Astra Theme Review (Pro) 2026: Is it Worth The Hype?

Since I started blogging in 2012, I’ve had an incredible journey with WordPress themes. From the popular Eleven40 Pro from StudioPress in the early 2010s to Astra Pro by Brainstorm Force, building websites with a WordPress open-source platform is a great feeling.

I have used Astra Pro for some time and have experienced the theme features, functions, and limitations firsthand. Based on this experience, it is time to write a detailed review of the Astra Pro theme. 

So, in today’s post, Astra theme review, I will show you why over a million people loved it, why it’s so popular, and why it is a strong competitor to Kadence, Divi, Elementor, GeneratePress, etc.

You will also learn about the free Astra theme and why you should consider buying the Astra Pro plugin to enhance your website design with more features and control. 

But just in case you’re new to digital marketing, let’s begin with the obvious question. 

Astra Pro Theme

Looking for an in-depth Astra Pro theme review? Discover its powerful features, customization options, and performance benefits, making it a favorite among WordPress users. Find out if Astra Pro is the right choice for your website.

Price: 69

Price Currency: USD

Operating System: WordPress

Application Category: WordPress Theme

Editor's Rating:
4.73

What is Astra Theme?

Astra is a lightweight, free WordPress theme that is flexible, fast-loading, mobile-responsive, and offers endless customization options. 

Over 1 million active downloads, a 5k+ five-star rating, and good customer support make Astra the most downloaded non-native WordPress theme ever. 

It integrates deeply with other popular WordPress platforms, including WooCommerce, LearnDash, Sensei LMS, Easy Digital Downloads, and LifterLMS.

Astra themes can be used to build portfolios, eCommerce stores, personal blogs, affiliate sites, business websites, and more. 

It is SEO-optimized and includes built-in Schema.org integration. The template-based theme is compatible with AMP technology and most page builders, including Elementor, Visual Composer, Beaver Builder, Gutenberg, and Brizy. 

The Astra theme offers customizable, free starter or predesigned templates for most industries. With these starter templates, you can build incredible web pages in minutes without coding. 

Now that we’ve understood the Astra theme, let’s review the Astra WordPress theme properly. 

Before we review the WordPress Astra Theme, check out how to access the Astra Pro plugin’s 1-year legal license with premium support for free. (Hint: I accessed Astra Pro using the method described in that post.)

Getting Started With Astra Theme

Downloading the Astra theme is straightforward. 

You can download it directly from wordpress.org or via your WordPress admin theme area. You could also download Astra as a zip file from the official WP Astra website. 

You’re good to go with the Astra theme, whichever way you prefer. 

However, the free version has limited access to support and design customization. Unless you purchase the Pro add-on, you also have limited access to design elements, support, and theme control.

This post will explore the design capabilities of the Astra Pro plugin and the features of the free Astra theme. But first, let’s explore the customization possibilities in the Astra theme straight out of the box. 

Astra Theme Customization 

Note that my review of the Astra theme is based on version 4.2.1, the latest update I wrote. Before buying, you can check the most recent theme version on the changelog page.

With that out of the way, let’s jump in.

Astra Theme Customizer

The Astra theme customizer lets you control most aspects of your website’s design. You can tweak all design settings and site layouts, from the header, single post, and archive pages to the footer. 

The theme customizer has General and Design tabs for features that give the site structure and aesthetic designs. 

The General tab is where you define structures, while the Design tab lets you customize elements such as font size, site color, spacing, margins, post meta info, padding, etc.

The available customizer features/settings depend on whether you use the free Astra theme or the Pro plugin. 

For example, the features to set the author info box, turn off single post navigation links, auto-load previous posts, and enable social share buttons are pro features. 

As with all WordPress themes, changes you make in the customizer are previewed in real-time in the content area. Overall, the customizer is easier to use, and navigating and finding features is painless. 

Astra Starter Templates

One of the beauties of Astra’s theme is the starter templates, which allow anyone to design a fantastic website quickly and with less effort. 

As of now, Astra has over 240 starters who predesign website templates for most industries. These templates are designed with page builders like Elementor, Brizy, Beaver Builder, and Gutenberg, using the Astra theme. 

To install the starter templates, ensure the Astra theme is active on your website. Next, go to your WordPress admin area, hover over Astra> dashboard>, and click Starter Templates from the tab. Next, click Install & Activate on the pop-up box. 

After installing the starter templates, you can search for your favorite theme by industry and the corresponding page builder. 

Here, I search for a theme suitable for a personal blogger website and design using the Elementor page builder plugin.

After selecting a theme, I need to enter the website logo or decide to do it later. 

Next, I must customize the website color or pick from the preset color scheme and font. Whatever you do here is not set in stone. You can change and customize your design later.  

In the next step, enter some info about yourself, like your name, website design experience level, email, and whether you’re designing for yourself or a third party. 

Review the page’s settings, including importing demo content and widgets, installing required plugins, setting global customizer settings, and deciding whether to share sensitive data with Brainstorm Force for development. 

Once you’re through, click “Submit & Build My Website,” and Astra will start building your website. This process should take one to three minutes maximum. 

You will receive this message and can begin customizing your website.

Astra will install all required plugins to edit and customize your starter templates, depending on the page builder plugin. In this case, my starter website was built with Elementor, so I used its drag-and-drop editor to design my page.

The Elementor plugin is preinstalled along with the starter theme I installed.

Enjoy the ride from here and bring your fantastic website to life.

A critical piece of advice is to consider demo content, widgets, and pages imported with a starter theme. Your theme will mostly import the contact, About, and Home pages.

You’ll need to edit these pages with your content and information and customize their appearance to fit your website image and brand voice.

Astra Theme Performance 

Astra is built to deliver fast load times, a maximum user experience, responsive web pages, and optimized performance. 

It has a built-in feature for hosting Google Fonts locally. Enabling this feature will download Google Fonts to your host server, reducing the number of HTTP requests for third-party resources and loading them faster for site visitors. 

Astra’s theme performance also includes Preloading local web fonts, which makes the fonts load quickly while the browser downloads the page’s HTML. 

These features come with the free WP Astra theme. 

Though your website’s performance with the Astra theme will depend on your website’s resources, Astra provides a solid foundation for making your website incredibly fast. 

Astra theme uses Vanilla JavaScript to code website interactive elements instead of JQuery. JQuery is known to be render-blocking and negatively impact website performance.

Vanilla JavaScript, which is much faster and improves website performance, enables developers to write code without additional frameworks or libraries such as JS, React, jQuery, and Vue.

Additionally, the Astra theme is very lightweight, with less than 50 KB and eight requests out of the box on a clean WordPress blog installation; your website is guaranteed to load extremely fast.

Astra Site Layout 

Site layout is an essential factor for most users when choosing WordPress themes. 

You want a WordPress theme that lets you display content in prominent places and gives you control over where you place it and how your site is structured.

In the Astra theme single post/page sidebar layout setting, you can choose content/sidebar, sidebar/content, or no sidebar. Each container layout can be customized to fit your design mission perfectly.

For example, you can select options for the site’s single-post container layout: default, standard, full width, or narrow. Then select the container style to unbox, boxed, or default. 

In the sidebar section, Astra lets you choose a boxed, unboxed, or default sidebar style, and you can define the content width in its container. 

Defining the content area width is available for single posts on a blog page. These features allow you to customize users’ reading experience. 

You can set the content area to narrow, wide, default, or custom widths, giving users unique and improved reading experiences across your pages.

However, the Astra theme does not offer an option for a sidebar/content/sidebar page in a single-post layout. This means you can not have a right and left sidebar on a single post layout with the content area in the middle of the page.

This is a feature I wish to see in subsequent significant updates to the Astra theme.

After selecting your option in the General tab’s single post or site layout, you can switch to the Design tab to customize elements such as color, padding, font, margins, background color, border radius, icon size, spacing, etc.

Using Astra Pro, you can create custom site layouts, such as Masonry (for archives pages), fluid and Grid layouts, blog content, and advanced header and footer customization. 

Also, Astra Pro lets you add HTML codes, shortcodes, and width sections to the header and footer. And create a mobile hamburger menu, flyout header, breakpoints, dropdown menu, and more. 

I discussed header and footer styling in the next section. 

Header/Footer Builder

Designing attractive headers and footers in the WP Astra theme is effortless. 

Astra lets you set the primary header that displays across the site, different headers for mobile devices, header logos for mobile and desktop, and header logos for retina devices.

You can set different header types, such as a sticky header, a transparent header design, a mobile header with a hamburger menu, and an off-canvas header. Astra also lets you set the visibility status for the site title, logo, and inline site tile and logo.

The visibility option disables header and footer elements on specific devices while allowing them to be displayed on other devices.

The Astra header and footer allow you to add elements to the tri-layer templates section settings. 

Each section/layer can be created into multiple columns, allowing you to add several elements to the footer and header, provided you consider spacing. 

To add elements to the footer or header sections, hover your mouse on an area to reveal the + sign, click it, and make your selection from the available pop-up widgets panel. 

To open the settings panel for a section/layer in the footer or header, click the gear icon to reveal the General and Design tabs.  

However, with the Astra Pro plugin, you can do more with your site header and footer sections. 

Astra Pro allows you to create custom content or page layouts, such as page headers, footers, Hooks, page content, and 404 pages. The features are available on the Astra Pro custom layout page.

You can create custom headers or footers that appear only in specific post types, or create content that injects into the content body based on conditions, like after a particular heading or block of text. 

You will also need the Astra Hook plugin to add Google Analytics and other custom and third-party code to your theme’s header, footer, and body. The Hook plugin is also accessible to free Astra theme users.

Astra Page Level Setting Options

Astra provides page-level settings and customization for individual posts or pages, overriding the default or global customizer setting. 

A new Astra setting icon appears at the top when you create your posts or pages in the WordPress editor. 

Click the icon to reveal the setting options. Within the settings panel, you can define a new page layout for the current post or page and turn off on-page elements such as the header, footer, and banner area.

You can override the default customizer page layout setting, choose between no sidebar, right or left sidebar, and even define the sidebar style – default, unboxed, and boxed. 

Moreover, the panel lets you configure advanced settings for page elements, such as turning off the primary and mobile headers and defining transparent and sticky header settings for the current page. 

Assuming you’ve set up custom page headers (Pro features) for this post or page, you can select one here to accompany it when you hit the publish button.

This Astra page-level control also lets you set the page template or canvas for building with page builders like Elementor, Brizy, Beaver Builder, and Divi. 

Astra Global Settings

WP Astra theme, like any other WordPress theme, allows you to set global or sitewide settings. 

In its global settings panel, you can control sitewide customization for typography, the up-scroll button, Misc, button styles, hyperlink color, H tags, containers and site layouts, Accessibility, and Block editor global padding. 

You can access basic header and footer features in the Global settings panel. 

To access this option, hover your mouse on an element in the header section to reveal the small edit button. This action will open the corresponding setting panel to design the header.

You can add elements to your website header section and customize it in the General and Design tab.

Typography

The WP Astra theme typography is another significant setting in the Global settings panel. 

Typography can make or break your site’s user experience (UX), so consider the web font style, color, and size you choose for your website.

Astra lets you pick a global web font for body content and heading tags. 

First, you can choose from a preset heading and body content web font style, automatically setting the global typography. As you hover over a font style, Astra reveals the font names (heading/body fonts) so you can better understand what you’re doing. 

Moreover, you can customize the base font for your selection, giving you more control over sitewide typography. 

Astra also lets you choose your preferred font family and weight, set your preferred sentence case, and configure global font decoration settings. 

Also, Astra has hundreds of Google font typographies in the free and Pro plans, though the Pro has more. Google Fonts is arguably the largest free resource for web fonts (800+); the Astra Pro is built in with all of them. 

Astra Pro Support 

Based on personal experience, the team behind the Astra theme (Brainstorm Force) offers excellent support services for premium customers.

I have engaged the support team on several occasions and received timely, helpful responses each time. 

I had to seek advice on resolving the Astra theme header section, which caused a high Cumulative Layout Shift in PSI. 

Not only did the support rep provide helpful advice, but he also logged into my site (with my consent) to troubleshoot the problem. When we couldn’t resolve the issue, he also offered another option, showing how helpful and supportive the Astra rep can be.

Read the content in the email image below.

That was indeed premium support. 

Beyond engaging support reps, Astra offers an extensive help document library, video tutorials, hundreds of blog posts detailing how to get the most out of the Astra theme, and many troubleshooting guides.

Astra provides support via ticketing, which you can submit by logging into your Brainstorm Force user account. 

Astra Pro Pricing

Suppose you have followed through with this Astra Theme Review. In that case, the free version has significant design and control limitations, making it nearly impossible to create the website design of your dreams. 

If you need only a fast, lightweight WordPress theme with basic to decent features, Astra Free is sufficient. 

However, consider the Astra Pro plugin to take control, customize your website to the next level, and design a unique website. 

The Astra Pro license starts at $47 for annual billing, the Essential Bundle license costs $137 for 12-month billing, and the Growth Bundle is offered at $187 for a 12-month license. 

You can save money by purchasing a lifetime license for any plan, which gives you lifetime access to support, features, and product updates. 

If you’re considering getting the Astra Pro plugin, here are some reasons to consider it, especially if you want to build a unique, powerful website design that represents your brand identity.

• Built-in social sharing functions.
• Custom layout and hooks for creating custom content.
• Create page headers for different post types.
• More control over customizations.
• White-labeling features for web development agencies. 
• Access to premium customer support.
• More integration with other WordPress tools, like LearnDash, Elementor, and Easy Digital Downloads.

Astra Pros and Cons

As with all themes, Astra has pros and cons. You should know some of these upfront before purchasing the Pro plugin.

Alternative Free Theme to Astra

If you only want to use the Astra theme for free without considering buying the Pro plugin, I suggest you get the free WP Kadence theme instead. 

Comparing the free features in both Kadence and Astra, Kadence comes out on top. 

Several advanced features in premium themes like Astra and GeneratePress are free in WP Kadence. 

For example, Kadence gives more control and flexibility over the blog archive page and its content layout display.

There are options to display archive content in columns or a grid, set the featured image size and aspect ratio, and customize the post title and content elements. 

Compared with Astra Free, customizing the archive blog content layout, elements, and featured images is only possible with the Astra Pro add-on plugin.

Kadence themes also offer more customization options for single-post layouts, such as customizing post meta info, adding post-last updates, and adding an author image to the page title section. 

You can check out WP Kadence for free on the developer website, or get the Astra Pro plugin. Both Astra and Kadence are pretty fast and lightweight WordPress themes.

FAQs

Conclusion…Astra Theme Review

Astra theme is one of the best and most downloaded WordPress themes. The free version offers customization features that allow anyone to build unique websites without touching code or knowing HTML.

However, after discussing the Pro features not found in the free theme in this WP Astra WordPress theme review, you might consider buying the Astra Pro plugin, which offers more customization, features, control, and flexibility for designing incredible web pages quickly. 

Also, if you need advanced features and ecommerce integrations, getting the Astra Pro makes more sense and is cost-effective.