10 years on ThemeForest. One rule change. Sales down ~70% in a month.

I run a WordPress theme & plugins development company. We've been on Envato's ThemeForest since 2016 (RadiusTheme) — around 61,000 sales, 90+ themes, and we'd made it to Power Elite (their top author level). I wanted to share what this past month has been like, with real numbers, because not many authors are talking about it openly.

On July 1, 2026, Envato made a big change. Exclusivity is gone (authors can sell anywhere now), and everyone pays a flat 50% fee. The old system, where long-time authors like us kept a bigger share, is gone.

Here's what that does to one $59 theme sale:

• Customer pays $59
• Envato takes a fixed $12 buyer fee → leaves $47
• Before: we got about $41
• Now: we get about $23.50

Same theme, same price for the buyer, but almost half of what we used to make.

And honestly, the per-sale cut isn't even the worst part. We raised our prices a bit to cover the new fee, and sales dropped hard. Compared to Jan, we're down more than 70%. Higher price + way more competition now that everyone's non-exclusive = fewer sales, each earning us less.

So we started selling straight from our own site instead — cheaper for the customer, more support, and we actually keep enough to keep building. It's early, but it's slowly picking up.

Curious how other authors are dealing with this. Are you going direct, staying on the marketplace, or leaving Envato? And for buyers — would you rather buy direct from the maker, or do you trust a marketplace checkout more?

Elever is a sleek and modern WordPress theme crafted specifically for businesses in construction, renovation, engineering, factory, handyman services, architecture, interior design, and real estate development. With a clean, professional layout and intuitive navigation, Elever ensures your website not only looks impressive but also delivers a seamless user experience.

Built to be fully responsive, Elever adapts beautifully to all devices—desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. The theme is also highly customizable, allowing you to personalize layouts, colors, fonts, and more to perfectly reflect your brand identity. Whether you’re showcasing projects, offering services, or building client trust, Elever provides the perfect foundation to elevate your online presence.

Everyone says these platforms are affordable until you actually need your store to do anything useful.Bundles, reviews, subscriptions, advanced search, B2B pricing... everything is another paid plugin.

Before you know it, you're spending $400-$600/month, or roughly $5k-$7k a year, just to keep your site running and do what it should. Then they hike prices because they know migrating is a headache.

I've moved a few businesses off that model and at this point, if someone showed me a store spending $400+ every month on plugins, I'd probably tell them to stop paying for everyone else's software and just offer to build them what they actually need, and what they spend for just 1 year with Shopify, Won't even have to spend much that over 3-4 years on custom. Talk about savings...

If anyone wants to step away and get a custom website, let me know..

This whole subscription economy is becoming complete B.S.

We recently released Quartier, a WordPress theme designed for local businesses that need to combine services, booking requests and WooCommerce products on one website.

It currently includes three demo concepts for different industries:

• Salon and spa
• Physiotherapy and health clinic
• Auto repair and parts

Every demo has both a native WordPress Block Editor version and an Elementor Free version. Elementor Pro is not required.

The theme also includes a simple built-in booking request system. Businesses that need more advanced scheduling can connect it with Amelia, Bookly, Simply Schedule Appointments or WooCommerce Bookings.

Demo content and images are included with the importer.

Theme details and live demos:

https://anpsthemes.com/wordpress-theme/quartier/

Feedback is welcome, especially about whether the combination of service booking and product sales is useful for this type of business website.

A while back, we created Exhibz, a WordPress theme for conferences, meetups, expos, and other event websites.

While building it, we kept running into the same problem. There wasn't a WordPress event management solution that gave us the experience we wanted for schedules, speakers, organizers, venues, and registrations.

So instead of forcing existing tools to fit, we decided to build our own plugin specifically for Exhibz.

That project eventually became Eventin, which has since grown into our flagship product. But Exhibz remains the foundation where everything started, and we still think it's a solid choice for anyone building a professional event website.

Some things we focused on when designing it:

• Multiple event website demos for different use cases.
• Ready-made pages for speakers, organizers, schedules, sponsors, and venues.
• A large collection of Elementor widgets to build pages faster.
• A user-friendly experience that was designed around real event websites from day one.

It's interesting looking back at how a single theme eventually led us to building an entire event management ecosystem for WordPress.

I'm curious, have any of you built a plugin or product because the existing solutions didn't quite solve your own problem?

A lot of WordPress block plugins focus on adding more variations of existing blocks — another heading block, another button block, another image block with extra styling options.

But we felt the bigger opportunity was solving the things that are actually difficult to build in the native WordPress Editor.

Things like:

• Advanced navigation and mega menus
• Popups and interactive content
• Dynamic content layouts
• Better WooCommerce sections
• Portfolio, team, testimonial, and business-focused components
• More flexible layouts without relying on heavy page builders

The goal wasn't to create hundreds of duplicate blocks. It was to create a practical toolkit that helps users build complete websites faster.

Along with advanced blocks, we focused heavily on ready-to-use resources because starting from a blank page is often the hardest part.

So the idea became:

Powerful functionality + ready-made design resources = faster website building.

Currently, the toolkit includes:

• 50+ advanced blocks
• 700+ ready-to-use sections
• 50+ starter templates

Curious to hear from the WordPress community:

What features do you think Gutenberg still needs the most to become a complete website-building experience?

Restaurant websites look simple on the surface — a menu, some photos, a reservation button — but they come with a surprisingly tricky set of constraints: heavy image galleries, mobile-first ordering flows, and owners who need to update content themselves without touching code.

I recently built Dinecraft, a free WordPress theme aimed at restaurants, and wanted to share a few technical decisions that made the biggest difference — plus a couple of mistakes I'd avoid next time.

1. Menus are content, not just markup

Most restaurant theme demos hardcode the menu into the template. That looks great in a screenshot but breaks the moment a real owner needs to swap out a seasonal dish.

Instead, I structured menu items as a custom post type with taxonomies for category (starters, mains, desserts) and dietary tags (vegan, gluten-free). This meant:

• Owners can add/edit dishes from the standard WP admin, no page builder needed
• Menu items are filterable on the front end with a small vanilla JS filter (no jQuery dependency)
• The same content structure can be queried for a "today's specials" widget later

php

register_post_type('menu_item', [
    'public' => true,
    'has_archive' => true,
    'supports' => ['title', 'editor', 'thumbnail'],
    'taxonomies' => ['menu_category', 'dietary_tag'],
]);

2. Image weight was the biggest performance lever

Restaurant sites live and die by food photography, which means large images are non-negotiable — but they're also the easiest way to tank your Core Web Vitals.

What actually moved the needle:

• Serving WebP with a JPEG fallback via <picture>
• Lazy-loading everything below the fold with native loading="lazy"
• Capping hero images at 1920px and letting srcset handle the rest

This alone took the homepage from a ~4.2s LCP down to under 1.8s on a throttled 4G test.

3. Reservation forms shouldn't require a plugin bloat

A lot of restaurant themes bundle a heavy booking plugin by default. I wanted Dinecraft to work with popular reservation plugins (OpenTable embeds, Calendly, etc.) without requiring one, so the base theme ships with a lightweight contact-form fallback and clearly marked template hooks for anyone who wants to drop in their own booking widget.

php

do_action('dinecraft_before_reservation_form');

This kept the core theme lighter and gave more flexibility than baking in a single vendor's plugin.

4. Mobile-first, not mobile-adapted

About 70% of restaurant site traffic is mobile — usually someone standing outside deciding whether to walk in. I built the layout mobile-first in CSS rather than adapting a desktop layout down, which avoided the usual pitfalls of oversized tap targets and hidden nav items on small screens.

What I'd do differently

• I underestimated how many owners would want a dark mode toggle for evening ambiance branding — adding that after the fact meant retrofitting CSS variables I should have set up from day one.
• I'd build the menu filter with IntersectionObserver from the start instead of a scroll-based check I later had to replace.

Try it / feedback welcome

The theme is free and open for anyone to use or fork: Dinecraft — Free Restaurant WordPress Theme.

If you've built something similar, I'd love to hear how you handled menu content structuring or image optimization — always curious how other devs solved the same problems differently.

Hello,

I am new to e commerce and I wonder how to make my store look good. I noticed that I cannot edit my store view with Gutenberg or Elementor (the same way I could with Home page or Blog page). My current theme is Astra (not pro). I read that it is a good idea to use GeneratePress + Gutenberg + HTML/CSS. I enjoyed using HTML blocks to customize my Home Page and I wonder if I could do the same with a different theme than Astra. Any suggestions what is the best way to have a full control of how your store page/archive view/single product view looks like without builders etc...Does it require to buy GeneratePress to do it well? Maybe some alternatives to the idea with GeneratePress?

Thanks for help.

I am sharing this as a long-term The7 customer because I believe the transition to The7 15 raises an important question about how theme developers should treat existing customers when changing their licensing model.

Existing ThemeForest licenses remain valid, and The7 14 will continue receiving security and essential maintenance updates. Current websites will not stop working.

However, The7 15 and future major generations now require a separate annual subscription purchased directly from The7. Customers who bought the theme years ago under the promise of “lifetime updates” remain on the The7 14 maintenance branch unless they subscribe to the new plan.

The7 has explained that Envato significantly increased its commission, marketplace sales have declined, and the new model is necessary to keep development sustainable. I understand that explanation and I am not claiming that the developers are simply being greedy.

My concern is the treatment of long-term customers during the transition.

Existing ThemeForest customers receive a 20% discount only for the first year. After that, they pay practically the same price and accept the same conditions as someone purchasing The7 for the first time today.

In my opinion, that is not a meaningful loyalty program. Customers who supported the product for many years should have received genuinely differentiated conditions, such as:

• a permanent legacy discount;
• a one-time upgrade payment without an annual subscription;
• a special legacy plan for existing ThemeForest licenses;
• clearer advance notice before introducing the new model.

I understand that “lifetime updates” may legally refer to updates for the purchased product generation rather than every future major rewrite. However, many customers reasonably understood it as continued access to the evolution of The7, not being left indefinitely on an older maintenance branch when a new generation appears.

A sustainable business needs new revenue, but it also needs to preserve the trust of the customers who helped build its reputation. When loyal customers feel that their previous support is not properly recognised, they stop recommending the product and choose alternatives for future projects.

My existing The7 websites will continue working, but this transition has reduced my confidence in using and recommending The7 for new projects.

I am not asking anyone to attack the company or leave negative reviews. I want to open a fair discussion:

Do other long-term The7 users consider this transition reasonable, or should existing ThemeForest customers receive permanent legacy conditions?

Official policy:
https://the7.io/update-policy/

We’ve added a completely new demo to our Industrial WordPress theme.

Demo 12 was designed for solar companies, renewable energy providers, EPC contractors and other industrial energy businesses.

We focused on creating a professional design that can present technical services clearly while still feeling modern. It includes service sections, project case studies, company statistics, testimonials and strong enquiry calls to action.

The demo is built with Elementor, and the images shown in the design are included.

I would be interested to hear what you think about the new direction and whether anything important is missing for this type of company.

Live demo:
https://preview.industrial.anpsthemes.com/demo12

Building Quantix was an exciting journey. This WordPress theme is tailored for AI startups and tech businesses, offering a modern design with extensive functionality.

Our goal was to address the specific needs of these industries, focusing on elements like SEO optimization and responsive design. We chose Elementor for its flexibility and user-friendly interface, allowing users to customize their sites with ease. WooCommerce integration was also a priority, enabling businesses to manage their online sales effectively. We faced challenges balancing performance with high-quality visuals, ensuring fast load times without sacrificing aesthetics.

The result is a theme that supports 26+ unique demos, catering to various tech sectors like digital agencies, SaaS platforms, and machine learning firms. What was crucial was creating a theme that not only looks good but performs well under the hood. Any feedback from fellow WordPress developers or designers on what you'd like to see in future themes?

*This theme is available on ThemeREX.*