In search of good enough?

I’m trying to be constructive here – this isn’t a baseless gripe.

As a business consultant/adviser I’ve often been asked for advice on templates – for many small/solo businesses they’re a good alternative to an often unaffordable bespoke one-off solution.

I find choosing themes to be a pain… there’s so many which just aren’t good… often with poor visuals, badly coded, needlessly complex or lacking basic features.

Honestly, I’ve not found a theme which could be used as-is.
Even the well-written and expensive ones (including Genesis and Woo) often have poor font face/size, and need extra features.

(‘What are the reasonable features?’ is a question I’ve not yet answered.)

For example, something as basic as ‘prev/next post’ is often absent… and what’s the ‘best way’ to provide it? Although personally I prefer to make a child theme and hard-code to template and function files, that’s not something everyone can do and so widgets become applicable (with their own potential problems of poor coding).

Is it reasonable to expect to be able to get something appropriate for less than $100?

Although not for a one-off, it’s not an unreasonable expectation of a theme that’s been produced to sell thousands – and hence generate more revenue than would be the case if it was produced for a single client.

Where’s this going…?

Not sure – I initially wanted to air my view and see if there’s others who can add something.