The partial democratization of the internet has made it much easier to reach a vaster audience without having to invest in paperback printing.
Most online magazines operate as a blogpost front to cover the latest events in their domain while selling subscriptions for the electronic version of the curated editorials that can only be found in the monthly issue.
While we have covered some of the best premium WordPress themes in general previously, a magazine has more specific needs that are either addressed in specific themes or comprehensive ones.
What Is a Magazine Theme?
A premium WordPress magazine theme is a theme designed to offer a solution to the old publishing structure via ad revenue and subscriptions.
Aside from the financial aspect to keep your contributors and business model afloat the website needs to appear less cluttered and eye-catching to bring in extra traffic and new readers once you eventually get that viral piece that travels the cyberspace.
Because of the sleek design and the focus it brings to the content, premium WordPress magazine themes are often popular with publishers and independent writers to use especially due to the monetization focus contrary to blog themes.
Key features that you should be looking for in a magazine WordPress theme are SEO Optimization, exceptional editing options, GDPR Compliancy, Advertiser Friendly, Light and Dark mode, Fast Performance, Responsive on any device.
Lastly, it is important that your WordPress magazine theme comes bundled with various popular plugins to ease customization and SEO.
If you are deciding on a WordPress magazine theme then make sure to go over our recommended list of magazine themes.
How Do I Choose a Theme for My Website?
Choosing the right theme to install on your website usually comes down to what team sparks a vision of your website and thus almost entirely subjective.
But here’s a good list of essential features to look for when trying to choose a premium WordPress theme for your website:
- It needs to be fully responsive and mobile-friendly
- It needs to be close to what others in your industry use
- It needs to support a drag and drop page builder for easy customization
- It needs to be fast and light therefore nothing bloated that affects loading
- It needs to be compatible with all major browsers
- It needs to support popular WordPress plugins
- It needs to be SEO-friendly
- It needs to be fully customizable when it comes to colors and fonts (theme builder)
- It needs to be multilingual
- And lastly, offer technical support
If you’re still feeling overwhelmed, it is completely fine! In this piece, we will introduce our top 12 premium WordPress magazine themes.
By the end, you’ll have a much clearer idea of what you should be looking for in a premium WordPress theme.
Best Premium WordPress Magazine Themes
Let’s go over some of the best premium WordPress magazine themes the internet has to offer:
Astra
Astra is a lightweight theme for WordPress with plenty of marvelous minimalist templates.
Their e-Book Author template is perfect for writers.
It has clear typography and potential space for additional elements to be added.
You can use Astra as is or configure it to suit your liking.
It’s suitable for complete beginners but also offers flexibility for more experienced users.
Additionally, it is a fast, lightweight theme that can help boost your WordPress SEO, meaning your site will rank better in Google and other search engines.
The several ready-to-launch starter websites allow you to get started in no time and the inclusion of several premium plugins make it a worthy investment.
Features:
- Includes support
- Astonishingly fast
- Build a site in minutes with 1-click setup website templates
- WooCommerce support for online stores
- Completely customizable
Cost: $59/year or a one-time payment of $249
Deep
Deep is an excellent WordPress Elementor theme built with the Elementor page builder.
It offers a visual footer builder, an advanced mega menu, and powerful theme options.
It comes with a 1-click demo sites installer to help you get started right away.
Deep features multiple custom widgets including social channels, post slider, testimonials, latest reviews, and newsltter subscription which is an important aspect of any WordPress magazine theme.
Features:
- Lifetime access to Deep
- Advanced Page Builder
- No codes, no stacking — just choose the plan that’s right for you
- Free future updates
- GDPR compliant
- SEO Optimized
Cost: The Deep theme has 3 tiers. The first is a 1 License that costs $59, the second is a 5 License package that costs $199, and last but not least is the 10 license package that costs $339.
Divi
Divi is a popular WordPress all-purpose theme.
It comes with hundreds of page layouts, including minimalist templates suitable for writers of any niche (movie, fashion, philosophy, etc.)
With Divi, you also get a built-in page builder for easy customization.
This visual builder is user-friendly and lets you edit text, images, styling options, and much more.
Divi offers Google Fonts and unlimited colors, meaning you can easily make changes to how your content looks without needing to know any CSS code.
You can also easily add features like a contact form.
Features:
- Includes support
- A fantastic visual drag and drop builder
- Save custom layouts for reuse
- A/B split testing
- Total customization
- 20 pre-built layouts and templates
Cost: $89/year or $249/lifetime (includes access to several other products from Elegant Themes)
Zeen
Zeen is a theme primarily designed for magazine formats.
It offers many demo layout options, but at the same time, you can customize it with the help of the built-in Tipi builder tool, which is included in this WordPress magazine theme.
Zeen includes an impressive array of cool animations, which is a great tool to keep visitors glued to the page offering them more related content that is easy to consume.
You should consider checking this one out since it lauds itself as being the next generation of WordPress magazine themes.
Features:
- Frontend theme options
- Compatible with Elementor
- Powerful advertising
- Mobile Responsive
Cost: $59/single license
Viral Mag
Viral Mag is a super fast WordPress theme that comes with specialized features to create outstanding magazine, newspaper and blogging websites. It comes with a responsive demo layout that looks great on all types of viewing devices like mobiles, desktops and tablets. The theme is packed with various options that will allow you to build an elegant website in breeze without the requirement of any coding knowledge.
Viral Mag is an Elementor based WordPress theme with more than 20+ magazine styled elements included on the templates. Besides, the theme has multiple header layouts, footer layouts, blog archive page layout, post/article page layouts and many more.
Viral Mag Key Features:
- One Click Demo Import
- 20+ Magazine Style Module for Elementor Page Builder
- Multiple Header Layouts, Footer Layouts, Blog Page Layouts, Article Page Layouts
- Advertisement Ready to Place Ads on your News Magazine Website
- Advanced Typography Option to Choose The Favourable Font and Font Size
- Sticky Sidebar Options
Viral Mag Pros:
- Fully Compatible With Elementor Page Builder
- WPML and RTL Ready
- 100% Responsive to All Types of Devices
- Highly Customizable WordPress Magazine Theme
Viral Mag Cons:
You need to Upgrade The Theme to The Pro Version to Unlock Many Advanced Features.
The Issue
The Issue is one of the highest-rated and best-selling WordPress magazine themes out there.
It has an online magazine-style layout that allows you to feature content in multiple columns with an easy to use interface.
Your design will look great in any screen size and on any device.
With additional WordPress theme customizer options, The Issue lets you manage your website layout, buttons, fonts, colors, backgrounds, and more without editing any code.
Your content is displayed in an eye-catching and unique way, not to mention the advertising functionalities and lightbox gallery options and typographies.
Features:
- Fast Loading
- Easy Translation
- Good SEO Practices
- Responsive
- Unique Typography
- Sponsored Posts
Cost: $59/single license
Sahifa
Sahifa is a clean, modern, user-friendly, fast-loading, customizable, flexible, functional, and fully responsive WordPress magazine theme with a design that is easy on the eyes.
It also boasts full compatibility for RTL languages with demos specifically made for them.
It has large featured images and extensive typography options that improve the readability of your content and gives your visitors a great user experience.
It manages to balance power and beauty, resulting in a high-quality browsing experience for all users.
Many sites have to choose between complexity and accessibility, given that their layout cannot adapt to the diminutive screens of hand-held devices.
Features:
- One-click demo import
- 100% responsive
- Optimized for Speed
- RTL language support
- Unlimited Sidebars
Cost: $59/single license
Jannah
Jannah is a gorgeous WordPress magazine theme with 24 ready-made demos for bloggers, writers, and authors.
You can experiment with different fonts, colors, headers using the Theme Options Panel.
It’s simple but offers a full of range features so you can leave a lasting impression without overwhelming your visitors.
Features:
- Adjustable visual customizer for colors and fonts
- Responsive on all devices
- Compatible with CoAuthors plugin
- Unlimited header styles
- Numerous widgets
Cost: $60/single license
OceanWP
Another incredible yet fast minimalist-style theme on our list is OceanWP.
It is a multi-purpose theme with more than 80 demos.
Maybe we could say that some of the designs are a bit too similar, but all of them are well-coded and modern.
They work on 4 different styles which are Blog, Corporate, E-Commerce, and One-page website.
It also offers over 20 different plugins you can purchase and use on your websites.
However, 13 of these plugins are premium ones.
It allows you to control how your website looks without ever getting very technical.
Features:
- Supports popular page builders for easy site creation
- WooCommerce support
- Fully responsive
- Image sliders and custom widgets
- Fantastic customer support
- Unlimited color schemes
Cost: $39/year or a one-time payment of $159 access all features (and top tier support)
The Voux
The Voux is one of the greatest WordPress magazine themes that you can use to publish your works.
You will have access to a wide range of layouts and design options to help create a slick and attractive website.
The design is reminiscent of prestigious newspapers which owe it to the excellent Visual Composer plugin.
The Voux also offers essential magazine site features like Mega Menu, Galleries, Shopping, Social Media promotion.
Features:
- SEO optimized
- Fully Responsive
- Nine unique header styles
- Easy Loading
- Drago and Drop Interface
Cost: $59/single license
Newspaper
The Newspaper theme is perfect for blogging, excellent for news, newspaper, writing articles, magazine, publishing, or review sites.
It is the number one WordPress theme in the field of news and designed by tagDiv with the support of WordPress 4 and higher versions.
It also supports videos from YouTube.
Newspaper is fast, easy to use, light and performant.
The Newspaper theme has been built for mobile devices and small screens with an outstanding support team.
It is a good choice for beginners as well as professionals searching for a platform to publish their content.
For a better start, you have access to 50+ unique demos.
Newspaper can be ideal for news-related websites due to the combination of gorgeous elements with an intuitive design which are suitable for any kind of publication.
Features:
- +100 unique prebuilt sites
- Responsive mobile-optimized image gallery
- WooCommerce ready
- SEO friendly structure
Cost: $59/single license
Soledad
Soledad is a responsive WordPress theme that emphasizes readability with exceptional style.
It comes with demos that suit your various publishing needs whether you are running a newspaper, blog, or magazine.
In conclusion, this is a stunning WordPress magazine theme that focuses on integrating new media visual and audio content with written form.
Features:
- Huge library of demos
- Various portfolio layouts
- Custom elements for page builders
Cost: $59/single license
Indigo
Indigo is a modern WordPress magazine theme tailored for online magazines and blogs.
Indigo is incredibly easy to use, comes with all the features and layouts you need.
The prominent heading is what makes your website stick out so there is a lot of room for customization on whether you want a more minimalist approach or a prominent heading.
In conclusion, this a great magazine theme since it utilizes social media widgets and cross-content display to the max.
Features:
- Responsive Layout
- Sidebar equipped with custom widgets
- Display templates
- WooCommerce Ready
Cost: €79/single license or €159/lifetime
Final Thoughts
And with that, we have covered our favorite premium WordPress magazine themes that share a more distinct feel than the usual multi-purpose themes.
All of the above mentioned are worthy contenders in this list and offer something unique either in terms of features or visuals but what your decision usually should come down to is the degree of support offered, whether complimentary hosting is also provided, and lastly if you just like the demo.
We hope our list of premium WordPress magazine themes helped you find one that will work great for you and your website.