Quick comparison review of these 3 popular freemium WordPress themes as of 2020.
I’m getting tired of being asked which of them I’d rather use and why. So this guide is to explain once and for all. I compare their pros and cons, and what unique things they have the others don’t.
Which theme would Johnny choose?!!
GeneratePress:
- My favorite of these 3.
- Most mature – been around much longer than the others.
- Biggest user base – more support, tips, and integrations available.
- Caters well to both regular users and coders. (The other 2 don’t cater to hardcoders.)
- Has the super awesome “Elements” feature which works like developer “hooks & filters” but done in GUI way.
- Really nice starter themes that don’t look generic.
- Was obviously inspired by my favorite theme (Genesis). Unfortunately, Genesis is not meant for end users.
- I really like the head developer (Tom Usborne) and designer (Mike Oliver).
Download GeneratePress and try it out. I’m a huge fan of the non-gimmicky, BS-free website. No silly promises or hype marketing. Just an honest Canadian dude telling what it can do and how it makes your life better.
Astra:
- I don’t like them at all. Don’t like their theme or plugins either.
- Good marketing but mostly copycat vibe. All their extensions are basically copycats of existing themes and plugins. Just feels like a “business” more than a passionate WordPress creator.
- Generic starter designs – nice enough to look “designed” but don’t stand out.
- Buggy, not so great support. You can read online of people complaining about them.
- The theme is however very fast and very popular so they’re obviously doing something right.
Get Astra if you like their vibe, starter sites, and plan to use other products in their eco-system. If it matters, I think many people are jumping ship from Astra now since they seem buried under their success. Too many support requests and while they have a full company team, they’re busy focused on other businesses. It also seems many affiliate marketers that used to promote Astra are now promoting Kadence since it’s the new “thing”.
Kadence:
- New kid on the block.
- The header/footer builder really stands out. (Blocksy also has this.)
- Nice starter themes. But not many of them.
- I like the focused one-man vibe.
- Kadence has a more full-featured Gutenberg block library plugin. Not a dealbreaker, really. You could use Kadence blocks with another theme (no problem).
Get KadenceThemes if their vibe looks good to you. FWIW, I feel their recent hype is just due to affiliate marketers trying to cash out on a trend. It’s not like Kadence is coming up with something completely otherworldly from all existing themes on the market.
What really makes GeneratePress the winner
It’s been solid for so many years. Great performance and support. They’re very focused on their product instead of jumping around from one business idea to the next. No gimmicky marketing. It’s a great theme. Super fast. Easy to use. Great for developers AND end-users. What else do you want?
If you’re not for GeneratePress, Kadence would be the easy second place due to its super handy header/footer build feature and cool designs. If you like their starter sites, then use Kadence.
Another runner up that should have been in here (but not as many people ask me) is Blocksy. It has great coders, great design, and super intuitive features/functions and easy to use.
FYI:
- I use Genesis on all my critical sites.
- Because all my main sites are hard-coded.
- And Genesis is best for hardcoders.
Love your comparison, and I love like-minded people (like you) that confirms my thoughts .. 😉
The new BETA of GP is just BAD ASS.
Have a great day now Johnny
Would love to see an in-depth comparison between these themes, that goes over the personal opinion of generatepress is awesome, Astra sucks.
Own both, generatepress and Astra mini agency bundle, not using either as I have fallen in love with oxygen builder, but would be nice to see some statistics in terms of speed and junk code of these three themes from a power user like you that isn’t driven by affiliate market sales.
“I feel their recent hype is just due to affiliate marketers trying to cash out on a trend. It’s not like Kadence is coming up with something completely otherworldly from all existing themes on the market.”
I thought, I have to check out Kadence, as there is some hype on FB in the usual groups. But it really did not click for me. I did not get the “must have vibe”. Blocksy I like a lot though. And like to recommend for some friends with little sites. Personally I do love GP and GPB.
And btw, would be nice, if you could update your block reviews.
I felt the same way about generatepress. I was thinking about getting generatepress till I found out about Kadence, and fell in love with their blocks plugin. Still like generatepress though.
I love Generatepress.
Astra …I couldn’t have said that better.
Thanks Johnny
Very biased review.
We use astra and like them.
Every theme and plugin has some issues including the ones you treated high above.
Yes, this review is highly biased by personal experiences. I liked Astra at first and then started to hate it the more and more I use it. You can see my many complaints about Astra. But I’m glad you found something you’re happy with. That’s all that matters.
Kadence just came out with a pro version. I own all three of these themes and have used GP on many sites. However, Kadence had become my goto. First off its not a one man developer. But most importantly, my sites are blazing fast! Granted its young but, this team of developers is just as much responsive and interactive as GP.
While I agree with you, for the most part, about. Although I’ve started replacing all the sites ive made with it Kadence, it still has a bunch of good points too.
You should so a more recent and complete review.
I am quite sure Kadence is mostly one man. I know because I chatted directly with the founder. With that said, that theme is growing fast in popularity and will soon enlist the help of other developers if he hasn’t already. My main sentiment about Kadence being “one man” is actually a positive one. It reflects the clear vision and leadership of one person rather than a chaotic kitchen with conflicting chefs.
My Kadence theme review was already done a while ago. You can trust that I’m on top of it because I have it deployed on my sister-in-law’s website and some clients. Also chatting with some other devs who are involved with it. 🙂
Yea I think Sridhar worked with them for a bit.
Any insights on speed/coding quality/etc for Kadence vs Blocksy vs Neve?
Have been testing GeneratePress out as per your suggestions and I love everything about it except for one…as a non-coder, want more control for the header (yes, just this! >.< )! (Unless there's a better way other than theme change? plugin etc)
Would appreciate your expert opinion please!
Blocksy and Neve would be better coding than Kadence for me.
– Neve – Romanian professional dev team with lots of success over the years. Same team that did Hestia and many other hit themes.
– Blocksy – 2-man dev theme with great coding background. Also Romanian, go figure.
– Kadence – American founding dev with contract coders. Well-intended coding but I think he’s new to commercial theme development.
This is not a knock on the Kadence lead developer. Theme development is really finicky and it’s one thing to code properly, and another thing to code so other developers can work with your code easily.
From a user standpoint, all 3 are equal. Will perform adequately. But if you were a developer yourself customizing things in code, you may prefer Neve or Blocksy over Kadence. If you see code as just structure, then you care in different way. But when you see code as art, you will have even more personal preferences for sure.
Which out of the 3 is faster with gutenberg? Semi coder here
All 3 are equally super fast. It’s kind of the trend now for modern framework themes. They are all fast and the difference is more in UI and workflow.
I can’t get below 0.6s for a standard homepage with kadence on a $5 DO plesk droplet, any ideas? Is it the theme or something else?
Are you using caching?
GeneratePress is w@nk. OceanWP is better than all of these.
Check out Kadence, I used to use Elementor + Oceanwp (and I really like oceanwp) however kadence + gutenberg is much faster
hi,
Thanks for the review. I heard quite a few websites out there got sued for not Accessible compliance (ADA law). What is the best way to deal with this Accessibility?
I know Kadence has support feature for it.
thanks
There are free sites where you can scan your site and get most of those issues fixed. But if you want to be absolutely lawsuit-proof, you can hire one of those expensive firms or at least a solid local developer.
Hi Johnny, thanks for the awesome content!
I am a non-coder and I’ve been reading through and testing different themes. I am just stuck at the decision between purchasing the Kadence Pro theme or sticking with Blocksy and waiting for their Pro version. (Of course, then I am also trying to decide on a styled block library, possibly Qubely or Stackable, and if I should also purchase either Pro version).
What are your thoughts, especially on which choice will be better for future-proofing sites? Thanks!
Most people would be fine either way. I feel many would choose Kadence whereas I personally prefer GeneratePress or Blocksy. All 3 of them are solid and future-proofed IMO.
Hi Johnny,
Nice Article I enjoyed reading it. I’m in Love with Blocksy theme, it’s so fast and has many customization options. Better than Astra though Lol.
Oh yeah, I really like Blocksy too.
Gp is great, but the header builder (and various headers with conditions) wins it for me with Blocksy.
However I love generate blocks both free and pro version.
Hehe…yes…they’re all good! I’m sure features will be evened out soon enough.
Hey Johnny, I’ve read many of your posts these past few days. Great work! I really enjoy the way you put your opinions across without a “my thoughts are better than yours”, or an obvious marketing way you see on a lot of other similar blogs. It creates a more personal touch and in that, a place where I feel I can trust what I’m reading is coming from a good place.
I’m someone that’s been dabbling in and out of maybe wanting to be a web designer/developer for many years. I’ve created quite a few WordPress sites in the past, some great, some not so great. I haven’t got many “developer” skills as you may put it but have put a couple of sites together I’m proud of with GeneratePress/GenerateBlocks. Coronavirus lockdowns have allowed me to put more time into pursuing this and I just wondered if you had a bit of advice for me.
Firstly have I made the right choice paying for this combination when I don’t have many developer skills? I have a friend that works for a company that uses WPBakery. Wow, it’s bloated, but he gets a lot done without having to learn any code at all. Maybe GeneratePress is a better choice because I can learn more about how WordPress works as a whole, in turn getting me more skills down the line than just whipping things up with page builders? There’s also the element of maybe I’m not able to become a decent developer and I’m just straitjacketing myself? I’m in my 30’s so it’s not like I’m a young buck.
I must add how great the GeneratePress support team is, it feels like a little secret forum that answers all your questions for you whenever you’re stuck. The guys really are amazing and I don’t think I’ve witnessed such great support anywhere, in any area of anything!
Moving forward how should I continue my learning? Would a PHP course be beneficial (maybe not WP-specific enough), should I learn as I go along with each site, or are there any great YouTubers I can binge-watch? GP/GB combination is already making me feel quite competent but I just want to get better as quickly as I can whilst continuing to enjoy it as much as I am right now.
Thanks in advance if you take the time to reply. Either way, I’ll continue to check this place for new content. 🙂
Hey Christopher,
I’m glad you enjoy the site as it’s written for people exactly like me and you. GP/GB is a great combo with lots of room to grow. Indeed, Gutenberg blocks are the pro way to develop custom layouts. You will get better with them and the community will give your more professional ways of creating sites.
Doesn’t matter your age. I used to feel like if I wasn’t a rockstar coder by 25, I was too old already. But this thinking is silly. If you’re even curious about it, you may have more natural aptitude for it than you think. Start with HTML/CSS at freecodecamp.org. Then watch Dani Krossing PHP tutorials. With that alone, you can do lots of manual CSS styling and PHP conditional functions already. Also good enough to hack templates and fork plugins, create custom ACF blocks. Then grow into JS, React if you want to get more serious backend stuff. Everyone’s journey is different so I’m biased by own path as I think mine is the best for everyone. haahahaha
Thanks for the question, it really should (and will) be a future post here.
A nice quick reply too!. 🙂
Yeah, I feel like I’m going in the right direction sticking with blocks. Due to not having a long history of using page builders I haven’t got to retrain muscle memory or stick to old ways of doing things – may be allowing me to stay ahead of the curve of those who use page builders that may struggle to make their mark in what looks like a Gutenberg-based future.
I feel like I’ve gone back to learn HTML/CSS many times. It’s one of those things I’ve always known and picked up bits of but I can no way say I’m competent enough to build a well-designed static site. Saying that it’s rare I get stuck making edits within the WP CSS (albeit GeneratePress does a lot for you). I’ll bookmark the Dan Krossing PHP tutorials and get started this week coming up! I don’t know how I’ll balance it with also trying to spend as much time with WordPress as I possibly can, but I’ll figure something out! Thanks for the recommendation.
I would absolutely love to get into this world and make a living out of it. I don’t need to be the rockstar coder you may have become 😉 , but enough to get by and enjoy what I’m doing. Too many wasted years partying and working hospitality!
Thanks again, and I’ll look forward to a post on the subject matter.
Great comparison Johnny. Are you still using GeneratePress on this website? I’m using KadenceWP but find the blocks add way too much HTML code into posts/pages? I would like to revert back to the default Gutenberg builder for posts hence my question?
Hello Johnny,
Thanks for your helpful review.
I doubt the Woocommerce support in Astra will satisfy all my requests for a store. In my opinion, there will be a need to write code for some customization in any case. In this case, the simplest version of Woocommerce will be more useful. For example, when I want to add a grid/list toggle button or the number of products per page option, I don’t want to deal with the template that Astra makes complicated.
As a result, Astra’s (or Kadence’s) deeper Woocommerce integration capability isn’t really that advantageous.
These are just my thoughts on what I wrote. But actually I would like to know your opinion.
Genesis not arranging woocommerce well, their woo-commerce plugin is also outdated. Then which theme you are recommending for Woocommerce in 2021?