If you’re in the market for a fast, Gutenberg-ready WordPress theme that is absolutely packed with customization options and innovative features, then you should definitely give the Blocksy theme a try.
In this Blocksy review, I’m going to go over a Blocksy theme overview, pricing, and showcase all of the free and pro features available to you.
Let’s see what the Blocksy theme has to offer.
Blocksy Theme Review Overview
Overall, Blocksy is an excellent theme for WordPress bloggers who want to create a beautiful website that’s highly customizable. It’s packed with features and customization options to make it easy for users to create a beautiful website that looks professional in no time. It features a drag and drop header/footer builder and dozens of beautiful predesigned starter sites.
The theme is very mobile-friendly so your site will look good on all screen sizes with little effort. Best of all, Blocksy is also optimized for speed and performance, making sure that your website loads quickly so you can more easily pass Google’s Core Web Vitals.
Customization
One of the most customizable WordPress themes.
Speed
Extremely fast speeds thanks to optimized, modular code.
Support
Fast customer support and engaging Facebook community.
Blocks
No dedicated block plugin, so third-party blocks recommended.
Pricing
Insanely good value for the price that you pay for the theme.
Ease of Use
One of the easiest themes to use making it very beginner-friendly.
Blocksy Pros
Blocksy Cons
Starts at $69/year
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What is Blocksy?
Blocksy is a premium Gutenberg WordPress theme that is created by two passionate WordPress workaholics, Sergiu Radu and Andrei Glingeanu, over at creativethemes.com. They are based out of Romania.
The Blocksy theme is a truly innovative, feature-packed theme that also uses modular code which, when combined, creates a lightweight theme that allows you to create nearly anything you can imagine when using the additional Blocksy Pro features.
It has tight integration with the WordPress Gutenberg editor which is one of my favorite perks about the theme.
The theme is completely free to download from the WordPress repository and can be extended with Blocksy PRO which I will cover more below.
Let’s look at Blocksy pricing next.
Blocksy Pricing
As mentioned in the previous section, the Blocksy theme offers a completely free option that is loaded with features. It can be downloaded directly from the WordPress repo.
That being said, the Blocksy team announced Blocksy PRO in November 2020 which adds a significant amount of premium features to the Blocksy theme.
Blocksy offers very competitive pricing when paired against some of the other best WordPress themes on the market right now.
Here’s a pricing table showing the Blocksy pricing for both their annual and lifetime plans.
Blocksy PRO | Personal | Professional | Agency |
---|---|---|---|
Number of Sites | 1 | 10 | Unlimited |
Annual Pricing | $69 | $99 | $149 |
Lifetime Pricing | $199 | $299 | $499 |
* Prices may vary.
Best Features of the Free Blocksy Theme
- Custom WordPress Customizer
- Header and Footer Builder
- Sticky and Transparent Header
- Global Color Palette
- Social Sharing Box (without a plugin)
- Related and Trending Posts built-in
- Cookies Consent Notice (GDPR)
- Sticky Sidebar
- Live Search
The free Blocksy theme offers many more features than other free WordPress themes. In fact, it offers more free features than most paid WordPress themes do. There are so many good free features, but I’m going to highlight my favorite ones.
Custom WordPress Customizer
Custom customizer? What does that mean?! Well, when you go into the WordPress customizer while using the Blocksy theme, you’ll notice that it looks… different than any other WordPress theme that you’re used to.
I could explain it, but a picture’s worth 1000 words, right? Here are two images of the Blocksy WordPress customizer. You’ll notice that the layout and the options look different from the default WordPress styles used in other themes.
Not to mention, there’s even a sun/moon icon at the bottom of the customizer that allows you to switch from light to dark mode with the flip of a switch. Now that’s cool!
Blocksy Customizer Light Mode:
Blocksy Customizer Dark Mode:
You can see that all of your various options are intuitively laid out in a way that makes sense to anyone building a website with Blocksy.
For example, here are the Blocksy WordPress customizer sections listed out with all the top-level options:
- General Options
- General
- Header
- Footer
- Sidebar
- Colors
- Typography
- Performance
- Post Types
- Blog Posts
- Single Posts
- Categories
- Pages
- Author Page
- Search Page
- Blog Posts
- Visitor Engagement
- General
- Social Networks
- Core
- Site Identity
- Menus
- Widgets
- Homepage Settings
- Additional CSS
Having a WordPress customizer laid out like this makes it very easy to know exactly where to go when you want to customize a certain section of your website.
In case you didn’t already figure it out… I dig the Blocksy custom customizer!
Header and Footer Features
Next, the free Blocksy theme offers an amazing header and footer builder where you can easily drag and drop different elements onto your header or footer to build a fully functional header for your website within a matter of minutes.
This is a much faster way to create a header than any theme that doesn’t offer a header builder such as GeneratePress.
Here’s a list of all the header builder elements offered in the free Blocksy theme:
- Account
- Button
- HTML 1
- Logo
- Menu 1
- Menu 2
- Search
- Socials
All of the draggable header elements can be seen in the image below:
You can then take any of these header elements and drag them onto the header builder to easily create your desired header.
One of the best parts is you get three rows (top, main, and bottom) to use as you desire.
Let’s create a sample header for the desktop version of our site.
I drag the Logo, Menu 1, Button, and Account elements onto the header builder, and boom! Within a minute, I have a full-fledged header that looks like this.
One thing that’s important to point out – the Account element is part of the free Blocksy theme. Normally, this is a paid feature with other WordPress themes (if they even have the feature at all).
This is an extremely nice feature as it allows users to log in and out of your site and also have their custom avatar show up.
So now that we’ve seen how easy it is to build a menu for the desktop version of our website – what about mobile?
If you haven’t already guessed, it’s just as easy. Let’s click the “Mobile Header” tab at the bottom and build our mobile header.
I place the Logo and Trigger element onto the mobile header builder which produces the following mobile header:
Simple enough! But what about that highlighted box on the left side? What’s that?
Well, that’s the mobile menu that shows when you tap on the menu trigger.
You can see it shows your menu (the Offcanvas Menu element), your Contact information, and your Socials all nicely laid out in the mobile menu. Looks great!
Global Color Palette
If you haven’t used a global color palette in a WordPress theme before, you’re missing out. A global color palette completely revolutionizes the way you add or change colors on your website.
Simply choose new colors in your global color palette and colors are instantly switched all throughout your website wherever they are globally linked.
Here’s a screenshot of the Blocksy global color palette:
There are currently five colors in the Blocksy global color palette. Here is a quick explanation of what they are used for:
- Color 1 – Your primary brand color
- Color 2 – An alternative/hover color of your primary brand color
- Color 3 – Mostly used for your paragraph text color
- Color 4 – Mostly used as the text color for headings, subheadings, and titles
- Color 5 – An option color to use as you wish
Below the three color palettes that are offered to you, you can see that there’s also an area to set your base font color, link color, heading color, text selection color, and also your site background.
Using a global color palette saves you hours of time when developing a new website as you don’t have to go into every single area and manually change your colors like you do in a theme such as Astra. Blocksy is way better in that aspect.
I do wish that Blocksy offered more colors in their global color palette to give you even greater flexibility with your site colors, but they must have read my mind because there is a central color palette feature coming soon to Blocksy PRO. 🎨
Social Sharing Box (without a plugin)
This is a super nice feature that simply does not come with the most popular WordPress themes out there. Blocksy has it, AND it’s free.
Have you ever wanted social sharing icons on your post to show up so users can easily share a post they like with their friends?
You’re in luck, Blocksy has an elegant, lightweight solution for you. Check it out.
You can go directly into the “Share Box” options on single posts (blog posts) and show a beautiful share box in various areas on your post.
For example, in the screenshot above, I chose the option of showing the share box within my content. You can specify whether you want it to show at the top of your post, bottom of your post, or both.
Then, down below, all you have to do is turn on the various share networks that you want to show in the box and voila! You’re done!
Here is what the Blocksy share box looks like:
Looks clean, doesn’t it?
The nice part is that you don’t need any type of plugin to get this functionality, it’s all built directly into the free Blocksy theme.
Have you ever installed a plugin to get social sharing icons within your theme? If so, you may know that many of those plugins are very bloated because they use JavaScript to fetch social share counts or they use an icon font which loads an entire font file and slows down your website.
Well, with the Blocksy share box, you don’t need to worry about load times – performance was thought about from the beginning.
There are no bloated share counts to show and all of the icons are using SVG icons which are the most lightweight way to show icons.
So now you can have beautiful post sharing icons within your blog posts while not giving up any performance!
Best Features of Blocksy PRO
- Care and Support
- Enhanced Header and Footer Builder
- Header and Footer Pro Elements
- Conditional Headers and Footers
- Content Blocks (Hooks)
- Advanced Menu (Mega Menu)
- Custom Sidebars
- Custom Fonts
- Adobe Typekit Fonts
- Local Google Fonts
- White Label
- Custom Code Snippets
- WooCommerce Extra
If you thought the free Blocksy theme was good, just wait until you see all of the epic premium features that come with Blocksy PRO.
Blocksy has some of the best premium features on the WordPress theme market right now and they implement them very well.
Let’s go over the best Blocksy PRO theme features.
Care and Support
There’s a reason that care and support is the first feature listed in the Blocksy PRO features overview on their site.
The two Blocksy developers, Sergiu and Andrei, are very responsive in the Blocksy Facebook Community. I would suggest you join that group and see for yourself! They reply extremely fast to questions or inquiries and do it in a kind and professional way.
They’re so responsive, in fact, that I’m wondering if they even sleep. Sergiu and Andrei, do you guys sleep?! 😜
While we’re talking about Facebook groups, you should also join my completely free Start Blogging 101 Facebook Community where we talk about all things WordPress and blogging!
Anyway, the care and support that the Blocksy team delivers are excellent and really show. Having great support backing a great product is one of the most powerful combinations to success!
Enhanced Header and Footer Builder
Once you purchase Blocksy PRO and get the plugin installed and activated, you’ll get access to the enhanced header and footer builder.
Go to the header or footer section of your website and see all of the additional header elements available to you!
As you can see, you get a number of additional header pro elements when you activate Blocksy PRO.
Also, check out all the arrows pointing to the duplicate feature. You can now create three additional duplicates of the button, divider, HTML, and social elements. This means that you can have a total of four of each of those elements.
Here are all the additional Blocksy Header Pro Elements that come with Blocksy PRO:
- Contacts element
- Language switcher
- Desktop menu drawer
- Search box
- Widgets
- Button 2
- Button 3
- Button 4
- HTML 2
- HTML 3
- HTML 4
- Divider 2
- Divider 3
- Divider 4
- Social 2
- Social 3
- Social 4
After using some additional elements given to me, I decided to spruce up the example header shown in the free Blocksy features section.
After quickly adding some additional header pro elements to my Blocksy header, I now have an even better looking header with an offer above the header and social icons.
You can easily create a header that looks like this within minutes using all of the header pro elements offered in the Blocksy PRO theme.
All this talk about your website’s header, but what does Blocksy offer for your footer?
Well, the footer builder is just as powerful as the header builder.
Let’s look at a Blocksy PRO footer example using the footer builder with the footer pro elements.
The Blocksy footer pro elements that are added are the logo, search box, and button elements. This allows you to easily place your site’s logo, a search box for posts or pages, and even a CTA (Call To Action) button in your footer as you desire.
Even without any of those footer pro elements added, you can build a robust footer with various widget areas, contact information, copyright, and social icons.
Adding four widget areas along with the Blocksy copyright information and socials, you can create an attractive footer that looks like this:
Wow! That footer layout looks better than the layouts I see on 95% of other websites and it can be built very easily using the Blocksy footer builder.
Conditional Headers and Footers
On top of the enhanced header and footer builder (which comes with additional header and footer pro elements), Blocksy offers an incredible conditional headers and footers feature.
This feature is really well implemented and gives an obvious advantage over some of my other favorite WordPress themes.
Conditional Headers and Footers allow you to create an unlimited number of advanced headers or footers and display them on individual pages on your site based on conditions.
Not sure what I mean? Say you want to show your same global header on all your site pages except you want a completely different header to show on your About Us page to include more information about the company in the header.
Or, say you don’t show any contact information in your global header, but you want to add the Contact element to your header when users are on your Contact Us page. You can do that, too!
Let’s see an example of the Blocksy conditional headers feature in action.
After you have activated Blocksy PRO on your website, go to the Header section in your WordPress customizer. You’ll see a “Headers” tab next to your “Elements” tab. Choose that and you’ll see your Global Header along with a button that says “Create new header.”
After choosing “Create new header,” you’ll be presented with a modal where you can fill out the name of your new header and also choose which header you want to copy styles from. In this case, I want to copy my Global Header and tweak it for the new About Page Header.
After you choose “Create New Header,” you’ll see that a brand new header called “About Page Header” shows up in your headers tab in the Blocksy WordPress customizer.
You’ll also see the title above the Elements and Headers tab says “Customizing: About Page Header” which verifies you are now editing a completely different header.
Okay, so we have a new header now, but how do we specify that we want this header to only show on our About page? Well, it’s very easy.
Click on the “About Page Header” arrow and you’ll be brought into the About Page Header settings where you can choose a button that says “Add/Edit Conditions.” This is where we can specify conditions to show this header only on our About page.
After choosing “Add/Edit Conditions” for our About Page Header, you’ll see another modal show called Display Conditions.
Here, you’ll want to choose the “Add Display Condition” button which will give you options to choose your About page.
I specify Include, choose Page ID, and then select the About page which looks like this:
After you click the “Save Conditions” button, you have now successfully configured the new About Page Header to show only on the About page.
Now, go back to the Header section within your WordPress customizer, switch to the Elements tab and now you can drag and drop all the new elements onto your new About Page Header.
Once you have created your new header, go to the About page of your website and check out your brand new header!
Notice how I changed the banner and the button up top? I also added the Contact element to show the company address and phone number in the header which makes more sense for an About page than showing the normal Global Header.
The Blocksy PRO Companion kills it with their conditional header and footer feature. Awesome work, Blocksy team!
Content Blocks (Hooks)
Time for my favorite feature that Blocksy PRO offers – Content Blocks (Hooks). For those of you who are familiar with other popular WordPress themes, you have probably heard of these before.
Astra’s version is called Custom Layouts, GeneratePress has Elements, Kadence has Hooked Elements, and Blocksy has Content Blocks.
They’re all essentially the same thing, except certain WordPress themes implement it better than others and offer more features.
If you’re unfamiliar with what Blocksy Content Blocks allow you to do, here’s a quick explanation.
You can easily create custom sections (using Gutenberg blocks, any block extension plugin, or your page builder) that you can then hook into various areas of your site using conditionals.
Think of Blocksy Content Blocks as being similar to conditional headers and footers, except now you can create separate block sections and place them all throughout your site (even replace headers and footers along with placing them in your content, sidebar, WooCommerce cart, and more).
For example, say you want to include a sticky countdown timer above your header for an offer you’re running. You can easily create a fixed content block in Blocksy which will show above your header and stay on the user’s screen as they scroll down the page.
One of the best things about Blocksy content blocks is that there is an expiration feature that allows you to set an expiration date for your content block and that block will automatically disappear off your site when it expires. This is perfect for a countdown timer offer that expires at a certain time!
The amount of Blocksy hooks that you can use to hook your custom content into is INSANE. There are so many hooks.
So many, in fact, that I had to put them into accordion blocks. Check out all the Blocksy theme general hook locations along with the WooCommerce hook locations below.
It’s safe to say that if you want to put a piece of custom content that you build into your site, you can hook it virtually anywhere on your website which allows for a nearly limitless amount of customization with the Blocksy PRO theme.
Advanced Menu (Mega Menu)
Blocksy PRO extends your menu options by giving you an Advanced Menu that provides a number of helpful features including the ability to add a Mega Menu.
After adding a new menu, you can go into each menu item and configure its settings to create your own personal Mega Menu.
And here’s a beautiful example of a full-blown Mega Menu shown on Blocksy’s site created with all the Blocksy Advanced Menu options.
I could go more into detail about the Blocksy Advanced Menu, but Mega Menus are pretty self-explanatory. You can create multi-column menus with icons, badges, or whatever else you can build.
As the cherry on top, you can replace the Blocksy Mega Menu overlay column with a content block as seen in the image above.
Custom Sidebars
Have you ever wanted to create a number of custom sidebars and assign them to various pages? For example, say you want to display specific related posts or a special offer to your users based on the WordPress category that they’re currently reading.
Have no fear, Blocksy Pro is here.
I feel like I’m repeating myself, but this feature works just like the conditional headers and hooters and similarly to Blocksy content blocks, except you can create an unlimited amount of sidebars and conditionally show them on posts or pages.
Let’s check out Blocksy custom sidebars.
Once you have the Multiple Sidebars Blocksy PRO extension activated, you can go to Appearance → Widgets. You’ll see an area to create a new sidebar.
I created a new sidebar called Custom Sidebar 1 and then you can place whatever widgets you want in your new sidebar. For example, here I’m creating a new list of posts that are in the News category and are sorted by the most commented posts.
After that, you can click the gear icon next to the sidebar title and you’ll see the conditional settings.
In this example, I’m saying that I want this Custom Sidebar 1 to show only on my posts and pages that have a category of “News.”
So now you can begin to see how powerful this feature is. Say you want “related posts” to show in your sidebar and change depending on which category your user is reading.
Or, say you want to display a certain ad or affiliate banner in your “Tech” category, but you want a different banner to show in the “Gaming” category of your website. You can do all that and much, much more.
Custom Sidebars is a feature that certainly sets Blocksy apart from the competition to make it one of the best WordPress themes on the market right now.
Custom Fonts + Local Google Fonts
With Blocksy PRO, you are given the ability to upload any amount of custom fonts and use them within your typography options through the Blocksy theme customization settings.
- Upload any amount of WOFF fonts
- Customize variations for every font
- Use variable fonts for flexible weights
Not only can you upload your own custom fonts, but you can use Adobe Typekit as well. All you have to do is paste your Project ID and all the fonts within it will be readily available for you to use.
Lastly, there is a Blocksy PRO extension that allows you to choose Google Fonts and download them so that they are served from your own server. This allows you to stay compliant with GDPR rules.
Simply choose only the Google Fonts you need, sync them, and Blocksy will do the rest for you.
The ability to have local Google Fonts with the Blocksy PRO extension provides a convenient performance boost for your website and only takes a minute to set up!
White Label
This section will be quick, but white label is a very sought-after feature especially for anyone running an agency that creates websites for others.
Keep in mind that the Blocksy White Label feature is only available if you purchase the Agency plan (annual or lifetime). The Agency plan, in my opinion, is a steal for the money.
The amount of value the Blocksy theme provides is insane for only being $300 to own the theme for a lifetime. I’m sure this pricing will go up at some point.
That being said, if you have the Agency plan, you will see a Blocksy PRO extension to activate White Label. Hit the Configure button and you’ll see the following.
Within the Blocksy White Label settings, you’ll see a General tab which has dropdown options for Agency Details, Theme Details, and Plugin Details.
- Agency Details
- Agency Name
- Agency URL
- Agency Support/Contact Form URL
- Theme Details
- Theme Name
- Theme Description
- Theme Screenshot URL
- Plugin Details
- Plugin Name
- Plugin Description
All of these options allow you, as an agency, to override settings and get rid of Blocksy branding in place of your own.
Additionally, there are Blocksy White Label advanced settings.
These additional white label advanced settings allow you to hide the Starter Sites tab and also to hit the White Label extension so that it’s even less obvious that Blocksy is the theme being used.
Don’t worry, if you hide the White Label extension, there’s a way to secretly show it again. 😉
Custom Code Snippets
The Blocksy theme actually provides a couple of options when it comes to Custom Code Snippets.
- Globally add header and footer scripts
- Add header and footer scripts at the post/page level
The first option allows you to globally add header and footer scripts to your website to load on every page of your site.
This is really useful for loading various libraries or something like Google Analytics on your website.
In fact, the Blocksy theme supports both Google Analytics + Google Analytics 4. Here are the Blocksy WordPress customizer settings showing the Google Analytics and Custom Code Snippets pages.
Blocksy Google Analytics Support:
Blocksy Global Custom Code Snippets:
On top of the Global Custom Code Snippets that Blocksy provides, you can also include scripts at the page/post level as well. This allows you to include custom code only for certain pages.
For example, say you want to run analytics or Facebook pixel on certain pages for WooCommerce checkout. You can do that.
All you have to do is go into the post or page that you want, click on the Blocksy Page Settings in the upper-right, and scroll all the way down.
You’ll see a Custom Code Snippets section that you can click into which looks just like the global version, except this now pertains to only that certain post or page.
WooCommerce Extra
If you aren’t already blown away by all the free and pro features that the Blocksy theme offers, there are even more features to supercharge your WooCommerce site using Blocksy.
Let’s take a look at all of the Blocksy theme free and pro WooCommerce features in a table.
Blocksy WooCommerce Features | Free | PRO |
---|---|---|
Advanced archive layouts | ✓ | ✓ |
Advanced single product layouts | ✓ | ✓ |
AJAX Add To Cart | ✓ | ✓ |
Quick view module | ⨉ | ✓ |
Floating cart | ⨉ | ✓ |
Off-canvas filters | ⨉ | ✓ |
Off-canvas cart | ⨉ | ✓ |
New single product layout | ⨉ | ✓ |
Product share icons | ⨉ | ✓ |
Gallery slider (coming soon) | ⨉ | ✓ |
Multi-step checkout (coming soon) | ⨉ | ✓ |
Distraction-free checkout (coming soon) | ⨉ | ✓ |
Wishlist (coming soon) | ⨉ | ✓ |
As you can see from the Blocksy free vs pro WooCommerce comparison table, Blocksy PRO comes with a crazy amount of additional WooCommerce features.
Not to mention, the Blocksy team has some really awesome features in the works that will be coming soon: a gallery slider, multi-step checkout, distraction-free checkout, and a wishlist. I’m excited to see them!
Speaking of “coming soon” features, let’s check out additional Blocksy PRO features that are in the works.
Coming Soon Features
Even though the Blocksy theme already has proven that it’s one of the most featured-packed WordPress themes on the market, they aren’t stopping there.
The Blocksy team has plans to add even more epic features to the Blocksy PRO extensions including:
- Advanced Blogging Extension – This will take your blogging experience with Blocksy and turn it up yet another notch. It will include several things such as a reading progress bar and reading time estimates. Additionally, there will be new share button types along with more designs for single posts and comments. I’m very excited for this extension to be released!
- Portfolio Extension – This will provide an attractive way to showcase your work, no many what field you’re in. You will be able to categorize projects into individual categories and create beautiful pages to showcase them.
- Central Color Palette – This will allow you to integrate the Blocksy global color palette into the most popular design tools from the WordPress ecosystem. I mentioned this in the Global Color Palette section of this article, but this will make the Blocksy global color palette so much more useful!
- Premium Starter Sites – These are pretty self-explanatory. The Blocksy team will be providing some premium starter sites that are built with all the tools provided in Blocksy free and PRO.
So, there you have it! A full Blocksy review highlighting all the best features of the free Blocksy theme along with all the best features of Blocksy PRO.
I don’t know about you, but the amount of features that the Blocksy theme provides (especially the pro features) completely blew me away.
There are several premium features that differentiate Blocksy as being one of the best WordPress themes in the market today including conditional headers/footers/sidebars, amazing customization options, various archive/page layouts, and so much more.
If you haven’t already, you should definitely give the Blocksy theme a try. The free Blocksy theme is already impressive as-is, and adding Blocksy PRO is like giving your site superpowers.
Have you tried the Blocksy theme yet? If so, what themes have you used in the past? Do you like Blocksy or another theme better? Let me know in the comments below.
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Hi Jake, this is a great versus review! The most comprehensive one I’ve seen to date.
I recently shifted to Kadence from Elementor Pro, there was a bit of a learning curve at the start but have no regrets. It really has a clean code and my TBT actually dropped from 100ms+ to 0ms! Amazingly clean.
Just wanted to ask (I suppose this page was built on Kadence), how did you implement the sticky header? Is that via sticky Top Row with HTML as container?
Hi Dietrich! Comprehensive is what I aim for 😉
First of all, excellent, excellent choice on switching to Kadence from Elementor Pro. You will not regret that one bit a year from now when your site is blazing fast and other Elementor users are wondering why their pages are taking 7 seconds to load.
Secondly, fantastic news on the TBT dropping to 0ms. Feels great, doesn’t it?
Lastly, yes, this site is built with the Kadence theme. The sticky header is crazy simple to implement. All I did is add an HTML block in the center of my top row with the text I wanted and then added a button element next to it. Easy peasy. If you need any more help, feel free to join my WordPress Without Page Builders Facebook Group and we’ll help you out 🙂
Hi Jake,
I’ve recently started following your blog closely and taking your advice seriously. I know you recommend both Kadence and Blocksy themes but I’m wondering if you could expand on some of the considerations you take when choosing which one to use? They seem very similar (but I know not the same), and my own whack at it from my perspective is that Blocksy might have some more developer-esque features and Kadence has the Kadence blocks library that they are promoting.
I want to use the core gutenberg blocks library as much as possible in my sites but I know it’s not totally ready yet so I’ve decided to use EditorPlus that extends the core blocks with additional settings and that only adds blocks that are completely missing and impossible/tedious to replicate in gutenberg (though I’m still trying to determine whether or not I will also need the GenerateBlocks container and grid blocks to build more advanced layouts).
So because of that I’m leaning towards Blocksy, but also because it seems to have some more developer friendly tools available and is cheaper to boot! However, I have never used either and like to hear what your decision process sounds like when you decide which theme to use on a case by case basis. I might just do the same and use both depending on the project too!
Cheers
Hey Brandon,
I appreciate the detailed comment and really appreciate you following my blog! You certainly aren’t the first to ask this question. 🙂 Ideally, I would write a Blocksy vs Kadence review pointing out all the differences, pros, and cons of each, although that will take a while since I could probably write 7000+ words on it.
I can give a somewhat quick comparison to hopefully shed some light on your question. First of all, I’m like you in the sense that I try to use the core Gutenberg blocks as much as possible. Why? Because I know I won’t ever have to swap those out. Next, I use Kadence Blocks if needed because they’re easily the best extension of Gutenberg blocks out there at the moment and they’ve been out for a while. There’s a reason Kadence Blocks are the most popular Gutenberg block extension right now.
Blocksy, on the other hand, currently does not have any block plugin at all which is actually a big disadvantage for Blocksy (as of the date of this comment – Feb 1, 2021). They currently recommend using Stackable, but I actually disagree with taking that route right now. I disagree with this because if you start building a number of pages using Stackable blocks, then when Blocksy does eventually release their blocks plugin and you install it, you’ll have to do one of two things. 1) Either keep both the Stackable and Blocksy blocks plugins so that all your blocks load (yuck, this is a disjointed and unnecessary use of two plugins) or 2) replace every single block that you built in Stackable with a corresponding Blocksy block (also yuck, who wants to do that?).
This is why Kadence has a huge advantage right now. If you use the Kadence theme, they also have Kadence Blocks which integrates perfectly with the theme and you don’t have to worry about swapping blocks out unless you were to completely switch themes AND block plugins. Kadence is currently much more popular which gives it many advantages as well. More popular = more people buying = more money to put into the team = more features at a faster pace. Kadence has a larger team which means better features are going to be pushed out more quickly and they have dedicated people for support so support will be better.
That being said, the Blocksy theme is extremely polished and has some amazing customization features to be able to customize all areas of your website. They will eventually have their own block plugin as I mentioned, but it’s just not there yet. Even when it is initially released, it will take a lot of time and polishing to get anywhere close to where Kadence Blocks is currently at. They currently have a smaller team, but that doesn’t mean that won’t change. I really don’t think you can go wrong with either theme, and I invested in the pro versions of both themes as soon as the pro versions were released because they’re easily two of the best Gutenberg-ready themes on the market today while also being lightweight. I’m really excited to see what features each theme releases in the future.
The best advice I can give is to just download the free version of both themes and see which one you like better – which one feels more intuitive? What theme allows you to build the exact site you want the quickest? And then also study the pro features of each theme and see if it’s worth the investment for you (hint: most WordPress themes offer pretty similar pro features, but they’re implemented differently).
I hope that at least helps a bit! If you’d like to discuss more, feel free to use my contact page to get a hold of me.
And once again, thanks for the comment and great question – many people are wondering the same thing!
Cheers,
Jake
Jake, thanks a ton for your last comment where you compare Kadence and Blocksy. I really love the polish, the custom customizer and look and feel of Blocksy. The only reason I am still leaning towards Kadence is Kadence Blocks. Is it really such a big deal though? There are countless blocks plugins and Stackable looks like a solid option. Really tough decision to make.
Hey Sascha!
You bring up a great question that many people debate over. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using a third-party plugin such as Stackable (that doesn’t have a theme tied to it). Me, personally, I’ll tell you why using Blocksy + Stackable isn’t my favorite option right now. Keep in mind that each third-party block plugin you install is a brand new interface and tool to master.
If you use Blocksy right now, you’ll have to install a third-party block plugin such as Stackable until the Blocksy team releases their own dedicated blocks plugin (if you decide that’s the block plugin you’re going to use). So, say you create all your landing pages in Stackable, what happens when Blocksy releases a dedicated blocks plugin?
You’ll have to either a) Keep Stackable on your site forever because if you uninstall it, your blocks will be broken. Not the worst thing, but also not the cleanest option to keep your site lean.
Or b) Redo all your landing pages with Blocksy’s dedicated blocks plugin so that you can delete Stackable and only use one blocks plugin that is tightly integrated with the theme you’re using. This would personally be my preferred option because I absolutely love having a theme + blocks plugin that is tightly integrated for the best Gutenberg experience. But then, if you do decide to go this route, why not just wait until Blocksy releases their blocks plugin since they’re already working on it? There isn’t much benefit in learning a separate blocks plugin only to switch everything over again.
That’s just my $0.02 🙂 However, it’s all personal preference. You can do whatever you feel is best for your site and getting content pushed out efficiently!
For affiliate marketing sites most people still seem to recommend GeneratePress and GenerateBlocks. Why is this? Is it possible with Blocksy/Stackable/Kadence etc, to run Adsense and Ezoic etc?
Hi, Adam! Yes, you can run Adsense and Ezoic on sites using Blocksy or Kadence. There are several options available for affiliate marketing sites. Here are my top recommended ones:
If you have any other questions, let me know!