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. Bridge 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 Bridge comparison with the Bridge Theme.
The Bridge Theme
In this Bridge theme review we look at how this theme scores on a number of important points. Which page builders are used, what are the features for webshops, how fast does it load, and what other striking features are there. Bridge was launched in 2014 by Qode, a Power Elite Author.
Bridge Theme Rating
A good theme is immediately recognized by a good rating that has been built up over the course of at least a few years. That is more than the case with the Bridge theme. With a rating of 4.78 out of 5, it ranks highest on the Themeforest marketplace.
Bridge's Pagebuilders
The demos of the Bridge theme can be edited with 2 well-known page builders, namely Elementor and WP-Bakery. I definitely prefer the former, although I also like working with the Bakery page builder. Bridge doesn’t target Gutenberg at all, which is a good thing. Gutenberg is a complete disaster and will never be a success.
Bridge Review: Demos
The Bridge theme comes with more than 610 demo websites. About 250 of these were made for Elementor, and a sloppy 350 for WP-Bakery pagebuilder. A good theme comes with many and well-styled demos and you are in the right place with Bridge. All these demos can be easily installed with 1 click, then you can continue working on them with your favorite page builder.
Bridge Review: Headers
A beautiful collection with all kinds of differently styled headers has been well thought out. I hope everything on the screenshot shows well, otherwise go to their own site and check out the layouts there.
Bridge Review: Blog
The variety in blog layouts is also striking, this has also been well thought out. The Bridge theme is also ideal for building blog websites. View the various options that Bridge offers below.
Bridge Review: Portfolio
I must honestly say that the Bridge theme is suitable for practically any type of website. For corporate websites, for shops, for blogs, and for very specific niches such as travel, education or music sites. Below is a screenshot of a 4-column portfolio layout. Bridge also offers great versatility and options when it comes to portfolios.
Bridge Webshops
With Bridge you can build very good professional shops. You have tons of beautiful shop designs and shopping widgets at your disposal to make a success of your webshop.
Special Features
Bridge is packed with special features and I’m not going to list them all here. I show three of them below, you can view the rest on the Bridge website.
Build beautiful graphs with the Bridge Line Graph feature.
For your online business the Bridge Pricing Calculator will always come in handy.
The Bridge cross-fade images gives a different view of images.
Bridge Theme Review Conclusion
This Bridge theme review is coming to an end, I’ll give you my overall opinion about it. There is no denying that Bridge is a great theme. One can really build any type of website with it, it has several good page builders in it and has a lot of good demo websites. Furthermore, it has many wonderful extra features and settings so that everything can be adjusted without technical knowledge.
Astra vs Bridge Conclusion
To start with, Astra has the best free theme installed on millions of sites. Bridge does not have a free version, so we compare the pro versions. As far as I’m concerned, Astra has the better demos even though Bridge has more. These are available for 4 page builders, those of Bridge for 2 page builders. Astra loads faster and is probably the fastest theme there is for WordPress. Bridge also loads fast but it’s a bit less. My choice falls on the Astra Theme.