Mojo Themes, the ThemeForest Alternative
I recently signed up at Mojo Themes, a fairly new site that is loosely modeled after ThemeForest. So far my first impressions are very good. I like the layout and the site design is pretty awesome with some nice vector illustrations in the background. I had a chance to talk with one of the owners and he was a super nice guy, which counts for a lot in my book. Here are some of my observations about the site so far.
What they offer?
You can purchase WordPress, HTML/CSS, Tumblr, PSD , Email and Magento templates. They do have a link to a "more " section that currently has nothing under it, so I assume they are planning on offering more in the future. As of right now, the selection is pretty small, but in time I am sure that will change soon as people find out about the site and their templates. The templates they do offer seem pretty well made with the high quality designs you expect from an upscale market place like this.
What's the same?
A lot of the site is the same as ThemeForest. Most of the categories, the quality of themes and the overall structure of the site is very similar. One thing I have noticed is that the organization of Mojo Themes is a lot better than ThemeForest and I personally like the design of the site a lot more.
What's different?
The first thing I noticed is that they don't have a "friends" feature built in, which to me is great. So many sites now-a-days have social networking features built into them, when it's out of place and not needed. I have friends on facebook, which makes sense. On a site like this, it's really just a pain in the butt and to much time out of my day to build up a friend list.
Like I said before, things seems to be laid out better and in more user friendly locations.
One more thing...
I had to throw this two cents in before I finished. The support for the site is awesome. I emailed these guys at almost 1am and got a reply in less than 5 minutes and they were super nice. I then made a suggestion about the site and they literally changed it on the spot, right away. It's hard to find really good support like that on the web and I was very impressed.
In conclusion
Overall, I hope this site takes off because it's really well done. Hats off to the founders JR Farr and Brady Nord for doing such a great job creating the site and I wish you the best of luck with it.
Also, I would like to point out that this is a totally unbiased review and I was not paid or contacted by mojo themes to write it.
I was one of the first to add a theme to Mojo Themes and I agree their team are great, nice, friendly guys. For my money the best thing about Mojo is that they have an author collab feature which allows designers and dev’s to com e together and create a theme and automatically get half each of the profits when the theme is purchased, on ThemeForest they have no such collab feature set up and authors are left to work something out between themselves, funny how ThemeForest is quick to add new styles of themes etc (which makes them money) whilst the author collab feature has been on the back-burner for almost a year now (?).
I do not want to disrespect ThemeForest or it’s authors who are for the most part great people but I do find the reviewers are way more clouded than that of Mojo Themes, in my honest opinion, the only themes to make it past the ThemeForest reviewers are those that closely resemble every other theme on their site / DreamTemplates.com.
Still, what do I know eh? I’m sure someone from ThemeForest will come and put me down (as they usually do on their own forum if you’re not in the click) but to be honest I feel ThemeForest, even though it is hugely more popular than Mojo, is not in as safe a position as they think…all it takes is a similar idea done correctly with an eye for originality and I for one would see no reason to visit TF again.
I prefer originality, different styles of templates that show flair, ideas, creativity and I don’t see that at ThemeForest; sadly I’m not convinced that MojoThemes will take the place of ThemeForest because it seems they are not aggresive enough in their marketing and still make very few sales with most of the ThemeForest’s better designers wary of moving to Mojo because ThemeForest has such a high market share (not including the best which is, was and always will be TemplateMonster).
As I said this is my opinion and if you can’t take criticism then maybe you shouldn’t try to be a Designer.
Harsh but true.
Thanks for your article.
I concur, the only designs that pass TF’s are the ones that are almost similar to other designs on TF. It’s filled with designs of the same style.
I registered at Mojo two days ago, and immediately the website gave me a total different experience and impression.
I’m sticking with Mojo, great website!
Nate — Appreciate the kind words and the awesome write up. It’s always nice to get an outsiders perspective on what we’re doing and how we can make things better. I mean after all, this marketplace was built for you guys.
@RobbyDesigns: As always, thanks for the feedback. We always want to step up our game. We’ve got a few promos coming that we think will create some great buzz too!
@Gerben: Love to hear that you’ve had a great experience. We’ll do our best to keep it that way. Also looking forward to having you on the Factory tutorial series!