Divi vs. Other WordPress Themes: Is It the Right Choice for You?

If you’ve ever gone down the rabbit hole of building (or rebuilding) a WordPress site, you know the options are endless. 

Some themes look beautiful but feel clunky to work with. Others are powerful but overwhelming for non-developers. Finding a theme that’s flexible, fast, easy to use, and still customizable enough for your team? That’s a tall order.

We’ve tested a lot of WordPress themes over the years. And while no theme is perfect for every project, Divi has consistently delivered. Here’s what makes it our favorite, and what you should know before choosing the theme for your own site. 

What is a WordPress theme, anyway?

A WordPress is a collection of files that controls the overall design and style of your site. It’s what makes your website look like… well, your website.

Themes encompass things like:

• Color palettes
• Font styles
• Initial template/layout options (sometimes)

Themes ensure consistency across your site. They’re great for a cohesive look and feel without having to start from scratch every time you build a new page. Once you choose a theme that matches your vision, you can focus more on what you want to say and less on how it all fits together. 

In short, using a theme means you can spend more time on content creation and less time on design. 

Read more: WordPress: What is a theme?

But how is that different from a template? 

Great question. Themes and templates work together, but they’re not the same. 

Themes are about the overall aesthetic and functional framework of your site, where you choose your colors, fonts, header and footer design – things like that. Some themes include features like appointment booking or are designed for specific businesses, like restaurants or real estate agents.

Templates define the layout of individual pages, post types, or content blocks (i.e. a CTA or About Us block) within that theme. A theme may include multiple template options.

A Quick Peek At Some WordPress Numbers

Let’s take a look at some numbers:

• 43.6% of all websites use WordPress as their CMS.
• Close to 520 million websites are built on WordPress.
• WordPress has a 61.8% share of the CMS market. 
• There are 30,000+ WordPress themes out there, many free, many paid, some bundled with page builders (which, surprise surprise, help you build out pages).

So yeah. WordPress is kind of a big deal. 

And with so many options of themes to choose from, choosing the right one can certainly feel overwhelming. To that end, knowing what to look for and what sets a good theme apart helps. 

Okay, and why Divi?

We’ve worked with a lot of themes over the years. But we keep coming back to Divi. It’s what we currently recommend to our partners since it provides a good base theme, while still allowing our developers to customize it quite a bit.

Here’s what we love about Divi:

Customization Without Coding (Unless You Want To)

Divi gives you plenty of control over design elements like:

• Fonts
• Colors
• Spacing
• Animations
• Backgrounds
• Button styles

This level of customization means you can make sure your site is 100% on brand. Every page can look exactly how you want it to without ever writing any code. But if you do want to dig in and customize, for the most part Divi plays nice with developers too. That’s a big deal for us. We can customize sites and build custom blocks for our partners, and then hand the site off to less technical teams that can easily manage them. With every theme, though, there are limitations to the customizations that make sense from a value standpoint. It may not make sense to spend $1,000 coding a small detail or feature that doesn’t add much value.

A Visual Builder That’s Actually Visual

One of Divi’s biggest selling points is its drag-and-drop visual builder. It’s not just a backend editor with a preview button. You’re editing your actual page in real time. No guesswork or endless switching between tabs. 

Want to move a section? Drag it.
Change the headline? Click and type.

Test a new layout? Done in seconds.

This makes things very user friendly. It’s great for marketing teams who want to take control of their content without bugging the dev team every time they want to change a button or upload content.

Fast, Clean, And (Mostly) Lean

Some page builders can get pretty bloated. That’s no good. It means slow page speeds, poor mobile performance, and unhappy Google rankings (and we want to keep the technical SEO team happy too).

When paired with a solid host and the right caching option, Divi can still score in the high 90s in page speed tests. We’ve seen it firsthand (again, just trying to keep the technical SEO team happy). It may not be the lightest theme on the market, but it’s far from the heaviest. 

It’s Responsive Out Of The Box

Everything you build with Divi adjusts automatically to screen sizes. Mobile, tablet, desktop, it’s responsive. No separate builds or complicated CSS needed. That’s a win for user experience!

Plenty Of Pre-Built Templates To Choose From

Divi comes with a massive library of pre-designed layouts, which makes spinning up a beautiful page fast and painless. From services pages to portfolios to product features, there’s a layout for almost everything.

This is great if you’re looking to hit the ground running or want design inspiration to take things in a new direction. 

Fully Supported Theme

You get what you pay for. Sure, you can choose a free theme but having a theme that is supported by a full development company is an easy investment. It’s not going to be obsolete tomorrow. There’s tech support. It could mean the difference between spending hours and hours (trust us, we know) and getting frustrated, or just opening the box and having everything at your fingertips. There’s loads of Divi-specific tutorials out there to help you along the way as well. 

Related: How to Use the Divi Theme for WordPress Websites Guide

Okay, and what if I choose a different WordPress theme?

Not all WordPress themes are built with long-term success in mind. You of course do not need to use Divi just because we do, but just please keep in mind that some themes can be the cause of major headaches down the road. 

What causes those headaches? 

You can’t update WordPress core files.

Some themes aren’t compatible with the latest version of WordPress. That means you’ll miss out on important updates. It may not be an issue now but eventually, something will break.

Your site breaks when you update.
Maybe your site looks great today. But all it takes is one update and… poof! Your buttons and layout have pulled a disappearing act.

You’re exposed to security risks. 

Outdated or poorly coded themes can leave big vulnerabilities open for hackers to exploit. Not great if you value your business or your users’ data.

You’re stuck with limited features.

Want to add a feature down the road? Good luck with that. A low-quality theme might not support the plugins or design elements you need to grow. 

There’s zero support.

Many free or abandoned themes don’t come with documentation or support forums. That can be extremely frustrating when something’s broken and you need help to fix it.

It becomes obsolete.

In the same way that you can’t run the latest apps on old smartphones, a theme will slowly degrade and become obsolete if it’s no longer maintained.

Divi Is User Friendly But You May Still Want a Developer

We love Divi. But we’ll be honest, there are a few things to be aware of if you’re not a developer and want to build your site yourself. 

The first is potential performance issues. 

If you’re not careful with how you build your pages, performance can suffer. It can be easy to go overboard with Divi’s extensive customization options. A developer can help you optimize for speed and choose the right hosting environment. 

The second is the steep learning curve.

Yes, Divi is user friendly. But it’s also packed with a lot of features and customization options which can be overwhelming for new users. And no matter what, it takes a lot of time to build even a small website. A developer can customize your site for you, create a library of blocks you can use to build new pages, and train you and your team on how to use the site.

Divi Is A Theme You Can Grow With

Like most things when it comes to digital marketing tools and strategies, there’s no such thing as a single best solution. Just the one that works best for you. For us, it’s Divi. If you’re looking for a WordPress theme that balances usability, customization, and performance, we think it’s a solid bet. 

It’s powerful enough for developers to do their thing. Simple enough for marketers to take the wheel. And with a little optimization, it can run fast and look great across every device.

Thinking about a WordPress site redesign? Learn more about our Divi theme web development services.