Soledad and Astra are sold through different marketplaces and are therefore no direct competitors. Soledad 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 Soledad comparison with the Soledad Theme.
The Soledad Theme
The Soledad Theme came on the market in 2015 and is still one of the best scoring themes on Themeforest today. In its own words, it specializes in Blog and Magazine websites, despite being a multipurpose theme. Another eye-catching feature is the 6000+ homepage demos, crazy. Let’s quickly see what this theme has to offer.
Soledad's Rating
Soledad has one of the best ratings on the Themeforest marketplace. A rating of 4.87 out of 5 is not common, at least not on Themeforest. However, there are themes such as Astra that simply score the full 5 out of 5.
Loading Speed of Soledad
Also with regard to loading times, the Soledad theme is only with the best in that area. Also with regard to loading times, the Soledad theme is only with the best in that area. Above you see a speed test performed on GtMetrix that scores 100%. The builders of Soledad also claim a 100% score on Google, and Pingdom, but I got 96% in my test in Google. Still exceptionally good.
Soledad uses Elementor + WP-Bakery
Soledad uses my favorite page builder, Elementor. Elementor is a very good page builder made by very unreliable people. Service is very bad, I happen to be waiting for weeks at this point for a reply from an email I sent them. But to be honest, the page builder is almost as good as the DiviBuilder. As an encore there is a 2nd page builder, WP-Bakery.
Soledad's Header- and Footer Builder
Soledad comes with a very well-functioning drag & drop header- and footer builder. You start the process by choosing a header in the builder after which you can make as many changes as you want.
Cloud Library
This is a great feature of Soledad Theme. This feature allows you to quickly build websites by editing templates or combining blocks from our Cloud Library. You can click, edit, and combine. Just a few clicks and you can create your own website.
- 1300+ Pre-Built Blocks/Templates
- You can import any blocks/templates from any demo easily
- You can easily copy and paste blocks from a page to other pages.
- You can combine any blocks/Templates easily to create your own unique pages/sites.
- The site is regularly updated with new blocks/templates
Creating Webshops with Woocommerce
You can integrate your online store directly into one of our demos, or create your store in any other way you prefer. You can build your store quickly and easily with many of our elements and styles. Soledad makes it easy to sell products online.
- 8 Styles to List Product Items
- Multiple designs for Single Product Page
- Ajax Product Pagination & filter
- Product Compare & Wishlist built-in
- Variable, External/Affiliate Product Supported
Soledad's SEO
- Google and other Search Engines: Friendly WP Theme
- Builtin JSON -LD Support (Valid & Updating)
- Compatible with Yoast, Rank Math and All In One SEO Plugins
- Google Updates: Keep up-to-date
- Search Engines: Fast Index Your URLs
Soledad focuses on validating Google Rich results & structured data. It supports: Article, Breadcrumbs and Posts Review. The theme can also be used with any SEO plugins. This theme ensures that your website is friendly to search engines like Google. Soledad helps you rank higher in search engines.
Dark Mode
Can we call it the latest fad? More and more themes are coming with Dark/Light mode switches, and we see that here at Soledad too. Great function.
Soledad's Post Styles
- Table of Contents Supported. Enable with Just One Click
- Simply click to change the style of all posts
- Just one click to change the style of a post for a special post
- Smooth Parallax Images & Videos Style Supported
- You can scroll endlessly inside the posts supported
- 100% Responsive and Great on All Devices
Soledad supports many different post templates, all with beautiful designs. It supports smooth parallax effects for images and videos, making your posts more interesting to readers.
With Soledad you can create beautiful blogs or portfolio websites. Below you can see a few nice examples. The theme offers a wide choice of different styles.
Make Soledad your own Brand
If you, as a web design agency, want to pretend to your clients that you have developed the theme yourself, then you can use this tool to change everything that contains Soledad into your own brand.
Soledad Theme Review Conclusion
Let me finish this Soledad review. If you would like more information, you can of course visit their own site. The Soledad theme meets all requirements. It loads fast, has a lot and beautiful demos for all niches. You can create any type of website with it, and it is also very suitable for shops. It works with the Elementor page builder, one of the best of its kind. Well, the theme is definitely recommended, although there are simply much better themes.
Astra vs Soledad Conclusion
I like Astra better, it is just way better overall. But also, the Soledad theme wants to see a separate expensive license for every website you want to build with it. This will quickly cost you a lot of money. You are better off with Astra or Divi that can be used on an unlimited sites and are also even better and more stable themes.