We have a range of options spanning everything from people just starting out, through to more serious bloggers.
Your options are:
1. Classic themes
$19 one-time-fee
The classic themes are time-tested and still used on thousands of sites today. They're appropriate for anyone running a hobby blog but nothing else. They are not optimized for SEO, pagespeed, accessibility or user experience.
The classic themes are 100% DIY and do not come with any support.
2. Feast Plugin Lite
$99/year
The Feast Plugin Lite gives you access to the entire Feast Plugin setup without the distraction of having to manage the settings.
This is perfect for serious food bloggers that are just getting started, because it allows you to focus 100% on writing recipes, while leaving the technical configuration up to us with the best practices built in by default.
We consider this the absolute minimum for any non-hobby site.
3. Feast Plugin
$249/year
The Feast Plugin gives you access to all the settings in order to modify your site to suite your tastes.
Support is here to get you set up like the demo sites.
4. Branding
$499/year (+ the Feast Plugin)
The branding upgrade for the Feast Plugin provides access to a guided branding page, as well as access to support for additional styling changes. This option is for people who want a personal touch, rather than using our theme/demo styling.
You get access to the customization library as well as troubleshooting for common syntax errors (such as incorrect element targeting, missing brackets, or misspellings).
Note that the branding support does not allow for coding changes and is limited in scope to uncomplicated CSS changes. We may update or change the Feast Plugin to make CSS changes simpler where possible, based on requests and feedback.
Questions
It's technically possible, but it's way more work than it's worth.
If you have no intention of getting traffic or monetizing the site then just stick to the classic theme.
If the goal is to monetize or compete for search engine traffic, go straight for the Feast Plugin Lite.
Yes, your Feast Plugin settings will automatically change based on ongoing updates and best practices.
You'll need to manually update the plugin unless you've enabled automatic updates.