Inspiro and Blocksy 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 Blocksy Theme
This Blocksy Theme Review will quickly explain why it is such an amazing theme. This theme can be used for building websites, blogs, and shops. This theme works flawlessly with Gutenberg. But it also works great together with all well-known WordPress pagebuilders like Divi or Elementor. Let’s have a look the free- and pro versions of Blocksy.
Blocksy's Rating
Blocksy has a free and a pro version. Both are immensely popular and receive top ratings. WordPress.org blocksy’s rating shows that all the raters gave 5 stars, with only 1 other rater giving 4 stars. It is difficult to get a better average rating than the one shown by Blocksy Theme.
Blocksy Theme's Loading Speed
The Blocksy Theme scores insanely well on every renowned speed test the internet has to offer. You can tune the theme yourself extra for speed by using a good cache plugin in it. That is always recommended for any theme, as well as using CDN if your website focuses on traffic from multiple countries.
Blocksy Demos
It is always important for a theme to have a reasonable collection of demos, also called start sites. Nobody wants to build a site from scratch these days. People prefer to set up a demo to be able to work much faster. Blocksy offers a great collection of starter sites which is totally awesome. If you hover over the different demos on their site, you can see which page builders they can be edited with. Usually that’s for Gutenberg and Elementor.
4 Different pagebuilders
Not everyone has the same page builder as their favorite. However, the Blocksy Theme is suitable for almost everyone as it works perfectly with no less than 4 different page builders: Gutenberg, Brizy, BeaverBuilder and Elementor. My preference is for Elementor, an insanely good page builder.
Blocksy Header-Builder
We used to mess around with the headers and HTML knowledge was certainly needed to get the header exactly the way you wanted it. For a few years now, good themes have been provided with header builders that make styling the header a piece of cake. A young theme like Blocksy also immediately has a very good header builder.
Blocksy Footer Builder
What goes for both the header and footer builder is that you can build multiple different headers or footers and use them on different pages. The design possibilities are practically unlimited.
Blocksy Woocommerce Webshop
Blocksy has good demos for webshops and has a lot of great options that make your shop look really professional. Above you can see some of these options like Quick View, Floating Cart, Wishlist, Search by SKU and more.
Blocksy Theme Review Conclusion
This Blocksy Theme review shows that the theme has impressive options. This includes the 4 page builders that can be used with the corresponding demos. The demos themselves are of good quality and there are about 25 of them, a nice number. Even the free version is very good and offers many options that are improved a bit in the pro version. Blocksy is definitely recommended and it is not surprising that it has a practically flawless rating.
Let’s continue this Inspiro vs Blocksy comparison with the Inspiro Theme.
The Inspiro Theme
Let’s start this Inspiro theme review. Inspiro is a WordPress theme that focuses on video and photo editing. It has a modern design. Inspiro has many features, including a fullscreen area for Vimeo, YouTube, and self-hosted video backgrounds, Page Builder integration, and is ideal for displaying your video portfolio. The theme can be used with WooCommerce as well as popular Page Builders like Beaver Builder and Elementor.
Inspiro's Rating
Since the last time I wrote a review for Inspiro, there are now a lot more people who gave a rating. However, the average remains high, 4.7 out of 5 is a very good rating. Especially since Inspiro is very focused on video features, something that perhaps not everyone understood immediately and therefore some give a very bad rating.
Video Functions
As for the special video features that Inspiro offers, below is a list of features for the free version and the pro version, because there are big differences between them.
You can see that all video features are in the pro version, but nothing in the free version. If you are looking for a free theme with video functions, we can say that Inspiro is not suitable. What the pro version offers is beautiful, but don’t be alarmed by the price for a license of 79 dollars per website per year. For this you have practically the best theme there is for WP, the Divi theme. And not for 1 website, but for unlimited sites.
Video Backgrounds
As shown below, videos in the header can be used as background. Other great features are video on hoover, videos in portfolio items and video lightboxes. One of the best features is the video autoplay on mobile and tablets.
Portfolio with video BGs
Below is an example of a Portfolio page design. You can hover over each item to see a preview of the video or image.
Inspiro & Elementor
Inspiro theme review: Demos
The Inspiro theme has a series of very nice demos and for various niches. Demos or also called starter sites can be installed with 1 click via the backend of your WordPress. Inspiro has a small 35 demos for the free and pro version together, including demos for shops and of course photography.
Inspiro: Headers
Inspiro doesn’t have a real header builder like the top themes but with 1 click you can install other types of headers. Different headers on different pages, everything is possible.
Image/Video overlay
Another wonderful tool is the gradient overlay customizer pictured below. This is one of the features that immediately struck me while writing this Inspiro theme review. You can create beautiful effects and give your website a professional look.
Inspiro Theme Review Conclusion
As the last part of this Inspiro theme review, I give my overall opinion. The free version of Inspiro has virtually no features and I would never use it. The pro version is good for website photographers, film makers and other people who want to use videos all over their site. The pro-theme can be called downright expensive, so I have my reservations about that too.
Blocksy vs Inspiro Conclusion
Inspiro and Blocksy share a lot. Both offer a free version that is extremely user-friendly and have many active installations. Both have stunning demo designs that are also nice for building shops. Blocksy is my favourite here, as it has everything that Inspiro does better and loads faster.