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. Newspaper 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 Newspaper comparison with the Newspaper Theme.
The Newspaper Theme
The Newspaper theme has been around since 2013 and therefore belongs to the established order. Over time, all the bugs disappear from themes and a very good product remains. This theme specializes in building news sites, blogs and is ultimately a bit multipurpose. A lot can be done with this theme.
Newspaper Theme Rating
The average rating of 4.82 out of 5 is particularly high. Since Newspaper is a niche theme, this indicates that the theme is almost perfect for building blogs and news websites. Newspaper is also very suitable for web shops.
Newspaper's Demo Websites
I count a total of 160 starter sites, also called demo websites. The quality of the demos is so good and spread over all kinds of different niches that this number is more than enough. There are themes that offer much more, but the quality is very important.
Demos for Webshops
Newspaper offers a total of 8 demo websites for webshops that can be installed with 1 click. These are not the first best designs but very neat looking layouts.
Newspaper Theme Review: Shop Builder
Newspaper now also has its own Shop Builder, just like Divi has had its WooBuilder for years. All copied from Divi, but it works well. This shopbuilder is equipped with 27 special elements for shops. With this you can set up your cart and other shop pages exactly as you had in mind.
TagDiv PageBuilder
Here we come to a feature that can certainly be improved, but I wonder if they will do it because they are a bit proud of their own page builder. Of course, it cannot be compared with a DiviBuilder or Elementor. This is practically the only thing I don’t like about Newspaper, the page builder is a weakness. I must honestly say that it is not a bad page builder but it can just be better.
Performance Optimizer
You can see here link what exactly the optimizer does for you, which is impressive. This used to be impossible to achieve in a WordPress website without being an expert in this field. Now several themes have this type of optimizers and they make very fast loading websites with them. The fastest theme always remains Astra, regardless of what other themes say about themselves.
Header- and Footerbuilder
For a good theme it is nowadays a requirement to have a header builder and a footer builder, since all top themes have this. Newspaper certainly belongs to the top and of course has this too. I will not go into this further.
Newspaper's Pop-up's
Not all themes have this much anymore. Newspaper lets you use an unlimited number of popups on your pages. Purchasing pop-up plugins is no longer necessary. It is true that a service like PopTin is much more flexible and better, I prefer these kinds of services as popups bring in money they are very important.
Newspaper Theme Review: Conclusion
Let’s wrap up this Newspaper Review. The theme has much more to offer, but I will not list the complete package here. If your interest has been piqued, you can read more on their own site. My opinion about this theme is very positive, it can and has everything one needs to build a good site. I would like to see that the demos can also be edited with Elementor in the future, that would improve the theme considerably. Highly recommended.
Astra vs Newspaper Conclusion
To start with, Astra has the best free theme installed on millions of sites. Newspaper 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 Newspaper has more. These are available for 4 page builders, those of Newspaper for 2 page builders. Astra loads faster and is probably the fastest theme there is for WordPress. Newspaper also loads fast but it’s a bit less. My choice falls on the Astra Theme.