Looking for an honest Customizr review?

Before pulling the trigger on Customizr Pro, you'll want to read this exhaustive Customizr review. Find out if the WordPress Customizr theme is any good in 2022, and if it's right for you!

This is a comprehensive look at the free Customizr WordPress theme and Customizr Pro theme. Below, you will find every aspect of Customizr explored and how the Pro version compares to the competition. Let's dig in.

What is Customizer?

Customizr is a WordPress theme developed by Presscustomizr.com, creators of the Nimble Pro page builder for WordPress.

As you can see, Customizr has over 800 5-star reviews, an overall rating of 5 out of 5, and over 60,000 active WordPress installations. Having piqued my interest, I decided to dig a little deeper to find out once and for all if Customizr is worth using in 2022. This is my Customizr review.

Customizr Review – Free

First Impressions

The free version of Customizr is pretty basic, on par with most free WordPress themes. Let's review the free version's customizer menu together.

My god, the font used in the customizer menu is atrocious! There is just something about it that I really do NOT like. Not a big deal, but I was immediately put off by it and thought it was worth mentioning because I can't help but feel annoyed by the overuse of italics. Quick, let's move on!

Global Settings

Customizr's global settings offer a decent selection of expected options. Some notable features include, but are not limited to:

• Easily place social links in sidebars and footer
• Enable animated link effect on hover
• Image lightbox effect on click
• High-resolution Retina support
• Dynamic image centering on any device
• Load smaller images on mobile devices
• Slider parallax effect
• Display author box at end of posts
• Smooth page scroll and commenting options

Front Page Content

Layout

As with most themes, you can set your home page to a custom page or a list of your latest blog posts, with the ability to apply a category filter. The free version of Customizr also allows you to choose from 4 different sidebar options, including:

• No sidebar – full width
• Right sidebar
• Left sidebar
• Both left and right sidebars

The option of having both sidebars enabled is a nice touch.

The Slider

Going through the menu, I had an awesome front page slider with scrolling parallax (that can also be disabled) within seconds.

You can create custom sliders by adding images manually from your media library, or auto-generate a slider from your posts, the ladder being my favorite.

Featured Pages

Customizr has a convenient little option to display featured pages underneath your home page slider. The free version allows you to manually pick 3 pages of your choice, edit the description for each page, and edit the button text. It's worth noting that this can be easily created with the free GenerateBlocks plugin.

Global Post Listings

Here you can change the number of posts listed, and the excerpt length displayed for each post in the grid. There are no options to change the style of the grid itself.

Header

There are a plethora of header options going inside this menu! While not as robust as Astra's header builder, the available options still allow for flexible header styling. Some of the more notable options include:

• Sticky header options
• Main header layout options (full-width, boxed)
• Display Main header top border
• Header behavior on scroll options
• Logo display options and locations
• Mobile device header options
• Menu expansion effect options and locations
• Topbar layout options (full-width, boxed)
• Social links on topbar

Overall, I'd say there is enough to satisfy most people. Even for someone as picky as myself, I could customize the header to my liking. Of course, I would still style it a bit more with CSS.

Main Content

In the Main Content options window, you'll find a myriad of customizable options and features, including:

• Many Breadcrumb options
• Authorbox locations
• Related posts locations
• Comment box options and locations
• Single page, posts, and archive layout options
• Post meta display options
• Gallery effects (lightbox, hover, custom)
• Page navigation options
• Image settings
• And sidebar social locations

What's noteworthy here is that you'll find many of the same options here that are in other locations as well. I suppose this is done for user convenience, and I think it's actually pretty handy.

Footer

Looking at the footer options, I can see that it is lacking in terms of customization in both the free version and the pro version. Here, you'll discover:

• Horizontal footer widget layout options (full-width, boxed)
• Footer credits layout options (full-width, boxed)
• Sticky footer feature (on/off)
• Back to top arrow feature (on/off/left/right)
• And footer style options (light, dark)

There are no options for customizing the colors of your footer area outside of the global color option. Although this can be remedied with CSS, a couple independent color options would have been nice to see.

Menus

This is your typical WordPress menu location settings. Nothing special or different to note here.

Widgets

In the widgets menu, you'll find 4 areas to add widgets to your WordPress theme, including:

• Right sidebar
• Footer area one
• Footer area two
• Footer area three

Again, this is pretty standard across the industry.

Advanced Options

Here, you'll find some different interesting options to play around with, including:

• Additional CSS
• Lazy loading images
• Minifying CSS stylesheets
• Defering Font Awsome icons
• Defering Javascript
• Preloading Google fonts
• Automatically adapting font size to screen width
• 2 theme style options

It's worth noting that the 2 theme styles include Modern and Classic and that the performance options are somewhat redundant, considering that most people will be a plugin already with these features.

Customizr Review – Pro

Now, according to their website, let's take a look at Customizr's premium features.

This feature expands on the Featured Pages module mentioned earlier. There is a huge array of customizable options, making it easy to build the area of the featured pages to your liking.

What isn't clear is that this is a stand-alone WordPress plugin. You could purchase this separately to further modify the Featured Pages module on the free version of Customizr. However, as I said before, this can be easily created using the free GenerateBlocks plugin, and it would be much more flexible, only limited by your own imagination.

I must also point out that this module is built into the Pro version, so if you aren't using it in the Pro version, it just added deadweight.

Wow, an entire module dedicated to displaying simple contact information in your topbar header? Where do I sign up? I do suppose it's convenient, at least.

There're a few reasons many websites don't use infinite scrolling. For starters, it isn't SEO-friendly because crawlers won't see anything that's loaded in this manner. Additionally, infinite scrolling makes it impossible to display your footer, leaving your readers infinitely chasing it.

Fortunately, Customizr provides a handy option to enable a “load more” button, which can be easily turned on and off, depending on users' preferences.

This is a great feature for customizing all of your website's font elements, but the free version of Astra has all Google fonts built in as well. This, however, is slightly more robust, but the same results can be achieved using CSS.

There's also an interesting option to disable this feature and unload it from your website if you so desire. I actually appreciate that this was included, but it somewhat negates the point of buying the Pro version. Doesn't it?

This is extremely helpful for customizing the post grid on your homepage. There are several different layouts to choose from, each with its own set of configurable options. To be completely honest, some of the effects are REALLY cool.

There are free plugins to achieve similar results, but they aren't as customizable, and most of them will cause site drag. This also isn't very easy to replicate with CSS. Personally, I'm using Flex Posts for my homepage because it is lightweight, but it's extremely basic. Could this feature be Customizr's saving grace? It just might be.

Yeah, this can be done with a small amount of CSS. Read my Super Easy WordPress and CSS Styling Tutorial for more information on how to do this.

I'm actually not sure what this is referring to. I've gone through every single option and didn't see anything other than the homepage slider options.

More fluff? I couldn't find anything related to this in the Pro options. From what I can tell by reading the documentation, is that it relates to the mobile hamburger menu, but I don't see any “cool effects” to choose from. You can either enable some hover effects or turn them off. Pretty lame.

This allows you to add header and footer scripts from the customizer menu. This is easily achievable with free plugins OR manually adding them to the correct files. And I don't know why on earth you would want/need to add Google Analytics through your theme. This should be done through a proper SEO plugin such as Rank Math.

You'll also get email support and access to their documentation (which is available for free users as well). However, free users will be directed to the support forums, while Customizr Pro users will get access to much better support through a support ticketing system.

Customizr Pros

This Customizr review wouldn't be complete without a pros and cons list.

Free Version Pros

• Responsive, modern-looking theme
• Sticky header (not often seen in free themes)
• Stylized post grid layout
• Box or full-width website layout options
• 4 sidebar options – none, left, right, or both
• 3 footer widget areas
• 2 Theme styles – modern, or classic
• Responsive homepage slider with parallax
• Several built-in performance options
• Built-in image light box
• Simple Featured Pages module

Pro Version Pros

• Convenient Font Customizer module
• Advanced Featured Pages module
• Incredible post grid customizer
• Custom Customizr gallery

Customizr Cons

Free Version Cons

• Only one menu hover effect
• Only one global color option
• Can't change menu colors
• Can't change footer colors

Pro Version Cons

• No additional theme color options
• Not many additional options to choose from
• Increased theme weight (more than double)

Reasons for Pro

Who Is It For?

Customizr Pro is better suited for designers who build websites for clients. Why? Because the licensing is absolutely incredible. The Lifetime Pro version allows you to enable it on unlimited websites and gives your clients access to lifetime updates and support. With Customizr Pro, anyone can quickly deploy a clean, modern-looking website in seconds.

Is It Worth It?

In my honest opinion, no. But most pro themes aren't actually worth it, either. Pro or premium themes add site drag to each and every page on your website, with convenience being the trade-off.

Just about every premium feature I've seen in a WordPress theme can be solved through lightweight plugins or CSS. In Customizr's case, the post-grid customizer is the saving grace.

Bottom line: If you're looking for a theme with a sticky header and a customizable post grid, then this theme is for you.

Customizr Theme Examples

Currently, the Customizr showcase displays a 404 error, but you can still browse some live WordPress Customizr theme examples here: 17 new websites in the Customizr showcase!

Customizr Page Builder

Although I don't usually recommend WordPress page builders, it only makes sense to pair Customizr with Presscustomizr's very own page builder, Nimble.

What is Nimble?

A free, powerful, and simple drag-and-drop page builder plugin, Nimble Builder is used by 45K+ live websites. With its lightweight performance, this is the perfect tool for building beautiful web pages that look fantastic on mobile devices and desktop computers.

Read more about Nimble here.

Customizr Questions & Answers

Customizr Theme Alternatives

GeneratePress

GeneratePress (the theme I am using) is one of the best WordPress themes I have ever seen. The premium version allows you access to their extensive site library, allowing you to rapidly deploy a wide variety of different website templates. And because it's built on their GenerateBlocks plugin, it's amazingly lightweight and fast! It puts Elementor to shame.

Astra

Another good Customizr alternative is Astra. The free version is lightweight and has an amazing header and footer builder. You can also import templates from their free template library, which for free, is pretty awesome!

Conclusion

Customizr is a respectable WordPress theme with constant updates and highly-rated support. Like most premium themes, you mainly pay for the licensing and support.

The free version offers enough flexibility and control to design beautiful websites with incredible speed. The downside is that, like their Hueman theme, they will all have the same look, functionality, and feel.

If you like my Customizr review or have more questions about the Customizr Pro theme, let me hear them in the comments below, so I can add them to the Q&A.