ProWebsiteGuide.com uses the Astra theme on this website and recommends this theme to anyone starting out with WordPress. The WordPress theme Astra is fully customisable, meaning if you are starting a side business or project, the theme can adapt to your business needs as you grow. Don’t just take our word for it though. This theme has over 70,000 active installs and 3200 plus 5-star ratings from its users.
We assessed various factors such as the themes speed and code quality to determine if the Astra theme really is the right wordpress theme for your website. Upon our research, we found the theme to be superior in a variety of ways; thus, we rate it 5/5.
Below is a detailed Astra theme review. So, let’s get started!
Review Factors
Speed
The Astra theme is made for speed. It is a light-weight WordPress theme with unmatched performance and a load time of under one second. However, if you want a better load time than this, combine Astra theme with WordPress Rocket to drop your load time by another 15 to 20 percent.
Another reason that adds to its high performance is that it does not use jQuery. Most of the time, rendering blocking jQuery hampers performance optimisation. Therefore, to ensure that this doesn’t happen, Astra uses Vanilla JavaScript instead.
As compared to other design themes that have 300KB of additional resources, Astra calls under 50KB, thus making it feature light. All this further helps boost the theme’s speed, ensuring that it loads fast.
After all, speed is one of the top factors that business owners must consider when selecting a theme because statistics show that 40 percent of the site visitors are likely to bounce off if the site takes more than three seconds to load. Besides this, Google recommends page load time to be under three seconds.
Overall, Astra scores well on speed tests:
- Pingdom – 100 percent speed grade
- Google Page Insights – 95 percent speed grade
- GTmetrix – 400ms load time
- YSlow – 91 percent speed grade
Since speed matters when it comes to visitor engagement, the Astra theme thus is an option worth considering. However, don’t forget your site’s final speed will depend on other factors like plugins and hosting services.
Quality of the Code
The code quality is amazing. Astra is a well-coded theme based on the underscores theme from Automattic.
As it is derived from underscores, most of its features are similar to the accessibility-ready theme, which adds to quality coding. However, the two places where it lacks and could have been better for seamless coding are the skip navigation link and underlined links in the main content. These could have been better. Nonetheless, the quality of the code is still top-notch as compared to other themes.
Customisation without Coding
The main plus point of the Astra theme for those starting out with their first website, is that the theme can be easily customised. We want to highlight in our Astra theme review that it can be easily and fully-customised. Furthermore, you don’t have to touch a single line of code and navigate your way through the technicalities like HTML, JavaScript, CSS, or other coding standards to design and customise it. Let’s just say customisation is as simple as it can be.
Another great benefit of this feature to business owners is that since it can be customised without any technicality, you don’t need to hire or work with a web developer or designer. All the options to customise are available and can be viewed on the WordPress theme customiser. This means that you can preview the changes that you make in real-time. The customisation options are spread across 8 different sections and sub-sections. Therefore, making it super easy for you to customise and save your changes.
From customizing the structure to disabling and enabling meta information and changing the footer’s layout by adding custom text, colors, and typography, with Astra theme, it offers endless customisation options. It spares you from the annoying problem of hard to customise footer.
With Astra’s Footer customisation settings, you can easily insert one or two-footer bar sections. Each can contain text, a footer menu and a widget. It also offers transparent headers that allow you to stretch the background image into the header area. Moreover, you can also apply colors and transparency to the title. The extended header options like page headers, mobile headers, sticky headers, and transparent headers are also available.
It gives you the perfect platform to showcase your creative knack while ensuring that the theme is well-aligned with your business image and persona. It is an adaptable theme that gives you easy ways to implement changes much needed to create a perfect website for the ultimate user experience and engagement.
Documentation
One of the biggest challenges that business owners face when creating their website on their own is setting up a new theme. This is frustrating because not all the business owners are technically sound and understand the complexities of setting up a site. For this, they need proper and detailed documentation.
Fortunately, you don’t have to worry about documentation for the theme set up if you choose Astra. That’s right; Astra’s knowledge base is fully comprehensive. This means that you can find various articles and video tutorials on how to set it up. You can find detailed information on numerous topics regarding the Astra theme and how to leverage its full potential.
Astra Starter Sites
This is a value-adding plugin, worth mentioning in our Astra theme review.
Free to download, once you install this plugin, you can access and build your site from 100 plus pre-designed sites available with Astra.
Astra starter sites save you from navigating through complex layouts. All you have to do is insert images and content, and your professional-looking business site is ready in the fastest time. In addition to this, if you are wondering about the imports, then let us tell you that they are quick and smooth. They can be installed as well as activated automatically with the utmost ease.
Astra Starter Sites plugin also gives you the power to import a whole site in one go. This spares you from the hassle and frustration that comes with importing individual pages one at a time. Therefore, you will save plenty of time creating a website that can be invested in other revenue-generating areas of your business.
Wait, there is more! With Astra, you can also choose a page builder. As the name suggests, it will help you build your website. This feature is not available in many other website themes, so it’s a plus point. You will be asked to choose your favorite page builder from Elementor, Gutenberg, Beaver Builder, or Brizy.
Once you select your page builder of choice, you can have access to the Astra Starter Sites. These sites are ready to import templates divided into different categories, making it easy to search through.
WooCommerce Integration
Astra’s theme is a good choice for those looking to create an eCommerce website. The theme comes with smooth WooCommerce integration. This is an important feature that most sites require nowadays to set up an online store. So, rest assured that it will deliver on this aspect when you use the Astra theme, thus making WooCommerce integration seamless.
WooCommerce specific functionality such as Ajax carts, two-step checkouts, infinite scroll, quick view, and other features give you great control over your shop’s appearance and product pages. You can further optimise the checkout page to lower cart abandonment rates. With these
Besides the WooCommerce integration, Astra also supports the easy digital downloads plugins like LifterLMS and LearnDash.
Astra Theme Review – Is There Any Point getting the Astra Pro version?
Although the free version of Astra is good, the pro version is awesome. Astra Pro offers more advanced features and functionalities, thereby saving you time and getting the best results. All the features discussed above may not be available in the free version. However, to benefit from them, you’ll have to invest in the Pro version. From various website layouts to select from multiple background options, blog layouts, WooCommerce integration, and sticky header, you can enjoy all these benefits in the Pro version of Astra.
The free Astra version will be forever free. But, it’s best to invest and get a Pro version if you can, because the features it offers are performance optimising and provide you with a quick and easy way to create a sticky, highly-converting and user-engaging website for your business without any professional assistance. It is worth every penny!
Astra Pro – Plans and Pricing
Astra offers a variety of premium plans to choose from. These include:
- Astra Pro Basic plan—It is available for $59 only. Astra Pro features 20 plus free starter websites, one-on-one email support, unlimited website use, and extensive training.
- Mini Agency Bundle—This package includes 60 plus free starter websites and a WordPress portfolio plugin. You also have a choice between the ultimate addons for Elementor and ultimate addons for Beaver Builder.
- Agency Bundle—Worth dollar 249, it features 60 plus agency starter sites, all developer plugins, and any other plugins when launched in the future.
Another benefit of the Pro version is that it comes with a 14-day 100% money-back guarantee. In case the Astra theme isn’t for you, you can get a full refund in fourteen days without any loss.
The Final Verdict
To conclude our Astra theme review, if you want a WordPress theme that is multi-purpose, feature-rich, performance-optimised and doesn’t skimp on flexibility, then Astra is the best option. We think Astra is a valuable addition to the series of WordPress themes. It is a beautiful theme that can be used for blogs, e-commerce sites, businesses, portfolios, and more.
Unlike other themes, Astra provides users with the ability to import website themes and customise it with complete flexibility. Thus, you can easily customise it according to your business image. From typography, colours, the logo and everything in between, Astra gives you the power to transform your site at the click of a button.
More importantly, those users who need more features and functions can easily upgrade from the free version to the pro version of the theme. Users don’t need technical knowledge, web development skills, or coding know-how to custom design it with the Astra theme. It is very simple and straightforward. You can easily navigate your way through the options and create a site that looks great and is optimised for performance.
So, whether you run a restaurant, fitness center, food or drinks blog, or an eCommerce website, Astra is an excellent theme for your to get started. We whole-heartedly recommend both the free and the premium versions of Astra.
