Are you looking for an honest review of the Astra WordPress theme? Are you unsure whether to use Astra on your site? Then, this article will make everything clear for you.

As you might already know, Astra is one of the most popular WordPress themes available on the market. It’s 1+ million active installations and a 4.9/5 average user rating. That’s pretty cool, right?

 

Well then, does that make it the best theme for WordPress? Is it really a good theme to use?

 

Here, we’ll answer that! It’s our detailed review of the Astra WordPress theme. We’ll discuss its ease of use, installation, customization, performance, pricing, and lots of other features.

 

So, let’s start!

 

IN THIS ARTICLE: hide

A. Astra Theme Overview

B. The Key Features of Astra Theme

1. Good Performance

2. Customization Capabilities

3. Page Builder Compatibility

4. Layout Options

5. Header and Footer Builder

6. Demo Import

7. Integration

C. Installing and Customizing Astra

i. Installing the Astra WordPress Theme

ii. Customizing the Astra Theme

D. Importing Astra Starter Sites

E. Astra Theme Support

F. Astra Theme Pricing

G. Pros and Cons of Astra Theme

H. Astra Theme Alternatives

Conclusion

A. Astra Theme Overview

Astra is one of the best and most popular WordPress themes available on the market. It’s a powerful and highly customizable multipurpose theme that you can use to create various types of websites.

 

Astra Theme

Astra Theme

The theme offers tonnes of customizable features that make it possible to design a slick website. Moreover, the modern and elegant look of the theme is guaranteed to attract your visitors.

 

For a quick and easy set-up, you can find 180+ ready-to-import demo templates. You can choose one of them and apply on your site immediately. Just change some images, texts, and a few minor elements, and your site will be ready to be published in no time.

 

Moreover, it supports page builder tools brilliantly making it much easier to edit your site with your intuition.

 

As mentioned before, Astra has a whooping 1 million+ active installations with a 4.9/5-star rating from its users. This popularity and trust from the users show how excellent Astra is for providing its features and services.

 

This brings us to our next topic i.e. the features of the Astra theme that makes it better than the others.

 

B. The Key Features of Astra Theme

Astra is a very feature-rich theme. If you just look at its features in the free version, then you’ll find the capabilities that even some premium themes can’t provide. Further, if you have the premium version installed, then you get more of them.

 

So, here’re some of the remarkable features of Astra.

 

1. Good Performance

The first thing to know is that Astra is a very lightweight theme that’s proven to improve your website speed and performance. With a faster website, you’ll attract more visitors and enhance the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of your site.

 

Astra WordPress Theme Performance

Performance of Astra

The main reason behind the performance of the Astra theme is its clean and minimal code structure. The developers of Astra don’t use any heavy codes like JQuery. Also, the codes are written and structured in a very optimum way.

 

For better results in your performance, you can combine the Astra theme with one of the best web hosting services available.

 

If you want other tips, then you can check out our article on how to speed up your website.

 

2. Customization Capabilities

Customization capability is something that makes one theme better than the others. And, Astra has lots of customization options that enable you to personalise your site as you want.

 

In the free version too, the customization features are very generous. Additionally, the premium version has more extended editable options.

 

After you install the theme, you can see a lot of options in the WordPress customizer. There, you can find all the elements that your theme has editable.

 

Color Settings on Astra

Color Options

For example, it lets you change the colour of the theme, text, links, buttons, etc. to your matching brand colour. Also, you can set the fonts and typography with various options that may be ideal for your target audience.

 

Additionally, you can change the layouts of your posts/ pages, header, footer, menus, and so on. In most themes, it’s difficult to customise your header and footers. But, Astra offers header and footer builders to completely edit them too.

 

3. Page Builder Compatibility

Page builders are WordPress plugins that offer to create and edit your web pages easily with dragging and dropping. Essentially, it converts your web page elements into draggable grids which you can place in your desired paces.

 

Astra Page Builder Compatibility

Astra Page Builder Compatibility

And, Astra has been built to be compatible with major WordPress page builder plugins that make editing your site very convenient. Some of the page builder plugins that Astra supports are Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Brizy.

 

Not just the simple integration, it has its own addons for these page builders. For example, you can check Ultimate Addons for Elementor and Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder. Astra works on top of these plugins and hence allows you to create anything you can imagine.

 

You don’t like using a page builder? No problem! It also has powerful options for the default Gutenberg WordPress editor. You can use their free plugin Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg and design your website.

 

4. Layout Options

With Astra, you get a handful of options on the site layout. As a result, it becomes easy for showcasing items for different types of information or products in different formats.

 

Layout Options

Layout Options

The available layouts are:

 

Boxed: The boxed layout makes it possible to contrast important sections by displaying them in a box.

Full Width: With this layout, you can display your site content in the entire screen width.

Padded: It lets you set margins on the content to provide it some space from others.

Fluid Layout: With the fluid layout, you can make your site content look good whether you stretch or contact your browser window.

Spacing Control: It lets you give space and margins to all the elements.

Default Container: This is the default layout that Astra provides.

Besides, you can choose whether you want to keep the sidebar on your site or not. If you want, you can choose the side you want it.

 

5. Header and Footer Builder

Header and footer builders are the latest features added in the newest version of Astra i.e. Astra 3.0.

 

The best thing about the header and footer builders is that they are visual builders. I.e. they let you create and edit by a drag-and-drop interface. With that, you can create professional headers and footers with the builder’s interface and place the elements in any order you like.

 

In your headers and footers, you can add various elements like texts, widgets, header menu, footer menu, social icons, links, etc. Moreover, changing the look of the header and footer is easy with the available layouts.

 

Also, you can design a custom header and footer for mobile with different elements and designs.

 

6. Demo Import

Demo import is an important feature a theme can have. A demo site is simply a premade website template created to showcase the features of a theme. And, good WordPress themes like Astra allow importing such a demo site to any WordPress installation.

 

With the demo import option, you can easily import the demo data with one click. Then, you can edit the content, change the images, texts, etc. and your site will be ready to publish. Saves a lot of time!

 

And, Astra is one of the themes that have a huge option on the premade demos. To talk numbers, it has over 180 importable starter templates. Of course, some are free and some are only accessible to premium users.

 

Astra Importable Demo Sites

Astra Demo Sites

Since Astra is a multipurpose theme, the starter demos it offers are also for various purposes and niches. Whether you’re looking for creating an eCommerce, membership, portfolio, or business website, Astra has the demo templates for all.

 

7. Integration

WordPress plugins are the tools that you install on your WordPress site to add certain features. In some cases, WordPress themes don’t work well with those plugins leading to creating difficulties.

 

In the case of Astra, it has seamless integration with various WordPress plugins. Some of the plugins that it supports well are LifterLMS and LearnDash. Besides, it has deep integration with other popular page builder plugins, which we’ve already talked about.

 

Moreover, Astra runs smoothly with the most major plugins for WordPress SEO, membership, speeding, and eCommerce plugins.

 

These are some of the features that you get after installing Astra. Now, let’s go ahead and see how to install Astra.

 

C. Installing and Customizing Astra

As you might know, Astra has both free and premium versions available. Now, the process involved in installing depends on which version of the theme you want to install.

 

Anyway, installing both versions of Astra has some simple processes involved.

 

i. Installing the Astra WordPress Theme

Astra free can be installed directly from your WordPress dashboard with a few clicks. For that, log in to your WordPress site first. Then, go to Appearance > Themes, and click on Add New on the next page.

 

Installing Astra Free

Installing Astra Free

There, search for Astra, install it, and then activate it.

 

Activating Astra WP theme

Activating Astra

Installing & Getting Started with Astra Pro

To upgrade Astra to the premium version, you’ll have to install Astra Pro Addon. It’s the premium plugin that adds the features of Astra with which you can perform more site customization.

 

On the Astra pricing page, you can see different premium plans for Astra Pro Addon. From there, you can purchase any one of the packages you like.

 

After purchase, go to My Accounts > Downloads from the menu.

 

Go To Downloads On Astra

My Account > Downloads

This will redirect you to your account on the Brainstorm Force site where you can see your product information and downloads.

 

Go To Downloads On Brainstorm Force

Brainstorm Force, Account > Downloads

From there, you can simply download the Astra Pro Addon plugin to add to your site.

 

Astra Products from Brainstorm Force Website

Product: Astra Pro Addons

To do that, simply go to your WordPress site’s dashboard. Then go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin.

 

Upload Plugin for Installing Yoast SEO Premium

Upload Plugin

After that, upload the zip Astra Pro Addon file, and then click on the Install Now button. After installing, just click on the Activate button to activate the plugin.

 

Install Astra Pro Addons Plugin

Install Astra Pro Addons

After that, you can easily activate additional features that are available with this plugin. Some of them are Color, Typography, Spacing, Blog Pro, Nav Menu, Sticky Header, Custom Layout, etc.

 

Next, you’ll have to activate your product licence in order to receive notifications, updates, and support. To do that, again go to the Brainstorm Force Account page, go to Licenses and copy the licence key from there.

 

Go to Licenses

Go to Licenses

Then, head over to your WordPress Dashboard > Appearance > Astra Options and paste the licence on the right where it says ‘Astra Pro License’ and activate it.

 

Enter and Activate Astra Pro License Key

Activate License

That pretty much sums up installing the Astra WordPress Theme. More information and alternative installation methods can be found in the article on how to install a WordPress theme.

 

ii. Changing the Astra Theme

You can begin customising Astra immediately after installing it. Go to Appearance > Customize to do so.

 

WordPress Customization Option

WordPress Customization Option

Following that, you’ll find all of the editable options organised into menus. We’ll go over some of the most important customizer options here.

 

Global

Astra WordPress Customizer

WordPress Customizer Astra

The Global tab contains options for

 

Change the font type, size, weight, line height, margin, and so forth.

Colors: Select colours for the text, theme, link, link hover, headers, backgrounds, and so forth.

Container: This is the screen area where all of your site’s content is shown. You may choose the width of the container and the layout type for blogs, archives, pages, and the whole site.

Buttons: Change the colour of the button, the text colour, the width of the button, the margins, and so on.

Builder of Headers

You may use header builder to create a gorgeous header that will show at the top of your website. You may include features like as menus, widgets, simple text, buttons, social buttons, accounts, and so on.

 

Astra Header Creator

Astra Header Creator

You may drag and drop the parts into whatever arrangement you choose. Basic parameters for each part may be customised. For social network icons, for example, you may customise the icon size, spacing, background, and so on.

 

Archive/Blog

It allows you to customise the look of your blogs and archives. If you operate a blogging website, you must manage these settings.

 

There are modifiable choices for Blog/Archive and Single Post. Some people are

 

Content Width: Enter a custom width or use the default width of 1200 PX.

Show/hide highlighted photos, as well as the title and blog meta. You may also move them around.

Meta: Display or conceal elements such as comments, category, author, published date, author, and so on. You may also arrange them in whatever order you choose.

Sidebar

If you wish to add a sidebar to your site, you may do so from this page. You may choose it to show on the left or right side of the screen.

 

You may also customise the location of your sidebar for pages, articles, and archives. You may also fully conceal it. You may also customise the width of your sidebar.

 

Builder of Footers

You may totally construct your footer using a drag-and-drop interface, similar to the header builder. You may quickly add items like as HTML text, a footer menu, social icons, widgets, copyright, and so on.

 

If you don’t like where they are, you can just drag & drop them anywhere else on your footer. Every element’s location, margins, orientation, layout, and so on may be changed.