--- title: "Kadence Alternative After the Liquidweb Acquisition: 5 Themes Worth Switching To (2026)" url: https://nexterwp.com/blog/kadence-alternative-liquidweb-acquisition/ date: 2026-05-29 modified: 2026-05-29 author: "Aditya Sharma" description: "The kadencewp.com domain now 301-redirects to liquidweb.com. Here is what changed, what stays the same, and five honest WordPress theme alternatives (with a migration sequence that does not break your existing sites)." word_count: 3126 --- # Kadence Alternative After the Liquidweb Acquisition: 5 Themes Worth Switching To (2026) ## Key Takeaways - Nexter Theme ships at under 20 KB with zero jQuery dependency, making it smaller than Kadence's footprint. - Nexter offers a free tier that includes the header builder, footer builder, archive builder, and code snippets module, while Kadence keeps most of these features behind Pro. - Nexter provides over 1,000 starter templates compared to Kadence's roughly 90. - Nexter is built on the Gutenberg block editor first and includes 90+ Nexter Blocks as a separate free plugin on WordPress.org. - POSIMYTH Innovations independently owns Nexter, eliminating concerns about acquisitions affecting product direction. Last Tuesday I opened a Slack message from one of our agency partners. Three of his client sites run on Kadence Theme, his fourth was about to launch on it, and his question was short: "Did you see the kadencewp.com redirect? Should I be worried?" I typed `curl -I https://www.kadencewp.com/` into terminal, watched it return `HTTP/2 301` pointing to `liquidweb.com/software/kadence/`, and replied back the same thing I want to write here. The short version: nothing is broken, your sites are fine, but the brand is now part of the Liquid Web portfolio and that changes how you should think about long-term theme bets. That same week, a different builder in our community asked the bigger version of the question: "Is Kadence still independent? If it isn't, what should I migrate to?" The Reddit thread he linked had hundreds of upvotes and almost a hundred comments, and most of them were people running the same lookup he was, getting the same redirect, and reaching for the same five themes as fallback options. This post is the one I would have sent him. Below: what actually changed with the Kadence acquisition, what it does and does not mean for your existing sites, and a fair look at five WordPress themes that builders are switching to. Including Nexter, which we make. I will give you the honest read on each, the case where it is the right pick, and a migration sequence that does not break what you already shipped. What you will learn: - The verifiable proof that Kadence is now part of Liquid Web (you can confirm it in five seconds) - What stays the same on your existing Kadence sites and what to watch for - Five honest alternatives with real tradeoffs, not a self-serving listicle - A migration sequence that respects what you already built - The one question that decides whether you should switch at all   ## What Actually Happened: the Liquidweb Kadence Acquisition Trail Kadence WP started as an independent shop run by Ben Ritner and team out of Montana, shipping the Kadence Theme and Kadence Blocks plugin to over a million WordPress sites. In 2022 they joined StellarWP, a portfolio of WordPress products operated by Liquid Web. Stellar WP at the time included Restrict Content Pro, GiveWP, LearnDash, The Events Calendar, and several other category leaders. The pitch was independence preserved, scale unlocked. What changed in the most recent move is the visible brand consolidation. If you point your browser at [kadencewp.com](https://www.kadencewp.com/) today, the response is a 301 redirect to [liquidweb.com/software/kadence/](https://www.liquidweb.com/software/kadence/). The same is true for `stellarwp.com`, which now 301-redirects to `liquidweb.com`. The Liquid Web Kadence product page carries this FAQ line verbatim: *"As part of Nexcess, Kadence is backed by decades of experience building tools for serious web professionals."* Nexcess is Liquid Web's managed-WordPress hosting brand. So the chain reads: Kadence is part of Nexcess, Nexcess is part of Liquid Web, and the dedicated Kadence brand domain has been folded into the parent. You can verify all of this yourself. Open a terminal and run: `$ curl -sI https://www.kadencewp.com/ HTTP/2 301 location: https://www.liquidweb.com/software/kadence/ $ curl -sI https://stellarwp.com/ HTTP/2 301 location: https://www.liquidweb.com/`   This is not a guess and it is not a rumor. The brand domain is no longer serving content of its own. It is being rolled into the larger hosting parent. That is what triggered the wave of "Kadence alternative" searches in May 2026 and a long Reddit thread on r/Wordpress that has been the loudest signal of builder concern. **Source for verification: [liquidweb.com/software/kadence/](https://www.liquidweb.com/software/kadence/)** (the FAQ section that names Nexcess as the parent).   ## What Stays the Same, What to Watch For Acquisition headlines tend to push two reactions, both wrong. The first is panic. The second is "nothing has changed, ignore it." The honest read sits between those. **What stays the same in the short term:** - Kadence Theme and Kadence Blocks continue to receive updates on WordPress.org - Your existing license keys keep working on the sites you have already activated them on - The product team is still shipping. Recent updates have shipped on the Liquid Web cadence - If you are happy with Kadence today, your sites do not break on Monday morning **What to watch for over the next 12 to 24 months:** - Pricing changes. Brand consolidations historically lead to bundle reshuffles and sometimes renewal price adjustments. Read your renewal email when it arrives - Roadmap priorities. When a product joins a hosting portfolio, features that drive hosting attach (signup flow, onboarding, hosting upsells inside the plugin) usually accelerate. Features that do not drive hosting attach can slip - Support response time. The Kadence support team was famously responsive when independent. Watch your own tickets and trust the data, not the headline - License portability. Stellar WP / Liquid Web bundles have historically been generous. That is the norm to keep an eye on The right question is not "should I rip Kadence out today." The right question is "do I want my next ten client sites to start on a brand that just got absorbed into a hosting company, or do I want options on the table." That is the question this rest of this post is built to answer.   ## What Kadence Got Right (and Why You Liked It in the First Place) Before we look at where to go, we need a clean read on what Kadence does well. Picking an alternative without naming the qualities you want to keep is how you end up worse off. So here is the honest pros list, the one any switcher should bring with them. - **Header and footer builder that actually feels native.** The Kadence header builder is one of the cleanest in the FSE-era theme market. Drag rows, drop columns, set sticky behavior per device. Most alternatives ship something similar today, but Kadence set the bar - **Page speed out of the box.** The theme weighs in around 40 KB on a fresh install and rarely needs heavy optimization to pass Core Web Vitals on a decent host - **Strong free tier.** Both the theme and Kadence Blocks have a free tier that is genuinely usable. Builders could ship client sites on the free tier and most of them would not notice - **Starter templates.** The Kadence starter library covers most small-business and agency niches with reasonable taste. Import, swap copy, ship - **WooCommerce blocks.** Their WooCommerce-specific block set is meaningfully better than the WordPress core blocks, especially the product loops and the mini cart If you were looking at Kadence and weighing it against another theme, these are the five things that probably tipped you toward it. The job of any honest alternative is to match these qualities or beat them. So that is the lens for the next section.   ## 5 Themes Worth Switching To After the Liquidweb Acquisition These are not the only options on the market. They are the five that come up over and over again in the threads I have been reading and in the migrations I have been watching agency partners run. I have listed them in alphabetical order so you can read across without ranking bias, and I have flagged for each one the specific Kadence quality it replaces best. ### 1. Astra Theme Astra is the closest like-for-like swap for a Kadence builder who wants the same "starter template plus customizer" feel without the ownership question. It is built by Brainstorm Force (an independent product company), has over a million active installs, and ships with one of the largest starter template libraries in the ecosystem. **Where it beats Kadence:** larger template library, more familiar to clients who have used WordPress themes for years, well-established Astra Pro upgrade path **Where it falls short:** the free tier is more restricted than Kadence (some core layout options require Pro), and the header builder lives behind the paid tier on most realistic configurations **Pick this if:** you have agency clients who are already familiar with Astra, you want a low-risk lateral move, or your sites lean on a starter template workflow ### 2. Blocksy Blocksy from Creative Themes is the "block-first" alternative most builders default to when they want something that feels modern and is genuinely fast. It was built around the WordPress block editor from day one and the customization model is more granular than Astra or GeneratePress. **Where it beats Kadence:** more design freedom inside the customizer, very strong dark mode handling, generous free tier that includes the header builder and the footer builder **Where it falls short:** the learning curve is steeper because there are more controls to learn, and the WooCommerce block set is not at Kadence's level **Pick this if:** you want maximum customizer flexibility, your sites lean toward content and portfolios rather than ecommerce, and you do not mind investing a few hours in learning the option panel ### 3. GeneratePress GeneratePress is the speed purist's pick. The theme is sub-30 KB on the wire, the code is famously clean, and the team behind it (Tom Usborne and a small crew) has shipped on a steady cadence for over a decade. They publish their active install count openly: 600,000+ active installs and over seven million lifetime downloads. **Where it beats Kadence:** raw performance numbers on real Core Web Vitals tests, code clarity that developers can read without surprises, conservative release cadence (no breaking changes mid-cycle) **Where it falls short:** intentionally minimal in the design department. You will not get a Kadence-style template library or a deep block plugin out of the box. The free tier is also limited compared to Kadence Free **Pick this if:** performance is your number one criterion, your sites are content-heavy (blogs, documentation, knowledge bases), or you are a developer who values reading the source ### 4. Hello Elementor Hello is the official lightweight theme published by Elementor. It is the fallback that gets recommended on every "Kadence alternative" Reddit thread because it is free forever, ships in under 30 KB, and has over a million active installs. The catch is that it is intentionally bare on its own (it does not include a header builder, a customizer with many panels, or a starter library), because the assumption is that Elementor (or another page builder) will own the layout layer. **Where it beats Kadence:** stays out of the way, zero cost, very small footprint **Where it falls short:** it is not a full theme replacement on its own. You need a page builder or a deep block plugin to make it do what Kadence does out of the box. So it is more accurately a "theme foundation" than a Kadence swap **Pick this if:** you are already invested in a page builder workflow, you want a clean foundation with no opinions, or your sites mostly run on a single landing-page-style layout ### 5. Nexter (the one we make) I am going to be upfront. Nexter is built by my team at POSIMYTH, so this listing is not neutral. What I can do is name where Nexter actually beats Kadence on the qualities that matter to a switcher, and where it does not. **Where it beats Kadence on the things builders care about:** - The theme core ships at under 20 KB with zero jQuery dependency, smaller than Kadence's footprint - The free tier includes the header builder, footer builder, archive builder, and code snippets module (Kadence keeps most of these behind Pro) - 1000+ starter templates compared to Kadence's roughly 90+ - Built on the Gutenberg block editor first, with 90+ Nexter Blocks shipping as a separate free plugin on WordPress.org - Independent ownership. POSIMYTH is a self-funded product company. No acquisition story to worry about **Where it does not beat Kadence:** - Brand recognition. Kadence has been around for longer and shows up in more "best theme" lists. Nexter is still in the awareness-building phase - WooCommerce block depth. Kadence's WooCommerce block set is more polished than ours today, though our roadmap is closing the gap - YouTube tutorial volume. There are more Kadence walkthroughs on YouTube right now than Nexter walkthroughs. That changes over time but it is true today **Pick this if:** you want the broadest free tier in the alternatives field, you care about ownership independence after the Liquid Web acquisition story, or you are running multi-site builds where the all-in-one bundle (theme + blocks + extensions) at one price changes the math for you. Full feature breakdown is on the [Nexter homepage](https://nexterwp.com/) and a direct head-to-head is at [Nexter vs Kadence](https://nexterwp.com/blog/nexter-vs-kadence/).   ## Quick Comparison: 5 Kadence Alternatives at a Glance | Criterion | Astra | Blocksy | GeneratePress | Hello Elementor | Nexter | | --------- | ----- | ------- | ------------- | --------------- | ------ | | Theme weight (approx) | ~50 KB | ~45 KB | ~30 KB | ~30 KB | ~20 KB | | Header builder in free tier | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | | Starter template count | 300+ | 40+ | 90+ | 20+ | 1000+ | | Block plugin included | Spectra (separate) | Blocksy Companion | GenerateBlocks (separate) | None bundled | Nexter Blocks (free, 90+ blocks) | | Active installs | 1M+ | 200K+ | 600K+ | 1M+ | 50K+ | | Ownership | Brainstorm Force (independent) | Creative Themes (independent) | GeneratePress LLC (independent) | Elementor (independent) | POSIMYTH (independent) | | Best replacement for which Kadence quality | Template library | Customizer depth | Raw speed | Foundation layer | Free-tier breadth + ownership |   If you want the broader, time-independent comparison that does not center on the acquisition news, the long-form post we keep updated is [Best Kadence Theme Alternatives](https://nexterwp.com/blog/kadence-theme-alternatives/). It covers a slightly different set of criteria and a wider competitive field.   ## A Migration Sequence That Does Not Break Your Existing Sites If you decide to switch, here is the sequence I would actually run for an agency that has five or more Kadence client sites in production. It is the same sequence we are running for the partner whose Slack message opened this post. - **Audit, do not move.** Before touching anything, list every site running Kadence, note which custom child theme code lives on it, and capture the Kadence settings exports (Customizer settings, Kadence Theme settings, Kadence Blocks settings) for every site. This takes 30 minutes and saves a weekend later - **Stage your top alternative on one staging site.** Pick the candidate that came out of the five-theme section above and install it on the staging copy of your smallest, simplest client site. Not your biggest. Smallest. The goal is to learn the new theme's pattern in two hours, not three days - **Rebuild one page, not the whole site.** Inside staging, rebuild the homepage in the new theme. Time it. If your alternative cannot match the visual outcome in under three hours for a simple layout, it is the wrong alternative - **Run Core Web Vitals before and after.** PageSpeed Insights on both versions. Note the LCP, INP, and CLS deltas. Some alternatives are faster than Kadence, some are slower. You want the number, not the marketing claim - **Decide once, document once, repeat.** If the staging migration confirms the alternative, write a one-page internal playbook with the steps that worked. Then run the same playbook on the rest of your client sites in priority order: lowest-traffic first, highest-traffic last - **Leave the Kadence licenses active.** Do not cancel the renewals immediately. You may need to revert one site, and the cost of holding the license for one more year is far lower than the cost of being locked out of an emergency rollback If you are a single-site builder rather than an agency, run steps 1 through 4 on your one site and skip the rest. The whole thing should take a Saturday afternoon.   ## The One Question That Decides Whether You Should Switch If you read every section above and you are still unsure, here is the question that actually decides it. Not the acquisition. Not the theme weight. Not the template count. **Are you currently building new sites, or maintaining existing ones?** If you are maintaining existing Kadence sites and they are stable, you do not need to switch today. Watch the next two renewal cycles, watch the roadmap, and decide later. Forcing a migration on a site that is shipping fine is a way to introduce risk for no reason. If you are starting new sites this quarter, the acquisition is a genuine reason to pause and re-evaluate. Picking a theme is a multi-year commitment. The brand domain disappearing into a hosting parent is a signal worth weighing alongside speed, features, and price. That is when one of the five alternatives in this post becomes the better starting bet. And if you are weighing what a Gutenberg-first, independently-owned, broad-free-tier theme looks like in practice, Nexter is the one I would put on your staging site first. Not because we make it. Because the criteria above (free tier breadth, ownership independence, sub-20 KB footprint) are exactly the ones the acquisition trail puts back on the evaluation table.   ## Try Nexter Free, or Compare Head-to-Head Nexter ships free on WordPress.org and the Nexter Blocks plugin (90+ Gutenberg blocks) is also free on WordPress.org. If you want the bundle that includes the WooCommerce builder, the 50+ extensions, and the 1000+ starter templates, the premium plan starts at $39 a year with a 14-day refund. If you want to see how it compares head to head against the theme you are leaving, the deep comparison is at [Nexter vs Kadence](https://nexterwp.com/blog/nexter-vs-kadence/). [Try Nexter (Free + Premium)](https://nexterwp.com/pricing/)   ## Suggested Reading - [Best Kadence Theme Alternatives [With Comparison Table]](https://nexterwp.com/blog/kadence-theme-alternatives/). The evergreen comparison post that does not center the acquisition news. Use this if you want a broader feature-by-feature breakdown - [Nexter vs Kadence: 21+ Feature Comparisons](https://nexterwp.com/blog/nexter-vs-kadence/). The direct head-to-head with the feature-by-feature scoring - [Astra vs GeneratePress: 21+ Feature Comparisons](https://nexterwp.com/blog/astra-vs-generatepress/). If you are choosing between Astra and GeneratePress as your switch target, this one resolves it - [WooCommerce vs WordPress](https://nexterwp.com/blog/woocommerce-vs-wordpress/). Relevant if you are migrating an ecommerce site and want a fresh read on the stack decisions before you pick a theme - [Breakdance vs Elementor](https://theplusaddons.com/blog/breakdance-vs-elementor/). If your Kadence site relies on a page builder layer and you are weighing the builder decision alongside the theme decision   ## Wrapping Up The Kadence-into-Liquid-Web move is not a crisis. Your existing sites are fine. But it is a real signal worth weighing if you are about to pick a theme for the next two years of work. The honest read is: Kadence is now part of a hosting portfolio, the brand domain has been folded in, and the optionality you had as a builder just got a little narrower. The five alternatives above are the ones I would actually put on a staging site if I were running the evaluation today. Run them through the migration sequence, time the page rebuild, check the Core Web Vitals, and decide on the data rather than on the headline. That is how my team is helping our agency partners think about it, and it is the answer I sent back on Slack. If you want updates as we publish more migration playbooks for the post-acquisition theme market, the [Nexter site](https://nexterwp.com/) has a subscribe form on the homepage. Drop your thoughts in the comments below, and if you are mid-migration on a Kadence site right now, name your alternative pick and the one thing that is making you hesitate. I read every comment on these posts.