We compare two of the most popular themes for the construction of webshops, corporate sites and blogs of the moment here. Both of these themes have a pro version, Astra also has a popular free version. BeTheme 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 Astra vs BeTheme comparison with the BeTheme.
The BeTheme
The BeTheme was already released in 2014 and has therefore been around for years. Meanwhile, the theme is one of the best-selling on the Themeforest marketplace. This is of course due to the constant improvements to the theme over the years. The most eye-catching feature of the theme is the huge amount of demo designs. Okay, let’s start with this BeTheme review.
The BeTheme ratings
The BeTheme has a particularly high average rating of 4.83 out of 5 at the moment. There are very few themes with a similar or higher rating. Buyers of this theme are therefore very satisfied, which instills confidence, especially since the theme has already been rated by 6400 people.
BeTheme 650+ Starter Sites
As mentioned before BeTheme has the BeTheme 650+ demos, an unprecedented amount. About 50 of them are for webshops, and more than 200 are built with Elementor. If that is your favorite page builder, you can immediately continue working on such a demo. In any case, all demos can be edited with their own Be-Builder.
More then 600 settings
The theme with the most setting that I know is The7 with 1250+ settings. The BeTheme has 600+ but this is still very high. The settings are divided into chapters, which makes it easy to find the right setting quickly.
BeTheme Review: Load Speed
All top themes load quickly these days. The image indicates 100% in Google Speed, but it does not state whether that is for desktop or mobile. The theme will certainly be fast, but I doubt very much whether it really gets 100% in Google without a good cache plugin. It seems very strong to me. The fastest themes are still Astra and Generatepress.
Custom Branding
Custom Branding options are, of course, wonderful for web design companies that want to appear to be using their own CMS and theme. The annoying thing about this theme is that it requires a separate license for each website on which it is installed. So it quickly becomes very expensive to use BeTheme for customer sites.
BeTheme's Shape Dividers
We have known Shape Dividers for years from the Divi Theme. Those are the ones who develop all the new gadgets, the rest like the BeTheme copies all that. Many people are not aware of this of course, but by taking over everything, the BeTheme does not become a Divi Theme of course. But the features are wonderful. Shape Dividers creates a beautiful artistic transition between 2 sections.
BeTheme Review: Masks
Another fantastic feature that they copied elsewhere. Masks cut out letters and give them a special background, with movement if desired.
BeTheme Review Conclusion
Listen, even though they didn’t come up with everything themselves, the BeTheme is a great theme. It contains everything and much more that you need to build a good shop or website. I also assume that this theme has aroused your attention. You would do well to take a look at their own site where many more features are shown. I cannot list them all here. The BeTheme is highly recommended.
Astra vs BeTheme Conclusion
Astra and BeTheme are both great themes. If you are looking for 100% stable and lightning-fast themes, you are best off with Astra. Astra has several versions, the bare pro version is already very good, but the bundles are the cream of the crop. BeTheme has 1 premium version that has everything on it. BeTheme has a plethora of demos and settings. They have also copied many of Divi’s top features. I certainly have more confidence in Astra that everything is also error-free. The biggest difference is that Astra is for unlimited sites, and BeTheme can only be used on 1 site.