Let’s take a look at arguably the most popular WooCommerce theme on the market today, Flatsome. (see: what is WooCommerce?) We’ll highlight the main features of the theme, discuss what types of websites it will work best for, and talk about possible downsides.
In this Flatsome theme review, we’ll cover the following topics:
- Who is Flatsome for?
- Getting started with Flatsome
- Flatsome’s WooCommerce features
- Flatsome’s features for all sites
- The Flatsome UX Builder
- Flatsome Pros & Cons
If you’re looking for more options, check out our list of the best WooCommerce themes of the year.
Who is Flatsome for?
The Flatsome theme is incredibly versatile. With it, you can build just about any type of website—a small business site, a blog, a one page marketing site, you name it. But where Flatsome truly shines is its ecommerce features. It was designed to be one of the premium WooCommerce themes on the market.
- Best for anyone building an ecommerce site with WordPress
- Suitable for all types of WooCommerce shops
- Excellent for agencies & freelancers building many sites (because of its versatility and unlimited layout options)
- Also good for company websites & blogs
Getting Started with Flatsome
The Flatsome theme is only available through ThemeForest, a popular WordPress theme marketplace. As of December 2017, it costs $59 (one-time fee). After purchase, you’ll be able to download a .zip file that contains everything you need to get started.
Flatsome WooCommerce Features
Let’s take a look at Flatsome’s features specifically built for ecommerce sites.
Live Search
Let your users quickly find the products they’re looking for using Flatsome’s live search feature. Just start typing and instantly see results. Check out the animation below.
Product Quick View
Quickly preview any product from the main shop or a category listing. The quick view opens in a lightbox with a sleek animation.
Products/Category Layouts
Choose between 3 different styles to layout your products:
- grid view
- list view
- masonry view
Individual Product Page Layouts
For individual products, you can completely customize how each product is displayed. You are not limited to images on the left, product description on the right, reviews down below, etc. Move things around to better accommodate what you’re selling.
Here’s an example of some of the preset product page layouts you can use:
Catalog Mode
Use the catalog mode option if you only want to display products without selling them.
- Show/Hide prices
- Replace “add to cart” with forms, or other custom code
- Remove the shopping cart functionality from all aspects of the site
Other WooCommerce Features
Here’s a longer list of all the things the Flatsome theme can do for your WooCommerce site:
- Add products to a wishlist
- Quick add to cart buttons
- Customize sale and new notification bubbles
- Set a different products per row for every screen size (desktop → mobile)
- Add color variations and product images will switch to match color
- Built-in support for external (affiliate) products
- Choose between vertical or horizontal image galleries
- Apply a quick zoom on mouseover of the product image
- Multiple tab styles for displaying Description, Additional Info & Reviews
Flatsome Theme: General Features
These are things that will benefit any website, and are not just unique to a WooCommerce site.
Tons of Theme Options in the Customizer
Flatsome makes extensive use of the WordPress Customizer, which means super-simple editing for you, the user. Here’s just one example of some of the ways you can customize your header & navigation. And each of the sections shown below have at least 10 options within them. Ultimate flexibility!
Flatsome Header Builder
Flatsome includes its very own header builder, which is super easy to use, and comes with tons of options.
There are 3 main header areas that you can customize:
- Top Header
- Main Header
- Bottom Header
The top header is often used for important, but not necessarily your primary, navigation items (account links, social media icons, etc.). The main header typically includes your logo, main shop pages & categories, search & cart. The bottom header can be used to showcase your main shop pages, and then you might use the main header to make search more prominent.
Ultimately, you can rearrange things however you want. But Flatsome also includes a handful of preset options that you can apply with one click.
Flatsome Footer Options
You can customize the Flatsome footer in a hundred different ways.
- Dark vs. light options
- Change alignment to left/right/center
- Change background colors, or go transparent
- Replace the entire footer and use the UX Page Builder to design something unique
Footer Widgets
There are two footer widget areas, and each one can accommodate up to 4 widgets. The footer widget areas are stacked on top of each other, and you have a third footer area at the very bottom of the page.
Flatsome Blog Options
You can also choose to display blog posts in many different ways.
- Greyscale images that turn to color on hover
- Overlay titles on an image, or show them below the image
- Apply different animation styles to a post slider
- Show/Hide the “Read More” button
- Display blog posts in a masonry grid
Performance & Speed
The Flatsome theme has been optimized for speed. It loads incredibly fast to provide all users with a quick-and-easy shopping experience.
One-Click Child Theme Creation
During setup, you can choose to have Flatsome create a child theme for you with one click. This makes it easy to create custom CSS styles while ensuring the parent theme stays updated, and none of your changes get overridden.
Demo Content
With a theme as powerful as Flatsome, it can be easy to get overwhelmed. They’ve made it easy to get started by allowing you to import all the content & layouts that are used on their demo site. This is achieved through the setup wizard.
For most beginners and first-time WordPress users, editing existing demo content is far easier than trying to figure out how to create your own.
Updates & Support
Flatsome is the only theme that UX Themes sells, making it the sole focus of the company. This ensures it is constantly updated to support the latest versions of WordPress & WooCommerce. And because they only have one theme to support, it allows them to provide excellent customer service.
In terms of support, it’s also worth noting that they provide extensive documentation, including over 80 help articles and getting started video tutorials. Their support is available 24/7.
The Flatsome UX Builder
The UX Builder is Flatsome’s custom page builder. This means that it only works with the Flatsome theme, and you cannot use it on anything else.
NOTE: I’m normally not a fan of custom page builders being included with a theme. It creates theme lock-in, which makes it harder to switch themes in the future. If you choose Flatsome, you should plan to use the theme for a long time.
That being said, the page builder is really powerful, and in terms of usability, I’d say it’s on par with the leading WordPress page builder plugins.
UX Builder: Features
It would take forever to list ALL of UX Builder’s features, but I’ll mention some of the more prominent features below:
- Front-end Editing: The UX Builder is as close to a front-end editor as you’ll find. As you’re making edits, you’re previewing your live site in real-time.
- Pre-built Layouts: Over 300 pre-defined layouts & sections, available with one click. Get a head start on your design.
- Fully Responsive: Preview your site on desktop, tablet & mobile, while easily changing the layout for each device.
- Sliders & Banners: Create sliders & marketing banners with a simple drag-n-drop solution.
- 40+ Elements: Choose from 30 content elements, 9 shop elements, and 5 layout elements, along with hundreds of presets & options for each element.
- Create smooth parallax transitions on image elements
- One-page navigation options if you choose to go that route
- Create sticky sections that stick to the top of the browser window
SEE ALSO: How to create a sticky header in WordPress
Getting Started with Flatsome’s UX Builder
UX Themes has put together a helpful video tutorial to help get you started.
Flatsome Pros & Cons
Let’s break down some of the top-level pros & cons of the Flatsome theme. We tried to highlight more details in the previous sections, so this quick breakdown is more of a high-level overview. Think of it as the quick takeaways.
Flatsome Pros
What makes Flatsome one of the best choices for a WooCommerce theme?
- Truly optimized for every aspect of a WooCommerce site
- Powerful page builder with unlimited design options
- Tons of pre-built designs you can apply with one click
- More theme options than you’ll probably ever need
- Excellent, thorough documentation (and 24/7 support)
Flatsome Cons
While there are certainly more pros than there are cons for the Flatsome theme, here are a few things to keep in mind.
- If you decide to switch themes later, it can be difficult (because of how integrated their UX Builder is)
- You have to pay a little extra to extend support beyond 6 months
- There is more of a learning curve than some other WooCommerce themes (because of how powerful it is)
Conclusion
If you’ve made it this far, I shouldn’t have to reiterate that the Flatsome theme is easily one of the best WooCommerce themes of all time. While I have yet to find a WordPress theme that is perfect, Flatsome comes pretty darn close.