Astra vs CosmosWP vs OceanWP : Which is the Best Multi-Purpose Free WordPress Theme?

OceanWP has been quite popular WordPress themes for years. Affiliate marketers, business owners, SEOs, digital marketers, developers, or anyone who is into WordPress theme must have come across OceanWP. It is, without a doubt, one of the most popular WordPress themes in the world and has over 600,000 active installations.

Astra is another popular WordPress theme with nearly 1 million active installations. It is a fast, lightweight, and widely customizable theme and has numerous pre-built demo websites. It was introduced in 2017, and the rest is history.

On the other hand, CosmosWP is a freshly-built free WordPress theme that is taking the WordPress market by the storm. Whoever decides giving it a try ends up praising it and using it. Although it still has a long way to go to compete with giant themes like OceanWP and Astra, there’s no sign of it slowing down to reach their levels.

So, here we have tried our best to compare these three of the best free WordPress themes – Astra, CosmosWP, and OceanWP.

If you would love to check other free themes, check our collection of best free WordPress themes.

Things That Are Common Between WP Astra, CosmosWP and OceanWP

Here, I have listed down the main things that you should consider while picking the perfect theme for your website. And these features are common among these three themes.

• Compatible with popular page builders – Elementor, Site Origin, Beaver Builder, Divi, and more
• They are Gutenberg-ready
• Great support
• They are among the fastest WordPress themes
• Compatible with all the major plugins
• Easy installation and setup process
• And full of features and countless design options

OceanWP and Astra are Giants, and CosmosWP is Growing…

CosmosWP is growing quickly, and the reasons are many. The theme not just offers a vast amount of designs for free, but it has infinite customization options that anyone can easily play with to build amazing websites. It is not built just for developers, but for those non-technical people as well who want to build their business website, a hobby blog, or an online store. It encloses every one of us who needs a WordPress website.

Page Builder Compatibility

Astra integrates seamlessly with popular page builders like Elementor, Divi, SiteOrigin, Beaver Builder, and WPBakery Page Builder. Moreover, its top-tier plan Agency Bundle has add-ones that are specially built for specific page builders. While you build your pages using a page builder, Astra lets you turn off the page title and sidebar so that you have more space to work on.

OceanWP is also designed in a way that it works smoothly with all the major page builders. Mostly, people use Elementor, Visual Composer, Beaver Builder, and Divi with OceanWP. But, people love using Elementor with OceanWP the most. The premium version of OceanWP also has an extension that lets you add widgets that are designed for Elementor.

CosmosWP is built with Gutentor, a page builder that is shooting up in popularity recently. Combining with this page builder, you can build designs that have never been built before. And not just that, CosmosWP fully supports all the major page builders, including Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi, SiteOrigin, Visual Composer, and more.

Setup and Installation (Ease of Use)

With Astra (both free and premium), you will get a simple zip file that you can upload on the dashboard or through FTP. In the case of CosmosWP and OceanWP, you get a zip file of their free versions that you can upload on the dashboard or through FTP. Their premium plans are just plugins and add-ons that will add extra features to the free version. With OceanWP, you get a collection of extensions as a zipped folder that you can upload and install on your website. And CosmosWP provides its premium version as a plugin that you can install through your plugin section on your dashboard.

Free Pre-built Demo Designs

OceanWP has 13 pre-built demo designs while CosmosWP has 15 of them.

WP Astra wins with 36+ free demo starter sites. All these three themes have demos built for blogs, business websites, fitness websites, travel websites, education websites, construction websites, medical websites, and online stores.

CosmosWP Free Demos

Astra Free Demos

Now, let’s look at some of the free demos of OceanWP

OceanWP Free Demos

Pro Demos

Currently, OceanWP has 60 and WP Astra has 65 premium ready-to-import demo templates. You will find premium demo starter sites for blogs, corporate websites, one-page websites, and e-commerce stores. You can choose from the vast amount of premium demos to build photography, gardening, spa, restaurant, medical, education, construction, gaming, event, travel websites, and more.

Astra Pro Demos

OceanWP Pro Demos

CosmosWP Pro Demos

CosmosWP has currently 11 premium demos and counting, with a plan to build over a hundred demos. There are demo starter sites for business, agency, consultant, medical, education, construction, travel, restaurant, fitness, lawyer, and blog websites. And the number of demos are increasing week by week.

WooCommerce & EDD Features

All these three WordPress themes are quite good for building online stores. They fully support WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads Plugins.

OceanWP WooCommerce Features

The theme has blazing fast speed and responsiveness. The theme offers a quick product view and off-canvas filter, dynamic cart and checkout options, easy customization, ready-to-import WooCommerce demo, and so on. Let’s just look at some of the most important WooCommerce-specific features of OceanWP.

Responsiveness

The responsiveness plays a huge part in online stores. The theme has made sure that every element of your e-commerce store looks and functions great on all devices, including mobile phones and tablets. It has a mini cart for mobile, and all other WooCommrece functions work fully on small devices.

Quick View and Off-canvas filter

The quick product view and the off-canvas filter view lets your customers navigate and look at your product in a better and user-friendly way.

Singe Product Features

OceawnWP has all the single product features that your online store requires to be a successful one. It has Ajax on the Add To Cart button, vertical layout for the thumbnails and tabs, product navigation, floating bar, sale badge, Cart and Checkout pages, and Multi-step Checkout.

Dynamic Cart & Checkout

The dynamic cart option and checkout page of the theme helps you reduce cart abandon rate of your store. It has a floating Add to Cart button so that the button is always visible when your customers are scrolling through the product pages. And a native cart popup option offers your visitors a clear idea of what to do next one they add a product to their cart. The checkout page is also quite clean and functional.

Quick and Easy Customization

OceanWP makes sure the customization remains quick and easy on any page or section of your e-commerce store. You can easily drag-drop and organize e-commerce elements like product images, titles, pricing, rating, Add to Cart button, categories, and so on.

Readymade WooCommerce Demos

OceanWP has several free and premium demos; import your favorite demo and kickstart your online store.

CosmosWP WooCommerce Features

We just saw that OceanWP has great WooCommerce features. Is CosmosWP of the same caliber?

CosmosWP is fully-optimized for WooCommerce and it comes with infinite options if you are ready to play a little with its WooCommerce features and design.

The theme supports WooCommerce Gallery, Lightbox, and slider, which will help you attractively display your products. Its conversion-focused layout setting will help you get the most out of your visitors, and the secured code will make sure your online store is fully safe and secure.

The theme uses a clear professional checkout page so that it increases the conversion rate.

Loading Speed for more sales

Developers at CosmosWP know how hugely the loading speed of an online store matters in terms of generating sales. Even a 1-second delay reduces the overall sales of your products quite dramatically. That’s how impatient online customers are today.

Well-optimized for Smartphones

Mobiles visitors are increasing day by day and there’s no sign of them slowing down. Keeping this in mind, CosmosWP is built with a mobile-first design approach so that every feature and design of the theme is mobile-friendly. The navigation is pretty easy on smaller screens too.

Shop, Archive, and Product Pages Builder

CosmosWP offers you flexible options to create professional shop pages, archive pages, and product pages that convert more sales. The theme lets you control the design and element of each of those pages to meet your requirement.

Header WooCommerce Cart

The header WooCommerce cart will help your store make more sales as the cart remains visible while customers are browsing on your e-commerce store.

Dedicated WooCommerce Sidebar

Your customers will surely love to browse products of specific categories, price range, or under some other factors. CosmosWP offers you a dedicated WooCommerce sidebar where you can put filters and other widgets without interrupting other pages. Your visitors can filter the products and easily find the products they are searching for.

Pre-built WooCommerce Starter Demo Templates

The theme has both free and premium demos built especially for online stores.

Astra WooCommerce Features

Astra is one of the best WooCommerce themes out there. With its highly customizable and super clean design, you can build amazing e-commerce sites or integrate WooCommerce on your website.

Here are the major WooCommerce features of the Astra WordPress theme.

Clean and Speed-optimized

Developers of Astra have made sure that the theme remains as clean as possible. It is lightweight and is well-optimized for speed.

Rock-solid and Secure

Astra has used clean code standards and ensures your e-commerce store remains safe and secure. This is a must-have feature anyway.

Product List Style

You have multiple options when it comes to product list design. You can enable or disable certain elements and adjust the number of products you want to display on the product page.

Off-canvas filtering

Off-canvas filtering will help you see the products by applying specific filters in terms of the price range, category, color, and so on. And the filtering sidebar disappears when you start viewing the products.

Hover Effect for Images and Quick View

You can quickly view the products and also zoom a particular part of the page with the hover effect.

Two-step and Distraction-free Checkout

With the two-step, distraction-free, and secure checkout process, you will surely reduce the cart abandoning rate on your e-commerce store.

Other WooCommerce features of Astra include horizontal/vertical gallery, Ajax Add to Cart on Single Product Page, Box shadow, Cart option in the menu, dedicated sidebar, a dropdown cart, product catalog, and more.

Speed comparison

All OceanWP, Astra, and CosmosWP developers have done their best to make their theme as fast as possible, and they are wildly successful in doing so.

We installed these themes and imported one of their demo content and ran several speed tests. CosmosWP has a little edge over OceanWP and Astra here. Although the test showed Astra WP fast, there are many instances that people are not happy with Astra’s speed.

OceanWP Speed Test Result

CosmosWP Speed Test

Astra Speed Test

Pricing comparison: WP Astra vs OceanWP vs CosmosWP

When it comes to pricing, all three themes have annual and lifetime subscriptions available. CosmosWP offers monthly subscription too.

WP Astra Pricing

WP Astra has three pricing plans with monthly and annual subscription options.

Its cheapest plan Astra Pro costs you $41 per month, whereas its Mini Agency Bundle costs you $69 per year. Its most popular plan Agency Bundle costs $249 per year.

Astra Pricing

Astra Pro pricing plan offers features including all free starter templates, one-to-one support, extensive training, and unlimited website usage. The Mini Agency Bundle offers all Astra Pro Plan features, 55+ Agency Starter templates, WP Portfolio Plugin, and Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder or  Elementor. Likewise, its top-tier plan Agency Bundle includes all Astra Pro Plan and Mini Agency Bundle Plan features, plus Convert Pro Plugin, Schema Pro Plugin, and access to SkillJet Academy courses.

You can also buy WP Astra for a lifetime with a one-time payment of $249 for Astra Pro, $499 for Mini Agency Bundle, and $699 for Agency Bundle.

Astra Lifetime Pricing

OceanWP Pricing

OceanWP’s pricings are categorized into three plans – Agency, Business, and Personal plans. The Personal Plan costs you $39 annually for a single site, whereas its most popular plan – Agency Plan lets you use it in 25 sites for $129 per year. All its three plans come with free updates, supports, eight free extensions, 13 premium extensions, free demos, and 60 Pro demos.

OceanWP Annual Pricing 

If you want to buy one of its plans for a lifetime, the Agency Plan costs you a one-time fee of $519, Business Plan costs you $319, and Personal Plan costs you $159.

OceanWP Lifetime Pricing

CosmosWP Pricing

When it comes to Pricing, CosmosWP offers you more flexibility; it has monthly, yearly, and lifetime subscription options for its four plans. If you just want to test it out before planning to buy its yearly or lifetime plan, you can purchase its monthly subscription plan that costs you $19.99 for a single site license, $29.99 for Professional Plan (5 sites license), and $49.99 for a month for its Business Plan. Its Unlimited sites license – Agency Plan costs you $79.99 for a month.

You will get one month of updates and support, all free starter demos, advanced banner, multiple layouts, more headers and footers, elements, multiple blogs, page, and post options, Popup Sidebar, Sticky footer, and 100+ Customizer Options in the Professional, Business, and Agency’s Monthly Plans. But, the premium demos are not available on the Personal Monthly Subscription Plan.

CosmosWP Monthly Plan Pricing

CosmosWP annual subscription for 1 site license if $39.99 per year and its Professional Plan, Business Plan, and Agency Plan are priced $59.99, $129.99, and $199.99 per year. Below, you can see the features you get with each of these plans.

CosmosWP Yearly Plan Pricing

And if you love this theme and want to use it for a lifetime, you can purchase its lifetime subscription too. Its 1 site license costs you a one-time fee of $139.99 whereas its 5 sites license and 25 sites license costs you $189.99 and $399.99 respectively. The Unlimited sites license for lifetime costs you $599.99.

CosmosWP Lifetime Plan Pricing

Support

In terms of support, CosmsoWP has the edge over WP Astra and OceanWP. OceanWP provides free assistance to its premium users. Still, you will have to wait for a few days to even weeks to get support, and it’s understandable because of the huge number of users it has, which in turn, will bombard their support assistance with hundreds and thousands of support requests every day. WP Astra also provides supports to its free and premium users but they are not as quick as that of CosmosWP.

WP Astra Support

WP Astra has a well-detailed knowledgebase, FAQs, and support to its premium and free users. Their documentation has nearly 200 articles including videos. You can contact the support team for pre-sale queries, free support, and pro support. Astra’s support is usually quick, although there are some instances people were not happy with their support.

OceanWP Priority Support

OceanWP offers email support to its users and prospective customers.

For those who need quick and priority support, OceanWP has two Support Plans that you can purchase – Professional Support Plan and Ultimate Support Plan.

Professional Support Plan costs you $29 which offers you three months of priority support and access to theme documentation, theme/plugin conflict testing, theme setup assistance, and help with theme and extensions.

Likewise, the Ultimate Support Plan costs you $99 and offers you one year of priority support. It also gives you access to all those Professional Support Plan’s features for free for a year.

CosmosWP Support

CosmosWP offers quick and effective support to its users. It has live chat support too. The response time usually remains between a few minutes to a few hours. And unlike OceanWP, ComosWP support is totally free.

Final Words

I hope you found this comparison useful. So, which theme have you decided to use?

CosmosWP OceanWP Astra