The theme of your WordPress website will always play a huge role in how quickly your site loads. If you choose a slow-loading WordPress theme, you will have a slow-loading website. Even if you try to add bandaids like caching, it will likely remain sluggish. If SEO is important to you, a slow site will negatively affect your Google rankings. That is why you must always use the fastest WordPress theme on your website.
If you haven’t heard about Phlox themes, they are some of the most beautiful themes for Elementor. If you use Elementor, then you have surely heard about their Hello theme, which is a very basic starter theme. Both Phlox and Hello themes are quite popular on the WordPress theme market. On paper, both of them boast that they are lightweight and fast. But, do they really live up to the expectations?
Our focus with this article is to put both of these themes to the test with tools such as GTmetrix, Page Speed Insights, Web Page Speed Test, and Pingdom.
Before we move on to the speed comparison, here’s a short introduction about the two themes. It is also important to note that our case studies below are not sponsored by Phlox or Elementor.
Phlox is a translation ready, and search engine optimized theme. This lightweight theme comes with 20+ demo sites that can be imported in a single click. The theme is completely responsive and fine-tuned to adapt according to various screen sizes. It has a free version and a paid version which costs $39 (one-time purchase). Most of the Phlox themes are very aesthetically pleasing and feature rich.
Hello Elementor theme is a free plain-white and lightweight theme that is developed by developers of the Elementor page builder. The theme comes with almost no styling and scripts. You can design it using the Elementor page builder. The leaner code of the theme will give you an added advantage for your SEO activities. You can also download the child theme of Hello which available in GitHub.
For our project, initially, we selected the Phlox theme because it had an amazing layout. But after we installed the theme, we found out that the theme was not optimized for speed. Along with this, we found other limitations. We have written about the limitations of Phlox in a separate article. Additionally, the default Phlox theme alone has a file size of 524 KB and sends a minimum of 43 requests, which is double the size of a default WordPress theme. So, if more elements are added, it will increase the page size and requests.
We would suggest the Phlox theme only if you need the exact, or similar to exact, demo of the Phlox theme. If speed is at top of mind, this theme will be a disappointment as it gives more page requests and loads many unwanted CSS and Javascript which you cannot control.
So, from a speed perspective we would suggest the Hello Elementor theme. It is safe to say that it did not disappoint. Using the Elementor Pro page builder and Elementor Pack plugin, we were able to match the Phlox theme layout.
Once we switched to Hello Elementor theme, we could see a significant cut in the number of requests and the page size. We would recommend the Hello Elementor theme if you want faster speed and have a custom design that you wish to further enhance with the Elementor page builder.
Here is the speed comparison chart for both the themes.
| Pages | WebPage Test | GTmetrix (Page Speed Score, YSlow Score, Fully Loaded Time, Total Page Size, Requests) | Page Speed Insights (Mobile Score, Desktop Score) | Pingdom(Performance Grade, Load Time, Page Size , Requests) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hello | Phlox | Hello | Phlox | Hello | Phlox | Hello | Phlox | |
Click here to view the full image | 4.230s | 7.337s | 98%, 89%, 6.2s, 1.08MB, 61 | 62%, 85%, 7.7s, 2.43MB, 70 | 21, 65 | 16, 40 | 80, 1.07s, 1.6 MB, 77 | 78, 2.80 s, 3.3 MB, 94 |
Click here to view the full image | 2.683s | 3.383s | 99%, 91%, 2.6s, 848KB, 38 | 98%, 87%, 3.9s, 1.21MB, 55 | 62, 85 | 55, 83 | 81, 1.38 s, 1.6 MB, 77 | 78, 2.79 s, 1.5 MB, 69 |
Click here to view the full image | 3.014s | 3.381s | 99%, 88%, 3.4s, 1.02MB, 61 | 98%, 86%, 5.5s, 1.14MB, 64 | 42, 67 | 30, 73 | 78, 763 ms, 1.4 MB, 67 | 78, 1.44 s, 1.4 MB, 73 |
Click here to view the full image | 6.240s | 7.614s | 97%, 89%, 4.8s, 2.69MB, 82 | 89%, 78%, 5.8s, 3.04MB, 103 | 60, 84 | 55, 84 | 79, 1.64 s, 2.9 MB, 83 | 75, 3.65 s, 3.3 MB, 104 |
No matter the type of website you have, a fast WordPress theme is an asset. Page speed plays an important role to improve your search engine rankings and user experience.
We hope that you now have a better understanding of the speed of Phlox and Hello Elementor themes after our case study above and that you can make your decision with less hesitation.
If you need any assistance to improve the speed of your WordPress website or any other related issues, our experienced developers are here to help. Send us a message or give us a call to discuss more.
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