WordPress core as you can get. It doesn’t slap a codebase on top of WordPress that tries to turn it into something it’s not. The Kadence Blocks plugin is essentially a Gutenberg extension that gives you all the functionality of a page builder like Elementor. By combining Kadence with Kadence Blocks, you can edit pretty much your entire site in Gutenberg, whether you work on a page or a post.
- It’s versatile. Conditional headers, hooked elements, build-in table of content, a fully-fledged page builder thanks to Kadence Blocks… You can do a ton of things with Kadence. So much in fact, that you won’t need many plugins to give your site the functionality it requires. Not only does this help the performance of your website, but it’s also great for preventing plugin conflicts and other forms of instability.
- It’s easy to use and improves your workflow dramatically. Say you want to change the entire color palette of your website in one go. As Kadence works with a global color palette, you can do this in just a few clicks. There are tons of nifty little features like this that make Kadence super convenient to use. From setting up a website to maintaining it, Kadence just makes things extremely easy.
For me this theme has been a game changer. You can build the exact same sites as with a traditional page builder, without sacrificing speed and having a WordPress stack which is user-friendly and easy to maintain.
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Number of users and user reviews
Although Kadence only has been around since 2020, it already has 90.000 active installations. It has a 5 out of 5-star rating.
Costs
Kadence comes in two flavors: a free and a premium version. The free version already offers so much functionality that it lets most paid themes bite the dust. You can check out the demo site of my Affiliate24 Starter template to see what I mean.
The paid version of Kadence has the following costs:
- Kadence Pro – $59 per year
- Essential Bundle – $129 per year
- Full Bundle – $199 per year
- Lifetime Full Bundle – $599 one time
To be frank, these price points are pretty steep. If you’re looking for a budget-friendly alternative I recommend you pick GeneratePress which I’ll describe below.
2. GeneratePress
GeneratePress is another WordPress theme which is all about speed, stability, and accessibility. It was one of the first modern, multifunctional WordPress themes which was speed-focussed and years later it still is one of the top dogs in the industry.
Where you add a page builder to Kadence through Kadence Blocks, you add a page builder to GeneratePress through GenerateBlocks. GenerateBlocks works a bit differently than Kadence Blocks. You’ve got fewer blocks to choose from but can combine them into your own blocks.
Any affiliate site you end up building with GeneratePress will be blazing fast. But be prepared for a bit of a steeper learning curve in comparison to Kadence.
Having said that, as an affiliate marketer you can’t go wrong with GeneratePress. It’s easily one of the best WordPress themes on the market today.
Number of users and user reviews
GeneratePress has 400.000+ active installations. It has a 5 out of 5-star rating.
Costs
GeneratePress has both a free and a premium version. This is what the premium version costs:
- Premium Yearly: $59 yearly
- Premium Lifetime: $249 one time
Check out their website here.
Note that their Lifetime plan costs less than half of what you pay for Kadence.
3. Blocksy
Blocksy is a theme I haven’t tested myself, but it’s one of those themes you’ll see affiliate marketers often recommend on online forums.
Just like GeneratePress and Kadence, Blocksy is a lightweight theme build around the Gutenberg editor. It’s a multi-purpose theme with which you can put together nearly any website you can imagine.
Feature-wise, Blocksy and Kadence are extremely similar. And like Kadence, they are also making a rapid ascend through the WordPress theme rankings, with many people ditching their old theme in favor of Blocksy.
Number of users and user reviews
Blocksy has 40.000 active installations. It has a 5 out of 5-star rating.
Costs
Blocksy has a free and a paid version. Here are their paid plans:
- Personal – $49 per year, $149 lifetime
- Professional – $69 per year, $199 lifetime
- Agency – $99 per year, $299 lifetime
4. Astra
As with Blocksy, I haven’t put Astra to the test myself. But it is a wildly popular theme that has been around for years. It is the theme of choice of many affiliate marketers.
Unlike the above themes, they don’t have their own dedicated Gutenberg block builder. However, you can combine Astra with a plugin like Kadence Blocks or Ultimate Blocks.
Number of users and user reviews
Astra has 1 million active installations. It has a 5 out of 5-star rating.
Costs
Astra has a free version but also comes with several paid plans:
- Astra Pro – $47 per year, $249 lifetime
- Essential Bundle – $169 per year, $499 lifetime
- Growth Bundle – $249 per year, $699 lifetime
5. Divi
Divi is the theme I used for all my websites before I made the switch to Kadence. What I like about Divi is its versatility. Next to a page builder it also has a theme builder, and you can style and adjust pretty much everything about your website.
Divi is a WordPress juggernaut. It has been around for ages and is easily one of the most popular WordPress themes about all time.
Among affiliate marketers they have caught some heat due to their theme being bloated. And although I always easily passed my core web vitals when using them, it was a struggle getting decent mobile PageSpeed scores.
Don’t get me wrong: you can make a Divi website very fast. It’s just going to take you way more effort than with any of the above themes. And in all fairness, Elegant Themes, the company behind Divi, has been addressing the issue of speed in recent updates.
However, Divi is not build around the Gutenberg-editor. In fact, it’s often clashing with it.
The bottom line: Divi is a solid theme. Not only in general, but also for affiliate marketers. However, these days you’ll be better off picking any of the above options due to performance and compatibility considerations.
Number of users and user reviews
Divi has millions of users. You can’t download the theme from the WordPress repository, but on TrustPilot they have a 5 out of 5-star rating.
Costs
Divi has no free version. Here’s how much it costs:
- Yearly Access – $89
- Lifetime Access – $249
Conclusion: picking a WordPress theme for your affiliate website
At the end of the day, whatever is the best theme for affiliate marketing comes down to personal preferences.
These are the themes you should consider (especially the first 4 options):
Personally, I prefer Kadence, and I built all my sites with it. However, there are plenty of affiliate marketers out there who rather use GeneratePress or Blocksy.
Since most of these themes have a free version, I recommend you try a few of them and see what works best for you.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know if a WordPress theme is good for affiliate marketing?
It can be hard to determine this looking from the outside. For instance, a theme might look great, but it can be very slow. You best bet is reading this article or asking people on online forums about affiliate marketing.
Unfortunately, most websites that publish articles such as “the best themes for affiliate marketing” have not been written by actual affiliate marketers and thus recommend mostly god-awful themes.
How important is speed for an affiliate marketing WordPress theme?
It is extremely important. Website speed is a direct Google ranking factor. Furthermore, speed has a direct impact on your conversion rates. As an affiliate marketer you should always pick a fast WordPress theme.
hi, how about rehub? heard that Âmzon suggest this theme
Hi Santa, I haven’t tried it and I don’t know anyone using it. It’s a ThemeForest theme – personally I’d never use one of these because they tend to be bloated (slow) and are single-purpose. I.e. customization options are extremely limited in comparison to the themes I mention in this article.
Unrelated piece of advice: I’d always try to stay away from Amazon as much as possible as they kick publishers off their platform with little to no warning and are constantly slashing their fees. They are a pretty terrible company to work with.