We create fast, beautiful websites
Competing for organic traffic is hard.
Publishing a high-traffic, ad-supported blog has unique challenges. Of course your site should be beautiful and fast, but it should also be designed mobile-first, follow SEO guidelines, pass accessibility compliance, fully utilize the WordPress block editor, and be remarkably easy to manage.
Choosing the wrong technology partner can make or break your business (and your sanity).
You need a trustworthy partner; consider who our team has been trusted by…
…plus about a hundred more food blogs, lifestyle blogs, travel blogs, craft blogs, beauty and fashion blogs, personal finance blogs, law blogs, health blogs, and tech blogs.
If you publish content on the web, you can trust us to help you grow and thrive.
How CultivateWP can help.
We have three approaches for designing and building your custom WordPress theme.
All three have the same features & functionality, the same project scope, and offer the same technical solution. The difference between them is how much time is necessary to achieve your visual design goals.
Cultivate VIP is our traditional theme service (12-16 weeks). It’s the best choice when your brand is so unique it needs to shine through every element of the site. Cultivate VIP powers 25% of the top 100 food blogs on the web.
Cultivate Pro is our rapid theme service (4-6 weeks). Rather than starting from a blank page, we start with good choices based on our years of experience. We work with you to select the styles, elements, and blocks to make it your own, then build a custom theme based on your selections. We believe Cultivate Pro is the best fit for 95% of food bloggers who want a custom theme.
Cultivate Go is our semi-custom theme service (1 week). We guide you through a variety of theme options, then customize it with your logo, brand colors, typography, and content to make it your own. We believe Cultivate Go is the best low-cost theme available that doesn’t compromise on technology.
Don’t take our word for it.
Speak with some of our clients. They have firsthand experiences and opinions. Trust their honest feedback to see why we’re the reliable choice.
“CultivateWP somehow managed to take the chaos of my vision and turn it into a highly polished, super user-friendly, SEO-driven design that I couldn’t be happier with. Their designs go way beyond just looks, so it’s awesome knowing that all the bases are covered. Plus, the fact that the CultivateWP team is always there, ready to help and cater to our needs in this constantly changing industry, is priceless.”
Beth Moncel, Budget Bytes
“From the day my new theme launched, I have noticed nothing but positive changes. In addition to an all-around better user experience, I’ve noticed higher RPMs and increased email signups. I also love the functionality I have on the backend with the Cultivate Pro blocks that allow me to display my most relevant and helpful content. I couldn’t be more pleased!”
Erin Collins, Meaningful Eats
“Cultivate Pro is solid, easy, and high quality. I think that it’s a huge benefit to any food blogger wanting to bridge the gap between mass-market themes and expensive custom themes.”
Rachel Farnsworth, The Stay at Home Chef
“I’m so happy with my blog redesign! Not only am I incredibly impressed with the sleek look and feel of my new site, the functionality is what gets me. It’s so easy to create new posts, it’s so easy to organize my content, and it’s a lot easier for my readers to find what they need.“
Karen Gifford, The Food Charlatan
“I truly enjoyed working with Bill and Duane. It was done so quickly and on time! All my wishes came true as we worked together and any questions answered within a matter of hours. Amazing customer service and I love my new pink website so much and get lots of compliments on it! Not to mention it’s a true pleasure to work with nice people.”
Olena Osipov, iFood Real
“We have had a wonderful experience working with CultivateWP! Bill and Duane are communicative, responsive, and solution-oriented. Not only is our new site beautiful, but it functions very well and we’ve seen strong improvements in terms of the site’s backend health. We’re very pleased we chose CultivateWP for our website redesign and would happily work with them again on future projects!”
Maegan Brown, The Baker Mama
“I knew what to expect every step of the way, deadlines were always met, and the project launched on time. I have received nothing but praise from my readers for a site that is easy to use, easy to navigate and most of all, it’s fast!”
Holly Nilsson, Spend with Pennies
All our themes are:
Mobile First
Designed how your audience sees it.
Our mobile-first design ensures your site looks great and functions seamlessly on any device, putting the needs of your mobile users first.
Accessible
Universally accessible, regardless of abilities.
We bake in accessibility from day one and test through design and development so your site is inclusive to all users.
SEO-Friendly
Created following SEO expert guidance.
We work closely with industry SEO experts, integrating their guidance into every design and development decision we make.
Theme.json
Fully tokenized from design to code.
Our design and development process is interlinked through a fully tokenized design+code system utilizing theme.json in WordPress.
Gutenberg
Thoroughly utilizing the WordPress block editor.
We fully utilize the block editor with a backend editing experience that matches the frontend on posts, pages, categories, after-post, and sidebars.
Coding Standards
Built the right way with WordPress standards.
We’re all about doing things the WordPress way, follow coding standards, and keep up-to-date with the latest features.
Pagespeed
Designed & developed to be uncommonly fast.
Instead of starting with design and then trying to optimize for speed, we begin with smart design choices that can be built to be fast from the start.
Core Web Vitals
Able to pass Core Web Vitals with flying colors.
Core web vitals play a crucial role in determining your website's ranking, so we make sure your site is designed and developed to ace every metric.
Frequently Asked Questions
We have three WordPress theme services (Cultivate Go, Cultivate Pro, and Cultivate VIP) depending on your budget and time constraints. We also offer optional logo and branding packages to accompany your new theme. Finally, we offer ongoing support for our themes. Our aim is to be your long-term technology partner.
All our services have the same features & functionality, the same project scope, and offer the same technical solution. The difference between them is how much time is necessary to achieve your visual design goals.
• Cultivate VIP is our traditional theme service (12-16 weeks). It’s the best choice when your brand is so unique it needs to shine through every element of the site. Cultivate VIP powers 25% of the top 100 food blogs on the web.
• Cultivate Pro is our new rapid theme service (4-6 weeks). Rather than starting from a blank page, we start with good choices based on our years of experience. We work with you to select the styles, elements, and blocks to make it your own, then build a custom theme based on your selections. We believe Cultivate Pro is the best fit for 95% of food bloggers who want a custom theme.
• Cultivate Go is our new semi-custom theme service (1 week). We guide you through a variety of theme options, then customize it with your logo, brand colors, typography, and content to make it your own. We believe Cultivate Go is the best low-cost theme available that doesn’t compromise on technology.
Our theme services are available at three different price points, all of which have the same great features & functionality, the same project scope, and offer the same technical solution.
• Cultivate VIP starts at $45k, with most themes coming in around $48k. Our VIP waitlist is typically around 4 months, and once the project is started it usually takes 12–16 weeks to complete.
• Cultivate Pro starts at $16k, with most themes coming in around $17k. Our Pro waitlist is typically around 2 months, and once the project is started it usually takes 4–6 weeks to complete.
• Cultivate Go starts at $5k, with most themes coming in around $6k. Our Go waitlist is typically around 3 weeks, and once the project is started it usually takes 1 week to complete.
A new logo & brand often goes hand-in-hand with a website redesign. We have three branding services, depending on your needs.
• Full Brand Package ($7,500) An intensive 4-week design process where we’ll create a completely new concept for your brand—all optimized for web use and accessibility, of course. You’ll receive an all-new logo in multiple orientations, new supporting graphical elements, all-new brand colors, and a shareable brand guidelines booklet (PDF) along with your logo in a full compliment of file formats. Includes two rounds of logo revisions which is usually plenty, but you can add on additional rounds (hourly) if you’d like. This is usually the best option for bloggers looking for a complete, comprehensive rebrand.
• Standard Brand Package ($2,500) A quick 1-week design refresh of your brand where we’ll create a new text-based wordmark using certain conceptual aspects of your existing logo—all optimized for web use and accessibility, of course. While it won’t contain an illustrative logomark (think the Target logo, or the Nike Swoosh) it will communicate your brand name in a succinct and professional manner. You’ll receive a new logo with new brand colors in a full compliment of file formats. Includes two rounds of logo revisions which is usually plenty, but you can add on additional rounds (hourly) if you’d like. This is usually the best option for successful bloggers who want a refresh but don’t want to lose their valuable brand equity.
• Guided Brand Colors (performed hourly, typically $250–$500 total) Our designers will help you select accessible color palette based on your current logo and design guidance. This is usually the best option for bloggers who want to keep their existing logo but need to update their colors for accessibility purposes.
Of course if you’re happy with your current logo, we’re more than happy to keep it! Many successful bloggers, especially those with a rich site history, don’t want or need to change their logo. We absolutely do not require you to rebrand your site for a new theme. We also don’t require you work with us for a new logo or rebrand. We’ll happily work with whomever you choose and can provide guidance to make sure they create something that works well with your new theme. Heck, we’ll even recommend some logo designers for you if you’d like!
Every website we launch includes CultivateWP Standard Support, which is very straightforward. Need something? Maybe a new block, or perhaps style revisions? Any kind of creative work? Just email us! We only charge for actual time spent performing design/development work—that means no ongoing monthly retainers, and no invoices for time spent on emails or calls. We also have a Priority Support option.
Many of our clients also use a tech support company like NerdPress or iMark Interactive. If that’s you, continue to reach out to them for your regular tech issues; they’ll escalate any theme-related issues to us.
One more thing: when it comes to major WordPress releases you might consider reaching out to us for a white glove theme update. Since the introduction of the Gutenberg block editor, WordPress changes can be rather dramatic as new features and functionality are added. In those cases it makes sense to have your theme creator address breaking changes to the theme itself. With our white glove service, we’ll copy your site to staging, run the updates, and correct any breaking changes to the theme.
With CultivateWP Standard Support, we’ll perform the work hourly (typically just a few hours) and will only invoice you for time spent performing actual work. With CultivateWP Priority Support, you get white glove updates for all major WP releases at no additional cost.
Every designer & developer serving the high-traffic, ad-supported blogging space should deliver beautiful, fast, accessible, mobile-first WordPress themes using the block editor. Those are the table stakes!
What makes us different is our technology implementation.
First, our designers and developers work hand-in-hand through a fully tokenized design system. We use shared JSON code in both design and development that matches 1:1 with the new WordPress theme.json configuration file. Unlike a simple UI kit, every element and component in our design system has a corresponding code snippet. Our designers understand how development works because they use the exact same tools and functionality as our developers! That means they create speed-optimized designs that help our developers build themes that pass Core Web Vitals with flying colors.
Second, our Cultivate Category Pages feature is the gold standard when it comes to adding curated content to WordPress categories. Some other theme builders have pieced together similar functionality but they’re rarely as well built or as easy to manage. Our Cultivate Category Page implementation does it the up-to-date WordPress way, meaning you won’t have duplicate content that disrupts SEO, and you won’t have to use out-of-date technology like widgets.
Third and most importantly, we fully utilize the block editor. That means the back end editor matches the front end—line for line, image for image, font for font—so what you see truly is what you get. That also means we bring the block editor to just about every manageable part of your site. With a CultivateWP theme you’ll not only edit your posts and pages with the block editor, you’ll also manage your home page, Cultivate Category pages, sidebars, after-post comments area, above-footer area, and even more.
We’re able to do all of this because we do things the WordPress way. No tricks, hacks, or shortcuts.
We’ve launched hundreds of WordPress websites. You can see some of our favorites showcased in our portfolio.