You find the perfect WordPress theme. You click buy. Then the checkout asks for a subscription instead. Twenty minutes and eleven browser tabs later, you still don’t have a theme, and your patience is nearly gone.
That confusion exists because Envato runs two platforms that look like cousins but work nothing alike: **Envato Elements** and **Envato Market**. I’ve paid for both, on and off, for about four years. Dozens of ThemeForest and CodeCanyon purchases for client builds too. Here’s the honest breakdown, with real numbers, so you can pick the right one in five minutes instead of five hours.
## Key Takeaways (TL;DR)
– **Envato Elements = subscription.** Unlimited downloads, one simple commercial license. Starts at $16.50/month billed yearly.
– **Envato Market = pay per item.** Buy once, own it forever. Most items run $5 to $79.
– **Elements has no Extended License.** Market does. This matters more than you’d think.
– **Not everything is on Elements.** Many of ThemeForest’s best-selling themes are Market-only.
– **Market purchases include 6 months of author support.** Elements downloads don’t.
– **Quick rule:** Download stuff constantly? Get Elements. Need one specific item, an Extended License, or real support? Buy on Market.
Try Envato Elements here | Check Envato Market pricing here
## What Is Envato Elements?
Think Netflix, but for creative assets. One fee, unlimited downloads, no per-item charges.
A single Elements subscription covers:
– WordPress themes and plugins
– Thousands of fonts
– Stock photos, videos, and illustrations
– Music and sound effects
– Video templates for Premiere Pro, After Effects, and DaVinci Resolve
– Presentation templates for PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides
– Mockups, graphics, and 3D models
**Pricing at the time of writing:**
– Annual plan: $16.50/month, billed as $198/year
– Monthly plan: $33/month (cancel anytime)
– Students: 50% off with verification
– Teams: per-seat discounts that bring the cost down to roughly $10 to $12 per member/month
What sold me was the licensing. Every download, client work included, falls under a single commercial agreement with no tiers and no add-on fees. You don’t need a decoder ring to work out what you’re allowed to use.
Honestly, my biggest annoyance is search. The library is huge and the filters are mediocre, so expect to scroll past a lot of near-misses.
## What Is Envato Market?
This is the original Envato, a classic pay-per-item marketplace split across six sub-sites:
– **ThemeForest**: WordPress themes and website templates
– **CodeCanyon**: plugins, scripts, and app source code
– **VideoHive**: motion graphics and stock footage
– **AudioJungle**: royalty-free music and sound effects
– **GraphicRiver**: graphics, logos, and print templates
– **3DOcean**: 3D models
You buy items one at a time, and authors set their own prices. In my experience, WordPress themes run $29 to $79, plugins $15 to $60, and music starts around $15.
Every purchase includes:
1. Lifetime use of that item
2. Free future updates
3. 6 months of support from the author (extendable to 12 for a fee)
That last point is huge. If a plugin breaks after a WordPress update, you can message the developer directly. Try doing that with a $0-per-item download.
## The Difference Between Envato Elements and Envato Market: 6 Things That Actually Matter
### 1. Subscription vs One-Time Purchase
Elements bills you the same if you pull 3 items or 300. Market charges only when you buy. Sounds trivial, but it flips the entire value proposition.
Grabbing assets every week? Elements gets cheaper with every click. Buying one theme for one site? A subscription is money down the drain after month two.
### 2. Licensing: Simple vs Powerful
Elements hands you a single universal commercial license. Unlimited projects, client work, most commercial uses, all covered. The catch: no Extended License option exists. Period.
Market offers two tiers, Regular and Extended. Extended costs more (often 5-10x the base price) but lets you charge end users. Building a paid app, a SaaS product, or a game people pay for? You need Extended, and only Market sells it.
### 3. Catalog: Curated vs Complete
Elements is a curated library. It’s massive (millions of assets), but it’s a subset, not the full vault.
Some of ThemeForest’s biggest names, Avada and Flatsome among them, aren’t available on Elements. Authors opt in voluntarily, and plenty don’t. If your heart is set on a specific best-seller, check Market before you subscribe.
### 4. Support: Self-Serve vs Author-Included
No author help on Elements. You get the files and the documentation. That’s it.
Every Market purchase includes 6 months of direct author support. For anything business-critical (an e-commerce theme, a booking plugin) that alone can justify the price.
### 5. What Happens When You Stop Paying
Cancel Elements, and anything you already used in finished projects stays licensed forever. But you can’t grab those files and start brand-new projects with them after cancellation. I learned this the awkward way when a client wanted a small change six months after I’d paused my plan. Re-downloading wasn’t possible.
Market items never expire. Buy once, use forever, in the project you licensed them for. No renewal anxiety.
### 6. Who Each Platform Actually Suits
**Elements** is built for freelancers, agencies, video editors, social media managers, and bloggers, anyone burning through assets every month.
**Market** fits business owners, developers, and one-off buyers who need a specific item done right.
## Which One Deserves Your Money?
After four years of paying for both, my rule is simple: count your downloads.
If you pull new assets weekly (fonts, footage, templates for client decks), Elements pays for itself fast. At $16.50/month on the annual plan, it costs less than two ThemeForest themes. If you need a single theme or plugin, buy it on Market and own it for good. Subscribing to grab one file is like paying for a gym membership to use the treadmill once.
One more honest complaint before you subscribe: quality control on Elements is looser. Market shows sales numbers and reviews, which make the good stuff obvious. On Elements I’ve wasted entire afternoons hunting for a decent After Effects template. Ten minutes on Market usually beats an hour of Elements browsing for anything specific.
And if there’s any chance you’ll need an Extended License or direct developer help someday, don’t overthink it. Go Market.
Pick based on how you actually work. Everything else is marketing.