DreamTemplate Premium Website Templates Review
DreamTemplate offers a truly huge selection of templates for a wide range of uses. They aren’t specialists in any specific niche of the design market, but they are a powerhouse that creates templates for all sorts of formats and different purposes. That kind of diversity could come at a cost, but DreamTemplate seems set out to prove that jacks of all trades can still be masters of some.
They boast over 7,000 designs, which is unreal, and it’s even more unbelievable that you can purchase a license to use all of them at once. With so much variety in front of you the biggest problem might be digging through it all to find what you want, but that seems like a pretty good problem to have.
How to Use DreamTemplate
First impressions are important, and DreamTemplate themes are placed right there on the home page, as soon as you arrive on the site. There are examples shown from several of their categories to showcase the types of layouts you will find within.
There is a lot here to look through, so you are definitely better off narrowing down your search as much as possible. It would be nice if there were more ways to filter the results, but you will certainly find multiple templates to suit your needs here and the process shouldn’t be too time consuming.
There is a navigation menu on the right where you can sort through the different categories of themes. The designs are sorted first by what the template is for (Website, Flash, CSS, etc.), and then by sub-category to let you get closer to the look you’re after (Abstract, Wedding, Music, etc.). You can sort the results to see the newest templates, or the most popular ones available on the site.
The search feature also works well. It allows you to narrow down your search to a specific category, and then there are advanced search options to filter your search even further. The results are displayed in the same style as browsing through categories. You see clean thumbnails that you can get a pretty good impression from.
With such a large selection it’s important that the site be easy to browse through and search, and DreamTemplate has managed to make what might be an insurmountable task a fairly simple and pleasant experience.
What DreamTemplate Has To Offer
The main draw is definitely the diversity in types of templates, and it’s important to understand the available categories. There are a large number of categories to go through, and it can seem a little ambiguous. It’s a bit simpler to break them down into two broader categories.
Templates for websites:
- CSS Templates
- Website Templates
- Flash Templates
- Flash CSS Templates
- Photo Gallery Templates
The above categories are all templates you can use as your website, or for a part of your website. Flash Templates, for example, are not just Flash files, but website templates which have prominent flash components. CSS Templates do come with full xhtml markup, and not just cascading stylesheets. All of the above options can be used to build an entire website, so poke around and explore without worrying too much about the differences between them if they are not particularly important to you.
However, there are three categories that can’t be used for websites. These are more geared towards internal business use.
- Word Templates
- Corporate Templates
- Powerpoint Templates
You can use the templates above for things like documents and presentations, rather than full-featured websites. Since you can buy access to all that the site has to offer in one purchase, being able to download templates like these for your online business is definitely valuable as well.
It can be pretty confusing to look through all of these options, since it is not explicitly stated or explained what these categories are all about until you really dig through them to figure it out. Don’t be overwhelmed by it all, though, because there are gems for your website when you take the time to sort through all of the options.
Information and Documentation
There is not a lot of documentation or help available on the website, but templates do each have their own installation instructions and helpful information.
The FAQ page should be able to answer most of your basic questions, while the Knowledgebase answers many of the same questions but is easier to search or sort by category.
Support, Forums, and Theme Support
DreamTemplate offers a couple of support options, but the lack of a support forum is a bit of a letdown. It’s always nice when there is a community for technical support, where other helpful users can chime in and potentially solve very tough issues.
They do have a contact form allowing you to ask questions directly, and they promise to get back to all inquiries within 24 hours, which is great and promises a very fast response time. We have not used DreamTemplate, so we haven’t had occasion to check their response time.
If you prefer, there is also a help desk with a ticket option. This can be a better choice when you have a difficult problem. More often than not ticket systems are open to be seen by numerous people within the company, who can work on the problem and get back to you with a comprehensive solution.
There is also live onsite chat support, where you can talk to either the Sales/General department (primarily for presale questions), or the Billing/Activations department if you run into a problem.
The Downside
The lack of public documentation and support is a negative, but that they offer support at all for such a huge range of products is impressive enough. The addition of a support forum, and publicly viewable documentation for themes, would really help users know in advance what they are getting into.
I also find the categories slightly confusing because the differences between many of them are very small and I don’t think they are explained well enough on the site. The sub-categories however are very finely organized to help you find a DreamTemplate theme which suits the aesthetic or motif you have in mind. My advice would be to pay more attention to those sub-categories unless, for example, having a particular Flash component to the page is of very high importance to you.
Pricing: It’s Best To Buy In Bulk
You have two options when buying your own DreamTemplate: You can purchase one single theme, or you can buy a membership and have access to the whole lot of them.
Single themes are listed with unique prices that can border on ridiculous, often going as high as $7,000. Very few people are going to be willing to pay a price like that for a website template, because you could easily hire a top end designer to build a theme to your exact specifications for that kind of money. Fortunately, it’s not the only choice.
DreamTemplates really pushes the much more affordable option of buying a membership and gaining access to all of their designs at once. This is a one-time fee of only $149 to gain access to over 7,000 templates and all of their resources for one year, which is absolutely a steal. That works out to about 2 cents per template. Crazy pricing!
It should be noted that with the full membership there is a limit on how many templates you can download in a single day, which is currently set at 20. This shouldn’t be a problem for any kind of user I’m aware of, but it is worth mentioning that the daily download limit does exist.
Our Recommendation
If you want a massive bank of resources to draw from, or just a wealth of options to use for your websites, DreamTemplate certainly has an enormous collection for you. Considering the sheer volume of it, you can’t beat the price.
About Mike Kelley