Have you ever heard of the Zeen theme? I bet you’re not since it is a very underrated WordPress theme on Themeforest, a lot of people haven’t discovered this theme yet, but this theme deserves recognition.
The first time that I bought a theme on Themeforest was a very bad experience, the first theme that I tried was a popular WordPress theme on Themeforest which I will not mention the name of.
The said theme has a lot of good reviews, and even some influencers recommended it— but I don’t know why they promote it since its really bad— it’s making my site slow, lots of errors in the search console, losing my ranking, and the theme was bloated and full of bugs.
I almost lost my faith in ThemeForest until I tried Zeen, I was so impressed with Zeen theme that it gives me a reason to write my first WordPress theme review.
During my 7 years of being a webmaster, I tried lots of WordPress themes like Generatepress, OceanWP, Kadence, Blocksy, Astra, and other famous themes but this is the first time that I was so impressed with a theme that makes me excited to share with you.
In this article, I will give you an insight into the Zeen theme — all of its features, functionalities, and even the pros and cons of using this Zeen theme.
Speed And Performance
Almost every web owner is concerned about speed, so I decide to give you the insight first about how the Zeen theme performs and if can keep up with some popular themes that are known for speed like GeneratePress, and Astra.
To be honest Zeen theme is a bit slower compared GeneratePress but with proper optimization, you can manage to get a good page speed insight score on the Zeen theme. You can see the screenshots below on how my site performed one different speed test by using Zeen Theme.
Zeen Theme Speed Test
Page Speed Insight Score Using Zeen Theme
Below is the screenshot of both the mobile and desktop score of the Zeen theme, the website that I’ve used is my own website with real-time traffic, lots of images, videos, and banner ads.
Zeen Theme GTmetrix Score (Real Time traffic not a test site)
Below is the real-time score of Mirageportal using the Zeen theme.
Zeen Theme Pingdom Score
Below is the Pingdom score of my site using the Zeen theme.
Zeen Theme KeyCDN Score
I also test my website score when using the Zeen theme in different locations, you can see the screenshots below.
Above are all the screenshots from different speed tests that I perform using Pagespeed Insight, GTmetrix, Pingdom, and KeyCDN test. You can see how pretty well the Zeen theme performs in all the speed tests that I’ve made.
It can also be even faster by doing a few tweaks in the theme by removing videos and choosing a lighter design, improving your cache and you will get the result instantly.
In addition to that, I’m also using 18 plugins on this site during this speed test, and considering the fact that lots of WordPress themes will struggle with just a few plugins it is impressive that even with loads of plugins my site still performs really well with Zeen theme.
Clean Code and Bloat Free WordPress Theme
What makes Zeen performs well was the code, there are a lot of WordPress theme that offers great design but are poorly optimized with lots of bugs, but the Zeen theme has an amazing coding standard.
Codetipi the team behind Zeen did pretty well on their promise to deliver a theme that is free from bloat that can slow down your website.
Zeen Theme Features For Blogging, E-commerce, Magazine, or Any Site You Want
After showing you how fast Zeen theme can be in the real-world test, let us review all the features of Zeen Theme that you will surely like.
High-Quality Design
One of the most compelling aspects that immediately drew me towards Zeen is its extraordinary commitment to aesthetics and design. Zeen stands out as a masterpiece with its remarkable emphasis on high-quality design, setting it apart from the competition.
From the moment you lay eyes on your website adorned with the Zeen theme, it becomes evident that meticulous attention has been paid to every detail. The careful selection of fonts, the harmony of color schemes, and the precise arrangement of elements all contribute to an overall visual experience that is nothing short of captivating.
Zeen’s dedication to offering a high-quality design extends beyond just surface-level appeal. The theme is ingeniously crafted to be retina-ready, a feature that takes your website’s visuals to a whole new level. With retina-ready capabilities, Zeen ensures that your content is displayed with astounding clarity and sharpness, regardless of the device or screen resolution your audience uses.
If you want to use its full potential on the image on your WordPress, you need to follow the instructions provide in the Zeen documentation for the best practices.
Beautiful Pre-Built Website
The main selling point for me in buying Zeen was not just the speed but also the design. Zeen provides a beautifully crafted premium rebuild website that easily captivates my attention on choosing a theme.
Here’s is the fun part, If you are already familiar with the WordPress theme on Themeforest you might already aware that there are a lot of WordPress themes on ThemeForest that have good design but the problem was when you try to import it on your existing website, it was a mess the demos are different from it actually was in real time.
You can even see some Freelancer for hire that offers services for demo installation of ThemeForest, their services will ensure that your site will look exactly like the demo that you’ve chosen. It’s how complicated it was just to use the pre-built designs of other WordPress themes.
Even I have a very bad experience using a prebuilt design from one of the popular themes on ThemeForest when I Import the design it didn’t look like what I expected, the footer are missing, the headers, and lots of bugs appear that broke my site.
But when using Zeen it was easy as pie, all you need to do was to install the Zeen Theme choose the prebuild then follow some simple instructions and you’re done. Your website will look exactly like the prebuilt design that you’ve chosen.
Page Builder
I’m obsessed with website speed, I want my site to benefit from speed without spending too much. A lot of other people say that if you want your site to become faster you’ll need to use the best server for your site.
It was partially true but it is not practical always practical, WordPress site becomes slower due to some reasons and one of the main reason was the Page builder. If you are new to WordPress you will see a lot of opinions that if you want to create a stunning-looking website you should use Elementor.
I don’t like Elementor, I’m not a fan of some third-party page builders due to the fact that it will make your site slow.
A third-party page builder like Elementor and WP Bakery will help you to easily create a stunning website that’s true but your site might suffer from slow loading speed since third-party page builders are designed to be compatible with almost all WordPress themes are bloated with heavy CSS and Javascript that might cause your site to perform slower.
Zeen Theme Tipi Builder
The Tipi builder on the other hand is built by Codetipi it has cleaner codes, Tipi builders are built for speed and purpose to be 100% compatible with the Zeen theme, it was also easier to use than any page builder that I’ve used, it was even more beginners friendly that Gutenberg.
Anyway, in terms of speed, Gutenberg was the fastest Page builder it is way faster than old page builders like Elementor and WP Bakery and can have a toe to toe speed battle with Tipi builder.
Both Gutenberg and Tipi Builder are fast but the ZeenTipi Builder has an edge when it comes to ease of use. By using Tipi Builder you can easily create stunning pages with its drag-and-drop feature, you can also combine different designs from different prebuilt demos of Zeen into your webpage to create a stunning-looking landing page for your visitors.
Dark Mode
Zeen WordPress theme also offers a dark mode functionality where your visitors can decide how they want to see your site. Zeen Dark mode uses cookies that can remember your visitors of preferences so the next time they visit your site, your site dark mode will automatically switch on.
In other WordPress themes, you will still need to add an additional plugin just to have a dark mode option, but with Zeen it was already built-in inside the theme, it is up to you if you want to use this feature or not.
Let’s Review Plugin
Do you publish review articles on your website? If yes, you’ll gonna like this feature. Let’s Review is a stand-alone plugin by CodeTipi, it is one of the most gorgeous-looking review plugins available in the market.
It can be bought separately in the ThemeForest that costs about $29 but with Zeen Theme it was included in the package and automatically installed the moment you install the Zeen WordPress theme.
This plugin offers proper JSON-LD schema so you would not need to use other schema generator plugins on your site. The Let’s Review plugin inside Zeen has also pros and cons, and ratings, and you can also choose from different templates for the review section.
Since the Let’s Review plugin and Zeen theme are both created by Codetipi it works seamlessly without any issues.
E-commerce Friendly
Zeen is good on almost any kind of website whether it’s a gaming website, magazine, blog o even e-commerce. They also provide a beautiful prebuilt website and design that you can use on your e-commerce shop.
It has built-in product swatches, unique and beautiful product page layouts, and a slick cart checkout page. Zeen gives you some features for your e-commerce without adding some new plugins.
Speed Optimization Features
Another impressive feature of the Zeen WordPress theme was its built-in speed optimization features. The team behind Zeen was really serious about speed, and they even add built-in speed optimization features.
When you hover over customization options you can see some of its features built to improve your site performance, these features include image lazyload, Lazy load embedded iframes+videos, minified CSS, and minified Javascript. These kinds of features are often found on premium speed optimization plugins like WP Rocket.
But in Zeen you can get those for free when you buy Zeen theme.
Organize and Easy Learn Customizer
When it comes to WordPress customization OceanWP is one of the most recognize WordPress themes that offers lots of customization even for the free plan. I’ve used OceanWP for 3 years on my site and they indeed provide lots of customization options.
But when I tried the Zeen theme customizer, I was even more amazed by what it offers compared to OceanWP. It was because OceanWP has lots of customization options but I find it a bit more complex especially for beginners, while in Zeen all the options are well organized.
. Zeen theme offers many customization options but is well organized, to the point that even complete beginners will find it easier to learn.
What I like about Zeen Customizer as they provide lots of customization options but they only include what you might actually need, they only included all the important stuff and remove all the necessary options to avoid bloats on the theme.
Let me show you some of its customizers options:
SEO Option
Another important option that you can see on the Zeen theme was its SEO, they are serious about making their theme as SEO-friendly as possible and they include an option where the Zeen theme can create a JSON-LD schema, enable titles for images, and enable voice search.
To enable the voice search you need to follow the documentation about the voice search provided by Codetipi.
Social Media Icons, Sharing, and Functionality
In some of the previous WordPress themes that I’ve used when I want to include social media such as sharing button, and other social media functionality I need to install a plugin. But in Zeen you don’t have to since, it was built in the Zeen theme.
You can add any of your social media accounts and place them in a certain location on your website without the use of an extra plugin.
BBpress Compatibility
Zeen is also compatible with BBpres if you want to create a forum site using BBppress, there is an option in the customizer that is dedicated to BBpress. You can choose a bbPress layout, and add a unique sidebar for bbPress without the need of an extra plugin or bbPress add-ons.
Login Screen Customization
This one is a small feature but I really love this one, since it enables you to customize the login screen to your WordPress website. You can choose if you want a default or dark mode of your login screen and you can even add your own logo to remove the default WordPress logo of your site.
White Label
In other WordPress themes, you will need to pay extra if you want a white-label feature, while the other theme doesn’t even offer a white label. When using Zeen you can enable its white label feature without extra cost.
All you need to do is go to the customizer option and enable the white label >> enter your theme name and child theme folder name>> then add your preferred theme image, theme screenshots, and child theme screenshot, and you’re done.
The disadvantage of using the white label options was your Zeen help section where you can read the Zeen documentation and the community will disappear on your WordPress dashboard.
Fonts And Color Options
Zeen theme also has a wide range of fonts and color options. You can use its Google fonts in default and if you worry that it might slow down your website– well they already have a solution by providing an option to download and host the Google fonts you selected locally.
You can also use a typekits or any custom fonts if you prefer, Zeen also allows fonts combine in three different variations to benefit from different font styles.
Its typography customizing option is well organized and can easily understand without much confusion. When it comes to color options you have plenty of choices, it works like a sandbox where you can do whatever you want and change color as you please.
You can change the color of the body, excerpt, headings, bylines, copyright lines, and many more.
Monetization Option
Want to enhance the monetization of your site? No problem, Zeen theme is a well-rounded WordPress theme that will let you create any site and offers you different ionization options.
Monetize our Blog/Website
If you’re using AdSense or any ads on your blog there are a lot of banner ads placement that you can use in Zeen theme. There are banner ads placement in Customizer, where you can place your ads codes to appear in the banner ads. You can find it on posts, pages, headers, footers, categories, and more.
There is also an option for background advertisement that you can enable to accept promotion on your site and place it as a background.
Sponsored Post Feature
Zeen theme also provides a sponsored post functionality, where you can easily label your sponsored post and adds your sponsor’s branding, its name, link, and image or logo.
Paywall Compatibility
If you planning to create premium-only access content to monetize your site, Zeen is fully compatible with a paywall system “Restrict Content Pro” You can expect the to work is seamless with the WordPress paywall system.
Verdict
In conclusion, Zeen was really good WordPress theme that you can find in ThemeForest, It was just an underrated theme that lots of website owners don’t know about. Zeen theme was a fast, light, and reliable WordPress theme.
It was well-optimized and offered lots of useful features, the Tipi Builder was unmatched by third-party page builders like Elementor or WPbakery, but if you still insist to use Elementor — Zeen theme was fully compatible with Elementor.
Zeen offers more for the amount that you paid, and they definitely deserved more attention.
