Welcome to this Acabado Theme Review. First of all, I’ve been an Acabado user for several months or even up to a year now on my websites.
When I initially purchased this WordPress theme I was very hyped about the features and recommended it to everyone.
But during the usage of Acabado, I noticed more and more things about the theme that completely reversed my initial enthusiasm, and caused issues with my site.
After trying all kinds of fixes I finally decided to change my default theme which resulted in fixing all of the issues at once.
Let me share my experience and give you also the alternative that I’m using now.
TL;DR. The Acabado Theme may be fast for mobile devices but it’s coded poorly and causes a lot of technical issues. Furthermore, it has problems with compatibility with common plugins and companies so it causes more problems. Other Premium Themes are fast as well and perform way better.
Scroll down directly to my best recommendation by clicking HERE
Let’s get started.
Contents
Income School
Income School is an internet company that teaches people how to make money online with blogging and Youtube. It’s created by Jim Harmer and Ricky Kesler, who have a great Youtube channel about SEO and blogging that’s focused on niche websites.
I’ve been following their advice for a while and they really know what they are doing in terms of SEO education.
So I was super hyped when they announced the “fastest WordPress Theme” available for WordPress1 websites.
I was always very undecisive on the theme I wanted to use so I was sure that two of the best SEO guys on the Internet will make a great product.
So I instantly purchased it when they launched the theme and installed it on my main blog.
But even though Income School is awesome for SEO advice, they’re not so great in building WordPress themes…
The WordPress Theme Acabado
The Acabado theme was created by Income School. Its primary selling proposition is the mobile speed for Google’s mobile first policy2.
To answer that right away. Yes, it is fast. But you also need to consider two things.
- It’s not the only fast theme available
- A speed test just using Google pagespeed insights and showing the snippet is not reliable…
But before we talk about speed tests, let’s see what else Acabado can do.
It has built in SEO and Schema for a couple of elements like book reviews, product reviews, recipes, and video reviews.
The only other thing that makes it special is its feature to optimize images for Pinterest automatically, and the anti-bounce protection feature.
The anti-bounce protection feature is a little window that appears when someone scrolls back up in your post. It’s not really that useful, to be honest.
A handy feature is the Google Analytics integration. If you don’t know how to add a code snippet to the header of your theme you can just add your Google Analytics ID and you’re done.
Installation and Setup
The installation is easy as with any Theme and you can quickly upload some demo sites, to see how the theme looks life and how it performs.
Everything else is pretty standard and available in every other decent theme that you can get for WordPress. The Acabado Theme also eliminates nearly all customization features, and cut’s out a lot of styling and arrangement options.
One cool thing is the hero image and additional tiles for your homepage that you can create pretty quickly and easily. But it’s not a unique feature, and I will show you a cooler option to manage that part of your theme.
Something that I really liked about the theme, is the tutorial that will show you how to install the theme and use it right within your WordPress backend.
All the sites using Acabado looks pretty similar. If you want to take a look at the design you can check out the pages below.
Why A Google Page Speed Insights Snippet Is Not Reliable
Meanwhile, everybody knows that mobile speed is an important ranking factor for Google. So all the established WordPress theme creators take care of that as well.
But the problem with speed tests is, that they’re done in a nutshell to show a screenshot of how fast a website loads. But that’s not the reality of things.
The theme is only one single aspect of page speed. Even if you have a cheap hosting provider, you can have an empty website, install a fresh theme, upload some light demo content and score a 99 in google pagespeed insights results…No matter what theme you’re using.
I’ve tested that myself with mediocre shared hosting on Bluehost and free themes and also got awesome results.
A fast mobile loading time is not a unique feature of the Acabado WordPress Theme. You can basically get a nice results screenshot with every other theme as well.
So loading up some thin demo sites to get a screenshot of a good score is not really representative.
To optimize for speed, you’ll need to care of the plugins, image optimization, right embedding of video and social media icons, and so on…
Everything plays into page speed. So don’t get fooled by a screenshot of a speed test with some thin demo sites.
Even though the Acabado theme can score excellent results, you can do that with seasoned and free themes as well, so it’s not really better in terms of speed.
So if you perform a speed test with some of the established themes and Acabado on a content-rich website, you won’t see any difference anymore.
Why I Don’t Recommend The Acabado Theme
I’m NOT a developer or designer or coder… Yes, I not how to style a headline on my blog with CSS3 and that’s about it. So this is not a coder opinion…
The problem is not Acabado’s limited functionality in terms of development and design.
While using the theme I encountered a couple of problems with my blog, that lastly showed how poorly the Acabado theme is coded.
Even though I really like Income Schools SEO advice and their high quality videos on Youtube, I think the Acabado theme is just a money making opportunity. It’s coded to fulfill the very basic need of having a fast theme and that’s it.
So let’s see what bothers me with this theme, and what I’m using now.
Table Of Contents Not Working Properly
When I started to introduce a table of content to my blog I did that with two different Gutenberg block plugins. The first was Ultimate Blocks4 the other was Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg5.
The first plugin didn’t work for unknown reasons. When I clicked on the links it didn’t scroll down the site and also couldn’t be toggled…
So I switched the plugin to the second plugin, switched every single table of content manually on every site, and after one day they didn’t work again…
I even asked a developer in my desperation to take a look at my blog and asked the support of both plugin creators but nobody knew what was wrong.
Sooo… I installed another plugin solely for creating a table of contents…
It kind of worked. The links were clickable and the website scrolled down, but I couldn’t toggle it. At least I had a table of content…
Then I switched the Acabado theme to the one I’m using now, and magically all of the plugins on my site worked like a charm…
Acabado is incompatible with three of the most common WordPress plugins. So if you’re planning to use a table of contents on your site (which you should for user experience) you’ll may have issues with Acabado.
Incompatibility With Thrive Products
Ever heard of Thrive Leads6? Or Thrive products? I guess so, it’s one of the biggest companies for WordPress tools.
A friend of mine was using Thrive leads and purchased the Acabado Theme a while ago from my affiliate link and recommendation.
But as soon as he installed the theme, on his blog, the whole website was broken because of incompatibility issues with Thrive Leads.
Just recently I asked the Acabado support if they recently fixed those issues after they rolled out several updates for the theme, but nope. Acabado theme still doesn’t work with Thrive.
So he refunded Acabado and got another theme.
Multiple Meta Descriptions
Acabadoi has built in SEO and Schema. That may sound nice but in reality, it creates conflicts with the meat description and any SEO tool. Yes, you can deactivate the built in Schema but the codes will still conflict with essential Plugins like Rank Math SEO.
It’s kind of counterintuitive to claim Acabado is suited for beginners but at the same time stating that you shouldn’t use SEO tools that will give perfect guidelines for content optimization to beginners. Isn’t it?
When performing an audit with Ahrefs software it also shows some issues with multiple meta descriptions. That’s because the Acabado built in SEO creates a meta description for the website, Facebook and Pinterest at the same time.
So it may sound fancy to have built in SEO but it causes more problems than just having a decent SEO Plugin like Rank Math or Yoast.
Social Sharing Buttons
The social sharing buttons are pretty cool. They are built into the theme and you can activate it from the setting.
The cool thing about that is, that you don’t need to install another plugin to activate social sharing buttons, but they also slow down the website as well.
Of course, it’s optional to activate social sharing, but you can’t design them, they’re super small and displayed only at the bottom of the website and they slow down the loading times.
I would rather recommend using a plugin like Ultimate blocks, so you can install only one plugin and active social buttons, table of contents, review rating blocks, and all kinds of other cool stuff with only a single plugin.
Btw…Another issue that occurred after Acabado updated their theme was the “opens new site” icon with every link that opens a new tab.
It ruined the look of my whole website because it deformed the look of every single button on every page I had on my site. The only thing I could do is ask for the old version and roll back the update…
Beginner Theme That Causes Issues For Beginners
As mentioned above the incompatibility of a lot of other plugins and tools will cause some issues that you be facing.
So maybe the Acabado theme is kept super simple to avoid overwhelm with design and features, but on the other side, it will cause confusion when stuff doesn’t work as it should.
And especially as a beginner you don’t want to deal with code or theme editors to see why…
Sooner or later you’ll learn more and more along your journey, and if you want to start customizing your side or collecting email you’ll be less excited about Acabado.
I was constantly dealing with errors in my Ahrefs7 report, but just look for your self what happened only because I switched to my current theme!
As you can see, the only thing that I’ve changed was the theme and it caused a dramatic increase in my overall health score for my website.
It’s not enough to consider speed as a ranking factor for search engines. Technical issues will confuse search engines and lead to worse rankings.
Also Read: Affiliate Marketing Side Hustle – A Beginners Guide
Affiliate Marketing And Links
By the way, if you’re an affiliate marketer you can’t promote the Acabado theme even if you own it. When I purchased it, I still could but Income School changed their terms and only allows members of their “Project 24” Coaching to promote it.
That means you first need to purchase a $500 program to get the affiliate links to promote it, even if you own it.
Related: Best Autoresponder For Affiliate Marketing
Conclusion: Acabado Theme Review – My Personal Recommendation
As you can see from this review now, Acabado WordPress Theme is by far not the best. When you look at comparisons of good WordPress Themes you won’t even find it in the rankings.
Just to clarify that again. I am not a developer, designer or highly skilled coder who needs unlimited design and customization options.
I’m a regular blogger who just learns along the way and made his experience with different themes and plugins already.
And to be 100% honest as a former Acabado user, if you’re looking to buy the theme, DON’T!
I’m a big fan of Income School but it’s a pretty noob theme that will cause trouble for beginners who’ll face technical issues, that no one can explain.
So please save your money and pick one of the more established companies.
My Final Recommendation
If you’re looking for a crazy fast mobile-optimized theme, that is suitable for beginners and pros and has great functionality, get Astra.
The Astra WordPress theme is one of the most established and known themes on the market. It pushed the health score of my website instantly, right after switching the theme. It gives me all the options (and way more) like Acabado but without the issues…
So you can just install the theme, pick a basic design with the free version and you’re ready to go. Or if you want to purchase the Pro version, you’ll have all the options available to customize and improve your website. You’ll also get some awesome ready-to-download templates for your website, that look amazing!
Of course, it’s compatible with all of the common plugins, so no more headaches with stuff that doesn’t work.
In terms of site mobile speed, they are as fast as Acabado, so there is no single point Acabdo would win this comparison…
If you choose to get on Astra through the link on this site, I’ll also give you the list of my top recommended Plugins and must-have’s for WordPress to have the best setup for website speed!
Just hit me up when you got the theme through the contact form on this site.
So go and check out the Astra Theme down below.
