Socialize Buttons is a small CSS3 library that adds styled social media icons to links and buttons on a web page. It ships with seven visual styles across three sizes, and it is applied by adding a class name to existing markup rather than by uploading image files. It suits freelancers and site owners who want consistent social icons without loading a separate icon font or a JavaScript plugin.
The product is sold on ThemeForest in the Buttons category for $4. The vendor, whose marketplace profile is the only author information supplied with the listing, does not publish a sales figure for this item, so there is no purchase history to weigh. That absence matters for a buying decision and is treated honestly below.
What Socialize Buttons actually gives a site
The core idea is deliberately narrow: the library is a set of CSS rules that restyle an element already on the page. Nothing is generated by script, and no image requests are made. The practical effect is that a social icon costs almost nothing in page weight compared with a plugin that bundles an icon font, a stylesheet and a settings screen.
Seven styles and three sizes from one class
Each visual treatment is selected by a class, and size is a separate class, so the two choices combine rather than multiply into twenty-one fixed variants. In practice a developer can place a large flat icon in a footer and a small rounded one in a header without touching any other CSS. The vendor tags the pack with 3D and effects, which indicates at least some of the seven styles use depth or shadow treatments rather than flat colour alone.
Works on links and on buttons
Because the styles apply to both anchor elements and button elements, the same class works for a plain profile link and for a control that triggers a share dialog or opens a panel. That flexibility is more useful than it first appears: many icon packs assume every social action is a link, which forces awkward markup when the action is really a button.
No images, so nothing to upload or lose
Every icon is drawn with CSS and the accompanying font library rather than a PNG or SVG file. There is no media library to populate, no sprite sheet to regenerate when a style changes, and no broken image icon if a file is moved during a migration. For agencies handing a finished site to a client, that removes a common source of quiet breakage.
Graceful behaviour on old browsers
The listing states the styles degrade nicely on older browsers. Read that as a promise of legibility rather than fidelity: on a browser that does not support the newer CSS features used for the effects, the icon should still render and remain clickable, but it will not look identical to the reference. That is the correct trade-off for a decorative element, since a social icon that fails to load is worse than one that looks plain.
Where Socialize Buttons fits, and where it does not
The strongest fit is a brochure site, a blog or a small business site that needs a consistent row of social links in a header, footer or author box. It also suits a landing page built by hand where the developer wants tight control over markup and no plugin overhead. Freelancers maintaining several small sites benefit most, because one stylesheet covers every project and the visual language stays consistent across them.
A second good fit is a theme or template being assembled for sale. A lightweight, dependency-free icon set is easier to document and less likely to conflict with a buyer’s existing plugins than a full social sharing suite.
The wrong choice is any project that needs behaviour rather than appearance. Socialize Buttons does not count shares, fetch follower numbers, open a native share sheet, lazy-load embedded posts, or connect to any platform’s API. A site that wants share counts beside each icon, or a floating bar that follows the scroll, needs a sharing plugin and will find this library too thin. The same applies to a team with no one comfortable editing templates: adding classes to theme files is simple, but it is still a code edit, and a site builder user who cannot touch PHP or HTML will get nothing from the purchase.
Setting up Socialize Buttons in practice
Installation is a file copy and a class name. The stylesheet and the font files go into the theme or a child theme, the stylesheet is enqueued or linked in the document head, and then each social link receives the relevant classes. The vendor supplies documentation and links to a video walkthrough, which shortens the first run considerably for anyone unfamiliar with the class naming.
Prerequisites are modest but real. The site must allow custom CSS or template edits, which rules out fully locked hosted builders. The font files need to be served from the same origin or a permitted CDN, and a caching or minification plugin should be checked afterwards to confirm it has not stripped or reordered the rules. Expect a straightforward single-site installation to take well under an hour; a multi-site rollout with a shared child theme takes longer only because of testing across templates.
One caveat the vendor does not address in the listing is accessibility. Icon-only links need an accessible name, usually through visually hidden text or an aria-label, and the library does not appear to add one automatically. That is a small amount of extra markup per link, but it should be planned rather than discovered during an audit.
Strengths and limitations of this social icon library
Strengths
- Very small footprint: CSS and a font, with no JavaScript and no image requests.
- Seven styles and three sizes combine freely, giving more visual range than the file count suggests.
- Applies to both links and buttons, which covers share triggers as well as profile links.
- No image assets means nothing to upload, optimise or break during a site migration.
- Degrades to a usable state on older browsers instead of disappearing.
- Low price of $4 makes it an easy line item on a client project.
- Documentation and a video guide are included, which is more than many snippet packs offer.
Limitations
- No published sales figure and no rating data in the listing, so there is no independent signal of how the library behaves across real sites.
- Purely presentational: no share counts, no analytics, no platform integrations, no floating or sticky behaviour.
- Requires editing theme files or adding custom CSS, so it is unusable on locked hosted platforms.
- Accessible labelling for icon-only links is not handled, leaving that work to the implementer.
- The seven styles are fixed; matching a brand’s exact icon shapes means overriding the font or the CSS.
- No stated update history or compatibility statement for current WordPress versions in the supplied data.
How Socialize Buttons compares with the wider category
The alternatives fall into three groups, and the comparison is really about which group a project belongs to. Full social sharing plugins bundle icons with behaviour: counters, popups, floating bars, shortcodes and a settings screen. They solve more problems and cost more in page weight, database options and update maintenance. Socialize Buttons sits at the opposite end, offering appearance only.
The second group is general icon libraries and icon fonts such as Font Awesome or Dashicons. These give thousands of glyphs, including social marks, but no ready-made styling for the social use case. A developer using them writes the button styling from scratch. Socialize Buttons is effectively that styling, pre-built and scoped to social icons, which saves an afternoon on a small project but offers no value to a team that already has a design system.
The third group is hand-written CSS. A competent front-end developer can produce a comparable set in a few hours. The $4 price is really buying the seven finished styles, the size variants and the documentation, not a capability that cannot be replicated. Buyers should judge it as a time-saver for small sites, not as infrastructure.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Socialize Buttons used for?
It is used to style social media icons on a website without image files. The library provides seven CSS styles in three sizes that are applied by adding class names to existing links or buttons. It changes appearance only and adds no sharing logic, tracking or platform connection of its own.
Does Socialize Buttons need JavaScript or a plugin?
No. It is a CSS library plus a font, so it works without JavaScript and without a WordPress plugin. The files are added to the theme and the classes are written into the markup. Any behaviour, such as opening a share window, has to come from separate code the site already runs.
Will Socialize Buttons work with any WordPress theme?
It works with themes that allow custom CSS or template edits, which covers most self-hosted WordPress setups and child themes. Locked hosted builders and platforms that block custom code cannot use it. A caching or minification plugin should be checked after install to confirm the stylesheet is not being altered.
Is Socialize Buttons accessible for screen readers?
Not automatically. Icon-only links need a text alternative, normally visually hidden text or an aria-label on the element, and the library does not add one. Implementers must supply that label for each link. The vendor documentation supplied with the listing does not cover accessibility, so this should be planned into the build.
Verdict on Socialize Buttons
Buy it if the job is a small site or a template that needs tidy, consistent social icons and the person building it is comfortable editing theme files. At $4 the risk is negligible and the saved styling time is real. Skip it if the project needs share counts, floating bars or any behavioural feature, since a sharing plugin covers that ground and this library does not. Skip it too on locked hosted platforms where custom CSS is unavailable. The lack of published sales and rating data means there is no crowd signal to lean on, so the decision rests on whether a lightweight, presentation-only icon set matches the brief.
