The Ella Shopify Theme is no longer a stranger to merchants who often seek a Shopify theme on the Themeforest site. It's one of the TOP SELLERS on the marketplace at the moment.
You might’ve heard some people say that: “Why don't you use free themes on the Shopify Theme Store?”. Okay, they are free but short of customization features, and for the Shopify Premium themes on the store, the prices are from $140-$450, so they might be costly for many merchants.
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That's why people often get their themes on the theme marketplaces like Themeforest or MOJO. They are more affordable and still feature-rich. And Ella theme is an outstanding example to be mentioned.
Credit: Themeforest
In today's article, we're going to give you a genuine review of the Ella Shopify Theme to help you find out if it's a theme that is worth investing in for your online shop.
PageFly Verdict / Our opinion
Ella's a feature-rich theme with tons of customization options at a reasonable price. You can create various layouts for different store types. However, be aware of some potential drawbacks: user reviews mention occasional bugs and a slightly complex settings interface. Customer support could also be improved.
Overall, Ella's a strong choice for experienced users who prioritize customization and value. If you're a beginner or crave top-notch support, you might consider exploring other options.
A general look at Ella Shopify Theme
Ella is designed by the HaloThemes team who is the Power Elite Author in the Envato marketplace. They specialize in BigCommerce Theme & Add-ons, Shopify Themes & Modules, Magento Themes & Extensions, etc. They also release 2 new themes every month.
The Ella theme is the most popular Shopify theme on Themeforest, as mentioned before. It has over 38,000 sales (and counting) and is in the TOP 3 weekly best-selling eCommerce theme in the marketplace.
Credit: Themeforest
Ella theme is compatible with many browsers such as Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, and so on, and is adaptable with the bootstrap 4.x framework.
For the new updates, latest versions, changelog, and other documentation related to the Ella theme,
Related reading:
- Blum Shopify Theme Review
- Top 30 Free & Paid Themes For Your Shopify Store: Review and Analysis
- Pipeline Theme Breakdown, Review and Analysis
- Shopify Warehouse Theme Breakdown, Review and Tutorial
Who would use the Ella theme?
Yes, we understand the theme selection depends on personal style, brand and many other factors, but the Ella theme is more ideal for:
- Those who want a theme with more customization features than a normal Free theme but are still on a budget. It helps you save more money because, with more features, you don't have to add too many Shopify apps to your store.
- Merchants who seek diversity in which a theme can offer.
- Those who need a multi-feature theme to support their demands.
Let’s see the price
Ella comes at the price of $89. It's not the highest or lowest amount you can see on the Themeforest. As we know, it’s just slightly higher than the average price.
So, let's look at the main layouts/functions the theme can offer you with this price:
- 17+ Homepage Layout
- 16+ Child themes (or theme styles) for different businesses (included in the package)
- 07+ Layouts for Category pages
- 10+ Layout for Product pages
- 05 Collection page layouts
- 06 Blog page layouts and support other custom pages: About Us, Lookbook, FAQs, Contact Us, etc.
and so on.
Now, you may want to ask: “If the Ella theme can provide such a great number of features and benefits like many Shopify Premium themes, how come its price is lower?”
To answer this, we need to look at some factors:
The first thing is the support service. With the regular license ($89), you can only have 6 months of support (not to mention that it's email support, not chat). If merchants want to extend the period to 12 months, they have to pay an extra fee of $24.
So, when you calculate a little bit, the price can go up to more than $100 if you want more assistance.
With a theme, the support service for it is important because it goes with long-term development: theme updates, bug fixing, advanced modification, etc. That's why the prices of Premium themes on the Shopify Theme store are higher because they give you full-time support with no time limit.
Next is competition. The Ella theme is sold on a freelance marketplace where tons of theme developers and designers are selling the same product, so the price can't be a lot higher than the average price on the marketplace.
And lastly, it's credibility. To sell a Premium theme on Shopify Theme Store, you must be a Theme partner and meet specific requirements from Shopify to be officially accepted. An official Shopify theme should have a higher price because it was scrutinized by Shopify itself, and it also goes with more benefits in the long run (like support).
Okay, what about features? Does Ella have any highlight features that can compare to the Shopify Premium themes? Let's take a look.
Ella Shopify Theme's Main Features
Multiple Layout Options
There are a variety of layout options that the Ella theme can offer you. As mentioned before, merchants will benefit from the diversity of this theme's features.
In the Theme settings, you will find the Multiple Layout section where you can choose different styles for Header and Footer, List collections, Category page, Product Page, Blog Page, and even Password Page. We can see that the Ellla theme developer focuses on the customization experience of users, so they give you many options to suit your taste.
Megamenu and AJAX Navigation
It's good that Ella theme can support the Megamenu feature because merchants don't have to find a Shopify app for Megamenu anymore, which reduces the number of Shopify apps a merchant installs into their store to avoid slow loading speed of the site, and save their money.
So, if you have a large menu, Ella can be a savior. 
Credit: Ella theme demo
About Ajax navigation, we can see that the theme always tries to facilitate users to display a link to another page on a certain page without refreshing the page. Its “Slideshow with Lookbook" feature is one of the examples.
Advanced Cart Optimization Features
Having a cool cart feature is essential for improving the conversion rate. Why? Because if your cart interrupts visitors when browsing your shop, they might abandon it quickly. Also, a flexible cart can help enhance the user experience, so if people find it convenient to add products to their carts and adjust them freely, they wouldn't mind buying.
The Ella theme gives merchants many options to customize their carts feature such as:
- Popup AJAX cart with Upsell option. This helps customers know what is in their carts immediately without going to a cart page. And with the Upsell option, merchants can utilize it instead of installing a Cross-sell or Upsell app if they want to save more money.
- Drop-down cart. When people click on the bag icon or their wish lists, they can see a small drop-down cart on the current page.
- Direct cart editing for buyers. As mentioned earlier, this function helps buyers easily make changes to their carts, which creates a comfortable buying experience.
Mobile Responsiveness Options
With mobile responsiveness, the Ella theme designers do a pretty good job with many setting options. The theme allows users to add images separately on desktop and mobile versions for some custom content sections.
You can choose a different layout for the mobile header. Also, if you pay attention to the settings of the Ella theme, you will see a mobile margin adjustment option in many sections.
Various Content Sections for Homepage
We don't want to repeat again and again, but Ella theme indeed offers merchants a stockpile of customization sections, especially for the homepage. There are many custom block sections to display image banners with CTAs, Brand blocks, About us section, Instagram gallery and so on.
Merchants can add featured collections or products right on the homepage and can enable quick view & quick shop features to help visitors buy the products quickly.
Product Countdown
This is a feature for your products when you want to set up to support your flash sales event. It's great to have this feature in the theme settings because you don't have to find a Shopify countdown app to help you with that.
Size Chart Options
With Ella theme, merchants can insert their size charts and select them to be displayed on all product pages or just specific products. Again, it's a cool feature because you don't need to install a Shopify size chart app anymore.
Product Custom Tab
If you want to organize product descriptions, and you want to share a great amount of useful information with your buyers, using the product custom tab can be an option. The Ella theme can help you create tab elements for product descriptions to sort out your content on the product page such as “product info", “shipping note", “customer review”, etc.
Collection Sidebar Filtering
It has powerful sidebar filtering for collection pages. Merchants can set up their sidebar filtering by tags (the tags created when adding their products), so when people browse the collection page, they can find what they want by colors, sizes, brands, etc.
Also, you can add featured products, custom images and custom blocks to promote your brand in the sidebar.
Credit: Ella theme demo
Does Ella theme affect a store’s loading speed?
If Ella has a lot of features and customization options like this, does it affect the loading speed of your site?
In the Item Details, the theme developer shows that Ella has a fully loaded time of 3.3 seconds and gets a 90% (A) page speed score by GTMetrix.
Credit: Ella theme
In our opinion, the theme feature is a factor that can affect the loading speed of a site, but it's not the only one. Your site can be slowed down because of Shopify apps, Image sizes, the way you edit complex theme code, and many other factors, so with this score, Ella theme is friendly with your site's speed.
What do people say about the Ella theme?
The Item Rating for Ella theme on the Themeforest site is 4.82 based on around 600 reviews. 90% of them are 5-star reviews and they are mostly about Ella's feature availability, design quality, and customizability.
Credit: Ella theme
However, there’re some complaints about late support, bugs, and the settings should be more clear and organized.
People also discuss Ella theme in a community like Reddit. Yes, some people love the theme because it offers tons of customization features at an affordable price. However, some people are still cautious to use a Shopify theme that is outside of the Shopify Theme Store.
Credit: Reddit
If you want to know more about real store review, check out Ella Theme Review by HeyCarson.
Ella Shopify Theme Pros and Cons
Okay, so what do we think about the Ella theme? Let's take a look at its pros and cons here:
Pros
- The theme provides multiple options, child themes, and multiple features that can cover large customizability demands.
- It's mobile responsive. Ella has many setting options for the mobile version and the layout design is responsive as well.
- The price is affordable, and because it's feature-rich, merchants can save more money since they don't have to add so many Shopify apps to their stores.
- They have detailed and step-by-step support documentation and image support files when you download the theme package.
- Ella theme does support edit custom pages like About Us, FAQ, Landing pages, etc. However, for more advanced modification, you need to find a 3rd-party page builder app like PageFly, for example, to flexibly edit and design your pages.
Cons
- The backend interface (settings) is confusing in some parts. The way they name some sections might confuse people. For example, in the collection grid sections, they can name them “Collection-1”, “Collection-2”, etc. instead of using random words so that people can understand this is where they will add their collections on the page.
- The settings are overwhelmed with duplicate sections. When there're options with the same function, you will see Ella theme will list them all in the settings, which makes the editor a bit lengthy and less clean. They can just show 1 or 2 examples of the feature, create a dropdown, or “+ add section" option to make the settings lighter.
- The theme still has many minor bug issues
- They don’t have support through chat, and some people did complain about late responses through email.
- The support period is short (just 6-12 months).
3 Shopify Store Examples Using Ella Theme
#1 - Akibento Store
#2 - Nine Space
#3 - King Motorcycle Fairings
Read more: Shopify has just released Dawn Theme, received the most mentioned in the Shopify community, not only meets the latest web and UX standards, but also delivers best-in-class buyer experience. Check out this Shopify Dawn Theme Review here to find out the answers.
Conclusion
The Ella Shopify theme stays true to the price. Although there're some minor bug issues, settings interface, and support service that need to be improved, we still recommend it to merchants who are finding a feature-rich theme at an affordable choice. The theme offers you more benefits than its drawbacks, so why don't you try it? After all, the decision is all yours.
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