Enfold is Kriesi's premium multipurpose theme, built around its own Avia Layout Builder rather than the block editor. It's been around long enough to earn a stable spot as one of the ten most common themes in our database, which says more about durability than trendiness. This piece looks at who's actually running it and why, based on what shows up when live sites are crawled.
What it actually is
Enfold is a ThemeForest product, not a free wordpress.org theme, sold as a single-purchase license rather than a subscription. It's been tracked since 2018 and shows the profile of a mature, settled product: usage isn't climbing, but it isn't collapsing either. It just holds its ground, which for a theme this old is its own kind of achievement.
The builder does the heavy lifting
Pages get built with the bundled Avia Builder, a drag-and-drop tool that predates the block editor and doesn't map cleanly onto it. You design in Enfold's own interface, not Gutenberg, which means the layout logic lives inside the theme rather than in portable WordPress blocks. It works fine day to day. It just makes the theme, not WordPress core, the thing running your site's structure.
Who ends up running it
Studying the sites running it, the pattern is consistent: agencies and marketing firms lead, followed by SaaS companies, nonprofits, and legal or financial services. Business type skews heavily toward services and nonprofit organizations, and the language mix has an unusually strong German presence alongside English — a nod to Kriesi's roots and a real DACH-region following. Sites like Double the Donation and the Mifos Initiative fit that mold: mission-driven, service-oriented, not e-commerce-first.
What it's actually good at
The one-time license, with no recurring builder subscription, is a genuine point in its favor compared to some rivals. The plugin pairings back up the profile: Yoast SEO and Contact Form 7 dominate, WPML shows up often for multilingual agency and nonprofit sites, and Borlabs Cookie and Complianz appear frequently — consistent with a European, GDPR-conscious user base. It also has a real ecosystem of child themes, so a starting point rarely means starting from a blank slate.
What you'd use instead
Avada is the closest direct rival — same era, same builder-first approach, same agency-heavy audience, so it's worth comparing before committing to either. If the Avia Builder itself is the problem, GeneratePress and OceanWP take the opposite route: lightweight, block-editor native, and free to start, at the cost of the built-in demo layouts Enfold ships with.
Where it starts to hurt
WP Rocket turns up often enough alongside Enfold to suggest the theme's markup needs help to stay fast — a caching plugin isn't optional, it's a workaround. The Avia Builder is also a lock-in: pages built in it don't translate to Gutenberg or most other builders, so switching themes later usually means rebuilding from scratch. Update notices going out over a Facebook group and a newsletter, per the author's own description, feels dated next to how most premium themes now handle updates natively. And because it's not distributed through wordpress.org, reseller and bundled copies (like the VestaThemes-shared version we also track) circulate, which is a support and security question worth asking before you buy.
Questions worth answering first
Is Enfold free?
No. It's a paid ThemeForest license, bought once rather than rented as a subscription. There's no official free version on wordpress.org.
Does Enfold work with the WordPress block editor?
Not natively for layout. It relies on its own Avia Builder for page structure, so most Gutenberg block workflows sit on top of it rather than replacing it.
Is Enfold good for an online store?
It can run WooCommerce and some sites do, but the data shows it's mostly chosen for services, agency, and nonprofit sites rather than e-commerce-first businesses. For a store-focused build, a commerce-oriented theme is usually a better fit.
So, should you use it?
Pick Enfold if you're an agency, nonprofit, or professional services outfit that wants a lot of ready-made layouts and a one-time purchase, and you're comfortable working inside its own builder long-term. Skip it if you want a block-editor-native setup, plan to switch themes down the road, or need a lean, fast-loading site without added caching. For that second group, GeneratePress or OceanWP will serve better; for the same builder-driven approach with a different flavor, Avada is the obvious comparison.
Last updated 2026-08-13
