The Astra theme from Brainstorm Force is one of the most popular free WordPress themes available today. With over 1 million active installs, Astra strikes an impressive balance between being lightweight and fast while still providing a ton of customization options.
In this comprehensive Astra theme review, we‘ll cover everything you need to know about this versatile theme, including:
- What makes Astra so fast and lightweight
- The key features that make Astra stand out
- How easy Astra is to customize without coding
- What you can do with Astra‘s many pre-built website demos
- How well Astra integrates with popular page builders
- Which version is better – Astra free vs Astra Pro
By the end of this Astra review, you‘ll have all the information you need to determine if Astra is the right theme for your next WordPress website project.
Why Astra is One of the Fastest WordPress Themes
Speed is one of the most important considerations when choosing any WordPress theme. The faster your site loads, the better the user experience. Fast load times lead to better conversions, lower bounce rates, and improved SEO rankings.
So how does Astra stack up when it comes to site speed and performance? Extremely well and far better than most other multipurpose WordPress themes.
Out of the box, Astra weighs less than 50KB without any content or plugins. For comparison, most other premium multipurpose themes exceed 300KB+ in size when empty. And while size alone doesn’t directly correlate to speed, it is a good indicator of how bloated a theme’s codebase is.
The Astra theme is able to achieve impressive performance for a few reasons:
- Built using modern development practices to be extremely lightweight.
- Only the CSS/JS required for activated features are enqueued.
- Options to disable various theme elements that you don‘t need.
- Carefully crafted code that follows WordPress coding standards.
To demonstrate Astra‘s lightweight footprint in action, we installed a complete Astra site using the Hello Elementor template. This template imports actual content, images, and theme settings to better replicate a real website.
With no additional optimizations, our demo Astra site loaded in under 1.2 seconds:
For reference, a site loading under 2 seconds is generally considered excellent by Google PageSpeed standards.
Of course, Astra alone can‘t guarantee a fast site – factors like your hosting setup, page caching, image optimization,WordPress plugins, and more also play a huge role. But combined with proper optimization practices, Astra provides a solid performance-focused foundation.
Now let‘s look at some of the other reasons why Astra has become the theme-of-choice for over 1 million WordPress site owners…
Key Feature 1: Pre-Built Website Demos
Creating a custom WordPress site design from scratch is difficult. Plus most small business owners would rather focus time and energy on their business instead of learning WordPress design.
That‘s why one of Astra‘s most popular features is its library of ready-made website demos that can be imported with a single click.
Astra currently offers over 100+ beautifully designed website demos suited for all types of small businesses such as:
- Portfolio sites
- Local businesses
- Online stores
- Restaurants
- Personal blogs
- Professional services
- Product launches
- Travel blogs, and more…
Each Astra site can be previewed live before importing. And installing any of the demos is as simple as clicking on the "Import Site" button from within your WordPress dashboard.
The Astra Starter Sites plugin will automatically configure all the customization settings, import content, widgets, images, and menus. This allows you to have a professional-looking website in literally 5 minutes or less.
Better yet, all Astra demo sites are built using Elementor – the most popular drag & drop page builder for WordPress. This makes customizing any imported site incredibly easy even for beginners with no coding skills.
The free version of Astra includes around 44 website demos spanning multiple niches and layouts.
Upgrading to Astra Pro gets you full access to all 140+ starter sites covering even more specific demos and niches.
Either way, you‘ll be able to find multiple designs perfectly suited to your small business orclient site.
Key Feature 2: Easy Customization With The WordPress Customizer
Ease of use is another area where Astra shines. Though feature-rich, customizing the theme doesn‘t require dealing with complicated admin options or learning to code.
Instead, all theme settings can be accessed directly from the built-in WordPress Customizer panel. For anyone familiar with WordPress, the Customizer provides a live preview allowing you to see changes in real-time as you make them.
But what really makes the Astra Customizer special is the sheer amount of options available to customize almost all aspects of your site without touching code:
Customize Your Header
Astra gives you fine-grained control for customizing your header design including options for layout, colors, spacing, typography, menu style, transparency effects, sticky headers, and much more.
You can easily build multi-level drop-down menus, add search icons, social media profiles, custom branding, and other elements.
Blog Post Layouts
The theme includes options to customize single posts and archive/category pages. For example, change sidebar position (left, right, or none), feature areas, colors, spacing, typography, etc.
You can also display excerpts, full posts, hide/show metadata, feature images, and again customize every element on the page.
This makes tailoring your blog design easy without needing to write any code.
WooCommerce
Astra also boasts deep integration with the WooCommerce plugin to help you build custom online stores.
Customize product archives, the shopping cart and checkout pages, product imagery, typography, colors, spacing, sidebar management, and more.
You can even enable Ajax add to cart for a smoother user experience.
Page Level Settings
One of Astra‘s best features is the ability to override site-wide settings for individual pages and posts using page level settings.
For example, you may want to create a landing page with a unique header and no sidebar. Or maybe disable the title for a specific page.
With Astra‘s granular controls, you can customize the layout, design, and toggle various elements on and off per page without writing custom page templates.
This is extremely useful when using Astra alongside a popular WordPress page builder like Elementor or Beaver Builder.
Key Feature 3: Lightning Fast Elementor Integration
As mentioned earlier, Astra is built from ground up to work seamlessly with the Elementor page builder plugin. The theme handles all the boring stuff like settings and performance while Elementor lets you drag-and-drop beautiful page designs.
But what makes Astra stand out from other Elementor-compatible themes is the deep level of integration between both plugins:
- Change Elementor Settings Per Page – Customize width, header, title, featured image and more for every post/page.
- Custom Elementor Templates – Create templates that can be reused across different pages.
- Theme Builder – Design custom headers, footers, single posts, archives and 404 pages using Elementor.
- Custom Elementor Widgets – Additional widgets for things like theme options, mobile menu, WooCommerce cart, post elements, social icons, etc.
Astra helps bridge the gap between design and development by letting you use Elementor as your entire site builder while still giving developers the hooks and code control they need.
You‘ll be able to build extremely complex and customized sites without ever looking at code. This combination offers a fantastic editing and user experience for all skill levels.
Key Feature 4: Membership Sites With Paid Courses
In addition to eCommerce, Astra also makes it easy to build membership sites with paid courses, members areas, drip content, and more using LifterLMS.
LifterLMS is the most popular Learning Management System for WordPress used by coaches, teachers, entrepreneurs to sell online courses.
Astra Pro offers deep integration with LifterLMS providing options to customize course archives, lesson pages, member profiles, checkout pages, pricing tables, and so on.
Again, you‘re able to style all aspects of your membership site and online school without coding making Astra a great choice if you plan to monetize a website with paid courses.
Astra Theme Review: Free vs Pro Version Differences
The core Astra theme is available for free from WordPress.org where it enjoys a perfect 5 out of 5 star rating. Over 1 million websites currently use the free version.
Astra Pro starts at an introductory offer of $57 per year for updates and full support. So what exactly does the premium version add and should you consider upgrading?
The free Astra theme really provides everything you need to create beautiful websites – demo imports, header/content customization, blog settings, WooCommerce integration, page builder support, and more.
However, Astra Pro does offer some compelling features that advanced users and agencies may appreciate:
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More Header/Footer Design Options – Additional header, footer and menu builder features like transparent headers, full-screen menu customization, drop-down skin options, custom mega menus, sticky navigation and other premium layouts.
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White Label – Removes Astra branding throughout dashboard for client sites and white label agency installs.
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Scroll To Top Options – Choose effects and styles for customizable scroll to top buttons.
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Advanced Footer Widgets – Add up to 6 widget areas in the footer, control layout and design.
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WooCommerce Enhancements – Extends eCommerce features with conversion boosting tools like ajax cart, single product layout controls, custom checkout pages, catalog mode and cart page customization.
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Membership Sites – Deep integration with LearnDash and LifterLMS as mentioned previously for building course platforms.
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Support and Updates – 1 Year of updates plus dedicated customer support from the Brainstorm Force team.
The full comparison chart listing all free vs pro Astra features can be viewed here.
As you can see, Astra Pro caters more towards designers, developers and agencies who need additional customization capabilities.
Casual users are likely satisfied with the free theme‘s ample selection of features and options for most generic sites like blogs and basic online stores.
Final Thoughts on the Astra Theme
So after reviewing all aspects of the Astra theme, is it a good choice for your next WordPress project?
The short answer is – absolutely!
Astra strikes the perfect balance between being lightweight and fast while still providing an impressive amount of customizations without compromising on features.
For beginners, you can easily import a professionally pre-made site demo and quickly launch a beautiful website in under 10 minutes. More advanced users will appreciate Astra‘s expansive Customizer settings for deeper design flexibility.
While Astra is perfectly suited for simple blogs and basic online stores, it can also handle complex websites when clubbed with a drag & drop page builder like Elementor or Beaver Builder. This combination offers a stellar editing experience across all skill levels.
Further bolstering Astra‘s value proposition are essential site-building tools like header/footer builders, white label capabilities, sticky navigation, backwards compatibility, speed optimization, eCommerce features, membership platform support and flawless operation.
The premium version (Astra Pro) definitely pushes the boundaries even further for those needing more advanced customizations. But overall, both free and paid versions deliver immense value.
So if you want a super fast WordPress theme that also looks great out of the box, AND one that can be further customized to suit any website design needs…look no further than Astra!
