Salient Theme Review: Feature-Packed?
| Quick Facts | |
|---|---|
| Latest version | 18.2.1 |
| Price | $60 regular license, $2,950 extended license |
| Marketplace | ThemeForest |
| Sales | 170,000+ |
| Last vendor update | June 2026 |
| Best suited for | Agencies and freelancers building portfolio, agency, or creative sites with a visual builder |
A lot of the WordPress premium theme market is flooded with multi-purpose themes claiming to be the only theme users need to make any site.
The Salient theme remains one of the top contenders in this category, offering a wide range of templates, a mature visual builder, and WooCommerce support.
But does it still deliver on all it claims to offer, six years after we first reviewed it?
More importantly, is it worth the $60 price?
In this Salient Theme Review, we’ll check out the theme’s current features and compatibility before making a call.
What Is Salient About?
Salient is a feature-packed multi-purpose WordPress theme created by ThemeNectar.
ThemeNectar has been selling on ThemeForest since 2013 and holds Power Elite author status, the marketplace’s top tier, reserved for authors who’ve sold enormous volumes over a long track record. Salient has passed 170,000 sales and carries a 4.81-star rating across roughly 6,900 reviews.
You can use the theme to build almost any type of website – from a blog to a full WooCommerce store.
The theme ships with hundreds of pre-built section templates and a deep set of customization options, so you can give any site you build a personal touch without writing code.
Salient is ThemeNectar’s only product. The only other thing the company sells is support and hosting add-ons for the theme itself.
Salient Theme Review
Salient makes creating an attractive website fairly uncomplicated – you rarely have to touch a line of code to get something built.
Regardless of whether you’re making a portfolio or a business page, going from concept to a working site with Salient is straightforward.
Design and Style
The Salient theme gives you access to a large demo library, which speeds up the design process considerably. You pick a demo close to what you want and swap in your own content.
Most of the demos lean modern – transitions, animations, and confident color choices give them a distinct feel. There are also minimalist-style demos that work well as a starting point for a blog or portfolio.
Since the theme is fully customizable, you can edit any demo and make it as bold, flat, or plain as you like.
Theme Features
Rich Collection of Templates
Salient now ships with 470+ professionally designed section templates, accessible from ThemeNectar’s Salient Studio inside the page builder. You can filter and sort the collection by category to find what fits your brand.
If you’re starting from scratch, you can mix and match section templates until you’ve assembled the layout you want.
Full pre-built websites are also included, so you can import a complete demo in one click and start editing content instead of building from a blank page.
Easy to Customize
Salient comes with a heavily customized version of WPBakery Page Builder, tailored specifically to the theme’s design system.
It includes device-specific display controls for individual elements, letting you show or hide content differently on desktop, tablet, and mobile without extra plugins.
The drag-and-drop builder lets you put your own spin on any template, and the library of page elements (buttons, cascading images, blog post grids, and more) makes it possible to assemble a site true to your vision without hunting for third-party add-ons.
You can add animations, page transitions, and parallax effects directly from the editor – no separate plugins required.
WooCommerce Support
Salient supports WooCommerce out of the box and is tested against current WooCommerce releases (8.x through 10.x at the time of writing), so setting up a store doesn’t require extra compatibility patches.
You get multiple product display styles, custom gallery options, and layout controls to keep the shop consistent with the rest of your site.
An AJAX cart lets visitors add products without a full page reload, and the Quick View feature lets shoppers preview a product without leaving the page they’re browsing.
Responsive and Retina-Ready
The theme was built with responsive styling as a core requirement rather than an afterthought. You design your site once, and it adapts across screen sizes.
Performance
ThemeNectar markets Salient as lightweight for a builder-driven theme, with built-in minification and adaptive image delivery. In practice, actual load times depend on how many sections, sliders, and third-party plugins you stack on top of the builder, so treat any specific speed claim as a starting point rather than a guarantee for your own build.
SEO Friendliness
Since Salient is a multi-purpose theme, it doesn’t try to be an SEO plugin. It handles the fundamentals – clean markup, proper heading structure, fast-loading images – but leaves keyword and metadata work to a dedicated plugin.
Salient works cleanly with popular SEO plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math, so you’re not locked into a specific one.
Theme Options
Header Layouts
Salient includes over a dozen header layouts built in, so you rarely need to write custom code for your site’s header.
Icon Packs
The theme ships with four built-in icon packs covering interface, social, and decorative icons, so buttons and menus match your site’s style without a separate icon plugin.
Unlimited Color Options
You can create custom color schemes and gradients to fit your site’s design, with enough range to make each build look distinct.
Extensive Typography Options
Salient includes 800+ font options, and switching between them to find the right feel is effortless.
In addition to these, you can define row types, set paddings, edit backgrounds, add video backgrounds, edit shape dividers, and layer parallax effects. A lot more is possible inside the theme’s options.
Additional Features of Salient
Advanced Adaptive Images
Salient’s adaptive image sizing serves images matched to the visitor’s screen size. Smaller screens get smaller images, which helps loading time and bandwidth usage.
Multilingual and Translation Ready
The theme ships pre-translated into multiple languages and supports RTL layouts and WPML, so building a site for a non-English audience doesn’t require extra workarounds.
Social Media Integration
Adding social sharing buttons to your site is a matter of picking icons and adding links.
Multiple Styles for All Sites
Salient includes multiple portfolio project layouts, several blog layouts, and extensive shop template variations, so finding a starting point close to your vision is usually quick.
Built-In Design Elements
Hundreds of customizable content elements are built directly into the page builder, so you rarely need extra plugins to add visual components to a page.
Support and Documentation
Whether you’re a new or a long-time user, Salient’s documentation covers setup, customization, and common troubleshooting steps.
ThemeNectar also maintains a knowledge base of previously answered questions, where you’ll likely find a solution to most common technical issues.
For account or technical questions that documentation doesn’t cover, ThemeNectar runs a ticket system through Envato. Response times vary with support load, so don’t expect instant answers during peak periods.
Salient Pricing
Salient is available on ThemeForest for $60 for a regular license, which includes lifetime updates and six months of support. You can extend the support period for an additional fee at checkout.
ThemeNectar also offers a bundled hosting option if you’d rather not manage hosting separately.
If you’re building a product you charge other people for, such as a subscription site or a theme built on top of Salient, you’ll need the extended license, which currently runs $2,950.
Verdict: Is Salient Worth It?
Salient still impresses with its assortment of design elements and editing options, backed by hundreds of fonts, icon packs, and section templates.
The template library and demo sites give you real flexibility – use what ThemeNectar built, or start from a demo and make it your own.
Version 18.2.1, released in June 2026, keeps the theme current with WordPress 6.4 through 7.0 and recent WooCommerce releases, and ThemeNectar’s update cadence suggests Salient isn’t going anywhere soon.
If you’re looking for a mature, actively maintained multi-purpose theme and have $60 to spend, Salient remains one of the stronger picks on ThemeForest.