As the founders of a very successful company, Carsonified, the whole WooThemes crew have loads of respect for both Ryan & Gill, which means that it was really great meeting up with them. They use our Fresh News theme over at ThinkVitamin and according to Ryan, they’ve been really happy with the theme thus far.

So here’s a little “Hi!” and endorsement from Ryan…

Ryan Carson says Hi! to WooThemes from Adii Rockstar on Vimeo.

I think that everyone would agree that a custom WordPress-built site will cost you lots more than any of our individual themes or subscriptions, right? The reason in this is purely in the time that a designer / developer needs to spend servicing one client, whilst we can spend that same time but then give multiple clients access to the same development. That’s just the way the two different business models work and both will bring their own pros & cons to the table.

Now, I’m not suggesting that custom design / development beats getting a template (since I also own a thriving custom design / development agency), but a template – when used correctly – can offer you great value-for-money; especially in times like these… When I browse around our showcase of WooThemes modifications, I see more and more great examples of how our themes were used as a framework and not an out-of-box solution. Looking at examples like Brad Ruggles, Anne Jackson, GoMediaZine & Resume Bear – it is hard not to see the value in customizing one of our themes. So why doesn’t everyone do it?

Another great example (to prove my point) is the recently redesigned ThinkVitamin website from the Carsonified crew. Even though I’d have loved for them to customize the theme more, it’s still great to see such a respect company using one of our themes; instead of having to develop one from scratch. So why would Carsonified (an established and hugely succesful company) use a WooTheme, when they could’ve done this on their own? Here’s why I think they did (and why others are doing this too):

• At $70 a pop, our Single License themes are a steal and a fraction of the cost of a custom WP theme;
• Our themes already have a bunch of non-standard WP functions built-in;
• Maybe they didn’t feel as comfortable with WordPress as they do with other platforms;
• Their design + CSS skills are top-notch, which is all they’d need to deploy to customize one of our themes.
• They wanted to launch the redesign ASAP and didn’t have the time to develop a custom theme; and
• They knew that we’d provide them with fast and efficient support on any queries they might’ve had whilst installing / tweaking the theme.

I know that for designers / developers using a template as a basis of their projects seems like “cheating”, but even Magnus is using one of our themes (modified though) on his own blog. So why when our themes offer you a fast, efficient and value-for-money solution, would you decide to go custom? For me the bottomline is a “horses for courses” approach in terms of going the custom route only when you need to; if you can however service all your needs with a modified WooTheme, why look elsewhere huh?