WP Astra Theme Review (Astra 2.1): Everything You Need to Know About!

Astra is a WordPress theme available in both free and premium versions offering different features. You can create a beautiful website, portfolio, ecommerce store, LMS, blogs, etc. easily with the Astra WordPress theme. We have tried to cover all aspects of an ideal review, I’ve tried making this Astra Theme Review as extensive as I could to serve you with the best information about Astra Theme.

Along with this blog, I also run an Agency called Big5 Network. The reason why I mentioned about the agency is that we use the Astra Theme for many of our agency’s clients. Since we first used Astra on client’s websites, we never faced any complaint or issue with the theme and performance. The multi-purpose functionality of Astra makes it one of the best WordPress themes for agencies.

Before jumping into the review, let’s quickly look at some facts and information about Astra WordPress Theme:

If you have any question or doubt even after reading the review then then you can ask me in the comment section below.

Astra is a product of a Pune (India) based development company called Brainstormforce. Brainstormforce’s team is exceptionally talented and innovative. Not only Astra theme, but they’ve also developed popular plugins like Ultimate Addons for Elementor, Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder, Schema Pro, and many more plugins.

Astra Theme Review – Start from Here

Like many of the reviews that you come across on the internet, I’ll also say that Astra is one of the best WordPress themes I have ever worked on. With its super compatibility with Elementor, it becomes super easy to build a website of any type and purpose. You can look at this website; I created it for a client in about 2 hours (I am not kidding). Only the content blocks were left with sample content, which the content team later worked on.

Astra is a highly customizable WordPress theme. The best thing I found about the Astra theme is the page builder compatibility and its speed performance. With default data, this theme loads in about half a second. Astra doesn’t use jQuery because it generally creates issues in speed optimization. On the place of jQuery, it uses Vanilla JavaScript that enhances the website performance.

At the beginning of 2020, Brainstormforce announced Astra 2.1, which is an improved version of the Astra theme. So, let’s quickly have a look at what Astra 2.1 offers.

What’s New in Astra Theme 2.1?

What are the Key Features of Astra Theme?

Firstly, let’s have a look at some key features of the Astra Theme. It will get you a little idea about what problems developers have tried to solve. Along with that, many of the theme providers have not offered these features, so it’ll be worth having a look at what Astra offers indifference to others. Here are some key features of Astra Theme:

1. Speed Focused
2. Easy to Install and Configure
3. Best theme for Page Builder
4. Powerful Add-ons and Options
5. WooCommerce Compatible
6. Dedicated Premium Support
7. Developer Friendly
8. White Label for Agencies and Freelancers.

These are some major key features of this theme. In this Astra Theme Review, we’ll be practically checking how well these features work.

Why Choose Astra Theme?

There are plenty of reasons for choosing this theme for your website. The Astra theme is a complete website solution for any business or purpose. It is compatible with all major page builder and plugins along with WooCommerce. You can create an attractive website with the Astra theme within a few hours. Agencies are using this theme to develop websites for their clients. This theme will work like a charm for agency solutions for website development. During our wp Astra theme review, we found these super awesome features, you can find them below:

Ready to Import Website Templates

There are dozens of pre-made website templates which you can directly import and make a website with. These website templates give you the ease of creating websites in a few hours. You can access these templates through Astra sites plugin, which is included in the theme package you purchase from the website. Just import the template and customize its content as per your need and requirement.

No Coding Required

You don’t need to have any coding knowledge to work with the Astra theme. Changes can easily be made using the drag and drop page builders plugins like Elementor, Beaver Builder, etc. Even if you are a newbie in website building, you can easily build your website with the Astra theme. In our Astra theme review, we created a website entirely with drag and drop elementor page builder. We didn’t felt like we need coding knowledge to work with Asta at any point in time.

Compatible with Page Builders

Astra theme gives you the ability to use it with all popular page builders. The best thing about page builder compatibility is that you don’t need to do anything technical, just drag and drop modules and build websites. Along with the page builder compatibility, Astra offers you options to turn off page title, features images, header, footer, and more elements.

Super Fast Loading Speed

One of the main features of the Astra theme is fast loading speed. Astra is made for the super-fast loading speed of website with all essential and attractive modules. WP Astra is the lightest theme available in the market that provides tremendous performance. There are plenty of themes available online, but none of them matches the Astra theme’s performance.

Astra theme uses Vanilla JavaScript instead of jQuery that helps in eliminating render-blocking of jQuery. jQuery is one of the elements that create issues in optimizing the website for PageSpeed and web vitals.

Customize Everything Easily

WordPress Astra theme provides you with its advanced customization options along with native WordPress customizer. It gives you the freedom to customize things according to your needs. It allows you to make changes with the help of options and the help of drag and drop customization options. You will get a real-time preview of your changes as soon as you apply them. There is no need to change tabs to see the changes. You can view all changes you make in real-time preview.

Layout Settings

With this option, you can manage website layout settings like container layout, header, blog, archives, single pages, posts, sidebar, and footer. Other than these, various layout customization options can be applied to make changes to website layout.

Colors & Typography

We found that during our WP Astra theme review, there are various fonts, colors, and typography options available in this theme. You can change the look of the font and website color scheme according to your brand theme color and other aspects.

Header Options & Layouts

Astra theme comes with several inbuilt header layouts, which can totally change the first fold look of your website in seconds. Pro version of Astra theme adds more advanced and creative features to the header.

Blog & Archives

You can easily control the design of your blog, posts, and archives. There are plenty of options available in the customizer to customize the layout of your blog, posts, and archives.

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Astra Theme Templates Library

Pre-made website templates is something that every agency and website creator wants. Astra comes with a wide range of pre-built website templates for almost every purpose and business. Templates help you save a lot of time as you don’t have to create a site from scratch. Just import a demo website, and put your content in it. You will be having a website entirely ready for your client within minutes. Here is how the import window of Astra theme looks like:

Astra starter sites plugin is available for those using a basic/free version of the Astra theme for wordpress.

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Astra is Schema Ready ????

During our Astra theme review, we tried to test this theme with schema snippets. Schema snippets are one of the important parts of search engine optimization. When developers say its SEO friendly, you must check with schema snippets compatibility because schema plays a vital role in SERP. In case you are wondering what schema snippets are, let me tell you:

What is Schema?

A schema is a different type of code that you insert in your website to show detailed information to the users directly on SERP. Schema helps search engines in knowing about what your content exactly is. There are different types of schemas, like products, reviews, events, recipe, articles, organizations, and a lot more. Schema Pro is the best plugin for schema markups, and it is 100% compatible with the Astra WordPress theme as it comes from the same development house. For example, here is a small image which shows how schema looks:

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Page Builder Compatibility

Brainstormforce, the developer company of Astra theme, claims that it is compatible with all major page builders available for WordPress. We looked into this. We have tried this theme with all major page builders like Custom types ready, Beaver Builder, Elementor, Thrive, Architect, Visual Composer, and Divi Builder. As claimed by developers, It performed well with all the page builders mentioned above. These are the page builders that you will be getting as suggestions from any or all major WordPress websites and theme developers, so a theme needs to be compatible with these page builders.

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Unmatched Performance

Developers of the Astra theme has coded this well. They have coded every line of code in a way that enhances the loading speed and performance of the Astra theme. Developers claim that:

• No JQuery is used : Sometimes render-blocking jquery slows down the website, so they have used vanilla javascript here to enhance performance.
• Less than 50KB in Size : As compared to other wordpress themes that require around 300KB of resources, Astra here needs only 50KB of resources to load completely.
• 0.5 Seconds Loading Time : The default data is given in the Astra theme needs only 0.5 seconds in loading. The theme is entirely optimized and delivers fast performance.

To test the claims, we decided to manually test this theme over different website loading speed checking websites during wp Astra theme review. These were the results. Well, for information, we would like to tell you that we took a little heavier demo of Astra theme to analyze than the one on which the company made claims.

We received following results after checking :

1. Instead of 100% Grade on Pingdom, we got 95. Still, 95 is an impressive number.
2. On Google speed insights, we got 86% instead of 95%.
3. GTmetrix showed 1.3 Seconds fully load time. 1.3 Seconds for a complete website is an awe-inspiring time.
4. On YSlow, we’ve got 87% which is just matching to the claims.

Well, these numbers are still very impressive and didn’t change our recommendation to go with astra theme.

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Astra Theme WooCommerce Compatibilty

Yes, you can create WooCommerce websites with the Astra theme. There are some attractive features which include stylish product snippets and pages, Off-Canvas filtering options, hover effects for images, box shadows, quick view, horizontal and vertical gallery, Ajax adds to cart, product navigations, cart option in the menu, 2 step checkout as well as distraction-free checkout, and much more. Again, the module is focused on providing performance along with better conversion using new styles and distraction-free checkout pages. During our Astra theme review, we tried woocommerce functions, and as expected, it was working brilliantly well.

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Astra Theme Templates – Starter Sites

Developers have packed it with ready to start website templates, which we also call demo sites. You can import these demo sites within a click, and then you can use them to create an entire website for you. Astra has demo sites for almost every purpose, so you need to import the demo website and change its content. Your new website will be ready within minutes. Here is an example of how the demo sites library looks in Astra theme:

There are over 23 designs available in free plugin for Astra basic/free theme. You can get astra starter sites plugin here for free.

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Astra vs GeneratePress vs OceanWP

Well, there has been a lot of buzz about these three themes. We tried testing all 3 of the themes and then prepared a comparison review. If you want to know about the comparison between Astra vs. GeneratePress or Astra vs. OceanWP then you can read this comparison review at Astra vs. GeneratePress vs. OceanWP vs. Genesis. In short, Astra was the best theme out of these 3. So, from us, we’ll suggest you go with Astra in this Astra vs GeneratePress comparison.

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How to Install Astra Theme on WordPress?

Installing the Astra theme is a pretty easy task. You can do it easily. If you are installing a WordPress theme for the first time, then look at the steps given below, It will help you in installing Astra theme on your WordPress website:

Astra Theme Review 2022: Features

Astra theme is one of the best themes for WordPress out in the market. This theme is downloaded for over to 9,00,000 times in less than three years of launch. People love this theme because of the attractive and creative features it offers. We have tried every feature of this theme during the Astra theme review and found everything working well. So, here are the features of Astra theme:

1. Transparent Header
2. White Label
3. Blog Layouts
4. Site Layouts
5. WooCommerce Compatible
6. Sticky Header
7. Page Headers
8. Color Control Options
9. Typography Options
10. Custom Layouts
11. Scroll to top link
12. Footer Widget
13. Header Section
14. Header Designs
15. Spacing Control
16. Boxed, Full Width, Fluid and Padded Website Layouts
17. Background Control
18. List, Grid and Masonry Blog Layouts
19. LifeterLMS Integration
20. LearnDash Integration
21. Mega Menu
22. WooCommerce Designer
23. Hooks & Filters
24. 5 Star Support

and a lot more with updates from developers… Astra is a perfect theme for anyone. Being an agency or an individual, you don’t need any other theme to work. Astra will work perfectly everywhere.

Mega Menu in Astra WordPress Theme

After many beta releases, Astra finally has a perfect mega menu option. It is released in Astra Pro v1.6.0. A mega menu allows you to create dynamic and more engaging as well as informative menus. It includes several styling options, widgets in menu options, and page builder templates in the menu. Developers really have done magic with their work. Here is a little example of how a simple mega menu will appear. Here it is:

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How to Update Astra Theme to Astra 2.0?

Procedure to update your existing website on Astra 2.0 is easy, just follow the steps mentioned below, and you’ll be able to update your website to Astra 2.0. You must have received a notification in the themes tab of WordPress panel. Simply click on the update over there, and the theme will get updated. If in case you are not able to automatically update it, you can use these steps to update to Astra 2.0 manually.

1. Install the Easy Theme and Plugin Upgrades plugin.
2. Download zip file of the Astra theme 2.0 here.
3. Upload the downloaded zip as installing a theme.
4. If you are Astra Pro user, download the zip file of the plugin from downloads tab of your Astra account.
5. Upload the downloaded zip as installing a plugin.
6. You are done.

Astra Theme Pricing & Plans

It is available in different pricing options. Astra basic is available for free also and you can easily download it. It is available in 3 different pricing options. All 3 are mentioned below with pricing and discounts.

Conclusion of this Review

Selection of the Astra Pro Package totally depends on your usage. If you are building a website and want it to be extensive in features then go with the mini agency package. For blogs, I would suggest you to go with Astra Pro Theme only which is more than enough for a blog.

Without any if or but, Astra is the best free theme and one of WordPress’s best premium themes. The theme lets you create websites in minutes with the help of dozens of pre-made templates. Page builder compatibility is really good with Elementor and Beaver Builder. Other than these page builders, Astra is built to work with all major page builder plugins. Pricing and customer support is placed at the right spot, and you won’t be disappointed by the Astra theme ever.

Astra Theme FAQs

Thanks.