Themify Builder Review 2024
by Adam Preiser updated Feb 23, 2024
Themify Builder is a WordPress page builder mostly integrated with Themify built themes. However, it can be used with other themes.
Current Pricing: Free to $59
Ease Of Use
7/10
In my testing, I found that Themeify Builder is not as intuitive as I would like.
Price / Value
9/10
Pricing wise, you will not be able to find a more affordable page builder for WordPress.
Support
6.5/10
There are many concerns related to support reported here in the comments. Concerned with the low cost and ability to provide quality support.
Themify Builder Pros
- Pre-designed Layouts & Sections
- Front End & Backend Builder
- Multisite Support
Themify Builder Cons
- Basic Interface That Is Not Intuitive
- Lacking Theme Builder Features
- Lacking Header / Footer Builder
Themify Builder Coupon Discounts
There are currently no active Themify Builder Coupon or Themify Builder Discounts available.
Themify Builder Review: Wrap Up
Themify Builder is not a page builder that I would recommend anyone to use. It’s very rough around the edges which leaves the impression that it’s also half baked.
37 thoughts on “Themify Builder”
Themify is awful. Just took over a website for a client which hadn’t been updated for YEARS. So of course it blew up when I updated Themify and it’s additional builder plugins broke the entire site when updated! Was assured all these update issues were from waiting so long to update. Got it all updated, rebuilt almost the entire site to display properly. Had to add back every bit of color, font, link customization. So thought that was just a one-time thing because she hadn’t had any updates, discussed and planned out with client. Well the next three updates in the last week or so and knocked half as much stuff back out again. If you don’t disable all the builder plugins, it’s likely to lock up your site and you have to go into file manager to remove the plugin manually. If you try to restore from a backup, you have to manually remove all builder plugins and the theme folder or it locks up the site.
It’s very disappointing to see the same issues with updates, support and suggested CSS to fix issues that’s posted here going at least 3 years back. I typically use Astra and Beaver Builder for my clients who want to edit some on their own. I have made this Themify client’s access to edit a little more friendly and trained her in Themify. Although there are a lot of nifty “bells and whistles” in Themify available designs and modules … doesn’t matter if they don’t work in all browsers OR break and have to be redesigned after a .0x update!
I disagree that these issues can be blamed on browsers. It’s the design company selling a product to consumers — whether pro or end user — when you pay a yearly fee for updates and support, your website should look awesome in all browsers… frustrated for my client as she’s going to pay me for a total overhaul of the site to a new theme/builder again before she renews next year …
those guys are scammers trust me. i was premium subscriber many years. last year i decide to stop my subscribe (cause their support sucks) and guess what. My site every few weeks get a virus with redirects to random virus pages.
Scammer is a harsh word. I doubt there is a correlation unless there was a security issue specifically with their builder and you didn’t have access to updates.
Either way, sorry to hear you have had hacking issues.
Hi,
This is Nick of Themify. I agree with Adam of WPCrafter. “Scammer” is a very harsh allegation. Could you let us know how our products caused the virus on your site?
I second the concerns posted here by others. Have used their themes, mainly Ultra as a blank canvas, for some years, but updating the themes is always like playing Russian roulette. Sometimes (very few times) it’s working without severe problems, yet most of the times it’s always coming with nasty surprises like suddendly no longer editable content blocks, vanishing styling of elements or not showing the content blocks at all.
When it’s updating time, I don’t (or didn’t) do it at once as you can be sure the „know issues“ section in the support forums will show things like „Drag & drop and responsive styling mode doesn’t work if minified scripts is enabled“, „Builder image module not showing on Builder preview“, „Chromes doesn’t render parallax scrolling background-image or row background image“ etc.
Their support is also something that you need a lot of patience for, mostly coming up with „we need WP credentials to take a look at“ and providing some patch-up CSS – which may even work until the next theme update.
To cut a long, time- and nerve-consuming story short:
I have switched to Elementor Pro when a customer is in need of a WYSIWYG builder on their sites. I have no time (and no nerves anymore) to burn money with recreating tons of customer content after each and every update just because something broke (yet again). And not updating is -of course- no solution either. Themify is -at least for me- no solution you can count on. Sadly, because I do like the concept and their themes.
Hi,
This is Nick from Themify here. We are sorry to hear about this situation. Please allow us to help and explain as those issues you mentioned were actually related to browser issues.
First issue: (Image module not rendering on Builder preview using Safari)
This was related to Safari failing to render the ‘srcset’ attribute which is used for responsive images. This issue was introduced after Safari’s update and we’ve resolved it long ago. You can refer to this known issue we logged here on May 2018:
https://themify.me/known_issues/safari-builder-image-module-not-showing-builder-preview
Second issue: Parallax scrolling image not working on Chrome v67. Chrome didn’t render background-attachment:fixed properly when the element has CSS transform. The issue was introduced after the Chrome v67 update (Google released v67 at the end of May of 2018) and we resolved it immediately on Jun 17, 2018 (we have this logged on Github Issue for the record).
About the content not being editable and styling issues, we don’t have similar bug reports related to it according to our recent forum threads and Github Issues. We remain dedicated to providing excellent support and would like to help rectify this issue for yourself, and possibly others. If possible, could you send us more details on them? Please allow us to be hands-on and resolve this for you.
Thanks,
Nick
Themify Team
I’ve been using Themify for about 3 years (recently got their lifetime membership because they lowered their price). So I’ve experienced the ups and downs. The last major framework update they released last year was a mess (think they called it cheetah framework). Recently they seem to be working very hard to improve their builder framework. I think they’ve learned a lesson there. Now they start announcing major updates and offering beta version in advance informing users what to expect. They are the only builder tool that supports Gutenberg at the moment. Seeing the new features and improvements they are releasing, the lifetime fee I paid is worth it.
Hi Jennifer,
Thanks for giving Themify a second chance. Your support is appreciated. We are working actively on new features and improvements. See our blog for more details: https://themify.me/blog/development.
Adam, I’m a neophyte on building web sites and have been very grateful for your sage advice, ending up with Astra and Elementor Pro through your site (many thanks).
Themify certainly seems to do some things that Elementor doesn’t, such as Parallax and time delay (still looking for that in Elementor), and the interface for transparency is much better. I’m not looking to change from Elementor, but I am looking for solutions that will allow me to build a site that encompasses professional features for today’s world, which include these features.
I much appreciate people providing feedback but it is only as good as it is accurate, and one wonders how much is percieved and how much is real 😉
It’s highly unlikely that any one theme or page builder will provide everything one looks for, and certainly interfaces are personal preferences, but it would be nice if people focussed on the best or unique things and how these could be improved in builders and themes that were devoid of, or lacking in them.
Just my $0.02 worth !!
I have been using Themify for years. It’s true that for a long time you had theme/builder plugin lock-in, which was not good. But in the past year they have updated the framework (themes and builder plugin) to save your content properly so you do not have the lock-in with their products.
It can certainly be frustrating to update software and have big issues. I have experienced that with Themify and other products as well. I usually wait to update software when I know major updates have been out a while so I know major kinks have been worked out. Whenever I have had a problem with an update, I use the Themify support forum to see if others have asked the same question and usually I find answers to whatever problems I’ve had. The fact that they have open forums so you can benefit from the questions others have asked is HUGE. Most places have migrated away from open forums. I appreciate their willingness to keep the forums open.
Many problems are from a particular combination of theme/plugins, so it can be hard to test all interactions before releasing software. A combination of current backups and the use of a test or staging site is critical to maintaining a healthy website.
I enjoyed Themify’s level of flexibility and ease of use, and I initially wanted to renew my membership with Themify.
But not anymore.
Their builder/theme has many bugs, yet I understand every theme and software has its own share of bugs.
What truly frustrated me was their lackluster response from their support, every time I seek help on the bugs.
The support typically takes 24 hours between each response, even during office hours. They take:
– 24 hours to say “send us your login details”
– another 24 hours to say “is this what you are trying to do”, – then 24 hours to say “I can’t replicate on my side, can you give me screenshots”
– another 24 hours to say “do this XXX way instead” which often doesn’t solve the issue. They give patchy solutions instead of showing efforts to fix the core issue
– For example, there was a bug which caused posts to select no sidebar instead of default (which I set to right sidebar). They told me to manually choose select default EVERY SINGLE TIME I create a new post. I had to insist that this is not enforceable for all my clients who put self-posts forever in the future.
– 24 hours later, IF you’re lucky, then they say “we have sent this to the development team. It should be fixed in the next patch.” If not, happy waiting.
– Oh, and they don’t reply on weekends. So add 48 hours to your waiting time if you’re hustling your website over the weekends. So one simple bug can take 1 whole week which their development team decides to do something about it. Can you imagine trying to getting help for every bug you face?
– Look out this very unpleasant support staff called MLian. The first time I posted 5 bugs/queries together in one new thread, all for the same theme, she told me to separate them. INTO 5 DIFFERENT THREADS?? I said to her the queries are all related, it’s hard to explain every one of them individually. Watch out, she’ll keep giving patchy solutions rather than fix any core issue, which delays the process even more (remember 24 hours for every reply), hoping you will just settle for it and gtfo.
I’m moving on to other builders that I’ve used like Thrive builder and Elementor. I may not have used their support much so I can’t compare on that, but I don’t face that many bugs at least for now.
This is their biggest problem, in my opinion, based on experience. Their support is consistently terrible.
Thought I’d throw my two cents in: Themify sucks. Like one reviewer below, they started out good, got too big, and now can’t keep up. I bought the lifetime package and wish I hadn’t wasted the money now. Hardly an upgrade goes by without something crashing. The latest buffoonery was when they updated the framework and broke more things than it cured. Stay away from Themify!!!! BTW, I’ve been building web sites since 1996 and have tried just about everything on the market.
Hi, I’m a little disagree with you. I’ve started my “webdesign journey” with Themify and almost all my projects I’m doing with the themes. Of course they are not the best, but who is? Elementor themes, Divi? Everybody makes some mistakes and every update is a little dangerous and makes some mess. I think the Themify is a small company and they have not a lot of money form marketing (like the Divi team), employees and other stuff. But if they do a bad stuff so why people are buying their themes? All the best Bart
Hi, Bart,
Yes, Themify was a good program, but constant bugs and crashes, lame CSS fixes, and long turn around times, has made it more frustrating to me than you, evidently. When there a new updates, I am diligent about backing up before I upgrade anything and I have had to restore a backup until a fix is done, more times than I can count. Each one of those instances is time consuming and keeps me from what I do and costs me money. That’s why I no longer recommend them.
To tell you the truth, Bart, I agree that everybody makes mistakes, but I don’t agree with “every update is a little dangerous and makes some mess”. If that were true, then nobody would buy the software.
Something better? Well, based on a recommendation on this site, I’ve been working with the GeneratePress (pro version) and the free Beaver Builder version (after ruling out several others including Elementor). The results are VERY promising.
Good luck with Themify, Bart, but I will be moving all my sites over to something else. Cheers!
I am looking for an excellent web builder. Which one would you highly recommend at this time?
It’s hard to beat Elementor and the value it offers.
I’ve been building websites since MySpace was popular, so I’m not new to coding at all. When I first bought access to Themify it was great; support didn’t take too long to respond, issues were resolved within a day or so, and there were occasional bugs but they were usually resolved before I noticed. But now, every single update they roll out seems to have a new issue. I have a client that hasn’t been able to update her site for days because of Themify issues. When I sent a ticket, they took 24 hours to tell me “the site is loading fast from my end, is this issue resolved” when that wasn’t the issue in the first place. I’ve spent the last 2 weeks trouble shooting themify issues across 4 or 5 different WP sites. They’re officially costing me money, so I definitely will NOT be renewing my subscription with them this year. If you have any recommendations for another framework with a similar concept, please let me know!
Wow, sorry to hear that. Sometimes when you think you are saving money on a certain tool, it actually has the potential to cost you much more when there is a problem. Right now my go-to is Astra Theme +Elementor.
Been with Themify for about 6 months. The themes are nice (I’m presently using Ultra), but the rest is pathetic!
My experience with the support staff, is anything but…. supportive. I assume they are in India. First and the most obvious is the time difference. I live in Germany, so if I have a question and the time to send it, say late afternoon, they’ve gone home. Perhaps the following day there is an answer.
When they do answer and provide what I’ll term support is nearly 90% a CSS code. Not a bad thing, but with so many plugins, tabs, ability to insert plain text, it seems they have no idea other than to type CSS.
I have posed, perhaps 20 questions over the past six months. Of those 20, and this is no joke, at least fifteen have involved this response: Send me your logon credentials in a private message and I’ll fix it. Seriously.
Brought it to the attention of the home office. While they did let me know that the email was received and they would look into this and get back to me…. they never did.
Smart looking themes. Terrible company.
The Themify builder is a good concept, but the quality of the product, the themes, and the customer service are horrible. The themes are always having problems. The tech people leave your site a mess when they are done working in your site. It takes days and weeks to get a reply in the support system. And the updates leave your site broken more often than not. Very unstable products.
Yea I have always been most concerned with how low priced it is and the already give half away to referral partners. Not sure how they may money or have a sustainable business model. Add in that there is so much competition in the page builder market and Gutenberg is coming out in a few months.
Agree with other reviews. I purchased the theme a few months ago and my dev team has recommended using another because it is highly unstable; there are always bugs and issues with updates.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Do not buy Themify. I recently changed the theme from Metro Themify (old) and I assure you it was the worst choice I could make. With the recent update of WordPress and Framwork update all the custom Post and most of the functionality of the additional Themify plugins have been blocked. This has happened to ALL who created Custom Post on Themify Ultra with the CPT plugin (again from themify). I am looking for another one.
I recommend as a friend.
Dont Buy Themify.
It’s been nothing but problems all year long. The support forums can take weeks before you get just an answer (not a solution, mind you, just a response). And, it’s not unusual for Support to ask you to add custom code or a 3rd party plugin to fix their problems.
Better Builders: X Theme (trust me, it’s cheaper in time-savings), Creativo, Divi. All of these themes have been stable, reliable and have far better support.
I started building websites with good old HTML in 2009 and have used several dozens themes and a half dozen builders. Themify Ultra is the Worst builder in that, as Image Earth Travel states, it’s buggy, problematic, broken. It even re-formats parts of your site when you update (and yes, I am using a child theme and yes, ultra still messes it up).
It’s a shame it’s such a mess, because in the rare moments that it works . . . it’s a real nice platform.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Sorry to hear that it was this bad.
Hi
I am new to website building. I have little knowladge of website building. Actually i got impressed by themify drag and drop builder. And almost going to purchase themify ultra theme.
Please help me to choose drag and drop builder for my small busines website ( ecommerce website ).
I would suggest Elemetor and the Astra theme. In fact, I have a full video tutorial on the combo right here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na7PXBJakRg
I have been using Themify Ultra for a while now and I must say it is highly unstable. When I try to update a paragraph for example, sometimes it changes all paragraphs on a page and if the change is on a portion that is not visible on the page, if you update, I must say you are screwed.
I have tried other builders which offer much less but at least they are stable and get the work done. Honestly, I am done with Themify. Wastes a lot of time trying to fix the issues.
Personally, I would not reccommend it to anyone at the moment. Maybe if the bugs are fixed and it becomes actually usable, then maybe I can try it again.
Thanks. I am a coder for a good number of years.
Sorry to hear, but not surprised.
Hey Adam
Hope you are well. I asked you not too long ago to review Themify builder on your YouTube channel.
I was very impressed with the Themify builder because of all the features it had which made the other builders look way behind.
As with the previous comment, I am moving to Elementor because of the issues and updates of Themify builder that is always breaking something in a site. Themify works, it’s awesome, a lot can be done. But god forbids there is an update, even through a child theme, somethings breaks.
I have lost my patients with the update breaks. The framework has been updated this month and things just got a whole lot worse.
I have been using Elementor for 2 months or so, and still using Themify and I am definitely moving all my sites to Elementor.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Yea nothing is worse then an update breaking things.
I have to agree that the Themify Builder is not great having used it now for almost a year. It’s not about being technical or not, it’s about supplying a Builder without bugs, especially on updating – something always goes wrong (I’m using a Child theme).
The support is not that great either, typically waiting 3+ days for someone to respond to a ticket. Anyone that’s building a website knows that this is too long.
I’d love to know exactly how Themify categorises (or not) their Ultra support tickets?
I get much better and excellent support from my WordPress.com blog site that I built over 2 years’ ago.
Thanks for sharing your experience with them.
I wholly disagree with you, especially: “…not a page builder that I would recommend any to use.” Ultra may not be for the “non-techies” as you say you wish to target, but that statement is WAY too sweeping of a commendation of Themify. I started building web sites in 1995 by hand coding; then Artisteer showed up and, finally, Themify. Yes, there is not a ton of video support, but we can read and there are documents. What would you compare Themfiy to? Itself? I have used Themify for several years and, yes, I have had problems with them, but in the end, for someone who has some experience in web building and is looking for something that provides a good, stable framework, has many ways to build and fine tune a web site, all modules are updated, works on multisite, and on and on. I now only build web sites for my wife’s art and our travels (and a couple of relatives sites), but I bought the lifetime package when they had a great offer, which they quite often have, so ALL my themes and plugins are updated – for as long as I use the package. AND you are NOT limited to the number of sites you can use Themify on, unlike some of the ones you list as alternatives. And a search for “themify reviews” shows you as the only one who doesn’t seem to like it. So, if you aren’t going to recommend it to non-techies, then make that clear. If you don’t recommend it to advanced users, you are doing them a great disservice.
Well, I am not saying that someone can’t buy it, and use it to build something. What I am saying is there are much better products that are easier to use, more intuitive, and more likely to stay in business for the long haul. It has nothing to do with it being too technical, it’s that if you can use a better page builder and get better results in half the time, then I am going to say that. Sure you can go find some “reviews” out there, but those are not reviews they are people that just tell you about the features and give you a link to buy, where they earn 50% of the purchase price. They have never used it, and express no opinion on it because they don’t give a crap about you, they just want you to buy. I am the only reviewer that has to courage to tell it like it is, as I see it, to actually take a position. All the others just want your money.