Uncode and Astra are sold through different marketplaces and are therefore no direct competitors. Both themes recieve excelent ratings. Uncode 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 Uncode comparison with the Uncode Theme.
The Uncode Theme
The Uncode theme came on the market in 2015, and has therefore been around for years. Themes build a good reputation over time if they continuously score good ratings for so many years. That is why we have Uncode in the top for high-scoring themes on the Themeforest marketplace in this theme review.
Uncode's Rating
An average rating of 4.89 out of 5 is very high on Themeforest, although there are themes such as Astra with a 4.99 rating. The Uncode theme is therefore a real competitor to the top themes on this marketplace. The total number of sales of the themes is also beautiful with more than 100k.
Uncode's loading Speed
The values shown below for Google Speed are impressive. Of course, this is under the best circumstances and does not mean to me that the theme would be so fast after installation. At the very least, everything is extra tuned with a good cache plugin and who knows what else. But one thing is certain, the theme is fast.
Mobile Load Speed
Although this is not a unique feature of course, the structure of images that are displayed to browsers is very well put together with Uncode. This ensures very good loading times on mobile phones as there is no need to load unnecessarily loaded images.
Create Webshops with Uncode
One of their most touted and proud of their features is the great partnership with Woocommerce. This immediately indicates to me that one can make very nice webshops with Uncode. Their page builder is also geared to that. There are many more features than I show you below of course, the rest you can see on their own site.
Uncode's Page Builder
Many themes with their own or let’s say private label page builders give them a name, but with Uncode it seems nameless. The name will just be Uncode page builder I assume then. The rating figures show that it certainly works well, otherwise the rating would be much lower, but I always prefer to work with a Divi or Elementor.
Demos and partial Demos
Uncode offers you 70+ full site demos and a further 550+ templates that you can use anywhere on your website. Demos can be installed with 1 click and can then be quickly adjusted by yourself. This works much faster than building all blocks yourself when you are building your site.
Uncode Theme Review: Blog
Setting up a good blog with Uncode is no problem at all. Several beautiful layouts are available. Not really anything special but I’ll mention it anyway.
Portfolio with Uncode
Endless possibilities for portfolio layouts. Again it is noticeable that they are proud of it. For portfolios you are certainly in the right place with Uncode.
Uncode Theme Review Conclusion
There is much more to tell about Uncode, but if the theme interests you, read on on their own site. Uncode strikes me as a nice theme with which everything is possible and with beautiful loading times. A problem for professional designers, however, is that I prefer to work with a page builder that I know well and not always with another. I would have preferred to see the theme with Elementor as a page builder. Despite that, Uncode is definitely recommended for beginners.
Astra vs Uncode Conclusion
Astra is the best built free theme ever, Uncode does not have a free version so we can only compare the pro versions. My preference is strongly for Astra for several reasons. Better page builder, faster loading times, more stable theme. Uncode 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.