Just a vehicle to get you to pay more

Hello @eckstein,

Free WordPress products are financed through premium WP products, and this goes both for themes and plugins, which ensures the support for the usage of free products and further maintenance and development. Unless, of course, the product is financed through a charity or sponsorship, which is not the case with OceanWP.

You don’t have to use any of our free (Ocean Extra) or premium products, and you can dismiss those notices.

“It’s just some grey, vanilla CSS with default WP theme options.”
This is the default theme styling, which you can completely customize further from the Customizer. And we have a ton of customization options available.

Further more, you can unlock additional features by adding the free Ocean Extra plugin, like single page / post control, local Google fonts, Adobe Fonts, WP widgets, and more.

“I have no idea how this theme has so many good reviews.”
If you check the reviews, you’ll see these were given by users who have actually worked with OceanWP and know (first-hand experience) they can build a fully-functional website with lots of premium-like features, even with the free version.

It really takes more than simply installing a theme or plugin to get yourself familiar with the capabilities of any product, which is something you can try in the future.

If you need guidance on how to actually build a website with OceanWP, we have a Knowledge Base + video tutorials. In the end, this forum is also available to you if you get stuck and our tech support will do their best to guide you.

Best of luck

PS, a few things I forgot to reflect on:
– “Just a vehicle to get you to pay more” – it’s 100% free. You pay nothing, so you can’t pay more.
– OceanWP features are all 100% free in the free version, not limited by usage or time so you won’t get a half-baked website only to realize that half-way through. What is available is available 100% for free.
– We don’t have any premium features that upgrade existing ones available in the free versions. All our premium products are about 100% new features entirely.
– We recommend only a few free products which are linked to the products in the WP repo, and only products that we use in our website templates. We don’t use tracking nor affiliate links, not in the theme, not in plugins, not even in the premium products therefore everything involving OceanWP free products is financed through our premium products / services (but that’s not specific to OceanWP alone).

• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by Marko OceanWP.

Hi @eckstein,

As a user for over 6 years and 120+ websites and shops running on this free theme + free extra plugin, I highly recommend you give it a second try, and learn how to create beautiful websites with this free theme.

It will require you to get the ins and outs of this theme, but you would not be the first one to become enthusiastic, once you get the hang of it.

Have a great day!
Annie