It’s official…all Brainforce Force products (Astra theme and other plugins like Ultimate Addons, Convert Pro, Schema Pro) are now on my shitlist.
I thought Astra looked cool and exciting when they made a ton of noise in the emerging “lightweight WordPress theme” market back in 2018. They seemed to be a super lightweight theme with aggressive extensions so that you could have not only a lightweight site but a full-featured one.
Their success with Astra was duplicated to many other plugins. An SEO plugin, an email marketing plugin, and then addons for pagebuilders, addons for Gutenberg, and on an on. Everybody enjoyed having lightweight, low-cost alternatives.
It all seemed great…until…
…until I actually tried their products on various sites. Some of them were used on my personal projects. Others were on client sites. I’ll go down the list of my Astra-nomical discoveries below.
1. Astra theme isn’t really a true developers-theme.
The Astra theme is probably their best product and a clever marketing anchor if you ask me. Indeed it is super lightweight. Super minimal, so lean and simple. And of course, that would make it easy to deliver upon their “fastest/lightest WordPress theme” claims.
But as I’ve said before, there’s a huge difference between FAST vs EMPTY. There are many themes out there that are fast but you can’t do anything with them. Almost no features…so minimal to the point that you have to install plugins for simple functionality which then negates their minimal footprint to begin with. Believe it or not…Astra hits the mark here as well. Their base theme is very lightweight and quite extensible.
So what’s the problem then?
My problem is the Astra theme isn’t developer-friendly. They’ve copied some pseudo developer-friendly features like hooks and filters but by and large their theme is marketed towards the regular WordPress user market that don’t know how to code and simply throw pagebuilders on all their pages.
I don’t mind that Astra has chased the money and followed the crowd with the largest revenue potential. All I’m going to say is that the Astra theme is for newbies and not for true developers. If you never plan to do any coding, you’re fine. But if you do want a legit coder-friendly theme…please use something else, like GeneratePress or Genesis.
You may have also been around during the buggy era when it seemed every WooCommerce update would break Astra. And you never know if it was the theme or WooCommerce. But it seemed Astra wasn’t able to support their newbie customers well enough and many of them got mad. That period never bothered me personally, but I’m just sharing.
2. Ultimate Addons for Elementor makes slow database queries.
Yes. This happened. I think same goes for their Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg. I can’t remember all details because I halfway wrote this post months ago and just finished it now.
3. Uses too many autoloads.
Originally, I found Schema Pro had like 800KB on one of my client sites. I couldn’t believe it. Do not use their plugins on heavy sites or really busy sites! Trust me, they are not built for best performance!
UPDATE JUNE 25, 2020:
Being that Sujay so generously spent his time to invalidate my post below in the comments and also in my Facebook Group. I felt inclined to add some photos of “detailed proof” for him.
I had to take precious out of my day to go find one of the client issues…digging through old chat messages and emails. Low and behold..the site with 800kb autoloads has only gotten worse in the last 2 months. Oh and what do you know…turns out I’m not a liar after all.
This site is using the LATEST VERSION OF SCHEMA PRO from June 17, 2020 and the previously 800kb autoloads HAS NOW GROWN TO 1.2MB of AUTOLOADS. I don’t want to hear anymore excuses/accusations about sites supposedly using outdated version, etc. (Screenshots attached.)
UPDATE JUNE 30, 2020:
- After trying the tips that Sujay suggested, I am now pleased to update that this issue was resolved. The latest version of Schema Pro doesn’t have the problem. If you have data from the previous version, you simply need to deactivate and reactivate the plugin to get rid of the autoloads.
UPDATE NOV 30, 2020:
- Schema Pro causing a ton of locked up outbound LMTP processes due to not having a recipient email.
- This issue caused super high server loads. Very frustrating…and further proof of their plugins inability to scale. This is a critical client site, too.
UPDATE DEC 8, 2020:
- I find another client site using Convert Pro that had 125K autoloads.
- Anyways…I’m getting too lazy to report each and every instance of high autoloads.
3. Astra theme has too much autoloads
Yeah, this is my replacement #3. I see 800kb worth of autoloads in the wp_option table, many rows called “astra-sites-and-pages-page”. It’s just a common theme with anything made by BSF.
4. Some of their plugins (I can’t remember which one) have a lot of inline styles.
Blah blah blah, more ranting here. Too lazy to even write it out.
5. They deleted my feedback on their Facebook group.
When I posted and asked on their Facebook group about the autoloads, it was deleted immediately. What I wished was for them to address it…maybe like a, “Yes, that’s us. We’re aware of that and looking to fix it.” or even a “We’ve never seen that. What site are you noticing this on?” to make it sound as if it was uncommon.
But no, they chose to squelch to my message and I suspect it’s how all their stuff is built. Sure enough when I check their other plugins, I see excessive autoloads as well. Looks like they’re not planning on fixing it anytime soon. Schema Pro is still a cool plugin but not if you have many pages and lots of traffic.
NOTE: if you don’t know what autoloads are…they greatly affect your speed and memory use. You can learn how to clean them here.
UPDATE JUNE 25, 2020:
Sujay actually uploads the image of my post and says it was just an “unhelpful rant” and not useful as feedback. I’ll let you decide for yourself.
6. Not good support
If you followed BSF products for some time, you’ll know that it’s an ongoing complaint about their support. At first, I chalked it up to them having recently launched many products and expected they would be back on top of things but their support never caught up. There are still angry customers who eventually left despite already paying for their lifetime deal.
7. Ultimate Addons for Elementor (UAE) causing conflicts
I got a client with issues on this one. It’s either conflicting with caching or conflicting with another plugin. To be fair, UAE usually doesn’t have issues but this time it was the culprit. Anyway, I’m done debugging BSF stuff for now.
8. Shady business and developer ethics
Some of you may have remembered the Astra theme suspension from the repo. Read for all the details:
Brainstorm Force plugins aren’t built for enterprise use.
That’s the bottom line. If you have a small site with not so many things going on, Astra stuff will be just fine for you. But if you want something A-grade and truly professional or have a large site with tons of traffic, stick to the pro stuff and leave the Astra ecosystem entirely.
The way Astra is headed, they’re just gonna be chasing and doing copycat iterations of every popular plugin out there. I don’t see them really bringing anything of unique value or ever focusing on their developer market. You can even feel it with their delayed progression on many projects. It seems they build it just good enough and then move on to the next cash cow.
With that said, their stuff isn’t totally bad and can still be useful for many situations. Some things like ConvertPro are usable low-cost alternatives. But for everything else…just be careful, ok?
Still want to use Astra and BSF plugins?
- Fine then, use my affiliate link…but I sincerely hope you don’t.
Very good to know. I have a client Woocomerce website that I ‘built’ using Astra theme… and took me so much work to get it at least performing decently. Luckily the client want to update the website now, so it’s bye-bye Astra for me too. Thanks for the post. Cheers!
Woocommerce*
Yes I think so.. thank for your honest review
I went back to Genesis themes for now. Not sure what I will do with my Astra LTD.
I agree with you about Astra. What do you think are some features that are just necessary for a theme to have aside from it being lightweight?
Tough question. Different users (newbies, DIY, coders) need different things. What’s a good shoe for you is different from what’s a good shoe for me.
I really don’t understand… Was this Post genuinely criticizing Astra or creating a nice eye-catching post with an affiliate link?
I appreciate the time taken to paint the article but it is highly discouraging to see affiliating to a product that is being criticized.
The post shares exactly how I feel. The affiliate link is for me to benefit from the people who don’t listen. It’s a win-win for me regardless if you listen or not. No matter what you choose, I win.
How about CartFlows? I think it is developed by Brainstorm Force too.
I’m Sujay, co-founder of Brainstorm Force.
We love and appreciate any feedback and strive to improve our products with each update. But as Johnny says it himself, this is such a lazy post which leaves me wondering what could we really improve.
Let me address each of his comments below:
1# Would you mind sharing what is Astra missing and how could it become a true developers-theme? We have proudly made Astra for non-coders. But, we absolutely have a lot of developers who love and enjoy Astra. Just saying “Astra theme isn’t really a true developers-theme” does not really help. A little more hints on what is missing could certainly be taken as feedback and seek ways to improve.
2# There are no details shared when Johnny says: Ultimate Addons for Elementor makes slow database queries. It’ll be great if you could share some more details.
3# Schema Pro had Auto-loads, but it has been fixed 3 months ago. (in v1.6.0 released on 26 Mar 2020: https://wpschema.com/changelog)
4# Inline styles: I think Johnny must be referring to Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg. This plugin actually only loads required CSS for that particular page. Gutenberg itself loads styles for all the blocks.
5# Deleted feedback on Facebook group: Our Facebook group is for user-to-user discussions. If the question was posted as a support ticket or a rant, it does not get approved.
Here is the screenshot of Johnny’s post which did not get approved: https://d.pr/i/mfBPMS
As you will notice, it was kind of a rant and certainly wasn’t posted for other users in our group.
6# Brainstorm Force plugins aren’t built for enterprise use: Our products are actually used by a lot of Government agencies (including NASA)
Again, we love and appreciate any feedback. And we strive to improve our products with each update. But only if Johnny could have written this post as feedback and not just a rant.
Cheers
At this point, I’m angry as f**k. You started arguing with me last night and getting all defensive. I told you that you were welcome to come on here and offer help to anybody with these issues.
What I wasn’t expecting was for you to gaslight my posts or dismiss them as “lazy” or “inaccurate” ranting.
ALL FEEDBACK is feedback. It don’t matter if it’s written full of developer-notes or short and newb-like with only feelings. And if you, as a company, want to cherrypick which ones you allow or don’t allow on your public forum…then don’t go around playing PR afterwards if you don’t like what’s being said elsewhere.
Now thanks to you…I had to take precious time out of my day to go find one of the client issues…digging through old chat messages and emails. Low and behold..the site with 800kb autoloads has only gotten worse in the last 2 months. Oh and what do you know…turns out I’m not a liar after all.
This site is using the LATEST VERSION OF SCHEMA PRO from June 17, 2020 and the previously 800kb autoloads HAS NOW GROWN TO 1.2MB of AUTOLOADS. I don’t want to hear anymore excuses/accusations about sites supposedly using outdated version, etc. (Screenshots attached.)
At this point, I will reiterate what I said to you in the chat. I’ve touched Astra and BSF products on over 100 sites every month. I know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re welcome to take my comments as sincere feedback or invalidate them as “undetailed rants”. That’s up to you. I don’t have free unpaid time to play product tester for you anymore. And definitely not for a company that spends more energy on PR than CUSTOMER SUPPORT.
(this updated exchange and photos will go on my website post…..be very careful what proof you ask for next….because if I have to waste any more unpaid time to dig them up, they will 100% go on my website as well)
Johnny,
I’m sorry if I offended you with my last response. As for the “autoload have grown”, since Schema was implemented on your website before the update, you still have autoloads in the database.
If you deactivate the plugin and reactivate it, you won’t see the autoloads anymore.
Thank you for the actionable advice. I’ll have the client try it right now.
That advice of “deactivate and reactivate” REALLY needs to be broadcasted to all users of your plugin, otherwise every single user from before that update might have the same issues. That’s a very non-standard way to actually fix an issue covered by a plugin update, and I doubt many would have done it arbitrarily.
Just replying that it worked perfect for my client.
Boy.. Lolz. I love your content and really appreciate the tutorial on installing OLS/Cyberpanel on CentOS 8. I was wondering though, am I supposed to re-enable SELinux after I install CentOS 8? Or permanently leave it disabled?
I’m dropping Ass-tra after this. Have you heard of? Kadence theme? Any good as a general replacement for Astra.
Also putting together a full document on how to install a unmanaged VPS from buying it (Contabo) all the way through server set up: Port change, SSH, brute force, firewalld, virus scanner, etc. To the WP side of things: MainWP, WP Reset, Backups, login path change (not always recommended though), automatic updates, etc.
It’s simple but comprehensive. I need help figuring out Blo… shit, I mean Cron Jobs though. I was wondering if you wanted to co-write it or help me clean it up or something.
Much appreciated!
SELinux is usually disabled for many control panels. In some cases, it’s set to permissive. I’ll release my thoughts on Kadence soon but generally, it seems nice enough.
Writing a full server setup guide is tough. So much work and still not detailed enough for many readers. Hahahah.
Thanks for the clarification bro. Yeah, that’s what I’m finding too. It’s hard to write a single step by step list. Still working on it though, even if it ends up just a personal list. I like your setup tutorial but I got hacked and the hosting company made me harden everything, so now I’m all paranoid and want all the bells and whistles, which your tutorial doesn’t go over: Change port 22 to non-standard, Install ClamAV, Install FireWalld (and configure zones), SSH, Bruteforce blocker, etc.
So, I mixed your tutorial and another dudes together… and!…. I just successfully installed CyberPanel OLS on CentOS 8! And everything seems to be working great so far. Let me know if you want to see the steps. Or do let me know if it’s one of those things like “yeah noob, you can do it, no one’s impressed, but you’re going to run into things not working from here on out and there will be no documentation yet, so you’re fucked” lol.
Hahaha, you’re welcome to share your guide. I did release a “how to harden a linux web server” guide a couple days ago.
Hello Dr. Mike!
I would also like to read about your tutorial.
Where can I find him?
I’ve been building wordpress websites for more than 6 years. I heard the name Astra Theme. Astra Theme was real sh*tty THEME We’ve ever used they say you can white label but when you view page source you can see astra names like 1000’s in a single page WTF that’s how they gain SEO sh*t from other’s websites creating backlinks. Not only that thing we always build sites as compliant with Google Page speed test. First Painful content as well as largest painful content was too high even we used less content as well as Total Blocking Time. They Copy beaver themer. But they can’t perform like Beaver shame on them. Go for beaver Theme you’ll love it. Poor support we wrote a ticket but they took 3 days for responding. When you say a thing they will say we added in our list and updated in future. Testing team sucks as well. They don’t test anything. Just deploy products without any testing with tons of bugs. Thankfully we returned within 14 days and got refunded. I say no for astra theme and their Lifetime sh*t. If you are developer you will feel me. I appreciate johnny for speaking the truth. Don’t waste your time with brainstorm products.
Thank you for sharing. It’s zero surprise at all.
I read this thread a long time ago and was a bit sceptical. I have been using Astra for a long time and also have the Agency Liftime package.
Astra has bugs from time to time, I knew that from the beginning and I thought, OK, they will fix it.
In the meantime, however, I am really tired of it, because something new is added all the time, which causes new problems. And if you use the whole Brainstorm Force package, there are more problems that I don’t want to go into.
Recently I finally switched to generatepress and I have to say what a blessing.
I wish I had done it earlier. But as it is, better late than never 😉
Thanks for your professional opinion and stay as you are. I Love your work 🙂
I’m sorry for your issues Dieter, and glad you found a truly stable theme. Cheers for your new WordPress moving forward with GeneratePress!
Too many autoloads. No more astra from now on. Kadence, generatepress, helloelementor are much better.
SELECT option_name, length(option_value) AS option_value_length FROM wp_options WHERE autoload=’yes’ ORDER BY option_value_length DESC LIMIT 10;
astra-settings 244315
I’m having a hell of a time with Astra on my shared server and cloud. Some sort of resource issuing going on an my CPU and memory resources are getting eaten up. Did switch to Generate Press and now using their blocks. Way less bloat and easier to use.
Hello,
I’m having a pickle of a time with Astra customer service. I asked them if Astra Pro would help me with control over my site and they said they haven’t tested the Astra with a certain plugin I use. Ok, but does it give me control in an area where I can’t get control with Elementor and they still haven’t answered since yesterday. The problem I found, is nothing to do with Fancy Product Designer. It seems like they block an area off or limit control in a certain area.
I totally agree. I bought the pro version. I couldn’t have made a worse decision. Its buggy, The editor gets super slow and next thing you view your page it looks like a 3 year old with a jigsaw puzzle.
Astra and Brainstorm force products in general are not what they used to be. All you get now are:
– Buggy and bloated products
– Updates that remove free features (such as starter templates) and are replaced with paid features
– Cosmetic changes to the theme withouth new functionality are celebrated as game changers.
– Spectra pro page builder is extremely buggy and slows down the builder to a standstill
– Reported bugs do not get addressed
– Nnon-existent support
– Shady business practices
My impression is that they have lost the interest in the Astra theme and their old products and are simply using Astra now as a cash cow and to upsell other Surecart and other surecrafted products to Astra buyers.
Yeah…I do feel it’s more of a lead generator for them than actual focus. If they do anything, it’s not to innovate but to copy features from other themes (that are actually innovating) to stay relevant. For this…I don’t use Astra theme. After trying it on one of my main sites, it was enough for me.
Hello,
Reporting on October 2024.
Astra Pro is almost great to tinker with. However m, it is awful to use, slow loads (Autoload errors present), jumbled up elements on load, specially on smartphones. Style sheet is unstable with other plugins.
Will replace it soon, take the money loss.
Khaled A.