Kadence Theme Review

General Design

Kadence has about 9 pre-build demos and all are clean, modern, and professional.

Kadence has about 9 pre-build demos

The full-width, spacious layout is also the common feature of all the demos.

As for the color, the bright and fresh color palette makes the theme so fresh and vibrant.

Notably, you can freely change the color, typography, and structure of the layout as you want or create your own style if you don't want to use any of the demos.

Responsive Design of Kadence Theme

Kadence theme makes your site display beautifully on all devices.

Responsive Design of Kadence Theme

You can import one of the pre-made demos quickly within a few minutes after installing the required plugins. But if you manage to set up your site by hand, it's a bit complicated. So I think if you're a layman in WordPress, you'd better hire a developer or a web design company to set up and customize your site with this free theme.

The most outstanding feature of Kadence is the high customizability: Kadence theme works perfectly with Gutenberg blocks and Elementor page builder. Especially, because Kadence WP has the famous Kadence Blocks plugin, the free Kadence theme has the Kadence Blocks support: extra advanced blocks, settings for layouts, footer, header, and more.

There are three methods to customize the free Kandence theme so: using Elementor, Gutenberg, or the Customizer.

Customize Kadence with Elementor

Elementor page builder is suggested by Kadence WP so Kadence theme has a lot of pre-made demos for Elementor. You can import these demos or customize yourself with Elementor.

You have all the standard modules from Elementor and they all display properly and beautifully on your website.

Customize Kadence with Gutenberg

Kadence has advanced settings for Gutenberg editor even when you don't install Kadence Blocks. These options are mostly related to layouts and alignments. Even so, the layouts are visualized with symbols to help you easily choose the desired one.

Kadence has advanced settings for Gutenberg editor

When you install Kadence Blocks plugin, there is an extra settings sidebar and more advanced blocks. These blocks are more complicated than the default Gutenberg so if you are a beginner, it may take a few times to try them.

Extra settings sidebar and more advanced blocks when installing Kadence Blocks

Then, I review the synchronization between the Customizer settings and Gutenberg settings. Kadence free theme does a good job at this aspect. For instance, when you set the theme color in the Customizer, you can also see the color in the Gutenberg editor like this and you can even change the color in the editor.

The synchronization between the Customizer settings and Gutenberg settings

Customize Kadence with the Customizer

For those who are familiar with the default Customizer interface, using the Customizer in Kadence may be difficult.

Because many advanced settings also mean complications. For instance, I'm not a designer so it's quite difficult for me to understand and use this color option immediately.

Review the color option

But if you're a professional use, I guess that you will love this Customizer. It's innovative, intelligent, and different from the rest.

For example, it's never easier than using this interface to choose the desired layouts and edit the parameters of your site:

Choose the desired layouts and edit the parameters of your site

Especially, Kadence free theme supports header and footer builder so you can customize them with easily drag-and-drop action.

Review the header and footer builder

(Besides Kadence theme, I've reviewed another theme with the header and footer builder called Customify. But Customify has fewer options than Kadence).

And it's a piece of cake to add a large number of social links to your site:

Add a large number of social links

There are many other things in the Customizer. They will let you edit even the smallest detail of your site without touching any code.

As I mentioned in the Customizer section, Kadence has many extra settings and Gutenberg blocks for everyday use. That's easy to use even with a beginner like me. Notably, all the standard blocks look good on your site.

However, Kadence Gutenberg theme still has a bug with the 3-columns default Gutenberg block pattern. Here it is:

a bug with the 3-columns default Gutenberg block pattern

Kadence theme's speed is quite good. But if you still want your site to run faster, you should do more things to optimize the speed.

Review Kadence theme's speed

Then, after using some tools, I can confirm that Kadence theme does a good job at optimizing for SEO!

The documentation has all the needed instruction while using this free multipurpose theme. It's well-written, brief, and understandable. Moreover, you can use the search box to find the answer with some keywords quickly.

Remember to choose the right ticket for free users and list your related question here. I sent a ticket and the supporter replied to me within one day. However, they haven't resolved my problem yet.

Updated: they have answerd to me after a few days and I could resolve the problem following their guide!

I sent a ticket to the support team of Kadence

Also, in the WordPress support forum, the author will help you solve your problem.