iThemes with its name sounded has helped more and more people creating their websites withe its qualitied plugins, helping solve headaches of those new bloggers.

Since 2018, iThemes has changed its focus from WordPress themes to plugins, and, as a result, now boasts some of the leading WordPress security, backup and maintenance plugins available today.

It also offers web hosting, and has recently acquired the popular Kadence Theme. This broad range of products makes it a viable all-in-one solution for anyone starting and managing a WordPress website.

Items are available individually, as well as in bundles, so this review covers the different iThemes products to help you to decide which ones, if any, are right for you.

Whether you’re looking for a new theme for your site or a powerful plugin to enhance its features and functionality, by the end of this iThemes review you should have a much better idea of whether or not this well-established company can help you with your project.

Let’s get started…

Short Introduction of iThemes

Founded in 2008 by Cory Miller in Oklahoma City, from then on, iThemes has grown considerably, with employees working in a range of departments and across multiple disciplines.

Over time, with its focus shifting from themes to plugins, iThemes announced it would be retiring its portfolio of themes at the end of 2021. However, iThemes now offers customers Kadence Theme (and Kadence Blocks plugin), which it acquired when it purchased the Kadence WP company.

The addition of a hosting service has made iThemes a potential option for anyone looking for a single company that can provide them with most of what’s needed to build and manage a successful WordPress website. You can get help with creating your website and running your business through the training content that’s available via the on-demand videos and live webinars.

In this iThemes review, I’ll cover Kadence Theme and Blocks plugin, explore the other tools available from iThemes, and check out its hosting service.

iThemes WordPress Themes

With iThemes’ older themes being retired, the newly acquired Kadence Theme is now the only theme it has available.

Thankfully, it’s a highly customizable multipurpose theme that can be used to create almost any type of website with WordPress.

So, while there’s only one WordPress theme available from iThemes, the flexible nature of Kadence Theme means there’s a high chance it’s a good option for your website.

KADENCE THEME

Kadence Theme is a multipurpose option for creating a wide range of custom or unique WordPress websites. Its selection of well-designed templates and almost endless customization possibilities make it a genuinely appealing theme.

While there are countless free themes out there, Kadence stands out as one of the best. Not only is it a lightweight theme that helps your site to load quickly, but it also offers far more design and customization features than you’ll find with most free themes. In fact, the customization capabilities are what truly make Kadence stand out.

Since Kadence is available in both free and pro versions, you would probably expect the free version to be very limited, but that’s not the case at all. The free theme is quite capable and will meet the needs of many users.

What Additional Features Does Kadence Pro Offer?

The free Kadence theme and Kadence Blocks plugin both include so much that it makes you wonder, what additional features do you get if you purchase the pro version?

In short, Kadence Pro builds on the features that are available in the free theme. When you’re looking at the Kadence settings, the pro add-ons that were grayed out with the free theme are now available with Kadence Pro.

You’ll also get additional menu options to create a beautiful mega menu, multi-column dropdowns, dropdowns with custom backgrounds, or include icons in your menu.

If you’re building an e-commerce website, you’ll love the WooCommerce add-on that gives additional options within the customizer for WooCommerce shops.

The pro upgrade also comes with hooked elements that can be added anywhere in your site conditionally. You can show these elements to specific users, show them based on page or post type, and control many other aspects.

In addition to these features (and some others that haven’t been mentioned), you’ll also get one year of support and updates.

BACKUPBUDDY

BackupBuddy has protected half a million WordPress websites since its launch in 2010. Starting at $80, the plugin gives you full control of how backups are taken, managed and restored on your WordPress website.

Because of some of its more advanced features, BackupBuddy has become popular with web designers and developers looking for a solution that makes it easy to clone, migrate and manage multiple versions of a website.

Other highlights are as follows:

• Backup and restoration of entire websites or individual files and components.
• Database rollbacks to restore lost content and settings.
• The ability to schedule automated backups.
• Off-site backup storage for increased resilience.
• Support for popular cloud services for remote storage.
• Greater control over restorations and migrations of backups with ImportBuddy.
• The ability to create a WordPress staging site, and to clone and transfer sites between web hosts.
• Email notifications of successful and unsuccessful backups.
• Many developer features for more advanced backup and migration procedures.
• 1GB of BackupBuddy Stash cloud storage (5GB on top tier Gold plan).

ITHEMES SECURITY PRO

The maintenance of the popular Better WP Security plugin was taken over by iThemes, which then launched the premium iThemes Security Pro plugin. There’s also the rebranded and updated lite version, which is available from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Like all of the best WordPress security plugins, the aim of iThemes Security Pro is to secure and protect your website from random and focused attacks. It will also prompt you to do all you can to harden the security of your site, including using strong passwords and suitable usernames.

Other highlights of iThemes Security Pro:

• Brute force detection to protect against password guessing.
• WordPress site malware scanning.
• File change monitoring and detection.
• Ability to lock out bad users attempting to access your site.
• An away mode to prevent any admin access for set periods of time.
• The ability to hide the login and admin pages and URLs to minimize access.
• Action logging to see what logged-in users are doing.
• Scheduled database backups.
• Email notifications and alerts of potential breaches and issues.

RESTRICT CONTENT PRO

Another plugin that was acquired by iThemes is Restrict Content Pro, a tool for creating membership sites with WordPress. With this plugin running on your site, you get high levels of control over which users can access your content.

A flexible approach to subscriptions means you can offer your visitors multiple options for becoming members. Restrict Content Pro has good membership management functionality, too, along with the ability to import users from other membership plugins.

Other highlights:

• Integration with many payment processors and gateways.
• Drip-release of content on multiple schedules.
• Support for discount codes for running promotions.
• Detailed reports to check the performance of your membership site.
• Automatic welcome, payment receipts and expiration reminder emails.
• Support for multiple email marketing platforms.

SYNC

If you manage more than one WordPress website, then Sync can make keeping them up to date much less time consuming. While there’s no longer a free version of Sync, you can use the 30-day free trial to check out the plugin. Paid plans start at $69 a year for the ability to manage up to five sites, giving you a quick way to update plugins, themes and the WordPress software through a single dashboard.

Other highlights of Sync:

• Daily email notifications of available updates.
• The ability to ignore updates for specific themes and plugins.
• The installation of updates en masse or selectively.
• Bulk installation of themes and plugins on multiple sites.
• The ability to manage comments and users on multiple sites.
• The ability to hide Sync on sites you manage for clients.
• Custom client dashboards to restrict access to WordPress features.
• A mobile app to manage multiple WordPress sites on the go.
• Integration with other iThemes products for improved security and smoother backups.
• Site uptime, downtime and performance monitoring and reporting (pro feature).
• Instant email notifications if something goes wrong (pro feature).

OTHER ITHEMES PACKAGES AND PRODUCTS

As well as purchasing the iThemes products individually, you can also gain access to them via various packages:

• Plugin Suite: $499 a year for unlimited licenses for all iThemes plugins (apart from Kadence Blocks).
• Agency Bundle: $749 a year for unlimited licenses for all iThemes products (including Kadence Theme and Kadence Blocks) with unlimited site licenses.
• WordPress Web Designer’s Toolkit: from $700 a year for a collection of iThemes products to help you to build a WordPress web design business.
• iThemes Training: from $30 a month for access to video courses and the members-only Slack channel

Plugin and theme purchases include access to support and product updates for one year.

To learn more about iThemes related plugins and products, click!