WordPress themes allow us to completely change the look and feel of our website in no time, and Astra takes that to a whole new level. Astra is currently one of the most popular, fastest-growing and highest-rated theme in the WordPress repository today with its free version gathering over 600,000 active installations. That’s huge! So if you are interested in learning more about the Astra Pro theme and all its functionalities, here is a comprehensive Astra theme review to help you out.
In this article, we are going to explore Astra and find out the reason(s) behind the popular demand. We will then look at its premium version and make a decision whether we believe it is worth the money or not, based on the findings of our review.
Astra theme is known for its excellent PageSpeed and feature-rich customization. Free Starter Sites bundled with Astra helps you to create a professional website in minutes. Top of that Astra Pro version offers additional value-added features at a lesser price than the competition makes Astra a complete WordPress theme.
We’ve used this super-popular, highly-rated theme multiple times, for several websites, and have managed to deliver awesome web designs and can tell you ALL about it – in a true, honest and unbiased review.
Before we go deep into our review of Astra theme, lets first understand, what is Astra.
What is Astra?
Astra is a free WordPress theme developed by the talented team of Brainstorm Force, Astra is one of the best multipurpose WordPress themes on the market.
Brainstorm Force is an Indian-based web development company. They are a group of professional WordPress developers that have developed, aside from Astra, various other plugins.
Some of their well-known plugins are the Ultimate Add-ons for Beaver Builder and Ultimate Add-ons for Elementor. They extend the capability of the said page builders by adding new custom widgets, blocks, elements or templates.
They are also the team behind the popular Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg, which transforms the Gutenberg editor into a what we can call a mini “native WordPress page builder”. It adds advanced custom blocks with extended features and capabilities.
It strikes a rare balance between style and performance with flexible customization options and powerful integration with popular services and platforms.
The theme gives you access to a rich theme options panel paired with tons of pre-made layouts and compatibility with almost every popular page builder plugin.
Astra – Fast, Lightweight & Customizable WordPress Theme for Any Website
But despite being packed with powerful features and functionalities, the Astra theme is super lightweight, and also well optimized for speed and performance.
Now, with all this on the table, it is worth noting that the theme is available in a free version and a paid one – Astra Pro, with the latter packing in more advanced features.
However, do you really need the Astra Pro version – especially with hundreds of thousands of users satisfyingly using the free one?
Well, all these types of questions will be answered in our full in-depth Astra Theme Review.
By the end, you will have a detailed insight into what both versions of the theme have to offer, and which one is right for you.
Before you continue, have a quick look at this short video with an Astra Quick Start Guide.
So without further delay, let’s get started:
Why You Should Use Astra? The Pros!
Before we dig deep into our detailed review of Astra theme, let’s first understand, why one should give Astra theme a shot.
Astra WordPress theme is available for free, rich in customization, and optimized for performance. What more reasons could you want from a WordPress theme?
However, we will not leave you with some general ideas.
Here are all the big reasons that make Astra a must-have theme for your WordPress website:
# Beginner-Friendly Design Options
It’s easy to spot a good design when you see one! But creating one from scratch is a whole different story. Even if you have advanced page builders at your disposal that require no coding – you at least need to have proper knowledge about UI/UX to conjure up a decent looking website.
Now, even if you are a complete beginner with no designing knowledge, you will still be able to create professional-grade websites using Astra.
# Powerful Starter Sites
To get you started, Astra comes with a companion plugin called Astra Starter Sites.
Once the theme is installed and activated, you will have access to over a 100+ pre-built website templates, most of which are free. This website templates are professionally designed pre-made website demos (made with Elementor, Beaver Builder, Brizy and Gutenberg each) that you can install on your website with a simple click.
What makes them so good is that they are not just single page templates, they are entirely functional sites with all the essential pages, plugins and features bundled into one package.
It covers multiple niches and various design styles, so you are bound to find something that you like.
On top of that, the theme is compatible with almost every popular page builder plugin. Therefore, if you dislike certain details about the starter site you import, you can easily make tweaks in the layouts to fit your taste.
Check out all the Starter Sites Now
# Global Customization Features and Options
In addition to the starter sites, the extensive customization features and options Astra offers in both the free and premium versions have garnered a lot of praise that also attracted a lot of users.
In the Pro version, the extended customizer options cover almost every element on your website. You can alter the background color, set custom typography, change the site’s layout, etc. of almost every part of your site.
Since version 2.0, BrainStorm Force’s team has completely reworked the customizer to make it easier to design and customize your website. Its performance and usability drastically improved and we’ll cover them in-depth in this review and we’ll also be including a comparison of the old and the new customizer.
Even in the free version, you still have a wide variety of customization options, which makes Astra one, if not the most generous free themes out there.
# Responsive Design
The majority of online traffic is moving to mobile which makes it super important for your website to be mobile-ready. Luckily, the Astra theme follows a responsive design language which makes your website mobile-friendly from day one.
So no matter, if a user is viewing your site from a desktop or small-screen mobile phone, you can rest assured that they will get satisfying user experience.
Even during our Astra theme review, we have tested it on some sample site, the responsive design works flawlessly with all the modern WordPress Page Builder plugins.
# E-Commerce Support
Granted there are many eCommerce compatible free WordPress themes on the market, but they rarely deliver good designs and professional aesthetics. But, with Astra, it is completely different.
As you have seen, the Astra theme comes with tons of customization options and ready-to-use premade layouts, including eStore demos. On top of that, with WooCommerce integration, you will be able to set up a full-fledged online store and start your eCommerce business right out of the box.
# Super-Fast
Astra has been built from the ground up with a focus on speed and performance. WordPress websites that use Astra in comparison to other themes, load faster and have snappier performance.
We have provided a more detailed look at how Astra manages to deliver these blazing fast speeds in the following section.
Now that we have a general overview of what Astra is, in the following sections, we are going to delve deeper into the features and capabilities of it.
By the end of the article, you will be able to make a confident decision about whether you should purchase Astra Pro or not.
Astra: Performance
One of the key USP (Unique Selling Point) for Astra is its super-fast performance. But on the contrary, multipurpose WordPress themes are notorious for their bulky size which slows down PageSpeed.
Well, Astra does use three awesome measures to ensure optimized performance and quick load time.
According to the developers of the product, the size of the Astra is less than 50KB which makes it super fast. They claim that it loads in just 0.5 seconds with default WordPress data.
On top of that, Astra complies with all the best coding standards using much of the WordPress data which also benefits in optimizing performance.
And lastly, the developers made sure to stick to Vanilla JavaScript only. This prevents jQuery from interfering and affecting the loading speed.
With all these measures working together, Astra advertises a load time of less than half a second. Although your mileage will vary depending on what type of content you have on your website. But it is likely to be better and faster compared to other market alternatives.
We’re going to put that claim to the test right here.
We’ll be using a shared hosting test server located in Germany and testing Astra several times. We’ll be using Pingdom Tools for the test with the test server set at North America, Washington DC, meaning a transatlantic trip for our website.
# Default Astra Theme Test
For this first test, we installed Astra, created a bunch of empty pages and added dummy text content. Astra Starter Site plugin is also installed and activated, but we didn’t import a template.
Here’s the result for v2.2.1:
We weren’t able to meet the 0.5s (500ms) load time with the default installation, but that’s understandable since we’re using a cheap shared hosting service to test this. In the end, this is a spectacular performance and loading time.
While one would expect that the increased page size will make no difference at all since it’s very small or perhaps even have a very small negative impact (perhaps an additional 1-5ms load time), the opposite is true. It loaded faster and not just by a small margin. We’e talking about hundreds of milliseconds here.
# Default Astra with Astra Pro But No Modules Active
For the next test, we’ll be testing the same site but this time, with Astra Pro installed, however, we will not activate any modules.
The results for v2.2.1:
The number of requests, page size, and load time increased. It seems that just installing Astra Pro, even without activating any modules at all, added some sort of code in the theme, which is understandable, but we can see that it is still as lightweight as ever.
# Default Astra with Astra Pro and the Majority of Modules Active
We’ll be testing the same site for the third time but this time, all modules are active, except for the following:
The reason is that we’ll need to install prerequisite plugins for these to be activated. Our goal here is to test the performance of Astra and its direct Add-Ons only.
Here’s the result for v2.2.1:
Version 2.2.1, the page size almost doubled but the load time and the number of requests have only slightly changed, but even with a larger page size, it still has superior performance.
# Astra Starter Site with the Majority of Modules Active
For the final test, we’ll be able to have insight as to how Astra would perform in a real-world scenario.
We’re going to import one of the sites from the Starter Site library and check its performance.
Overall, this test site will consist of the following:
- Astra Pro with almost all modules activated
- Astra Starter Site plugin
- Astra theme
- Elementor
- Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg
- WPForms Lite
- Starter Template called “BBQ Restaurant”
And the result of v2.2.1:
We can see that, the result is still pretty impressive!
Remember that we are testing using a shared hosting server in Germany and our Pingdom test server is in Washington DC. The site still managed to load in under 1 seconds! The page size and the number of requests are probably even lower than your average website.
Astra’s performance is top-notch. Even on a dirt-cheap hosting service, it was able to perform excellently. So far, we can say that Astra Pro is worth it!
In the next section, we are going to take a quick tour of Astra Pro’s features.
Astra: Key Features
By now you should have a clear idea of everything you can do with the Astra theme. However, if you want a bit more technical insight into all its bells & whistles, then here is an in-depth look at all its key features:
# Astra Starter Sites
Astra comes with over 100+ professionally designed ready-to-use demo websites. Some of them are available with the free version of the theme while many can be accessed when you purchase their Mini Agency or Agency Bundle.
Astra demo layouts are developed around various different niches and can help you start anything from basic blogs to online businesses and eCommerce websites.
During the Astra review, we have checked and installed a couple of agency and eCommerce starter sites and all the development and import of starter site demo was easy and seamless.
You are likely to find a demo layout that fits your design requirements. And in case you want to make some edits to the overall look and feel, that too can be managed with the tons of customization options bundled in with the theme.
Well if you are planning to start your own website and want to learn the nitty-gritty, here is our detailed guide on How to Create a Website: Step by Step Guide to Make a Website.
# Customization Options
It would be an injustice to simply state that the theme is rich with customization options.
In our Astra theme review, we dug deep to understand and unveil the functionalities of the customization options offered in the free and paid version of the Astra theme.
Based on our findings, we can positively say that if you are getting the free version of the theme, you will get access to all the basic and necessary customization options that are more than enough to start your website.
However, Astra Pro comes in bundled with tons of advanced customization and design options to help you get complete control over how the site looks and feels.
Here is a look at the overall customization potential of the Astra theme and everything you can do with it:
- Tons of Site Layout variations – boxed, full-width, and padded with full control over spacing, margin, and other parameters.
- Several inbuilt header and footer options giving you complete control over how they look and feel.
- Support for sticky and transparent headers.
- Offers Mega Menu support.
- Tons of color & typography options.
- Dedicated sidebar with loads of settings and customization options.
# Blog Layouts
Astra Pro brings tons of blog layout variations to help you present your content in a unique way:
- Grid Layout.
- List Layout.
- Masonry Layout.
- First Post Highlighting.
- Excerpt Count.
- Date Boxes.
- Blog Structure Control.
- Post Pagination.
- Infinite Loading.
# Custom Layouts
All the custom layout options are preserved for the Astra Pro users. However, here you will be given complete control and advanced tools to create your own custom layouts.
You will be able to create custom headers & footers, set up custom display conditions, build unique 404 pages, and even use hooks to inject custom code and content anywhere on your website.
# Integration with Learning Management System
Astra Pro offers seamless integration with LifterLMS and LearnDash, two awesome learning management systems. These platforms allow you to create, manage, and distribute online courses for your readers.
Astra contributes well with advanced settings that let you enhance user experience with additional styling on such websites.
# SEO Optimization
Astra brings inbuilt Schema Integration and comes with basic schema markups which helps to deliver rich SERP snippets to help bring more traffic to your website.
Not only that, but the theme is developed following the best coding standards to make sure to offer better SEO performance.
# Astra Widgets
Theme Astra comes with tons of free widgets to help you display additional information on your website.
- Address Widget: Helps you add a widget to your business address on your website.
- Info List Widget: Helps you add an info list anywhere on your page. You can even use icons to create an awesome looking list if you want to.
- Social Icons Widget: A dedicated widget to show all the popular social network icons on your website. All you need to do is select the social networks (it supports all popular social networks) and the widget will show them on your website.
# WooCommerce Support
Both Astra and Astra Pro come with WooCommerce support but the pro version brings in much more advanced options like:
- Grid settings
- Infinite scrolling
- Off-canvas sidebars
- Product quick view
- Gallery option
- Dropdown cart
- Attractive sales bubbles
And much more.
Next, let’s check out their support and documentation.
Support and Documentation
Aside from features and pricing, another important thing for premium products is support and documentation. In spite of how great a product is, people will still have questions.
So a critical question is: if you experience a problem and you need help, how fast can the team give you a satisfactory reply? Can they even help you?
Is the documentation any good? Can you easily find what you are looking for? Can you clearly understand what’s documented?
Those questions will help us understand whether a company or team is dedicated to serving its customers.
Therefore, in this section, we are going to find out the kind of support Brainstorm Force has and check out if their documentation is good or not.
Let’s begin!
# Documentation
Their documentation is one of the most extensive we’ve ever seen. They both have videos and articles that thoroughly explain every item in detail.
Their documentation contains over 200 articles discussing and detailing each feature the theme has to offer.
It’s very easy to navigate around their docs. There is a search form, a sidebar and a nice categorized grid of menus as its index page.
If you want a really quick way of accessing the documentation, you can just type in whatever you want to lookup for followed by the keyword “Astra” in Google and, most of the time, the top results will link to the official documentation.
You have two ways of accessing Astra’s documentation.
You can either bookmark their documentation page so you can easily access it or you can just open up a new tab and then type whatever you are looking for, followed by the “Astra” keyword and let Google guide you to the relevant documentation page.
The actual documentation is easy to understand. It’s clear, concise and well-structured.
Above is a screenshot of their documentation page for the Colors & Background module.
See how there’s a breadcrumb underneath the title which lets you know where you currently are and trace back to previous sections? There’s also a sidebar on the right containing links to other articles in the documentation.
Video Documentation and Tutorials
Aside from their text-based documentation, they also provide video documentation and tutorials on their own YouTube channel. For those who are more into video demonstrations and tutorials, you’ll find this very useful.
Their YouTube channel also contains information about general WordPress usage. They have videos not only for Astra but also for their other products like the Ultimate Addons, Convert Pro, etc.
# Support
They offer three types of support: pre-sale, pro and free. If you access their support page, you’ll be greeted by this:
Their support page will first attempt to direct you to their documentation by asking you what kind of problem or question you have. If there are no results based on your question, you can then access their actual support page (the button to submit a ticket will still appear even if there are results based on your question).
One downside here is that there’s no way to go directly to the actual support page without having to type something in the box. It’s an extra step.
While their support can be considered as one of the best in the market, there’s still a handful of people saying they are slow to respond, which is evident in their Facebook Page.
For the majority of the complaints like this, however, we can see a common pattern. The tickets of complainants were almost always sent during holidays or weekends. We can, therefore, say that you can expect a slower response time during these days. This is why our rating for their support is the lowest in our table at the beginning of the article.
If we had to nitpick and find something where there is room for improvement, this would be it. As a company serving hundreds of thousands of customers, they should be ready to answer questions as fast as possible, no matter the day.
Next up, Astra: Free Vs. Pro!
Astra: Free Vs. Pro
As mentioned earlier, Astra delivers all the basic and necessary functionalities with the advanced options saved for Astra Pro.
We have reviewed the free Astra theme as well as the paid version called Astra Pro separately. And as per our Astra theme evaluation, the Astra Pro can be considered as a Value Addition Pack to the already awesome free Astra theme.
In terms of user experience, you might consider Astra as the base theme with Astra Pro functioning more as a dedicated page builder for that theme.
Astra Pro – Exclusive Features
By now, you should have a basic idea of what features you will get if you upgrade to the Pro version. However, here is a more concise look at all the extra features bundled in with Astra Pro.
- Design: brings support for sticky header, mobile header, page headers, mega menus, and extended color & typography controls.
- Layout: support for different layout variations like boxed, full-width, padded, fluid layout, and spacing controls.
- Support for Custom Layouts: create headers, footers, 404 pages, and custom hooks.
- Typography & Color: extra control over your site fonts, font style, font size, colors, and so on.
- Blog Layouts: It introduces tons of blog layouts like the grid, list, masonry, date box, excerpt count, blog structure control, post pagination, infinite loading, and so on.
- Global Design Options: advanced designing options for header & footer layout and content.
- WooCommerce: extensive eCommerce options to help you build a high converting e-store and deliver an awesome shopping experience.
- Third-Party Integrations: offers seamless integration with LifterLMS, LearnDash, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Support: get access to 24/7 premium customer support.
Astra: Astra Pro Addon
This can be confusing for some users.
Astra Pro and the Astra Pro Addon are exactly the same. You see, Astra is the base theme that is available for free. When you choose to upgrade to the Pro version, you will need to buy the Astra Pro Addon plugin.
Astra Pro Addon Features
Once installed on your WordPress website in conjunction with the Astra theme, it will provide some enhanced features. The plugin simply introduces tons of addons for different aspects. You can activate and deactivate the add-ons as per your requirements.
This allows you to only keep the features that you are using so you don’t unnecessarily bloat your website with unwanted functionalities and slow it down.
Astra & Other Plugins
With Astra installed on your website, if you visit the Astra Options page, you will see a box that says you can extend the theme functionality by installing additional free plugins.
Additional Plugins for Extended Theme Functionality
As you can see from the image above, this includes:
- Astra Customizer Reset
- Astra Bulk Edit
- Astra Widgets
- Custom Fonts
- Customizer Search
- Custom Typekit Fonts
- Import / Export Customizer Settings
- Sidebar Manager
- Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg
All these plugins are created by the developers of Astra. Therefore, you can rest assured that you will face no compatibility issues.
Furthermore, Astra is compatible with almost every popular WordPress Page Builder on the market including Elementor and Beaver Builder.
So if you are using any one of them, then you can also install the Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder and Ultimate Addons for Elementor to extend the functionalities of those page builders.
Next up, pricing!
Astra: Pricing
Astra itself is free. If you would like to see the Astra Pro options, here they are in a nutshell:
- Astra Pro – $59
- Mini agency bundle – $169
- Agency bundle – $249
Let’s explain in detail what each of them offers.
To activate its premium features and functionalities, you have to purchase a license for the Astra Pro Addon, a plugin which has a starting price of $59 a year.
There are two other plans available: the Mini Agency Bundle, which costs $169 a year and the Agency Bundle, which costs $249 a year. It’s possible to upgrade from a lower tier to a higher plan but not vice versa.
Renewals on all annual plans come with a 20% discount.
If you’d rather not pay an annual price, you can buy a lifetime license instead. If, however, you are already in an annual plan and decided to you’d rather want a lifetime license instead, you can easily upgrade.
The price for a lifetime license is $249, $499 and $699 for Astra Pro, Mini Agency Bundle and Agency Bundle respectively.
Annual and lifetime licenses don’t have any differences aside from the duration of the license. No feature, functionality or bonus is exclusive to either license type.
All of their plans, annual or lifetime, come with a 14-day, no questions asked, money-back guarantee.
What are the differences between the plans?
The Astra Pro plan only includes the Astra Pro plugin that lets you access premium features and functionalities including one-to-one support, extensive training, and unlimited website usage.
The Mini Agency Bundle includes everything in the Astra Pro Plan with the addition of WP Portfolio Plugin plus your choice of premium Ultimate Add-on (Ultimate Addons for Elementor or Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder).
The addons enhance Elementor and Beaver Builder respectively by adding custom widgets, modules or elements. You will also have access to the premium site templates in the Astra Starter Site Library in this bundle.
Finally, the Agency Bundle includes everything from the Mini Agency bundle, including both Ultimate Addons with the addition of Convert Pro, Schema Pro along with any of their future plugins.
No matter the plan you choose, your license can be used on an unlimited number of websites.
Each bundled plugin, e.g. Schema Pro, WP Portfolio, etc. has its license keys which let you use them even on a website that’s not using Astra.
Overall, Astra offers flexible pricing plans that let you choose what you need depending on your budget.
Check out all the pricing options
So, Is It All Sunshine And Butterflies? The Cons!
Astra is pretty much perfect when you consider all the awesome features it brings to the table. There is practically no compromise and the theme delivers on all grounds.
However, if we were to do a little more nit-picking then something can be said about not enough third-party integration.
Running a particular niche website isn’t all about the design. You also need access to niche-specific features. However, that’s an issue that can be easily resolved by installing additional plugins. But it is something worth keeping in mind.
Wrapping Up The Astra Theme Review: Is It For You?
If you are tight on a budget, then without a doubt, you should pick Astra blindfolded. It is by far the best free theme on the market.
Whereas if you are planning to get a premium WordPress theme and customization is top on your priority list, then Astra is worth a consideration.
You can especially benefit if you are a developer or designing agency that needs to build various niche websites for their clients. Its diverse collection of ready to use website demos and customization options makes it a priceless tool for web development.
If you are planning to invest in this theme or the Agency Bundles, you could do that during a couple of weeks when they plan to offer a Black Friday and Cyber Monday offer when the prices are got down to minimal. Visit their website to get 30% OFF during this year’s sale season.
Do let me know if you find this Astra theme review helpful. Do you want us to compare the Astra theme with some other popular themes like GeneratePress, Genesis Themes or Divi? Let us know your thoughts or queries in the comments section below, we would be happy to respond.
Cheers!
Get Astra NowYou may also like:
- 30+ Grid Based WordPress Themes for Creatives & Photographers
- 24 Premium WordPress Tesla Themes + optional HTML Themes – only $25!
- Collection of 40+ Free and Premium Bootstrap Admin Themes
- How to Display a Random Post with the help of AJAX
0 comments:
Post a Comment