Template Monster Reviewer's Comments

Template Monster is the largest most compressive website template service on the Internet and “TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award” winner. They offer more than 11,000 templates and logos.

Through Template Monster you can buy templates individually and they do not require a membership fee. These templates are great for beginners with little knowledge of website design or for advanced designers on tight dead lines.

Royalty-free templates range from about $50 -$70 and are separated into categories from agriculture to weddings. Once you have bought a template you can customize it as many times as needed to create content pages for your website. Template Monster offers both unique rights and custom services.

We found that although Template Monster doesn't have as many features as some of our lower rated products, they compensate with the number of available templates, from personal blogging Wordpress Themes to ecommerce CRE Loaded Templates, and an easy-to-use and responsive help center.

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Template Selection:  

Although Template Monster offers fewer advanced features and accessory options, they provide more template choices than any other service. We counted more than 6600 website templates and according to their customer support, there are more than 11,000 templates, including logos, Flash intros and corporate identity packages available to purchase.

Template Monster features more format types than any other service we reviewed. They not only include simple Website templates and Flash templates, but also Swish animation, ZenCart, and PHP-Nuke options.

Template Monster's ecommerce templates are more expensive than a typical website template. Templates that use CRE Loaded, ZenCart and Os commerce are designed specifically for online stores and include several content pages, shopping cart capabilities and different PHP configurations. These templates are about $150 each.

Many of the Flash templates come with a non-flash version, so you can incorporate flash style without the animation.

Feature Set:  

Every template comes with more than 8000 stock photos, 3500 clip art images, a font collection and a month of web hosting. Template Monster does not offer as many fancy features like PowerPoint templates or CD labels like some of our lower rated products. They make up for this by offering more templates than other services.

Template Monster offers a few editable samples so you can test their designs before you purchase. They also include custom services where given the criteria Template Monster's designers will customize your template for you. You can also purchase a template at its "Unique" price. After a template is bought at its unique price it will automatically removed from the collection and no one can ever buy it again. There is an anti-fraud check with every purchase. Authorization usually takes about a half an hour before you can download your template.

Although Template Monster says each template is compatible with Photoshop 5, for best results it is suggested you use Photoshop 7 or later.

Ease of Use:  

There are two ways to steer through the massive amount of templates offered through Template Monster. You can narrow your search through the drop down search boxes. These boxes allow you to sort your search criteria by product type, category, style and even author or price range.

The second way is to define your search by HTML editor. Scroll down to the bottom of the home page and there you will find quick links to popular HTML editors such as Dreamweaver and FrontPage. If you are partial to FrontPage, for example, you can chose the FrontPage link at the bottom of the screen and it will direct you to templates compatible with FrontPage.

Keep in mind that almost all templates offered on Template Monster are compatible with major HTML editors like FrontPage, Dreamweaver and GoLive.

Help/Support:  

Template Monster has everything you could ask for in a help center. They not only provide email and chat support, but also post a user's guide, FAQs and a searchable knowledgebase.

The user's guide outlines the process of searching for and buying a template. Online chat is one of our favorite help features. Within moments you can be connected to someone that can answer your questions instantly.

The searchable knowledgebase feature lists questions that Template Monster has received over the years through email with their answers.

Summary:  

Template Monster offers a wide variety of templates and formats through an easy-to-use website. So whether you need a simple template for your first website or an exclusive, custom template for your business, Template Monster has you covered.