Gutenix Theme Review: Lightweight, Multipurpose Theme With 47+ Demo Sites

This article was researched and written by our experts using our in-depth Analysis Methodology.
In the market for a lightweight multipurpose WordPress theme for your next project? In this Gutenix theme review, we'll take a look at a new freemium theme that offers detailed Customizer controls, 47+ demo sites, page-level controls, support for Elementor and Brizy page builders, and more. Keep reading to see the theme in action.
Table of Contents

Gutenix Theme Review Introduction

Looking for the perfect theme for your next WordPress site?

Gutenix is a freemium multipurpose WordPress theme that you can use for everything from blogs to business websites, portfolios, WooCommerce stores, and more. It offers 47+ importable demo sites, detailed customization options in the real-time WordPress Customizer, and integrations with the native block editor (Gutenberg) as well as popular page builder plugins such as Elementor and Brizy.

In our hands-on Gutenix theme review, we’ll introduce you to this theme’s features and show you how it works.

Gutenix Theme Review of Key Features

Gutenix theme

Gutenix is a multipurpose WordPress theme, which means you can use it for pretty much any type of WordPress site in any niche.

I’ll start by briefly listing its key features and then I’ll show them in more detail as I go hands-on with the theme:

  • Detailed options in the native WordPress Customizer to control all aspects of your site’s design. Includes lots of options for key areas such as your header, with sticky and transparent options among many other settings.
  • 47+ importable demo sites built with the block editor, Elementor, and Brizy. New templates are added every month.
  • Lightweight design – just 18 HTTP requests and 123 KB on a fresh WordPress install.
  • Page-level controls.
  • WooCommerce compatibility.
  • Bundled ZeGuten plugin, which adds 21+ blocks to the editor. This is a premium plugin, but you get it at no extra cost with the premium version of the Gutenix theme.
  • WCAG-compliant for accessibility.

Examples of the Gutenix Theme

Gutenix is a multipurpose theme, so you can use it for pretty much anything. Beyond that, it comes with 47+ importable starter sites, so you can begin from a bunch of different foundations.

With that being said, I do want to give you a basic idea of what you can expect your site to look like with Gutenix, so here are three representative starter sites:

Lawyer demo
Digital products demo
Craft brewery demo

If you want to browse all 47+ starter sites, click here to go to the full library.

Gutenix Theme Pricing

Gutenix comes in both a free version at WordPress.org as well as a premium version with more features. The premium version is technically an add-on plugin – so you’ll use the same free theme from WordPress.org whether you’re sticking with the free version or going pro.

The free version comes with ~6 different demo sites and basic features. This gives you a decent amount of flexibility and will work for some sites, but many of the best importable demo sites and useful customization features are only available with the premium version.

If you want to go Pro, you can either purchase a one-year license or a lifetime license:

  • One-year license – $69
  • Lifetime license – $174

Both options allow use on unlimited websites. You also get access to the ZeGuten plugin at no extra price, which would cost you $37 if you purchased it separately.

Hands-On With the Gutenix Theme

Now, let’s go hands-on and I’ll show you what it’s like to use the Gutenix theme. 

Note, I’m using both the theme and the Pro add-on plugin for this review.

Basic Setup

When you first install the plugin, it will prompt you to install the companion Gutenix Wizard plugin.

This plugin launches a nice setup guide to help you configure basic settings for the theme. For example, it gives you the option of automatically starting from a child theme, which lets you safely make your own customizations:

Gutenix theme child option

Importing Demo Sites

The installation wizard also gives you the option to import one of the 47+ pre-built demo sites. You also get options to filter the demo sites, which is convenient.

First, you can choose your preferred builder from three options:

  1. Native WordPress block editor (Gutenberg)
  2. Elementor
  3. Brizy

You can also filter demo sites by category:

Gutenix theme demo sites

When you choose a demo site to import, you’ll be prompted to install the plugins that are required/recommended for that demo site. This will be different depending on the exact demo site that you chose:

Install plugins

Then, you can choose how to import the actual demo content. You can either add the demo content to your existing content or overwrite your existing content to completely replace it with the demo content:

Import demo content

Gutenix will also regenerate thumbnails as part of the setup process, which ensures your images look great.

Once that’s done, you’ll see a success screen and your site should look exactly like your chosen demo site:

Success

Exploring the Other Gutenix Wizard Settings

Beyond the setup guide, the Gutenix Wizard adds another area where you can configure some basic settings and install other tools. You’ll be able to:

  • Create a backup of your theme, which is useful to make sure you don’t ever lose the changes that you make.
  • Browse the starter site library and import a different design if needed.
  • Install some of the recommended bundled plugins, including the ZeGuten plugin (more on that later).
  • Access theme documentation.
  • Export/import your site’s content.
Guteniz Wizard

Using the WordPress Customizer

To customize your theme’s front-end design, you get to use the real-time WordPress Customizer. Before you do that, however, you can go to Appearance → Gutenix Settings to control which premium modules you want to enable.

When you enable a module, you’ll open up access to those options in the WordPress Customizer. For example, if you enable the Blog Layouts module, you’ll get more detailed options in the Customizer when it comes to your blog’s layouts, and so on:

Enable modules

Once you’ve made those choices, you can open the regular Customizer by going to Appearance → Customize. Here, you’ll see Gutenix’s many options laid out in the sidebar:

Gutenix theme WordPress Customizer controls

I can’t show you every single setting because there are a lot. But I can just generally say that you get a lot of control over how your site looks and functions. Let’s look at some examples…

If you open the Header settings, you’ll get another list of settings to control a bunch of options for your header including:

  • Top panel (appears above your main header)
  • Vertical and mobile menu behavior
  • Buttons on your header
  • Sticky header
  • Transparent header
Header settings

For example, if you enable the Top Panel, you’ll be able to control its content, colors, typography, width, and which devices you want to display it on:

Top panel settings

Moving away from the header, you’ll get a similar level of depth when customizing your blog page (the page that lists all of your blog posts). You can choose from different layouts and listing options, adjust the order of content elements (or hide some), customize colors and typography, edit the “Read More” button, and lots more:

Blog page

Finally, the General Settings area is a catch-all for a bunch of different features including the following:

  • Breadcrumbs
  • Back to top button
  • Sidebar (including a sticky sidebar option)
  • Preloader
  • Built-in subscribe popup
  • Dynamic CSS to improve performance
General settings

For example, if you enable the built-in subscribe popup feature, you’ll be able to preview that popup right there in the Customizer. One neat feature is that it includes a built-in option to add an opt-in form shortcode from whichever form plugin or list building plugin you’re using on your site:

Built-in popup

Again, I can’t show you all of the options because there are too many to detail. But you will have plenty of options to control how your theme looks and behaves.

As for the actual content in the demo site that you imported – you’ll be able to customize that using whichever editor you chose when you imported the demo site (the native block editor, Elementor, or Brizy).

Using Gutenix Page-Level Controls

To give you more flexibility when working with individual pieces of content, Gutenix also comes with page-level controls whenever you’re editing an individual post, page, or custom post type.

You get a pretty detailed list of options letting you perform the following actions:

  • Adjust various parts of the layout, including overall layout, sidebar, header, and footer
  • Disable specific elements including the top panel, footer widgets, and breadcrumbs
  • Configure the sticky header and transparent header
Gutenix theme page-level controls

Using the Bundled ZeGuten Plugin

As I mentioned in the pricing section, one perk that you get with the premium version of Gutenix is access to the ZeGuten plugin at no extra cost.

ZeGuten extends the native WordPress block editor with 21+ new blocks including blocks for pricing tables, testimonials, sliders, countdown timers, and more.

You don’t have to use the plugin. But if you do install it, you’ll be able to access all of those new blocks when working inside the regular editor. You can see all of the available options in the list to the right:

ZeGuten plugin

Gutenix Theme Performance Tests

Now for maybe the most important question in this review – how does the Gutenix theme perform?

To get an idea of the Gutenix theme’s performance, I ran a fresh install through WebPageTest.

I’m just testing the naked theme – not one of the demo sites – because there are too many variables with a demo site. For example, if you use an Elementor demo site, a lot of your site’s “weight” will come from Elementor, not your theme.

So while your actual site will undoubtedly be a bit heavier, testing the naked Gutenix theme gives us a good idea of its basic performance foundation.

In that, Gutenix did quite well – a fresh install has just 18 HTTP requests and is 123 KB in size. This makes it a lot more lightweight than many other WordPress themes.

Gutenix theme performance test

As long as you follow other WordPress performance best practices, you’ll definitely be able to create a quick-loading WordPress site with the Gutenix theme.

Final Thoughts on the Gutenix Theme

Overall, Gutenix is another solid entrant to the marketplace for lightweight, multipurpose WordPress themes. Thanks to the detailed WordPress Customizer options and the 47+ importable demo sites, you can use it for pretty much any purpose.

It’s pretty lightweight for the features that it includes and it also offers detailed page-level controls, which is especially nice if you want to pair it with a WordPress page builder plugin.

If you want to get started, you can install the free theme from WordPress.org to give it a go. Then, to unlock more options in the Customizer and all of the importable demo sites, consider upgrading to the premium version for $69.

Have any questions about the Gutenix theme? Ask away in the comments!

Colin Newcomer

Colin has been using WordPress for over a decade and is on a quest to test all 60,000+ plugins at WordPress.org. He has been a Writer and Product Review Expert for WP Mayor since 2017, testing well over 150 products and services throughout that time.

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One Response

  1. Not my experience with this product at all…
    buggy, appalling support and so slow to rectify clear issues with updates.
    subscribers are basically beta testers!

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