Helping engineers create intuitive user interfaces of the product back-end, admin dashboards do facilitate and automate software development. Sometimes the number of saved hours can reach hundreds of them! As a consequence, programmers save a lot of effort and get the ability to concentrate on other tasks, while customers manage to significantly reduce costs.
Concerning practical use, admin templates allow companies to manage and analyze data from one place, view statistics and keep track of real-time updates. For these reasons, they have gained high popularity recently. However, the choice of an admin dashboard is quite challenging. If you’ve ever searched them on Google, you know that the market is full of similar products.
They can be categorized by technologies (Angular, React, Node.js, Bootstrap. HTML admin dashboards, etc.), by goal (some templates aim to ensure data visualization and management, some — to provide big data analytics capabilities, others — to manage IoT data, etc.), by theme (e.g., white, dark), and so on.
So, while the right choice will let you save thousands of dollars, the incorrect one may result in the waste of time and money. Also, good custom admin templates ensure ease of use: an intuitive user interface and engaging user experience are one of the key success factors of any mobile or web solution.
In this article, we’ve collected the top 10 admin dashboard templates — 5 free and 5 paid — with a dark theme. Why dark-themed? Why are they so popular and why should you use a dark mode? How do you choose the best option? Find out the answers!
WHY SHOULD CHOOSE A DARK THEME?
After macOS Mojave was announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference on June 4, 2018, and was officially released a bit later (on September 24), dark themes became one of the most popular UI/UX design trends. This event encouraged famous companies to update software and create new products with dark themes. And those who were the pioneers gained an advantage.
We believe that a dark mode is so attractive as it provides some kind of depth and feel of quality. It isn’t about the use of too flashy colors or, even worse, plenty of them in one design. And isn’t about creating too many contrasts.
Certainly, sometimes such tricks should be also applied but most often, designers employ them in the B2C area to catch users’ attention. For business, a customized dark-themed admin dashboard is a perfect option: as your eyes don’t get tired, it’s very convenient to use in everyday work.
THE BEST DARK-THEMED ADMIN DASHBOARD TEMPLATES FOR FREE AND PREMIUM
1. Black dashboard Angular
Black Dashboard Angular is a free open source Bootstrap 4 and Angular user dashboard template for data visualization and management. Created by Creative Tim, this MIT-licensed product embraces rich graphics, contemporary typography, and cards. It also provides two modes — dark and light.
Being packed with all the necessary plugins and instructions on how to start, Black Dashboard Angular significantly simplifies development, from prototyping to writing the code. Therefore, you have developers’ time and project costs reduced.
This free dashboard software has an engaging modern design. However, the red navigation shifts focus from the data visualization panel which sometimes may deflect attention away from the required information. The tool offers both free and paid versions.
Features that you can access for free
- 16 handcrafted elements
- Thousands of possible combinations
- Responsive design
- 3 plugins
- 7 sample pages
Features of the PRO version
- 160 components
- 14 customized plugins
- Documentation
- SASS and Sketch files
The template is available for free and the price of upgrading to the PRO version is $59.
By now, this Bootstrap 4 Angular web dashboard has been downloaded 2,600 times and rated by customers 4,9 stars out of 5.
See a live preview of Black Dashboard Angular.
Instructions on how to get started are available by this link.
2. NGX-admin
For today, ngx-admin from Akveo is the most well-known admin dashboard template based on Angular 8+ and Bootstrap 4+. Being free, MIT-licensed, and open-source, it provides an intuitive and beautiful interface. Ngx-admin serves for both personal and commercial purposes and enables support for Nebular and Eva Design System. Due to Eva, you can create truly remarkable UI/UX designs.
Nebular is a UI toolkit for developing modern and rich-functional web applications with Angular. This MIT-licensed product offers a set of native Angular components, auth and security layers that can be easily configured to your API.
Eva Design System is a customizable design system that enables businesses to create unique branding themes. Eva provides over 480 beautiful open source icons, about 400 text styles, and more than 250 layer styles. This design solution includes support for web (Angular UI library) and mobile (React Native UI library) components.
Ngx-admin Agular dashboard provides software engineers with over 100 custom UI components that include maps, graphs, charts, tables, editors, and many others. Also, it is adaptive which makes your products look great regardless of the type of device and the size of screens being used. Besides dark, ngx offers light, cosmic, and corporate themes.
The plus is that this dark-themed Angular template is fully customizable, so you can easily tailor it to your business-specific needs. What’s important, ngx-admin allows easy integration with backend (.NET, Node.js, Java/Spring) using Angular Backend Admin Bundles (ngx admin + backend).
Features of ngx-admin
- Responsive layout
- More than 100 UI components that are integrated with backend service
- RTL support
- Mobile-first
- Backend services
- Repository layers
- JWT Authentication setup for either UI or backend
- Perfectly suits for commercial usage
- Detailed instructions and clear code documentation
If you choose Multi starter kit bundle, you will also get access to:
- The ability to implement various projects with the help of Backend Bundle
- Bug fixes and answering questions according to the terms of your license
The use of ngx-admin software dashboard allows engineers to save up to 480 hours on development and businesses — reduce project costs by $33,000.
The price of this ready-made product for data management starts from $59.
See a live demo of ndx-admin Angular template.
Find all the necessary instructions and documentation here.
See Akveo’s ngx-admin on GitHub (18,845 stars in total).
3. Black dashboard React
Another solution invented and launched by Creative Tim. Providing a number of custom UI components and plugins, Black Dashboard React is a web admin template for delivering beautiful web solutions. This MIT-licensed product offers 2 themes that you can choose from — Light and Dark.
Being packed with all the required developer tools and design elements, it focuses on visualizing and managing the business data. What’s important, this Bootstrap (Reactstrap) template offers free and paid versions, ensures a high customization level, and has a beautiful modern design.
The functionality of a free version
- 16 custom UI components
- 3 plugins
- 7 sample pages
The functionality of the PRO version
- 160 individual UI components
- 15 plugins
- 7 sample pages
- SASS and Sketch files
- High responsiveness
- Clear documentation on how to use and how to get started
According to 112 user reviews, this dashboard admin template was rated 4.9/5. By now, it has been downloaded 12,469 times. You can try Black Dashboard React for free with limited functionality and then upgrade to PRO if it suits your business and technical needs. The PRO version is available for $59.
See a live demo of this Bootstrap admin template.
4. Label
Features of a demo version
- 1 layout
- 2 example pages
- 25 components
- 2 plugins
- Responsive layout
- Support for most modern browsers
Features of the PRO version
- 2 themes
- 6 example pages
- Over 200 components
- More than 30 plugins
- Premium support
- Documentation
- Advanced Gulp task
PRO regular
- Use for one software project
- 6 months of premium support
- Provides free lifetime updates
- Accessible only for non-paying users
PRO extended
- Use for a wide range of software projects
- 1 year of premium support
- Provides lifetime updates
- Allows having paying users
Like most admin dashboards, Label has both free and paid versions. The paid (Premium) version consists of regular and extended versions.
Label from Uxcandy is a Bootstrap 4 admin dashboard. This product provides various customized web components like tables, buttons, etc. You will also receive multiple useful things that involve example pages, charts, icons, and other necessary elements for making cool web applications faster and easier.
Label perfectly suits for implementing software projects such as SAAS solutions, administrator panels, and high-performance web applications as well.
The price of a regular version is $24 and of PRO — $699.
Live demo of Label Bootstrap admin template.
Documentation and instructions on how to install and customize the product.
5. Xtreme
Xtreme is a React Redux web dashboard template for making intuitive user interfaces of software projects. Launched by WrapPixel company, Xtreme React Admin is a fully responsive and customizable product that is based on a modular design.
This solution offers a wide range of great features that involve over 250 pages, more than 65 UI components, 2000+ font icons, and many other useful things. It also provides customers with both light and dark color themes and, most importantly, 4 user dashboards — Classic, E-commerce, General, and Cryptocurrency. To see more details, see the functionality below.
Features of Xtreme
- 6 color schemes
- 3 themes of the sidebar: colored, dark and light
- More than 2000 great font icons
- Over 250 templates of pages
- Calendar design
- Over 65 UI elements (buttons, badges, alerts, cards, pagination, tabs, etc.)
- Plenty of tables (React and Bootstrap tables, basic tables)
- Various harts
- Widgets
- Validation forms
Unlike other dashboard solutions described in this article, Xtreme is accessible for free to personal use only, no commercial. You can use it to check the code and ensure that the product suits your needs and is compatible with the required programming language(s).
The price of Xtreme React admin template starts from $39 for single use that allows personal and commercial purposes and lets software engineers build one website or application.
There are also plans for multiple use ($79.00), extended use ($399), and multiple extended use ($999.00) that offer wider possibilities. For instance, the license that costs $79 lets developers employ the product for an unlimited number of projects, enables lifetime updates that are available for free, and provides 1-year premium support.
By now, Xtreme React Redux admin panel template has been downloaded over 208,000 times and attracted more than 171,500 customers.
To check out this solution, you should visit this website. See a live demo of this dark-themed admin dashboard template here.
6. Nalika
Nalika is a Bootstrap HTML5 admin template with a dark mode that has a clean intuitive design. Being MIT-licensed dashboard software released by Colorlib, it has a responsive layout and modern design. With multiple UI elements, plugins, and libraries, this product enables programmers to implement web projects faster and easier.
Features of Nalika
- Numerous UI elements that include data map, Google maps, code editor, and a lot more
- Font icons
- 53 HTML files
- Static and data tables
- PDF viewer
- Image cropper
- File manager
- Text editor, tree view
Nalika is available for free. You can download this HTML template from this website.
Take a look at a live demo of this Bootstrap web template.
Find documentation here.
7. YoraUI
YoraUI is a Bootstrap admin dashboard template and data visualization tool that offers a wide range of ready-to-use customizable UI components, chart libraries, maps, tables, widgets, and editors. What’s important, the product facilitates the development process and provides a high level of customization.
It is noteworthy that YouraUI offers two dark layouts — vertical and horizontal so that customers can choose what they like the most. Besides a dark mode, there is a light version, too.
Features of YoraUI
- Multiple UI elements that include buttons, badges, dropdowns, tabs, pagination, modals, progress bar, and more
- Advanced UI elements that involve sliders, loaders, carousel, context menu, etc.
- Responsive appealing design
- Horizontal and vertical layouts
- More than 10 pre-built dashboard widgets
- 1000+ icons
- Cross-browser compatibility
- Documentation
- A number of customized chart libraries
The price of downloading this Bootstrap 4 admin template from UrbanUI is $25.
A live preview of YoraUI.
Documentation and instructions on how to install this dashboard software.
8. Majestic
Produced by UrbanUI, Majestic is a fully responsive Bootstrap dashboard template. Thanks to its convenience, various UI components, high level of customization, and cross-browser compatibility, you can deliver different types of software products much easier.
It also enables developers to make web solutions look stunning on all devices including mobile. This dark-themed admin template includes either vertical or horizontal layouts.
Features of Majestic
- Dark and light themes
- More than 1000 icons
- Integration with tools such as npm and gulp
- Multiple UI components
- Plugins and dashboard widgets
- A variety of chart libraries and other dashboard tools
The price of this Bootstrap 4 dashboard starts from $25 (for a regular license).
A live demo of Majestic dark-themed Bootstrap admin template: vertical and horizontal.
Documentation is available by this link.
9. Corona
Corona is another Bootstrap 4 user dashboard template that you should consider for your project. Allowing software developers to create mobile-friendly mobile applications, Corona provides a wide range of UI components that you can employ in your design.
One of the key benefits of this Bootstrap web dashboard is that it offers a high level of customization and has a responsive interface. Being built on top of the modern technology stack, it has all the necessary tools for the quick start.
Another advantage is that there are 5 templates to choose from: besides Default Dashboard, there are other solutions such as Classic Horizontal, Modern Horizontal, Modern Vertical, and Tinted Slidebar. While classic variants offer classic design, other templates have bright elements on the interface.
To our mind, it’s better to use (or at least to start with) classic template as nothing here draws attention from the data on charts and diagrams.
Features of Corona
- A wide range of UI dashboard elements that involve buttons, badges, sliders, carousel, tabs, pagination, and other elements
- Drag-and-drop technology
- Event calendar
- Various layouts
- RTL compatibility
- Mobile-first design
The price of using this Bootstrap admin template starts from $35 for making a single website.
A general cost for developing a number of sites is $99 and the most expensive license costs $499. At the moment, Corona offers shares. For instance, the price for a regular plan is $25 instead of $35.
Check out of a live demo of this Bootstrap user dashboard template.
10. Luna
- Luna is a Bootstrap web admin template that has a dark mode and fully responsive layout. Being compatible with most web browsers and having well-structured code, this dashboard software provides a lot of UI elements, plugins, and developer tools for building web solutions.
- Furthermore, the product allows businesses to easily track and monitor website activity and visualize data. Therefore, it perfectly fits for monitoring and managing different types of projects.
- The functionality of Luna
- Various UI components
- Animations CSS3
- View monitoring
- Plenty of tables’ styles
- Login, register, and error pages
- Text editor and autocomplete
- 2 charts libraries
- SVG maps and loaders
- Customized modal view
At the moment, Luna can be purchased for $24 for a single project and $800 for extended use.
Preview of Luna user dashboard template.Final thoughts
FINAL THOUGHTS
Although there are so many admin dashboard templates to choose from, don’t be afraid — there is an approach that will help you make the right decision. First of all, define your business needs and goals. Second, browse user dashboard solutions and find those that provide the necessary features.
Pay attention to such things as the number of UI components, data visualization capabilities, the level of customization. Take into account the price and check out a live demo. Ask your developers to look through documentation: all the instructions on how to install the product have to be clear and detailed.
Choose a web dashboard that corresponds with the necessary technology stack: for example, if you have in-house Angular developers or want to extend an Angular-based project, you should choose an Angular template. Finally, you should enjoy the product design that should be responsive, intuitive, and just beautiful.
If you have some questions about web admin dashboards or would like to request a consultation, feel free to contact our team! With extensive experience in software engineering and business analysis, we’ll be glad to help you resolve your issues.
Building Reconciliation Tool for e-commerce company
Our client was in need of streamlining and simplifying its monthly accounting reconciliation process – preferably automatically. But with a lack of time and low budget for a custom build, development of a comprehensive software wasn’t in the picture. After going through the case and customer’s needs, we decided to implement Retool. And that was the right choice.
The scope of work
Our team developed a custom reconciliation tool designed specifically for the needs of high-volume transaction environments. It automated the processes and provided a comprehensive dashboard for monitoring discrepancies and anomalies in real-time.
The implementation of Retool significantly reduced manual effort, as well as fostered a more efficient and time-saving reconciliation process.
Creating Retool Mobile App for a Wine Seller
A leading spirits and wine seller in Europe required the development of an internal mobile app for private client managers and administrators. The project was supposed to be done in 1,5 months. Considering urgency and the scope of work, our developers decided to use Retool for swift and effective development.
The scope of work
Our developers built a mobile application tailored to the needs of the company's sales force: with a comprehensive overview of client interactions, facilitated order processing, and enabled access to sales history and performance metrics. It was user-friendly, with real-time updates, seamlessly integrated with existing customer databases.
The result? Increase in productivity of the sales team and improved decision-making process. But most importantly, positive feedback from the customers themselves.
Developing PoC with Low Code for a Tour Operator
To efficiently gather, centralize, and manage data is a challenge for any tour operator. Our client was not an exception. The company was seeking to get an internal software that will source information from third-party APIs and automate the travel itinerary creation process. Preferably, cost- and user-friendly tool.
The scope of work
Our experts ensured the client that all the requirements could be covered by Retool. And just in 40 hours a new software was launched. The tool had a flexible and easy-to-use interface with user authentication and an access management system panel – all the company needed. At the end, Retool was considered the main tool to replace the existing system.
Testing New Generation of Lead Management Tool with Retool
Our client, a venture fund, had challenges with managing lead generation and client acquisition. As the company grew, it aimed to attract more clients and scale faster, as well as automate the processes to save time, improve efficiency and minimize human error. The idea was to craft an internal lead generation tool that will cover all the needs. We’ve agreed that Retool will be a perfect tool for this.
The scope of work
The project initially began as a proof of concept, but soon enough, with each new feature delivered, the company experienced increased engagement and value.
We developed a web tool that integrates seamlessly with Phantombuster for data extraction and LinkedIn for social outreach. Now, the company has a platform that elevates the efficiency of their lead generation activities and provides deep insights into potential client bases.
Building an Advanced Admin Portal for Streamlined Operations
Confronted with the need for more sophisticated internal tools, an owner of IP Licensing marketplace turned to Retool to utilize its administrative functions. The primary goal was to construct an advanced admin portal that could support complex, multi-layered processes efficiently.
The scope of work
Our client needed help with updating filters and tables for its internal platform. In just 30 hours we've been able to update and create about 6 pages. Following features were introduced: add complex filtering and search, delete records, styling application with custom CSS.
Together, we have increased performance on most heavy pages and fixed circular dependency issues.
Creating MVP Dashboard for Google Cloud Users
Facing the challenge of unoptimized cloud resource management, a technology firm working with Google Cloud users was looking for a solution to make its operations more efficient. The main idea of the project was to create an MVP for e-commerce shops to test some client hypotheses. Traditional cloud management tools fell short.
The scope of work
Determined to break through limitations, our team of developers turned Retool. We decided to craft an MVP Dashboard specifically for Google Cloud users. This wasn't just about bringing data into view; but about reshaping how teams interact with their cloud environment.
We designed a dashboard that turned complex cloud data into a clear, strategic asset thanks to comprehensive analytics, tailored metrics, and an intuitive interface, that Retool provides. As the results, an increase in operational efficiency, significant improvement in cost management and resource optimization.
Elevating CRM with Custom HubSpot Sales Dashboard
Our other client, a SaaS startup, that offers collaborative tools for design and engineering teams, was on a quest to supercharge their sales efforts. Traditional CRM systems were limited and not customizable enough. The company sought a solution that could tailor HubSpot to their workflow and analytics needs.
The scope of work
Charged with the task of going beyond standard CRM functions, our team turned to Retool. We wanted to redefine how sales teams interact with their CRM.
By integrating advanced analytics, custom metrics, and a user-friendly interface, our developers provided a solution that transformed data into a strategic asset.
In 40 hours, three informative dashboards were developed, containing the most sensitive data related to sales activities. These dashboards enable our customer to analyze sales and lead generation performance from a different perspective and establish the appropriate KPIs.
Building a PDF Editor with Low-Code
Our client, a leading digital credential IT startup, needed a lot of internal processes to be optimized. But the experience with low-code tools wasn’t sufficient. That’s why the company decided to hire professionals. And our team of developers joined the project.
The scope of work
The client has a program that designs and prints custom badges for customers. The badges need to be “mail-merged” with a person’s info and turned into a PDF to print. But what is the best way to do it?
Our developers decided to use Retool as a core tool. Using custom components and JavaScript, we developed a program that reduced employees' time for designing, putting the data, verifying, and printing PDF badges in one application.
As a result, the new approach significantly reduces the time required by the internal team to organize all the necessary staff for the conference, including badge creation.