Ohio and Astra are both sold very well. Both themes can be used for the construction of very nicely looking webshops and corporate websites. Ohio 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 Ohio comparison with the Ohio Theme.
The Ohio Theme
The Ohio theme is still very new compared to other themes in the top sales on the Themeforest marketplace. Where most top themes came out between 2013 and 2015 is Ohio from the beginning of 2020. So the theme made advances very quickly, which is due to a number of points, we will come back to that in a moment.
Ohio Theme's Rating
A rating of 4.85 out of 5 can measure itself with the rating of the best themes on Themeforest. Ohio not only has a good rating but also good sales figures for a fairly new theme. The theme will certainly rise even further, they do a lot of good.
Ohio's Page Builders
Look, here we immediately have something that the builders of the theme do very well. They don’t come with a sloppy own page builder but use 2 very reputable page builders in Elementor and WP-Bakery. As a professional web designer I prefer to work with the best page builders out there and not always with someone else I don’t know by heart. I assume others think the same.
Fast loading Times
In addition to very cleanly written code, incredibly fast loading times are a must for themes these days. The fastest theme I know is Astra, but nowadays all top-selling themes are very fast. The Ohio theme scores very well in this area and can compete with the best.
In order to quickly display content in browsers also on mobile layouts, image sets must be prepared so as not to have to show oversized images. Ohio does all this perfectly.
Webshops with Ohio Theme
Also a must nowadays if you offer a theme, is that it works perfectly with the Woocommerce plugin to be able to build shops with it. In addition, buyers of Woo-Themes like to see beautiful extra features for shops such as Ajax Cart, Swatches, a nicely working Currency Switcher, Sticky Products and more. With Ohio you are in the right place in this regard, the theme gives very good thought to the shopping functions and has it all.
Ohio Theme and Blogging
The Ohio Theme also allows one to build great blogs. We are slowly finding out that Ohio is a fast riser because the theme is very all-round and has all the important things in it in a cool way.
Ohio theme review: Demos
By its own admission, Ohio Theme has 50+ full site demos as well as many pre-built sections that you can use anywhere on your site.
325+ Elements
The combined number of widgets or elements for Elementor and WP-Bakery are over 325. This includes standard elements and custom/new ones by Ohio/Figma.
Menu-Styles for Ohio
Ohio has ready-made menus that you can set up in your website with 1 click. Further adjustments can then be made, but this is usually not necessary. So the Ohio theme has its own header builder shines. The strange thing is that it is in Elementor, the page builder that uses the theme. At least they don’t advertise it.
Portfolios
Ohio is not very extensive for portfolios, but it has not been forgotten either. I would definitely use a different theme for a portfolio site but Ohio can be used if you are not too demanding.
Font Styles in Ohio Theme
Something that is really well arranged in this theme are the font styles. You can use virtually all Google, Adobe and other fonts in your websites without having to upload anything.
Ohio Theme Review Conclusion
The Ohio Theme is a complete theme, exactly what we thought from the start in this review based on the beautiful rating. The 2 page builders in it are very good, and the theme also offers everything to create any type of website. The theme will certainly be improved in upgrades for years to come. Ohio is definitely recommended, although there are much better themes of course.
Astra vs Ohio Conclusion
Astra is the best built free theme ever, Ohio does not have a free version so we can only compare the pro versions. My preference is strongly for Astra for several reasons. More page builders, faster loading times, more stable theme. Ohio has a big disadvantage and that is of course that it can only be used on 1 site. You may use Astra on all your websites. Winner: Astra.