- What is Divi?
- What is Astra?
- Divi vs Astra in Pricing
- Astra pricing
- Divi pricing
- Divi vs Astra in Features
- Divi Features
- Astra Features
- Divi vs Astra in Page Builders
- Divi Page Builders
- Astra Page Builders
- Divi vs Astra in Performance
- Page Load Speed
- Importing Starter Templates
- Divi vs Astra in Customization
- Divi in customization
- Astra in customization
- Conclusion
WordPress is the World’s largest Content Management System(CMS) Platform powering over 450 million websites. That said, Divi and Astra are the platform’s most popular and used themes. In this post I will highlight how each will battle for the crown( Divi vs Astra) and become king of WordPress.
The website space is evolving every day and these two themes are having an impact either directly or indirectly. Whichever space you are in be it blogging, E-Commerce, LMS (Learning Management System), Corporate Websites etc. Without further ado, let’s get right into it!
What is Divi?
Divi is a theme developed for WordPress by Elegant Themes and it is their flagship product. It facilitates development of websites by acting as a theme and a page-builder. Divi has a drag and drop builder thus enabling both beginners and experienced professionals develop amazing websites for themselves and clients. It is very popular with over 900,000+ installations.
What is Astra?
Astra is a WordPress theme developed by The Brainstorm force. It is the fastest, lightweight ,customizable and free theme. Astra comes with over 100+ demo websites and 500,000+ installs . The theme can handle almost any type of website such as E-Commerce, Blog , Corporate websites and so much more.
Divi vs Astra in Pricing
Astra pricing
Astra Pro prices are of 2 types mainly annual and lifetime. The annual plan starts at $47 to $187 while the lifetime plan starts at $227 to $937 with each coming with an upgrade of features and offering value to its customers such as advanced header builder, customizable sidebar, blog layouts and so much more.
Divi pricing
Divi previously had only annual pricings but they have upgraded their pricing plans to include both annual and lifetime. The annual price is $89 and $249 for lifetime. Exciting features include: product updates, premium support, risk-free guarantee and so much more depending on the package you have selected.
Divi vs Astra in Features
Divi Features
Divi has over 270+ different layout packs that can be customized to suit the different niche websites and can be customized. These are commonly known as demo websites.
It has a built-in drag and drop page builder that customizes both pages and blog posts. This is very handy as it does not require third party apps wen you are using Divi.
Templates, headers, footers and blog layouts can be customized using Divi using a drag and drop page builder. This enables Divi users to edit global settings and make changes throughout your website.
Divi has its own page builder that was designed for theme itself thus making it more user friendly to beginners who have no knowledge on coding. More often than not customers prefer Divi to WordPress because of this reason.
Astra Features
Astra is compatible with third party apps more as compared to Divi because of its default page builder
It offers over 230+ layout packs that are customizable to build and design your WordPress website and make it a powerhouse.
The theme is very light weight and under 50KB with very minimal JavaScript giving it incredible load time speeds.
Astra is free free when installed on wordpress.org but you need to upgrade to pro for more exciting features.
Woo Commerce Integration and advanced woo setup to help your store be successful online store owner
Page-level settings that enables you to edit page setup settings as well as enable page builders such as Elementor. However, Gutenberg is the default block builder.
Divi vs Astra in Page Builders
Divi Page Builders
This is one of the amazing features that the popular theme has to offer. Divi has a default page builder that as been developed by Elegant Themes. Although, the theme is very famous in the WordPress space, the page builder is what makes it stand out from other themes.
To access Divi, go to your WordPress dashboard then click on Add New
Add the page title and edit your page to have the best on-page SEO (URL, focus key phrase, tags etc).
Click on Use Divi Builder, edit your page content and click on publish.
Astra Page Builders
Astra does not have a default page builder set for its users but works amazingly with third-party page builders such as Elementor and Beaver builder.
Personally, our website uses Astra as the main theme and Elementor as the main page builder. This compatibility is top-tier and works magic when designing stunning websites. You can either import a website demo and customize it to your liking and preference if you are a beginner or build it from scratch.
Divi vs Astra in Performance
The theme of your website can greatly affect the performance of your website and majorly revenue which is not good at all. In this sub-heading, i will highlight various aspects of performance for the two awesome themes.
Page Load Speed
| HTTP REQUESTS | PAGE SIZE | PAGE LOAD SPEED | ||
| Divi | 20 | 395 KB | 0.848s | |
| Astra | 8 | 8 KB | 0.427s |
Astra has concurred Divi on the performance space because Divi has its own page builder making it a bit ‘heavier’. This is one of the reasons users prefer Astra to Dive while choosing a theme for their website.
Importing Starter Templates
This is importing a starter kit from the both themes and testing the performance on a more realistic scenario. This ensures that you get more statistics on the performance.
Elementor was used on Astra in order to balance the scales and ensure that no test was done in favor of the other.
| Page size | HTTP Requests | Median Page Load | |
| Divi | 1.452s MB | 27 | 1.472s |
| Astra | 1.520 MB | 60 | 1.507s |
I think Astra definitely beats Divi when it comes to performance, Performance of a website is very critical as fast websites tends have a lot of benefits such as a high CTR, high google rankings, high revenue earnings through RPM and Ad clicks.
Divi vs Astra in Customization
Divi in customization
Elegant Themes have designed a simple and basic theme customizer for its users. It is not as complex as its nemesis (Astra) but has decent customizing features. For a beginner, it is pretty much ok but for an advanced WordPress developer you might want to consider something else more powerful and complex.
Astra in customization
I think Astra ha displayed its prowess in customization of its websites with more customizer settings such as Woo Commerce, Side bars, Breadcrumbs and so much more. The brainstorm force has developed a customizer that is powerful to build any type of website.
It handles operations swiftly and loads quite fast which is very key for designing powerful websites and awesome websites.
Conclusion
Both Themes have displayed prowess in their respective fields and each have their pros and cons. To help you decide on which theme you can use, here are some questions to help you with the decision:
- Are you a beginner in web development or expert?
- What’s your budget range?
- What type of website are you looking forward to have
- How complex is your website?
- How fast do you want your website to load?
I believe both are great themes but we use Astra to power our website because of Woo Commerce extension and performance. Tell us which theme you use on your website and why you love it. See you in the next article.