Astra Theme vs Genesis Framework [2023] 💥
ASTRA THEME (Genesis 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.
GENESIS FRAMEWORK (Astra vs Genesis)
GENESIS FRAMEWORK REVIEW
In this Astra vs Genesis comparison, we now move on to the Genesis Framework. We take a look at what this framework has to offer for Wordpress websites. It was recommended by Joost de Valk of the well-known Yoast SEO plug-in, by Matt Cutts from Google, and even by Matt Mullenweg (founder of Wordpress). There are of course no better references. The system is very safe, very fast due to great coding and very reliable.
GENESIS PRO
One can purchase a single theme in combination with the Genesis Framework or choose for Genesis Pro which gives access to the complete collection of 40+ themes that Studiopress (designer of the Genesis Framework) has to offer. You can then build as many sites as you want with it. You will also receive hosting for all your sites for a year WP Engine. WP engine is the best hosting one can imagine for Wordpress. You get full service, so they do everything for you. The server is completely optimized to run Wordpress at lightning speed and is very secure.
GENESIS FRAMEWORK THEMES
As mentioned, you can also just choose one of the themes and with the standard theme "Open Source" you only pay $ 59. The Genesis Framework can be used on any server. Most other themes will cost you 99 or 129 dollars. Below I show a number of these themes. Click on the images for a live preview.
Open Source Genesis Theme
Corporate Pro Theme
Authority Pro Theme
Metro Pro Theme
There are themes for every conceivable niche. All these themes have a perfect code and are super fast. The ease of switching themes and installing them are certainly one of the strengths of the Genesis Framework.
SEO OPTIMIZED
As mentioned earlier, the Genesis Framework has the best possible references (Google, Yoast and Wordpress itself). The framework was developed by Greg Boser (SEO expert) and is written in the cleanest code out there, with no errors. Let's just say the search engines love it.
Apart from the perfect code, Genesis delivers rich snippets to the search engines via Schema microdata. The search engines love this too and ensures your site is found even better. Additional information is also added to your title and description in Google search results. Below you can see how well Genesis (= WP Engine) scores compared to other well-known frameworks such as Wix.
SEO SETTINGS
The Genesis Framework offers a sea of options for SEO settings, making the use of an SEO plugin completely unnecessary.
Genesis notices immediately when you install an Open Graph plug-in and will start using its data so that everything remains compatible.
GENESIS FEATURES
For the first time, I am going to report something to you here in this Genesis Framwork review regarding the Genesis Framework and its themes, which is less positive for some. As far as features are concerned, it is absolutely impossible with a phenomenon like Divi by Elegant Themes. I mean to say that with Divi there are endless possibilities to customize everything and build a very futuristic site. Also with Genesis you have many options and it works nice and smooth but the two cannot be compared in that regard.
In itself it is nothing negative for others like for me. I don't believe that a spectacular design offers more results than a sleek and good design, which loads much faster. On the contrary, I spend little time on beautiful backgrounds and rotating and moving parts of the site. Everything has to work perfectly and above all be displayed very quickly in browsers, which brings more money. I certainly try not to denounce Divi here, because I am also very positive about Divi. Also a great platform.
GENESIS THEME UPDATES
Since themes in the Genesis Framework are automatically used as a child theme, any changes you made to your design are never removed in the case of automatic Wordpress updates.
GENESIS THEME SECURITY
Given the high professional level of the developers, the code is resistant to hackers. As soon as there is a new version, your theme will also automatically upgrade if you have set it that way. Due to the clean code that is used, no errors occur in the design after an upgrade, which is often the case with many other themes. Many themes also have code that is prone to being hacked and here you have the guarantee that this will not happen, especially if you use their perfect WP Engine.
GENESIS PRICING
There are 4 options for beginners through to full time pros. The cheapest option is to use Genesis Framework with their Open Source theme. This costs $ 59 and you can compare this with Astra or Generatepress which are very fast, quite sober, very popular themes. Option 2 is one of the 40 themes to find out what specializes in your niche. The cost is $ 99 to $ 129. Option 3 is Genesis Pro, this gives you access to all 40 themes and you can build as many sites as you want. Genesis Pro costs $ 360 per year. Option 4 is WP Engine, with this you are on their WordPress specialized server with your websites which makes them really fast and you have nothing to worry about and manage CDN and much more. Click the link to know more. Highly recommended, but of course more expensive than the previous options. With WP Engine you automatically get access to Genesis Pro.
GENESIS THEME REVIEW CONCLUSION
The Genesis Framework really belongs to the top frameworks out there. The only thing that can be noticed is that the Themes are less customizable compared to those of some competitors like Divi. Of course this is not the most important for everyone. I would say for a serious company this is better than Divi. Especially if you take WP Engine which takes everything out of your hands and they make your sites really fast is great.
Genesis vs Astra comparison conclusion
For starters, thanks for reading this Astra Theme vs Genesis Framework comparison to the end. Astra is a great theme which is one of the top 3 fastest themes for Wordpress. Apart from that, the theme is very well put together and also looks very good. Astra works very well with the best page builder for Wordpress called Elementor. Astra is more suitable for beginners and people who don't want to spend too much, Genesis is suitable for medium to large companies with multiple sites that have no problem paying a little extra to purchase WP Engine, the top version of Genesis that allows the websites on their antisocial fast hosting. For both systems applies that it is for people who prefer speed over design, otherwise it is better for Divi.
The Genesis Framework lets you build great fast websites that look just as good. Too many bells and whistles are not necessary to generate a good turnover, people want to bind visitors by quickly serving them the pages without waiting. Therefore, for large companies and for example affiliate marketers who want to make money with their site and multiple websites, WP Engine is best. This is a fully controlled managed hosting system which is optimized on Wordpress and speed. You do not need to install any CDN or cache plug-ins, the loading times of your websites are lightning fast without having to do anything about it. This in combination with the fast Genesis Pro which is included in WP Engine, it virtually can't go any faster. WP Engine + Genesis Pro let you build as much site as you want and you get 100% support with it. Well it costs a little money but you are also in the front row.