Picking the right WordPress theme for your site is crucial and more important than aesthetics. There are various aspects, including speed, ease of use, customization options, and more to take into consideration. And two of the biggest names in the game are Astra and OceanWP.
Both of these WordPress themes offer plenty of customization options, excellent speed, unique designs, and affordable prices. However, due to their similarities, it can be challenging to choose between them.
To avoid any hassle and to give you an easy solution, we’ve compared both these popular themes next to each other, considering various parameters.
By the end of this article, you’ll have an exact comparison of the two themes along with our suggestion so that ultimately you can pick the best theme for your site.
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Without further due, let’s start the battle between OceanWP and Astra.
OceanWP vs Astra: Basic Overview
What is OceanWP?
OceanWP is one of the most popular Themes with over 600,000 installations. It’s an excellent WordPress theme with plenty of in-built functionalities. OceanWP is one of the most generous WordPress themes and is versatile in designs.
To increase the theme’s functionality, it comes with plenty of extensions and add-ons for features such as sticky content, Instagram feeds, popup login, and more.
OceanWP comes with plenty of customization options so you can design your site the way you want without any hassle.
The interface is clean and modern, so OceanWP won’t cause you any trouble if you’re a beginner. The theme comes with a free version, as well as a premium version with additional features.
What is Astra?
Astra is another prevalent WordPress theme with amazing features that will give your site a unique look. This multipurpose theme was built by Brainstorm Force, also known for various plugins, including Addons for Elementor and Beaver Builder.
This performance-optimized site integrates seamlessly with Elementor to give you a unique look and ultimate flexibility. Astra works like a charm with all popular WordPress page builders such as Elementor, Divi, etc.
Moreover, Astra focuses on speed. Their theme would significantly help in boosting the speed of your site. It comes with a free version and a premium version for better features.
Additionally, you can purchase various extensions by Astra to increase the theme’s functionality. Astra integrates with various popular LMS plugins, integrates with WooCommerce, and provides multiple pre-made templates.
Overall, Astra is one of the best picks to consider if you want your site to run blazing-fast with unique designs.
Related Read: Elementor Pro vs Astra Pro
OceanWP and Astra Features Comparison
When judging how good a theme is, it’s crucial to see and analyze the features of each one. Before we dig into OceanWP versus Astra’s comparison, let us go through both the plugins’ features.
OceanWP Key Features
- OceanWP is fully responsive. That means the theme will look good irrespective of the device your user’s login through.
- OceanWP lets you create your designs the way you want. It comes with plenty of customization options, so you can make changes and customize it to fit your needs.
- To save your time and provide you with a quick solution, OceanWP comes with pre-made templates. These templates are further customizable and can be changed easily as per your requirements.
- If you want to set up your E-commerce store, OceanWP might be the right pick. It comes with excellent E-commerce designs to give your store a brand new look.
- All the themes by OceanWP are built with SEO best practices in mind, so you don’t have to worry about lousy SEO performance.
- OceanWP provides support for RTL and can be easily translated into various languages.
Astra Key Features
- Astra Themes comes with plenty of pre-made designs. These designs come in handy to give your site an eye-catching look without doing everything from scratch.
- Astra takes customization to the next level. It lets you customize almost every aspect quickly and easily.
- Astra offers seamless integration with WooCommerce so that you can have a fast, flexible, and unique look for your online store.
- If you are a developer, you will love Astra. It takes customization to the next level with clean and extendable coding.
- Astra follows the best WordPress SEO practices. If you need it, it also comes with the required schema.org markup.
- Astra introduces multiple widgets to your site. For example, you can embed social media icon links through the Astra theme without needing a separate plugin.
Speed & Performance Comparison Between OceanWP and Astra
Performance and speed go hand in hand. The speed of your site plays a vital role in the success of your site. A slow site will eventually lead you to a significant traffic loss and decrease your sales.
Also, poor performance can interrupt your SEO ranking and reduce your conversion rate. Pretty much the exact opposite of what you want.
Therefore, to ensure your site continues to grow, the theme you pick cannot slow down your website. Let us have a look at Astra and OceanWP’s speed.
OceanWP Speed & Performance
OceanWP is a designed-focused theme. That being said, we don’t mean that it will perform poorly or disturbs your site’s performance.
OceanWP ensures that your site does not perform poorly with some unique features, such as the option to disable all the scripts and staples you do not need.
Since your site does not need to load CSS with the unused features and JavaScript, it is a smart way to boost your site’s speed. It proudly claims that it comes with one of the fastest page loading time.
OceanWP is also a lightweight theme; you can expect good speed and performance of your site. Irrespective of the theme you pick, you will continue to receive an excellent speed.
Astra Speed & Performance
Astra is a performance-focused theme. It firmly takes your site to the next level with its performance-oriented features.
It is truly a lightweight theme because it requires less than 50KB compared to other themes that need 100’s of resources.
To boost your performance, Astra comes with JavaScript rather than jQuery. Additionally, Astra is optimized for speed and loads it in less than 0.5 seconds.
They also use the best coding standards to ensure that every piece of code is optimized. Astra also uses the default WordPress data for optimized speed.
Winner: Compared to OceanWP, Astra provides better performance-optimized features and ranks above OceanWP for speed according to our research.
Ease of Use and Website Building
Everyone that’s starting their site looks for a theme that’s easy to install and setup. Even experienced users are looking for a simple theme to install and setup to avoid the hiccups and save time.
Ease of use and setup is a crucial parameter when picking a theme. So we took a look at each of the plugin’s installation, setup, and then interface to determine which is easier to use.
OceanWP Ease of Use
OceanWP’s installation process is quick and straightforward. Once you have installed the theme, the premium plans will not change the themes themselves.
Instead, you get a series of zipped folders for each addon that you will have to install to your site’s plugins folder manually.
Additionally, to import the demo sites, you can do it by installing demo import extensions. To manage your plugins, themes, and designs, you get ThemePanel.
However, the panel can be too overwhelming for beginners because there are a ton of options available by OceanWP.
The possibilities are well organized; therefore, once you learn and understand the interface of OceanWP, you’ll get more comfortable using OceanWP.
Astra Ease of Use
Astra is extremely simple to download and install. Unlike other themes, you do not need to install the free version first.
You can install the theme by uploading a Zip file to your site directly either through FTP or through the dashboard, whichever method is convenient for you.
The setup of Astra when importing demo sites can be lengthy. However, you do not need to be tech-savvy to complete it. The interface of Astra is clean and modern.
The appearance of the dashboard is impressive, and you won’t find it challenging to navigate through the options. Astra’s organization is more streamlined than OceanWP, making it easier for beginners to get started immediately.
Winner: Astra takes the lead in this round due to its easy to use interface.
Premade Layout and Templates
Not all website owners are designers. Investing your money to hire a web designer is great, but if you can do it on your own, do you need one?
Additionally, users on a budget and beginners need a quick and easy solution without the extra step of hiring a designer.
Your theme must have pre-made designs and layouts to save your time and money. Fortunately, OceanWP and Astra come with plenty of pre-made designs and layouts that you can easily import and tweak as per your requirements.
Let us have a closer look at the templates and designs.
OceanWP Templates
OceanWP contains an extensive library of pre-made designs. The theme has over 75+ ready-made designs, with 13 designs available in the free version.
OceanWP has designs for various niches and styles; however, Astra’s designs are more versatile than OceanWP.
Most of the designs are built with the Elementor page builder. If you are using another page builder, you might want to reconsider using OceanWP.
This theme has various layouts from weddings to bakery sites. These pre-made designs can be easily imported and customized.
When we talk about customization, OceanWP excels in this area; you can customize your site entirely to your needs without any trouble. However, the quality of designs offered by OceanWP falls short compared to Astra.
Astra Templates
Astra has one of the largest libraries of pre-made templates made with Astra and multiple page builders. Also known as demo sites, the designs of each template are commendable.
If you are using the free version, you get access to 30 free pre-designed templates, and the premium version grants you access to over 75+ pre-made designs.
Astra ensures that you save your time by giving you an excellent ready-made template rather than building everything from scratch.
When you go to the library of templates, you will see designs for every kind of niche. Whether you own a pet care site or WooCommerce, Astra covers all the niches.
Additionally, you can quickly navigate the designs through the search bar. The designs are conversion-optimized and can be further customized according to your needs to create a site the way you want.
You can browse through the entire collection and find the right type of design within a few minutes.
Winner: Both themes come with equal templates. However, Astra offers more free templates than OceanWP. Astra takes the win of this round due to its excellent quality of designs.
OceanWP and Astra Customization Options
Your WordPress theme must provide you various customization options. Although you get plenty of pre-made designed layouts by both the themes, you still want your site to look the way you want to rather than feeling boxed in with design forced on you.
Both themes give you detailed options in the WordPress customizer to handle your site’s appearance. The main Astra theme page comes with a landing page that further directs you to the WordPress customizer.
Also, of note, Astra gives you control over various aspects of your designs, including the colors and typography.
On the other hand, OceanWP gives the ultimate customization options. The customization options are above any WordPress themes.
We strongly lean toward OceanWP when it comes to customization because you get better control over your site’s appearance.
Winner: Astra and OceanWP both give you plenty of customization options. However, OceanWP takes the lead in this round because it offers better and more customization options.
Plugins and Extensions
Plugins and extensions are essential to enhance the functionality of your site. Both themes provide various free and premium extensions. Let us have a more in-depth look at what both of them provide.
OceanWP
OceanWP gives you various extensions such as popup login to embed login/register form anywhere on your site, Instagram to fetch your feed, and Fullscreen extensions to create a fullscreen and scrolling site.
Along with Stick Anything plugin to stick anything on your site quickly, and much more. These extensions have you covered from beginner to developer.
Astra
Astra provides various premium extensions in the Agency Bundle. With this plan, you get multiple add-ons such as a call to action, schema markup plugin, add-ons for themes, and add-ons for specific page builder plugin.
Additionally, Astra provides free extensions like customizer research, import/export customizer settings, customizer reset, etc.
Winner: OceanWP and Astra both come with various plugins and extensions. So this round is a tie between the themes.
WooCommerce Compatibility
If you own an online store, especially on WooCommerce, you may want to look for a theme that integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce.
Since an online store’s interface is different from the usual sites, you want a theme that gives your customers a pleasing shopping experience.
OceanWP and Astra integrate perfectly with WooCommerce. Both themes provide WooCommerce-specific features such as shopping cart functionality, controlling product pages, and more.
Let us compare the WooCommerce features and pick a winner.
OceanWP Compatibility
OceanWP comes with exceptional built-in WooCommerce features for its themes, so you do not need to install separate plugins.
OceanWP has teamed up with some of the best marketers in the business to bring you all the best WooCommerce features.
Some of the key features of WooCommerce by OceanWP are:
- Native Cart Popups
- Product quick review
- Floating ‘add to cart’ bar
- Dropdown cart
- Filter widgets and dedicated WooCommerce designs
- Multi-step and distraction-free checkout options
- Off-canvas menu for filters and product search
Astra Compatibility
Astra, on the other hand, does not stay back when it comes to WooCommerce features.
Some of the best WooCommerce features by Astra are:
- A Bubble indicator for sale products
- Gallery options to display products on your page
- Quick view to have a look at the product without opening it
- Dropdown cart
- Off-Canvas bar on your site
- Infinite scroll option to load all the products on a single page
- Grid settings to display your products in a grid layout
Winner: Both plugins come with various customization options, and you do not need to add additional plugins to enhance the features. Therefore, this round is a tie between OceanWP and Astra.
Support and Documentation
No matter how easy to use your theme is, there will always be some obstacles. That makes having excellent and reliable customer support by your side so important.
Let’s see what kind of support and documentation options are available with OceanWP and Astra.
OceanWP Support & Documentation
All the plans come with one year of support and updates. Additionally, the primary way to get help from OceanWP is by the ticketing system. If you want the best support by your side, OceanWP comes with a priority support plan at an extra cost.
If you can solve issues by reading articles, you will be happy to go through the documentation section of OceanWP. It comes with a documentation section that covers all the critical problems you might face. However, it is not as comprehensive as Astra.
Astra Support & Documentation
Astra takes support seriously. One of the reasons why we adore Astra is its support and documentation. The quickest way to get help from Astra is to request a ticket.
Additionally, Astra comes with one of the best knowledgebase sections. There are plenty of tutorials to guide you through every step.
The documentation and knowledgebase section covers almost every aspect of designing and other crucial factors.
If that’s not enough, you can also join the Astra community, where you can help each other and give your valuable feedback.
Winner: Both themes provide support and documentation. However, Astra focuses more on support and comes with excellent knowledgebase. Therefore, Astra wins the round.
Pricing Battle Between OceanWP and Astra
Of course, pricing plays a crucial role in building your site. There are plenty of investments when making a site, but picking a theme is vital to your site’s success as it shapes your site’s design and looks.
You do not want to overspend on a theme that does not come with all the features, and at the same time, you do not want to hold back any chance to have the best theme.
To ensure you get the right theme at the right price, let us dig the pricing of both themes.
Note: Both the themes come with a free version. If you want a simple solution, you might want to pick the free version. However, the free version lacks all the excellent features. We recommend choosing the premium plans to get the best of both the themes.
OceanWP Pricing Plans
OceanWP provides three pricing plans. All the plans come with eight free extensions, 13 premium extensions, 60 pro demos, and more.
- Personal: The plan is ideal for one site and states at $39.
- Business: The business plan is the most popular OceanWP plan. It states at $79 and is suitable for three websites.
- Agency: The AGency Bundle is suitable for up to 25 websites and states at $129.
All the plans by OceanWP are backed by 14 days money-back guarantee to ensure that you have a risk-free purchase. OceanWP also gives you a chance to purchase the extensions individually.
However, we recommend picking OceanWP Extensions Bundle as it offers value for money.
Astra Pricing Plans
The free version of Astra comes with limited layouts and flexibility. Upgrading to the premium version grants access to the most extensive layouts library and takes customization to the next level.
Astra comes with three premium version. They are:
- Astra Pro: the plan states at $47. The plan comes with unlimited website usage, excellent support, more than 20+ starter templates, and more. If you are a beginner, the Astra Pro plan is an ideal solution for your site.
- Mini Agency Bundle: The plan states at $169. The plan includes all the features of Astra Pro and comes with 55+ starter templates, extensive training, WP Portfolio plugin, and more. If you own multiple sites and need a more advanced solution, Mini Agency Bundle is ideal for you.
- Agency Bundle: Agency Bundle is an ideal solution for large business owners that states at $249. The plan comes with all the Mini agency bundle features and gives you access to covert Pro plugin, schema pro plugin, SkillJet Academy, and more.
Like OceanWP, all your plans are backed by a 14-day money-back guarantee.
Winner: The winner depends on your needs. However, if we go by a cheaper option, OceanWP wins the round.
OceanWP vs Astra: The Final Winner
OceanWP and Astra are two of the most robust themes and as you can see from this article, comparing the best themes against each other is a challenging task.
Both themes come with excellent features and affordable plans to create the best-looking sites. OceanWP is perfect for you if you own a large site with millions of users and need a quick and cheap solution.
Additionally, if you like to take more control over your site with plenty of customization options, we recommend picking OceanWP.
Astra, on the other hand, is perfect if you are a beginner who needs the best designs for your site. Astra also is the clear winner in support, so you might want to consider Astra if you need a simple solution with the best designing options and premade layouts.
No matter which theme you pick, you will be able to create a unique and speed-optimized site quickly. We hope you liked our article. Let us know which theme are you going within the comment section below.
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