- In today’s article, we reviewed the market of marketplaces and websites that sell admin, mobile, business templates, and themes. We tried to list all the Themeforest alternative solutions on the admin template market. Well, anyway we will include ThemeForest in the selection.
We decided to write such an article because we saw that the market of web and mobile themes is growing, but no one has yet gathered all the players in one article and listed all Themeforest alternatives. We also compared them and described common problems, pros, and cons, and other stuff.
This article will be useful not only for buyers alone, but also for those who want to sell their products through marketplaces. We will analyze the amount of traffic, terms, and conditions, support policy, and other related stuff that helps you to decide on which marketplace to place your product.
Categories of stores
So, on the template market, there are 3 categories of stores:
- Classic marketplaces collect products from different vendors. In this case, anyone can use the services at the site to sell their product, but a commission will be collected for this;
- One technology store. The website sells products built around one technology. An example is CoreUI: we will analyze it in more detail later in the article;
- Premium vendors. Premium vendors only sell their own, in-house created content, as opposed to marketplace websites that sell themes submitted by a variety of third-party users. Prices are generally higher, but quality and support are better.
Criteria for evaluating template marketplaces
Let’s also take a look at criteria that can be used to evaluate marketplaces. Naturally, they have different weights for different types of stores. For example, for premium vendors, the number of templates and traffic will not play such a significant role as for a classic marketplace. The criteria are following:
- Number of products. In some marketplaces, there are more than 30,000 products, but in premium vendors, there are only 50-200 products;
- Product details page quality. One of the most crucial criteria. Your conversion depends on how well this page is designed;
- The quality of the search and, in general, how the catalog works;
- How the support is carried out. This is also one of the most important criteria. The chance of your customers returning to buy a product depends on this a lot;
- Pricing policy;
- Traffic amount;
- Customization services;
- Affiliate program availability and conditions.
General information about the web and mobile templates market
Conversion
In general, according to our assumptions, the average conversion per purchase is somewhere between 0.04% and 0.07%, which is generally much less than in classic online stores. This is due to the fact that marketplaces and stores sell specific goods and the audience for their consumption is limited.
Marketplace structure
Most marketplaces and online stores selling templates consist of:
- Main page – where general information is presented, as well as links to the most popular products;
- Directory with various filtering options;
- Search;
- Product Description Pages.
Marketing / Traffic Acquisition
Market participants have several strategies for attracting traffic to their platforms:
- Paid advertising;
- Retargeting;
- SEO development;
- Content marketing;
- Affiliate program.
Common Marketplace problems
Let’s look into common marketplace problems.
- Lack of transparency. Inconsistent and opaque review system. Even upon requesting additional information from the Envato support team, you may receive very abstract to no information about your rejection reasons;
- Floating standards. Every review process was unpredictable;
- Abstract regulations. There is not enough information and examples on how to develop a perfect theme and publish it on Themeforest;
- Lack of support.
Review of Marketplaces
Premium Vendors
Flatlogic Templates
Overview
Flatlogic is also a platform that sells templates of its own development. The site has a good design and clear structure. The clients may also purchase a service for customizing products and custom project development.
What does it offer
Flatlogic offers admin, business, and mobile templates that are generally built around Javascript technology, namely:
- Angular templates and themes
- React templates and themes
- Vue templates and themes
- Bootstrap templates and themes
- React Native templates
There are also backends on these templates made with Node.js and .NET technologies. The company is also working on business templates. For instance, now it offers a User Management template.
Number of traffic
The website has around 115k monthly users according to Similar web tool. Most of the traffic comes from the US and European countries.
Pricing policy
The prices start from $99 for the template without backend and personal license to $449 for the developer license. If you want the backend, you need to pay $149 for the personal license. There is also a subscription for the GitHub updates – $14 for 6 months and $39 for 12 months. There are also many seasonal discounts: follow the website or social media to find out and get updates.
Affiliate policy
Affiliate program allows you to earn a 50% commission from every customer you refer. The company provides outpayments every month via Paypal or wire transfer. To become an affiliate you need to create an account on the website, receive the ref code, and place a link on the chosen resources.
How to sell as a vendor
There is no open possibility to sell as a vendor. But you can send us a message at [email protected] – and we’ll try to come up with something.
Support and refund policy
The support is provided by email only: the company says they will reply in 24 hours except for weekends. In order to be applicable for a refund, you have 24 hours to inspect your purchase and to determine if it does not meet the expectations laid forth by Flatlogic.
Licensing policy
There are two licenses: personal and developer licenses.
Personal license: Your use of the item is restricted to a single application. You may use the item in work that you are creating for your own purposes or for your client. The item may not be redistributed or resold. You may not charge users for using your application.
Developer license: You are licensed to use the Item to create one single End Product for yourself or for one client (a “single application”), and the End Product may be Sold and users may be charged for using it (e.g. you are building a SAAS application).
Customization Services
The company offers a wide range of customization services, from customizing of their own products to building applications from scratch. These are mostly web or mobile applications.
Recap
Flatlogic is a good choice if you want a quality design and dedicated support from theme creators. It is also a good choice if you want customization services as well: the team has seasoned full-stack developers to help you.
StartBootstrap
Overview
Start Bootstrap is an amazing website where you will get the best bootstrap themes and templates absolutely for free. Startbootstrap started out as a single developer who sold their templates through marketplaces, namely Wrapbootstrap. The project is maintained by only one web developer – David Miller. The site was raised thanks to detailed guides describing how to work with Bootstrap technology.
What does it offer
Startbootstrap sells bootstrap-based products, namely:
- Themes;
- Admin templates;
- Code Snippets.
Number of traffic
Similarweb resource estimates the amount of traffic at 700 thousand users per month, which in reality allows us to say there are about 400 thousand per month, according to google analytics.
Pricing policy
There are a lot of free products on the website, which attract traffic. The prices start from $49 for one template (standard license) to $149 for the extended one. Seasonal sales up to 50% happen quite often.
Affiliate policy
We haven’t noticed any affiliate program on the website.
How to sell as a vendor
Not applicable, as it’s not a marketplace.
Support and refund policy
The support is provided via email: the authors promise to respond in 24 hours. Refunds are processed on a case-by-case basis but are not guaranteed.
Licensing policy
There are two license types: Standard and Extended.
Standard – in short, if you are creating a single end product (like a website or web application) end-users can access for free, and the end product’s source files are not being redistributed in any way, the Standard License is sufficient.
Extended – in short, if you are creating a single end product (like a website or web application) that end-users must pay to access, then the Extended License is required. With the Extended License, you can also redistribute the modified End Product as part of an application, but you cannot redistribute the Theme “as is” as a stock asset on its own or as part of a bundle of products.
Customization Services
There are no customization services provided by the author.
Recap
This is a good choice if you know what you want and also like good design and buying without intermediaries. Also, your buying not from a huge corporation, but from an open-source developer will be a certain plus for your karma.
Creative Tim
Overview
Сreative-Tim is a rich marketplace where you can get bootstrap themes and other items like Admin and Dashboard, UI kits, Angular, Vue, and React themes. They offer the premium theme as well as the freemium version.
What does it offer
Here you can buy admin and dashboards templates, UI Kits, Landing pages, Login forms, Wizards, Calendar components. The themes are divided into free and premium, and also divided by design and technology.
The products are built with the following technologies:
- Angular;
- React;
- Vue;
- Node.js;
- Laravel;
- Svelte;
- React Native and others.
Number of traffic
According to the SimilarWeb tool, Creative Tim has 800k unique users.
Pricing policy
Product prices usually start at $49 and are divided into 4 plans based on license. The most expensive price goes up to almost $1000 per product. You will also have the opportunity to renew your update subscription and paid support.
Affiliate policy
You can earn 50% commission on affiliate sales: when a customer you referred buys a product, you will receive a 50% share. Anyone with a blog, a social media account, or just a set of friends that are in the field of web development can become an affiliate. You can also provide discounts to your users.
How to sell as a vendor
Since this is a premium vendor committed to making quality products, it is not openly stated that you can sell your products in this store.
Support policy
Support is divided into community support and premium support. Community support is made for free templates: the Creative-tim team does not offer human-based support for free products. In general, support is provided to users in case of errors in the product, or if the features do not work as stated. Any custom development requests will not be supported.
Licensing policy
There are four types of licenses available for Creative-Tim products:
- The Freelancer license grants you the right to use the purchased product only for one project (either yours or for a client);
- The Startup license grants you the right to use the purchased product for multiple projects, such as a SaaS;
- The Company license grants you the right to create other licensed products based on the template that you purchase from us;
- The Enterprise license grants you the right to create any kind of software, SaaS, digital products, and sell them.
Customization Services
There are no customization services offered by Creative-tim, but they share contacts of their partners who can do this type of work.
Recap
If you have enough budget to spend money on a single item, then you can try Creative-Tim. They have quite a few products to choose from and good user support. The downside is they don’t have customization services, and the store is slightly unusual.
One technology store
Official Bootstrap marketplace
Overview
This marketplace is maintained by the official bootstrap team. The website has a good design and is very intuitive to operate.
What does it offer
The marketplace is offering a variety of products built on top of Bootstrap. For instance:
- Admin and Dashboard
- Landing pages
- Applications like project management tools
- E-commerce websites
- Blog web-sites
Number of traffic
We cannot accurately determine the amount of traffic in the store, since it’s built on a subdomain of the bootstrap site itself, and all third-party services estimate traffic at 12 million users monthly, which hardly reflects the real picture.
Pricing policy
The prices start from $49 for a single license, $149 for unlimited websites, and from $300 for an extended license.
Affiliate policy
There is no affiliate program on this website.
How to sell as a vendor
There is a big guide on how to sell as a vendor. You need to share the experience of working with bootstrap, share examples of your work and design, and contact information.
The rules seem not clear to us, though. You need to send the required information to the email and wait for the response. We have tried to apply to this marketplace twice. They did not respond at the first time, and after that they rejected us without any clarification.
The commission is following:
Support policy
Technical support for each theme is given directly by its creator. Support for the themes is given for 6 months after you purchase the theme and is specific to questions around functionality, bugs, and basic implementation.
Licensing policy
Here is an overview of the license policy of the bootstrap marketplace.
Customization Services
There are no customization services mentioned on the website.
Recap
On the one hand, the Bootstrap marketplace seems to be a good solution for buying templates, since the team promises a good check of templates from third-party users. But from the vendor’s point of view, the rules for placing in this store are not entirely transparent, as there are no explicit criteria for admission.
Mdboostrap
Overview
Mdbootstrap is a store selling products made on its own library/framework – Material Design for bootstrap. Why did I include it in the collection, you ask? It’s simple: they are in the same field as other marketplaces, selling software and components for building web applications.
What does it offer
The company sells Material Design for Bootstrap – it is a frontend framework, a set of tools/elements/functionalities used to build websites and web applications. The company provides this in four main technologies: Angular, React, Vue, and jQuery (as the Bootstrap default version).
Number of traffic
The site has a sizable user base of 1.62 million. 19% of users come from India, followed by the US with 8%. The traffic is mostly organic.
Pricing policy
There are several pricing options available. For example, you can buy the Uber stack – all products presented on the website for 999 euros with access for 1 developer. Further, depending on the technology (React, Angular, jQuery, or Vue), you can purchase a range of products (plugins, admin panels) or a bundle with components with a price from 79 euros to 599 euros for one developer. The company offers one-time payments, but subscription for technical support has to be renewed yearly. Its cost is 60% of the license price.
Affiliate policy
The basic rules sound like you can earn 50% commission on every sale generated by your affiliate link. This does not happen immediately, though, but over time – the more you sell, the higher the commission rate. Cookies keep your leads for up to 180 days. You can track your statistics through a special dashboard on the site.
How to sell as a vendor
You are not able to sell products as a vendor on this website.
Support policy
If you want to receive support directly from the developers of MDBootstrap, you need to become the customer. Otherwise, you will have to ask questions at the support forum, which is not bad as well.
Licensing policy
In general, there are three licenses on the website: one Free and two Pro versions.
Highlights of free version:
- Free for personal use;
- Free for commercial use;
- No attribution required.
Highlights of the MD 4 PRO version:
- You have a right for personal use;
- You have a right for commercial use;
- No attribution required;
- Lifetime usage;
- Perpetual maintenance;
- No automatic recurring fees.
Highlights of the MD 5 PRO version:
- You have a right for personal use;
- You have a right for commercial use;
- No attribution required;
- Lifetime usage;
- Subscription for maintenance & bonus features (can be cancelled at any time);
- Unlimited projects.
Customization Services
The company provides consulting services on how to use its products and how to build web applications. The company also provides a custom development service. The cost of one hour of consultation starts at $ 139, the cost of custom development, in turn, is $ 69 per hour.
Recap
MDBootstrap is a good example of a single technology business. If you become a buyer of their products, the advantage is that you get support directly from the product developers. Also, a good plus is that the company offers services for consulting and customizing products.
Coreui
Overview
CoreUI is another storefront that is built around a single technology, just like MDBootstrap.
What does it offer
CoreUI sells easy-to-learn UI components and Admin Templates on various front end technologies:
- Bootstrap 4;
- React;
- Angular;
- Vue;
- Laravel.
Number of traffic
Core UI’s traffic ranges from 250,000 users to 300,000 monthly users. The first country for visits is India, the second, respectively, the United States.
Pricing policy
You can buy CoreUI products starting from a one-time $79 payment for them. Further prices depend on the license, together with the number of developers who will be given access to the code and the products included in the bundle. You can also choose to pay $89 per month for unlimited access to the enterprise license. Additionally, the company offers to download and use a free open-source license.
Affiliate policy
Promoting CoreUI products, you can get a 25% commission on every sale you refer to. Software products are available for sale through the 2Checkout affiliate network. To start selling, all you need to do is display product information and “Buy now” links on your website.
How to sell as a vendor
You are not able to sell as a vendor on this website.
Support policy
Human-based support is available only for premium accounts. The company promises to answer within 48 hours. For free users, there is a support forum available.
Licensing policy
Here is a basic overview of licensing policy of CoreUI:
Customization Services
The company offers a wide range of customization services and custom development. It includes software development, design, and user experience services.
Recap
CoreUI will be a good help if you want to get good support along with the product, as well as if you want to order customization services for purchased products in the future. The price of CoreUI products will probably be a small drawback.
Classic marketplaces
Wrapbootstrap
Overview
WrapBootstrap is one of the most well-known bootstrap marketplaces. There are hundreds of themes available. One handy feature is the ability to filter by Bootstrap version. Theme sales commission is competitive.
What does it offer
Wrapbooststrap offers templates written in Bootstrap. There are admin and dashboards, e-commerce, landing pages, portfolios and resumes, UI Kits, and various other themes. You can also find some templates that use javascript frameworks: angular, vue or react.
Each theme is accompanied by detailed specifications such as layout, column, version, item number, and compatibility information for the Bootstrap version that the theme can work with.
Information regarding the features of each template can be found below each template (e.g. number of page templates, a section within the design, width header and footer details, etc).
The Live Preview provides a comprehensive overview of the template, which is quite useful to get a good idea regarding how the theme may appear after the final product is complete.
Number of traffic
According to Similar Web, Wrapbootstrap has over 200k monthly users. if you extract the numbers in GA, then it’s about 100k users a month.
Pricing policy
The prices on the website are very scattered. The site does not have a single policy. Developers themselves can set prices for their products. Prices depend on licenses: you can buy a single license for up to $50, Multiple will cost from $120 to $250, and an extended one can be bought for $1000.
Affiliate policy
You’ll receive 10% commission for items priced at or above $10, and a 5% commission for items below $10. Earnings are paid monthly via PayPal or Payoneer.
How to sell as a vendor
Here’s a short summary of one of the users’ experiences:
“There were times I submitted a theme, and it was months before it was even looked at. I would send emails every couple of weeks to let the owner know I’d submitted a theme, and never got a response. Then, there was another time I submitted a theme and it was rejected because the owner felt that the color scheme I chose wouldn’t allow the item to sell too well. What?”
Support policy
Support is carried out by contacting buyers with the authors of the templates. This policy results in a huge amount of controversy since the site does not really moderate the correspondence.
Licensing policy
The store offers a standard license scheme: Single, Multiple and Extended licenses:
- Single – The item may not be redistributed or resold. Your use of the item is restricted to a single installation;
- Multiple – Your use of the item may extend to multiple installations. The item may not be redistributed or resold;
- Extended – Your use of the item may extend to multiple installations. You may license, sublicense, redistribute, or resell the item.
Customization Services
The marketplace didn’t offer any customization services, but you can ask creators of the themes about it.
Recap
In my opinion, the marketplace is overall outdated and oversaturated with not so good content (but, there are some really good templates by some incredibly talented designers). We also know about cases of store creators delaying payouts for several months. Also, there are plenty of themes there on Wrapbootstrap that should have never seen the light of day because aesthetically they are not really appealing.
Themefisher
Overview
ThemeFisher is another notable player in the Bootstrap templates market. Whether you need a quality Bootstrap front-end theme to impress end users, or a highly functional Bootstrap admin template for behind the UX scenes, you will find what you need here.
What does it offer
In the Themefisher store, you can buy bootstrap and html5 templates in the following categories. All Templates are made by the company itself:
- Free templates;
- Premium templates;
- Bootstrap 4 templates;
- Admin templates;
- E-commerce templates;
- Landing pages;
- Business templates.
The site also emphasizes that they strive to provide a free version for all themes you see, saving you hours of fruitless search. You can always choose the Pro version in the future and pay a little extra to remove the ThemeFisher credit at the bottom. Also, the company offers multi-theme bundles at attractively low rates.
The company also offers templates made with the static site generator Hugo.
Number of traffic
According to SimilarWeb, there are 83,000 monthly visitors. But as you can see, the traffic is constantly dropping, which is a little alarming.
Pricing policy
The price for all templates costs $20 + $3 credit card fee, which is a bit strange, since these are usually expenses of the company itself. Also, for $37 you can buy a bundle from all templates.
Affiliate policy
The site lacks any information about affiliate programs.
How to sell as a vendor
There is also no information on whether you can sell as a third-party manufacturer on this site.
Support policy
All premium templates come with a developer support option. The site also has basic documentation for each template. But there are nuances: the documentation page looks a little raw. The FAQ questions look stubbed out by Lorem Ipsum.
All supported items have 3 months of included support. You also have the option to purchase a support extension. You can create a ticket through the feedback form on the site.
Since Themefisher is offering non-tangible and irrevocable digital products, they do not issue refunds after a purchase is made.
Licensing policy
When purchasing a product, you do not have the option to choose a license – there’s only one. But there are some limitations:
- You cannot build open source products based on them;
- You can only build one commercial product with each template.
Customization Services
There is no information about any services for changing templates on the site.
Recap
The project is already 6 years old, but since it’s supported by only one person, it seems that in some places it is unfinished. In our opinion, quite a simple licensing system is a good advantage.
Templatemonster
Overview
Templatemonster is one of the oldest players in the web development market. The company began its journey back in 2002 and already has more than 26,000 products from different vendors.
What does it offer
The company offers the following products:
- WordPress themes & plugins;
- Ecommerce themes;
- CMS templates (Drupal, Joomla, MotoCMS 3);
- Website templates with drag and drop builder;
- Admin templates;
- Business apps templates;
- Premium graphics.
With filters and search properties, it is really easy to find your digital product from among the 26,000 products available in the collection. The company adds, on average, 350-400 new products with a broad spectrum of types and categories every month. You can sort out the best one for you by using specs and other options.
Number of traffic
Traffic values range from 2 to 3 million monthly users. The vast majority of users are from India and the USA.
Pricing policy
The most common price is $75. In general, the templates usually range from $55 to $120. Keep in mind that the initial price only covers a single theme license. If you’d like to install it on multiple websites, you’ll either need to buy multiple copies, or find themes that offer developer licenses (usually up to 5 websites) for an extra fee.
On top of the base fee, there are a bunch of optional add-ons that the theme author can offer. The most common are hosting, plugins, and installation done for you. It’s easy to spend $200-300 when you check out.
Affiliate policy
You can get a 30% commission for the first purchase and 10% for returning visitors. There are already 165,000 affiliates who promote TemplateMonster. An important plus is that the company provides various materials to make it easier for you to promote it: comparative articles, video reviews, coupons, and banners.
How to sell as a vendor
The company has comprehensive documentation on how to start selling products on their website. Your product must match the categories posted on the site and meet the basic criteria. The loading of products is automated and takes place using a special application on the site.
Support policy
On every page of the Template Monster website, there’s a little live chat bubble icon that pops up in the bottom right corner. From there you can send questions to support staff about consulting (before buying), technical support, or billing. This chat operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
If it’s more complicated, you can always submit a ticket, where you’ll get a more detailed answer, but will have to wait longer for it.
After you’ve purchased a template, providing technical assistance becomes the vendor’s problem. Template Monster only deals with the underlying support infrastructure.
Licensing policy
Here are the different types of template licenses available for purchase:
Free Sample: this type of fee usually requires you to share TemplateMonster on social media to download something.
Single Site License: ranges from a few dollars to around $200, depending on the product, vendor, and associated platform.
Developer’s License: For non-exclusive use on up to five sites.
Customization Services
TemplateMonster offers a wide range of services for setting up and customizing the purchased product:
- Web Design & Dev;
- Website Optimization;
- Graphic Design;
- Ads & Marketing;
- Content Writing;
Recap
TemplateMonster is one of the best alternatives to Themeforest. The marketplace has more than 26k premium website templates and gained over 3 million customers.
Features of TemplateMonster products:
- It comes with complete documentation;
- 24/7 customer support;
- GPLv3 licensing themes.
However, it’s not very easy to search for products that suit your needs. There are also problems with the quality of products.
Themeforest
Overview
ThemeForest is powered by Envato society Australian company founded by Collis Ta’eed, Cyan, and Ta’eed Jun Rung. ThemeForest is one of the parts of the Envato Market along with other well-known marketplaces – CodeCanyon.
ThemeForest offers a huge range of more than 39,000 themes and templates including some built with Bootstrap.
What does it offer
The marketplace has different items for WordPress and other platforms users: Template kits, HTML templates, marketing-related templates, eCommerce-related resources, blogger templates, Admin Templates, and others.
The marketplace has been categorized into 14 top levels, which should be helpful. Using the search bar, you will find a long list of themes for your preferred search term. You can narrow your results by using the five subcategories like Bestsellers, Newest, Best rated, Trending, and Price.
Then you can use the ThemeForest built-in filter system to quickly catch the suitable theme from the huge list.
You can also choose to subscribe to access all products.
Number of traffic
Themeforest is undoubtedly the leader in the number of users among marketplaces that offer web development products. The number of users according to the SimilarWeb tool is about 15 million users. Most of the users are from India and the USA – 10% each.
Pricing policy
Generally, you can buy templates/themes ranging from $20 to $70 for the basic license. You can also extend support for the separate payment.
Affiliate policy
If you become an affiliate, you will earn up to 30% commission. The website also tells us that Envato Affiliates earn more than $3 million per year. You can monitor your performance & earnings via your affiliate dashboard.
How to sell as a vendor
In order to sell at this marketplace, you need to register an account and pass validation. After that, a large form will appear that you need to fill out and wait for approval from the Themeforest team. You should also be aware that there are 2 types of failures: Hard and Soft. If you receive a Hard reject, then you can no longer apply with the same product and you will not receive any explanation why you were refused. With a soft reject, you can try and pass the test again with the same product. You will also receive an explanation of why you were refused and what to improve.
Also, you should be aware that there are no exact criteria for evaluating a product. The site only vaguely tells you to care about the quality of the code.
On the web, we also found dozens of reviews sent by people who were very unhappy with the hard reject policy, as they were doing their best to develop quality products.
Another disadvantage may be that the amount of your payouts depends on the number of sales, and the competition in this marketplace is simply enormous.
Support policy
Most of the authors provide their support for up to 6 months only if you are facing any issue on theme installation, bug, general concern. If you need support after that period, you can extend your support by choosing the “Extend support to 12 months” and paying the suggested money.
Support is provided by the authors of the themes – ThemeForest acts only as an intermediary.
Licensing policy
If you purchase the Themeforest standard licenses, you need to know the details of these. There are two types – Regular and Extended.
The regular license helps you work on a digital platform without any restrictions. If you want to transfer your design and work to your client along with your theme license, you have to buy an additional extended license for this. However, redistribution is not allowed in the extended license due to their limitations.
Customization Services
The company does not provide services for customizing products. To do this, you can contact the theme authors directly.
Recap
ThemeForest is the best preference for theme creators, but not the first choice for the developers. There are many alternatives to ThemeForest you can prefer.
Before making a purchase at ThemeForest, make sure you read all the details of the product. Since it is a marketplace where you will find different sellers, make sure to check all the reviews before any theme purchase. There are many stories in that themes are not working properly and the support is not good.
Wrappixel
Overview
WrapPixel is a company specializing in designing themes for front-end development. The company is a mid-sized player in the market and cannot boast of a large selection of products.
What does it offer
The company mainly sells admin templates on various frontend technologies: React, Angular, Bootstrap, VueJS. The company also offers UI Kits and Bootstrap snippets of code, like forms or navigations. Products are both free and premium.
Number of traffic
The company has about 150,000 monthly users, according to SimilarWeb. Most of the users are from India and Brazil.
Pricing policy
Most of the themes come with the price of $39 for the basic license and $499 for the extended license. Updates are lifetime. Support is free for one year.
Affiliate policy
You can get up to 30% commission for each referred sale on WrapPixel, even if your customer bought more than one product. Wrappixel offers monthly payouts via Paypal to all our affiliates. Minimum payout will be $50.
How to sell as a vendor
You are not able to sell as a vendor on this website.
Support policy
The company offers support only for the premium products. Here are the terms and conditions:
Support does include:
- Answering your questions or problems regarding the template.
- Giving solutions to the bugs reported.
Support does not include:
- Customization work;
- Any installation work;
- Support for any Third Party Plugins / Software we used in our template;
- Support or Guide for How to integrate with any technologies (like, PHP, .net, Java etc);
- Solving bugs in your implemented template.
Licensing policy
Customization Services
The company offers customization and custom development services.
Recap
A good advantage of choosing products from this company will be lifetime updates and free support for one year. However, there’s a minus as well: the company also sells its products on external marketplaces, which clearly creates queues in support tickets.
Codecanyon
Overview
Codecanyon is an online marketplace that mainly sells pieces or whole blanks of web applications. That is why the store name contains the word code.
What does it offer
Codenanyon sells plugins, code, and scripts. Products are divided into the following categories:
- Mobile;
- WordPress;
- HTML5;
- PHP Scripts;
- Plugins;
- JavaScript;
- CSS;
- .NET;
- Apps;
- Skins.
Each category has its own subcategories. For example, choosing Javascript, you also have to choose which elements of the web application you want to buy. For instance, forms, loaders, and unloaders, etc.
Number of traffic
Codecanyon has about 6 million monthly users according to SimilarWeb, which in reality has about 3 million users according to Google Analytics. Most of the users are from India, the USA, and Brazil.
Pricing policy
The prices are very different. Some products cost just $10 for the regular license, some others cost up to $1000 for the extended license. You can also extend support for every item for about $50.
Affiliate policy
If you become an affiliate, you will earn up to 30% commission. The website also tells us that Envato affiliates earn more than $3 million per year. You can monitor your performance & earnings via your affiliate dashboard.
How to sell as a vendor
For new authors on CodeCanyon, they take a huge (50%) cut of the sale, even more, if you’re not exclusive (67% cut). This used to be in exchange for the following benefits:
- Targeted traffic – millions of buyers are registered on their marketplace;
- Standardised item pages with easy links to demos;
- e-Commerce capability (handle store, checkout, etc);
- They do customer help / support (optional by authors);
- They process refunds (and pay for them from their share of the sale);
- They pay the tax (VATmoss);
- In exchange, they keep the customer details (email) and you get 50% (increasing to 70% as sales come in).
Pros of using CodeCanyon to sell your plugins
- Publicity for your plugin;
- A large customer base to tap into;
- An established marketing and distribution channel.
Cons of using CodeCanyon to sell your plugins
- CodeCanyon is a highly competitive market;
- Brand recognition is difficult;
- You’re bound by the CodeCanyon’s terms;
- Auto-renewals are not an option;
- Commission rates are pretty high by most people’s standards;
- Communication with clients is only possible via CodeCanyon.
Support policy
Most of the authors are providing their support for up to 6 months only if you are facing any issue on theme installation, bug, general concern. If you need support after that period, you can extend your support by paying the suggested money.
Support is provided by the authors of the themes, Codecanyon acts only as an intermediary.
Licensing policy
The licensing policy is similar to that at Themeforest as they belong to the one company – Envato.
Customization Services
There are no customization options. But you can contact product creators and ask about customization services.
Recap
The undoubted advantage of Codecanyon is the number of products, as well as the sale of ready-made fully working applications, including those with a backend part. However, with this variety, it’s very easy to get confused and buy things you don’t need.
Codester
Overview
Codester is a creative digital marketplace based in the Netherlands. It is an online marketplace designed for users to buy and sell any web development assets. The site was launched on May 10, 2014, and since has hurdled and thrived to become one of the most well-known digital marketplaces.
What does it offer
Mobile Apps – there are a total of 200+ mobile apps (including mobile apps source code) available on Codester, each sub-sectioned into categories like Android, iOS, Ionic, Corona, Buildbox, and Titanium.
Themes – Codester has a total of 150+ pre-made themes, a large number of which are either HTML or WordPress, as well as some Magento and PrestaShop themes.
Plugins – Codester also features a total of 70+ plugins, the overwhelming majority of which are for WordPress (30+ WordPress plugins in total) and Magento.
Graphics – Codester has a large number of pre-made graphic packs for web designers, developers or even webmasters looking for pre-made design goodies. These graphics packs are logos, 2D game characters, icons, product mockups, user interfaces, and more.
Number of traffic
Codester has more than 650k monthly users according to SimilarWeb tool. Most of the users come from India and Brazil.
Pricing policy
An average theme or plugin is definitely more affordable than the average option on ThemeForest and CodeCanyon or any Premium Vendor shops.
For example, themes start at just $19, and most seem to cap out around $39-49. Codester’s prices are both lower and more variable because it has always had author-driven pricing.
Bonus: no added transaction fees. Codester doesn’t charge anything to process payments, so you can subtract another $2 from all of their prices when compared with ThemeForest and CodeCanyon.
Affiliate policy
If you refer new customers to Codester, you will receive 10% of any of their purchases. We believe that is a very low commission. Affiliate tracking cookies last for 90 days.
How to sell as a vendor
The process of selling products looks like this:
- Sign up;
- Upload your item;
- Review team will review your item;
- Once your item has been approved, it will appear on Codester;
Features for sellers:
- No exclusivity requirement or tiered payments based on exclusivity. You’re free to sell exclusively through Codester or through Codester plus your own store;
- 70% commission rate no matter how many sales you have or your exclusivity;
- You can set your own pricing.
Codester is great for developers already selling through their own store because there’s no penalty for non-exclusivity.
Support policy
By default, all of the products on Codester come with 12 months of support. Of course, you can extend support, but it will cost you more money.
Licensing policy
There are two licenses on Codester:
A regular license allows an item to be used in one project for either personal or commercial use by you or on behalf of a client. The item cannot be offered for resale either on its own or as part of a project. Distribution of source files is not permitted.
An extended license allows an item to be used in unlimited projects for either personal or commercial use. The item cannot be offered for resale “as-is”. It is allowed to distribute/sublicense the source files as part of a larger project.
Customization Services
There are no customization services provided by the company.
Recap
Codester does have a huge range of advantages both for buyers and sellers when it comes to web-developing assets. It is indeed a great place to start for any developers, programmers, and designers.
For sellers, it offers higher commissions, more flexibility, and no penalties for non-exclusivity. The only negative is its size and selection in comparison to Envato. The other negative is the amount of commission if you want to become an affiliate.
Conclusion
This is a comparison of the key players in the template sales market. We highlighted some criteria for evaluating marketplaces in the article beginning: now let’s summarize.
Number of products
Here, the undisputed leaders are classic marketplaces such as Wrapbootstrap or Themeforest.
Product Quality
If we summarize, then the highest quality products come from premium vendors and stores built around one technology. The quality is determined by the fact that these companies do not release products so often, but work on their own and, therefore, guarantee quality. In turn, at classic marketplaces, you can often observe a situation when the product and its support can be really awful.
Product detail page quality
Companies like MDBootstrap and CoreUI are obvious leaders: essentially, they sell one product and describe it with as much detail and as well as possible.
The quality of the search and, in general, how the catalog works
According to this indicator, things are approximately equal to everyone. Here’s why: where there are several dozen products, there are both search and filtration.
How the support is carried out
The leaders in this area are Flatlogic, Creative-Tim, and other premium vendors. These provide support without intermediaries.
Pricing policy
On classic marketplaces, prices are usually lower. Premium vendors have higher prices, but also better quality.
Customization services
The customization service is offered by premium vendors: they know their product well and have highly qualified developers on staff.
Affiliate program availability and conditions
Affiliate programs are better with premium vendors. They have higher prices, so they are ready to share more with their partners. For example, Flatlogic is ready to give 50% revenue from every purchase.
We will be very grateful if you share this article with the world and give your opinion about marketplaces and the template market.
