Salient and BeTheme are currently the number 3 and 6 on the Themeforest marketplace. These are both bestsellers. There are themes that are sold more often, but not via Themeforest. Let’s start with Salient without saying it would be better.
The Salient Theme
The Salient theme was already released in 2013 and therefore belongs to the old guard of WordPress themes. It is still in the top 5 on Themeforest today which is a very good sign. So we are dealing with a top theme here. The theme is multipurpose but with an emphasis on webshop construction. Let’s start quickly with this Salient review.
Salient's Ratings
Salient has a rating of 4.81 out of 5 as shown in the screenshot above. That is, to say the least, a great rating that few themes have. This is the average rating of votes cast over almost 10 years. This indicates that the theme is stable and will have few or no errors.
Salient + Woocommerce
Salient is very suitable and offers many great options for building webshops. Below is a good example of the new layouts for your products. Photos in the form of a gallery where the product information is always visible. Modern 2-column layouts allow product images to be seen efficiently and keep the information and buying options visible at all times.
Gallery Images
Or this new Woocommerce feature. Your users can scroll through product images without having to stop at the thumbnails and information.
Scrollable Images
As seen in the video below, there is a “show filters” button which makes searching easier. You don’t have to choose between sidebars or full-page layouts for your products. Give your customers the ability to filter when they need it and keep your products focused until then.
New Filer Lay-out
I’m not going to list all Salient’s Woocommerce features here. Take it from me that Salient is a frontrunner in Woocommerce possibilities and if you are going to build a shop, Salient is definitely worth considering. More Woocommerce info can of course be found on their own site.
Salient Review: Demos
The site for Salient talks about 400+ templates they offer. I’m assuming that’s a combination of sections and full site demos. I count a total of 33 full site demos for Salient. That is certainly not a large number, but the demos are really beautiful, time has been spent on them. The demos shown below are demos for webshops.
Salient's Pagebuilder
As a page builder, Salient uses a high-quality version of the WP-Bakery page builder, an old very reliable and good page builder. This visual front-end Builder is tuned with many extra widgets what brings the total amount of widgets to 65+. Personally, I think they would do well to make their demos available for Elementor, the most popular page builder at the moment.
Responsive Editing
As befits a real page builder, you can edit responsively if desired. You can make separate adjustments to the design for mobile phone, iPad and Desktop. Of course all popular page builders can do this, but I’ll just point it out.
Portfolios
Salient is also a very good theme for those of you who want to build a portfolio website. The theme offers countless different layouts for full width, with column and the separate portfolio pages.
Special Features
Divi is no longer the only theme that is packed with features. Most themes have copied the majority of these features and benefit from this well. I’m not going to list all the features here, that would make this article way too extensive which is not necessary. If you want to see more, check out their own site.
Mix text with Images
Scribble Text
Salient's Header Lay-Outs
With just 1 click you can install another header. You can choose from a wide variety of header menus as shown below. Salient also has a header builder that allows you to make further customizations to your header.
Salient Theme Review Conclusion
The conclusion of my review is that Salient is highly recommended and as far as I’m concerned is in line with the 3 top themes on Themeforest. It has everything a good website needs and more. The things you can do with texts in Salient are really great and the theme is perfect for building a shop. The only problem with Themeforest themes is that you would have to buy a separate license for each of your sites. This while themes such as Astra and Divi are just as good and extensive and used on unlimited sites
Let’s continue this BeTheme vs Salient comparison with the BeTheme.
The BeTheme
The BeTheme was already released in 2014 and has therefore been around for years. Meanwhile, the theme is one of the best-selling on the Themeforest marketplace. This is of course due to the constant improvements to the theme over the years. The most eye-catching feature of the theme is the huge amount of demo designs. Okay, let’s start with this BeTheme review.
The BeTheme ratings
The BeTheme has a particularly high average rating of 4.83 out of 5 at the moment. There are very few themes with a similar or higher rating. Buyers of this theme are therefore very satisfied, which instills confidence, especially since the theme has already been rated by 6400 people.
BeTheme 650+ Starter Sites
As mentioned before BeTheme has the BeTheme 650+ demos, an unprecedented amount. About 50 of them are for webshops, and more than 200 are built with Elementor. If that is your favorite page builder, you can immediately continue working on such a demo. In any case, all demos can be edited with their own Be-Builder.
More then 600 settings
The theme with the most setting that I know is The7 with 1250+ settings. The BeTheme has 600+ but this is still very high. The settings are divided into chapters, which makes it easy to find the right setting quickly.
BeTheme Review: Load Speed
All top themes load quickly these days. The image indicates 100% in Google Speed, but it does not state whether that is for desktop or mobile. The theme will certainly be fast, but I doubt very much whether it really gets 100% in Google without a good cache plugin. It seems very strong to me. The fastest themes are still Astra and Generatepress.
Custom Branding
Custom Branding options are, of course, wonderful for web design companies that want to appear to be using their own CMS and theme. The annoying thing about this theme is that it requires a separate license for each website on which it is installed. So it quickly becomes very expensive to use BeTheme for customer sites.
BeTheme's Shape Dividers
We have known Shape Dividers for years from the Divi Theme. Those are the ones who develop all the new gadgets, the rest like the BeTheme copies all that. Many people are not aware of this of course, but by taking over everything, the BeTheme does not become a Divi Theme of course. But the features are wonderful. Shape Dividers creates a beautiful artistic transition between 2 sections.
BeTheme Review: Masks
Another fantastic feature that they copied elsewhere. Masks cut out letters and give them a special background, with movement if desired.
BeTheme Review Conclusion
Listen, even though they didn’t come up with everything themselves, the BeTheme is a great theme. It contains everything and much more that you need to build a good shop or website. I also assume that this theme has aroused your attention. You would do well to take a look at their own site where many more features are shown. I cannot list them all here. The BeTheme is highly recommended.
Salient vs BeTheme Conclusion
BeTheme or Salient is not that big of a difference. Both themes have many and beautiful demos that can be edited with different page builders. Both themes are more than excellent for building e-commerce websites and load very quickly. If I had to have a favorite it would be BeTheme I think. It has some more gadgets and demos. Both themes require a separate license for each site on which you want to install it. If you have several sites, it is probably more economically sensible to work with Astra or Divi that can be used on unlimited sites and are also more stable themes.