We compare two of the most popular themes for the construction of webshops of the moment here. XStore only has a pro version, Botiga also a free version. XStore vs Botiga, which is the better theme? We start with Botiga which does not mean it would be better.
The Botiga Theme
A theme that is rapidly becoming popular is the Botiga Theme from the aThemes team. It has been around for less than a year and has already been installed on more than 10,000 websites and that will soon grow much further. Botiga specializes in building webshops and works with the CoBlocks plugin to make Gutenberg a kind of page builder. Let’s start this Botiga Theme review.
Botiga's Rating 5/5
The reason the theme’s popularity is growing so quickly is of course its quality, which is reflected in its particularly good rating. So far only one person has given it a 2, the rest all gave the maximum rating of 5, really remarkable. This theme has a very good future.
Botiga's Lay-outs
The Botiga shop only has 2 layouts at the time of writing this article, but those are beautiful designs. It is definitely worth clicking on the images below to see these layouts in real life.
Click the images below to see the live demos
Many people love the Botiga theme. It is simple and beautiful, which makes it a popular theme for shops. Today, there’s no need to be concerned about all the bells and whistles. Simple can still look elegant. Botiga is an example of this. This has the advantage that you don’t need to make many adjustments in order to create a webshop using it. You can complete your project in no more than a few hours.
Botiga's Shopping Features
Botiga is full of great shopping features that help you make your shop a great success and also give the shop a very professional look. Click on the images below to enlarge them.
Botiga Page Builder
Botiga does not use one of the well-known page builders by default, but can simply be operated with the standard Gutenberg editor. Not a particularly good page builder, of course, but since Botiga will mainly be used for creating web shops, that’s not a bad thing. People mainly work with Woocommerce for the products of course. If you also run a blog in addition to your wshop, I would definitely install Elementor.
Botiga Theme Review: Speed
Botiga loads very fast as shown in the image below. The test at GtMetrix was done with a good cache plugin installed.
Botiga Font/Colors
The Botiga theme has a very well-functioning system for both fonts and colors. You can choose from standard color palettes or you can compose your own colors.
Botiga Theme Review Conclusion
I close this Botiga Theme review with my opinion about the theme. I am very excited about both the free and pro versions of Botiga. The high rating that Botiga scores does not surprise me. The theme is great prepared for the construction of webshops, loads quickly and looks fresh and good. Recommended!
Let’s continue this XStore vs Botiga 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 Botiga Conclusion
Cool that you read this XStore vs Botiga comparison to the end. These themes are quite equivalent because they both have everything one could need. Purchasing additional plugins is practically not necessary. Botiga 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: Botiga.