Blocksy is a feature-rich Gutenberg ready theme that is available in both free and premium versions. It's a multi-purpose theme that can be used to create any type of website. In this in-depth review, let's find out if it's worth your time and money.
Readers of WPdexigner can claim 10% discount on any of the Blocksy plans by using the coupon code wpdexigner at the checkout.
Blocksy theme is a new block-based multipurpose WordPress theme that is quickly gaining popularity on the WP.org theme directory. It is active on over 40,000 WordPress websites in just a short period of time.
It offers a very sleek and modern interface and comes loaded with plenty of customization options. In fact, it is the same theme that I am using on this website.
In this in-depth Blocksy theme review, we will go over:
Let’s dive deep in.
Gutenberg Ready – Blocksy is a block-based theme and is 100% compatible to work with the new WordPress editor.
Lightning Fast – The theme is built using the latest web technologies like React, Babel, and Webpack. This makes it lightning-fast and accessibility-ready out of the box.
Header and Footer Builder – You can use the drag and drop builder from the customizer to create a fully customizable header and footer.
Layout Options – Blocksy comes with a wide range of layout options and lets you control everything from padding, margin, and border.
Page Builder – The theme is compatible with most page builders like Elementor, Divi, Brizy, Beaver Builder, etc.
WooCommerce Ready – Since it is a multipurpose theme, you can use it to create an eCommerce store using WooCommerce.
The Blocksy theme comes in two versions – a free version and a feature-rich Pro version that expands the functionality to new heights.
You can install the free Blocky theme from the WordPress theme repository as you would do for any other theme.
The free Blocksy theme includes all of the features one would require to build a basic website.
However, if you need powerful features like an enhanced header and footer builder with Pro elements, custom hooks, multiple sidebars, and White Label support, Blocksy Pro is the option you should opt for.
Gone are the days when free WordPress themes would mean fewer and restricted features. Blocksy theme is changing that and raising the bar higher by offering a good amount of features even in the free version.
If you run a simple blog or a website, a free Blocksy theme is enough to handle most of your requirements.
For advanced websites such as affiliate blogs or eCommerce websites, the Blocksy Pro adds innovative features.
Some of the features of Blocksy are baked into the theme and some features are accessible through the Blocksy Companion plugin.
Let’s check out some of the best features of the Blocksy theme one by one.
The header and footer are important areas of a website. They offer a way for users to navigate through your website.
Blocksy offers a very intuitive drag and drop builder that makes it easy to create a beautiful and advanced header and footer for beginners.
Below, you can find the list of all elements that are included in the header and footer builder.
| Header Elements | Footer Elements |
|---|---|
| Account | Copyright |
| Button | Footer Menu |
| Cart | Socials |
| HTML | Widget Area |
| Logo | Button |
| Menu | HTML |
| Off-Canvas Menu | Language switcher |
| Search | Logo |
| Socials | Search Box |
| Trigger | |
| Off-canvas panel | |
| Contacts | |
| Divider | |
| Language switcher | |
| Search Box | |
| Widget Area | |
| Wishlist for WooCommerce |
The first 11 elements in the above table’s Header column are part of the free version of the Blocksy theme, while the remaining elements are part of the Blocksy Pro.
When it comes to the footer, the first 4 elements in the Footer column are from the free Blocksy theme, while the rest are part of the Blocksy Pro.
It also allows you to create a sticky or transparent header. If you want, you can also create multiple headers and footers and assign them to different pages based on conditions.
You want your visitors to have the same experience across your entire website. This is only possible when you have consistent colors and typography across the entire website.
You don’t need to be a designer to create a consistent and professional-looking website using Blocksy.
The global color feature allows you to add colors to a palette, which are automatically assigned to different areas of your website.
The global color palette is designed in such a way that each color is linked to various areas of the website. When you change a color in the customizer, it is reflected throughout the entire website. This eliminates the need to open each page and manually edit the colors.
The global color you set in the Blocksy customizer works with Elementor as well as Gutenberg blocks like Stackable and Kadence Blocks Pro.
With Blocksy, you get 15 pre-built color palettes or you can edit them to create your own custom palette.
This is really a smart feature that saves a lot of time while designing or making changes to the website.
The fonts may seem like a small thing but have a big impact on your website’s success. You must choose a font pair that is easier to read and looks professional.
Blocksy theme comes with advanced typography controls to help you set the perfect mood for the website. It supports Google Fonts, so you have access to 900+ fonts.
Within the WordPress customizer, you can easily change site-wide fonts for text, headings, buttons, links, etc. You also get options to set the font style, size, weight, and line height.
To stay compliant with GDPR rules, you also get an option to offload the Google fonts and serve them from your own server. This also helps in reducing the number of outside requests and speeding up the website.
If you don’t want to use Google fonts, Blocksy also lets you upload your own custom fonts. You can also take advantage of its integration with Adobe Typekit and use fonts from it directly on your website.
You simply need to connect your Adobe Typekit account in the Blocksy companion dashboard and the fonts that are available in your account will be readily available in the customizer.
The majority of website visits these days are done through mobile phones. To ensure that mobile visitors get the same experience as desktop visitors, your website must be mobile responsive.
The Blocksy theme comes with controls that let you define how the website will look on mobile as well as tablet screens.
You get the options to control the spacing, height, border, alignment, padding, and margins for various areas of the website.
The responsive controls are spread all over the customizer. These controls can be accessed by clicking on the device icons wherever they appear.
The same controls are available for typography, where you can adjust the font size, height, and spacing for each device type.
Since Blocksy is a multi-purpose theme, it comes with support for WooCommere. The free version has some nice features and the Blocksy Pro addon extends those features to a new level.
In the free version, you get two layouts for the single product page and shop page.
In Blocksy Pro, the theme adds three additional layout options for the single product page.
What’s unique about Blocksy’s integration with WooCommerce are the tons of small nifty features it comes with to improve the user experience and boost your online sales.
It includes built-in features such as product quick view and wishlist. The product quick view feature allows your visitors to get a quick overview of your products without leaving the shop page.
The ajax add to cart option instantly adds the product to the cart without your customer having to visit the product page each time. This reduces the number of pages required before proceeding to the checkout.
The theme also supports ajax search, which will display products immediately after keywords are entered into the search box. Isn’t this a nice feature to have?
Other than that, it allows you to have a floating cart on the single product page that stays visible as the user explores the product page.
On smaller devices, you can also use the off-canvas filter and shortcut bar to give your website an app-like feel.
The Blocksy theme also lets you customize the checkout page and remove all the irrelevant fields to ensure clutter-free checkout.
They also recently added the video thumbnails for the WooCommerce single product page. The features are plenty and they help better conversion rate. Isn’t that what most eCommerce stores strive for?
As you would expect from any premium WordPress theme, Blocksy also has custom hooks with a take of its own.
What this means is you can create any content and hook it to different areas of your theme like the header, sidebar, before content, etc. The Content Blocks open up a lot of customization possibilities that are not possible from within the customizer.
What I like about this theme is when you visit any of the pages on the frontend and click on the Show Hooks button on the admin bar, and it gives a visual overview of various hooks available.
This makes it easy to view all hooks area available with the theme and saves you from a lot of guesswork. You can click on the pencil icon and start designing the content using the WordPress block editor.
The theme also lets you set display conditions to show the content only on specific types of pages and hide it from the rest. Also, you can set it to show content based on user roles.
Do you post seasonal content on the website like offers? The Content Blocks come with an expiration feature that you can take advantage of and show content for a specific period of time.
Blocksy also has popups as content blocks which I haven’t come across in other themes.
You can create beautiful seasonal offer popups or newsletter popups using the block editor and make them appear on the website. You can save yourself from installing one less plugin for popups.
The Blocksy theme comes with a companion plugin that adds a number of features as extensions. Some of the extensions are available in the free version while some are part of the Blocksy Pro theme.
You can access the extensions by clicking Blocksy in the WordPress navigation menu. Then, you need to navigate to the Extensions tab from the top bar to access all the free and Pro extensions of the Blocksy theme.
Here, I will talk about some of the extensions that I like and that have helped me cut down on the additional plugins.
If you have a blog on your website, the social sharing box is essential. It allows your visitors to share your content on various social media platforms.
Let’s be honest. It’s difficult to find a social sharing plugin that is lightweight and free.
With the Blocksy theme, you get a built-in social sharing box that is super lightweight and flexible. You can change the color to match your theme or use the official color of the social platform.
It supports almost every popular social media platform and allows you to toggle between them. You can also control which specific devices you want the box to be visible.
If you have an affiliate website or use analytics tools like Google Analytics to track the visitors, it is important to ask for the visitor’s consent. Normally, this would require an extra plugin.
Using the Blocksy companion plugin, you can enable the Cookie Consent extension to make your website comply with the GDPR.
You can choose between a floating popup and a bottom bar popup. The extension is flexible, allowing you to customize the duration of the cookies as well as the content displayed on the popup.
If you have a heavy website with a lot of content, a simple header won’t be enough to put all the navigation links.
With Advanced Menu, you can create full-fledged multi-column drop-downs and put any content link in it. You have the control to set a custom width for the drop-down and also the layout of the columns.
You can also provide a label and icon to the menu and customize its look and feel.
The shortcut bar enables you to display an app like bar at the bottom of your screen. You can add important website links and allow visitors to access them with a single click.
This helps in increasing customer conversion rate significantly.
You can add important items such as homepage link, phone, email, WooCommerce actions, and also any custom action that you can think of.
The Blocksy theme allows you to customize the display condition of the shortcut bar. You can glue it to the bottom of the screen or have it hide automatically when the user interacts with the website. You can also choose which devices the shortcut bar appears on.
Aside from these, Blocksy includes additional features such as custom sidebars and white label support.
It also lets you add custom code, into the head, body, and footer of your website without using an additional plugin.
You can also display a reading progress bar if you enable it in Post Types Extra.
Blocksy is also said to be working on adding more unique features, which should increase its feature set.
Enough talking about the features. Let’s check if the Blocksy theme is quick enough to pass the core web vitals in green.
Because I’m using the Blocksy theme on my own website, here’s a screenshot of the homepage speed test on Google’s Pagespeed Insight.
Getting 99 on mobile is a pretty good score in my opinion, and it says a lot about how well optimized the theme is.
Here’s the result when I run the test on GTMetrix.
As you can see, it gets a similar score even here with Largest Contentful Paint in under 600ms.
Blocksy is without a doubt one of the best optimized and fastest themes I’ve ever tested.
Blocksy theme has a very comprehensive knowledge base on their site. If you run into problems during installation or customization, you can check out their extensive knowledge base.
If you still feel stuck, you can get in touch with their support team. They offer free support on the WP.org forum as well as through their website. If you get a premium license, you can directly contact support from the website.
The support is quick and gets back to you in 4-6 hours during a working day. They have one of the best support team and can go out of the way to solve your problems.
In fact, at the time of writing this review, their rating on WP.org is a perfect 5 stars.
The Blocksy theme comes in free as well as the premium version. The Blocksy free is available to download from the WP.org theme directory.
The Blocksy Pro comes in three different plans and you can opt between annual and lifetime options.
| Plans | Annual | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
| Personal | $49/year | $149 |
| Professional | $69/year | $199 |
| Agency | $99/year | $299 |
All plans include all of the features of Blocksy with the difference being the number of licenses.
Readers of WPdexigner can claim a 10% discount on any of the Blocksy plans by using the coupon code wpdexigner at the checkout.
The Blocksy team has priced the theme very competitively considering the number of features it packs.
When it comes to competition, Kadence is the closest competitor to Blocksy. So how does Blocksy stack up against Kadence?
Blocksy theme, as you know, is a modern and feature-rich WordPress theme built with a focus on speed. It comes with a wide range of features as stated above in the article.
Kadence theme, on the other hand, is also is a professional WordPress theme with a modern design and tons of features. You get the same header and footer builder long with page customization features.
In terms of features, both the themes offer very similar features. Whatever you go with, you won’t be disappointed.
Kadence is good when you use buy its Kadence membership as every tool integrated with each other and offer a very good user experience.
So far, Blocksy is the best theme I’ve tried. I liked it so much that it became the theme powering WPdexigner.
It has a very clean user interface and is also very easy to use. The customizer is very nicely planned and all settings are placed in the right section. Any beginner will find it easy to navigate between the theme options.
Since the time I have started using it, the developers have kept adding new features at regular intervals.
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