We compare two of the most popular themes for the construction of webshops of the moment here. XStore only has a pro version, Astra also a free version. XStore vs Astra, which is the better theme? We start with Astra which does not mean it would be better.
The Astra Theme
The Astra Theme has been very popular for years. In other words, the free version of Astra is firmly in place on WordPress.org. In addition, Astra also has a very well-selling pro version which is mainly known for its beautiful demo websites that are pre-prepared for various page builders. Over a million websites currently run on Astra. Let’s start this Astra Theme review with its rating as I always do.
Astra's Rating 5/5
Below you can see the fantastic rating and comments that Astra gets from users. Where it says “Astra theme and Element” Elementor is of course meant, indeed a more than great combination to use Astra and Elementor together within 1 website. Obviously anyone giving a 1 star rating to the number one theme on WordPress.org has no clue about theme or works for the competition.
Astra Theme Review Demo Websites
Let’s go straight to one of the strongest points of the Astra Theme, namely the many demo websites. These demo websites, the so-called Starter Templates, are made to further embroider with your favorite page builder. The demos were made with Elementor, Beaverbuilder, Brizy and Gutenberg. Well, I’m not that impressed with the last one, but the others are 3 top page builders. This means that if one of these 3 is your favorite page builder, the Astra theme can be your favorite theme.
As seen above one can just choose for which page builder demo website will be shown. Astra has one of the best full website demo’s that I have ever seen in themes and plenty as for just elementor there should be like 180 different designs already.
Astra's Woocommerce Possibilities
The WP-Astra Theme was built from the start on having super fast loading times and it had to excel in the possibilities and beautiful designs for webshops and that intention has been successful. The options that Astra offers for E-commerce websites are unprecedented and practically surpass any other theme, including specialized Woocommerce themes.
Below I´ll show a few of the many features Astra offers for Woocommerce that make your webshop to a professional looking online store.
Infinite scroll
Off canvas sidebar
Quick view
The Astra Theme has about 15 such features for webshops. It simply has all the gadgets one could wish for.
Astra comes with Schema Mark Up
WP-Astra comes standard with Schema Mark Up which adds rich snippets to your articles. That way your articles will be displayed in Google’s search result in a more effective way as seen in the image below, with or without Schema. I have tried it on an HTML-website, and implementing Schema by hand is just to much work and errors will be made. Astra adds the snippets automatically and if your article changes, so will the Schema Mark Up.
Do you want someting even better than Astra’s basic Mark Up, then go for the more professional version of it:
Astra Speed
WP-Astra’s basic code is only 25kb which makes Astra one of the fastest themes out there, if not the fastest. Have a look at the images below, if necessary give them a click to enlarge them. On the left we see a speedtest done at GtMetrix with stunning results. On the right you see what one of the most famous SEO companies thinks of the speed of the Astra Theme.
Astra Theme Extra Info
If you are planning to set up a website with WP-Astra for teaching courses, it is good to know that the theme is fully compatible with Learndash and LifterLMS. In addition, Astra has an excellent SEO, is 100% responsive on all devices. It’s all too much to explain here in this review so I advise you to take a look at the Astra website itself.
Astra Theme Review Conclusion
The Astra Theme excels on several fronts, including speed, countless options for webshops, beautiful designs that can be installed with 1 click and that for 4 different page builders. In addition, Astra has built-in Schema as standard and is compatible with all commonly used plugins. This makes Astra one of the best-selling themes of the moment and I can recommend it to everyone, especially in combination with Elementor Pro.
Let’s continue this XStore vs Astra comparison with the XStore Theme.
The XStore Theme
In this XStore review we investigate why this theme has risen so quickly in the rankings. In their own words, the XStore theme is the perfect theme for building webshops. Unfortunately, it’s sold through the infamous Themeforest marketplace, but I’m not going to count any negatives for that. That wouldn’t be fair.
XStore Theme's Rating
An average rating of 4.85 out of 5 is of course brilliant. There are therefore only a handful of themes that score a better rating than the XStore theme. Users of the theme are therefore very satisfied with it, good to know.
XStore Theme: Loading Speed
I grabbed a random page from their demo for the test. The loading times are more than good. I assume that a very good cache plugin is installed on this demo, it almost has to be.
XStore Theme Review Demos
The XStore theme gives you more than 110 demo websites. They are practically all editable with one of the two very good page builders that you get, namely Elementor and WP Bakery. That is a number that exceeds that of most themes. Also keep in mind that most of them are layouts for shops which makes it all the more beautiful.
XStore Page Builders
I mentioned it before in the chapter “Demos”, you can choose from 2 page builders. The Elementor Pagebuilder which is definitely the better one but you don’t have the full version available unless you order it with it which isn’t a bad idea. Elementor is my favorite page builder. In addition, you have the full version of WP-Bakery with the XStore theme with even a plugin that provides many more widgets in the plugin. I must say, a very neat package that is offered here.
XStore Theme Free Plugins
What immediately struck me while writing this XStore theme review was the huge number of extra plugins that you get completely free. Together they are worth over $500 if you were to buy them. What I have to say in all honesty is that themes such as Divi do not need all those plugins because all that functions are already present in the theme itself.
XStore Theme Elements
The number of design elements or widgets that you have available in the page builder is very large. You can count them yourself, and that’s not all.
The theme’s website does not indicate whether it is for Elementor or WP-Bakery.
But I assume the latter because in the previous chapter I saw the extra plugin “Massive addons for Visual Composer” which is the old name for WP-Bakery is.
XStore Theme HeaderBuilder
The Header Builder is a great thing and looks good. Many themes now come with all these gadgets that have in principle been invented piece by piece by “the king of themes”: Divi.
XStore Single Product Builder
Plugins used to have this feature, nowadays every self-respecting theme is equipped with a decent WooBuilder. Everyone has special requirements for their shopping layout, so nowadays I wouldn’t work with a theme that lacks this.
XStore Theme Review Conclusion
This is already the end of this XStore Theme review. There is much more to say about it, but I want to keep the review short and sweet. More info is of course available via the button above on their own website. I have to say, all the points discussed are beautiful and there is actually very little missing from this theme. The only flaw I see is the way it is sold. The Themeforest marketplace requires themes to require a separate license for each of your websites. This gets expensive quickly. Someone with multiple websites would do well to work with Divi or Astra where they conduct the “Unlimited Website Usage” policy.
XStore vs Astra Conclusion
Cool that you read this XStore vs Astra comparison to the end. These themes are quite equivalent because they both have everything one could need. Purchasing additional plugins is practically not necessary. Astra has a better customer rating, is a bit more extensive and is generally a lot cheaper since it can be used on unlimited sites instead of only one. Winner: Astra.