Kadence and Airi are highly ranked on WordPress.org for the most popular and most downloaded themes. Both themes have a pro and a free version. I will quickly show you the best features of both themes and give my opinion.
The Airi Theme
This Airi theme review will focus on the key features. This theme was created by aThemes and featured on more than 20,000 websites. I have had positive experiences with another theme that was created by aThemes, named Sydney. I suppose Airi has more or less the same to offer. Airi is in the first place a theme that should create great webshops and is easy to understand for beginners and pros.
Airi Theme Review: Ratings
Below you can see on the 2 images the rating of Airi Pro and that of Airi Free. The Airi Free rating can be found on WordPress .org and the other rating comes from the Notorious Themeforest marketplace where the theme has recently been sold as well. However, it is recommended that you just buy on your own site if you intend to.
Airi Free Rating
Airi Pro Rating
Airi Theme: Demo Websites
The vast majority of Airi’s demo websites are intended for E-commerce purposes, in other words to build webshops with them. I give below with the images a few examples of the demo websites for different niches. The images can be clicked to view them larger and square. All shops were built with the Woocommerce plugin.
Airi Fashion Demos
Airi Furniture Demos
Airi Review: Loading Speed
The Airi Theme is a very fast loading theme, which is not surprising because we call it minimalistic, which has fast loading times as a feature. Below in the image you can see a test done via GtMetrix, a renowned speed test. If you are looking for a super fast loading theme, check Astra, the fastest theme for WordPress that has a lot to offer at the same time.
Airi Review: Page Builders
Airi Review: Header Lay-outs
Below I show you 3 different headers but the Airi theme offers a total of 20+ Header Layouts that you can install in your website with 1 click. Further adjustments to the header can then be made. I’m not going to show it all in this Airi Review, but Airi also has 12+ portfolio layouts and 8+ team layouts.
Airi Review: Blog Lay-outs
We already know that Airi primarily focuses on building shops, but Airi can do much more. For those of you who blog often and want to build a good site for it, it’s good to know that Airi offers different layouts for blogs. I wouldn’t be so quick to use Airi for it myself, but it’s certainly possible. A good theme for blogs is of course Divi.
Airi Theme Review: Settings
Practically all settings for the Airi theme are controlled via the standard WordPress Customizer. Most themes now make use of this, which makes the settings well-arranged. Think of settings for the header, your blog, the footer, sidebar, the shop, copyright, font settings and so on.
Airi Theme Review Conclusion
Thank you so much for reading my Airi Theme Review for the year. Airi is capable of a lot. Even in the free version, the demo layouts look great. Airi can be used to build any kind of website. You can access all themes from AThemes for a bit more than one theme. As Divi shows, memberships often offer more value than just one theme. Airi operates great in combination with the Elementor page builder.
Let’s continue this Airi vs Kadence comparison with the Kadence Theme.
The Kadence Theme
This Kadence Theme Review will quickly show you what to expect from this increasingly popular theme. There are people who think that this is the best current free WordPress theme and I have to say it is certainly up there together with Astra and a few other themes.
Kadence's Rating 5/5
The Kadence theme can be downloaded for free via their own site or via WordPress.org where it is one of the most popular themes with a very high rating. The theme is already above 100,000 active installs. In other words, it is currently installed on more than 100,000 websites. You can see all this data in the images below.
Kadence's Demo Websites
This video shows you exactly how to import a demo website into your WordPress which is a bit different then most themes operate. The video on the right starts exactly where the demos are mentioned. To learn how to import the plugin for this, watch the video from the beginning.
Kadence Theme Review Performance
We are running a Kadence Theme Test on loading speed at GT-Metrix. We use a website with the Kadence Theme with optimized images and the best cache plugin out there, WP-Rocket. This cache plugin already works fine once installed, but in this case we also set it up perfectly to achieve the best possible results. You can see these results below, the theme is amazingly fast.
Kadence's Page Builders
Kadence is a special theme that works very well with the Gutenberg Editor, which is an exception because it is actually not possible to work with it on its own since Gutenberg is still in the testing phase. Kadence does this by using a plug-in they developed themselves called Kadence Blocks. Of course, the theme also works perfectly with the Elementor page builder or any other elite page builder.
Kadence Theme Review Colors
The Kadence theme offers 12 pre-programmed color combinations, which also include feminine websites and Light & Dark Colors. The programming of the colors was carried out by a professional team. Incidentally, it is certainly possible to make personal adjustments to such a color combination.
Kadence Header Editor
The Kadence theme uses a special header editor with which the header can be styled very freely, even by people who do not have technical knowledge such as HTML or PHP knowledge. Many top themes today have this, and the feature is often referred to as Header Builder.
Kadence Compatibility
Apart from compatibility with all top page builders, the Kadence theme is also compatible with plugins that are important to many people. These include The Events Calendar, Learndash, Woocommerce, LifterLMS, and a few more. It allows you to sell products, conduct courses, solicit donations, or lead a forum through your website.
Kadence conclusion
My take on Kadence is that it’s no surprise that its free version has become so popular. Even the free version is already very good, and the pro version takes it even further. Kadence can really be used for all types of website and I can definitely recommend the theme for both beginners and pros. However, there are themes that are even better, such as Astra or Ocean-WP, but more about that in another article.
Airi vs Kadence Conclusion
Here’s my opinion at the end of this Kadence vs Airi test. As far as loading time is concerned, these themes are approximately the same. Airi’s demo designs come in larger numbers, made with Elementor, and the layouts are nicer. Kadence is a very good theme, especially as a free version, but Airi just does it better. Winner is Airi.