There are quite a lot of free Shopify themes out there. Since you already have to pay a Shopify subscription to keep your store running, it makes sense why you wouldn’t want to invest a lot in a theme.
While paid Shopify themes offer a lot of useful features that make your business easier to run long-term, free themes are great for ecommerce beginners. And since you can upgrade anytime, there are no downsides in trying out a free option first.
Some free Shopify themes might even be ranked amongst the best Shopify themes, and that’s where this article comes in use. We rank and review 12 best free Shopify themes in hopes to help you choose the one most suitable for you.
Top 12 free Shopify themes:
- Dawn – best free Shopify theme
- Origin – free Shopify theme for one-product stores
- Publisher – free Shopify theme for independent studios
- Ride – sports-centric Shopify theme design
- Taste – free Shopify theme for food and drinks store
- Craft – Shopify theme with neat and timeless design
- Studio – free Shopify theme for artists
- Sense – free Shopify theme for beauty products
- Crave – bold Shopify theme for food products
- Refresh – Shopify theme for men’s body care products
- Voonex – free Shopify theme for events & conferences
- Constance – free Shopify theme for skin care products
Make your online store fast and optimized for search engines.
Try TinyIMG today with 50 free image optimizations
What makes a good free Shopify theme?
Since the price is out of the question, what should you look for in a free Shopify theme? Here’s our criteria:
- Responsive design. The number of people that shop on their phones keeps increasing every year – and you don’t want to be left behind. Make sure to always check how the theme looks on a phone screen so your store visitors don’t leave the site out of frustration.
- Conversion optimization features. Your goal with business is to sell – so look for themes that offer features like cross-selling and quick buy. A good theme will also allow you to display recommended products, and include smart filtering and search features. Those are only a couple of examples to look out for.
- SEO features. For good search engine optimization on your Shopify store, you should be able to write meta tags, alt texts, and edit URLs. Granted, a lot of basic SEO features are available in most Shopify themes – including robots.txt and sitemaps. All you have to do is use the provided features correctly.
- Your business industry. Shopify themes that are better for big e-commerce stores might not suit your one-product business. Pay attention to the structure, elements, design, and features that the theme offers.
- User reviews. Always read user reviews and pay attention to the lower ratings to see what issues people are having and whether the creators addressed them.
Free Shopify themes: detailed overview
1. Dawn
Theme styles:
1
Great for:
Fashion industry
Top Features:
Cross-selling, Recommended products, Product reviews
Try theme:
Dawn is the free Shopify theme that you start out with when you create your Shopify account. And it’s certainly a great one. Dawn offers all the core features you need to successfully launch and manage your store. On top of it all, this theme is chic, stylish, and media-forward. Minimalist design removes all the clutter, so it’s easy to navigate.
This theme helps with increasing conversions by offering features like cross-selling and product recommendations. Buyers can also leave product reviews which increases the authority and transparency of your business.
Theme highlights:
Media-forward product pages
Advanced customization options
Minimal and stylish
2. Origin
Theme styles:
1
Great for:
One-product stores
Top Features:
Cross-selling, Recommended products, Quick buy
Try theme:
Origin is a free Shopify theme that’s designed for one-product stores. The design gives plenty of space to tell the brand story and talk about the product in a creative way. The original theme design is in a neutral color palette but you can tinker with it as much as you want because Origin offers flexible and advanced theme customization settings.
A great feature this theme offers is cross-selling, a smart way of recommending products while helping you increase revenue. You can also make use of the quick buy tool, add product videos to better show off items, and include a stock counter to incentivize visitors to buy the product while it’s still in stock.
Theme highlights:
Great for brand storytelling
Advanced customization options
Quick setup
3. Publisher
Theme styles:
1
Great for:
Independent studios, publishers
Top Features:
Cross-selling, Recommended products, Promo banners
Try theme:
Publisher sways away from the usual Shopify theme design and offers a more unique look for your website. It’s a great theme for selling artwork, merchandise, books, and accessories. This free theme focuses on visual storytelling, bold design, and minimal navigation. The starting preset can inspire you to customize the theme to your liking as it also offers flexible customization options.
The starting preset can inspire you to customize the theme to your liking as it also offers flexible customization options. Apart from that, you can utilize the cross-selling feature to help maximize conversions. Publisher also offers promo banners for promoting sales and new products, as well as including a stock counter to always show how many items are still in stock.
Theme highlights:
Moody, progressive design
Minimalist navigation
Advanced customization options
4. Ride
Theme styles:
1
Great for:
Sports
Top Features:
Cross-selling, Quick buy, Promo banners
Try theme:
Ride is a dark and bold Shopify theme that’s perfectly fit for selling sports equipment. This theme also offers unique page templates and asymmetrical layouts that allow you to create your own unique brand story. The theme is not cluttered but it gives enough space for editorial content and visual storytelling. And if you want to change things up, Ride has you covered with advanced customization options.
This theme offers several conversion-focused features, including cross-selling, press coverage, product reviews, promo banners, and recommended products. By utilizing available features, you can increase conversions and revenue.
Theme highlights:
Bold, dark design with accent colors
Advanced customization options
Innovative and flexible layout
5. Taste
Theme styles:
1
Great for:
Food and drinks
Top Features:
Cross-selling, Quick buy, Product reviews
Try theme:
Taste is one of the best Shopify themes for food and drink stores. It’s stylish, bold, and clean, with clear separate sections and no clutter. The product pages support larger product images, specialty product highlights, and FAQs, giving the potential buyer as much information on the product as possible. And if you wish to change up the sections and elements in this theme, you can do just that with flexible design and customization settings.
If you wish to change up the sections and elements in this theme, you can do just that with flexible design and customization settings. And when it comes to increasing conversions, you can do so by using cross-selling, quick buy, promotional banner, and other great features.
Theme highlights:
Spacious and clean design
Advanced customization options
Thorough product pages
6. Craft
Theme styles:
1
Great for:
Home goods, crafted goods
Top Features:
Cross-selling, promo banners, quick buy
Try theme:
Craft is a refined and minimal Shopify theme that celebrates authentic design. This theme supports brand storytelling with dedicated space for rich and compelling narratives. Everything from the navigation bar to product pages is tidy and simple, making your product the center piece.
To help you sell, Craft offers features like cross-selling, which recommends people items that go great with the one they’re eyeing. And that’s not it – you can also display user reviews to increase business trust, as well as create and display promotional banners for upcoming products and discounts.
Theme highlights:
Timeless, minimal design
Advanced customization options
Elevated storytelling
7. Studio
Theme styles:
1
Great for:
Artists, collections
Top Features:
Cross-selling, Product reviews, Recommended products
Try theme:
Studio is a great free theme and has several attributes that could help you to achieve your business goals. This theme combines modern typography, visual storytelling and minimalism to create an artistic look for your website.
As one of the great themes for artists, Studio supports collections-based navigation, creator filters, featured collections for galleries and new arrivals, as well as artist profiles. If you wish to tailor the theme to your brand, Studio has you covered, as it offers flexible customization options.
In order to help you achieve revenue goals, Studio allows you to utilize their cross-selling feature and display recommended products. If you want to promote items on sale or invite people to view new products, you can display promo banners across your store.
Theme highlights:
Advanced customization options
Collections-based navigation
Stylish typography and colorful accents
8. Sense
Theme styles:
1
Great for:
Beauty products
Top Features:
Cross-selling, Testimonials, Recommended products
Try theme:
Sense is a bright and fresh Shopify theme for beauty and skin-care products. The theme supports product videos, testimonials, and comprehensive product descriptions to build trust with the audience. If at any point you want to change elements, sections, navigation or anything else, you can easily do that because Sense offers advanced customization options that will help you achieve desired brand vision.
In terms of helping your business increase revenue, Sense offers a cross-selling feature, as well as allows you to display product reviews, an FAQ page, and promo banners for new items and discounts.
Theme highlights:
Fresh and bright design
Enhanced product understanding
Advanced customization options
9. Crave
Theme styles:
1
Great for:
Food products, bold brands
Top Features:
Cross-selling, Quick buy, Promo banners
Try theme:
Crave is a vibrant Shopify theme perfectly fit for those that want to stand out among the rest. Vibrant, bold, and fun colors instantly bring personality into your brand. However, if you want to go for something a little bit different with your design, Crave allows you to do that with their advanced customization options.
There are some notable features available that can help you increase sales. Among them is cross-selling – a proven marketing tactic that incentivizes buyers to buy more by recommending related products. There’s also a quick buy option, an option to display product reviews and promote products with promotional banners.
Theme highlights:
Vibrant and playful design
Supports animated content
Advanced customization options
10. Refresh
Theme styles:
1
Great for:
Body care products
Top Features:
Cross-selling, Slide-out cart, Product reviews
Try theme:
Refresh goes for a masculine, bold design with consistent typography and simple color palette. This free Shopify theme is great for emphasizing product quality and details with testimonials, ingredient information, and more. You can choose how you want the elements in your store to look with adaptive section layouts and advanced customization options.
By including such features as cross-selling, product reviews, FAQ pages, and promo banners, theme developers put focus on helping business owners like you increase conversions and maximize store revenue.
Theme highlights:
Modern design with minimalist color palette
Focuses on product quality
Advanced customization options
11. Voonex
Theme styles:
1
Great for:
Events, conferences
Top Features:
Call-to-action options, Countdown timer
Try theme:
Voonex is a free Shopify theme designed for various events, such as conferences, summits, concerts. This theme differs from the traditional e-commerce website layout, and offers such sections as event schedule, pricing plans, full event information, map integration, and more. The design is clean and minimal, focusing on the information rather than optics.
Voonex allows you to add a pricing plans section, as well as various call-to-action options that serve as a way to invite website visitors to complete transactions. You can also display a countdown timer to create urgency for potential buyers.
Theme highlights:
Great for events & conferences
Unique sections and layouts
Minimal, uncluttered design
12. Constance
Theme styles:
1
Great for:
Skin care and beauty products
Top Features:
Quick buy, Compare products, Upsell pop-ups
Try theme:
Constance is a Shopify theme that offers free and paid versions. The free version has all the core features you need, including a megamenu and a framework which creates a fully responsive website allowing it to look polished on all different screens. The theme also supports adding products to the wishlist without logging in.
The theme offers basic conversion-boosting features like quick shop, compare products, and product reviews. You can also display upsell pop-ups and add banners that show how many people are currently viewing the product.
Theme highlights:
Beautiful design
Clear navigation
Professional megamenu
How did we rank the free Shopify themes?
While building a list of the best free Shopify themes, we have to consider several aspects such as:
- Responsive design. All the themes on this list have responsive design, meaning they look good and work well on mobile devices.
- Conversion optimization features. We made sure to include free Shopify themes that offer features focused on boosting conversions.
- Up-to-date theme architecture. Every theme in this article is updated to the newest Shopify 2.0 version, meaning they get regular updates and don’t lack in features.
- Flexible customization. Since free themes usually don’t have a lot of pre-designed templates to choose from, it’s important to have flexible customization options to tinker the design and structure of the website to fit your brand.
Free Shopify themes vs Premium options
A free Shopify theme is a great option for businesses that are just starting out. If you don’t want to invest in a website right from the start, a free theme is a great choice.
However, premium Shopify themes cost money for a reason – they’re built better, they are more powerful and have more features. Sometimes, paying for a theme can benefit you in the long run because you won’t have to invest in a lot of third-party apps and plugins.
How to make a free Shopify theme better?
If your chosen Shopify theme doesn't contain all the functions you need, you can get them through multiple apps.
Image optimization
Creating high-quality images in the ideal format or size may be difficult. That's why opt for the TinyImg app. This app will automatically reduce your Shopify website's images, optimize them according to SEO principles, and keep the site fast.
Product Reviews
Customer testimonials provide social validation for brands and products. In case your theme lacks this attribute, try out any of the product review apps.
Currency conversion
If your shop is focused on the worldwide market, allowing your customer to pay with their affiliated currencies will increase their satisfaction. Also, it will boost sales. So, if your theme doesn't support currency conversion, add a Shopify currency converter app of your choice to your store.
Generally, there are a lot of useful Shopify apps that can help with SEO, referrals, purchase tracking, revenue optimization, and other marketing needs.
Final words
There are a lot of free Shopify themes out there. However, eCommerce merchants need to be careful as they choose because each theme is different, but with enough diligence everything is possible.
As for now, the best free Shopify theme is Dawn because it offers all the core features needed for a successful website, as well as a stylish yet timeless design that doesn’t over-clutter the website.
Curious to read more? Check out these articles:
How to benefit from ChatGPT as a Shopify merchant
How to set up a Shopify store: step-by-step guide from idea to launch
Frequently asked questions
In its official library, Shopify currently has 12 free themes. However, on other platforms you can find more free themes developed specifically for Shopify.
The most popular free Shopify theme is Dawn. It’s a theme that you start out with after creating a Shopify account. There are multiple successful stores created with Dawn.
Not every free Shopify theme is responsive, but the themes in the official Shopify library are all created to fit desktop and mobile screens. As you’re previewing a Shopify theme, you can view the mobile version by selecting a phone icon in the top bar.
You can download free Shopify themes from the official Shopify theme library.
In order to get a great free Shopify theme, make a list of features your website needs and check out our article on the best free Shopify themes to find the one.
