Comparison
DesignDeck compared with ThemeForest
ThemeForest is Envato's marketplace for website themes and templates, and it is the cheapest way in this comparison to own a professional design outright. Its long-running bestseller, Avada, lists at $69 for a regular licence.1 You pay once, and the theme is yours to use on one site.2
The catch is everything the $69 does not include. A theme is a set of files. To become a website it needs hosting, a domain and a WordPress installation, usually a few premium plugins, and somebody to keep all of it updated for as long as the site is up.5 DesignDeck is the opposite arrangement: a monthly plan, and none of that is your job.
What ThemeForest is
A marketplace of themes and templates from independent authors, sold one item at a time. A regular licence covers one end product, so ten sites on the same theme need ten licences, and an extended licence is needed if people will pay to use the end product.2 Prices are set by each author; Avada's regular licence is $69.1
Every item includes six months of support from its author, counted from the date of purchase.3 Extending that to twelve months at checkout costs a further 37.5% of the item price, and extending later costs more.4
Hosting is not part of the purchase. A WordPress theme needs a WordPress site on hosting you arrange, and ThemeForest keeps a page recommending WordPress hosts for exactly that reason.5 Envato's subscription, Envato Elements, swaps the one-time price for unlimited downloads from $16.50 a month on annual billing.6 Items registered to a project keep their licence if you cancel, but nothing can be licensed for a new project afterwards.7
What is different here
Zero install and zero maintenance. There is no theme to upload, no server to rent, no plugin to update and no security patch to miss, because there is nothing on your side at all: the site runs on our infrastructure and we keep it running. You pick a deck, fill in one form, and it is live on a real address in under a minute, before you have paid anything.
The honest arithmetic: a $69 theme costs less than a year of any monthly plan, ours included, as long as the hosting bill and the hours spent installing, configuring and updating it count for nothing. They rarely do. The monthly price here is the design, the hosting and the upkeep in one line. What you give up is ownership: you never hold the files, and if you stop paying, the site stops.
From $9.99 a month, and the preview is free.
Side by side
| DesignDeck | ThemeForest | |
|---|---|---|
| How you pay | A monthly plan, hosting and upkeep included | Once per site; Avada's regular licence is $691 |
| Hosting and install | None. It is live when you finish the form | Your own hosting and WordPress install5 |
| Support | We maintain the site for as long as it is on a plan | Six months from the author, extendable for a fee3 |
| Updates and security | Ours to handle, invisible to you | Yours, as the owner of a self-hosted site5 |
| Ownership | We host it and never sell the code | The files are yours to use under the licence, one end product each2 |
When ThemeForest is the better buy
- You already have hosting and somebody who is comfortable running WordPress.
- You want to own the files outright and pay once rather than every month.
- Your business depends on a particular WordPress plugin: a shop, a membership area or a booking system.
- You build sites for clients and want a theme you can adapt, licensing one per site.
What you would actually be getting
Each of these is a running site, not a screenshot of one. Open it, then put your own name in it.
Questions people ask first
Is a ThemeForest theme cheaper than DesignDeck?
Upfront, yes: Avada is a one-time $69.1 Over a year the comparison is the theme plus hosting, a domain, any premium plugins and the time spent keeping it all updated, against one monthly plan with all of that included. Which is cheaper depends on what your time is worth.
What happens when ThemeForest support runs out?
Each item includes six months of author support from purchase.3 After that you can pay to extend it, at a higher price than extending at checkout, or carry on without it.4 The site keeps working either way; what stops is the author answering your questions.
Sources
Prices and features checked 2026-09-24. Every figure above about ThemeForestcame from one of these pages. Where our research could not confirm a number against the vendor’s own pricing page, the sentence says so.