The FASTEST Shopify Themes

The Fastest Shopify Themes Summary:

Why are Some Themes Fast, and Some Slow?

Faster themes have a handful of characteristics that give them an advantage over slower ones: 

• They contain less code, which means they get processed faster on the server. 
• Their file size is smaller, which makes them easier to download. 
• They don’t rely on jQuery JavaScript library or javascript in general to render the page.
• They have cleaner CSS and inline CSS so the site can render faster.

All of these characteristics enable the server to download and render the site faster from the server, also taking the load off the browser so it can assemble the page easily and in less time. 

Slower themes usually need to download more JavaScript and frequently use off-shelf libraries and APIs, not necessarily optimized for speed such as Google Maps APIs and Google Fonts. 

When setting up your Shopify store, one of the first decisions you need to make is choosing your theme. Of course, the theme of your choice should be customizable, have a beautiful and responsive design, simple navigation, among other things, but one feature that’s often overlooked is theme speed. 

You know yourself when a website is slow to load you quickly lose patience and click away.

What Should I Consider When Choosing a Shopify Theme?

Before we go over the themes one by one, let’s see the key features that the best and fastest Shopify themes should include.

Website Speed

As we already mentioned, site speed influences your Google rankings, and with that, your visibility, conversation rates, and user experience. The faster your site is, the better ranking it will have and the more customers it will bring.

This is why in this article we included only the fastest Shopify themes right now, while also paying attention to design and flexibility.

Design and Flexibility

Speed is not the only precondition for a successful online store, as the store’s design is another important factor. That is why in our quest for the fastest Shopify themes, we were looking for those with appealing designs that online consumers will appreciate. And not only that, but we also ensured that the themes are flexible and customizable so you can show your creativity and create the online store just as you’ve envisioned it.

What Makes a Theme Fast?

Well, a fast theme is a small theme. A fast theme has clean CSS and fewer CSS files that are easily downloadable when the page loads. There is also less pressure from the javascript of the browser which makes the page display much faster.

A fast theme essentially has a fast rendering speed. Shopify, as one of the fastest e-commerce platforms, also offers hosting services with good infrastructure that contributes to the speed of your online store. That is why the fastest Shopify themes are quick to download and render very fast.

The fastest Shopify themes in detail:

We’ve broken down the details of the various themes we use and recommend below. Features and specs will change over time so always best to check the vendor’s website before deciding 100% on which theme best suits you.

1) Turbo

We can’t mention Flex without mentioning Turbo, its more affordable counterpart. Turbo is another super popular theme choice created by the award-winning team of developers called Out of the Sandbox.

Why is it so popular, you might ask? Well, the name of the theme says it all! Turbo offers amazing speed and performance power for your Shopify online store. As feature-packed as it is, this theme is perfect for online stores of all sizes. If you have a shop with a huge inventory, you will feel the benefits of the super-fast loading speed and caching functionality that will dramatically improve your user experience.

Sport and Ludicrous Speed Modes

How about a Shopify theme that comes in two-speed modes? Well, Turbo is built and optimized for speed, but when it comes to the performance setting, it enables you to choose between two options: Sport and Ludicrous.

In Ludicrous mode, the page preloading uses advanced methods to attempt to predict the next page the user visits and starts loading that page in the background. However, certain third-party apps might crash with this mode, which is why you can also choose Sport. This mode offers all the performance capabilities of the Turbo Shopify theme, without the preloading page technology but with seamless integration with third-party apps.

Features

Turbo comes in six urban and beautiful designs named by some extraordinary cities like Portland, Florence, Dubai, Seoul, Tennessee, and Chicago. These designs are packed with useful features that can be operated with intuition and simplicity, leaving you to showcase your creative and selling capabilities.

• Product sliders
• Mega menus
• Interactive mini cart
• Infinite scrolling,
• Customizable page templates
• Predictive (live) search
• Custom contact form
• Quick shop options
• Support for Shopify’s new Product Media

Verdict

How can you not enjoy something that’s created by the award-winning team at Out of the Sandbox? When it comes to fast and reliable Shopify themes for your online shop, this team knows its craft. Turbo loads pages very fast and is the perfect theme for a shop that has a lot of products to sell. It comes in two speeds, its functionalities are excellent, and the features are top of the class. We say YEY to Turbo! Go ahead, try it, and see for yourself!

Click here to visit the site for Turbo Theme

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2) Booster

Booster is yet another lightning-fast and conversion-boosting theme. Even though it’s newer and not as popular as others on this list, it has a lot to offer. Booster has a clean design and user-friendly tools that will help you not only increase sales and boost the speed of your store, but also save money on purchasing apps or investing in more expensive Spotify themes.

This theme is translated into 10 languages, so if you want to sell in Spanish, German, Japanese, Portuguese, etc, they got you covered. The excellent 24/7 customer support is another one of Booster’s perks.

This theme is easy to set up, you don’t need any coding experience, and you can install it in a matter of minutes. When you purchase a license for Booster, you will get all the necessary updates and support for a year. After that year expires, you can keep on using Booster forever, however, you will not have the privilege to get the newest updates and enjoy their functionality unless you extend your license.

Features

• Social proof sales
• Upsell and cross-sell functions
• Once you buy a license the theme is yours
• Megamenu functionality
• GEO IP currency converter
• a Multi-lingual Shopify theme – available in 10 languages
• Conversion-optimized cart and checkout
• Related products function for CRO
• Pop-ups

Verdict

This theme has excellent functionalities and saves you money on purchasing third-party ecommerce CRO apps. You can find several available demo sites on their homepage that will allow you to feel the opportunities that Booster provides.

Being fast is not their only attribute. Booster offers conversion optimization functionalities that are crucial for every online store, which makes it a winner in our eyes.

Click here to visit site for Booster Theme

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3) Flex

Flex is a game-changing theme for Shopify that’s beautifully designed and gives you ultimate control with its many features. You can configure it in several ways given that Flex has multiple layouts, excellent control of settings, and easy addition of custom CSS, which enables you to configure this theme in several ways. How about that for theme flexibility? No wonder this fast Shopify theme is called Flex!

Flex helps digital agencies and developers showcase their creativity and realize their ability to create something that their clients will appreciate. It also helps those with no coding experience to create the online store of their dreams. Flex is suitable even for merchants with small businesses who want to display their products online and continue to grow their brands.

Flex offers 13 template styles suitable for every industry. You can showcase the beauty of your products no matter the industry you’re in – fashion, food, cosmetics, technology, oils, plants, etc.

Features

Flex is packed with features that give you more control over your online store.

• Multiple Layout Options.

You can customize this theme to your heart’s content and let your creativity shine.

• Advanced CSS.

With Flex, you will be able to add CSS to sections directly within the theme editor. You can also apply styles to elements within a section without even having to go to another page.

• Icons + Elements.

How about adding visuals throughout your website with beautifully designed varieties of icons? You can add these icons to different elements including the announcement bar, featured promotions, texts, and columns.

Flex offers additional features for extra flexibility and control. Here are just some of them.

• Four header and footer styles
• Three product page layouts
• Mega Menus and dropdowns
• Control over margins
• Width settings
• Background gradients
• Button styles
• Testimonials
• Text columns
• Sticky bottom bar

Verdict

If what you’re looking for in a Shopify theme is flexibility and design options in addition to speed, Flex is the theme for you. As you can see, it’s packed with multiple features that offer great functionality and it’s made by Turbo’s creative developer team who takes into account their users’ suggestions. On top of everything, this top-notch e-commerce theme offers excellent 24/7 customer support, which is why we highly recommend it!

Click here to visit the site for Flex Theme

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5) Shella

How about a multipurpose Shopify theme that’s fast, fresh, dynamically developed, and has a solid price? We introduce Shella!

Even though this is another theme that’s suitable for various industries, because of its elegant and minimal design, it’s usually more popular in the fashion industry, which is why it’s used by online stores that sell shoes, accessories, cosmetics, and clothes. Shella is a flexible theme that offers 11 skins and 5 styles for your product page. It’s translated into 6 languages and has a variety of features that’ll help you optimize your site and increase your sales.

Features

Shella offers more features than your average e-commerce theme. All these features are essential for boosting your sales and improving your customer experience.

• Mega menu builder
• Builder section for homepage
• True filter
• Dynamic checkout buttons
• Headers and footers
• Infinite scroll on the collection page
• AJAX shop, AJAX search
• Size guide pop-up and page
• Popups for newsletters, coupons, promo, cookies policy, and purchase notification
• Option for subscription
• Custom product tabs
• Quick view and wishlist
• Revolutionary slides
• SEO-optimized
• Mobile-optimized

Layouts and Product Display

The extraordinary features for layouts and product display are where this theme goes the extra mile. Shella gives you the option for full-screen sliders and video players where you can showcase your products. The varieties of templates that Shella offers will enable you to display and customize the individual product pages but also the product category pages.

RTL Support

When it comes to language support, Shella supports Arabic, Hebrew Persian, and Urdu, enabling you to sell worldwide.

Verdict

Shella is a great Shopify theme that will leave your customers satisfied and coming back for more. Maybe it’s not the fastest theme on the list, but what Shella lacks in speed, it makes up for in extra features, functionality, and optimization. Using Shella will not just increase your customer satisfaction, but it will also improve your search engine optimization, which is a big plus for us.

Click here to visit the site for Shella Theme

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6) Fastor

It’s always a pleasure to recommend the best-selling Shopify theme for 2019! Fastor is still a cutting-edge theme with super fast loading times and features that will satisfy even the most demanding entrepreneurs.

It’s suitable for every industry, which is why it’s used by plenty of different businesses. This theme has 86 pre-made demos for you to use, 11 product page layouts, a growing number of available skins, and a supporting team that’s always ready to answer your questions.

Features

Whether you choose some of the general or more specific features Fastor offers, we promise that you will have the most wonderful experience.

• Design

Unlimited colors, fonts, pre-made skins, hover effects, etc.

• Layout

Spacing between columns, custom layout width, responsiveness, and layout type on each element

• Category

Sale, new badges, product number per row, product images, quick view, display elements on hover, default view.

• Product page

Auto-updated prices, image zoom, image size, image position, product social share, and previous/next product.

• Header

Quick search auto-suggest, various header types, advanced headers, vertical Mega menu.

• Custom Footer

Contact, about us, Facebook, Instagram, custom tab.

• Custom blocks

Contact page, product page.

• Widgets
• Age verification
• Facebook chat
• Multiple currencies

Full Oberlo Compatibility

With Fastor, you can import hundreds of products to your store in minutes. Oberlo will help you find products, add them to your store, or ship them directly to your customers. This dropshipping option gives you extra options for increased revenue.

Best Marketing Automation Platform for E-commerce Business

Fastor enables the user to display countdown cards to increase the number of orders, display a cookie notification bar, integrate Google Translate, add a favicon with the number of card items in real-time, and much more.

Clean Design and Speed-Optimized Code

Fastor has a compressed code that’s specifically designed to make your site load in seconds. That is why Fastor is considered one of the fastest Shopify themes on the market nowadays.

Verdict

What can you say about a versatile theme, that has a super-fast loading speed and features that make your head spin? We say yes! Go ahead and try it! This compact Shopify theme will give your customers a great user experience, so get ready for a boost in sales and conversation rates.

Click here to visit the site for Fastor Theme

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7) Debutify

Debutify is one of the best Shopify themes that you can get for free. The free version comes with several basic features that are enough for a beginner to set up an online store and enter the online market. You get an easy-to-use dashboard, default layout design that’s easy to navigate and edit, and the possibility to change colors and make your online store aligned with the colors of your brand.

This Shopify theme is suitable for all industries and optimized for mobile devices. You’ll get a clean design that’ll give you the opportunity to showcase your products to their best advantage.

Features

The Premium plan of Debutify comes with the following features and add-ons.

• Add-to-cart animation
• Cart countdown
• Cart discount
• Cart goal
• Chatbox
• Collection add to cart
• Color swatches
• Cookie box
• Delivery time
• Discount saved
• Inventory quantity
• Linked options
• Live view
• Mega menu
• Product tabs
• Quick view
• Sales countdown

Verdict

Are you a newbie in the e-commerce world? Then this theme is definitely for you! Debutify will show you what it’s like to run an online store, and if you are willing to continue, it will provide you with the premium features that come with the premium plans. But Debutify is not only suitable for beginners. This theme is powerful enough to satisfy everyone’s needs, especially with its premium plans.

Debutify is optimized for dropshipping, print-on-demand, and brand stores. It’s easy to install and only requires your Shopify URL. If you are in the market for something free, easy to use, and functional, we recommend you try Debutify.

Click here to visit Debutify.com

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Final Words

Choosing the fastest Shopify theme can get a bit confusing, but hopefully, we managed to make it easier for you and shorten your searching time.

All the Shopify themes that we have reviewed are super-fast and provide valuable features, functionalities, and optimization options essential for setting up and managing a successful online store. The most suitable theme for you will, of course, depend on your unique needs, but no matter which one you decide to go for, you won’t be disappointed.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What else is important when it comes to site speed?

Theme speed is pretty important when it comes to improving the overall site speed, but of course, it’s not the only factor. Other important factors in this equation are: 

• Hosting provider (hosting quality);
• Hosting location;
• The use of CDN (Content Delivery Network);
• The overall size of the page – page weight in MB.

How do I test my site speed?

You can try our free speed testing tool SiteSpeedBot.com. Once you put your site in there, it will give you a more detailed overview of what you need to improve and provide you with advice on how to make your site load faster. 

Does theme speed impact SEO?

The answer is a definitive yes. Site speed is considered a ranking factor for SEO and theme speed has a big impact on the site speed. 

In our years of experience optimizing sites for speed, we’ve come to the conclusion that the size of each page in megabytes (or the page weight) is a key factor here. So, a site that has a lot of pages, especially ones that go over the 3-5 MB limit, will most likely not rank well. 

Some of the techniques you can implement for making your pages weigh less are: 

• Image optimization;
• Use of lazy loading;
• Use of next-gen webp file formats.