Why Avada Is the Worst WordPress Theme in 2025: A Developer’s Exposé of Blame Games, Broken Code, and Bottlenecked Performance

Customer Complaints and Technical Issues with the Avada WordPress Theme

Below is a comprehensive collection of user-reported complaints, negative reviews, and technical issues involving the Avada WordPress theme. The feedback is grouped by issue type and includes summaries, direct source links, and representative quotes where applicable.

Plugin Conflicts

• Yoast SEO Conflict: Users have reported that activating the Yoast SEO plugin can severely slow down Avada’s page editor. One site builder noted a “delay of up to 10 seconds” before text becomes editable and Yoast’s own fields loading extremely slowly, an issue that disappeared when Yoast was deactivatedwordpress.orgwordpress.org. This suggests a conflict between Avada’s Fusion Builder and the popular SEO plugin.

• The Events Calendar/Yoast/WP Job Manager: In one case, Avada was unable to create new posts or events when used alongside The Events Calendar, Yoast SEO, and WP Job Manager plugins. The combination triggered fatal errors until Avada was turned off, proving it was Avada’s theme code at faulttheeventscalendar.comtheeventscalendar.com. The user concluded “it seems to be a theme conflict… [with] Avada,” since all plugins worked fine with a default themetheeventscalendar.com.

• Toolset Types Attachment Issue: A support thread on Toolset’s forum highlighted an open ticket with Avada regarding attachment display problems on custom post typestoolset.com. This indicates Avada’s builder may conflict with certain plugins that manage custom content, requiring coordination between Avada’s developers and plugin authors to resolve.

• Miscellaneous Conflicts: Other community posts mention Avada causing JavaScript clashes or styling issues with plugins. For example, Avada’s inclusion of its own Bootstrap/JS files has led to conflicts with third-party scriptsstackoverflow.com. In one instance, Avada’s color picker stopped working due to an incompatibility with a payments plugin, with Avada’s support pointing blame at the pluginwpgetpaid.com. Such reports show that integrating Avada with complex plugin stacks can require troubleshooting.

PHP Compatibility Problems

• Breakage on PHP 8+: A number of users have faced site-breaking errors when updating PHP beyond version 7.4 while using Avada. One WordPress admin upgraded from PHP 7.4 to 8.1 assuming everything (including Avada) was up to date, only to have the site go down with a critical errorreddit.com. The debug log clearly identified Avada’s code as the culprit, showing a “PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Attempt to modify property ‘admin_notices’ on null in /wp-content/themes/Avada/…” stack tracereddit.com. This suggests certain Avada versions (or Avada’s bundled Fusion plugins) were not fully PHP 8 compliant, resulting in fatal errors.

• Stuck on PHP 7.4: Even after applying the latest updates, some users found Avada would not operate on newer PHP versions. “The site won’t work beyond its current PHP v7.4. What am I missing?! Surely it should all be compatible with v8+?” wrote one frustrated customer after updating to Avada 7.11.10 and WordPress 6.6forums.envato.com. Only after updating all plugins did the site load on PHP 8, but key features like sliders and galleries still broke, indicating lingering compatibility issuesforums.envato.com. Another user similarly reported that updating to PHP 7.4+ caused parts of Avada (like WooCommerce cart icons) to malfunction or vanishforums.envato.comforums.envato.com.

• Ongoing Compatibility Fixes: Avada’s team has published documentation on required server environments (now recommending PHP 8.3+)avada.com, but community forums show that real-world upgrades haven’t always been smooth. There are GitHub issue reports (e.g. incompatibility with TranslatePress in Avada 7.9.1) and Envato threads documenting errors when users push PHP to the latest versionsgithub.com. This history of PHP-related hiccups suggests that Avada users need to be cautious and ensure theme/plugin updates before changing PHP versions.

Support and Customer Service Complaints

• Defensive or Unhelpful Support: A recurring theme in reviews is dissatisfaction with ThemeFusion’s customer support for Avada. Users describe the support system as “garbage” and difficult to access, especially after the included 6-month period lapsesforums.envato.comwordpress.org. Many have complained that support staff tend to deflect blame onto the user instead of owning the issue. As one customer bluntly put it: “Avada and ThemeFusion have the worst customer service. Customers get blamed for problems with their product… I recommend you avoid their themes and work with more customer-friendly providers.”wpcrafter.com. This sentiment is echoed by others who feel the developers refuse to acknowledge faults, responding defensively to criticism on forums and marketplaceswpcrafter.com.

• Long Waits and Paywalls: There are reports of support tickets going unanswered for weeksforums.envato.com, despite promises of a 2–3 day turnaround. Users who purchased Avada but didn’t renew support have found themselves unable to get help for serious problems (like site crashes) unless they pay for a new support license, which has caused frustrationwordpress.orgwordpress.org. One WordPress.org forum poster, unable to justify paying again, wrote: “I refuse to pay for a support license since I am switching theme… However I cannot easily do this [because Avada left my admin area broken].”wordpress.org This illustrates the bind some customers feel – stuck with an issue but unwilling to pay extra for assistance.

• Terrible Service Reviews: Outside forums, Avada’s support reputation has been hit by harsh reviews on third-party sites. A WordPress agency blog warned “their customer support is terrible. Instead of accepting their weaknesses and faults, they only defend themselves”tasvirwebsolutions.com, even showing a one-star ThemeForest review response as an example. On a complaints site, one user wrote “Frustrating Theme… waste of money and time”, advising “do not buy it if you are new to website designing”, implicitly because no helpful support is available to beginnerspissedconsumer.compissedconsumer.com. Even on Trustpilot, an Envato customer noted the lack of multi-site license discounts and how Avada/ThemeForest would deny refunds, leaving a sour support experiencetrustpilot.com.

• Aggressive Developer Responses: Some community members have also called out ThemeFusion for hostility toward criticism. In a “nightmare” case from 2015, a developer publicly lambasted Avada’s support as “worthy of the nasty toilet award”, claiming **“They have not taken ownership of one single issue… I received more assistance in this forum [GeoDirectory] than anywhere else.”*wpgeodirectory.com. A ThemeFusion representative did respond (in that external forum) to dispute these claimswpgeodirectory.com, but their tone – highlighting 5-star ratings and checking the user’s support ticket history – was seen by some as combative. This combative stance, and requiring purchase codes for any help, has alienated users who just want quick fixes to the problems they encounter.

Performance and Bloat Complaints

• Slow Load Times: A frequent gripe is that Avada sites are heavy and slow. Users on Reddit and elsewhere have called Avada “painfully slow, insanely slow”reddit.com, noting that even on decent hosting, out-of-the-box Avada pages can score poorly on speed tests. One site owner reported Google PageSpeed Insights scores in the teens (e.g. 14) when using Avada, stating it “loads megabytes of JavaScript and CSS for every page, most of it unused”wpcrafter.com. Such bloat can hurt SEO and user experience, and multiple reviewers have confirmed seeing the same behavior.

• “Bloat” and Heavy Assets: Long-time Avada users have observed that the theme includes an enormous amount of code and assets, much of which may not be needed for a given site. “The theme IS bloated!! The CSS is the worst – it includes CSS for plugins that are never used… over 80% of the CSS is unused,” one veteran user wrotewpcrafter.com. They noted that simple design elements result in huge shortcode outputs: “a massive chunk of code just for one sentence…!”wpcrafter.com. Another developer agreed that Avada’s Fusion Builder stacks pages with “dense shortcodes… making the page unreadable in raw format.”wpcrafter.com This means if you ever view the content without the builder (or try to edit in WordPress’s default editor), you’ll see inscrutable shortcode strings rather than clean HTML.

• High Resource Usage: Some have likened using Avada to deploying an entire kitchen sink for every site. On a forum, one commenter quipped that Avada’s popularity might be because it throws in “everything but the kitchen sink,” and indeed many find it overkill for smaller projectswpcrafter.comwpcrafter.com. There are anecdotes of Avada-built sites needing significantly more server resources (CPU, memory) to run smoothly, compared to leaner themes. For example, a user mentioned hearing that “Avada is bloated and needs more CPU to run”, especially when the site grows large or uses many of Avada’s featureswpcrafter.com. Such sites can suffer if placed on modest shared hosting.

• Mitigating the Bloat: Avada’s team often responds that the theme includes performance settings to disable features not in usereddit.comwpcrafter.com. Indeed, Avada has a Performance Wizard and options to deactivate unused elements. However, even these optimizations have drawn criticism. Some users report the optimizer tool itself can break the site: “Each time I end up with a broken site [after running Avada’s Performance Wizard]… some pages never load”reddit.com. Others appreciate the effort but note it’s easy to misconfigure. In summary, while Avada can be tuned to run faster, many feel it starts off overly bloated – requiring extra work (and sometimes support intervention) to achieve acceptable performance.

Lock-In and Shortcode Migration Concerns

• Shortcode Lock-In: Avada’s reliance on its Fusion Builder (now Avada Builder) shortcodes is a double-edged sword. Content built with Avada is infused with proprietary shortcodes (e.g.,

  ,
  etc.), which means if you disable Avada or its plugin, those shortcodes will litter your pages. A GeneratePress support thread put it plainly: once you remove a page builder like Avada, “you’re left with a mess of shortcodes instead of HTML/content.”generatepress.com The original poster attempting to migrate 800+ posts from Avada to a new theme found “unbelievable amount of [Fusion] code in [each] page… If I deactivate Fusion Builder, the whole page shows shortcodes.”generatepress.com. In practical terms, this often forces people to manually rebuild every page when switching away from Avadageneratepress.com.

• Database and Cleanup Issues: Beyond visible shortcodes, Avada can leave behind a lot of hidden data. One developer on Reddit remarked that “Fusion Builder leaves a lot of shit in the database including a bunch of autoload stuff, [making it] massive fun clearing out the DB when swapping themes.”reddit.com. Avada does not provide an easy uninstall script that cleans its entries, so orphaned options and meta may remain. (Community-created cleanup tools exist – e.g., a third-party plugin to remove Avada shortcodesgithub.com – but it’s an extra step for users to discover and trust these.)

• Official Stance on Migration: Even Avada’s own documentation tacitly acknowledges the lock-in. A help article about migrating from Divi/Avada notes that if the Avada plugin is disabled after migration, you will indeed need to “manually edit the content to remove shortcodes.”learn.showit.com. In other words, there’s no automated way to convert Avada-designed content to a neutral format. Some hosting companies or services offer to handle this (by keeping Avada active in a transitional environment), but it’s an added complexity when leaving the themelearn.showit.comlearn.showit.com.

• User Warnings: Experienced users often caution beginners about this lock-in effect. Many wish they knew earlier that choosing Avada means committing to it unless you’re ready for a painstaking rebuild later. “This is why I don’t like to recommend using a page builder that is tied to a theme,” one user wrote after struggling with Avada for a year and finding it “complicated, not logical and out-dated”wpcrafter.com. The shortcode-heavy approach is a primary reason cited – if you change themes, your content doesn’t cleanly come along. The only silver lining is that Avada has maintained backward compatibility within its own updates well (so your Avada site can be updated without breaking)reddit.com, but that is little comfort if you decide to move to a different design entirely.

Broken Features and Functionality Issues

• Bugs in the Builder UI: A number of Avada users complain about glitches in the visual builder that hinder basic tasks. In a well-discussed Reddit post titled “Avada is absolute rubbish,” the user described how the editor’s UI would misbehave: “the bugs come hard and fast, most notably flickering buttons which make it next to impossible to edit a container.” The official support suggestion was to disable “absolute positioning,” which the user hadn’t even enabled – and regardless, “even if it was, that would cause buttons to flicker?”reddit.com. Such buggy behavior made the interface infuriating to use. Others on that thread echoed having “weird bugs if you don’t have enough system resources” for Avadareddit.com, or if certain settings aren’t just right.

• Saving and Autosave Issues: The same Reddit author experienced a serious issue with Avada’s saving mechanism. After making significant page edits and clicking the save button (which appeared to work), he later found all his changes had been lost. To make matters worse, “the history button doesn’t seem to be a history button either – that just took me to the home page.”reddit.com There is no true autosave in the Avada builder, so losing work is a real risk if something goes wrong. This user lost hours of work and mused “How are they still in business?”, vowing to seek a refund for the “Avada crap”reddit.com.

• Demo Import Failures: Avada’s marketing highlights its prebuilt demo websites, but importing those demos doesn’t always go smoothly. In one Envato forum post, a customer reported that “after importing the demo content, everything on the site appears significantly different than what is shown on the demo. …I activated all the plugins and updated them… entered the license key… but the website doesn’t show as it should after the import.”forums.envato.com The user shared a link to their site which looked broken and pleaded, “Please help. I’m about to go crazy.”forums.envato.com. Common demo import issues include missing layouts or sliders (if required plugins like Revolution Slider weren’t installed or if server limits aborted the import). The official Avada docs list numerous potential server issues that can cause import to failavada.com. In community discussions, people often recommend using the hosting provider’s resources (increasing PHP max execution time, memory, etc.) or even manually importing XML data when the one-click import doesn’t work. Still, for a newbie expecting a plug-and-play demo, this can be a frustrating introduction.

• Mobile Responsiveness Problems: Despite being advertised as fully responsive, Avada can require tweaking to get mobile layouts right. Users have noted issues like mobile menus or headers not appearing correctly. One person in the Envato forum wrote “I’m having trouble… It [Avada] is not mobile responsive. It only shows the home page with no headers.”forums.envato.com In that case it turned out the responsive setting might have been accidentally disabled, but others have faced more baffling problems. A WooCommerce store owner managing an “Avada disaster” said, “my biggest issue is the mobile design… Avada has the responsive feature, but because the back-end is so convoluted it no longer functions properly, and I can’t fix it for the life of me.”reddit.com They described images “twitching” on the phone and the mobile header looking like “absolute garbage”reddit.com. Another user discovered that after making any change, the only way to get the mobile layout to work again was to deactivate and reactivate Avada’s plugins – a bizarre workaround just to refresh responsive CSSforums.envato.com. These cases suggest that while Avada can produce responsive sites, there are edge cases where the responsiveness breaks down or requires manual intervention (possibly due to caching of CSS or plugin conflicts).

• Feature Updates Causing Breakage: Avada is a complex theme, and occasionally new updates introduce bugs or incompatibilities. For instance, an Envato forum thread from 2023 mentions “Avada LIVE not working” after an updateforums.envato.com. Another user in 2020 noted that after updating from Avada 5 to 6, their sliders stopped workingforums.envato.com. In many cases, the solution involved updating bundled plugins (like LayerSlider or Slider Revolution) or re-generating CSS/JS files via Avada’s settings. But for the average user, a theme update resulting in missing sliders, non-functional galleries, or JS errors can be alarming. Avada’s support team often has to remind users to clear caches and check plugin versions whenever an update rolls outforums.envato.com.

• Crashes and Backend Errors: Some have encountered serious stability issues – for example, the Avada Fusion Builder plugin itself causing site crashes on activation. A church webmaster sought help because “when I enable the Fusion Builder plugin it crashes the site… I have had to disable it to get the site working again”wordpress.org. This left them unable to edit their pages at all. Since this occurred on a local site, it might have been due to a PHP error or memory issue, but the user couldn’t debug it without support. Unfortunately, because Avada is a commercial product, volunteers on WordPress.org couldn’t assist beyond directing them to official support – which in turn required a purchase code the user didn’t readily havewordpress.org. This example highlights how a critical bug (plugin crash) coupled with limited support access can leave a user stranded.

Sources: The above information is collected from a variety of public forums and review sites, including Redditreddit.comreddit.com, the official WordPress.org forumswordpress.orgwordpress.org, Envato/ThemeForest discussionsforums.envato.comtheeventscalendar.com, independent WordPress blogstasvirwebsolutions.comwpcrafter.com, and other community support platforms. Each issue is linked to its original source for reference and further detail.