X comes from Themeco, the same company behind the once-dominant Pro theme, and it's built the same way: a premium, subscription-licensed theme wrapped around its own visual builder rather than the WordPress block editor. Our analysis of live WordPress sites shows it's still holding its ground as one of the fifty most used themes we track, years after most of its builder-era rivals faded from view.
A Themeco theme built around its own builder
X isn't a free download from the WordPress.org repository — you buy it directly from Themeco, and that licence is what unlocks ongoing updates and support. It's been tracked since 2018 and counts as long-established in theme terms, having outlasted plenty of builder-based competitors that launched around the same time. Themeco calls it "an immensely powerful and endlessly customizable WordPress theme," which is the kind of line every theme shop writes about itself, but the customization claim mostly checks out: headers, footers and page sections can all be rebuilt visually, element by element.
Who actually ends up running it
Sites running X lean toward agencies and marketing firms, photographers, schools, sports clubs, nonprofits and religious or community groups — though no single one of these dominates, so it reads as a generalist theme with a soft pull toward small and mid-sized organizations that want a distinctive, one-off design without hiring a developer for every future change. English-language sites make up the bulk of usage, with a decent showing of German and Dutch sites too. If you're running a content-heavy blog or a large product catalog, this isn't where the theme's design effort is aimed.
Cornerstone, not Gutenberg
Everything visual happens in Cornerstone, Themeco's own front-end builder. Plugins like Revolution Slider and Essential Grid turn up constantly alongside it, which points to owners leaning on visual, media-heavy layouts rather than plain text pages. Contact Form 7 and Yoast SEO show up often too — standard tools for any small-business site, not signals unique to this theme. WooCommerce appears on a modest slice of installs, so a store is possible but clearly not the primary use case here.
What it does well
Real page-building freedom
Cornerstone lets you restyle almost any element without touching CSS — the same builder approach that made Themeco's earlier Pro theme popular with small agencies before X took over that role.
Child themes for repeat work
Support for child themes lets agencies rebuilding similar sites — churches, clinics, clubs — start from a shared base instead of rebuilding from scratch each time.
Where it costs you
Studying the sites running it, a familiar builder-theme pattern shows up: heavy front-end assets. Cornerstone, Revolution Slider and Essential Grid together load a fair amount of CSS and JavaScript, and older installs that were never re-optimized tend to feel sluggish next to a lean block theme. That's the trade-off common to visual-builder themes from this era — design flexibility up front, performance cleanup later. The subscription itself is the other catch worth flagging: stop renewing and you lose access to updates and support, which matters if you're building something meant to last without an ongoing budget line for it.
If X isn't quite right
If you want a builder-driven theme without the recurring licence fee, YOOtheme pairs its own builder with a free core and suits agencies used to a similar workflow. Themify Ultra is another all-purpose builder theme worth comparing feature for feature. And if the site in question is really just a simple business page or portfolio, OnePress does far less but loads far lighter, which is the better trade for plenty of small sites.
Questions worth answering first
Is X free?
No. It's a premium theme sold directly by Themeco under a paid licence, unlike most themes listed in the WordPress.org repository.
What page builder does X use?
Cornerstone, Themeco's own front-end builder — not the block editor and not Elementor, so skills built on other builders don't transfer directly.
Is X a good fit for an online store?
It can run WooCommerce, but only a small share of the sites we see use it that way. It's built more for content and marketing pages than for a full storefront.
So, is X worth it?
Pick X if you run a small agency, nonprofit, school or creative practice that wants a distinctive, one-off layout, and you're fine paying an annual fee to keep it updated. Expect to spend some time trimming Cornerstone's output if speed matters to you. Skip it if you want subscription-free software, a lightweight blog setup, or a store where checkout speed outweighs a custom slider. It's a mature, capable choice for the right small-organization site — not the answer for anyone chasing minimal page weight or free-forever tools.
Last updated 2026-08-09
