Cultivate Pro
A better way to design & develop custom WordPress themes.
Custom themes don’t need to be inaccessible.
Traditional custom themes usually cost $35,000 to $55,000 because it takes 3 or 4 months working with a designer and developer to create every aspect of your website from scratch. After building more than 100 custom VIP themes for bloggers, we knew there had to be a better way.
Cultivate Pro: the better way to make a custom theme.
All bloggers have unique visual presentation needs but most usually require the same common features and functionality. With Cultivate Pro, we created an entirely new design process with all the common features and functionality bloggers need built-in. Instead of starting from scratch, we start with over 175 pre-built design patterns, guide you through selecting the ones that work for you, style them just for you, and then build a custom theme based on your selections and styles.
Starting from proven elements built around SEO-guidance dramatically speeds up the process and lowers the cost significantly. You can now get a fully-custom theme with all our awesome features and no technology compromises for just $18,000. That’s one-third what our traditional custom themes cost on average!
What makes Cultivate Pro different?
A Better Process
A custom theme
made just for you.
Cultivate Pro isn’t a pre-built theme. We design and develop a custom theme made just for you, but rather than starting from a blank page, we start with good choices based on our years of experience creating successful food blogs.
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.
Faster Delivery
Delivered 3 times faster than ever.
Our traditional custom themes take 12—16 weeks to design and develop. In contrast, our Cultivate Pro rapid design & development process allows us to create a fully custom theme in as little as 4 weeks.
We spent over a year (and thousands of hours) developing this entirely new design+code toolset. Quite literally, there’s nothing else like Cultivate Pro.
More Affordable
One-third our traditional cost
Our traditional custom themes power over 25 of the top 100 food blogs. We’ve launched a ton of food blogger sites, but they were mostly for the biggest sites with millions of page views.
With our new 3x faster process, Cultivate Pro is just one-third of our traditional fees. That means we can help even more publishers grow and thrive.
Best Technology
Our best technology
When creating Cultivate Pro, our guiding principle was that it needed to deliver a technical solution every bit as good as our traditional custom themes. We absolutely refuse to compromise on the quality of our technology.
That means Cultivate Pro themes are just as fast, secure, easy to use, feature-rich, and well-coded as our traditional Cultivate VIP themes—but at a third the cost and delivered three times as fast.
Curious what Cultivate Pro is like?
Speak with some of our clients. They have firsthand experiences and opinions. Trust their honest feedback to see why we’re the reliable choice.
“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
All CultivateWP themes including Cultivate Pro are:
Mobile First
Designed how your audience sees it.
Accessible
Universally accessible, regardless of abilities.
SEO-Friendly
Created following SEO expert guidance.
Theme.json
Fully tokenized from design to code.
Gutenberg
Thoroughly utilizing the WordPress block editor.
Coding Standards
Built the right way with WordPress standards.
Pagespeed
Designed & developed to be uncommonly fast.
Core Web Vitals
Able to pass Core Web Vitals with flying colors.
Included with Cultivate Pro:
Cultivate Category Pages
Cultivate Category Pages enables you to turn normal category pages into content-rich curated landing pages that not only rank better in search engines but are also more helpful for your visitors.
Frequently Asked Questions
Cultivate Pro is a fully custom theme while Cultivate Go is a semi-custom theme—the difference is in the design.
With Cultivate Pro ($18k) we design a custom theme just for you starting from 175+ pre-built design patterns. You’ll have all of the common features & functionality bloggers need but with a design that’s uniquely your own.
With Cultivate Go ($6k) we start from a pre-built Pro theme and customize the logo, colors, and fonts—then begin the white glove site launch process. You’ll have all of the common features & functionality all bloggers need but with a pre-built design that’s branded for you.
Both Cultivate Pro and Cultivate VIP are fully custom themes—the difference is in the design.
With Cultivate Pro ($18k) we design a custom theme just for you starting from 175+ pre-built design patterns. You’ll have all of the common features & functionality bloggers need but with a design that’s uniquely your own.
With Cultivate VIP ($45k) we start with the same proven elements in Cultivate Pro to ensure you have all of the common features & functionality bloggers need—but from there, we break out of the box and completely customize the design of anything and everything.
Cultivate Pro costs $18,000. Our Pro waitlist is typically around 2 months, and once the project is started it usually takes 4–6 weeks to complete.
A new logo & brand often goes hand-in-hand with a website redesign. We have three branding services, depending on your needs.
• Logo Refinement ($1,000) If you already have a logo you generally like but it needs a bit of cleanup before your site redesign, this is the plan for you. We’ll redraw your logo to vectorize it and then create 4 or 5 additional variations of the logo for you to choose from. We’ll also create a Style Guide with a complete set of brand colors and typography that compliments your logo. This is usually the best option for bloggers who like their existing logo but need technical improvements to it.
• Standard Brand Package ($4,000) A 1-week redesign of your logo where we’ll create 3 new text-based wordmarks for you to choose from, 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 in a full complement of file formats plus we’ll create a Style Guide with a complete set of brand colors and typography that compliments your logo. 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 who want a refresh but don’t want to lose their valuable brand equity.
• Full Brand Package ($10,000) An intensive month-long design process where we’ll create a completely new illustrative concept for your brand—optimized for web use and accessibility, of course. You’ll receive an all-new logo in multiple orientations, new supporting graphical elements, a Style Guide with a complete set of brand colors and typography that compliments your logo, 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.
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!
We have two ways we support your site: Cultivate Care, and Standard Support.
Cultivate Care is a proactive approach to improving your theme.
As SEO guidance changes, new blocks become popular, and the WordPress block editor evolves, we are constantly updating and improving our core starter themes. With every major WordPress release (typically 2–3 times per year), we’ll compile a list of all recommended improvements with à la carte pricing. You can select just the features you want, knowing exactly what they’ll cost, and we’ll implement those updates on your site.
Standard Support
In addition to ongoing Cultivate Care proactive improvements, you may occasionally need new creative work—a new block or feature, modifying or redesigning an existing block or element, changing colors/fonts/spacing, etc. When you need new creative work, just ask and we’ll add you to our support queue. We typically take anywhere from a few days to couple of weeks to perform the work, depending on complexity and scheduling.
We encourage all clients to have a technical support partner like NerdPress , iMark Interactive, or SiteCare. You will continue to use them for your regular tech support, so always go to them first; they will escalate theme-related issues to us if needed.
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 coded well. 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.