Hi guys,
wanted your opinion, recently we are discussing an option with our theme on switching from our custom theme options to redux.
And are hitting some walls, since having our own theme options does give us some pride, there are redux advantages for which we would have to build up a bit more to catch up, tough we do slightly out performance it in speed and loading times.
Any suggestions or thoughts would be nice!
thank you
Personally I ditched Redux and moved to the customizer panel as you can now add panels (so “theme settings” and there are numerous scripts out there to add additional settings options (Kirki and this are the most common ones)
Wordpress.org has already banned custom panels (http://wptavern.com/wordpress-org-now-requires-theme-authors-to-use-the-customizer-to-build-theme-options) and I can’t see it being too long before Envato follow them…
Redux has a setting to move their options to the customizer instead of the custom admin page but I personally prefer using (as a buyer) and developing with the customizer
Somehow i doubt envato will ban it, since so much themes actually use them, but well who could know with envato 
Thank you for your feedback
Yup. Totally agree. Although I’ve used to develop themes with Redux for my clients (incredibly easy to setup and to customise code-wise), I’ve started to move towards built-in customiser. The more you use default WordPress functionality, the better - for stability, security and user experience. You also won’t have to worry about updating the third party framework - customiser updates come along with your routine WordPress maintenance.
WordPress will put pressure on them to do it imho, as then it creates a global setting across all WP sites, just like when Envato followed them into banning shortcodes and post types in themes.
At the moment a buyer doesn’t know what they will get, either one of the many options panels or the natural customizer… making everyone use the customizer makes the managing of WP sites easier for buyers.
Yes but in my book wp customiser will have to evolve quite a bit before its ready to cope with this or?
Since I just cannot get use to it.
I thought that too but it’s come on leaps and bounds in the last year or so, with the 2 links I posted you can pretty much add anything into the customizer… It’s not perfect but it’s being worked on pretty much all the time by Justin Tadlock so it’s only going to get better.
The beauty of the customizer over redux is the customizer is a preview panel, so they can see the changes before the save, so they can see the colours change and test the options before they save it.
Redux can save to the customizer as I said but imho redux just becomes an extra script you need to update. The customizer is the future
I think it all really depends on the use case.
I believe the Customiser has all features an average user might need from a theme - text inputs, colour pickers, widgets, menus management etc.
If there is anything really custom that your theme requires, I guess you could try to evaluate whether it’s more for a user or a developer:
Just a thought 
Yes, but were then to put, theme updates, demo imports etc., now that is nicely all in one place.
Theme options were not just theme styling and few settings but a whole theme experience and it worked.
Using customiser until now it’s just not that friendly for me and its a bit messy and cluttered
Being innovative is always challenging, but I believe the Customiser is:
All in all, there is always a workaround you just have to rethink your approach.
If you’re building really complex themes then the customizer might not be the best solution, I mainly build blog themes and simple portfolio sites which don’t need / want demo imports (if they do I use the default importer).
Theme updates should be handled by the Envato toolkit plugin
As I said, it’s a personal thing but I prefer the customizer as it’s just a much cleaner experience for the buyers and lets them modify the options but see the changes live.
Yes i am talking about a bit more complex themes, and we use envato toolkit but its placed inside theme options.
Yes maybe in the end it all subjective.