eComSolid is a new Shopify theme that aims to shape up the industry. Offering a free community plan and a premium $19/month upgrade, is this sale going to boost your sales?
The creators of this theme (Gem Pages) have been heavily advertising it lately on social media. So I decided to pickup a copy and provide a review for readers of this blog. They also offer their own visual page builder which is a very popular app already.
This is what attracted me, look at how amazing this theme looks! Reminds me of the old Volusion templates that cost thousands of dollars.
What is eComSolid?
This claims to be a Shopify theme that is built exclusively for conversion and offers greater freedom for your designs. Additionally, by combining apps you won't need to purchase additional ones from the Shopify app store.
First impressions look great, this is definitely a theme that could be used for dropshipping, print on demand or building your own brand online.
I'd say this is a theme designed for larger stores rather than single product stores. By default there is multiple templates available, most recently 'DropBooster' was released.
How much does eComSolid cost?
Currently at the time of writing this article, they offer a free version called community. This means you can download and use the theme, with full customization right away.
It's rare to find a Shopify theme that offers so many features for free. As you'll see below, there's quite a few that other themes charge you for.
The way eComSolid makes money is through their Sales Booster Add-on's which is actually the main reason they recommend using this theme, so ultimately you'll need the premium version.
If you need any support you'll need to go premium.
Over the course of a year, the premium version, at $19 a month could become quite expensive compared with other themes.
However, you won't need to buy other mini apps which means your store will be super fast. Every app you install, will slow your website down.
eComSolid Review
The first impression is great, this is a mobile and SEO optimized theme, which is great. To download the theme, simply connect your store URL. This integrates and installs an app into your store so you'll need to accept a few permissions.
Fully Customizable
I was pleasantly surprised to see how the theme looks in free mode. There's no catches here, you get full customization, even in free mode.
Initially there is multiple layour options for customizing the layout of paes. You can use a visual editor to make changes. There's also a ton of pre-made template blocks you can implement.
Visual Editor
Speaking of the visual editor, this is possible on all pages and makes editing your website a breeze. You can rename collections, sub headings, image text, links and everything through the editor, rather than using the Shopify settings.
This makes it easy for anyone who might be a complete novice to make global changes to their store within seconds, no technical knowledge required.
Seamless Integrations
You might not need or want the free apps that they include, so you can integrate your own fast. The theme is built for global online selling and offers integrations with nearly all Shopify apps.
Some of these apps include:
- Currency converter
- Scarcity message in cart page
- Sales notification
- EU cookie bar
- Countdown timer
- Smart browser tab
- Social proof
- Email popup.
Here's an example of the countdown timer.
And here's an example of the sales notification..
If you were to add these mini apps from Shopify you might be required to pay an extra $50 per month, so even taking the $19 a month premium plan is a wise idea.
Of course the real benefit comes from the sales booster addon.
Sales Booster Add-ons
The real reason you'd want to buy eCom Solid is this addon which is in the $19 a month upgrade. My personal favourite is the ability to add the 'buy more, save more'
Take a look at how sexy this looks!
Additionally you can add a sales timer. I'm not a huge fan of the bulky size template, but it is customizable depending on your own requirements and can be changes to something smaller.
Additionally there's the aility to add a sales push notification to the bottom of the page. Lastly you get a frequently bought together addon.
When you add everything together you can create something truly amazing.
Gem Pages Page Builder
It's pleasing to see that eComSolid offers Gem pages within their theme allowing you to create amazing, high-quality landing pages and sales page within minutes.
Goodbye Clickfunnels, you can do everything you want within your Shopify store. Gem Pages is a strategic partner with eCom Solid.
Fast Theme
You'll be pleased to know that eComSolid is a fast loading theme. I did my own tests via Pingdom and GTMetrix and both returned a high result.
https://ecomsolid.myshopify.com/ (Test domain) - I note it's not running all the apps so I'd say the tests below might be not the full picture.
I'm sure you're aware when hosting on Shopify, a lot of the page metric scores are dependent on your hosting provider and often you cannot influence this.
Page load time was 1.28 seconds and a page size of 1.7MB, only 69 requests. This would have been an A+ but Shopify lets down the result with expires headers, larger than usual http requests and not reducing dns lookups.
GTmetrix returned a 3.1 second load time, 1.37MB page size and 66 requests. Again this was let down by Shopify with compression, browser caching and scaled images.
eComSolid FAQ’s
No you do not need to change any code. The app you'll install controls the theme and all the required components. You simply use the visual editor to make changes.
There's no requirement to update the theme. All firmware updates are done via their app which is already installed in your store. Unlike some themes that require manual updates, there's nothing to do here.
Simply enter your URL into the box, install the app and the theme and all the mini-apps will be installed. You can configure which apps should be enabled or disabled.
Final Verdict
eComSolid is definitely one of the best themes I've seen out there and the fact it's free, makes it even better. It's definitely a rival of Debutify which is another freemium theme, with premium upgrade options.
However, I think eComSolid has only a few premium features, yet they are charging $19 a month for them. There's many apps in the store that you could buy that have a similar outcome.
Regardless, for those that need the sales booster features, you can upgrade, and for those that don't you can make do with the free version.
The visual editor is great for beginners and the integration with gem pages is worth it! One click install and instant updates via the app, make this a great product.
I can't believe the free version is free! Get it now.
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Last Updated on April 3, 2020 by Rhys Dale
Rhys is the owner and chief editor at Im Rhys and is living in Chisinau, Moldova. With over 15 years experience in eCommerce and Affiliate Marketing he has started many successful 6 and 7 figure businesses. After successes with USA and China dropshipping, he expanded into building 70+ micro affiliate websites in 30 different niches that generate money on autopilot. He now helps his wife to run her social media agency as well as travelling the world at every opportunity.
Thank you for this review, and any information you give to help us out. Now there is a $39 plan. Finding a quality supplier that has prices to compete with, and fast shipping in the US is crazy. What would your advice be for this problem? And last.. If you had say 1500, and was trying to start, where would you spend this money, and where would you not? Im not sure if that made sense lol. Thank you Alisa