TheGem Theme Review: Next Generation Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme

TheGem is one of ThemeForest’s bestselling multi-purpose WordPress themes, with over 86,000 sales and a 4.87-star rating from more than 2,200 buyers. In our TheGem theme review, we’ll walk through what this theme can do in 2026, including its 400+ pre-built demos, the bundled Elementor and WPBakery page builders, and the native WooCommerce theme builder.

If you’re looking for a theme that can build a wide range of websites, from agency sites and creative portfolios to ecommerce stores and landing pages, read on to find out if this is the right option in our TheGem theme review.

Why Choose TheGem WordPress Theme?

As mentioned, TheGem is a multi-purpose WordPress theme. There are countless other multi-purpose WordPress themes out there, so why choose TheGem over the competition? Let’s find out in this section of our review of TheGem.

Creative power

One reason to consider TheGem alongside other popular multi-purpose themes is the creative freedom on offer.

TheGem has been built to help website owners who wouldn’t consider themselves coders or developers, but still want to make a high-quality, modern WordPress website. It’s also worth pointing out that, due to some of its features that we’ll cover soon, TheGem is also a good choice for experienced developers who are looking for a faster way to produce professional websites for their clients.

One way that TheGem achieves this is with its enormous library of website demos, or concepts, as they’re called here. When setting up your new site with TheGem, you can choose from over 400 pre-built demos. The demo content can be imported into your WordPress website in just a few clicks once you’ve made a selection.

These demos cover many types of website and we’ll cover them in more detail soon in this TheGem theme review. Suffice to say, if you’re looking for a true multi-purpose theme that offers a good amount of creative power, TheGem is a strong contender.

That’s not all that helps increase the creative power of TheGem. Other features include a detailed set of customization options, plus a selection of pre-built page layouts and templates. Two drag-and-drop page builders, Elementor and WPBakery, are bundled with the theme as well.

Best features of TheGem theme

As mentioned, the creative power of TheGem is one reason to consider this theme. There are plenty more.

To help you decide if TheGem is right for you, we’re going to explore some of the other interesting features of this theme. After that, we’ll walk through the process of building a website with TheGem so you can get a better understanding of how this theme works.

TheGem website demos

TheGem is focused on giving you creative freedom over your website. Even if you’re new to website management and design, TheGem has plenty of features that can help you build a website beyond your current capabilities and skill set. The website demos, or concepts, are at the heart of this approach, and there are currently 400+ of them to choose from across both Elementor and WPBakery.

These demos aren’t just simple tweaks to a core design. Each one can be considered a unique website design in its own right. The demos span multiple categories, including:

• Agency
• App
• Business
• Creative
• Landing page
• One page
• Online shop
• Photography
• Portfolio

There’s also a miscellaneous category that’s worth checking out if your project doesn’t fall into one of the above. In that category, you’ll find a real estate demo, gym and fitness demos, restaurant demos, and more.

The developers of TheGem have reportedly carried out research on the leading websites in a range of industries. The team then applied the key features from those websites to their demos to ensure any websites built with this theme have every chance of success.

The team also reportedly cooperated with a team of top web designers from the Behance creative portfolio repository. The aim was to ensure the demo websites that make up TheGem were of a high standard, while also making sure they featured the latest design trends. A particular focus on UX trends and best practice was clearly part of the demo creation process.

Overall, the demos included with TheGem are all very impressive. They really do look like unique websites, rather than multiple demos created from the same WordPress theme. The result is impressive, and the catalog has only grown over the years, scaling from a few dozen demos at launch to 400+ today.

Hopefully, there’s a pre-built demo or concept that matches your project. But if not, thanks to the customization options and tools, TheGem could still be the right theme for your website.

Customization options and tools

Despite the great selection of demos, there’s a chance you won’t be able to find one that’s right for your project. On the other hand, maybe you like aspects of multiple demos and want to combine them to create the perfect design for your site.

Thanks to the customization options and settings, TheGem has more to offer than just its demos. With its mix-and-match approach to web design, you’re free to pick and choose which page templates your site uses.

TheGem also ships with 60+ content elements and 250+ design variations across them. Each can be adjusted to better meet your needs, so you’re rarely starting from a blank page.

Page builder tools

If the customization options and settings aren’t enough, TheGem bundles two of the most popular drag-and-drop page builders for WordPress: Elementor and WPBakery (formerly known as Visual Composer). Both ship with the theme. That means you don’t need an Elementor Pro subscription ($59/year) or a separate WPBakery license ($64) to get the full experience.

Through Elementor’s visual editor or WPBakery’s front and back-end interfaces, you can customize any of the page templates that make up TheGem. Creating your own page designs from scratch isn’t a problem either. If you’re not a coder, or just want a quicker way of producing custom page designs in WordPress, having both builders bundled gives you flexibility most multi-purpose themes don’t.

Slideshow creation tools

TheGem also includes two premium slider plugins. Slider Revolution and LayerSlider power the animated slideshows that are included in some of the theme demos. With Slider Revolution and LayerSlider at your disposal, you’ll be able to create advanced slideshows and presentations for your WordPress website.

Both Slider Revolution and LayerSlider are advanced tools. Discovering how to use them to their potential can take some work. If you’re going to build your theme around specific plugins, it makes sense that the CodexThemes team chose the most popular and feature-rich options. Including two advanced slider plugins could be considered overkill, but it does mean you have options.

Other features of TheGem

CodexThemes put a lot of work into ensuring any websites built with TheGem load as quickly as possible. Site speed is increasingly important, both for search engine optimization and user experience. TheGem ships with a one-click optimization tool, plus built-in caching, minifying, and lazy-load support.

WooCommerce theme builder and ecommerce features

If you’re building an online store, TheGem includes a native WooCommerce theme builder. You can design product loops, single product pages, cart, and checkout layouts visually, without dropping into code. AJAX live search (including SKU search), variation swatches, AJAX-powered product filters, and a catalog mode option round out the ecommerce toolkit. The theme is compatible with WooCommerce versions 6.x through 9.x.

Header, footer, and mega menu builders

TheGem ships with dedicated visual builders for headers, footers, mega menus, popups, and templates. You can build a custom header without writing CSS, attach different headers to different pages, and design rich mega menus with images and product previews. The popups builder lets you trigger promotional or opt-in popups on scroll, exit, or timer, without installing a separate popup plugin.

Website security

The TheGem development team focused on making sure this theme is as secure as possible. Only the most secure and efficient plugins were chosen to become part of the TheGem package. This not only helps your website load faster, but also reduces dependence on third-party plugins and tools, especially those from unknown developers. The latest version (5.12.1.1, April 2026) also shipped additional security improvements.

Broad plugin compatibility and optimization

Although the CodexThemes team didn’t pack this theme with extra plugins to inflate the feature list, they did ensure that any websites built with TheGem would be compatible with the best WordPress plugins. That means you’ll be able to choose the plugins you want to use, rather than having specific options forced on you. The theme supports WordPress 6.1 through 6.9.

High-quality user support

Perhaps the most important feature of TheGem is that the CodexThemes team is dedicated to providing exceptional user support. TheGem is supported in English, German, and Russian, and the team has earned a 4.87-star rating across more than 2,200 ThemeForest reviews, along with elite author status on the marketplace.

TheGem user experience

Creating a high-quality website isn’t easy. The appeal of WordPress and themes like TheGem is that they have the potential to simplify the process considerably. So let’s find out just how easy it is to create a professional website in the user experience section of our TheGem theme review.

TheGem: getting started

After uploading the theme files and activating TheGem on your WordPress website, you’re prompted to install and activate the required and recommended plugins. This includes the premium tools mentioned already, such as WPBakery and Slider Revolution, along with Elementor and free plugins like Google Analytics and Mailchimp for WordPress.

Installing and activating these plugins only takes a few clicks. Then it’s time to choose from the selection of website demos. This step is optional and you can simply start adding content to your site. As the demos are one of the best features of TheGem, it’s highly likely you’ll want to use one for your website.

Import demo content

Many WordPress themes boast a one-click demo content import process. Depending on the theme, in reality, getting your website to resemble the demo can be tricky. TheGem features one of the most straightforward and flexible demo content importers around.

Through the options, you can choose to import all the demo content, including images and videos. Since this will import a large amount of content that could potentially slow down your site and make it more difficult to manage, this option is probably best for those who want to see exactly what TheGem has to offer on a test site.

Those working on what will be their live website will probably be better off importing just one of the individual demo concepts. The importer tool makes it very easy to see which demo you’ll be importing. Some themes simply provide you with a list of titles to choose from, so having a visual guide makes things much easier.

A final option is to carry out a partial demo import. This allows you to import the demo content without the media files, or only import the media files. Once your chosen demo content import process has finished, the foundations for your site should be laid.

Having this amount of control over the demo content import process is great, especially when combined with a clear interface. It really makes setting up your new website very straightforward.

Theme customization options

Once you’ve imported some or all of the demo content, you can either start adding your own content to your site or customize its appearance. The theme has a detailed set of options, covering everything including:

• Overall site layout settings
• Individual content layout settings
• Header styles and layouts
• Typography settings for each individual style
• Color controls for all aspects of your site
• Background images and color settings
• Social media profile link settings
• Plus the option to save and restore theme settings

The back-end theme customization settings give you a good amount of control over your website. Support for the front-end WordPress Customizer interface isn’t as deep, but most layout, header, and footer customization is now handled through TheGem’s own visual builders, which offer real-time previews of their own.

Content publishing

Since TheGem makes use of WordPress custom post types, adding content to your new WordPress website requires you to first select the appropriate post type. This makes managing and publishing the different types of content on your site much more efficient.

New content can be added to your site through the WordPress block editor. Alternatively, you can launch Elementor or WPBakery. Either gives you a way to create custom layouts for your content and then populate them with a range of useful elements.

Once you’ve imported the demo content, customized the theme options, and added some content, your website should be well on the way to taking shape.

TheGem theme pricing options

TheGem is available on the ThemeForest marketplace for $59 (Regular License) or $2,900 (Extended License, for projects where end users are charged for access). The Regular License includes lifetime access to theme updates and six months of support, which can be extended for an additional fee at checkout.

The $59 price tag also bundles in three premium plugins that would otherwise cost extra: WPBakery Page Builder ($64 value), Slider Revolution ($85 value), and LayerSlider ($25 value). That’s roughly $174 in plugin licenses included with the theme purchase, on top of full Elementor support out of the box.

TheGem theme review: final thoughts

With over 400 pre-built website demos and a track record of 86,000+ sales since 2016, TheGem is a great-value theme. It’s one that’s a good fit for a wide range of projects. If the type of website you’re building matches one of the demos, TheGem is a strong choice.

Even if there isn’t a demo that matches your vision, TheGem is still well worth considering. With detailed customization controls, mix-and-match demo content, both Elementor and WPBakery bundled, plus a native WooCommerce theme builder, creating your own personalized website with TheGem isn’t difficult. That said, those with less time might prefer a theme with a demo that more closely meets their needs.

Overall, if you like the look and feel of TheGem, you can choose this theme with confidence. With a 4.87-star rating, regular updates (the latest released April 2026), and detailed documentation, you’ll have what you need to make your website a success.

TheGem theme FAQ