Astra Starter Sites Complete Review – 5*

Using the free Astra Starter Sites plugin is a fantastic way of creating a neat consistent WordPress website. If you have decided to choose the Astra theme for your website , we’d say that’s a great choice. However, before you proceed, make sure you benefit from using the Astra starter sites plug-in. With this plug-in, you can create pixel perfect and seamlessly designed websites that, too, in seconds.

Astra Starter Sites gives users access to more than 280 predesigned website templates and individual pages for your page builders. It is compatible with:

• Beaver Builder
• Brizy
• Gutenberg
• Elementor

The Astra Starter Sites are available on the site with these builders categorized separately. Simply browse through to get started.  This plug-in allows you to import complete website demos, tweak them, and then create professional websites flawlessly. It gives you complete flexibility to import what you need.

If you want to know more about the Astra theme then feel free to check out our Astra Theme Review!

Top Benefits of Using Astra Starter Sites

Here are some of the top benefits of using Astra Starter websites:

• It is an easy and improved template search option
• It provides users with a variety of filters to pick templates of a specific page builder
• Gives you the flexibility and power to mark the templates that you love
• With only a click, you can fetch the latest website templates
• Gives you the ability to import web pages separately and then mix and match them according to your requirements and specification to build a custom website
• Provides you with the option to inherit theme settings while importing a website template
• Enables you to inherit theme settings or import a template
• Allows you to search and import images from Pixabay using the Media Library of the WordPress
• Offers Elementor blocks and templates which are import ready and through the page builder

Reasons to Choose Astra Starter Sites

Did you know that more than 700,000 sites are powered with Astra? Users love the Astra theme because for all the right reasons. Some of them are:

Top-Notch Speed

Astra Starter Sites are designed with performance and speed in consideration. And this is evident from the best coding practices that Astra conforms to, which enables users to design and develop fast loading and highly functional websites.

Smooth Customization

Since all the settings are managed via the customizer, Astra keeps everything smooth and straightforward, giving you tons of opportunities and options to custom design your site that, too in just a few clicks.

Seamless Designs

As mentioned earlier, with the Astra Starter you can enjoy getting pixel-perfect designs. This means you can have a seamless and ready to use website demo from a vast library of starter sites.

Page Builders—Which One to Choose With Astra Starter Sites?

With Astra Starter Sites, you can use any of the four-page builders- Elementor, Beaver, Brizy, and Gutenberg. Let’s take a look at each of these page builders individually so that you can make a better selection.

Elementor

Elementor offers the ultimate user-friendly experience and amazing features, thereby giving you complete control over your website’s pages while using a visually appealing front-end visual editor.

It has as many as fifty-three content widgets to design pages precisely the way you desire. With Elementor, you can find widgets for adding videos, sidebars, images, testimonials, and maps. Moreover, you can also use widgets to create pricing tables, portfolios, social media sharing, WooCommerce, and Facebook comments.

Put simply, Elementor offers limitless opportunities for widget integration from your favourite WordPress plug-ins. In addition to this, all the aspects of this page builder are mobile-friendly, open-source, and search engine optimized. All templates can be imported and exported. You can also use Pro Website Guide’s recommended SEO plugin Rank Math with the Elementor page builder.

Beaver Builder

Likewise, the Beaver Builder interface is easy to use and loads fast. Apart from that, the template system works well too. This page builder has a nice variety of widgets, too, which can be accessed easily. However, when compared to Elementor, we think Beaver Builder lacks some advanced customization and styling features such as visual composer

Besides this, Beaver Builder is also quite expensive. Their pricing is quite high when compared to Elementor or other page builders in consideration. So, if you’re tight on budget, then we’d suggest Elementor over Beaver Builder. Beaver Builder’s standard package is $99, the Pro package is for $199, and Agency $399. On the other hand, Elementor’s plans are quite economical. They start as low as $49. Other packages like the Business package is for $99, and the Unlimited package is for $199.

Gutenberg

Gutenberg is the page builder or block editor that focuses on a modular approach to posts and pages. Thus, each piece of content in the editor from the image gallery to a paragraph or the headline is its block. This allows you to add, arrange, and rearrange WordPress blocks to create media-rich pages in the most visually intuitive way possible. With Gutenberg, you don’t need to shortcodes and custom HTML. Also, Gutenberg is excellent for a single-column layout.

But if you want perfectly align content, detailed styling, and flexible column layout, Elementor is a better choice. With Elementor page builder, you have full control over spacing, styles, and design. Also, you get pre-built widgets instead of workarounds. In addition to this, Elementor offers you the flexibility to create designs that differ from the theme’s default styling.

Although cheaper than Elementor, Gutenberg doesn’t offer the same features or functionality as you would otherwise enjoy with Elementor. Overall, when evaluated in terms of performance and flexibility, Elementor outperforms Gutenberg.

According to Pingdom

The Gutenberg page:

Is 1.0 MB

Had 47 requests

The Elementor page:

Is 1.3 MB

Had 54 requests

Brizy

In comparison to the other page builders discussed above, Brizy is relatively new. This WordPress page builder may be young, but it is proven to be quite promising. And this is evident from its 50,000 plus installations already.

Built-in React, it has an intuitive and easy to use interface. Unlike Gutenberg, it offers in-line editing, global styling options, and blocks, thereby redefining the page building process. Additionally, it also supports WooCommerce integration and features 4K useful icons.

Although Brizy is an excellent addition to page builders’ list, it still has a long way to go to compete with the established industry players like Elementor and Beaver Builder. One thing that Brizy truly needs to focus on is to introduce a reset button. For example, if you want to start from scratch after using a variety of tools and features on Brizy, you will have to delete every section one at a time. However, if there was a reset button, you could clear it in a snap. Also, there is no one-click way of adding blank blocks.

All in all, we think Brizy is a good option for those who want to create simple web pages with a page builder. However, if you’re looking to create a high-performing, visually-appealing, and well-optimized site, then you should opt for Elementor.

Astra Starter Sites —How to Use?

If you’re looking to save time and launch your site quickly without delay, then Astra Starter Sites is the best way to get started. Although you can use the Astra theme by itself, it will need time and work before you’re ready to launch. However, with Astra Starter Sites, launching your professional looking website is as easy as it can be. And that is not an overstatement. Continue reading to see below how to use Astra Starter Sites for your business.

But before we list down the steps to use Astra Starter sites, here are some notes about it:

Some users of Astra Starter Sites may not be able to find a predesigned website for their industry. But that is perfectly fine. This is because Astra gives you the power and flexibility to customize the template just the way you want. From text to photos, you can customize it all with Astra Starter Sites. Thus, even if you can’t find a predesigned template for your industry, you can use any other template design you like and quickly design your website. So, you should look by design, not by the industry.

However, before selecting a design, make sure to click the demo and look through all the pages. This is much needed to have a clear idea of what the web design and inner pages are like—all much needed to find out that it has what you want. If you watch the demo and get a good understanding of the site design, you may narrow down and then select a good design that doesn’t need too much time in customization and tweaking.

Now let’s get down to the ‘how to use?’ aspect.

• Once you select a demo design, install the importer plug-in.
• After installing it, choose your starter site. For this, go to ‘Appearance,’ then Astra Options, and Astra Starter Sites. Here choose a page builder. You have four-page builder options to select from, as mentioned above. We’d say opt for Elementor because it is highly functional and affordable. So, you get the best features and intuitive interface that, too, at an economical price.
• Upon choosing the page builder, select the starter site that you wish to install. Click on the website design you like to see a preview with some additional information. At this point, you will be prompted to install the plug-ins that are used on the site. You can automatically install them by simply clicking on them.
• Now once installed and activated, you will be able to see the import site button. Click on it to import the site into your website.

Here, it is essential to understand that you will have to swap the images added already with your pictures once you import them.

Depending on the site you choose, you might see some posts. Thus, you should add your own posts and delete the previous ones. However, before you remove them, make sure to view the post on the site already. This will give you a good idea of how they look and then edit them to see the back-end. If you don’t want to delete the previous posts, then that’ alright; you can always keep the posts as drafts. This will help keep the earlier posts on the website, giving you the flexibility to refer to the posts later as needed, but the good thing is that they will not appear on the front.

Also, when you use Astra Starter sites, you will find filler content. This helps you see what the page will look like after the content is uploaded. Therefore, you can edit it accordingly and replace it with fresh content. It also allows you to customize images and even hide and remove sections. Once you make changes, could you update it to see how it looks?

Conclusion

Overall Astra Starter Sites is a great plug-in for Astra theme users. Users can leverage on Elementor to maximize the performance of Astra Starter Sites. It allows you to smoothly and quickly import a design, customise it, create a great looking website that’s fuss-free.

Whether you are a restaurant owner, run an agency, interior designer, or a fitness trainer, Astra Starter Sites has something for everyone. Browse through to find the template of your choice.