Today, I’m excited to announce that Elementor has acquired Layers WP, a popular WordPress theme company. For those of you who are not aware, Layers is a WordPress theme brand, launched in 2014 by WordPress veterans, David and Marc Perel.

With some beautiful themes, Layers saw much success over the years, partnering with Envato and other major players in the market. Back in 2015, Layers won #2 on Product Hunt and attracted a lot of attention. Over the years Layers accumulated over 375,000 downloads worldwide.

With the change of the tide in the WordPress ecosystem and the fast-paced shift towards all-in-one solutions in its market, David and Marc approached us with a proposal. We met in London, and were impressed by the enthusiasm and approach of these two creative entrepreneurs. Both of us found common ground in our approach and vision, and decided to explore the option of an acquisition.

Layers were looking to hand over the project to the right company. They wanted to find a complimentary product for their themes, a product that offered an intuitive and easy to use solution for designing a WordPress website. Their selling point was that Elementor could stand to benefit from the many unique design features built into the Layers themes.

Making Layers Compatible & Free

Over the past few weeks, we have drilled down into the Layers theme and fine-tuned it, so that it worked as smoothly as possible with Elementor. 

Additionally, the Layers theme is now available for free via the Layers site.

Elementor Acquires Layers Inlay 2 Elementor Acquires Layers Wp 1

Why We Decided to Acquire Layers

It’s 2019, and users still struggle with bulky themes.

At Elementor, we recognized the immense thought, effort and hard work that went into the Layers project, and saw the potential in keeping this project alive.

We have always believed in contribution in the WordPress community, as seen by several other plugins we released like Activity Log and One Click Accessibility, projects that were 100% made for the community.

Similarly, we are now releasing the Layers theme for free, making it available for download via the Layers site. We are also considering adding this theme to the WordPress repository, to make it easier for the user to install.

The most outstanding feature of the Layers theme is without a doubt its advanced Customizer panel, offering easy-to-use tools to quickly customize areas like your site’s header and footer, blog page and more. This is a fantastic set of features that will contribute a great deal to Elementor and WordPress users alike.

What This Means for Layers Users

Layers will continue  to provide full support to its users for a temporary period of two months. After that time period, support will be handled by the Layers user community.

Elementor will continue to make sure the Layers theme remain compatible with Elementor and WordPress, but no new features are planned to be introduced.

Because the Layers theme is now fully compatible with Elementor, users can take advantage of Elementor, and even get a discount while upgrading to Pro.

Be sure to check out the dedicated documentation articles and video tutorial we already released, where we explain how you can work with Layers and Elementor.

What This Means for Elementor Users

Many of our users are on the lookout for a decent and compatible theme to use with Elementor. Layers are now another viable free option they can choose.

In the past, we released our ‘Hello Theme‘, which was a starter ‘bare-bone’ theme for users who wanted the leanest possible solution. Since it is so lean, the Hello Theme was mainly suited for users who can manage the entire site design with Elementor or code. Our hope is that the Layers theme will help less tech-savvy users manage the entire site design hassle-free.

Acquiring Layers is an exciting new direction for Elementor, and presents a great start for 2019.