Ella and X-Store are both highly popular webshop themes. Both themes can be used for the construction of very nicely looking webshops. Ella (Shopify) vs X-Store (WordPress), which is the better theme? We start with Ella which does not mean it would be better.
The Ella Theme
The Ella theme came on the market in 2014 and has not been sitting still since then. The theme has become the best-selling theme for shopify on Themeforest. It could well be the best-selling theme at all for Shopify since Debutify, an even more successful theme, has not been out for very long.
Ella Theme's Rating
Many people rely on the rating of others when they buy a product. The average rating that the Ella Theme has built up over the years is 4.81 out of 5. This is an impressive rating for themes, regardless of which CMS.
Ella Theme's Loading Speed
I just did a speedtest myself for the demo shown on Themeforest and you can see the results below. Of course that is not an optimal situation within the Themeforest website, but I could not discover any site of theirs.
They themselves give much better results for their speed than those that came out from my test. You can see this pictured below. These results can certainly be true under optimal conditions such as very good server and cache plugin.
Ella Theme Homepage Demos
The Ella theme offers more than enough variety to choose your homepage. When building a shop, full site demos are of course not necessary. The number of 50+ well-maintained demo layouts should certainly be sufficient.
The Ella-Theme is "Mobile First"
Mobile menu, discount for bundles, Quick Shopping, Quick Cart Editing.
Mobile-optimized menus are the best. This prevents customers feeling overwhelmed by too many menu options.
Discounts for bundles. Your store can offer maximum value to customers by offering upsell/cross-sell features, rather than limiting them to products they already have.
Quick Shopping gives buyers an easy and powerful way to shop online right from their homepage or category page.
Quick cart editing is a great way for buyers to modify products in their side cart. It simplifies the complex process of switching to cart pages to change other variants.
Increase your site's Revenue
Below you see a hypothetical situation how your website can grow into a great success in the coming year. My personal opinion is that only by using this theme that will certainly not happen. The best Shopify theme I know for revenue is by far the Debutify theme.
Many different Headers & Footers
Choose from a whole range of beautiful footers and headers. With a few simple clicks you have a completely different header. Different headers and footers can also be used in different parts of the shop.
8 different Mega-Menu styles
Mega menus are in vogue. It gives a website or webshop a professional look and everything is easy to find for visitors. Unfortunately, mega-menus can only be filled for medium to very large shops with a lot of content.
Product Bulk Editor
The Ella theme has integrated a bulk editor for the products. Very handy, because of course you don’t want to make product by product adjustments to, for example, your prices. And especially not if you have more than 1000 products in your shop.
Nice features in the Ella Theme
The Ella theme is full of them, but I’m not going to list them all here. Below are a few nice features that the Ella theme offers. These kinds of features make your work easier, make shopping more convenient for your customers and generate more sales.
Brands Alphabet
Gone are the days of searching for logos in Google and making them all the same size in Photoshop and displaying them on your site via a carousel plugin. The Ella Brands Alphabet probably has all the logos you are looking for ready-made available. This saves you a lot of time.
Languages and Currencies
Many webshops use multiple languages and currencies. The Ella theme shows this very nicely and everything works in one go without having to tune everything for it. Very nice.
“Before you leave” (below) is a nice feature that a lot of professional shops are using. If someone tries to leave your website, this will not be possible and a pop up will show some offer.
Ella Theme Review Conclusion
I’m going to put an end to this Ella theme review. I assume you got a good impression, this is a very cool theme. The Ella theme has everything and more for building a successful webshop, and it is not for nothing that it is one of the best-selling themes for Shopify. If you like to know more about the Ella theme, read on on their own website. Recommended!
Let’s continue this X-Store vs Ella comparison with the X-Store Theme.
The X-Store 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.
X-Store vs Ella Conclusion
These are both great themes, and both are also great for E-commerce. As good as X-Store is, the Ella theme is simply one of the very best themes available for building webshops. It is really hard to make a decision, I give Ella a slight edge. For any type of website other than web shops, I obviously prefer X-Store. Of course these themes use different CMS systems, so if you have a preference for WordPress or Shopify that will also have to be taken into account when deciding which theme is more suitable for you.