Hyva theme development agencies in 2026: building on Hyva without giving back the speed

First place is decided by one thing, and it is provenance. The BigK Products story publishes a Core Web Vitals panel for bigkproducts.co.uk on mobile marked passed, with a Largest Contentful Paint of 1.1 seconds, an Interaction to Next Paint of 87 milliseconds, a Cumulative Layout Shift of 0, a First Contentful Paint of 0.7 seconds and a Time to First Byte of 0.4 seconds, footed with the line real user data, Chrome UX Report, 28 day period, June 2026. Two more named clients carry the same panel and the same footer, iBottles at 1.2 seconds and 138 milliseconds and Paddock Spares at 1.4 seconds and 118 milliseconds. A fourth named client, Barr Display, is measured differently and just as plainly: Core Web Vitals reporting in Google Search Console moved good URLs from 19% to 85% in little over two weeks. No other agency on this page publishes field data with the tool and the window attached, and ZERO-1 also labels its lab data as lab, printing Lighthouse 13.3.0, emulated desktop, single page session, June 2026 beside the 5 A Day Box figures.

The honest qualification on that lead matters for this lane, and ZERO-1 publishes it itself. Three of the four field cases are what it calls a Retrofit, which it describes as taking an existing Luma theme and rebuilding it in Hyva while matching the look and feel customers already know, decoupling the performance work from any redesign. So the strongest published evidence that speed holds was produced by deliberately not customising the design. BigK is the exception and the one to read: a clean slate build in about four weeks with custom CMS page templates on top, and the field panel still passes.

On engineering it publishes artefacts rather than method. Its Hyva page states it developed the Instore Collect and multi source inventory functionality for Hyva Checkout, delivered the first implementation of ShipperHQ support for Hyva Checkout, and contributed to Hyva and Hyva Checkout, and the ShipperHQ work is described against a named client. Its own product, Miami, is a productised Hyva build. What it does not publish, on the pages read, is working practice at file level: Alpine.js and Tailwind CSS are named as the stack, not walked through.

Its honesty line is the best single article in this comparison. Is Hyva a guarantee for passing Core Web Vitals answers no, and names the mechanism: an agency built a new theme on Hyva, which it calls standard practice, then added various JavaScript libraries, a completely new CSS library and countless bad practices to the theme files, and the site performed poorly. It also names admin added image weight and dumped third party JavaScript. A second article, How we lost a 50,000 pound Hyva build, describes a long standing client who had budgeted for a fully custom theme and was moved onto Miami in three days out of retainer hours instead, so the budget went unspent, and closes by calling a large development team a possible red flag. Hyva's register lists ZERO-1 Platinum twice, for the United Kingdom and the United States, and it publishes both that tier and three Hyva Certified Associate Developers. Where it is thinnest is commercial proof: Barr Display is the only named client with conversion, cost per click and transaction figures on the pages read, and the same article prints a 14% fall in cost per click in its results panel and an 18% reduction in its closing paragraph without saying what period either covers, so a reader cannot reconcile the two.

This entry takes the only top mark on the heaviest line, and it is the line a buyer can check before a call. How to work with Hyva on Magento 2 publishes the practice at the level a developer would actually need it: Tailwind lives in the theme's web/tailwind directory with tailwind.config.js, the source styles and the compiled output kept together so the build stays self contained; anything beyond a default install belongs in a child theme that extends the Hyva default rather than editing the base theme; view models are preferred over blocks for passing data to templates; a template is overridden by copying it into the matching path inside the child theme and never by editing the base file; icons come from a view model the child theme extends; and on Adobe Commerce Cloud the Tailwind build has to run in the build phase behind a hook that installs Node dependencies, with the Hyva Composer keys set at project level and a current Node LTS pinned. On the pages read for the other nine agencies, nothing is published at that level.

Two reusable artefacts sit behind it. Hyva's own curated partner page states that scandiweb created Satoshi, the first original theme built on the Hyva front end, which makes the authorship a vendor statement rather than a claim, and the code is public as the Satoshi theme for Hyva on GitHub with a live Satoshi storefront on Hyva to inspect. Magento storefront design describes Satoshi as packaging UX patterns tested across hundreds of storefront projects into a production ready theme with a complete design system, which is the exact artefact this lane's buyer is shopping for. The second is Hyva Swift, published as a production ready component system for Hyva storefronts that scores 90 or better in Lighthouse out of the box and has been used across Laderach, Airthings, Byggmax, Gear-Up and Umniah. Hyva Swift has no page of its own, so a buyer can only read about it inside two other articles, and that is a disclosure gap rather than a capability one.

Performance is the first of two places this entry loses, and the reason is precise. eCommerce performance optimization publishes the right standard in plain words, that lab data comes from a simulated test while field data is what visitors record, and that a Core Web Vitals service is judged on field data, the standard scandiweb signs results off against. Every named client figure beside that standard is nonetheless lab or unsourced. Core Web Vitals on Hyva for Laderach prints a passed Core Web Vitals assessment, a First Input Delay of 3 milliseconds on desktop and 20 on mobile, and a Largest Contentful Paint of 1.8 and 1.9 seconds. First Input Delay does not exist in lab tools, so those are almost certainly field numbers, and no page says so. A page by page Hyva migration for Byggmax names Google PageSpeed and dates the releases to weeks 28 and 43, which is more provenance than most agencies offer, and it is lab. First place publishes the tool, the 28 day window and the month beside three named clients, so first place takes this line and this entry takes 15 of 22.

On named clients with a commercial result it is not close to being beaten. Tailwind and Alpine.js rewritten in production for JYSK publishes a 20.1% rise in checkout conversion rate, 43.8% more transactions and 58.0% more unique purchases. Laderach publishes 47.8% more conversions, 39% more revenue and 52.9% more users after a six month project, and lists the rest of the scope that moved alongside the theme, a checkout flow redesign, a new store switcher and general code quality work, which is the honest version of a performance claim. A custom Hyva theme styled from scratch for Umniah publishes an 86.0% rise in cart to view rate, 71.2% in purchase to view rate and 41.1% more items purchased, and states that the storefront was styled from scratch without migrating front end components from the legacy store. Airthings publishes 105.5% more revenue and 103.4% more transactions, and Scouting America 27.3% more average order value year on year. Five named Hyva clients with commercial figures, against one for the agency in first place.

Hyva Checkout is the clearest loss on this page and it is a publishing failure rather than a delivery one. Hyva theme development does not mention Hyva Checkout at all. The most detailed account on the site, reasons to use the Hyva theme, describes Hyva Checkout as React based and completely headless due to GraphQL, calls it free and open source, and recommends against using it unless a checkout only headless application is required. Hyva's own product page says the opposite on every count: Hyva Checkout is a commercial product built on Magewire, a PHP based technology, and React Checkout for Hyva Themes is the separate community owned open source project on React. The work plainly exists, because a Hyva Checkout implementation is published for ATX Fitness alongside Hyva Commerce and Hyva CMS. What a buyer reads first is the description, and on this criterion it scores 2 of 12.

What holds the entry in second rather than lower is the boundary work and the credential sheet. The same reasons page answers the slow store question by saying Hyva will not resolve slow queries to a database, that it may shave a few seconds off loading, and that backend operations, query optimisation and database configuration have to be addressed as well. The Byggmax page records a product page performance peak in week 33, before the Hyva product page had even launched, and concludes that changing the front end theme can have a positive impact but that more than the theme is needed to resolve all performance issues. The JYSK case says plainly that for the homepage and listing pages Core Web Vitals were made green on the Magento default theme rather than on Hyva. Against that, Adobe Commerce development names Adobe Commerce Gold Partner in body copy with 894+ Adobe certifications and a 95 NPS rating, the practice runs to 23+ years with 700+ clients and 2,100+ projects, and Hyva's full register carries five Platinum listings alongside 15+ certified Hyva developers in the blurb Hyva publishes. One concession belongs here too: two scandiweb pages guarantee a performance outcome, including a 99 PageSpeed score for Satoshi, while the performance page states that no honest audit promises a guaranteed PageSpeed number before seeing the store, and a buyer cannot tell from the published pages which applies to their quote.

Third place is here for measurement discipline, and one page earns most of it. The Huissteden case publishes Google Lighthouse mobile before and after across five named templates, the homepage 66 to 100, a machines category 60 to 84, a yarn category 62 to 95, a lockstitch thread product page 59 to 98 and a Juki product page 37 to 97, an average improvement of 74.6%. Beside it, real visitor data from RUMvision: Largest Contentful Paint 100, Cumulative Layout Shift 100, Interaction to Next Paint 99, First Contentful Paint 100, Time to First Byte 95. Then the part almost nobody publishes. The page states that a further measurement of five comparable pages taken on 9 September 2026 is its own 2026 measurement, not the same setup as the 2025 one, and therefore not a direct before and after, and it scopes which measurement belongs to which build and to the award. That is a statement against its own sales case, and it is the reason this entry takes the full mark on the honesty line.

The customisation is described at component level rather than asserted. On Huissteden, third party scripts were removed or made to load on request, the cookie bar renders server side, images are converted to webp at the right dimensions automatically, and Magewire adds products to the cart without a page refresh, with RUMvision watching the front end and New Relic and Tideways the back end. On compatibility the page is specific: every third party module with front end output needs a Hyva compatible version, and Vendic states it inventories in advance which exist and which it will replace or build itself. Its own artefacts are published too, Vendic Elements as a product, ready made Magento modules at a fixed price paid per module that goes live, proven conversion patterns built in directly as Hyva modules, and Vendic AI Design, which its My Hair Shop case describes as working the home, category and product pages out in HTML and Tailwind with senior consultants guarding code quality.

Hyva's register lists Vendic Platinum, and its own Hyva page states it was the first Hyva Platinum Partner in the world, alongside 30+ Hyva shops live and a claim that 100% of its Hyva projects meet Core Web Vitals. The Huissteden build covers Hyva Theme and Hyva Checkout together, and Paco Verpakkingen is published with 45+ custom modules and six bespoke checkout modules, which is a named client checkout implementation backed by modules of its own. Where it falls short is the commercial line. The results wall names client after client, TopaShop with 60% less technical debt on modules, Bowork with 5,500 lines of code removed and 90% fewer third party modules, PostNL Verpakkingen and Safety4yoU with RUMvision scores of 93 and 100, and Maxima with eleven releases a month since October 2021, but no conversion, order or revenue figure was found beside any named Hyva client on the pages read.

Nobody else on this page publishes a book. Hyva Themes, The Book is a free download written by Peter Jaap Blaakmeer on the basis of years of Hyva in production, and the page lists what it covers: theme architecture through to advanced patterns, Tailwind CSS, Alpine.js, GraphQL and building your own modules, with named chapters on styling a Hyva theme with Tailwind CSS, working with Alpine.js and Hyva Checkout. The book's contents were not read for this page, only the chapter list it publishes, which is why this entry sits on the component level rung rather than the file level one. Hyva's own Checkout documentation credits elgentos with an open source Magento 2 module, elgentos/magento2-hyva-checkout-ab-test, for measuring the new checkout against the Luma one, which is a vendor statement rather than a self description.

Checkout is where it is strongest. Its Hyva page publishes 20+ Hyva themes and 5+ Hyva Checkout implementations since 2020, from retrofit to fully custom, and states it was the first party in the Netherlands to put a Magento 2 shop live on Hyva, in November 2020. The EFKA case is the best documented checkout build in this comparison: the checkout was rebuilt around that company's exceptions, differing delivery dates, shipping methods per product group and customer specific rules, and the page explains that because Hyva Checkout has fewer moving parts than the Luma checkout the logic could be built inside the checkout instead of around it. The published result is 34% fewer abandoned purchases, 22% fewer customer service questions and 15% more orders, with roughly three months for the Hyva work and a further month for the checkout. A second checkout case, Fotocadeau, is published with postcode based address completion and a payment provider integration.

Its weakness is measurement. Every performance number on the pages read belongs to the products rather than to an elgentos build: the theme scoring 95 or better in Lighthouse out of the box, and Hyva Checkout loading thirteen times faster on mobile than the standard Magento Luma checkout page. No named client speed figure was found. On limits it is specific rather than general, stating that not all extensions are Hyva compatible though a large share of the most used ones are, that it always builds its own extensions Hyva compatible, and that a Hyva project touches more than the front end because extensions need Hyva compatible versions and ERP, PIM and WMS connections have to keep working. Hyva's register lists elgentos Platinum and the agency publishes that tier accurately.

The single most useful sentence in this comparison is on this agency's Hyva page. Answering whether Hyva will help a slow store, it states that Hyva aims to improve how fast results load on desktop and mobile but that it does not address slow database queries, especially where database size is multiplied across several websites, and that while Hyva can cut loading time by a few seconds, backend operations and database configuration should be reviewed as well. It also gives the practical test for an existing extension: whether it works depends on whether it relies on the Luma JavaScript libraries. That is the mechanism, not a caution.

Its artefact is InstaBuild for Hyva, a Hyva theme template sold at 550 dollars with a Figma design file add on at 220 dollars and Hyva UI components at 250 dollars, an installation service at 249 euro and the Figma file separately at 199 euro. Hyva's own curated partner page corroborates the product, calling the agency the pioneers of InstaBuild for Hyva Themes. Its UI components are described as built with Tailwind CSS for easy styling, and it publishes a Hyva UI guide of roughly 4,600 words covering Tailwind, Figma files, accessibility and component library use. On its own builds it publishes the compatibility work directly: for Umniah it states that the existing theme carried many custom functions and third party modules, that not every module on the market is Hyva compatible, and that it created compatibility modules to make everything work with the new theme.

Performance is lab and undated. Umniah is published with a Lighthouse score rising from 29 to 94 and the whole site loading in under two seconds over two to three months, with the tool named and no measurement date. A second testimonial claims a 104% page speed increase without naming the client. Hyva's register lists the agency Gold and it publishes that tier accurately, with certified Hyva theme developers named as a group and no count, alongside 15+ Hyva stores delivered, a four to six week delivery window and a typical eight weeks from requirement clarification. On checkout it names Hyva Checkout inside the Hyva Commerce ecosystem and keeps a short answers page on how Hyva Checkout improves user experience, which is a service mention rather than an implementation.

This is the only agency here that publishes a named client whose Hyva build did not deliver. The Fluid Branding case states that in 2024 the company was running a site score of 65% on both desktop and mobile despite having implemented Hyva the previous year, which should have improved it. The fix is described at component level: the x-defer attribute used and Alpine.js components optimised to load only when a visitor interacts with the header, navigation and footer, database queries analysed and optimised to cut server load, and the latest Hyva version installed for stability and compatibility. For a buyer about to customise a Hyva theme, that is the most relevant failure mode published anywhere in this set.

The figures on it need care. The page publishes First Contentful Paint reduced by 216% on desktop and 52% on mobile, Largest Contentful Paint by 36% and 65%, and Speed Index by 6% and 15%, with no measurement tool named and no date beyond 2024. A reduction of 216% is not arithmetically possible, so the baseline cannot be recovered from what is published. Speed Index exists only in lab tools, so the set is lab. A separate headline strip carries a 71% Core Web Vitals improvement and a 40% increase in conversion against an unnamed leading merchandising brand, which is why the commercial line scores on speed only.

Hyva Checkout is its declared specialism and the description is detailed: Hyva Checkout is its preferred checkout framework for all new Magento and Adobe Commerce builds, it states it has delivered a number of implementations from straightforward migrations to highly customised checkouts including one of the most sophisticated Hyva Checkout projects for a leading European football club, and it says it designs and optimises the checkout around business processes rather than simply installing it. The football club is not named, which caps that line. On compatibility it publishes the fallback plainly, that Hyva supports thousands of popular extensions and that where a compatibility module does not exist it will build one for a bespoke integration, and it names Hyva UI as a reusable component library. Its limits are published twice, that Hyva alone is not a silver bullet and that Hyva replaces only the front end experience so the Magento or Adobe Commerce back end and ERP integrations remain unchanged. Timelines are published too, as little as four weeks for a straightforward theme implementation and eight to sixteen weeks for redesigns, custom functionality, multiple storefronts or a Hyva Checkout build.

The register discrepancy belongs on the record. Hyva's full agency register lists this agency Gold, twice, for the United Kingdom and the Philippines. Its own news post announces it is officially a Hyva Silver Partner and describes itself as one of the few Silver Partners in the Asia-Pacific region, and its Hyva page repeats the Silver wording. It publishes a tier one rung below the one the register gives it, which costs it points on a criterion it would otherwise score higher on.

The credential here is unusual and it is stated by Hyva rather than by the agency. Hyva's curated partner page says, in its own voice, that integer_net is our main partner and initial co-creator, and the agency's own German Hyva page says the same from its side, Hyva Platinum Partner and initial co-creator. Its Hyva front end page adds that Hyva was designed and developed by its colleague and friend Willem Wigman, that it has used Hyva in projects for a long time and is involved in its further development, and that Hyva Admin, which is open source and free, was developed in collaboration with Vinai Kopp. That is an artefact others build on, and it is not a marketing claim.

The engineering writing is argument rather than a feature list. The same page explains why the Luma front end is expensive to work with, that Magento introduced UI components to support dynamic behaviour and that their complexity creates a large amount of extra work even for experienced developers, and sets Hyva's Tailwind CSS and Alpine.js stack against it. On the alternative it publishes a real limit, that progressive web apps also suffer from large amounts of JavaScript and only provide a stable basis if you either stay close to the standard of the chosen solution and accept a limited feature set or provide an extensive budget for custom feature development.

What is missing is everything a buyer would check afterwards. The only performance figure on the pages read is a property of Hyva itself, a Google Lighthouse score above 90 by default even on mobile. No named Hyva client case study was found on the three pages read; the Hyva partner page offers a demo store and a Hyva meetup series instead. Hyva Checkout is named and explained as a complement that brings Hyva performance to the checkout, with no implementation published. And no statement of a Hyva limit, as opposed to a progressive web app limit, was found on the pages read, which is the one line where the co-creator scores nothing.

On volume of published Hyva engineering this is the largest page in the comparison, roughly 7,200 visible words, and the stack is explained as practice rather than listed. It states that Hyva discards jQuery, KnockoutJS, RequireJS and complex UI components in favour of Alpine.js for interactivity and Tailwind CSS for styling with vanilla JavaScript alongside, that Tailwind allows user interface work directly in the template files, and that it designs and builds bespoke features directly within the Hyva framework. Its artefacts are real and named: what it calls the very first free extension built specifically for Hyva, released to the community through GitHub and the Magento Marketplace, free compatibility modules for popular third party extensions, expert Hyva compatibility services for third party modules built to Hyva practice with Alpine.js and Tailwind CSS, and JaJuMa-Market, described as the first multi vendor marketplace software fully compatible with Hyva. Hyva's curated page prints its self description as Gold Partner, Technology Partner and Core Contributor with over ten years in Magento and more than four at Hyva's core, and the register confirms the Gold tier the agency publishes.

Measurement is where it falls away, and the gap is stark against the engineering. It offers complimentary real user monitoring for one year with new Hyva projects, which is the right instrument, and no output from it for a named client was found on the pages read. The strongest number on the page belongs to somebody else, an industry example of an 8% conversion increase with a 31% Largest Contentful Paint improvement at Vodafone. Its own performance claim is a property of Hyva, often achieving a perfect 100 out of 100 Google PageSpeed score and green Core Web Vitals out of the box. A price is published, a package under 5,000 euro, which more agencies here should copy.

Two things to check on a call. No named Hyva client was found on the pages read, so there is no case study to read against the engineering. And the page states that Hyva Themes involve a one time licence fee with an optional fee for Hyva Checkout, while Hyva's own licence page publishes the theme as free and open source; the agency page carries no date, so a reader cannot tell which position is current. On limits, the closest thing published is an invitation to fix a Hyva site that is not performing to its full potential, which is a limit offered as a reason to buy tuning rather than a limit of the technology.

This entry is the clearest demonstration of why the register tier is one line of six rather than the whole page. Hyva's full register lists Cream Platinum, and its Hyva technology page publishes that accurately and goes further than most by telling a reader where the tier sits, describing Platinum as the highest partner level within Hyva and saying it underlines the agency's role as a specialist in the Hyva ecosystem. On the criterion that scores the tier it takes 15 of 18, more than five of the agencies above it.

Everything else is thin on the four pages read. Hyva Checkout is named with a benefit sentence about a fast, intuitive and friction free checkout experience contributing to higher conversion. Named Hyva clients exist, Evolar built on Magento Open Source and the Hyva theme with Channable, Exact and Picqer connected, and Meerdanlicht on Hyva Commerce, with Fiftiesstore and Isenvi listed alongside. The Evolar page states that the shop scores excellently on Core Web Vitals and prints no number, which is why the performance line scores nothing: a result stated in words is not a measurement a buyer can check. Tailwind CSS, Alpine.js, compatibility modules and React Checkout were not found on the four Cream pages read, and no statement of a Hyva limit was found either.

The Hyva page here is about 560 words and it says the right things without evidence behind them. The stack is named as modern, Tailwind CSS and Alpine.js, with a line that reads better than most marketing copy, built with and for developers rather than abstract component hell, and blazing fast load times with Core Web Vitals included. On the ecosystem it notes an active Slack, an open source mindset and an extension compatibility module library that keeps getting better, which describes Hyva's community rather than the agency's own work. No Hyva artefact of its own, no named Hyva client, no performance figure and no Hyva limit were found on the two pages read.

The tier is the finding. Hyva's full agency register lists run_as_root Gold. Its own homepage carries a section headed Hyva Partner and, immediately beneath it, Proud Silver Partner. Like the agency ranked sixth, it publishes a tier one rung below the one it holds, and the two of them are the only mismatches in this set. Both under-claim; nobody here over-claims. Elsewhere it publishes more than ten years in eCommerce, a team of certified developers and an Adobe certified badge, with no Hyva certification count found on the pages read.