Astra vs Elementor Hello Theme: Which One is Best for You?

In May 2019, the Elementor team officially got their Hello theme listed at WordPress.org. If you’re not familiar, Hello is a barebones theme framework specifically designed to pair with the Elementor page builder.

Thanks to page builder plugins like Elementor, you can now build entire themes – including headers, footers, archive pages, etc. – using a page builder. So now, rather than needing a mega theme like in years past, all you need is a lightweight theme to provide a foundation for the content that you build with your chosen page builder.

Themes Work Best with Elementor?

Elementor works with any WordPress theme you want, but the Astra theme has taken special efforts so the theme works seamlessly with Elementor and saves you many unnecessary clicks and time!

The Hello theme takes that approach to its extreme, offering just about the most lightweight, stripped-down foundation possible. It has no features or integrations – it’s basically just a blank canvas on which you can build your Elementor site.

The Astra theme has a similar focus on performance and also has a deep integration with the Elementor page builder, which might have you wondering whether you should use Astra or the Hello theme for your next WordPress/Elementor project.

In the end, both themes are great options, but they’re suited to different use cases. To help you choose the theme that’s right for you, we’re going to go hands-on and compare the Hello theme vs Astra so that you understand exactly what each one offers.

Astra vs Hello: Default Designs

Let’s start with the default design of these two themes because you’ll see some big differences in how they look out of the box.

With Astra, your site will have styling for all the important elements as soon as you activate it. Your site looks like a “real” website as soon as you activate it and Astra lets you customize everything via the Customizer.

On the other hand, the Hello theme does not add any styling for any of the core WordPress elements, and your site doesn’t look like a “real” website immediately after activating the theme. Again, that’s because you’re expected to use Elementor to design all those elements.

Let’s look at some of the core pages/content so that you understand the difference:

Header/Footer

With the Hello theme, there’s no real header. You can put either a logo or site title with a navigation menu. Along with header title of the page will keep appearing.

You can see it below: