Ultimatum Theme Review
Update – September 18, 2014
After gaining some more experience with Ultimatum, I’m hesitant to recommend it for a few reasons. Here’s my response to Nathan in the comments below regarding Ultimatum vs Headway:
Like with any theme builder, it’s going to be more on the bloated side. As far as actual code quality of Ultimatum, I’m not really familiar with it. I’ve actually only played around with Ultimatum on a couple test sites and have never used it for client work. Depending on the needs of the client, I almost always prefer Genesis because it’s really the cleanest framework available for WordPress and it’s extremely flexible. If the project requirements warrant a theme-builder (i.e. if the client foresees making a lot of changes to the design on their own), Headway Themes will typically be my #1 choice because I’m more familiar with it, it’s a little more flexible than Ultimatum and it is more reputable. That’s not to say Ultimatum isn’t reputable (although I’ve heard the developer has frequent health issues and misses time for development/support) but in my experience Headway seems to more reliable.
Regarding the compatibility of Ultimatum with other plugins, I never had any issues with other plugins but that’s not to say there couldn’t ever be any. For what it’s worth, I feel I did a good job putting it to the test with plugins like WooCommerce and Visual Composer.
If your clients are looking to change the design of their site without your help and if they aren’t comfortable with CSS and browser tools like Firebug, I’d suggest going with Headway because it’s easier for a beginner/novice to customize and the design interface is better.
A while back, I purchased the Ultimatum theme and spent some considerable time getting familiar with it. I designed a few test sites and even had another project running on it for a while. Overall, I like Ultimatum a lot and I think it’s a very powerful tool for building custom WordPress designs. Among the design frameworks available for WordPress, I’ve also used Headway Themes, Genesis by StudioPress, and a number of other very powerful themes that could be considered frameworks. Having worked pretty extensively with the big three (Genesis, Headway, and Ultimatum), I would give the edge to Headway and Genesis (read why in my comparison, Headway vs. Genesis), depending on needs and skill. Here are some of the things I like the most about Ultimatum.
Layout Builder
Ultimatum’s layout builder is very powerful yet very simple and it’s where the real business of your design is handled. If you’re familiar with the WordPress UI, the learning curve is pretty small. To get started, you simply create a template (which you can think of as an entire design). After you select your settings for your template, you create your site’s “layouts”. The great part about this is that you can create both partial layouts (header and footer) and full layouts that can include your partial layouts. Your layouts can be sectioned off into many different column variations like 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 2/3. etc. To fill in your layouts, Ultimatum allows you to easily drag and drop any of the WordPress widgets or any of the Ultimatum widgets into the layout’s sections. To include your posts and pages, you simply include the WordPress Default Loop widget and Ultimatum lets you customize even further. The layout builder of Ultimatum is a post in itself but this is just a brief overview of it’s capabilities.
WooCommerce Integration
Anyone with experience using WordPress and WooCommerce for e-commerce knows that not all themes integrate with WooCommerce. If you want to purchase a pre-designed theme from ThemeForest or somewhere, you have to make sure to purchase one that is compatible with WooCommerce. Sometimes, this can be a hassle, especially if you have a particular look you’re aiming for. At first, I was skeptical to see how well Ultimatum worked with WooCommerce but I was pleasantly surprised to see how well it did. Just create a layout for your shop pages and you’re good to go.
Front End CSS Editor
I love Ultimatum’s front end CSS editor and, if you enjoy styling your site with custom CSS, you will too. In fact, this is my favorite feature of Ultimatum. Changes display immediately and indentation to keep your code organized is automatic. Between Firefox’s inspect element and Ultimatum’s CSS editor, customizing the CSS of your site can be handled entirely from the front-end of your website.
Image Slider Integration
You’re not limited when it comes to which sliders you can use to display slideshows on your site using Ultimatum. It seamlessly integrates with some of the most popular sliders for WordPress (not to mention its own slideshow generator): Layer Slider, Slider Revolutions and ShowBiz Slider.
Visual Composer
The WP Bakery Visual Composer is one of the most popular drag and drop editors for WordPress. It lets users create layouts and add all sorts of elements to their pages and posts. Ultimatum includes the plugin as a standard part of the theme and can even be turned off if you don’t want to use it.
Navigation Menus
Ultimatum lets you design your site using seven different menus. Regular menus, drop-down, and mega menus are available in both vertical and horizontal layouts. You can also use a Twitter Bootstrap menu. If you’re a big fan of multiple menus in your theme, creating them is very easy. I love working with multiple menus in my designs and Ultimatum makes this very easy. With the help of some other menu related plugins, you can create some advanced navigation for your site.
Custom Post Types
With custom post types, WordPress really upped their game in the content management system market (rather than being just a blogging platform). With Ultimatum, you can easily create your own custom post types to organize your content. Even though I never used this feature of Ultimatum, I’d recommend using a plugin to create your custom post types so your post types aren’t theme-dependent. Custom Post Types UI and WP-Types are both good ones.
Mobile Friendly
Not only does Ultimatum allow you to create highly responsive designs, it also lets you design your own web apps for your site. If you’ve been looking for an easy way to create a mobile theme, Ultimatum may be a good way to go (there are other tools for this as well).
Lifetime Updates
That’s right, updates for life! At least as of now. The only other theme provider I know of with lifetime updates is StudioPress, makes of the Genesis framework.
Updates and Support
Since purchasing Ultimatum, it has been updated a few times to fix bugs and add features so it seems to be properly maintained. Regarding support, I only experienced one issue and the support guys responded to it. However, I’ve heard that the overall support for Ultimatum can be sketchy at times due to health reasons from the developer. This isn’t from my experience so I am not counting this as a weakness for Ultimatum.
Who Should Use Ultimatum
Like with Genesis, I’d say that you need to be pretty comfortable with CSS to really customize your design. There are built-in design features but they’re not as nice as Headway’s. Therefore, I’d consider Ultimatum to be a cross between Genesis and Headway. You can build complex layouts with ease like with Headway but you need to know CSS to customize the entire design, like with Genesis. For this reason, Ultimatum is a great option for either developers or non-coders who are can work some CSS.
Conclusion
I’m happy with my purchase of Ultimatum because it’s a nice tool to have. It makes custom designs much simpler and reduces production time to a fraction of how long it would otherwise take to do the same work all by hand. The value it provides is one of the best value in the WordPress market. It’s a very powerful tool that is worth every penny.
Thanks for your detail analyse on Ultimatum . Currently, I’m using this theme builder TemplateToaster. What your take on this builder. have you ever heard about this framework.
Hi, Amica. I can’t speak on that one, because I haven’t used it. I do my best to avoid theme builders nowadays. Occasionally, I’ll use Divi for a specific purpose, but that’s about it.
Hi Ren
May I ask why you dont use theme builders like Ultimatum anymore?
As I see it, if you use “predefined themes” you are more “locked in you development, and often have to wait for support for days on these..
What are you simple pros and cons on using Ultimatum vs. buying themes?
The reason I don’t use theme builders anymore is because I prefer lightweight and flexibility. My post on Genesis sums up a lot of the reasons I use it. In a nutshell, I prefer to code most of my own layouts, rather than depend on some theme or plugin to build them for me. This cuts back on bloat, and dependence of some third-party tool.
Ultimatum is a pre-made theme. The main difference between it and many other pre-made themes is that it lets you customize layouts more than most.
Pros and cons, in my opinion, mostly boil down to flexibility, performance, and time. With theme-builders, you get some varying degree of flexibility (not complete flexibility, though), and you probably get a decent design out of the box. They also let you build sites relatively quickly. However, you’re sacrificing some performance because theme-builders will add more files, and bloat to your database, than would otherwise be added with a cleaner theme. They may also make a serious mess of your content if they’re using shortcodes to style things.
If you’re going with a clean framework like Genesis, or even something like _s, you’re decreasing the bloat, and increasing flexibility. However, you may also be looking at a larger time requirement to achieve a similar design.
Choosing a theme, whether it’s a pre-made theme, a theme-builder, a framework, or a completely custom build, is a decision that has to be considered carefully. There’s pros and cons to all of them, so you have to weigh the benefits and the drawbacks to determine what meets your needs the most. Unfortunately, there’s no magical theme that is perfect for every use-case.
Another company that uses a powerful builder, and has lifetime updates, with many themes is ElegantThemes.com. I have worked with them for years, on a lifetime license, and I love it. But I’ve never heard of these others, Genesis, and Headway. I will check them out, definitely. However, I would love to see if you could do a review of ElegantThemes.com, in light of these other offerings. What do you say?
I’ve written a number of posts about Elegant Themes. Here are a few.
https://www.engagewp.com/divi-elegant-themes-review/
https://www.engagewp.com/best-wordpress-themes-for-beginners/
https://www.engagewp.com/headway-themes-vs-divi-elegant-themes/
https://www.engagewp.com/bloom-plugin-review-an-email-opt-in-builder-for-wordpress/
https://www.engagewp.com/why-i-no-longer-use-themeforest/
Hi there, I’ve been using UT for all my projects and client projects as well, It’s a powerful tool if you want a custom theme builder. I really don’t like the integrated menus, I always make my own and integrate on UT, but I love the infinite headers and footers that can be added in the sites, simply amazing. These are some examples of clients websites completely built with UT framework https://www.plazaloscolegios.com , http://www.ibbg.org
Hi,
How to deliver the website for client if we use Ultimatum?
Thanks
Sorry, I didn’t see the option for notifications, so I’m posting again so I can be notified when you respond. Thanks, Jeff
I am a longtime developer, but find more of my clients want simple editing ability, so, I’ve moved many to WP. I’ve struggled unsuccessfully to use Dreamweaver as a design tool for WP since most of the page layout features work better with something like Visual Composer (VC). I recently purchased Ultimatum (UT), but I’m wondering if I would be better off with something like Visual Composer by itself with my own themes? UT’s integration with VC is somewhat confusing and seems redundant in many ways. VC seems to have the layout blocks already which can be added to pages. And I don’t find UT really very helpful in custom design, since the layouts have to be custom CSS anyway. For example, if I want a gradient for the header, I’ll have to code that in DW and add it to a custom CSS. A less expensive program like Themify comes with prebuilt layouts that are pretty standard, but has less plugins than VC. However, if I am going to do the custom CSS anyway, all I need are basic frameworks, which I can then modify with VC or Themify widgets/blocks/ or whatever they call them.
Maybe I am missing something, but I’m more interested in something that allows be better design features than simply layout. I had used Artisteer in the past, but they dropped development for the Mac. It’s strength was the ability to modify CSS easily while viewing a layout design. I’d be really interested in your feedback.
Hi, Jefferis. So you’re looking for something that will basically let you add nice, pre-styled content elements? Personally, I think VC is junk and can be the source of some serious issues down the road. If I recall correctly, it essentially builds everything by way of heavy shortcode usage. I know there are a number of plugins out there that let you add content types (i.e. toggles, lightboxes, alerts, etc.) via shortcodes but I am hesitant to recommend them because if the plugin is ever deactivated or stops working, the site’s content will be full of non-rendering shortcodes. This is why I don’t support the idea of shortcodes for design.
If you’re looking for a development tool that will let you cut back on the amount of code you write, you could try something like Beaver Builder. I’m not sure how many design features it has but I know it’s a page builder and I’ve heard good things about it.
Hopefully I understood what you were asking! 🙂
Yes, I think so. Artisteer has come out with a Beta called Themler, which is cross platform, https://billionthemler.com, and I’m about to give it a try. I’m looking again at Desktop Server and live editing in DW 2014.1. Thanks for the heads up about VC. They don’t have a developer price option anyway, and I’m thinking that the yearly fees for Headway are kind of out there. I really am not crazy about subscriptions and not very happy with the way Adobe has gone, but I’m so invested in DW for plugins that I don’t see another option.
Well I am unhappy to see the hesitant part 🙂
To clarify our members need to see me in each forum post while there are other members of the team especially Powder is in forum and answering.
Also we do not update too often why? because if something is working its working you dont need to update.
For the last 2 months we have developed an enermous new site with new abilities and a new version of Ultimatum which will be shown to public on Friday.
For CSS part we supply every bit of modification in css builders but i accept they are not too fancy.
But honest reviews like yours let us see missing parts like css editing and makes us motivated to go forward.
UT is in market for nearly 3 years now and as a young product it was criticised too often and generally thought that it was just an adventure. In 3 years we shown its not an adventure it is a framework where we supply all tools for a non techie to develop sites where techies can amaze all 🙂
Said too much I think… I hope to see our versions reviewed here often 🙂
Hi, xenous. Thanks for commenting. I look forward to reading about your updates.
Maybe I should add this.
I’ve been using Ultimatum for a year now.
Good theme builder but when it comes to mobile responsiveness, the menu display is terribly bad.
Hi, Zion. Thanks for sharing.
As you may know we already release 2.7 version of our theme. Now we have a lot of menu features and you can use them for your responsive sites.
Thanks for the update. I hope to get a chance to take a look soon.
What about specifics like code quality and long term usability.
I know clients I design for want to change their site design and look every year or so and so I feel if this framework is great if it is going to stand the test of time…
I’d like to use it but not sure about the code and how well it plays with plugins like wpmu and other companies like ithemes and I have read some various reviews about it not following WP code standards but then again who does?
Do you know and or look into this before using it on your client sites ? : )
Hey Nathan. Like with any theme builder, it’s going to be more on the bloated side. As far as actual code quality of Ultimatum, I’m not really familiar with it. I’ve actually only played around with Ultimatum on a couple test sites and have never used it for client work. Depending on the needs of the client, I almost always prefer Genesis because it’s really the cleanest framework available for WordPress and it’s extremely flexible. If the project requirements warrant a theme-builder (i.e. if the client foresees making a lot of changes to the design on their own), Headway Themes will typically be my #1 choice because I’m more familiar with it, it’s a little more flexible than Ultimatum and it is more reputable. That’s not to say Ultimatum isn’t reputable but in my experience Headway seems to more reliable.
Regarding the compatibility of Ultimatum with other plugins, I never had any issues with other plugins but that’s not to say there couldn’t ever be any. For what it’s worth, I feel I did a good job putting it to the test with plugins like WooCommerce and Visual Composer.
If your clients are looking to change the design of their site without your help and if they aren’t comfortable with CSS and browser tools like Firebug, I’d suggest going with Headway because it’s easier for a beginner/novice to customize and the design interface is better.
Thank you Ren for the time you spent sharing good points!
God bless!
Andy
Thanks, Andy!