Coming Soon

A coming-soon page has to do three things: tell visitors what is launching, give them a way to be notified, and stay out of search engines until the real site is ready. That is a small brief, and a good coming-soon theme respects it — one screen, a headline, a short description, an optional countdown, an email field wired to a form or newsletter plugin, and social links. It should be quick to set up because it will be replaced, and it should be easy to remove without leaving orphaned settings behind when the main theme goes live.

What to look for

• Single-screen layout with a large background image or colour and readable text over it on mobile.
• Countdown timer you can set from the Customizer, and turn off if you have no fixed date.
• Newsletter form compatibility — Mailchimp for WordPress, MailPoet or a generic shortcode area.
• Search engine control: either the theme or WordPress’s own “Discourage search engines” setting should keep the placeholder out of the index.
• Logged-in bypass so you can build the real site behind the placeholder, or a clear path to using a maintenance-mode plugin instead.
• Small footprint — no need for sliders, portfolios or a blog layout you will never use.

Our coming-soon theme

Danfe is a free coming-soon WordPress theme with a full-screen background, headline and description text, a configurable countdown, a subscription form area and social icons, all set from the Customizer. It is intentionally narrow in scope: install it, fill in five fields, and you have a launch page in a few minutes. When the main site is ready, switch themes and Danfe leaves nothing behind. For a step-by-step walkthrough — including how to keep the page out of Google and how to connect the email form — read our guide to creating a coming soon page on WordPress.

Free alternatives worth considering

• Hello Elementor — a blank theme; with Elementor’s free version you can build a single coming-soon screen and use its maintenance-mode setting.
• Twenty Twenty-Five — the default block theme can serve a one-screen front page built from patterns, with no extra theme to remove later.
• Astra — if you already plan to launch on Astra, use its blank canvas template for the placeholder and avoid a theme switch.
• Neve — same approach as Astra: a blank page template as the temporary front page.

Free vs Pro

Danfe is free and has no Pro version; a coming-soon page does not need one. If you want more — A/B testing, referral tracking, advanced subscriber management — that belongs in a dedicated plugin, not the theme. Use Danfe for the placeholder, then move to a full theme such as Business Way or Bloge at launch.