Astra WordPress Theme Review

When searching a good theme for our site, there are two themes stand out from the crowd mainly from performance perspective. GeneratePress and Astra are those themes that offer similar performance features. In our earlier article, we have reviewed GeneratePress theme that we have used for sometime on this site. In this article, we will review Astra WordPress theme that we are currently using on this site.

Astra WordPress Theme

Astra is the theme developed by Brainstorm Force, a company behind some popular WordPress products like Spectra (Ultimate Add-ons for Gutenberg), Convert Pro, Schema Pro and Ultimate Add-ons Elementor.

• You can download and install the free theme from WordPress repository. It is one of the popular themes in WordPress repository with more than 6K, 5 star rating and 1+ million active installs.
• Actively supported in free WordPress support forum as well as on the developer’s site for premium version.

• Free version has restrictions on customizing theme settings and has limited features.
• The premium version comes as an Astra Pro plugin that will allow you to customize the free theme further.

In this article, we will primarily focus on the premium Astro version for the review.

Lightweight Theme

As mentioned, you need to look for Astra theme only when speed is the primary factor for your site. Since Astra theme adds less than 50KB to the website, you can easily get 100/100 score in Google PageSpeed Insights tool.

• The theme is also optimized for WooCommerce, so you can have fast loading product pages for better conversion.
• Integrates Schema.org setup to stand out in the search results.
• Supports AMP natively so that the layout will not break (nowadays you don’t need AMP).

Theme Price

You can purchase Astra either annually or with one lifetime payment. Astra Pro is the basic plan you can get for $69 /year, the Essential Toolkit is available for $119 /year and the Business Toolkit for $159 /year. The Essential Toolkit plan offers additional plugins like Spectra Pro and Ultimate Adonis for Elementor along with 300+ premium templates. With Business Toolkit, you will get AI Website Builder, SureFeedback and few other bonuses.

All plans offer one year support and updates with unlimited website usage. There will be always some discounts and you can get the Pro theme for as low as $49 during special occasions. We recommend you to first purchase Astra Pro annual plan, you can upgrade to lifetime plan anytime later if you are happy with the theme.

Astra Theme Dashboard

After installing and activating Astra theme, go to “Astra > Dashboard” menu. From here, you have the following options:

• Access customizer to configure theme’s settings.
• Activate your license and necessary Astra Pro modules on your site.
• Install additional plugins from Brainstorm Force.
• Install Starter Templates plugin and import one of the starter templates.
• Go to documentation or submit a ticket.

Make sure to turn on only the required modules to avoid loading additional CSS files.

Customizing Astra Theme

The customizer section allows you to setup logo, site layout, header/footer, breadcrumb, sidebar, blog and other settings. You can navigate through various sections and customize the options similar to any other theme. For example, you can turn on or off related posts, author box and social sharing icons on a single post layout. Each section has “General” settings where you can select the options and “Design” settings where you can customize the appearance.

As mentioned, WooCommerce has a separate section where you can customize the appearance of shop, cart and checkout page layouts.

Note: Make sure to check the settings for desktop, tablet and mobile devices separately to avoid layout issues on smaller screens.

Astro Pro Add-on

As mentioned, you have to purchase an Astra Pro plugin for getting premium features. Go to “Astra > Dashboard” to activate the license and enable the module you like to use on your site. Here are some of the notable features with the Pro add-on:

• Adjust the content margin/padding to change the site layout as per your wish.
• Customize colors, typography and layouts.
• Import free starter templates to start your site from a pre-defined template.
• Customizable header and footer design.
• Sticky header, WooCommerce optimized and scroll to top link.
• Integration with popular page builder plugins.
• Hooks and filters to insert custom code.
• Create mega menu for the header.

Creating Custom Layouts

One of the prominent features with Astra is the ability to insert code on your page layout. For example, with other themes you may need an additional plugin to insert Google Analytics tracking code. With Astra Pro, you can use the “Site Builder” module to create a custom layout section and insert content anywhere on the layout.

• Go to “Astra > Site Builder” and select the layout that you want to create. For example, click the + icon next to “Hooks” to create a custom hook.

• Use custom code editor or use the default WordPress editor.
• Insert PHP, JavaScript and CSS codes.
• Select display rule and user role to insert the layout in required position.

Using this option, you can insert Analytics code, advertisements, display banners, tags at bottom of the posts, comments reply link, etc. without any additional plugin.

Note: Free users can use Astra Hooks plugin for inserting custom sections from Customizer settings. However, this is limited and not flexible as Site Builder option.

Starter Templates

Another good feature is that you do not need to start building your site from scratch. There are 300+ premium starter templates you get with the Essential / Business Toolkit plans. In this way, you can quickly get the beautiful layouts and start focusing on your content.

You can also choose the templates for Gutenberg or Elementor to continue creating site with your favorite page builder plugin.

Customer Support

Astra theme offers extensive documentation and you can get answers to almost all your queries there. For free theme support, you can post your query in WordPress forum and for premium theme, you can raise a ticket to get response.

Earlier days, we used to get precise response like a custom code to support. However, this has been changed and now you will get “refer the documentation” kind of response for almost every query.

Are There any Issues With Astra Theme?

Well, Astra theme adds less than 50KB size to the frontend. In addition, you can customize each portion of the theme as per your need. However, here are some of the problems you may encounter:

• Limited customization options for author box, social sharing and related posts. You may need to use an additional plugin for flexible setup (for example – Novashare for social sharing).
• You need to be careful in checking mobile responsiveness and adjust the layout settings for different devices, especially for WooCommerce store.
• Even the Pro version does not get sufficient starter templates and there will be always an upselling of higher level plans.
• There are no additional widgets to showcase in sidebar and footer (for example – newsletter or posts list with custom queries).

You can get all these features with any commercial theme purchased from marketplaces like Themeforest for one-time price. So, you may end up spending additional recurring budget when going for Astra, especially if you want to use only on a single site.

Final Words

If you are tired of slow WordPress themes packed with hundreds of shortcodes, Astra is a strong alternative. You can start with the free version and upgrade to the Pro plugin for $69 to unlock additional features and customization options.