10 best free Shopify themes and templates

Choosing the right free Shopify theme or template for your business can seem like a challenging task. Free options usually offer just basic marketing features compared to paid alternatives, but they can still be highly customizable for you to create a unique brand identity.

That being said, a free theme can still help you launch a professional business if you put in the work. Not to mention that you can upgrade at any time, so there are no downsides to trying out a free option first.

To help you make the right decision, we reviewed and tested the best free Shopify themes and ranked them based on feature array, performance, and customizability.

Top free Shopify themes:

1. Dawn – best free Shopify theme
2. Origin – free Shopify theme for one-product stores
3. Publisher – free Shopify theme for independent studios
4. Ride – sports-centric Shopify theme design
5. Taste – free Shopify theme for food and drinks store

Some of these free Shopify themes might even be ranked amongst the best Shopify themes for eCommerce, so don’t underestimate their functionality just because it’s free. Keep reading to find out exactly why they’re the top options.

Free Shopify themes: detailed overview

We tested and reviewed all 10 free Shopify themes to find the best ones in terms of their features, customizability, and more. Here are our top choices in detail:

1. Dawn

Dawn is the best free Shopify theme because it’s minimalist, versatile, and has many marketing features. It offers all the core functionality you need to successfully launch and manage your store, and the minimalist design helps avoid clutter, so it’s easy to navigate.

The theme comes with media-forward product pages, ensuring your product is the main focus. You can use Dawn to write a blog, add an FAQ page, promo banners, cross-selling, or a recommended product section.

Pros:

• Social proof features like product reviews and press coverage
• Sticky header and product filtering for a seamless shopping journey
• Media-focused theme for showcasing your products
• In-store pickups for merchants with traditional stores

Cons:

• The minimalist theme can seem limiting for some businesses

Dawn is perfect for various types of businesses that want to focus on images, including fashion and home decor.

2. Origin

Origin is a great free option for Shopify merchants that gives plenty of space for storytelling and is highly flexible in terms of customization. Not to mention it offers a quick setup process in case you need to launch fast.

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.

Pros

• Conversion-oriented stock counter, cross-selling, and promo banner features
• Sticky header and product filtering for easy navigation
• Advanced customization options

Cons

• The storytelling approach isn’t suitable for multiple-product businesses

It’s best as a single-product theme for websites that want to showcase their brand identity, values, and mission.

3. Publisher

Publisher is perfect for merchants who want a more unique look for their website without paying anything. It focuses on visual storytelling and minimal navigation, so your brand narrative is the main focus.

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.

Pros:

• Marketing features like cross-selling, stock counter, and promo banners
• Many image-oriented feature choices, such as galleries, videos, rollover, or zoom
• In-store pickup for businesses with physical stores

Cons:

• No social proof features, such as product reviews or trust badges

The theme is best for artists, selling artwork, merchandise, books, or accessories.

4. Ride

Ride is a bold-style Shopify theme that offers unique page templates and advanced customization options, and is great for editorial content or visual storytelling.

Ride offers several conversion-focused features, including cross-selling, promo banners, and recommended products. Additionally, you can easily showcase social proof with features like press coverage and product reviews.

Pros:

• In-store pickup option for physical store owners
• Loads of merchandising features, including galleries, lookbooks, rollover, zoom, usage information, and slideshow
• Sticky header, recommended product section, and product filtering for a good user experience

Cons:

• Some bugs are known to occur with updates

Ride is a great option for medium-sized businesses and works as an aesthetic theme for sports equipment, gaming gear, graphic design, bars, and many other products.

5. Taste

Taste is great for merchants who want to showcase their products with high-quality imagery but still keep a minimalist and spacious design. 

The theme helps you increase conversion rates with features like cross-selling, quick buying, and promotional banners. Plus, you can enhance visual storytelling with high-resolution images, galleries, lookbooks, rollover, slideshows, image zoom options, videos, and more.

Pros:

• Press coverage and product review features for demonstrating social proof
• Recommended products, sticky header, and product filtering for easy product discovery
• A variety of merchandising features, including videos, slideshows, and more

Cons:

• May not be great for businesses with many products

While the demo store is an example of a theme for food and drink stores, its flexible design makes it great for any business that wants to focus on a strong visual appeal.

6. Craft

With an authentic design, Craft is a refined and minimalist free Shopify theme. 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 centerpiece.

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.

Pros:

• Features for social proof, including product reviews
• In-store pickups for physical store merchants
• Convenient navigation with sticky header, product filtering, and recommended products

Cons:

• While the design is flexible, advanced customization can be difficult to achieve

The theme is ideal for Shopify merchants who want a quick setup and launch process for their image-focused websites.

7. Studio

Studio is a simple yet modern free theme for Shopify merchants who prioritize visual storytelling and minimalism and want to achieve an artistic look. The theme supports collection-based navigation, creator filters, featured collections for galleries and new arrivals, as well as artist profiles.

In order to help you achieve revenue goals, Studio allows you to utilize its 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.

Pros:

• Quick buy and in-store pickups for shopping convenience
• User-oriented navigation features like product filtering, sticky header, and enhanced search
• Variety of merchandising features, such as galleries, lookbooks, size charts, and videos

Cons:

• Not a flexible color scheme

It’s a great theme for artists both for selling successfully and running a blog.

8. Sense

Sense is a bright and fresh-looking Shopify theme that is suitable for products that need more detailed descriptions or ingredient information. It offers advanced customization options, ensuring you can turn your vision into reality for free.

In terms of helping your business increase revenue, Sense offers a cross-selling feature and allows you to display product reviews, an FAQ page, and promo banners for new items and discounts.

Pros:

• Great for quick setup and launch
• Allows adding nutritional or ingredient information
• Includes product reviews and press coverage to ensure brand trust

Cons:

• Users complain about slow speed and bugs after updates

Overall, it’s a good theme for beauty and skincare but can also be customized for other natural or refreshing products.

9. Crave

Crave is a vibrant Shopify theme perfectly fit for those who want to stand out among the rest. Vibrant, bold, and fun colors instantly bring personality to 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.

Pros:

• Recommended products, sticky header, and enhanced search for simple product discovering
• Allows easily adding ingredient or nutritional information
• Visual storytelling-oriented features, including galleries, lookbooks, rollover, zoom, and videos

Cons:

• Not suitable for stores that also want to run a blog

As a mobile-friendly theme, it’s suitable for restaurants or any other food-related brands as well as image-focused businesses.

10. Refresh

Refresh goes for a bold yet clear design with a simple color palette. The free theme is good for emphasizing product images and their quality with product reviews and ingredient information. With adaptive section layouts and advanced customization options, you can adapt the theme for any store.

With features such as cross-selling, product reviews, FAQ pages, and promo banners, the theme developers focus on helping business owners like you increase conversions and maximize store revenue.

Pros:

• Great for visual storytelling with features like image galleries, lookbooks, slideshow, rollover, and zoom
• Convenient navigation with sticky header and recommended products
• Quick buy and in-store pickups for a seamless customer experience

Cons:

• No additional social proof features like press coverage

Refresh is good for stores with a small product array, particularly in the beauty or health industries.

Why free Shopify themes can be a good choice

Free Shopify themes can be a great choice if you’re just starting out or have a single or just a few products that don’t require any advanced theme features. When your business grows, you may even opt for getting features through third-party Shopify apps rather than a new template.

Whatever the case, here are a few reasons why free themes are beneficial:

• High-quality. All themes, including free ones, that can be found on the Shopify theme store have to meet the platform’s performance, safety, and functionality standards.
• Can be improved with apps. Free themes can be upgraded by adopting free or paid third-party plugins from the Shopify app store. This can help fill in the missing gaps when the theme isn’t rich in features.
• Budget-friendly. Free themes let you allocate your budget to more important business aspects, such as customer support or marketing strategies.
• Ease of use. Shopify usually makes free themes with beginners in mind, ensuring no coding or technical knowledge is necessary when launching your business.
• Scalability. While it depends on the theme you choose, many free themes can support medium-size brands. So, you can grow your business without putting hundreds of dollars into paid options.

What makes a good free Shopify theme?

While free themes are more limited in terms of features and scalability, they can still do a great job if chosen correctly. Here are the main factors that make a good free Shopify theme:

• Responsive design. According to Statista, around 30% of people globally use mobile commerce weekly. For this reason, picking a free theme that’s optimized for all sorts of screens is a must.
• Conversion optimization features. Your goal with business is to sell – so look for themes that offer features like cross-selling and quick buying. A good theme will also allow you to display recommended products, and include smart filtering and search features.
• 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.
• Your business industry. Free Shopify themes that are better for big eCommerce 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.

How to make a free Shopify theme better?

It’s no secret that free Shopify themes are not the richest when it comes to features and functionality. That’s where third-party apps come into play. On the Shopify app store, you can find over 8,000 apps and plugins for different purposes.

Here are a few types you may find useful for your business:

• Image optimization. Optimizing, compressing, or converting the format of images one by one takes a lot of time and frustration. Automate this process using the TinyIMG app, which will compress your images without sacrificing quality to make them more SEO-friendly.

• Product Reviews. Considering over 99.9% of customers read reviews before buying products according to a survey by Power Reviews, incorporating a product review app on Shopify helps build trust.

• Currency conversion. If you’re selling products worldwide, multi-currency features can help enhance user experience and potentially boost sales. So, if your free theme doesn’t support currency conversion, add a converter app like BEST or Nova to your store.

You can check out the full list of the most useful Shopify apps that can help enhance your theme with SEO features, referrals, purchase tracking, revenue optimization, and other marketing needs.

Conclusion

Picking the right free theme depends on your marketing strategy and brand needs. And while free options may not have as many features or be as customizable as paid alternatives, they’re often more than enough for startups or single-product websites.

Our best free Shopify theme suggestion is Dawn. It’s the most popular theme used on Shopify and for a reason. Even as a free option, it fits Shopify’s strictest performance standards and has quite an array of features, like blogs, cross-selling, press coverage, product reviews, promo banners, and more.

Curious to read more? Check out these articles:

How to change a Shopify theme

How to benefit from ChatGPT as a Shopify merchant

How to set up a Shopify store: step-by-step guide from idea to launch

How to sell on Shopify without inventory

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Frequently asked questions

Which is the best Shopify theme free?

Dawn is the best free Shopify theme because of its wide feature array and quick setup approach. It’s a great theme for blogging, and you can add an FAQ page, promo banners, cross-selling, and more. Not to mention you can include product reviews and press coverage to ensure higher brand trust.

Are free Shopify themes worth it?

If you’re just starting out or selling a singular product, a free Shopify theme is definitely the way to go. However, once your business starts growing, your theme needs may expand. In such a case, you’ll be able to upgrade to a premium Shopify theme based on your needs.

What is the most used Shopify theme?

Dawn is the most used Shopify theme because it’s free, minimalist, and ideal for many types of brands. It offers advanced customization options, helps products stand out with media-forward product pages, and is suitable for building a professional brand identity with visual storytelling features.

What is the highest converting Shopify theme?

The Shopify theme you choose doesn’t necessarily reflect how well your store will convert. However, choosing themes with the most useful marketing features, like a countdown timer, promo banners, product reviews, product badges, or a stock counter. Themes with many conversion-oriented features include such options as Woodstock, Mavon, and Stockholm.

About the author

Faustas Norvaisa

Faustas is a young digital marketing specialist with a strong focus on the areas of tech and e-commerce. Inspired by his abundant experience accumulated while working in various fields and industries, he has dedicated his professional years to helping others achieve their business-related goals. Faustas loves writing and sharing his insights with others, although it may sound like a cliche, his guiding motto is "sharing is caring".