Astra vs GeneratePress Vs OceanWP – Which Is The Best WordPress Theme?

Astra, GeneratePress, and OceanWP are all amazing and popular WordPress themes in 2019 that have the same selling points.

They’re all marketed on being lightweight, fast and best to use with Page builders like Elementor, Divi and Thrive Themes.

You’re picking between 3 themes that are in the top 0.1% of WordPress themes out there. But in this article, I’ll share why I prefer Astra over GeneratePress or OceanWP and let you come to your own conclusions to fit your needs (Also, I have a discount code for Astra Pro 🙂 !)

Click to Get 10% Off Astra Now Code: “VIP10OFF”

Astra vs GeneratePress vs OceanWP

Before we dive into the differences and what separates Astra, GeneratePress, and OceanWP, let’s dive a little into each WordPress Theme.

Astra is a lightweight WordPress Theme that was released in 2017 by Brainstorm Force, the company that for the past 9 years have been making great WordPress products like

• Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg
• Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder
• Ultimate Addons for Elementor
• Convert Pro
• Schema Pro
• WP Portfolio

In just 2 years, Astra has more than 300,000 product downloads and is loved by many and has almost 2000 5-star reviews in just 2 years. That’s bloody insane! 

To put it into comparison, GeneratePress has only 821 5-star reviews as I type this.

GeneratePress one the other hand is one of the world’s leading WordPress theme that lets you build a beautiful custom website using the simple drag-and-drop feature.

According to WordPress.org, GeneratePress is active on over 100K sites and has also managed to maintain an incredible 5-star rating on over 700 reviews!

GeneratePress’s Founder Tom is one of the most down to earth and helpful guy who’s contributed a lot to the WordPress community. In fact, if you go to GeneratePress documentation you will see the amount of work he has put in to create a repository of helpful documentation that is enough to make you well acclimatized with GeneratePress.

OceanWP is a completely free WordPress theme and in just 3 years it’s grown to be one of the most popular free WordPress themes. The free theme of the theme is activated on more than 400,000 websites and has a 5-star rating!

Out of the 2486 reviews (at the time of writing) only 33 are not 5-stars reviews. WOW!

That’s a 5-star approval rating of 99.986%!

Astra vs GeneratePress vs OceanWP: User Interface

Astra, GeneratePress, and OceanWP are all themes at the top of the industry when it comes to ease of use and the user interface.

GeneratePress simply uses the WordPress Customizer for its customizations. This is really convenient because you’ll be able to see the changes you make in real-time! This is the same that bloated visual pages builders use and is termed as WYSIWYG or What you see are what you get.

The free version of GeneratePress also gives you decent options, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize pretty much everything about your site in no time.

For example, if you go into the Layout area, you can configure detailed settings for your:

• Header – Let’s you can move your header around and change its styling
• Navigation – GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menu options and more
• Sidebar layout – Whether you want to use one or two sidebars or none.
• Blog post layout – Deals with featured image size, metadata, etc.
• Footer layout – like how many widgets to be included, etc

The Astra Pro Theme comes with a great modular editing approach that allows you to edit everything.

Both themes allow you to easily modify every aspect of your site without having to touch a single time of code ever

The OceanWP theme has an easy to use user interface as well! Compared to GeneratePress and Astra, OceanWP has the most customization options in the free version out of all the 3 things. Making it the best option if you can’t afford a theme.

Astra vs GeneratePress vs OceanWP: Speed & Performance

The one thing that makes GeneratePress, Astra, and OceanWP stand out from every single WordPress theme out there is one speed and performance. All 3 of them are fast, like fast beyond belief.

The GeneratPress theme and Astra Theme are both designed to be lightweight and fast and made for speed. They’re the most lightweight themes available in the market and offers unmatched performance. A fresh install of WordPress with Astra or GeneratePress loads in less than 0.5 seconds!

Both of them are kinda on par when it comes to speed, and considering that they’re both at the top, the difference is negligible.

OceanWP is a little heavier than Astra or GeneratePress with double the number of requests however, it still loads under 1s, which isn’t as good as Astra or GeneratePress but is still amazing.

Astra vs GeneratePress vs OceanWP: Developer Friendly

Astra, GeneratePress, and OceanWP are all 3 design designed to be used by “normies” like you and me who don’t know how to code.

However they’re also designed with developers in mind.

The Astra Pro theme comes with abilities to add hooks and filters, which is great functionality for developers to extend the functionality of the theme without touching the base code.

GeneratePress being built by Tom who’s very active in the WordPress community keep developers in mind with features like the ability to create child themes, custom CSS section and everything else you would need.

While OceanWP is easy to modify for beginners, it also has a lot of functionality for developers to add hooks and modify the theme to fit their needs.

Astra vs GeneratePress vs OceanWP: Integration & Compatibility

Astra Pro was designed from the ground-up to be perfectly compatible with popular page builder plugins like Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi, Thrive Architect and others. Astra also offers dedicated support for plugins like Learndash, making it the best choice for course creators.

GeneratePress, on the other hand, is the go-to theme for most of the online marketing professionals to use with page builders as it’s been around for a while.

Even Cyrus, the ex-head of SEO at Moz, considers GeneratePress is his go-to Theme to use with Page Builders!

My Current WordPress Stack (for the non-dev):
1. Theme = GeneratePress https://t.co/IvnQmUJisd
2. Page Builder = Elementor https://t.co/hbhCo4fP4p
3. Hosting = @wpengine (also @kinsta)
4. Cloudflare

— Cyrus (@CyrusShepard) June 14, 2018

However, Astra is slowly becoming more popular as it’s the new guys on the block that’s gaining traction.

I’ll check out Astra – thanks.

— Cyrus (@CyrusShepard) June 15, 2018

Honestly, when it comes to using a WordPress theme with a page builder, both GeneratePress and Astra are a no brainer.

One upside Astra has over GeneratePress is that the Brainstorm Force team behind Astra have build plugin for page builders like Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder and Ultimate Addons for Elementor and you can get them included with the agency bundle of Astra.

Astra vs GeneratePress vs OceanWP: Documentation & Updates

As mentioned in the intro Tom has contributed a lot to the WordPress community and the GeneratePress documentation is massive! Tom has created a massive repository of helpful documentation that is enough to make you well acclimatized with GeneratePress.

There’s also a ton of videos if you’re interested in a more visual approach towards learning. My point is he’s someone like you who’s dedicated his time towards contributing real value to the WordPress community.

Astra has a big Documentation repository as well but not as big and vast as GeneratePress however, it’s more than enough.

GeneratePress is kinda conservative when it comes to updates and isn’t on the cutting edge, Tom isn’t a huge fan of page builders and doesn’t change things with GeneratePress often.

Astra, on the other hand, is always trying to be on the cutting edge and releasing new updates whenever they can. They integrate well into page builders and always looking for new conversion-focused features that they can add.

OceanWP being a free theme doesn’t get you any support which can make it a struggle for someone just getting started. Nicholas sell’s priority support on his website at $99/year, however at that price, it’s better to just invest in Astra as you get Pro support included with your theme for cheaper.

Astra vs GeneratePress vs OceanWp: Pricing

Both Astra and GeneratePress have a free version. While OceanWP is completely free as a theme.

You can get started with the free version of Astra directly by clicking here. Also, the core GeneratePress theme is available for free at WordPress.org.

However, the free version of Astra and GeneratePress are very limited in what you can do.

Here’re just a list of some of the features you can with Astra Pro that you don’t get with the free version.

• Typography (use over 800 google fonts)
• Colors & Background
• Site Layouts (change things from full width to fluid)
• Multiple Header Designs
• Flexible Footer Layouts
• WooCommerce Integration
• White Label
• Scroll to Top Link
• Spacing Control
• and so much more…

Astra Pro is available in 3 different plans: Astra Pro, Mini Agency Bundle and Agency Bundle.

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You can get a 10% Discount on Astra Pro. Simply click the link below and use the discount code “VIP10OFF”

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All Packages Include 14-Day Money Back Guarantee For New Purchases​

Astra Pro Renewal Note: Renew your membership to Astra Pro for 20% Off! You will still be eligible for the discount if you renew it within two weeks after your license expires

Astra Pro may be a little pricey for some people just starting out with their online business. GeneratePress is a little cheaper alternative at only $49.

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JeremyNoronha.com readers can get a 10% Discount on GeneratePress Premium. Simply click the link below and the discount code “10PERCENT” will be automatically applied.

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While the OceanWP theme is free, and you can start using it directly by clicking here.

OceanWP does monetize by selling the core extensions bundle, which is a suite of over 13 Premium Extensions and 60 Pro Demos that you can import into your site.

The core extensions package has incredible premium functions like

• Sticky Header
• Elementor Widgets
• Popup Login
• Instagram Feed
• Footer Callout
• Woo Popup
• White Label
• Cookie Notice
• Portfolio
• Sticky Footer
• Ocean Hooks
• Side Panel

You can get a 45% Discount on OceanWP Simply click the link below and the discount code “OVERSOON” will be automatically applied.

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Astra vs GeneratePress vs OceanWP: Who Won?

Astra, GeneratePress, and OceanWP are all amazing themes and there’s no “one true winner”. Based on your circumstances I’d recommend a different one.

• If you want the best performance I’d recommending going for Astra Pro
• If you want good support and are on a budget GeneratePress is a better job
• If you are just looking for a “good free theme” and don’t need any support go for OceanWP

I personally use Astra Pro for a lot of my businesses as performance is very important to me and Astra is incredibly cheap for the performance it offers.

The answer is definitely yes, for only 59$ per year, you can have the best lightweight fast WordPress theme in the world!

That’s around 4 dollars a month with my Astra discount code!

Exclusive Discount Offer For Astra Pro

You can get a 10% Discount on Astra Pro. Simply click the link below and use the discount code “VIP10OFF”

Click to Get The Discount Now

Hurry Up! Limited Time Offer