Sydney vs Virtue comparison [2024] 💥
SYDNEY vs VIRTUE
In this Virtue vs Sydney Theme comparison for [2024], we summarize the best features of these two popular multipurpose themes. Both Sydney and Virtue have a free and a paid version. Which is the better Wordpress theme?
SYDNEY THEME (Virtue vs Sydney)
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.
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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.
VIRTUE THEME (Virtue vs Sydney)
The Virtue Theme has both a free and a Pro version. The free version is very popular and as it should be, the Pro version is of course 5x better. I will discuss both versions. Virtue was designed by Kadence-WP. Kadence is their No.1 theme and here's my review for it.
You find here all themes that Kadence-WP has to offer. If you would switch to the pro version, it is best to take the "Bundle" with which you not only have the Virtue Theme but all these themes at your disposal in 1x. The pro version offers the next extras.
Virtue theme review: Rating
If we check on Wordpress.org Virtue's rating is 4.9 out of 5. There are almost no higher rated themes because out of 220 people who gave a rating, only 6 people gave it less than 5 stars. Virtue is installed on more than 40,000+ websites which instills even more confidence. Apparently a lot of people are satisfied with this theme.
Virtue theme review: Demos
Virtue has about 6 different demos that you can install with 1 click. If that's not enough for you, you'd better use the Astra Theme which has about 150 pieces. The nice thing about demos is that you can make a quick start with them. The website is ready but still with the wrong photos and texts in principle. So place your logo in it, adjust the texts and photos and you are well on your way to having your own site.
Virtue theme review: Webshops
Virtue is more than ready for building professional ecommerce websites with the popular Woocommerce plugin. Today, more than half of all shops are built online with Woocommerce. Virtue gives you great customizability for the theme and with many extra features such as different number of column layouts, radio buttons, and custom tabs.
Virtue theme review: Speed
The image above shows that the Virtue Theme produces insanely fast loading times with the help of a good cache plugin. Virtue is a minimalist theme and most of them are pretty fast so it doesn't surprise me. In order to be found well, it is very important these days to use a fast-loading theme and Virtue is therefore very suitable for that.
Virtue theme review: Pagebuilders
The Virtue theme comes standard with the Gutenberg page builder and its own PageBuilder. The theme is also fully prepared to work with the SiteOrigin page builder. This is a very good page builder that has been installed on more than a million websites. I definitely recommend that you use this free plugin.
Virtue Demo content Importer
Many themes whine about copyrighted images and if you install a demo of them in your website, it will not contain the same images that they show in the demo on their site. At Virtue, if desired, you will receive the original images as shown in the short video above.
Virtue theme: Blogs
Virtue is great for building your own blog. There are 4 different ready-made layouts and all types of blog posts can be beautifully displayed on the archive pages such as video posts, posts with sliders or images, etc.
Virtue theme: Image Grids
Do you want to show your projects to your visitors in a brilliant way? Virtue also offers great portfolio options with image grids or different styles of mosaic layouts that can be arranged in the number of columns you want.
Virtue: Header layout
Virtue, like most premium themes, offers quite a few different header styles. Logo left or center, multiple menus and more. Just choose the style that best suits your website and you're done. It doesn't have a real header builder so the options are limited and freestyling isn't included unless you're good with CSS.
Virtue Options Panel
Virtue has all the important settings for you in an options panel. This panel is very clear, settings are easy to find as they are divided into chapters. A search function in the settings like the Divi Theme unfortunately doesn't have that yet, but that is only necessary with a very large number of settings, something Virtue does not have.
Virtue theme review: Extra features
Much more is possible with Virtue and the image above shows a number of features that have not yet been discussed here. If your interest is aroused in the Virtue Theme, you can investigate further on their own site whether you like the theme.
Virtue theme review: Conclusion
All themes built by Kadence-WP are of very good quality, and that also applies to Virtue. One can build anything with it, such as blogs, portfolios, but I think the theme is best suited for company websites. The theme offers beautiful demos, many customization options and everything works smoothly. The pro version is great although there are of course better themes.
Virtue vs Sydney Conclusion
Virtue and Sydney are both good themes, and the free versions are certainly highly rated for a reason. But even though both Sydney and Virtue are also worth their money in the pro version, I have to advise against them both because there are much better themes available for the same money and both themes are certainly not optimal for creating webshops. My tip is buy Divi, the best selling and valued theme in the world or possibly Astra if you want to work with a lightning fast theme.
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