5 Reasons Hyvä Is Still the Best Magento Frontend in 2025

Hyvä is the fastest, cleanest way to overhaul your storefront, improve Core Web Vitals, and stay on Adobe Commerce—without the chaos of a full migration.

Magento merchants are in a tough spot. You’ve already invested significantly in Adobe Commerce. Your backend workflows are dialed in, your catalog is stable, your integrations are customized—and yet… your frontend is aging fast.

Your site feels sluggish. Your theme is bloated. You’re losing out on conversions due to poor mobile performance and a clunky content experience. And worst of all, you know you need a change, but the idea of a full platform migration feels like a massive, risky leap.

That’s exactly where Hyvä comes in—and why, in 2025, it’s still the most effective, low-risk way to transform your Magento storefront without starting from scratch.

Watch the full video (9:01) or read below for the full break down exactly why Hyvä remains our go-to recommendation for merchants serious about performance, maintainability, and growth.

What Is Hyvä?
Hyvä (pronounced HOO-vuh) is a modern frontend theme for Magento 2, first released in 2020. It replaces the outdated Luma frontend with a performance-first, developer-friendly alternative that drastically improves speed, UX, and maintainability.

1. It’s Proven, Battle-Tested, and Widely Adopted

Let’s get this out of the way: Hyvä isn’t experimental. It’s not a half-baked framework built by a few developers hoping to disrupt Magento. It is the de facto frontend choice for modern Adobe Commerce implementations in 2025.

Since its launch in 2020, Hyvä has seen thousands of successful deployments across merchants of every size—from SMBs to global enterprise brands. And that adoption is only accelerating.

Agencies like SwiftOtter have fully standardized Hyvä as our default frontend stack for Magento builds. In fact, at this point, we consider it backward to launch a new Magento site using Luma.

Why? Because Hyvä delivers:

Far better performance (we regularly see CWV scores in the 90s)
Faster development and time-to-launch
A frontend that’s actually enjoyable to work with (for developers and marketers alike)

And crucially: it works with almost every major third-party module. The Hyvä team made module compatibility a core priority from day one—and it shows.

2. It’s a No-Risk Evolution—Not a Platform Rebuild

One of the most underrated strengths of Hyvä is how non-disruptive it is to your existing Magento infrastructure.

With Hyvä, you’re not rebuilding your entire store. You’re not migrating platforms. You’re not retraining your entire team on a new system. Your:

Products
Customers
Orders
Integrations
Admin workflows

…all stay exactly the same.

You’re simply replacing the aging Luma-based frontend with a modern one.

Compare that to a full platform migration (like Adobe to Shopify or BigCommerce), where you’re looking at:

Major data migration risks
New admin training for your staff
Rebuilding custom workflows from scratch
Platform-specific limitations you’ll discover too late

Hyvä offers the opposite: a low-risk, high-reward upgrade path that gives your customers a dramatically better experience without disrupting your operations behind the scenes.

3. The Feature Set (Especially Hyvä Commerce) Is a Game-Changer

Let’s talk capabilities.

The base Hyvä theme alone will boost performance and clean up your frontend code. But Hyvä Commerce—their extended suite of enhancements—is what truly unlocks next-level value.

For ~$350–$500/year, Hyvä Commerce includes:

A brand new CMS (yes, a real replacement for PageBuilder that your content team will actually enjoy using)
A redesigned admin UI with better UX and workflows
An inline image editor
Continuous feature updates and roadmap transparency
Modern tech stack that developers actually want to work in (goodbye, 2012-era frontend tech)

And yes, we routinely see Core Web Vitals scores in the 90s when implemented correctly. That directly translates to:

Faster load times
Higher conversions
Better SEO rankings
Lower bounce rates

Which means this isn’t just a developer dream—it’s a revenue driver.

4. The Hyvä Team Is Relentless About Improvement

This isn’t some set-it-and-forget-it theme.

The Hyvä team (led by developers like Willem Wigman and Vinai Kopp) continues to ship meaningful updates on a regular basis. Their investment in the product is obvious and ongoing. In the last year alone, they’ve:

Released a standalone Hyvä Checkout
Expanded third-party extension compatibility
Improved frontend performance
Polished the CMS experience
Prioritized developer feedback and community support

And unlike other Magento solutions, the Hyvä team is transparent about their roadmap and community involvement. You’re not buying a theme that’s going to stagnate—you’re investing in a product that evolves alongside your business.

As a bonus: their developer community is passionate, active, and growing. We’ve personally seen how much easier it is to find devs excited to work on a Hyvä project versus slogging through Luma or blank themes.

5. It’s Surprisingly Affordable (and Pays for Itself Fast)

Let’s talk cost.

For the base theme, you’re looking at a one-time license of ~$3,500 USD. That’s it.

Hyvä Commerce—packed with additional features and CMS tools—is a separate annual cost (~$500/year), but again, entirely reasonable for what you get.

Compared to:

Adobe Commerce licensing costs
Long-term maintenance of a legacy theme
Development hours required to build performance from scratch
Conversion losses due to slow site speed

…Hyvä is a bargain.

In most cases, our clients see the investment pay for itself within 30 days—purely through improved speed, usability, and conversion rates.

Even better? Because Hyvä reduces frontend complexity, development and maintenance costs go down over time. It’s easier to build, faster to iterate, and less of a headache to maintain.

What About Limitations?

We’ll be honest: Hyvä isn’t always the right fit. There are scenarios where it might not be the best choice—especially for merchants with highly custom, legacy frontend functionality that would require significant rewrite effort.

But we’ve already thought through those edge cases. That’s why we created this video breaking down five reasons not to use Hyvä—and when a different approach might make more sense.

Final Thoughts: Should You Choose Hyvä?

If you’re on Magento or Adobe Commerce in 2025 and still running Luma, you’re behind.

Hyvä is the simplest way to:

Upgrade your customer experience
Improve site speed and SEO
Empower your content team
Reduce maintenance headaches
Keep your backend systems fully intact

If Hyvä is on your radar, but you’re not sure whether it’s the right fit for your store, you’re not alone. There’s a lot to weigh: performance, compatibility, content needs, long-term costs—and it’s not always a clear yes or no.

That’s why we create this resource and its counterpart: to help merchants make confident, informed decisions.

If you’d like a second opinion or want to talk it through with someone who’s done this before, drop us a note below. We’re always happy to take a look and point you in the right direction.

Need Help Navigating the Decision?

Whether you’re leaning toward Hyvä or still weighing alternatives, we’re love to give you a second opinion rooted in real-world experience.