Why are there no large-scale responsive templates for admin sites?

Question

I have to change an old ERP system (typical private admin site) interface to be more modern and responsive. I’m not a designer but a developer with some frontend experience so my plan was to buy a responsive template from Envato or other sources.

However as I see almost all admin templates use bootstrap and a mobile-first approach. Maybe I missed something, but for me it makes no sense to optimize an admin page for a phone screen. Instead, I would like to see optimizations for larger screens. Bootstrap media queries ends at 1200 px, but our customer uses displays that are at least 1366 px wide, the most being 1920 px wide and some even bigger screens like 2560 px. In rare cases, there are full HD tablets.

The mismatch between what I want and what is offered makes me wonder: Is there a good reason that large templates are not sold? Am I missing something that makes it a bad idea to optimize for these larger resolutions instead of 480 px and 768 px?

Answer 1

Responsive templates are generally made for common screen sizes.

Screen widths like 480px, 768px, and so on up to 1024px are very common (although I would also argue that these should now extend up as far as 1440px) as they are used in most laptops and mobile devices.

Desktop machines and large displays are now less common.

If I'm designing a product then I want to get it to work on the largest number of screens possible in the shortest amount of time so I focus on the most common sizes first. This means that the value gained from designing for larger and less common screens is far outweighed by the smaller more common screens.

As large screen use is often so specialised, template makers don't really see the value in spending time researching how best to cater for them.