Hello has been built by the developer of the Elementor page builder. It was built for the page builder. You can use Astra with the top three extensions – Elementor, Beaver, and Gutenberg. Both the themes look beautiful, but what options do they offer? Here’s our comparison of the two templates:
Customization
Hello won’t show customization options in the live customizer tool when you install it, nor does it add a theme settings page to the WP dashboard. When you install Elementor, you’ll find a new menu – header and footer in the live customizer tool. When you click the menu, WordPress will open the Elementor live customizer tool that boasts the following design options:
- Global colors, typography, buttons, and images.
- Global fonts, form fields, header, footer.
- Site identity, background, layout, lightbox.
- Custom CSS.
In addition to the menu, you will find two new entries in the WP dashboard sidebar – Elementor and Templates. How to customize Astra? You can customize this template with the WP live customizer tool without installing any page builder. As in many other WP themes, users must open the WP live customizer tool to customize the template. When you do so, you’ll find the following menus in the live customizer’s sidebar:
- Global, header builder, breadcrumb.
- Blog, sidebar, footer builder, and performance.
When you click the menu, you’ll find the design settings of Astra.
Header and footer builder
You can customize or redesign the Hello’s header with Elementor’s header builder tool. Users can configure the header builder to show/hide the site logo, tagline, and menu on the theme’s header. The tool enables you to change the layout from inverted to centered and enable/disable the full-width header. The builder allows you to change the width of the Hello theme’s header. You can also change the background color of Hello’s header with it.
Astra enables you to build a header with the theme’s drag-and-drop header builder tool. The header in it can be of full width or content width, and it can have custom top/bottom/right/left margins. You can enable the sitewide transparent header for the entire website or specific pages and set a different logo for the transparent header in this template.
You cannot add a widget to the header in the free version of Hello, but you can do so in Astra. One more significant difference between the two templates is the search icon. You won’t find an option to enable the header search icon in Hello. Astra has this option.
The footer builder options of Hello are the same as the header option. Similarly, Astra’s footer designer tool is similar to its header builder utility.
Breakpoints
In Hello, you can set responsive breakpoints for mobiles, tablets, and desktops. Astra doesn’t provide breakpoint options, but you can set a different container width, layout, page layout, and blog post layout for desktops and mobile devices.
Button and forms
Astra comes with six different styles of buttons. Its counterpart doesn’t have pre-designed button styles. You can change the text, background color, width, border color, border radius, button font, and padding in the two themes.
In Hello, you can change the color and typography of form labels. You can also change the form field’s text color, background color, border radius, padding, and border type. You will not find form-related options in Astra.
Elements/modules are the core feature of page builders, and Elementor is no exception. The free edition of Elementor includes 20 to 30 elements only. The paid edition of the page builder has 90 components/widgets. It also includes a theme builder tool that unleashes customization options like the ones you’ll find in Astra free/Pro edition. The theme builder module also gives you access to header/footer designs. It may not work with all WP templates.
Astra Pro WP has the spacing control options and additional typography settings. Its space control system will let you change the margin/padding of the content area, header, footer, etc. The typography settings will allow you to change the font, size, and color of various heading elements/text on your website.
Astra Pro will let you add a mega menu system to your website, activate a sticky menu, customize its search system, and enable infinite loading on archive pages. You can also build a custom footer/header and insert JS/HTML/CSS code to any part of the website via a hook with it.
Pricing
You can download the free edition of these two templates from the WordPress repository. If you want to have better control over the design/appearance, you can purchase a license from Astra or Elementor. Elementor developers haven’t launched the Hello theme’s pro version yet. But as you can see in the above paragraphs, Hello relies heavily on the page builder. Without the page builder, it is a barebones theme.
To save time designing and customizing Astra, you can purchase its Pro version. If you buy the same (priced at 59 dollars), you can use the template on unlimited websites. Elementor subscription plans support 1, 25, 100, and 1000 websites. The single site license costs 49 dollars. The remaining three plans i.e. 1000, 100, and 25 website plans, cost 999, 499, and 199 dollars.
Which theme is better?
Following is the reason to use Elementor:
Powerful: With Elementor, designing pages is a breeze. You can build pages for all types of sites with the page builder.
Here are the two reasons why Astra might be a better option:
Cheaper: As you can use APro on as many sites as you want by paying just 59 USD, it is a considerably cheaper theme for users with multiple sites or may launch more sites in the future.
It doesn’t depend on a page builder: You can work with Astra with or without a page builder.
