Astra vs Essentials Theme comparison [2023] 💥
ASTRA THEME (Essentials vs Astra)
WP-Astra is the fastest Wordpress theme ever made...
In this Astra Theme review for [2023], I'll be the first to tell you that 2.369.964+ people entrust the health of their website to Astra. The Astra Theme was specially built from scratch to be able to build the most beautiful shops and more importantly, it had to load very fast. The Astra team has started a highly successful theme with this which is becoming increasingly popular. The only theme that stands up to speed against Astra is Generatepress but imposes it all other fronts against Astra.
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The faster your website, the higher it ranks in Google, the longer visitors stay on your site and there are many more benefits associated with it. Speed is very valuable today. With Astra you are in professional hands in that regard. Web shops also have to be fast, which results in more turnover. Let's start with that because Astra is built to build beautiful super fast charging shops with it.
ASTRA FREE & PRO: RATING
If we check on Wordpress.org Astra's rating, we see that practically all raters gave 5 stars on a couple of haters after that. The image above also shows that the free theme alone has already been installed on more than 1 million websites. Together with the pro version, that goes above 1.6 million.
ASTRA WEBSHOPS
Astra is optimized to achieve more conversion for your shop and generate more sales. A shop made with Astra is just much faster than with any other theme. Here on the Astra website you can see how this was tested against 50 other top themes by SEO- experts.
On the above-mentioned page you will also find all information about Astra + Woocommerce. A fast-loading webshop is not only appreciated by your visitors, but also by Google. This brings your shop higher in the SERP of Google and this attracts extra visitors. Your visitor numbers and their appreciation therefore increase exponentially.
Astra offers great possibilities to style your shop exactly the way you want without any technical knowledge being required. A few years ago this was unthinkable. Ok you can install all existing Woocommerce plugins without worrying about compatibility issues.
Furthermore, Astra offers a range of modern options for shops that will make your webshop a real success, such as: Infinite Scroll, Adaptable grid settings, Off-canvas sidebar, Quickview, Dropdown cart and more. More on this here. Check out some of the many complete shopping demo sites below that you can install in your site with 1 click.
ASTRA: STARTER DEMOS
As for starter demos (templates), Astra offers a total of 180 complete websites. So these are not individual pages or sections, but complete websites that you can take over and start adding your house style to them. These demos were prepared by the Astra programmers for the 4 different page builders you see in the screenshot below. Few themes offer better demo options than this.
I would also like to say that the theme is not only responsive, but special attention has been paid to create a perfect design and ease of use for mobile webshops. This in view of the increasing sales via mobile devices which will probably exceed 50% next year.
It is also worth noting that you can adjust the complete check-out page, shopping cart and product pages to your wishes, HTML or other technical knowledge is not required. A poorly constructed checkout page can quickly cost you a percentage of your sales. You see, when it comes to E-commerce, the Astra team has thought of everything.
ASTRA: LOADING TIME
As can be seen below, the Astra theme has incredibly fast loading times. Wherever you test, at Google, GtMetrix, Y-Slow or Pingdom, it always scores phenomenally. These are known speed tests and as I said before, the only theme that can match such results is Generatepress.
ASTRA: PAGEBUILDERS
Astra works as a whole with the Elementor page builder...
You can operate Astra through its own panel and the Wordpress customizer, but the theme is prepared to use an elite pagebuilder. My first choice, Elementor, has a free and a pro version. It's great to work with Astra Pro + Elementor Pro as the 2 go hand-in-hand as if they were made for each other. But it doesn't necessarily have to cost you money since Astra and Elementor also have a free version, although unfortunately with a lot less options.
Elementor in Astra
ASTRA SCHEMA MARK-UP
Schema are short snippets of information that the search engines would like us to add to our pages so that they have a better idea of what exactly is on that page. Doing so will be rewarded with a better display of your website in search results. Astra automatically adds Schema markup to your pages for you as they indicate here.
ASTRA + LEARNDASH
It is easy to design and create a website that offers an online course using the Astra + LearnDash integration. Astra offers many design options and features that help you provide a better learning experience. LearnDash lets you create a distraction-free, conversion-focused website for your next online class. Combine it with Astra to discover the many customizations that can be made.
ASTRA + LIFTER-LMS
You can provide students with the best online learning experience by integrating Astra + LifterLMS. Astra gives you full control over the design of your website. You can make it look great and customize it as much as you want. You can create a website that focuses on learning and driving more conversions with features such as distraction-free learning, a conversion-focused checkout page, and many others.
ASTRA HEADERS, FOOTERS, 404
Astra Transparent Headers, Astra Custom Header and Astra Custom Footers are PRO features that allow you to style your complete header and footer however you want without technical knowledge. The same goes for your 404 pages, by the way. You can offer different headers to different user groups in your system.
ASTRA: MORE FEATURES
Astra has so much more to offer, here you will find a wonderful overview with all the features that are available. sit in Astra. Sit down for it because it's a huge laundry list.
ASTRA THEME REVIEW: CONCLUSION
Thank you for reading my Astra Theme review to the end. You will agree with me that Astra is a very special theme that stands head and shoulders above most other themes. I am only talking about the PRO version of course because the free version of no theme can compete with the top themes today of course. I personally work with Astra in combination with Elementor and as a professional designer it is one of my favorite themes along with the Divi Theme which can also be used anytime and anywhere . Astra has no weaknesses.
ASTRA THEME REVIEW: DE PRICING
Astra costs only 59 dollars for a year, you can build as many sites with it as you want, that is not money compared to other themes that are less good and require a separate license for each website on which you want to use it. If you have a little more to spend, supercharge your Astra with one of the many Bundle packages that usually come with big discounts. That is the best option for companies who want to have their business website at the highest level. Regardless of which package you purchase, at Astra the number of websites on which you can use the theme and extras is always unlimited. All in all, Astra is highly recommended and has very interesting deals if you purchase a lifetime package with huge discounts.
ESSENTIALS THEME (Essentials vs Astra)
ESSENTIALS THEME REVIEW
Essentials is one of the Wordpress themes that is rapidly emerging. Not surprising because the theme offers many special qualities and is 100% compatible with the most popular page builder out there, Elementor. The theme is suitable for any kind of webshop, blog or website. This theme excels in a huge number of demo websites and demo pages, just like another theme from Pixfort: Soledad. What immediately struck me is that they have copied a lot of Divi , the most popular theme there is. This includes the animations, the Shape Dividers and much more. Those are things that made Divi unique, but in Essentials you have a kind of Divi copy.
ESSENTIALS RATING
Below you can see the rating that Essentials gets from people who bought the theme, and I must immediately say that 4.96 is an absolute top score. Such high ratings are very rare and so I certainly expect this theme to rise even further in the rankings.
ESSENTIALS INSTALLATION AND DEMOS
Installing Essentials is very easy. The theme does not have a free version so you will have to buy it first and it can simply be installed via the standard Wordpress theme installer.
It is recommended to install one of the many ready-to-go designs. Essentials offers about 30 very nice complete designs for web shops in all niches out there, so furniture, tools, clothing, etcetera. The theme is still very new and there will certainly be many more website demos soon. In addition to the website demo, you can also choose from 585 individual page demos. All demos are available for both Elementor and WP-Bakery Pagebuilder, both page builders that you can use with this theme.
ESSENTIALS SPEEDTEST
We perform a speed test with the theme under quite optimal conditions, so with cache plug-in and all images optimized. This theme indicates that it is also specialized on loading times and the results are very good as can be seen in the image below, but there are much faster themes of course.
with optimized images and cache plugin
ESSENTIALS HEADER & FOOTER BUILDER
Essentials offers one of the best Header & Footbuilders that allows you to style your header just the way you want without any technical knowledge. Essentials also has a dozen standard header styles that can be installed with 1 click.
ESSENTIALS THEME REVIEW: PAGE BUILDERS
All material such as demos comes in Essentials for 2 good page builders. You can use both a tuned Elementor-Free and a tuned version of WP-Bakery page builder, however you want. If you are going to use Elementor it is definitely worth buying Pro version.
ESSENTIALS THEME REVIEW: ELEMENTS
The Essentials Theme is packed with elements, below I will discuss a few separately if you want to know more then check out their own site where you can find info all over all elements. I have to say that the quality and number of elements are impressive, this is a great theme. So much has been copied from Divi that there is no other option already has the Divi Theme even more gadgets.
ESSENTIALS SHAPE BUILDER
For example, as mentioned earlier this has been copied from Divi, the Shape-Builder is a great tool. You can create beautiful backgrounds made of shapes on pages as well as blog articles and in different sections if you want. These shapes can even move and colors can be adjusted very quickly.
ESSENTIALS POP-UPS
Divi had it and now more and more themes are coming with it, a built-in pop-up Builder. I must also say that Essentials did not just copy stuff but did its best to surpass Divi. This Pop-up Builder is great and offers a lot of standard pop-up layouts. All buttons in the menus can be linked with pop-ups and pop-ups appear, for example, when visitors lowered pages so that you can quickly tell them something with your pop-up.
WOO: ENHANCED PRODUCT PAGE
With Essentials you can also build a very professional webshop. There is no lack of the best possible features for Woocommerce as good themes specialized on Woocommerce such as Ocean-WP have. Enhanced Product Page allows you to display your products in different styles to enhance your products.
ESSENTIALS WOO: WISHLIST
Wishlists have been around in themes for a long time and are very practical. Your customers can record in their account what they want to order later in your webshop by clicking a heart next to the product.
WOO: SLIDING CART
Your shopping cart can be called up at any time and will slide in nicely from the right. I'll leave it at this because there is so much more that this theme can do, but via the button below you can view it all on Essentials own site if you want.
ESSENTIALS THEME REVIEW: CONCLUSION
This is one of the best themes out there to build both websites and web shops and it is rising in the rankings and with every upgrade it is better again. It works perfectly with the Elementor pagebuilder and that's great. I previously indicated that Essentials is a kind of copy of Divi, although Divi is even better, I think. Therefore, as good as Essentials is, I would rather take Divi if you want even more options.
Of course, a large team has been working on Divi for years and it is therefore a lot more stable and without errors. Also, Divi can be installed on as many sites as you want and it only costs $ 89 and comes with the Divibuilder full version! Essentials comes with Elementor, but that's the free version we're talking about then. Essentials costs $ 59 per website you have and is well worth the money, but if you have multiple websites then Divi is without doubt the better choice.
Essentials vs Astra conclusion
First of all, thank you for reading this Essentials vs Astra comparison to the end. These themes are both great and can be used for anything. Astra's strengths are the incredibly fast loading times and the flexibility with which everything functions, the beautiful design (also for shops) and the price. Essentials has many more settings and everything can really be adjusted, provided you can find these settings in the abundance of them of course.
Depending on what is important to you, one or the other theme may be more interesting. Please note that if you have multiple websites, Essentials will require you to purchase a separate $ 59 license for each, while Astra has great deals and renewal of your license costs only 40% over the next few years. Finally, half a year of support alone costs around 40 euros at Essentials, which is of course absurd. Winner: Astra.