We compare two very popular WordPress themes here. Astra vs Avada, which is the better theme? We compare their pro versions. By the way, only Astra also has a much-loved free version. We’ll start with Astra, which doesn’t 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 Astra versus Avada Review with the Avada Theme.
The Avada Theme
One thing is for sure, Avada is the best selling theme on the infamous Themeforest marketplace. Unfortunately I have some doubts about the enormous sales figures since I have been advertising it for years but earn practically nothing from it. I have had the theme in my collection for about 8 years now and have very good experiences with it. It will certainly sell well, but the marketplace where they sell their theme is just very dodgy, which can be clearly seen on the reviews on Sitejabber, for example.
Avada Theme Review Ratings
Avada is a popular theme and has a very good rating, on average 4.77 out of 5. However, there are themes such as Divi that score practically 5 out of 5, and there are also themes on the same marketplace that come above 4.9.
Avada's Page Builder
There are several lesser-known but good page builders that have been developed by the builders of themes themselves. For example, the Flatsome Theme has its UX-Builder and Avada in turn has the FusionBuilder. Below you can see the page builder working on a testimonial. Below that a screenshot of the live visual page builder in action.
Avada's Elements
The Avada Theme gives you more than 120 elements (also called widgets). That is a large number, quite a bit more than most themes offer, and then we are talking about other top themes.
Avada Review: Demo Websites
The number of pre-prepared demo websites or starter templates is also quite high. Choose one of the 86 1-click demos to save a lot of time by not having to start your project from scratch. Below in the image you can see how this works, just select a demo and install it. A mebership license is of course required.
Avada Theme Review: Speed
As can be seen below, Avada shows astonishingly good results in a speed test at GtMetrix. Avada offers you a section in the backend where you can set many factors that influence the loading time of your website, the so-called “Performance Wizard”. For optimal speed it is always important to install one of the best cache plugins.
Avada's Form Builder
Avada actually has everything in it so that you don’t have to buy an extra plugin as seen here is a Form Builder with which you can quickly build exactly the forms you need for information requests or call-to-action purposes. The feature already has a large number of prepared forms that you can get up and running very quickly.
Avada Theme Review Conclusion
As mentioned, Avada is packed with features and it is not for nothing that it is one of the best-selling WordPress Themes, and has been for years. I can certainly recommend the theme as long as it is for only 1 website. The theme has a major weakness and that is the platform on which it is sold. This marketplace has a very bad reputation and takes a very high commission. This means that Avada cannot offer special deals, but requires a separate license for each website you have. This, of course, quickly becomes very expensive. Much cheaper alternatives are, for example, Divi and Astra. These are almost even better and you can use them on as many sites as you want.
Astra vs Avada Conclusion
Cool that you read this Avada 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 you can use it on as many sites as you like. Winner: Astra.