Kadence Theme Review: Is This the Best WordPress Theme?

Are you looking for a premium theme that combines speed, flexibility, and seamless WooCommerce integration? Kadence Theme is a game-changer in WordPress design, offering premium features that make website building effortless.

In this Kadence Theme review, I’ll explore what sets it apart from other WordPress themes. From its blazing speed to its responsive design that ensures perfect layouts on any device, Kadence delivers a smooth experience. Plus, with compatibility with Elementor and other popular plugins, it provides the tools to create stunning, high-performing websites—whether you’re a beginner or an experienced developer.

Let’s dive in and see if Kadence is the right premium theme for you.

Why Is Kadence WordPress Theme easy to use?

Kadence WP is a versatile, modern, responsive WordPress theme designed for effortless website building. Whether you’re running a small business, a blog, or a large corporate site, its intuitive design and user-friendly customization options make it stand out.

One of the key reasons Kadence WP is easy to use is its clean code architecture. Built with HTML5 and CSS3, it follows best coding practices, ensuring fast performance, SEO optimization, and seamless integration with the latest WordPress features. Unlike other themes such as Astra, GeneratePress, Blocksy, and Kalium, Kadence WP offers a drag-and-drop header and footer builder, advanced typography settings, and customizable layouts—all without bloated code that slows down your site.

Additionally, the Kadence framework allows you to add custom sidebars and widgets effortlessly. Using Kadence Elements, you can create dynamic content areas that integrate directly into WordPress core, making it easier to customize your site without touching a single line of code.

Kadence theme Starter template — Kadence Theme Starter Template

Easy Installation, no child theme needed

To install Kadence directly from the WordPress theme repository, go to your WordPress admin panel and select Appearance > Themes > Add New. Then, you can search for Kadence in the Search themes bar and click Install. After that, you can activate and go to the theme customizer and explore the customizer settings.

In my opinion, a child theme with Kadence is no longer needed. Kadence offers many options and settings, which can easily be customized to fit your needs. The installation process is straightforward.

Kadence Themes Customization — Theme Customizer

A testimonial from the Kadence Website

Demo WordPress Site: Creation with AI

Building a website has never been easier! Kadence integrates AI to generate customized copy and images, streamlining the design process. Whether setting up a blog, an online store, or a portfolio, AI-powered Kadence Starter Templates help you launch a stunning, professional-looking site in minutes.

What makes Kadence stand out? It retains your global colors when importing templates and seamlessly applies them to the design. Updating text, colors, and layouts is incredibly simple—no coding is required.

With AI enhancing Kadence’s premium features, you can create a custom website faster.

Learn more about Kadence AI Starter Templates.

Using Kadence theme for Blog websites

Kadence is a stunning and modern WordPress theme that makes blog customization effortless. With its intuitive layout options and seamless editing experience, bloggers can easily personalize their site’s design to match their style.

To get started, install the Kadence Blocks plugin. This free tool lets you enhance your homepage with sections like featured posts, call-to-action elements, and a customizable featured image display. You can also create unique single-post layouts, ensuring each article stands out while maintaining a cohesive blog design.

Adding a table of contents block for longer posts improves readability and keeps readers engaged. And if you’re using Kadence Pro, you can unlock advanced features like Elements, which are perfect for showcasing affiliate products or adding dynamic content.

With Kadence Theme’s flexible layout options, customizing your WordPress blog has never been easier.

What features does the free version of the Kadence Theme offer you?

The free version of the Kadence theme offers a simple, clean design perfect for creating a professional website. The theme includes a powerful options panel that allows you to customize your site to your heart’s content. You also get access to all the Google Fonts and color palettes and a responsive design that looks great on all devices.

Kadence offers more design and customization choices than many free themes, and the free version includes many desirable features.

Typography

The Kadence Theme provides extensive typography settings that allow you to easily modify your website’s fonts, headings, buttons, links, and more. With the WordPress customizer, you can change the site-wide fonts, colors, and other typography settings. Kadence also allows you to change the fonts on specific pages and posts.

The typography system allows you to create a unique design for your website. If you want complete control over the typography on your website, then Kadence is an excellent theme for you.

Global Colors / Color Palette

Kadence provides a high degree of customization concerning color settings, including site and content background colors, link colors, and full-color schemes.

Global color options can be set up quickly without custom CSS.

Additional Design features and extensive Customization Options

Kadence offers various customization options and design settings so content creators can create the site they want for their business. With Kadence, you have theming colors, typography, and layout changes at your fingertips. The free version allows you to change the look of your website with one click.

Advanced Header Builder / Menu design

With the Kadence layout settings panel, customizing your site header is a breeze, requiring no coding skills. One of the key highlights of this theme is its versatile header builder, which sets it apart from other free themes.

In addition to choosing between transparent or sticky headers, Kadence also features an intuitive mobile header option designed for seamless user experience on smaller screens. This flexibility elevates your site’s appearance, giving you additional features to enhance your brand identity.

You can go further and install Kadence Blocks Free and receive additional elements with its Advanced Header and Advanced Navigation Blocks, which are free in Kadence Blocks.

These powerful tools let you design custom headers directly from the WordPress Editor, giving you complete control without coding.

Kadence Pro Theme: Which add-ons do you get with the paid version?

Some features are only available if you buy the Theme Kit Pro plan, which includes Kadence Theme Pro. See the picture below with the Pro add-ons.

The most powerful features are the Header add-ons with the Conditional Header and the hooked elements. I have a separate article for the hooked elements.

Header Pro Addons

Header builders are a great way to quickly and easily create high-quality headers for your site, including drop header options. With access to twenty new header elements, you can customize the position of your logo, search bar, social icons, and site title on any page, giving it a unique and stylish look. You can apply personalized colors to each element with an adjustable color wheel to get the desired shade. Header builders always make sure that your website looks its best!

Enhance User Experience with Conditional Headers in Kadence Theme Pro

In today’s competitive digital landscape, capturing and retaining visitor attention is crucial for website success. One effective way to achieve this is through conditional headers, a powerful feature offered in Kadence Theme Pro. Conditional headers allow you to customize the header area of your website based on specific criteria, providing a tailored experience for different parts of your site.

Understanding Conditional Headers

The conditional header feature enables you to display different headers on different pages or sections of your website. This capability is handy for focusing visitor attention, promoting specific actions, or providing contextually relevant information without cluttering the interface.

In the image below, you see targeting settings for conditional headers

Define where the new header will appear using targeting options like specific pages, posts, or categories.

Choose visibility settings for users such as all users, logged-in users, or specific user roles.

Use Cases

E-commerce: Guide visitors through the purchasing journey by simplifying navigation and emphasizing call-to-action buttons.
Blogs: Tailor headers to match the content of individual blog posts, enhancing relevance and engagement.
Membership Sites: Provide personalized experiences for members based on their subscription level or role

Below is a video from Kadence, which explains how easy it is to set up conditional headers with Kadence.

Kadence Elements / Hooked Elements

Insert blocks and page builder content anywhere, conditionally, and within a timeframe. Hooked elements are set to display on specific dates and times. For example, show a text block with your contact information only during business hours (9 am-5 pm).

Kadence Elements is especially useful for affiliate blog websites to place your affiliate links where you want. It is best to place them within your text rather than in the sidebar. I’m getting more clicks when the CTAs are part of the article. The placement capabilities of Kadence Elements are huge. You can place it before the entry content or after the first, second, third, or fourth paragraph. A member from the Kadence FB community wrote a Javascript that enables placement later in the text, for example, after the tenth paragraph.

It is also possible – I do it sometimes when I find the design fits better- to use the Elementor template and integrate it with the Elementor Library block in Kadence Elements.

Instead of using hooked Elements, Kadence released a separate plugin (part of the Full Bundle) Kadence Conversions, with more options to raise conversion rates. Read my separate article here.

Ultimate Menu (Mega Menu)

This feature is awesome for website admins who want an easy visitor experience. Curated content is made more accessible when mega sub-menus, highlight tags, and icons are used to draw attention. It allows viewers to identify the content they’re interested in quickly. Having menu links consciously highlighted through this feature makes each visit more likely to be seamless and successful for the viewer.

As an illustration, the image below exhibits a beautifully crafted contact page that appears when the Contacts link is clicked in the menu.

Fixed Elements

Enjoy design freedom with Kadence. This popular design tool is well-known for its extendable hooks, allowing for page-fixed content that fits any design you have in mind. Whether you’re a professional user or an amateur hobbyist, take advantage of pro features like fixed footers and banners and show-by-device design elements. Take your design to the next level with Kadence and make something truly special!

Header/Footer Scripts

Kadence comes with inbuilt scripts that allow you to place your Javascript files and style sheets in the Kadence header and footer.
Regardless of the theme you install, Kadence scripts will be available to run without hiccups.

Woocommerce Addon (Kadence Ultimate only)

Kadence is an excellent theme for e-commerce shops, known for its ease of use and customization. It offers numerous features tailored specifically for WooCommerce. A standout feature of the Kadence theme is the Shop Kit add-on. This plugin allows Kadence to enhance and expand the functionality of WooCommerce products. I highly recommend the Shop Kit add-on for any WooCommerce shop using the Kadence theme.

Kadence Theme performance and loading speed

Kadence Theme comes with some excellent features, but what about its speed?

The theme is lightweight and relatively fast. Kadence does not slow down and provides a remarkable UX. Speed, especially for a fast website, is essential nowadays, mainly if you use Kadence for an eCommerce or business site.

You can verify this using Gtmetrix or Google PageSpeed insights. Kadence performs well and scores points on both Kadence’s speed and optimization. Kadence theme almost earns 100 or A+ for page load times.

This is the Google page speed score on a freshly installed WordPress website with the Kadence Theme.

SEO & Accessibility: A Strong Foundation

Kadence Theme is designed with SEO best practices and web accessibility in mind. It ensures your site performs well in search rankings while being inclusive for all users.

Clean, lightweight code for faster load times (a key SEO ranking factor)
Built-in schema markup to help search engines understand your content
Mobile-friendly, responsive design for a seamless user experience
Accessibility-focused design with proper heading structures, ARIA labels, and keyboard navigation support

While Kadence provides a strong technical foundation, SEO success still depends on optimizing your content, images, and metadata. Likewise, accessibility requires thoughtful content creation to ensure a great user experience.

Compare the free version of Kadence Theme with the Pro Addon

A comparison between the Free version and the paid version

Freature	Free	Pro
Integrations with third-party plugin	✅	✅
Header Builder	✅	✅
Footer Builder	✅	✅
Custom Layouts	✅	✅
Custom Post Type Support	✅	✅
Global Color Palette	✅	✅
Color Options	✅	✅
Global Typography	✅	✅
Global Button Settings	✅	✅
Scroll To Top	✅	✅
Socal Links	✅	✅
CSS Pre-loading	✅	✅
Transparent Header	✅	✅
Sticky Header	✅	✅
Responsive Controls	✅	✅
Breadcrumbs	✅	✅
SEO Optimized	✅	✅
Hooked Elements	❌	✅
Header Addons	❌	✅
Ultimate Menu	❌	✅
Fixed Elements	❌	✅
Header/Footer Scripts	❌	✅
Woocommerce Addon	❌	✅

Why choose Kadence

Pros

good integration with page builders like Elementor or Beaver Builder
Well-organized customizer with Design tabs
load Google fonts locally
Starter Templates plugin with a growing library
Global color & typography controls for a consistent design
Only turn-on features needed

Kadence WP is also available on WordPress.org and can be downloaded free from your WordPress backend under plugins. The Kadence theme is listed under the most popular themes. It stands out with five stars out of 5 from over 300K plus downloads (February 2025).

Cons

Customization settings can be tricky to find in the Customizer
Overwhelming for beginners due to the large number of additional options
There is a steeper learning curve compared to some other WordPress themes
There is no white-label option, which may be a downside for agencies

My Experience with Kadence Support

Kadence WordPress offers reliable and efficient customer support options, ensuring you get help. Their website includes detailed documentation covering everything from setup to advanced customization. If you need additional assistance, you can visit the official WordPress forums or the Kadence support forum to get answers from the team or the community.

After purchasing the Ultimate plan, I’ve raised a few support tickets through their website. They usually reply with a short video explaining the solution, making it incredibly easy to follow. The response time is typically within 24 hours on weekdays, and their answers are always transparent and helpful, even when my question wasn’t perfectly articulated. The support team is knowledgeable and patient, making troubleshooting a smooth experience.

Overall, I’m delighted with Kadence’s support—it’s responsive and well-documented, and the video replies add a personal touch that makes solving issues effortless.

What are some other alternative themes to Kadence?

You can use a few other WordPress themes in place of Kadence. Some popular alternatives include:

Kadence Theme Pricing

Kadence offers users multiple purchase options for the theme.

Free Kadence Theme, download from WordPress
Buy Theme Kit Pro Tier

Alternatively, you can buy the Plus Plan, which includes

Theme Kit Pro
Blocks Pro
Pro Starter Templates
Custom Fonts
4000 AI credits/year

and the third option is to purchase the Ultimate Plan

Blocks Pro
Theme Kit Pro
Pro Starter Templates
Custom Fonts
Kadence Pattern Hub / formerly Kadence Cloud
Kadence Conversion
Child Theme Builder
ShopKit for Woocommerce
Kadence Insight / new plugin released lat 2024
will also include all future plugins when available.
8000 AI credits/year

I recommend buying the Kadence Ultimate Plan. It is a perfect bundle to access Kadence’s full capability. Suppose you have several websites, and it is a must-have if you have an eCommerce website. The Kadence Shop Kit plugin enriches Woocommerce, and Kadence Conversions (see my separate article) helps you boost your conversion rate.

If you have only one website, you can choose the Essential Bundle. The Kadence Blocks plugin provides more Gutenberg Blocks for the designing process.

Kadence Blocks Pro

Kadence Blocks is the perfect complement to the Kadence theme. As for the Theme, there is a Free and Pro version available. Kadence Blocks Pro gives you even more control over the look and feel of your site while still being easy to use. If you’re looking for a way to take your Kadence site to the next level, Kadence Blocks Pro is the way to go. Read my separate article for Kadence Blocks review.

FAQ

Is Kadence better than Elementor?

There is no yes or no answer – it depends on your specific needs. Kadence works fine with Elementor but also alone. If you want more flexibility and control over your design, Elementor is a better choice.u003cbru003eu003cbru003eHowever, Kadence Theme and Gutenberg Blocks by Kadence are also good choices for building websites.

How do you use the kadence theme?

I use the Kadence theme with the Kadence Blocks plugin. This allows me to easily create custom page layouts and add new content blocks to my pages. It’s a very versatile and easy-to-use theme that lets you customize your site to look exactly how you want.

Kadence Vs. Astra: Which one to pick?

Both Astra and Kadence are great themes for WordPress. If you want the most mature, well-supported theme, go with Astra. However, Kadence has an equal feature set and is slightly less expensive. So it’s really up to you which one to choose!

Is Kadence a reliable WooCommerce-based theme for client work?

Yes, Kadence is a reliable Woo theme. In combination with Shop Kit from Kadence, it provides a solid foundation.

Before you go …

I want to suggest another article that could be of great interest to you, especially if you found the review of the Kadence Theme helpful. Check out the Elementor Hosting Review.

This review dives into the specifics of hosting services optimized for Elementor, a famous WordPress page builder. Understanding the right hosting environment is crucial for ensuring optimal performance and security, especially if you consider integrating it with themes like Kadence. The article provides insights into features, performance metrics, and pricing, making it a valuable resource for anyone looking to enhance their WordPress experience.

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