SimpleGreat Ecommerce is a premium responsive Magento theme sold on ThemeForest by the developer dedalx, priced at $199 and built for Magento Community Edition 1.8.x and 1.9.x. It bundles a blog manager extension, a Revolution Slider licence, and a theme admin panel that controls colours, fonts, backgrounds and layout options without touching core files. It suits store owners running a self-hosted Magento 1 shop who want a configurable storefront and an integrated blog without buying separate extensions.
The listing has accumulated 785 sales, which is a meaningful signal of adoption within the Magento 1 theme market rather than a runaway hit. The last vendor update is dated March 2015, and that date matters more than any feature list when assessing whether the theme is a sensible purchase today.
What SimpleGreat Ecommerce Actually Delivers
The theme’s central proposition is configuration depth. Rather than shipping a fixed design, SimpleGreat exposes a large number of storefront decisions through its own admin panel, which sits alongside the standard Magento configuration. Colours, fonts, backgrounds, product grid behaviour, menu style and footer content are all adjustable from that panel, and the vendor states that no core Magento files are modified — a practical concern for anyone who has had to patch a hacked-together theme after a Magento security release.
The visual controls are unusually granular for a theme of this vintage. Eight predefined colour skins ship with the theme, and beyond those the admin panel allows custom colour combinations, so a storefront is not locked into a preset palette. There are 206 texture backgrounds included, most of them transparent, plus the ability to upload custom textures and images. Font selection draws on 500 Google Fonts. Product grids can be set to three or four items per row, with a default or large product box size, and the homepage grids for new and sale products can be switched between slider and grid display.
Two features deserve separate attention because they replace paid extensions. The first is the built-in blog manager, which supports posts, comments, users and categories, and includes a homepage slider for recent posts. The vendor notes it can double as a news module, which is a reasonable use for a store that publishes announcements rather than long-form content. The second is the bundled Revolution Slider, which the listing values at $70. Slider layouts can be set to full-width or a boxed 980px format from the admin panel, and the slider supports swipe gestures on touch devices.
Product page behaviour is more flexible than the theme’s age would suggest. AJAX add-to-cart works with simple, configurable, grouped and bundle products, which matters because grouped and bundle products are where many older Magento themes fall over. Related and up-sell products get their own sliders, and the theme supports a custom tab on the product page for arbitrary content. There is also a catalog mode that disables add-to-cart buttons and the cart entirely — useful for wholesale or catalogue-only sites where transactions happen offline.
Smaller touches round out the feature set: sale and new badges on products, a floating custom HTML block, a Twitter feed slider, a Facebook like box, custom payment and social icons, a scroll-to-top button, Cloud Zoom-style image magnification, and grid or list product views. The theme is multilingual, multicurrency and localised, and PSD source files for the theme, slider images and banners are included.
Where SimpleGreat Ecommerce Fits — and Where It Does Not
This theme is aimed squarely at existing Magento 1 merchants. A store already running Community Edition 1.8 or 1.9 that wants a visual refresh, an integrated blog, and a slider without buying three separate products is the clearest fit. Electronics and general merchandise shops match the demo content, but nothing in the feature set restricts it to those categories — the configuration options are broad enough for apparel, hobby, or B2B catalogue sites.
Freelancers and small agencies taking on Magento 1 client work are a second natural audience. The bundled PSD files and the documented installation guide reduce the time between purchase and a presentable staging site, and the vendor claims a setup window of about ten minutes, which is plausible for a clean Magento install but rarely true once a client’s existing catalogue and extensions are in play.
The wrong audience is anyone starting a new store today. Magento 1 reached end of life and no longer receives security patches, so building a new commerce site on it is difficult to justify regardless of how capable the theme is. A merchant on Magento 2, Shopify or WooCommerce cannot use this product at all — it is not a cross-platform theme. Anyone who needs a theme that receives ongoing updates, modern PHP compatibility, or support for current Magento features should look elsewhere.
Strengths and Limitations of SimpleGreat Ecommerce
Strengths
- Configuration depth that is rare for a Magento 1 theme: unlimited colour combinations, 500 Google Fonts, and 206 bundled textures all controlled from one admin panel.
- Two paid extensions effectively included — the Revolution Slider licence and a functional blog manager with comments, categories and a homepage post slider.
- AJAX add-to-cart that supports grouped and bundle products, not just simple ones.
- Catalog mode, plus the ability to disable compare, wishlist and add-to-cart buttons individually, which suits catalogue-only and wholesale sites.
- No core Magento files modified, which keeps future security patching simpler.
- PSD source files for the theme, slider images and banners are included, which shortens custom design work.
- 785 sales indicate the theme has been deployed widely enough that community answers to common problems are likely to exist.
Limitations
- The last vendor update is March 2015. That is roughly a decade without a release, so the theme should be treated as frozen rather than maintained.
- Compatibility is limited to Magento Community Edition 1.8.x and 1.9.x. There is no Magento 2 version, and the vendor does not state support for later 1.x releases.
- At $199 the price sits at the top of the Magento 1 theme bracket, and the bundled slider and blog are less compelling when comparable functionality is now free or built into modern platforms.
- Support quality cannot be verified from the listing. The vendor describes it as “excellent dedicated support”, but with no updates since 2015, any support commitment is questionable in practice.
- Demo product photography is not included with the theme, so a buyer must supply their own imagery before the storefront looks finished.
- The feature set reflects 2015 front-end practice. There is no mention of modern performance tooling, critical CSS, or Core Web Vitals considerations.
How SimpleGreat Ecommerce Compares to Other Magento Themes
Within the Magento 1 theme category, SimpleGreat competes on breadth of built-in functionality rather than design polish. Many Magento 1 themes of the same era shipped a fixed layout with a handful of colour presets and expected the buyer to purchase a slider and a blog extension separately. SimpleGreat folds those into the purchase price and adds a control panel that reaches further into layout and typography than most of its contemporaries.
Against newer Magento 2 themes, the comparison is not close on maintenance. Magento 2 themes are built on a different front-end stack, receive ongoing updates, and are tested against current PHP versions. SimpleGreat cannot be ported to that stack, so a merchant choosing between the two is really choosing between an established Magento 1 site and a migration project.
Against general-purpose page builders and multipurpose themes on other platforms, SimpleGreat’s advantage is Magento-native integration — catalogue, cart and product attributes work without bridging plugins. Its disadvantage is that the same layout flexibility is now available on platforms with active development and larger support communities.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Magento versions does SimpleGreat support?
SimpleGreat supports Magento Community Edition 1.8.x and 1.9.x only. The vendor does not state compatibility with Magento 2 or with Magento 1 releases after 1.9.x. Because Magento 1 is end-of-life and no longer receives security updates, this restricts the theme to legacy installations rather than new builds.
Does SimpleGreat include the Revolution Slider for free?
Yes. The theme bundles a Revolution Slider licence, which the vendor values at $70, along with slider image PSD files. Slider layouts can be configured as full-width or boxed 980px from the theme admin panel, and the slider supports swipe gestures on mobile devices. The licence is tied to the theme purchase rather than sold separately.
Can SimpleGreat run a blog on a Magento store?
Yes. A blog manager extension is built in, covering posts, comments, users and categories, with a homepage slider for recent posts. The vendor notes it can also serve as a news module. This removes the need to buy a separate Magento 1 blog extension, which was a common additional cost at the time of release.
Is SimpleGreat still updated by the developer?
No. The last vendor update recorded on the listing is 20 March 2015. That means no bug fixes, security patches or feature additions for roughly a decade. Buyers should treat the theme as a frozen product and plan for eventual migration away from Magento 1 rather than expecting long-term maintenance.
Verdict on SimpleGreat Ecommerce
SimpleGreat Ecommerce remains a capable, deeply configurable theme for what it was built to do, and the 785 sales reflect genuine adoption among Magento 1 merchants. The bundled blog manager and Revolution Slider licence add real value at the $199 price, and the admin panel’s control over colour, typography and layout is broader than most Magento 1 themes managed.
Buy it only if a store is already running Magento Community Edition 1.8 or 1.9 and needs a visual overhaul without a platform migration. Do not buy it for a new store, a Magento 2 project, or any site where ongoing security updates and vendor support are requirements — the 2015 update date rules it out for those cases. For a legacy Magento 1 site with a defined lifespan, it is a reasonable purchase; for anything else, the money is better spent on a migration.
