Justin Tadlock
Watch out block patterns. There is an old player in town making the hard sell before you have even rolled out of bed. Envato just dropped a massive library of template kits for Elementor in your front yard.
Not to worry, the company plans to open things up for the block editor in the future. The Elementor page builder just makes the most sense right now. It was the first to market. It is mature and has a backing of 5 million users, many of whom will be accustomed to commercial upsells, and $15 million in recent funding. Financially, it is the smart play. The company can also test the waters of this new category of products before opening it to other page builders and the block editor in a proven market.
Envato, the company behind ThemeForest and other marketplaces for creators, launched over 200 template kits today to its large audience of end-users and site builders. The kits cover a wide range of niches. Everything from book authors to medical practices to restaurants is covered.
“Launching template kits is our latest response to the growing demand for page builders and customers looking for design inspiration that is simple and easy to apply to their website,” said Cameron Gough, General Manager of Envato’s Content team.
While this is not an official partnership between Envato and Elementor, at least not on paper, it further broadens the appeal of the Elementor page builder. It is sure to spur massive growth beyond its current 5 million users. If there is one thing Envato knows how to do and do well, it is selling products. When we questioned whether page builders would be able to compete in the long term with the block editor, the largest third-party theme marketplace is betting at least this one particular page builder can.
The marketplace is completely open. “We’re encouraging new and existing authors in the Envato community to create their own template kits and upload them,” said Gough. “It’s a great way to break into this market, especially at this early point.”
For site designers who have worked with Elementor, now is a great opportunity to submit a kit. You can set your own price — most kits range between $15-$30. The great thing is that designers are not responsible for building a full WordPress theme from scratch. Instead, they can essentially create multiple templates with a page builder, bundle them via the Template Kit – Export plugin, and cash in.
The interesting aspect here is that people with an eye for design and the skillset to build those designs in Elementor can sell their creations without learning to code.
“A template kit is a collection of page and block templates or layouts, each with a similar visual style and typically focused on a particular niche,” said Gough. “See some of the examples in our launch collection like a restaurant, or a gym, or a web/design agency. You could liken it sort of the demo content layer that you can find in some premium themes.”
Currently, end-users must have a theme installed that integrates with the Elementor page builder for these template kits to work. After purchasing and downloading a kit, users can simply upload templates to their sites via the Template Kit – Import plugin.
Kits are merely a starting point. Users will need to fill in their custom content. They also have the power to change the design through Elementor’s built-in tools.
Envato launched the template kits marketplace on its ThemeForest website. The current 200+ kits are broken down into 22 categories, the most popular of which are Business Services, Food and Drink, and Technology Apps.
Sales are already starting to roll in on launch day. There are no clear favorites at the moment with the top sellers hitting only two sales thus far. This should change in the coming days and weeks. The highest-priced kits tend to contain dozens of templates. Some kits, like Spring Watercolor and Floral, contain over 100 in the collection.
“We know many WordPress professionals that want a pre-packaged, fully functional website template may continue to favor our existing collection of WordPress themes,” said Gough. “But we increasingly see customers wanting to develop websites from a page builder foundation rather than a full WordPress theme. For these customers, template kits provide a leg up on design, and it’s important we continue to support those changing needs.”
For the launch, there is at least one free template kit called SaaSy. It is a SaaS and app landing page kit that includes 10 page templates and 26 block templates. It will be available for free until May 31.
“We know that the WordPress world continues to evolve and respond exceptionally well to the changing needs of the wider web design industry, and you only have to look at Gutenberg as one example of how the platform is evolving to meet the increasing demand for easier tools that provide a leg up on website design,” said Gough.
“Couple this with the strength of page builders such as Elementor and others, plus a vibrant and active community of developers, hosting providers, and more, we think there’s never been a better time to provide a new and easier way to bring WordPress websites to life.”
Do you need Elementor Pro to use the kits?
That’s going to be on a case-by-case basis. Some kits, such as the SaaSy one linked in the post, do not require the Elementor Pro upgrade. However, others will. My guess is that kit designers will want to utilize more features and will opt for primarily designing for Pro.
It is also possible kits may require other plugins. You will need to check the requirements for any that you are looking at.
I avoid Envato/Theme Forest like the plague! No matter how great the products are, the website is so overly complex and customer support (ie refunds) takes weeks/months to resolve. Did I say I hate Envato?…
Envato is killing the market once again with their cheap, bulky, multi-purpose, low quality templates with no real customer support. Professionals who are serious about their websites and design don’t buy stuff from envato. Their time is gone, only making money from those monster multi-purpose themes like Avada that have everything and in the same time are not valuable for specific niches or use cases and bundling all their products into envato elements, forcing users to buy their all-in-one low quality solutions.
I think that this is quite the opposite. I was one of the first WordPress.org reviewer and now one for Theme Forest, it will be 5 years soon. Bulky, bloated etc is so thing of the past and multipurpose is extremely simplistic, install on-demand and what you actually need and not the other way around.
Side note, WordPress uses themes, not templates.
I consider this a smart move specially when they start supporting Gutenberg and maybe even other page builders. There are so many designers that need a easy accessible way and place to share and sell stuff and dribble is Just bursting with visual ideas that just didn’t make it into any unified market or directory specially because the monetary incentive wasn’t there to or the barrier of entry was to technical (like in the theme directory). I welcome the fast turnover and plentiful design.
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