Astra

Looking for an honest Astra theme review? At WPBeginner we’ve seen firsthand how choosing the wrong WordPress theme can hurt your site.

While we now use a custom design, we spent years testing countless WordPress themes. Through this experience, we found that many multipurpose themes are either bloated with features you’ll never use, or they’re too basic to build a professional website without hiring a developer.

That’s why Astra caught our attention. It promised something different – a perfect balance between functionality and performance. But does it deliver on that promise?

In this detailed Astra review, we’ll share our honest assessment based on real-world testing. You’ll learn exactly what works, what doesn’t, and most importantly, whether this theme is the right choice for your WordPress website.

Astra Review: Why Use It in WordPress?

At WPBeginner, we’re constantly testing and evaluating WordPress themes to find the absolute best options for our audience. And let me tell you, Astra has consistently impressed us.

As a team, we’ve put this multipurpose theme through its paces, imagining how bloggers, small business owners, and even those building online stores can truly benefit from its flexibility and power.

One of the first things that stood out to us was the sheer number of pre-built website demos – over 250 and counting!

We were genuinely impressed by the variety and the professional design of these templates. For bloggers in particular, there are some fantastic starting points that can be installed with just a few clicks. This means you can have a great-looking blog up and running incredibly quickly, without needing to hire a WordPress developer. We can absolutely see how this would be a massive time-saver for so many of you.

When it comes to customization, Astra shines. We appreciate its deep integration with popular drag-and-drop page builders like SeedProd (be sure to check out our SeedProd review for more details). We know how valuable this is for those who want creative control without the technical complexities.

Even if you’re not using a separate page builder plugin, Astra’s own Site Builder is a standout feature. We found it surprisingly intuitive and powerful for customizing key areas like your site’s footer, header, 404 page, and more.

Performance and SEO are always top priorities for us at WPBeginner, and Astra doesn’t disappoint. We’ve seen firsthand how lightweight and optimized this theme is. It’s built for speed, which is crucial for a great user experience and can definitely contribute to improved blog traffic.

Plus, knowing it’s translation-ready with RTL support means it’s a valuable option for those building multilingual WordPress sites – a feature we know many in our community need.

If you’re looking for a free WordPress theme, then you can download the lite version of Astra from the official WordPress repository.

This free theme is designed to be lightweight and fast, and comes with a ton of customization settings that you can access directly in the WordPress Customizer.

You can choose between multiple blog layouts, sidebar styles, and site layouts, and then fine-tune the typography, colors, and more.

However, if you upgrade to the premium theme then you’ll also get access to the powerful Site Builder, Astra’s mega menu tool, additional layouts, and more.

Although the free theme integrates partially with many popular WordPress plugins and tools, the premium theme integrates fully with WooCommerce, LearnDash, and Easy Digital Downloads.

Astra Review: The Right Multipurpose WordPress Theme for You?

Choosing the right WordPress theme is one of the most important decisions you can make.

It’s not just about looks; the wrong theme can actively hinder your ability to create a website that not only looks fantastic but also keeps your visitors engaged and, importantly, ranks well in search results. Trust us, we’ve seen it happen!

With that in mind, let’s see if Astra is the right theme for your WordPress website.

1. Optimized for Speed and SEO

When we talk about theme performance here at WPBeginner, speed and efficiency are always at the front of our mind. Astra really impressed us in this area.

It’s a fast, lightweight theme that requires less than 50KB of resources and uses JavaScript rather than render blocking jQuery. In fact, the theme loads in less than 0.5 seconds, according to the Astra website. During testing, we noticed that snappy feel right away!

Want to personalize your blog with unique typography? We know that using custom fonts can sometimes be a double-edged sword, with fetching them from third-party services potentially slowing down your site. We’ve seen this impact loading times firsthand on various sites we’ve worked with.

That’s why we were particularly excited about Astra’s self-hosted Google Fonts feature. This allows you to use custom fonts without affecting your site’s loading times.

What’s even better is that Astra goes the extra mile by offering the ability to download fonts in the background while the rest of your page is loading. By preloading these files, the font will be ready to display as soon as the browser starts painting your site’s text. Trust us, these kinds of subtle optimizations make a real difference to the overall visitor experience.

They can also boost your WordPress SEO. Search engines such as Google use speed as a ranking factor, so a fast theme like Astra can help your site appear higher in the search results.

How We Use It (& Honest Review): Choosing a fast theme like Astra is a big step towards helping your content rank higher while also improving the visitor experience. We definitely see the potential for improved SEO and happier visitors with a theme built for speed like this!

2. Over 250 Starter Website Templates

One of the things we really appreciate about Astra here at WPBeginner is its focus on helping you get a stunning website up and running quickly.

That’s why they include over 250 website templates, and the variety is fantastic!

We’ve explored these templates, and they genuinely cover a huge range of niches, from professional small business websites and fully functional online stores to beautifully designed personal WordPress blogs. We can see how these pre-built options can save so much time and effort.

For example, Astra’s e-Book template is perfect for author websites as it has clear typography and lots of white space.

How We Use It (& Honest Review): These niche-specific and well-thought-out templates really made Astra stand out in our testing. We’re confident that our readers will find these templates an incredibly valuable starting point.

3. Schema Markup

When we evaluate themes for SEO at WPBeginner, one crucial aspect we look for is built-in schema markup. Astra doesn’t disappoint here. Right out of the box, it intelligently adds important schema types to your site, including SiteNavigationElement, SearchResultsPage, and BreadcrumbList.

From our experience, this kind of structured data is incredibly helpful for search engines. It provides them with a clearer understanding of your site’s content and structure, making it easier for them to index your pages correctly.

Ultimately, this means your content has a better chance of being shown to the right people – those actively searching for information just like yours.

Schema can also increase your chances of getting rich snippets. We’ve seen firsthand how these enhanced listings, with extra information like star ratings, product details, or event dates, tend to grab more attention and result in higher click-through rates and better engagement.

How We Use It (& Honest Review): For bloggers and website owners looking to stand out in search, Astra has some really valuable features.

4. Multiple Site Layouts

With Astra, you can easily manage your site’s overall layout. To start, you can choose between full-width, max width, padded, and fluid layouts. This gives you a solid foundation to match your brand and content needs right away.

But where Astra truly shines in terms of layout customization is with its Custom Layouts module. This is a powerful feature that really impressed us. It allows you to go beyond the basics and create completely unique designs for crucial areas of your site, including your header, footer, and 404 error page.

You can even create layouts for specific devices, show different content based on the date and time, or create unique layouts for specific user roles.

How We Use It (& Honest Review): As the WPBeginner team, we’ve really dug deep into Astra’s site layout capabilities, and we have to say, the level of control is genuinely impressive. We appreciate how straightforward it is to manage the fundamental layout choices – the full-width, boxed, and fluid options are all clearly presented and easy to implement.

What’s even more impressive is the ability to tailor these layouts for specific devices (ensuring a great mobile experience), show different content based on the date and time (perfect for limited-time offers or seasonal messaging), or even create unique layouts for specific user roles (ideal for membership sites or customized admin experiences).

Honestly, we see lots of value in this granular level of control.

5. Design Completely Custom Layouts

One of the things we consistently look for in a top-tier theme is how well it plays with the tools you’re already familiar with. Astra shines in this regard, offering seamless compatibility with popular page builder plugins like SeedProd, Beaver Builder, Divi, and Visual Composer so you can create all kinds of designs.

If you’re already comfortable with one of these drag-and-drop builders, then you can continue using it with Astra to create just about any design imaginable. We know how important this flexibility is for our audience.

Astra also comes with its own Site Builder that allows you to create custom headers, footers, 404 error pages, single and archive templates, and more.

You can edit any of your existing layouts, or create an entirely new layout.

What we particularly appreciate is the level of control Astra gives you over where these layouts appear. You can easily choose to apply a layout across your entire WordPress website or limit it to specific pages. You even have the option to insert a layout directly into your page or post content.

We see this as incredibly useful for things like creating a consistent ‘Subscribe to our email newsletter’ call to action that you can easily embed in all your blog posts, without having to recreate it each time. This kind of efficiency is a huge win for content creators.

You can even create different layouts for different users, such as a unique design that’ll only appear to logged-in users on your membership website.

The Astra Site Builder even supports hooks, so you can inject custom code into your layouts.

How We Use It (& Honest Review): We think Astra’s way of handling layouts is really great. It works super well with the page builder tools many of you already know and love, making it easy to design your site.

Plus, Astra has its own layout builder that gives you a ton of control to make your website look exactly how you want, even if you don’t use a separate page builder. This makes it easy to create a website that’s just right for you. Overall, we think this flexibility is a big win and one of the best things about using Astra.

6. Multiple Blog Layouts

Running a WordPress blog? Then you’ll be happy to know Astra comes with different ways to show off your latest posts super easily.

You can pick from layouts like grid (where your posts look like tiles), list (stacked one after the other), and masonry (where posts fit together like a brick wall).

After choosing a layout, you can control what content Astra shows on the blog page.

For example, you can add a date box, excerpt count, or display related posts your readers might like.

And if you’ve got tons of great content, Astra even lets you add page numbers at the bottom (pagination) or make new posts load automatically as people scroll down (infinite scrolling). This encourages readers to explore more of your posts, without overwhelming them by showing all your articles on a single page.

How We Use It (& Honest Review): We think Astra’s blog layout options are a real plus for anyone running a WordPress blog.

The variety of layouts gives you the flexibility to present your content in a way that best suits your style and your readers. We especially appreciate the level of control you have over what information is displayed with each post and the smart features like pagination and infinite scrolling for managing larger archives.

It’s clear that Astra has put thought into the specific needs of bloggers!

7. Custom Typography and Colors

Apart from looking good, custom typography and colors can make your site easier to read, strengthen your branding, and generally improve the visitor experience.

Astra has a handy Global Typography module that lets you change the typography of your entire website from a single location.

Plus, it even gives you 6 ready-to-use text styles you can try out with a single click – super easy.

Then, you can fine-tune the text sizes for different devices like phones, tablets, and computers. Or, if you know exactly what you want, you can set a specific font size using PX or EM units.

It’s not just about text, though. Astra also lets you play with the colors in different parts of your site, like the top area (header), your blog pages, archive pages, and the sidebar. You can even show different colors to people browsing on their phones compared to those on desktops.

When creating a color scheme, consistency is key. To help you out, Astra has a Global Palette where you can define a color scheme and then use it across your entire WordPress website.

You can even create unique color schemes for different promotions, special events, holidays, and more. If you’re a WordPress development agency, then you can also save time by creating presets and then applying them to multiple client websites.

How We Use It (& Honest Review): We’re big fans of Astra’s approach to typography and color customization. The Global Typography and global palette features are incredibly user-friendly and provide a fantastic way to maintain a consistent and on-brand look across your entire website.

8. Custom Headers and Footers

There are lots of ways to make your site’s headers and footers more useful to visitors.

Think about it – the header is usually the first thing people see, so having your main navigation menu there makes it super easy for them to find their way around. Just like we do here at WPBeginner, adding your custom logo to the header helps build your brand recognition right from the start.

Then there’s the footer. Often overlooked, but it’s where many visitors instinctively look for key information like contact details or links to important pages. We make sure our contact information and essential links are clear and easy to find in our footer.

The good news is that Astra comes with a drag and drop Header and Footer Builder. This allows you to add buttons, logos, social media links, and other widgets to these important areas.

You can also make the header sticky, create a unique layout for mobile devices, and show different headers on specific pages and posts. For example, you might create a unique header for a recent landing page.

You can also make the header transparent. After enabling this setting, Astra will make your primary header background transparent so the top part of the page content acts as the background instead.

Overall, Astra’s header and footer customization tools offer a lot of flexibility to create effective and user-friendly website navigation, something we consider essential for any successful online presence.

How We Use It (& Honest Review): In our opinion, Astra’s header and footer tools give you a lot of easy ways to set up your website’s top and bottom. This helps people find their way around and makes your site friendlier to use, which we always say is super important.

9. Create Multiple Sidebars

Sometimes, you may want to create unique sidebars for specific posts and pages. For example, you might display ads that are more relevant to a particular page, hoping they’ll click on them more.

To start, Astra comes with a right sidebar, left sidebar, and an option that removes the sidebar. After configuring these defaults, you can create unique sidebars that override the default settings on your pages, blog posts, and archive pages.

Depending on the plugins you’ve installed, you may also be able to create unique sidebars for your WooCommerce and LearnDash pages.

How We Use It (& Honest Review): Astra’s sidebar options are another great example of just how flexible and user-friendly it is. The ability to easily choose default sidebar layouts and then create unique sidebars for specific content is a really smart approach. We really appreciate that Astra doesn’t limit you to a one-size-fits-all sidebar!

10. Support For Mega Menus

Mega Menus allow you to arrange dozens or even hundreds of links into columns and rows, so they’re perfect when you have a lot of content. For example, if you create an online marketplace then you might arrange all your product categories and subcategories in a mega menu so shoppers can see everything at a glance.

With Astra, you can easily add a mega menu on your WordPress site. To make these mega menus even more helpful, you can also add things like pictures and videos.

In the Astra Menu Options panel, simply enable the ‘Mega Menu’ slider.

You can then organize your content into columns and add background images, custom text, shortcodes, widgets, and more.

How We Use It (& Honest Review): We know firsthand what it’s like to have a website packed with content – we’ve got tons of helpful articles and resources! That’s why we really appreciate features that make big sites easier to navigate.

Astra’s mega menu option is a great example of this. It lets you take a regular website menu and turn it into a much more organized and visual way to display lots of links.

11. Additional Widgets

If you run a business website, then Astra has a useful Address widget. This allows you to show your contact information in the footer or similar section, in a structured layout.

Astra also has a Social Icons widget, so you can promote your Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other profiles without having to install a separate social media icons plugin.

How We Use It (& Honest Review): These built-in widgets are a convenient way to share important business information and connect with your audience on social media without adding extra bloat to your site.

This streamlined approach not only simplifies website setup, but also helps to keep your site leaner and potentially faster, too.

12. Support For Web Stories

Stories are a popular short-form content style used by social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube.

While these platforms are great for reaching new people and creating excitement around your business, all the likes, comments, and shares happen over on their site, not yours. This means people aren’t necessarily staying on your WordPress website.

To fix this, you may want to use Google Web Stories. This allows you to create stories in the WordPress dashboard and publish them on your site. Since they’re hosted on your WordPress website, they can boost engagement and keep people on your site for longer.

Even better, Google Web Stories can be indexed and may appear in the search results and Google Discover (a feed of articles Google thinks people will like).

If you do create stories, then Astra integrates with the Google Web Stories plugin. Simply enable the ‘Web Stories Options’ in the WordPress Customizer and Astra will show the latest stories above your site’s header.

With that done, you can set the number of stories to display, control their size, manage the order of stories, display the story title, and archive links for all stories using Astra’s settings.

In this way, visitors will see your latest stories as soon as they arrive at your website. We think this is a fantastic way to grab attention and keep visitors engaged with your freshest content right away.

How We Use It (& Honest Review): We’re really excited about how Astra works with Google Web Stories. It makes showing off those fun, short story updates right at the top of your site super easy. This is a fantastic way to grab people’s attention and get them exploring more of your content.

Plus, Astra lets you tweak how these stories look so they fit right in with your website’s style.

13. WooCommerce Ready

If you want to sell stuff online, then Astra works great with WooCommerce, letting you build your whole store right inside the WordPress Customizer.

Astra also has features that can get you more sales. For example, it can load all your WooCommerce products on a single page using infinite scroll. It also has a ‘quick view’ so shoppers can take a closer look at a product without opening its page.

In addition, Astra adds a dropdown cart so shoppers can easily see all the items in their basket. It can even add sales bubbles to your products, which is useful if you run regular discounts or similar promotions.

How We Use It (& Honest Review): We’re big fans of how Astra handles WooCommerce. It takes the hassle out of setting up an online store that’s actually enjoyable for your customers to use.

With features designed to make browsing smoother and highlight your products, it’s clear Astra’s dedicated to helping you make more sales. They’ve struck a great balance between making things easy to get started and giving you the tools to really grow your business.

We think it’s a winning combination for anyone selling online with WordPress.

14. Integrates with Popular Course Builders

If you sell courses online, then Astra integrates seamlessly with LifterLMS and LearnDash. This allows you to create a professionally-designed, distraction-free online training website.

How We Use It (& Honest Review): We really appreciate how easily Astra works with popular learning platforms like LifterLMS and LearnDash. It really does take the headache out of designing a professional-looking online course website.

15. Community and Professional Support

The Astra theme is designed to be easy to use, and it integrates perfectly with the WordPress Customizer – things we always look for in a great theme here at WPBeginner. However, if you need some extra help then there’s a ton of additional resources.

To start, their knowledge base is a fantastic resource. We’ve browsed through it, and it’s packed with clear, step-by-step tutorials, useful code snippets that you can easily implement, and practical troubleshooting advice for common issues. It’s the kind of comprehensive support documentation we always recommend themes provide.

You can also visit the Astra blog, where you’ll find general advice on how to fix the most common WordPress errors, tips on how to make money online blogging, and more. It’s very similar to the kind of helpful content we strive to create at WPBeginner.

Astra also has an active Facebook community where you can ask questions and get help from other Astra users.

All the premium Astra plans come with professional support, so you can submit a ticket and a member of the Astra team will get back to you as soon as possible. We especially appreciate that they offer priority support with their higher-tier plans (Essential Toolkit and Business Toolkit) so your tickets will get answered more quickly.

Astra Review: Pricing and Plans

If you’re looking for a free WordPress theme, then you can download the lite version of Astra from the official WordPress repository. However, the premium theme lets you create completely custom headers, footers, 404 pages, blog pages, archive pages, and hooks.

It also integrates seamlessly with many popular WordPress plugins, including WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, and LearnDash.

If you upgrade, then you can choose between three plans:

• Astra Pro. Priced at $49, this plan unlocks the Site Builder so you can create all kinds of custom layouts without having to write a single line of code. It also integrates with WooCommerce so you can customize every part of your online store including your single product pages, checkout form, and shop page. With its code-free builder and WooCommerce support, Astra Pro is a flexible and powerful multipurpose theme that’s suitable for all kinds of blogs, websites, and WooCommerce stores.
• Essential Toolkit. Do you have Elementor installed on your WordPress website? For $79, Essential Toolkit comes with over 200 Elemetor templates, plus Ultimate Addons for Elementor. This popular addon has 40+ widgets and 200+ pre-built blocks, so you can create all kinds of designs. If you don’t already have a page builder, then Essential Toolkit also comes bundled with Spectra, which enhances the default WordPress block editor. With that in mind, Essential Toolkit is a great solution for anyone who wants to use Astra in combination with a page builder.
• Business Toolkit. Priced at $149, this plan includes everything in Astra Pro and Essential Toolkit. It also comes with SureFeedback, which helps you collect feedback on websites and designs, and the SureWriter AI-powered assistant. This AI tool can generate content such as blog posts, emails, and social media posts. These additional tools are ideal for WordPress development agencies or anyone who manages multiple client websites.

Astra Review: The Right Multipurpose WordPress Theme for You?

After thoroughly exploring Astra’s features, support resources, and the different pricing options, we’re confident that it’s a fantastic multipurpose theme that can really work well for all sorts of websites.

If you’re starting a brand new site, Astra Pro offers a huge library of starter templates to choose from. We think these can be a massive time-saver, giving you a professionally designed foundation to build upon with just a few clicks.

You can also create completely custom headers, footers, layouts, and sidebars, and then control exactly where these designs appear on your WordPress website. Its advanced display rules allow you to show different content based on user roles, so it’s also a good option if you allow user registration and want to create members-only content – something we know many of you are interested in.

For those of you who love using Elementor, the Essential Toolkit is definitely worth considering. It not only gives you Astra Pro but also includes over 200 Elementor templates and the powerful Ultimate Addons for Elementor. This means you can seamlessly integrate Astra’s flexibility with the visual building power of Elementor (which is a combination we often recommend).

Interestingly, the Essential Toolkit also comes with Spectra, a collection of Gutenberg blocks. Because of this, we’d also suggest this toolkit to anyone wanting to pair Astra with a page builder but who might be unsure where to begin.

Finally, Business Toolkit comes with additional tools that can help you communicate with your clients and generate lots of content quickly, using artificial intelligence.

While this might not be for everyone, we can see how this could be a real game-changer, especially for those who design, develop, or manage WordPress websites for others, offering a comprehensive all-in-one solution.

We hope this Astra review helped you decide whether it’s the right multipurpose WordPress theme for you. Next, you may want to see our guide on how to create a contact form in WordPress, or check out our expert pick of the best WordPress landing page plugins.

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