Why commercial template designers should offer free templates

Written by Sudhi | 10 May 2009

I recently wrote an article for Smashing Magazine outlining some of the best free and commercial Joomla templates. Each template that made the cut got four "dofollow" links from a very popular and high pagerank blog with a large, loyal readership.

The reason I bring this up - several commercial template designers had provided free templates. They don't make a lot, just one every year or so. But when they offer a free template, they are of the same quality as their premium templates. They also got links to their sites, and will probably see some sales originating from this article.

I looked at all the major premium template providers, and only two offered some free templates - Rockettheme and Joomlashack. They got links, the rest did not.

In addition, premium template providers should offer some free templates because it's the right thing to do. It is not good karma to take advantage of an open source frameworker and give nothing back to the community.