Astra vs Sydney Theme comparison [2023] 💥
ASTRA THEME (Sydney 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.
SYDNEY THEME (Sydney vs Astra)
In this Sydney Theme review we take a look at the most important features of this theme was launched by aThemes, a professional company that offers some very good Wordpress themes through their website. In 2013 Charlie Livingston started aThemes as a one man company but nowadays they work with 6 programmers.
Sydney theme review: Rating
If we check Sydney's rating on Wordpress.org, we see that practically all raters gave 5 stars except for a few haters. The theme is also quite well known among designers and is highly ranked on Wordpress.org for popular themes.
Sydney theme review: Demos
The Sydney theme offers about 12 modern demos that can be installed with 1 click. The choice is not too large, but since the theme is still very new, this will probably be expanded soon. Sydney also has 2 special Woocommerce demos from which you can quickly start webshops.
The great thing about demo websites is that they make a quick start. The website is already online but still with the wrong photos and texts. So put your own logo in it, adjust the texts and photos and you are well on your way to having your own website.
Sydney theme review: Webshops
I count only 2 demos for webshops in total. The theme is 100% compatible with Woocommerce, but if you are going to build a webshop then choose a theme like Astra or another theme from my top 10 for webshop themes. One can certainly build a good webshop with the Sydney theme, but there is simply better than this.
Sydney theme review: Speed
The Sydney theme is one of the fastest themes out there for Wordpress and should actually be in my list for fastest WP themes. Only the theme itself without additional plugins with only a well-configured cache plugin produced the result presented above. Check out a demo from Sydney itself and see how fast it loads. Of course you can optimize your website yourself for loading time. Follow this tutorial here.
Sydney theme review: Pagebuilders
The Sydney theme uses its own Building Blocks by default, but is compatible with Beaverbuilder and Elementor Pro page builder, one of the best out there in the field. I also definitely recommend installing Elementor for free if you're going to work with Sydney, but it's much better to buy the pro version.
Sydney: Google Fonts
With Sydney you don't need any additional plugins to have all Google Fonts. Sydney already has this built in as standard and you have more than 600 fonts available. You can set which font to use for each section, it all works perfectly.
Sydney theme review: Widgets
Sydney even offers some top widgets in the free version such as: Contact info, Video, Call to action, Clients, Employees, Facts, Latest News, Services Types, Lists, Social profiles, Testimonials, Skills, Timeline (Pro), and Latest news carousel (Pro). The theme is not only compatible with Elementor but with all top page builders so you can use the page builder that you like best.
Sydney: More features
Sydney has over 200,000 active installs and was downloaded much more often because it is simply a very good business theme for Wordpress. Sydney also offers the following features that I won't go into further: Frontpage Blocks, a very good SEO but unfortunately without Schema MarkUp, 100% Responsive on all devices, Parallax Backgrounds, Crelly Slider Support (Pro), and beautiful Full Screen Backgrounds. If Sydney has piqued your interest, I suggest you continue reading on their own website.
Sydney theme review: Conclusion
Sydney is a very good theme that has more impressive loading times. The demo layouts are beautiful, the theme set up is quick and easy. The theme is also very suitable for building shops with it, although it only offers 2 demos. The Sydney theme is ideally suited as a business theme and is 100% Translation Ready. If you'd rather dig a little further, I'd recommend checking out my list of the top 10 WP themes this year.
Sydney vs Astra conclusion
First of all thank you for reading this Sydney vs Astra comparison till the end. It may be clear that Sydney is a very good theme, but it is difficult to compare it with Astra. I have Astra high in my rankings for the best themes from [2023], Sydney is not in it. Astra Pro + Elementor Pro is one of my favorite combinations for building awesome websites at lightning speed.