OrganicThemes Overview
2013 Edition – Organic Themes is managed and founded by two top-notch design artists and WordPress Theme developers, Jeff Milone and David Morgan. Both are Florida-born graphic experts with years of experience in web design and WordPress Theme creation. Jeff was previously part of the web development team of Studiopress until he parted ways and partnered with David to form their own design company. David is a graduate of Computer Animation with expertise in CSS, HTML creation and web design. He is presently residing in Hawaii where he founded the Muku Studios, a design company established in 2007.
Theme Functionality
All themes developed by Organic Themes are easily customizable that even people without web design skills and knowledge in HTML and CSS codes can create their own website based on their preferred design. The themes have options page that makes lay-outing the web easier to do, especially with added features like auto resizing images, widget ready sidebars and gravity form integration among many others.
All themes are compliant with the latest release of WordPress and one unique aspect to many of the themes released by Organic is that they go back and add new versions of themes so there may be version 1, 2, 3 etc of a certain theme. Additionally, the themes are properly coded for SEO using many of the best practices for on site layout. Moreover, the blog page templates typically allow you display your featured blog on your site. Photoshop design files are included in all themes.
Theme Graphics
Theme graphics of OrganicThemes designs have high resolution and are excellent in quality. However, most of their themes do not have excellent graphical effects as they are mainly one-colored headers with various fonts. If you like or are looking for a more minimal design, Organic Themes is definitely a company to consider. The title fonts are perfect because they are bold and large enough to emphasize what the website is all about while their font style impeccably blends well with the title.
Organic Themes believes in beauty in simplicity as their themes adhere to the belief that less can be more with regards to web design. Consequently most of their themes are clean and elegant without having many features and graphical effects so that users and viewers are not overwhelmed by too many gadgets on the site.
There are about 20 different Themes created by Organic Themes, and they are consistently developing fresh and unique themes to meet the demands and needs of most users.
Example Themes developed by Organic Themes:
Theme Pricing
Each Theme created by Organic Themes costs $69. They also offer a Developer Package for $249 that includes all themes developed by Organic Themes, including future releases. Support is provided at both levels of membership.
At this price, the developer option is a good deal, however currently they only have 20 or so themes to offer, whereas a Theme shop like Elegant Themes has over 80 Themes starting at just $39. To be fair, Organic Themes is going after a little different market than Elegant Themes, however if price is a concern, there really is no better deal in WordPress than Elegant Themes.
Theme Support
Customer support provided by Organic Themes is similar with most premium theme developers whereby assistance is given through the support forum. The forum is user friendly since you can easily find assistance based on the type of theme that you need support and help. Be sure to read through actual user comments below regarding things like support and customer experience with Organic.
Summary
Organic Themes are ideal and recommended for minimalists who like simple design. They are great for business and corporate sites as well as those who want to post photos and videos on their websites since their digital pictures and arts are fully emphasized by the simplicity of the theme.
In terms of pricing, they are a little more expensive than average, but the quality of their work speaks for itself, and they have a great reputation in the WordPress industry.
Theme License
Each theme you purchase can be used on an unlimited number of personal or client sites. More specifically their site states, Unlike many website template solutions, our GPL licensing permits the use of our themes on multiple domains without any additional charges, as long as the themes are not being re-sold.
I have used 3 different themes from Organic Themes for 3 different site and each time I’ve had a wonderful experience. The code is clean and well laid out. Every time I use the support forum the responses are helpful and punctual.
I would recommend these themes to anyone who has an interest in a minimalist/clean look for their site. It would also be good to have a background in HTML and CSS. Not that you need it to use to implement the themes, but it makes any customization a much more simple task (as with all themes).
I just purchased the Response theme. I was sold on the idea of a simple, straightforward theme that does what it needs to do. I wanted to make my site look more professional and to facilitate e-commerce. The demos look awesome. Unfortunately, I have spent several days trying to convert my site. I should have stuck with Weaver II, which is free. The “solutions” through the forums often suggest going into the theme editor and changing the code. I am not a programmer, and this stuff is Greek to me. I didn’t pay $70 to have to write html. I am unwilling to give up, since I paid so much for this – but at this point, the amount of time I have spent has put me behind in everything else, and in the meantime, my site looks absolutely awful. Wish I could get a refund.
Just bought Non-Profit theme… and wish I had not. Many things/abilities I take for granted as they were all a part of other (cheaper!) purchased themes don’t seem to be here.
The online instructions are outdated and some of the features they advertise are not available.visible/enabled by default. And, from my scouring of the forums, they seem more than a little eager to send you over to Werkpress where you can pay even MORE to get the help most of the developers in my experience provide with your purchase.
Buyer beware… I wish I had been!
Organic Themes fail with simple site tagline display and support to have it fixed. Their Tech theme is NOT SEO friendly from the initial purchase.
After numerous attempts with the method suggested by their support, I have no tagline/bloginfo description displaying in the tabs. Worst, because it is not displaying, Google is not finding it. As Google places heavy emphasis on site titles and description, the Organic Tech Theme is not SEO friendly.
Secondly, the support for this issue has been only led me in circles with no real solution. This theme is not worth the $69 I paid for it. I have wasted too much time on something so simple that other companies offer with regards to SEO friendliness and optimization.
As support has mentioned, “the theme isn’t setup to output the tagline, only the title.” That should be clearly stated in the demo or somewhere before purchasing.
So buyer beware. Error to the side of caution before purchasing from this company. You may end up spending more time chasing your tail than anything else.
I’m not sure what ‘Organic Themes’ Kelly is referring to, but it’s never been the Organic Themes I’ve had the pleasure of working with.
Organic Theme’s support is 99% of the time extremely quick and considerate. Like all theme studios they don’t provide free customization services or help with 3rd party plugins, but gladly help with minor alterations to their themes, and fully commit themselves to helping when it comes to theme usage, theme bugs, and even WordPress setup.
There is no ‘upselling’ of ‘custom programmed modifications’ (Organic Themes refers customization to Werkpress, when customization is required), nor is there any sort of ‘proprietary coding’ (doesn’t make much sense when you think about it, does it?) that prevents users from modifying their themes. This, in fact, is one of the major selling points of an Organic Themes theme — they are incredibly modifiable and user friendly. These are themes you don’t need to be a PHP expert to decipher.
The functionality of Organic Theme’s themes is great; their theme support is great; the cost of their themes is reasonable: I couldn’t recommend them enough.
Consistently poor support from Organic Themes. For a company who sells WordPress themes at high prices, I expected a higher level of support, but Organic Themes’ approach to support is to answer only the questions they like, after forcing paying customers to sift through endless forum threads, which they often leave unanswered. They often answer questions by trying to sell custom programmed modifications to their themes, rather then pointing a user in the direction of a solution. Sure, their themes initially look nice at first, but when you get under the hood, they use their own code method, which renders them nearly useless, because fixing the errors they (themselves) make is almost impossible due to their proprietary coding– and they will not help with fixing their errors. Their themes are bold and flashy, but they are not very tight design wise. Much smarter to hire a WordPress developer and designer than to waste time on their dreadful support.
Hi Kelly,
I’m sorry to hear you had a poor experience. We take our support and customer service seriously, and try our best to answer every question we receive in a timely manner. We have opened our old forums up for public viewing, and now answer questions on a per ticket basis to better serve customers.
I would like to clarify that we do not use proprietary code. All of our code conforms to the GPL license and is developed to reflect WordPress standards. If we are notified of a bug, we guarantee to fix the bug in a timely manner. In fact, we update our themes consistently to keep them inline with new WordPress functionality and as bug free is possible. If there is anything else we can help clarify or assist with, we would be happy for you to contact us directly.
I do confirm that review. Same experience : my question was about integrating custom post types what is a basic wordpress feature. I feel like being a hostage and I’m quite furious.
I’d like to correct my review : I had a very fast answer from the support and I realized the mistake were from myself (and my poor knowledge), not from the theme.
“Not Impressed”
I purchased the shop forum. My main gripe is the support, I’ve posted on their forum three times and with the last post asking “Is any body there?”. It seems that they have taken my money and popped off to spend it. Will comment if they ever get back to me, but has taken over three weeks so far – pretty poor if you ask me.
As for the design, while they look ok, the template options are fairly limiting. Perhaps put it down to a mistake and move on to another layout design. I hear Thesis is an option. Any feedback on that welcome.
They’re not the cheapest themes on the market, but you get what you pay for. I love my Organic Theme for my photography site! They have responded to all my emails quickly, and the forums are very helpful. It’s clear they create their themes with the user in mind. My friends and clients ask who made my site, and I love recommending Organic Themes to them.
This was a horrible purchase. It was expensive and I wasted a huge amount of my time. This was the 3rd website I have created. After spending 6.5 hrs , reinstalling everything including worpress and the theme twice and reading countless forums (at least the ones I could get into), I gave up and bought an elegant theme. I had the basic layout of my site done in 75 mins. I asked for a refund, and it took me 3 emails to even get a response and no refund. Which admittedly is my fault for not reading the fine print, but I didn’t purchase it thinking it would not work. I would recommend you do not buy this product.
“Functionality at its best”
Hurrah for Jeff Milone and David Morgan! They’re born geniuses. Their templates are the most functional I’ve ever worked with. Who’d ever thought, apps like auto resizing images and gravity form integration are possible?
I like the theme but the “support forum” is like getting into fort knox. After two weeks of sending emails and plugging in transaction numbers they cannot seem to make it so we can access the one portion we need to ask questions. So nice theme but so far unimpressed with the support. I find the themes reasonably priced but not sure we’ll go this route again.
“Rip off”
I thought the rat race would’ve been more competitive with WP themes. I’ve never seen such outrageous prices than with the themes they provide. To add insult to injury, there are no discount offers buying in bulk.
It has never been easier to set the parameters I want for my theme than with the themes from OrganicT.
Even if I’m of a medical background, I did a fine job in creating the website for my clinic and it’s all because of the user-friendliness of their themes. Good job!
“Just another Gimmick”
I know organic stuffs are supposed to be good. That was why I was disappointed as they did not meet any of my organic expectations. They should not call themselves Organicthemes but they should start using Trashthemes.
Let’s face it, there are good themes and bad themes and the one basic concept that makes them good is the theme’s openness to being customizable.
The themes provided for by Organicthemes get an eight when it comes to the category of functionality.
Even if you don’t have a vast knowledge in HTML or CSS codes, you can easily create your own website using Organicthemes as a basis.
Lay-outing is easy to do with features that themes from Organicthemes have like widget ready sidebars, resizing images, etc.
my site became healthier when i started using organicthemes. how? well more visitors come to visit my website because of higher seo ranking. more visitors also come back because the background theme of my website left them a good healthy impression.
It’s so rare to come across a WordPress themes developer that can represent my healthy lifestyle. True to its name Organicthemes gave me the organic choice for website themes. And when you say organic, you simply know it’s the best!
“Simplicity schmimplicity”
I’m everything but minimalist and getting themes from Organicthemes is one of the biggest mistakes I made.
I needed something vibrant and lively and they gave me simple and boring. I really regret going for them. Woe is me!
“Organically Good”
Organic themes are healthy for all my websites! It did not only give me a site that’s pleasing to the eye and healthy to look at but it’s also healthy for my page rankings on search engines.
“I’m number one!”
My business is where I need to be in the top is almost every kind of ranking and with Organic Themes, part of the functions it has is codes for SEO. This gets my website on the top of every ranking.
The bone of contention when you’re making a choice for the right WordPress theme provider is the price and Organic Themes loses the game when this factor is taken into consideration.
Their themes are offered individually at the price of $69 which is already a pretty steep price to pay for one single theme.
You can avail of the discounts they offer when you buy all the themes that they have, it’s all worth $249.
However, with just ten themes developed at this time, you can get more value for your money if you buy themes from companies like Woothemes.
“Got it right the first time”
I so love my themes. Even if this is my first time, Organicthemes makes it a breeze. I feel like a professional web designer who gives me control of my site.
“Found a template just right for me”
I love having a template from Organicthemes. With the blog page template that they have, it’s a breeze to get my featured blog displayed on my site.
No fuss and no hassles, I can just select what blog I like to be seen and read by my followers first.
Functionality and support matters a lot to me and are big factors when choosing for the right WordPress company to go for. With regards to Organicthemes, I rate the features of gravity form integration, resizing images and widget ready sidebars at a nine for the themes they have. Without a great skill in web design, I find I could handle Organicthemes pretty easily. However, with my skill level established, I would need a lot of support from the company and Organicthemes provides support only through a support forum.