Astra vs GeneratePress – Which One is Best for SEO?
There’s no denying that Astra and GeneratePress are two of the most popular premium WordPress themes on the market. Each of those themes is packed with functionality and may be used for a wide range of purposes. What if, on the other hand, you need to unwind with only one theme? It’s undeniably a difficult decision to make.
That’s why, to make things even easier for you, I’d like to introduce you to the Astra vs. GeneratePress comparison chart. In this article, I’ll establish a contrast between each of those top premium WordPress themes, making it easy to choose the right one at the end.
Astra vs GeneratePress – A Brief Comparison
GeneratePress
Tom Usborne’s GeneratePress is a lightweight, multipurpose theme. It adds less than 10 KB in size out of the box and has a good reputation for clean code.
According to WordPress.org, GeneratePress is used on over 300,000 sites as of December 2020. Over 1,150 people have given it a perfect 5-star rating.
Astra
Astra is likewise a small, multipurpose theme that weighs less than 50 KB. It’s from Brainstorm Force, the same people who brought you Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg/Elementor/Beaver Builder and other famous plugins.
Astra holds the distinction of being the first and only non-default WordPress theme to reach one million active installs on WordPress.org. Over 4,800 people have given it a perfect 5-star rating.
Astra vs. GeneratePress
While each theme is excellent in its own right, I’d like to use GeneratePress more on my website. It’s easier to use, well-documented, and there are numerous tips on how to use and customize the create press theme. Aside from that, the theme is user-friendly for developers.
When it comes to the Astra theme, it uses vanilla JS, is much cleaner, is well-optimized for affiliate websites, and comes with a ton of pre-made example models (yes, even with the free version of the Astra theme) as well as a tight connection with Elementor.
His theme also supports a wide range of WordPress page builder plugins. As a result, you’ll have the most up-to-date knowledge when it comes to developing your website. It also has a large number of free but high-quality pre-made website designs that you may use. Simply install the theme and start customizing your website right away. This eliminates the need for data collection when designing or coding.
However, if you want to expand the functionality, the Astra Professional is a good option. You’ll gain features like hooks/filters, blog layouts, giant menu, header portion, clear header, and more if you upgrade to the professional model.
Astra vs. GeneratePress – Free and Paid Features
Both themes offer popular free variants as well as paid versions with more features, as we indicated above. The premium version is technically an add-on plugin for the free core theme; whether you use the free version (only the theme) or the Pro edition (plus the theme), you’ll be utilizing the same theme (the theme plus the premium add-on plugin).
To access all of the modules shown in the previous section, you’ll need the premium version.
Overall, Astra is more generous with its free features and more versatile as a free theme. As a result, if you’re only going to use the free version, Astra is definitely the best choice.
Key features of Astra WordPress Theme
Nevertheless, to simplify the Astra theme for you, let me simply discuss the important thing features of the theme.
Final Velocity:
Velocity is certainly one of many necessary features for any theme on the market. In case your web site is just not loading quick sufficient, be able to say bye-bye to the rating. 
Astra Efficiency Nevertheless, the cool half is that the Astra theme is built by conserving pace in thoughts. The theme is designed to be light-weight and glossy. So it does probably not have an effect on the web page loading time.
Starter Themes:
For first-time website designers, starter themes are really handy. Astra includes a number of pre-installed starter themes. All you have to do now is choose a starter theme based on your website and begin customizing it with your preferred web page builder software. It also works with page builder plugins like Elementor, Beaver, Thrive Architect, and a slew of others.
Astra WP Starter Websites As you’re getting the prospect to work with pre-made templates, so there’s no want so that you can have any prior data of CSS, coding, or design. Nevertheless, if you’re utilizing the free model of the theme, then you will need to think about getting some CSS expertise. As you aren’t getting many customizing features with the Astra free model.
Cellular-friendly choices:
We can not deny the truth that our web sites obtain the best site visitors from cell units. Therefore, that can assist you to customize your web site for cell units, the Astra Professional theme comes with a module referred to as Cellular Header. 
Astra Comes with Native AMP Help As soon as activated, you’ll get features like menu breakpoint, menu label, toggle button fashion, toggle button coloration, and plenty of extra. Together with that, you may set a special brand on your cell web site.
Search engine optimization-Pleasant:
Having an Search engine optimization Pleasant theme is extraordinarily necessary. However, not all of the themes include Search engine optimization pleasant features. Nevertheless, the Astra Professional theme takes care of the Search engine optimization half very well. 
Astra – Constructed for Search engine optimization Aside from being extraordinarily quick, the web site follows the fashionable Search engine optimization requirements. Because of this, it provides schema markup to every web page of your web site by default. So you should have a higher probability of showing in Google’s snippet and knowledge graph.
Straightforward Customization Choices:
Astra theme performs actually well relating to customization. By going by way of its intensive structure settings, it is possible for you to to handle the structure of your web site’s header, weblog, web page, a particular person put up, sidebar, and footer completely. 
Astra – Straightforward Customization Choices You’ll be able to add edit the colors, background, and typography. In brief, the theme means that you can customize every component of your web site. Plus, you don’t want any coding data to make the modifications.
Pros
- Sooner web page loading pace.
- Comes with 100+ starter sties.
- Numerous mega menu features.
- Extremely customizable.
Cons
- The customizer is a bit gradual.
- Prices greater than GeneratePress.
How A lot Does Astra Professional Price?
Astra Professional is on the market as an annual and lifelong plan, and the pricing is split into three classes. These classes are the Astra Professional, Mini Company Bundle, and Company Bundle. These plans price you $47, $169, and $249, respectively, when you select the annual plan. For the lifetime bundle, these plans will price you $249, $499, and $699, respectively. 
Whereas all of those packages have identical features, with the Mini Company Bundle and Company Bundle, you can be getting 55+ Company starter templates and some additional plugins. However it doesn’t matter what plan you select, you’ll get entry to one-to-one assist, limitless web site usages, intensive coaching, and plenty of extras.
GeneratePress – Fast Overview
GeneratePress can also be recognized to be one of many top WordPress themes, and I’m utilizing it on this web site. It’s stuffed with features and can be utilized on completely different web sites, blogs, and enterprise web sites. You need to use the theme to create a web-based retailer, weblog, portfolio, or an enterprise web site. 
The theme also gives you a lot of customization options, allowing you to change things like the background, blog, colors, and copyright. You may also disable or enable specific components, as well as use the mega menu, secondary nav sections, typography, and other features.
It also comes with a website library, similar to Astra. As a result, you can simply import the complete library to your website and have it live right away. The best part is that it also comes with pre-built layouts for web page builders like Elementor and Beaver. You may get GeneratePress for free from WordPress.org. Nonetheless, the free model lacks the same functionality and personalization options as Astra free.
Light-weight:
The great part of the theme is that it’s coded well, and it doesn’t have any buggy code in it. Additionally, the theme dimension is minimal. Because of this, it makes your website loads pretty fast. 
GeneratePress – Much less Than 30KB Together with that, the theme can also be developer-friendly. It comes with inbuilt choices so that you can add hooks and filters without altering the theme files. Additionally, you’ve gotten the choice to reset the theme in the case when you mess issues up.
A large range of customization choices:
As talked about earlier, the GeneratePress theme is stuffed with customization choices. You can begin by customizing your web site through the use of the default WordPress customizer. Or you need to use every other web page builder for a similar. 
Customizations for GeneratePress However, while the GeneratePress theme’s free version offers a lot of options, if you upgrade to GeneratePress Premium, you’ll have a lot more customization options. The theme allows you to adjust areas such as the header, navigation, sidebar structure, blog post structure, and footer structure, among others.
Pre-Made Starter Websites:
GeneratePress additionally comes with numerous pre-made starter websites. Pre-made starter websites are a superb possibility when you haven’t any prior data of website construction. Additionally, it actually hurries up the entire designing course. 
GeneratePress Website Library (without PageBuilder) GeneratePress again in 2018, launched its Website Library characteristic, and it comes with 25+ pre-built demo websites. These pre-built demo websites can be utilized on your weblog, company web site, on-line retailer, and others. Nevertheless, the one downside is that the GeneratePress free model doesn’t embrace any demo websites like Astra free.
Web page-Stage Settings:
One of the many best elements of the Generatepress theme is that it provides you web page stage settings. Because of this, you’ll get higher control over every bit of your content material. GeneratePress does it by giving a brand new structure meta field characteristic for each single put up and web page. Because of this, you may simply change what number of sidebars your website makes use of or the sidebar orientation. 
GeneratePress – Web page Stage Format You may as well select what number of footer widgets to make use of or disable sure components just like the header, navigation menu, put up featured picture, put up title, or footer. Plus, it means that you can create a specific container on your web page builder.
Optimized Efficiency And Quick Web page Load Occasions:
GeneratePress can also be an extremely optimized theme for efficiency and quick loading pace because it makes use of clear code construction. Therefore, the total theme has a dimension of lower than 30 KB solely. If I’m going forward and examine this web page dimension with different themes, then many of the themes have a dimension of round 200 KB. Additionally, the poorly coded themes might be sized as much as 1 MB. 
Plus, the theme doesn’t have any code dependencies. This helps in avoiding the render-blocking error that Google Web page pace Insights usually mentions. So if you’re actually severe concerning the web page pace, then GeneratePress is a perfect choice for you.
Pros
- Provides you extra customization choices than Astra.
- Nicely documented.
- Excessive web page loading pace.
- Reasonably priced pricing.
Cons
- Doesn’t have an unlimited pre-made templates library.
Not unlike Astra, GeneratePress doesn’t have a bunch of plans. As a substitute, it comes with a single plan which prices you $49.95. Nevertheless, GeneratePress usually run completely different promotions and low cost provides. So that you may get the theme at a value of $42-$43. 
GeneratePress Pricing Additionally, it comes with all of the premium modules and provides you full entry to the site-library. The theme can be utilized on limitless web sites, and it gives one yr of updates & assist.
Astra vs GeneratePress – Which WordPress Theme is the Best?
Ease of use:
Each theme is really straightforward to use and get started with. All you have to do to get started with these themes is install them and go to the Look section of your WordPress website, where you’ll be able to personalize your site right away. If you’re not using a professional web page builder like Elementor, this is quite beneficial. Furthermore, the finest part about each of those themes is that they use a modular approach.
As a result, all of the linked parameters have been grouped together. This makes customizing every component of the website really straightforward. You can, for example, change the settings, enable or disable particular components, and so on.
Efficiency Astra Vs GeneratePress:
Each of the themes, Astra and GeneratePress, performs exceptionally well. Each one is exceptionally light in weight and has a faster loading speed. Even if you use tools like Pingdom to inspect each of the templates, you’ll notice that they all have similar features. However, when used with a web page builder like Elementor, Generatepress is a little slower than Astra. However, the difference isn’t significant enough to warrant a differentiation.
However, you should be aware that the effectiveness of your website is determined by a variety of things. It contains information such as the web server you’re using, which plugins you’ve installed on your website, and many other details.
So, in this post, I will be comparing GeneratePress and Astra theme especially with regard to using it with page builder plugins like Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi, and others.
| Features | GeneratePress | Astra |
| Number of modules (in premium version) | 15 | 16 |
| Pricing | $49.95/year | $59/year |
| Renewal offer | 40% off on renewal | 20% off on renewal |
| Enable/disable modules | yes | yes |
Characteristics of Astra
Astra takes pride in being a one-stop theme for all of your requirements. The developers have worked hard to add a variety of important features to it, including a new redesign of the customizer with the 2.0 version. Here are some of the distinguishing characteristics:
- Integration between LearnDash and LifterLMS
- Integration of Digital Downloads Made Simple
- a large collection of demo sites
- Customizer that is quick and well-organized
- Megamenu
- White-label
- Excellent connectivity with Elementor and other page builders
- Unique Features of GeneratePress
- GeneratePress, on the other hand, isn’t very concerned in winning in terms of these features.
Its developers’ aim is to keep things simple, giving you only the tools you need to create your site distinctively and beautiful. Furthermore, Tom (the theme’s creator) wants GeneratePress to be very robust and compatible with as many external plugins as possible, as long as those plugins follow the best WordPress coding practices.
- As a result, GP sacrifices distinctive features in favor of compatibility and top-notch performance.
- GeneratePress currently has the following standout features:
- A micro page builder called Sections
- Code that is stable, tidy, and optimized
- Elements, which make it simple to add custom headers, layouts, and hooks to your site.
- There are a lot of hooks and filters.
- Unparalleled assistance
- Astra is the winner. The theme’s premium edition includes additional features than the free version.
Customization:
On the subject of customization once more, each of the themes has fairly related features. Nevertheless, to make it extraordinarily simple for you, let me simply level out the distinction that each of those themes has:
GenratePress
- With the GeneratePress theme, the cell header possibility will provide help to customize the alignment of components, paddings, and different settings.
- You’ll be able to set completely different web page headers for particular person pages.
- You may make your web page header clear, add video or picture within the background, and so forth.
- It additionally provides you a choice to handle your put up or web page headers.
- You may as well customize your footer, footer structure, set customized textual content, and so forth.
Astra
- With Astra, it is possible for you to to decide on between saver accessible footer widget layouts and set customized textual content.
- Astra provides you with completely different widget areas relying on the website template you select.
- Astra is extraordinarily versatile relating to altering the coloration and typography of each component in your web site.
Website Templates That Have Already Been Built
Each theme comes with pre-made website templates. In comparison to GeneratePress, however, Astra has a larger website collection. Additionally, installing pre-made templates on Astra is a breeze. You simply need to install a free plugin, and the template will be imported right away. The templates, on the other hand, were created for Astra’s professional themes.
As a result, if you plan to utilize the free version of the theme, it might not operate properly. GeneratePress, on the other hand, includes a superior website library. The library, though, isn’t as large as Astra’s. It does, however, contain high-quality themes. GeneratePress also has themes for Elementor, Beaver Builder, Gutenberg, and Brizy, as well as other web page builders.
Developer Options:
Each of Astra and GeneratePress is exceptionally developer-friendly. These themes were created with non-coders in mind, and indeed, you do not need to touch the code to create a fantastic website. If you’re proficient with CSS, however, each of the themes has a CSS section where you can add CSS and modify your website. There’s also the option of adding hooks for more extensive customization.
In addition, under the theme options, you have the option of importing and exporting. As a result, you can easily import and export your customized theme to your consumer website or several websites. Even if you want to make a child theme, each of the themes will help you. So it doesn’t matter if you’re a seasoned developer or a novice, each of the templates is suitable for use.
Integration with WooCommerce
If you want to start a web-based store, any of the themes would be ideal. They both come with WooCommerce integration support and a web-based store template. However, if I compare the two, I’d say Astra is a little more adaptable and customizable than GeneratePress. Furthermore, Astra offers more eCommerce designs than Generatepress. At the end of the day, though, GeneratePress also works exceptionally well with WooCommerce and other eCommerce plugins.
Support and documentation
Finally, let’s talk about the assistance and documentation. Each theme provides you with high-priority assistance, and you’ll be able to submit a ticket to have your query answered. Generatepress, on the other hand, has a large database that may assist you to design your website right away. It contains thorough information on all of the customization options. Astra, on the other hand, has its own database and gives extensive documentation. As a result, getting started with any of the themes will not be a problem for you.
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Astra vs GeneratePress – Quick Summary
GeneratePress and Astra are popular for a reason: they’re both fantastic WordPress themes with which you can’t go wrong. In general, Astra is slightly “better” than GeneratePress. There are more integrations, starter sites, customization possibilities, and so on. Is that to say it’s better? Not always, to be sure. It doesn’t matter if Astra has additional beginner sites if you like GeneratePress’s starter site because you just need that single template.
Similarly, if you don’t use WooCommerce, the fact that Astra has a somewhat more thorough WooCommerce integration is irrelevant.
GeneratePress, on the other hand, has a slight performance advantage, which is a significant issue. When it comes to performance, Astra is also fairly decent – it’s only that GeneratePress is a little better. There is no difference in pricing between the premium and standard versions. When it comes to pricing, though, there are two things to keep in mind:
Astra’s free edition is more functional than GeneratePress’s free version. If you’re only going to use the free version of either theme, you’ll probably choose Astra.
To have access to the premium templates, you’ll need to purchase one of Astra’s agency bundles. You should also think about the type of website you’re creating. GeneratePress, for example, maybe the ideal choice for a brochure site or blog, but Astra is likely to be the best choice for a WooCommerce store or online course.
Bottom line: you can’t go wrong with either theme, so you don’t have to be concerned about making a mistake. Instead, simply choose the option that best emphasizes and supports what you’re looking for.
Do you have any remaining concerns with GeneratePress vs Astra? Please post your questions in the comments area!
