Everybody is exploring safe and powerful options to set up online classes and sell courses. Be it a school, a college, an individual instructor, or an institute, their main aim is to provide education to their students where they can learn interactively and can perform better.
Since you’re here, I’ll recommend you to go with WordPress along with LearnDash LMS. This helps you set up your online classes within minutes. It allows you to manage your courses and students in the best possible way on your WordPress website.
But what about the appearance of your website? Won’t you like to make it more eye-catchy and engaging to your students? Won’t you like it to provide them the best user experience on your site? Obviously, you would! And, using a WordPress LMS theme which is compatible with your LearnDash LMS is worth of cost.
So, without further ado, let’s get down to comparing the two most-popular LearnDash themes— LearnMate LearnDash Theme and Astra WordPress Theme
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Best LearnDash Themes 2020
The LearnMate theme is developed by Wbcom Designs whereas the Astra WordPress theme is offered by Brainstorm Force. Both the themes have attractive styling options and work fine with your LearnDash LMS
LearnMate Theme
LearnMate theme is one of the most-recommended LearnDash themes that allows selling courses online with useful customization options and engaging styling options. It powers the LearnDash users to integrate other required functionalities to their website as it supports many useful plugins like Elementor, BuddyPress, bbPress, WooCommerce, Paid Membership Pro, Easy Digital Downloads, Premium LearnDash Add-ons, WP Forms, and many more.
Noteworthy Features of LearnMate LearnDash Theme
- One-click Demo Import
- Beautiful Typography & Theme Skins
- Grid and Listing Options to Display Courses
- Distraction-Free Reading
- Engaging Course Review Modules
- WordPress 5.x Compatible
- Fully Gutenberg Ready
- Multiple Header Variations
- Multilingual and RTL Support
- Optimized Mobile Menu Panel
LearnDash Theme
Astra Theme
Astra is a multi-purpose theme and a lightweight theme for WordPress that also offers a pre-built demo for LearnDash LMS to get started with your online education website. The powerful design options and the integration with the Elementor page builder make it easy to work with this theme.
Noteworthy Features of Astra WordPress Theme
- Performance-Focused
- Powerful Design Options
- Multiple Site Layouts
- Beautiful Typography, colors, and background
- Multiple Blog Layouts
- Support for WooCommerce, LearnDash and LifterLMS
- Astra Widgets: Address Widgets, Info List Widgets, Social Icon Widgets
- Custom Layouts for header, footer, 404 page, hooks, and display conditions
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Astra vs LearnMate: Comparison
Let’s compare both the themes on the basis of various factors:
1. Pricing
The pricing is the major factor that involves in making purchase decisions. Here are the pricing details for both the themes:
LearnMate theme comes with three pricing plans that include 1-Year Updates, one to one support, and 30% off on renewals—
- Single Site License: Worth $99
- 5 Site License: Worth $149
- 20 Site License: Worth $199
On the other hand, the Astra theme also comes with three pricing plans
- Astra Pro: Worth $47
- Mini Agency Bundle: Worth $169
- Agency Bundle: Worth $249
And, the picture is clear, LearnMate theme is a better option when it comes to buying WordPress theme at affordable rates.
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2. Loading Speed
The website speed is a critical factor when we are talking about engagement and great user experience. You need to make sure your students will have an engaging learning environment with proper two-way interaction. This means your website must load quickly with minimum lag.
After testing both the themes, we can say that they offer fast loading speed and are light-weight and optimized.
3. Theme Design
Boring classes can reduce the interest of students in learning online courses. Make sure whatever theme you’re using on your LearnDash LMS, it is capable of engaging students and allows them to focus on the course material.
LearnMate Theme Layout
LearnMate theme presents 6 unique mobile-responsive layouts that go well with all types of online education websites. Each layout offers an amazing course page designs with grid and list view options. The course and lessons page has a variety of customization options.
The distraction-free reading layout allows your students to focus on their study without displaying any extra web page elements on their screen. Moreover, if you want to create courses in such languages that are written from right to left, this theme is just awesome. It supports WPML plugin which makes it multi-lingual and offers in-built RTL support.
With BuddyPress and PeepSo integration, you can easily create a community of your students where they can share their progress details with others.
For extra customization, the Elementor integration can help you a lot.
Astra Theme Layout
On the other hand, Astra is basically a multipurpose WordPress theme that comes with a starter template for LearnDash. This starter template can give you a headstart for your e-learning web development project. This template offers various customization options for your course and lesson pages.
The theme is lightweight and optimized for speed and performance. The headers, blogs, single pages, posts, etc can be easily customized as per your need. Moreover, there are in-built header and footer options for you to try out. You can also make your header sticky. This WooCommerce ready theme allows you to design your store easily.
You will get the boxed, full width, padded, fluid layout, spacing control, and default container site layout options.
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4. User-friendliness
Think of these factors:
- Mobile Compatibility
- Optimized for all screen size and devices
- Well-planned site architecture
- Well-formatted content structure
- Fast load times
- Browser consistency
- Easy website navigation
All the above factors define how friendly your website is for your site visitors.
Both themes are lightweight and mobile responsive and perform well in terms of user-friendliness.
5. Compatible Plugins or Add-ons
LearnMate is compatible with many useful plugins such as Elementor, LearnDash, BuddyPress, bbPress, WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, WP Forms, Premium LearnDash Add-ons, Paid Memberships Pro, WPML, Gutenberg, and many more.
On the other hand, the Astra theme also works fine with Elementor, WooCommerce, LearnDash, LifterLMS, EDD, and more.
Final Verdict
Which theme is the best fit for your education website is totally depend on your website requirements. Think of your website and students’ requirements, compare both the themes on various factors, and then pick the best one for your project.
So, which theme captures your interest the most?
Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.
Stay tuned!
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