We compare two of the most popular WordPress themes for the construction of websites of the moment here. Astra and PopularFX have as well a free- as a pro version. PopularFX vs Astra, which is the better theme? We start with Astra which at this moment 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 versus PopularFX comparison with the PopularFX Theme.
The PopularFX Theme
In this PopularFX theme review I will quickly show you the best features of this theme, for both the free and the premium version. This theme is highly ranked on wp.org and has over 100,000 active installs. Recently, the theme has again made a number of startling upgrades and are also discussed.
PopularFX's rating
I must honestly say there are themes with a better average rating like Astra, but with a 4.6 out of 5 rating, PopularFX is certainly in the 5% best rated themes on wordpress.org. The last time I wrote a review for PopularFX a year ago, the rating was 0.1 lower, so there is also an improvement.
PopularFX Starter Demos
On the PopularFX site they are called “Templates”. I usually call them Demos or Starter Sites, but these are about 1-click install designs. In its own words, PopularFX offers 350+ of these demos, an unprecedented number! Even the free version has hundreds of demos in every niche one can think of. There are very few themes that exceed these numbers.
PopularFX PageBuilder
PopularFX uses “Pagelayer” as basic editor, a Drag&Drop Visual Inline Pagebuilder that they developed themselves. Nowadays there are more and more themes that develop their own page builder. I must honestly say that I prefer to just work with the DiviBuilder or Elementor, but most of these page builders just work very well.
PageLayer Widgets
The Pagelayer Editor has a nice number of widgets, nothing impressive but certainly enough to build great sites with. There are a lot more widgets than the one in the image above, but I’m not going to show them all.
PopularFX Load Speed
Website visitors have little patience, so having a fast-loading site is a must. As can be seen in the image, PopularFX is very fast and thus certainly meets the requirements. These results were achieved with one of the best cache plugins out there.
PopularFX & Woocommerce
PopularFX theme is fully compatible with WooCommerce, which makes it easy to design an e-commerce website. It is easy to sell, manage and grow any product online. The theme also has a large number of demos especially for shops and together with the widgets in their page builder, you can certainly build a good shop with PopularFX.
PopularFX Review Conclusion
I am going to finish this PopularFX theme review. The theme has a good page builder, has a lot and quite good demos, loads quickly and meets all the requirements that a good theme must meet. The problem is the price. For less money you can purchase much better themes such as Divi or Astra and that is also for unlimited sites.
Astra versus PopularFX Conclusion
PopularFX and Astra have a lot in common. Both themes are offered for free via wp.org but also have a great pro version. Both themes have very good demos. Both themes also load very quickly. The difference is that Astra has been around for much longer and is therefore more developed and has more demos and gadgets. PopularFX is a very good theme, Astra is great.