Brooklyn is a premium multi-purpose theme from United Themes, built around the WPBakery page builder rather than the block editor. It's been tracked since 2018 and sits among the few hundred most used themes we track — not a breakout hit, but a steady holdover that has kept its share rather than faded away.
A page-builder theme from the WPBakery era
Brooklyn isn't a WordPress.org theme — there's no free version, and it's distributed as a purchase through the usual marketplace channel. Its design work runs on js_composer (WPBakery Page Builder), paired with proprietary United Themes plugins like ut-shortcodes and ut-portfolio that add sliders, pricing tables, and portfolio grids. That combination shows up on the vast majority of live installs we look at, which tells you the theme's identity is the bundle, not any single layout.
Who actually runs it
Business-type data leans heavily toward services sites, with personal, nonprofit, ecommerce and corporate sites trailing well behind — media sites are almost absent. By niche it leans toward photography and creative studios and marketing agencies, but that lean is mild: construction, legal, events, and sports sites all turn up too. It's genuinely general-purpose, just with a slight studio-and-agency accent. Language data backs that up — alongside English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch sites all appear in meaningful numbers, suggesting the theme found real traction outside the English-speaking market.
What holds up
The consistency of the plugin stack is the strongest signal here. Contact Form 7 and Yoast SEO (wordpress-seo) show up widely too, meaning Brooklyn plays fine with the standard plugin toolkit rather than fighting it. For an agency or freelancer who already knows WPBakery, that familiarity and the ready-made shortcode kit can genuinely save setup time.
Where it shows its age
There's no free tier and no real child-theme ecosystem, so customizing past the builder's own settings means writing your own CSS rather than borrowing from a community of derivative themes. It's tied to js_composer, a builder that has lost ground to Elementor and to Gutenberg-native alternatives in both speed and flexibility. Revolution Slider, which appears constantly alongside it, has a well-documented history of security issues in older releases — worth checking that any Brooklyn install is running current versions before trusting it with sensitive traffic.
If you're comparing options
If the WPBakery lock-in is the sticking point, Phlox Pro covers similar general-business ground with a lighter footprint. Extendable and Epik 2023 are worth a look too if you'd rather start from a block-editor-native base than inherit an older builder's habits.
Before you decide
Is Brooklyn a free theme?
No. It's not distributed on WordPress.org — it's a paid theme bought through a marketplace, with updates tied to a license.
What page builder does it use?
WPBakery Page Builder (js_composer), plus United Themes' own shortcode and portfolio plugins for extra layout elements.
Is it a good fit for an online store?
It can run basic ecommerce, but usage data shows services and personal sites far outnumber ecommerce ones — a store-first theme will serve a serious shop better.
Where that leaves you
Brooklyn makes sense for an agency, photographer, or small studio site that wants a ready-made kit of sliders, portfolios, and shortcodes and doesn't mind working inside WPBakery. It's a poor fit for a content-first blog or media site — that segment barely registers in usage data — and anyone allergic to page-builder lock-in should look at Gutenberg-native alternatives instead. It's not declining fast, but it's not growing either: a mature, competent choice rather than an exciting one.
Last updated 2026-09-11
