So Much Better Than The Other Guys

After nearly five years with two different themes, I’d decided to switch to Astra + Astra Pro. Mainly for three reasons: 1) They have lightweight themes (I can shed excess code I’ll never use and thus help with page loading speeds); 2) Regular updates; 3) Actual customer support from people who know what they’re doing, and they specifically cater to one’s experience level.

I’m redesigning my site, and so far every question I’ve had has been answered clearly and promptly. If I can’t find the answer within their documentation, I submit a ticket and I get my answer. Speaking of ticket submission, I love that Astra have “how are you feeling now?” options. I inferred that the options (ranging from ‘panicking’ to something along the lines of ‘I’m fine’) are to gauge our mind-set when it comes to their prioritizing responses/tickets. Also, Astra have options one can chose when it comes to receiving an answer to one’s support question. One can go with receiving a ‘nerd’ answer (for those people with lots of coding, etc., experience), or select a variety of other options that apply to one’s training/experience level and free of condescending tones. (on one occasion, I chose ‘confused’ as my “feeling”, and I was pleased with the ‘nerd’ response I got because it gave me exactly what I was looking for — a simple cut-and-paste snippet for my functions.php page).

As for the themes themselves: easily customizable, lots of styling options, and a simple, yet effective user-friendly dashboard(!). Works very well with plugins like Beaver Builder, Google Analytics (Site Kite), Font Awesome, Yoast SEO, Cloudflare, Perfmatters.

I hate to sound like a cheesy late-night commercial. But I should give credit where it’s due. Astra is the real deal, and I’m happy to boast about them. Well deserved 5-stars.