Reviews, WordPress

Astra Theme Review: No More Dull And Boring Looking WordPress Sites

Are you a blogger or someone involved with business related to online marketing or a niche site developer, then Astra Theme will make your work more eye-catching and efficient? To know more about the Astra theme, read this Astra theme review in full detail. If you are looking for a WordPress theme to make your site load fast or make it look more beautiful, then you have just hit the right area.

Yes, by the title, you might have already guessed I am talking about Astra Theme, which is a beautiful WordPress theme that gives you the flexibility to both loading your site faster and also designs the website according to your choice. Before the Astra theme, it wasn’t easy to find a WordPress theme that could do both. Most of the themes offering designing flexibility would eventually make your loading very slow.

Astra Theme Review

Ease Of use

Value For Money

Customer Support

Functionality

 5/5

 4.5/5

Summary

Astra theme is a beautiful and easily customizable theme available in both free and a pro version, which is a must to have for your WordPress websites. The customization accesses that Astra theme provides is like no other similar themes in the market. It offers many features, but some of the features like it work without coding; hence you don’t need to hire any professional developers. Or even it gives you access to over 100’s of pre-built demo sites saving you from the hassle from building a site from scratch. You have the option to import any of these sites and customize them according to your choice using Astra Theme. You can go through the detailed Astra Theme review below where I have mentioned and discussed all of the features it has in full details along with many of the customization options, which are always helpful to make your sites more eye-catching.

4.8

 4.6/5

Rating

Many free demo sites.
Fastest Themes that I have tested.
Astra Theme Provides options for custom layouts and Page Headers.
It has a Mega Menu feature.
Astra Theme comes with LearnDash Support.

The Archive page and blog post styling are very basic.
The support response time can be on the slower side.
You will only find three header style options in Astra Theme.

What Is Astra Theme

The Astra theme is a WordPress theme developed by Brainstorm Force, which is a very famous company in the WordPress developing sector that is operating for over ten years with a team of 60 highly experienced and trained employees.

It gives you stores of pre-constructed demo locales, vast amounts of controls in the ongoing WordPress Customizer, in addition to significantly more, in a shockingly lightweight arrangement that will have your site stacking beautiful darn quick.

It also has a free version and is currently being used on over 200,000 websites. It provides excellent support for page builder WordPress plugins, which will give the full control over customizing your whole website through the WordPress Theme customizer.

In this Astra theme review, I will be discussing in detail about Astra theme breaking all its features in full details to make this concept easier for you.

Why Astra Theme

On a scale of 11 experts, seven experts recommended Astra Theme. This statement will be well justified when we look at some of the features it has to offer for us.

> It is Flexible

The Astra gives you the flexibility to use this for any type of website you can think about starting from a blogging site to your business eCommerce sites or even travel or beauty blog; you can use it for literally any websites.

> Small Size

Astra will only take about 50KB of space; for some of you, this space doesn’t matter. But this small size means that you can load the site very fast and you don’t have to wait for very long while using Astra.

> Can work with other page builders like drag-and-drop page builders

Astra can easily integrate itself with drag-and-drop page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, Thrive Architect, and these site builders are top-rated for creating WordPress sites.

> Super Easy to Customize

While using Astra, you can easily customize your theme; this is possible due to their real-time WordPress customizer. This will enable you to view and adjust things on a real-time preview, and you don’t even need to have any idea about coding.

> Comes with many pre-built demo sites

There is a high possibility that you might not be a professional designer, and hence you can’t build a website from scratch. Don’t worry, Astra got you covered; it offers a massive collection of importable proxy sites for many different niches.

Core Features of Astra Theme

Even Though the Astra theme features many exclusive features, but in this Astra theme review, I will be discussing most of their most unusual and unique feature that made me love this product.

1. Availability of many different demo sites

While you can customize the Astra theme without any preparation to manufacture your site, but if you don’t wish to build it from scratch, then you don’t need to because Astra incorporates an enormous library of pre-assembled demo locales that you can import with only a couple of snaps (through the free Astra Starter Sites module).

There are a group of things that are particularly incredible about Astra’s demo and proxy sites.

All these demo sites are built using drag-and-drop editors, which makes it super easy to customize any of the demo content according to your preferences. Unlike most other themes, Astra Theme will allow you to select your preferred editor.

The options you have are:

You have the option to choose from nearly 100 pre-built demo sites. And out of these many pre-built demo sites, you can access over 44 sites for completely free. However, if you want to use more free sites, then you have to pay for them.

The demo sites are divided into different niches like:

And many other niches, so no matter what demo sites you are looking for, you are sure to find it in Astra Theme.

You can easily check a preview of any site by clicking on it and then just press the Import Site button, and you can leave the rest on Astra.

2. Astra Theme is small in size.

I decided to run a test to make you understand how the size affects the loading time of the site.

For this first test, we introduced Astra, made a lot of void pages, and included sham content substance. Astra Starter Site module is likewise added and initiated. However, I didn’t import a layout.

Since form 2.0 was additionally discharged as of late, we’ve likewise chosen to contrast its exhibition with the more established variant – explicitly form 1.8.7 – of both the topic and the Pro extra.

How about we check whether there were enhancements or not, or even (ideally not) deteriorated (as now and then happens when more highlights are included). This is done on a similar server – everything continues as before: from the settings, design, and everything else.

The main distinction is the theme version.

The result for v2.0:

The result for v1.8.7:

I couldn’t meet the 0.5s (500ms) load time with the default establishment. However, that is reasonable since we’re utilizing a modest shared facilitating administration to test this. At last, this is a great exhibition and stacking time.

While one would expect that the expanded page size will not affect at all since it’s exceptionally little or maybe even have a bit negative effect (perhaps an extra 1-5ms burden time), the inverse is valid. It stacked quicker, and this difference was not that small, We’re discussing several milliseconds here.

The new form 2.0 is unquestionably an improvement with regards to execution.

The page size is considerably littler than what they promoted.

Be that as it may, allows running a test from Germany, rather than from Washington DC. This copies an individual getting to your site from your nation or getting to the site through a CDN.

In summary, we can easily say that you can load a fully loaded site for less than 200ms.

3. Work without code

You actually don’t need to hire a web developer or a designer to work with Astra theme; this theme can be customized according to your preferences without composing a single line of code. You can do all customization using page manufacturers, or blend and match Astra customizer settings with your preferred page builder.

If you would prefer not to utilize page manufacturers and simply need the default subject itself, its incredible customizer highlights let you tweak the hues, typography, format, and numerous different settings of pretty much every component of your site, particularly in the genius rendition.

Since v2.0, the customizer got a significant update. It presently performs better than anyone might have expected, stacking blazingly quicker. Notwithstanding that, its choices have been redesigned for better openness. You can customize this newer version more easily in few simple steps, unlike older versions, and you can do this customization a lot quicker and finally making it easier to import the complete site.

What’s more, with the assistance of the Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg, you can create professional-looking WordPress sites by yourself and more interestingly, you don’t even need to hire a professional page developer.

4. Astra can work with a WordPress page builder

You might wish to use Astra with other page builders for some your contents, Astra’s page-level settings can give you full control over the canvas in your page builder, and you will also have different options for each page.

This might be easier for you to understand with a simple example like off chance that your site typically has a sidebar, however you need to make a full-width deals page with your page manufacturer; you could simply debilitate the sidebar and change the width for only that page.

5. Huge collection of design and layout options

There is a tab known as a global tab where you can find all the comprehensive designs for the WordPress theme. However, the older versions didn’t have these options; hence you would have to switch in different screens and change simpler things.

For instance, designing “Global” settings for colors, typography, and so forth in v1.8.7 expects you to get to the accompanying –

Presently, there’s another Global tab where you can design global settings for the accompanying –

These global choices let you give your site a general feel or what we call a personality. Anything you set per module or per post will supersede these defaults.

Remember that page manufacturer setting will likewise abrogate these defaults.

In this Astra Theme review, I will be discussing a few of these essential global options.

Typography

The global typography settings control the default typography that you need to use on your whole site. Inside this, you’ll discover two settings: Base Typography and Headings.

The base typography settings spread alternatives for the substance and body.

This gives you choices to change the textual style family, variation, text dimension, textual style weight, and so forth. There’s likewise a conscious choice that permits you to change the text dimension contingent upon your client’s gadget. You can get to this by tapping the gadget symbol beside the size mark.

Color

Alongside the typography settings, we have worldwide shading settings. Getting to this will give both of you segments: Base Colors and Content.

The Base Colors contains settings for your topic’s default content shading, subject shading, connect shading, float shading, and so on.

This is likewise where you can change your site’s experience shading or include a background picture. Including a background, the image opens extra background settings.

Extra Background picture settings incorporate reiteration settings, arrangement settings, foundation size, and foundation connection.

Container

This is the place where container and layout related settings can be found. There are settings for the default site design, site width, dividing, WooCommerce format, and so forth.

We should have a brief glance at all the accessible holder settings:

Site format – you can set either full width, max-width, cushioned, and liquid. This will be applied to the external wrapper of your site.

The Width – your site’s substance width.

Space Outside body – this is just accessible while choosing a specific site format. For instance, in the picture above, we have set the site format to cushioned, so we have this alternative. This setting will let you change the space outside your site’s cushioned substance. It accompanies conscious choices available through the gadget symbol.

Format, Page Layout, Blog Post Layout, Archives Layout, WooCommerce -control design settings for different pages.

Dividing – comes into two areas: outside holder and inside the container. And it also works to the “Space Outside Body” setting.

Astra Pro or Free

Who doesn’t like some free stuff? At least I do. But every time free thing doesn’t work or isn’t sufficient for your work hence you have to pay for the pro version. So, in this section of the Astra Theme review, I will be discussing which version will be suitable for you.

The main Astra theme is easily available for free on many websites, but the Astra pro version is paid, and it will add many additional features. So, do you need a pro version to build your site? I have used the free version to create many sites, but again if you wish to make an advance site, not just a regular WordPress page builder, then you should consider going for the pro version.

Let us see some of the impeccable features the pro version has in offer for us.

Customizable Headers

The free form of Astra does, in any case, let you tweak your header, yet Astra Pro gives you significantly further developed choices for altering your header in many different unique ways. You’ll get highlights like:

More collection of demo sites

If you buy the Astra Pro Agency bundle, you’ll open every importable demo site. In the new pro version, you will gain access to the different types of professional editing modules, including supportive devices like Schema Pro to include rich pieces, WP Portfolio to assist you with including a portfolio, in addition to significantly more.

Better and detailed plugin integrations

The free form of Astra is good with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads, yet Astra Pro puts that on overdrive.

You’ll get huge amounts of choices for WooCommerce, similar to a change neighborly two-advance checkout, Ajax truck, and the sky is the limit from there.

Past that, Astra Pro additionally offers devoted mixes for LearnDash and LifterLMS, which is magnificent in case you intend to dispatch your online course with WordPress.

Better styling and layout options

Well, you can say that the free version of Astra already allows you to Customize basic color and typography. Still, the Astra Pro version is much more effective since you can edit and customize every single element on your site.

Astra Pro additionally gives you significantly more design alternatives for your substance and blog. For instance, you can look over different blog file formats and add content above or underneath your header.

Whether or not you go for the paid pro version of the Astra Theme always will depend on you because it depends on the type of work and customization you are expecting to do with Astra.

Astra Pro and the basic free version has the nearly same feature to offer, but Astra pro gives you more options for each of that feature.

Now you might be confused whether to go for the free version or the pro version. In simple words, if the free version is letting you do all your tasks easily and you are happy with it, you don’t need to buy the pro version.

For example, that you end up hitting a few dividers – like you truly need a clingy header, or you need an alternate blog file design – at that point, that is a quite decent marker, then you need Astra Pro.

My Final Verdict on Astra Theme

In this Astra theme review, I tried to cover most of the important facts that you need to know regarding the Astra theme. So if you ask me on the contrary to my opinion regarding the Astra theme, then I would suggest you use it without any doubt. There is not much room for debate regarding Astra since it can be easily said as one product that acts as an all-purpose WordPress theme. Through the colossal cluster of customization alternatives, you can utilize Astra for actually any kind of website.

Furthermore, because it utilizes the WordPress Customizer, tweaking Astra doesn’t require any unique information. That is correct – you don’t have to be a designer to make a custom site. But if you don’t wish to make a site from scratch, don’t worry, you don’t have to, you can just import one of their 100 pre-built demo sites and then customize with any of your preferred page builders.

Lastly, the wonderful finish is that Astra is excessively lightweight and execution advanced, which implies you can get every one of those different advantages while as yet having a site that heaps quick.

Along with these areas, regardless of the fact that whether you’re using the free version or Astra Pro, it is a must to have them for more unique and beautiful customization of your sites.

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Yousuf Hossain

I am an entrepreneur who always invests time closely with people to successfully bring their business online. My main mission with this blog is to help people with offering them free guides and tutorials related to website design and marketing so that people can grow their online businesses following my guidance and path!

Astra Theme Review: No More Dull And Boring Looking WordPress Sites