Which WordPress themes do you recommend using (or not)?

You will always achieve the best performance in WordPress with custom themes.

The easiest way to design custom themes is by establishing a theme development workflow based on so-called starter themes.

However you can also simply use a starter theme as-is in some cases, although it might look a bit bland.

Besides this approach, the next best option is to choose a lightweight, well-coded theme that is updated regularly for bugs, patches, and new PHP compatibility. Most WordPress users don’t know how to identity a theme that falls into these categories, which is why we launched the below list of recommendations.

If you choose a well-coded theme, in most cases there should be no need for a page builder plugin, which add a ton of code bloat to your website, hurt performance and security, and make future web design changes much, much more difficult. It can also lead to content lock-in and other related problems.

At the very end of the line you have the worst types of themes — these are extremely heavy themes or “all purpose” or “multi purpose” themes like Avada, Divi, X, and so forth that come pre-bundled with hundreds of features and code snippets. While this can look attractive to newbie users, later on it nearly always becomes a problem for performance, security, or otherwise.

If you really love page builder plugins, make sure to choose a high quality one that offers a free-tier to avoid the worst lock-in situations. Then pair your favorite page builder plugin with a lightweight theme to help reduce some of the code bloat and performance issues.