Pressmart and Astra are sold through different marketplaces and are therefore no direct competitors. Both themes recieve excelent ratings. Pressmart 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 Pressmart comparison with the Pressmart Theme.
The Pressmart Theme
The Pressmart theme came on the market at the end of 2022 and is therefore brand new. The word “mart” in the title indicates that the theme was developed especially for Woocommerce. At the moment the price is still very low. Many new themes give huge discounts in the beginning to become known faster.
Pressmart's Rating
The Pressmart theme currently has an unblemished rating of 5 out of 5. Until now, only 11 people have bought the theme and issued a rating. However, the fact that each of them gave a 5-star rating is striking and I think it can only be a good theme. Let’s start quickly with this review.
Pressmart Theme Review: Speed
Pressmart loads fast in all browsers. Below you can see the results of one of their demo websites displayed via iframe on Themeforest. This comes at the expense of speed so the real results are better than the ones you see below, but these results are already very good in principle.
Demo Webshops
It seems as if the theme is really only concentrating on shops at the moment. All demos are for webshops. These are very well styled demos and the number of 6 gives plenty of choice.
Pressmart + Elementor
Pressmart works everywhere with the excellent Elementor page builder, one of my favorite page builders. I must honestly say that I kind of hate themes with their own brand page builder. As a web designer you quickly understand how everything works, but it is even more pleasant if you can simply work with Elementor.
Mega Menu in Pressmart
Megamenus are of course no longer the latest gadget, but a theme must of course have it. Use the Pressmart drag and drop megamenu builder to have beautiful menus on your website.
Pressmart + Woocommerce
Pressmart is a real Woocommerce theme and is therefore purely focused on the construction of webshops. The theme has a lot to offer in this area. A good example of this are the +10 shopping page layouts including off canvas sidebars, Ajax filters and Infinite Scroll.
Options for Products in Woocommerce
There is also certainly no shortage of options for the products. Countdowns, Quick-Buy, Swatches, and more. See in the image below that there is also a sticky “Add to cart” bar.
Different Single Product Lay-outs
Pressmart also lets you choose from a range of layouts for the product pages. Below you see 4 examples of beautifully styled layouts. The theme currently does not have a layout builder for these kinds of pages as the top themes have, but one cannot expect this for the current price of the theme. If the theme continues to be successful, these builders will definitely appear in future upgrades.
Special E-commerce Features
With Pressmart, your shop immediately comes across as professional to visitors. The shop has very modern features for shop, which add to the convenience of shopping. Think things like Wishlist with categories, Frequently bought Together, and a bar progressive for Free Shipping.
Advanced Ajax Cart
The Ajax Cart supports the purchase process of your visitors on both mobile and desktop. This makes putting products in the shopping cart less time-consuming because people don’t have to go back and forth, but buy via the pop up.
More Ajax functions
Your visitors can quickly filter your products by color, rating and more via the Ajax Filters without having to renew the screen. This is a top feature.
Headers in Pressmart
You can choose from 5 well thought out headers. The theme does not have a header builder, but it is so new that we certainly do not fall for it. They will certainly be working on anything and everything to give the theme more and more features. There is also a reasonable choice for footers.
Portfolios & Blogs
Maybe not the strongest point of Pressmart, but one can just build a decent blog or portfolio with it too. Good to know because a webshop can sometimes run a blog next to it.
Pressmart Theme Review Conclusion
This review is coming to an end, if you want to know more, read on on the Pressmart site. As far as I’m concerned, the theme can only be used to create webshops with it, but it is very good at that. Pressmart is a great Woocommerce theme and definitely recommended.
Astra vs Pressmart Conclusion
The Pressmart theme has practically everything and works with Elementor, all beautifully. Astra, however, also works with Elementor, and a couple of other page builders. The Astra Theme has an infinite number of gadgets and features and nothing can compete with it only Divi. In addition, Astra can be used on as many sites as you want and Pressmart can only be used on 1.