OceanWP vs Astra vs GeneratePress vs Gutenix: Compare Multipurpose Themes

Multipurpose WordPress themes are the right choice if you want to entrust your site to popular page builders.

Although all multipurpose WordPress themes we are reviewing in this post are page builder-friendly, they make different accents and offer different builders – and we’re about to see in what way.

All the themes we’re about to review in this post are OceanWP vs Astra vs GeneratePress vs Gutenix.

We’ll compare:

• Features and designs in general
• Customization experience
• WordPress page builders support
• Pricing plans.

Each theme provides a limited free version, which can be a great starting point for you to feel the flow and see the options.

Now, let’s introduce you to the themes:

Launched in 2017, the OceanWP WordPress theme has gained huge popularity thanks to many great designs and features you can use optionally.

The GeneratePress theme was released in 2016 – and it’s still one of the loved WordPress multipurpose themes among developers and hobbyists. The theme puts a focus on speed, security and primarily Gutenberg support.

Gutenix is a relatively new kid on the block, it was initially designed as the block editor-first theme, but it was further repurposed as a WordPress multipurpose theme that supports different page builders, including Elementor. Actually, Elementor and Gutenberg are two big things Gutenix provides quality solutions for.

Astra, with over 1 million active installs, is one of the most chosen multipurpose WordPress themes of all time. It delivers all you need to start building a blog or a midsize / small business website.

The most selling feature of all multipurpose WordPress themes is a collection of turnkey templates for different business niches. Such starter WordPress site templates allow you to launch your site even a day.

In simple words, a multipurpose theme tries to cover as many niches as possible, making it super useful and affordable for developers and design agencies that build client sites of different types and functions. The themes in our roundup offer huge collections of beautiful designs, so let’s see what they deliver and what they have to offer beyond starter WordPress themes.

Page builders & overall customization options

The Astra theme

Astra creators are definitely making a huge emphasis on creative design solutions and, what’s also important, give you a huge choice of options.

Astra provides customers with the biggest number of Elementor optimized templates for almost every need – business sites, stores, online courses, portfolios, restaurants and more. An Astra theme demo preview is available for each starter site.

We have a dedicated post that covers how to build a fully-fledged hotel booking site with Astra.

First, the flexibility of the Astra theme will pretty much depend on the extra addons/modules included in your plan. With a bundle of advanced modules you can go pretty far and see the unlimited opportunities advertised by Astra with your own eyes.

Let’s list a few examples of the theme essentials you can customize:

• Colors & backgrounds
• Typography (use Google fonts or upload custom ones)
• Spacing
• Header section
• Navigation menu
• Sticky header
• Custom layouts (choose a custom layout for individual pages)
• Site layouts (full-width, max width, padded, fluid, etc.)
• Edit footer widgets
• Diverse blog options (grid, list and masonry layouts; highlight first post, control blog structure and more).

Where you can’t access it with a page builder, Astra has got you covered with tons of global theme options that give you access to footers, headers, menus, blog, and more website parts.

Another cool thing is that you can extend Astra with more free plugins that either simplify the theme management process (e.g. use the Astra bulk edit plugin) or enrich your theme customization experiences (e.g. add more specific widgets like Address with the Astra widgets free plugin or more Gutenberg blocks if you are on the block editor).

In short, the theme puts emphasis on the most common business niches and expects Elementor to be the most used WordPress page builder (it’s hard to find a task it can’t accomplish).

If you are a fan of Elementor, make sure to give a try to free Stratum Elementor widgets.

Astra can also boast of numerous WooCommerce features, including a Sales bubble style, layout settings for your products, and more.

If you do need to build a scalable WordPress site for serious business, you might need many marketing and SEO-aimed plugins that come with the Agency bundle.

The GeneratePress theme

Putting benchmark performance first, the theme comes with speed-optimized designs. The template library is not overloaded with tons of templates and settings; Gutenberg-optimized templates prevail, so the biggest bunch of themes are built to work with the native WordPress editor.

The theme designs include solutions for business portfolios, landing pages, shops, vacation rentals, magazines, restaurants and more.

In addition to the tools you get with the editor of your choice, loads of customization things are available in the WordPress Customizer. The settings include all the needed essentials:

• Full page layout customization
• Header customizations (offers a bunch of header presets)
• Distinctive navigation settings (full or contained, navigation location, etc.)

• Widgetized footer with a customizable width
• Editable site colors (color presets are available for the navigation menu only)
• Typography settings (for body text and headings, including fonts, sizes, etc.)

• WooCommerce settings

See how to get the most out of GeneratePress in the block editor.

Among the advertised features are ‘no dependencies’, meaning the theme won’t require any extra plugin downloads and installations for the default theme to work. The theme also adheres to accessibility standards and provides ready-to-go translations into 20 languages. The theme, furthermore, provides tons of hooks for developers for easier theme code tweaks.

The OceanWP theme

The OceanWP theme is powered by the Ocean Extra plugin that runs the theme installation Wizard to get you started in clicks. Depending on the demo design you choose, the theme asks you to install additional plugins (e.g. WPForms, some custom addons, such as Ocean Sticky Header, Ocean Elementor widgets, etc.). The theme gets you through quite a few dependencies to ensure you can get the design – but you may skip some of them if you want.

The premium library of themes includes beautiful design solutions for any niche, ranging from a coming soon page to a turnkey business site of any type.

The OceanWP theme is probably the most addon-rich – it offers multiple extensions to boost your theme customization experiences in many ways. For example, you can add an Instagram gallery, pop-up registration forms, and more.

As you might guess from the list of supporting addons, the theme is easy to customize to fit your needs:

• Edit colors and typography
• Customize site header (layout, container width, colors, media, social links, mobile menu, etc.)
• Add and customize a scroll-to-top button
• Edit buttons and their style
• Full-scale typography panel (individual settings for headings, main menu, titles, blog posts, WooCommerce widgets and more)

• Flexible footer and sidebar settings.

It’s easy to jump to the needed theme part right from the dashboard and edit it quickly:

Stating support for major page builders, it’s not that clear how the OceanWP theme does that. We can suppose designs work well with Elementor in the first place since there is a dedicated Elementor widgets plugin that enables you to work with the Elementor page builder better.

The Gutenix theme

Gutenix ships with different niche business starter sites powered by different builders. Thanks to the intelligent Gutenix installation wizard, you can get your site up and running in an hour – with your preferred design, of course. It can be your go-to solution if you need an Elementor WordPress theme or a Gutenberg theme.

Among the premium templates are very different niche demos, so you are free to design anything starting from a wedding agency site to an online course platform.

Either premium plan of Gutenix allows you to tweak any part of your theme globally, namely, in addition to the page builders:

• Go with any layout of your choice – full-width, boxed, with sidebar, canvas, etc.
• Edit accent colors
• Use an extended color scheme panel
• Adjustable typography, including access to Google fonts
• Extensive header and footer settings
• In-built pop-up form
• Numerous blog settings with modern layouts

The premium theme version ships by default with ZeGuten blocks – a block editor extension that adds many cool blocks to help you build layouts/add content that you unlikely can achieve with the default block settings (e.g. flip boxes, multi-block marketing sections, fancy call-to-action blocks and more).

Gutenix also offers a set of courses and tutorials that will help you get the most out of the theme and builders you prefer.

Table 1. Integration with page builders & third-party plugins

It’s worth mentioning that Astra, for example, most of the time comes with the same design solutions but optimized for different builders, while Gutenix ships with different designs depending on the builder you choose. OceanWP doesn’t stay any direct dependency between a builder and a theme so most likely each starter site provides default style adjustment to listed builders. Astra draws a clear line between page builder-friendly themes still giving a great choice of demos no matter which builder you prefer.

Pricing plans & bundles

How good/limited is a free version of the themes in question? You can check that yourself by downloading them, but let’s not focus on premium versions that definitely give you access to much more features.

The Lifetime cost means you pay just once and always get fresh updates and designs without a need to pay each year.

Table 2. How much does it cost to use a WordPress multipurpose theme?

Summing up on the pricing benefits:

• GeneratePress offers the most affordable annual subscription for using the theme under unlimited domains; on the cons side, you’ll need to pay each year.
• OceanWP allows you to use all premium theme features for just $39, but only for one website.
• Gutenix offers the most affordable lifetime plan for using the theme under unlimited domains.
• Astra’s plans are the most expensive, but since they come with many useful, premium addons, they pay off in many cases.

Conclusions: OceanWP vs Astra vs GeneratePress vs Gutenix?

We can continue this list, but… Who after all wins the battle?

The Astra theme can suit your needs if you’re looking for an all-in-one type of theme: numerous multipurpose designs, all top page builders, many essential extra plugins, integration with different plugins, the choice of pricing plans to fit the needs of projects of different scale.

If you need a rather lightweight, fast theme that puts the native WordPress block editor in the spotlight, you need GeneratePress. This is a top choice of WordPress developers and studios that build client sites and need a rather streamlined theme without bells and whistles.

The OceanWP theme is on equal footing with Astra in terms of the offered design solutions and extra plugins that take care of customization, SEO, marketing, communication and more.

You can rely on the Gutenix multipurpose WordPress theme if you need a high-quality design package for Gutenberg and Elementor, plus tons of ready-to-go tools to improve and speed up your site.

Now, it’s up to you!

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