Avada Theme Alternatives: Best Picks for Beginners

Avada has established itself as a leading choice among professional designers for WordPress themes, primarily due to its versatility and comprehensive feature set. Developed by ThemeFusion, Avada has become one of ThemeForest’s most successful products since its launch in 2012. With nearly a million licenses sold, it has garnered a reputation for enabling the creation of complex and feature-rich websites.

Despite its popularity, beginners may find Avada’s extensive options and functionalities overwhelming. Additionally, as the theme approaches a decade since its release, some users consider it outdated. There are complaints about legacy code that ThemeFusion cannot remove due to backward compatibility issues. For those new to WordPress and looking for a more user-friendly experience, several alternatives balance simplicity and powerful features.

In this article, we’ll look at popular Avada theme alternatives that allow new users to build professional-looking sites efficiently and effectively.

What to Look for in a Beginner-Friendly Avada Theme Alternative

Before we dive into specific Avada theme alternatives, let’s consider the key features that make a theme or builder ideal for beginners:

1. Ease of Use: The theme or builder should be intuitive and easy to navigate without requiring coding knowledge. A user-friendly interface is crucial for beginners.
2. Pre-Built Templates: Access to pre-designed templates allows beginners to start with a solid base design that can be easily customized to fit their needs.
3. Customization Tools: Look for options that offer a good range of customization features without overwhelming the user. The ability to make changes easily is important for creating a unique site.
4. Performance: Fast-loading themes ensure a smooth experience for the site builder and the end-users. Good performance also benefits SEO.

With these criteria in mind, let’s explore some of the best Avada theme alternatives for beginners.

Avada Theme Alternatives: Best Picks for Beginners

Now that we know what to look for let’s explore some excellent Avada theme alternatives that are perfect for beginners. Each option offers a user-friendly approach to website building while providing powerful features to help you create stunning websites.

1. Breakdance

Breakdance is a modern WordPress builder that offers a powerful alternative to Avada. It provides users with enhanced design flexibility and optimal performance. By default, Breakdance disables the WordPress theme system, eliminating theme bloat and allowing complete control through its visual interface.

Unlike Avada, which often requires third-party add-ons for essential features, Breakdance comes with 145 elements right out of the box. These built-in elements include a Post Loop Builder, Menu Builder, Multi-step Forms, Popup Builder, and Element Studio.

Breakdance’s intuitive user interface makes customization seamless. It’s drag-and-drop editing functionality and robust customization options enable users to modify every website element without coding knowledge.

Despite its extensive feature set, Breakdance is lightweight and fast. The builder is optimized to create websites that load quickly. This focus on performance sets Breakdance apart as a practical choice for WordPress users seeking a balance between functionality and speed.

Overall, Breakdance offers a comprehensive solution for WordPress website creation, combining ease of use with powerful features and optimized performance. Its all-in-one approach and user-friendly interface make it an attractive option for those looking to build efficient and customizable WordPress sites.

Why Breakdance is Great For Beginners

Modern drag-and-drop interface

Breakdance’s editing interface is user-friendly, and with extensive customization options, you can design elements ranging from simple to complicated in minutes. Customizing a WordPress menu requires the use of some third-party plugins. Still, Breakdance’s Menu Builder allows you to quickly create a beautifully designed, accessible menu without needing extra plugins.

All-in-One Solution

Breakdance provides features like WooCommerce integration, form builders, and animation controls. Unlike Avada, which frequently requires third-party add-ons, there is no need for additional plugins.

Breakdance includes a built-in form builder that allows you to create everything from simple contact forms to advanced lead capture forms, email subscribe forms, survey forms, and multi-step forms. It eliminates the need for third-party form plugins. Besides that, it includes a popup builder that allows you to create targeted popups for promotions, sales, and lead generation.

Performance and Speed

Breakdance is optimized for faster load times, helping improve site performance and SEO. It is built with newer web technologies and offers a superior caching mechanism that caches CSS separately for headers, footers, global blocks, and individual pages, loading just styles immediately relevant to each page. 

Ease of Use

Through its comprehensive suite of features, Breakdance offers an incredibly user-friendly approach to website design. It includes 145 pre-built elements and a huge template library, making it easy to create a website within minutes. The Global Styles system allows you to make site-wide style changes from a single control panel, ensuring a uniform appearance. 

Breakdance’s theme builder is simple and allows you to create layouts for different components of your WordPress website. You can create templates for headers, footers, single posts, archives, categories, tags, authors, 404 pages, and search results. Besides that, you can use conditional logic to control the visibility of these templates.

Element Studio – Breakdance includes Element Studio, a capability that no other WordPress page builder currently offers. It is a built-in IDE for creating elements for Breakdance. You can create custom builder elements visually using PHP, CSS, HTML, and JavaScript — directly inside the Breakdance interface. Building a custom element from scratch is a huge time and cost saver. 

Breakdance is Best For

• E-Commerce Sites: Ideal for small to medium businesses needing WooCommerce features with built-in product page and checkout customization.
• Freelancers and Agencies: Streamlines site building with global styles and reusable elements, saving time for teams managing multiple clients or projects.
• Marketing and Lead Generation: It excels at landing page creation with built-in popup and CTA elements, which is great for marketers focused on lead capture and conversion rates.

Pricing

Breakdance offers a straightforward yearly subscription model. Its free version allows users to explore its basic page builder features. For those seeking advanced functionality, including the theme builder and premium features, paid plans begin at $99.99 per year for a single site license and $199/year for unlimited websites. One license gives access to all features, making it a cost-effective page builder regardless of project size. 

2. Astra Theme

Astra is a lightweight WordPress theme launched in 2017 by Brainstorm Force. Currently, it has 1 million active installations, meaning 1 million or more websites are using Astra as their WordPress theme. It’s designed to be fast, simple, and highly compatible with third-party page builders, making it a great choice if you want a theme that combines performance with flexibility. Astra is an ideal choice for beginners due to its simplicity and performance. Its free version offers ample features for small websites, while the pro version unlocks more customization options.

Why Astra Is Great for Beginners:

• Ease of Use: Astra’s integration with the WordPress Customizer makes making changes intuitive for new users.
• Starter Templates: Astra provides access to hundreds of pre-designed starter sites that can be imported with one click, helping beginners get started quickly.
• No Coding Required: Astra offers a solid balance of customization and performance without requiring coding knowledge.
• WooCommerce Ready: Optimized for WooCommerce, making it a solid choice for eCommerce sites.

Pricing

Astra offers a free version that includes essential features for basic website creation. Astra Pro starts at $49/year for users seeking advanced functionality, making it more affordable for small businesses and individuals. The premium plans unlock advanced features like built-in layouts, White Label, Multiple Page Headers, Mega Menu, and additional starter templates.

3. Neve

Neve is a highly flexible and well-designed WordPress theme optimized for beginners. It’s designed to work seamlessly with popular page builders, allowing users to easily design professional websites.

Why Neve Is Great for Beginners

• Fast Setup: Neve’s simple setup wizard helps users install a demo site in minutes.
• Beginner-Friendly Customization: Works well with Elementor and Gutenberg, offering drag-and-drop page building.
• One-Click Demos: Access to an extensive library of demo sites that can be imported and customized to fit various industries.
• Various customization options via the customizer.

Pricing

Neve is available as a free WordPress theme with limited features. Neve Pro starts at $69/year for unlimited websites.

4. Elementor Page Builder

Elementor is a popular WordPress page builder with a simple drag-and-drop interface. It is one of four WordPress plugins with ten million active installations. While not a WordPress theme, Elementor is compatible with most WordPress themes and offers many design options. Its user-friendly features have made it the most popular page builder in the WordPress plugin repository, allowing even those with no coding experience to design webpages effortlessly. The plugin’s interface was developed to be straightforward, allowing users to see real-time changes as they create their website. 

One of Elementor’s standout features is its Template Library, which offers a vast collection of design elements, including single pages, blocks, and pop-up templates. This library enables users to quickly build, change, reuse, and export templates, considerably reducing website development. Whether designing a simple site or a complex eCommerce website, Elementor’s flexibility can fulfill almost all of your web design needs.

Why Elementor Is Great for Beginners

• User-friendly drag-and-drop builder
• Extensive template library
• Real-time design change
• Seamless WooCommerce integration

Pricing

Elementor has both free and premium versions. The free version includes basic functionality ideal for simple websites. The Elementor Pro has four paid options to choose from: Essential, Advanced, Expert, and Agency. Essential plan starts at $59 per year, while Agency costs $399 per year. 

5. Kadence Theme

Kadence Theme is a modern, lightweight WordPress theme that serves as an excellent Avada theme alternative, offering faster performance and more intuitive design capabilities.

It is quickly gaining popularity due to its user-friendly experience and advanced features. It is easy to set up, making it an excellent choice for beginners who want a theme that can grow with their needs.

Why It’s Great for Beginners:

• Drag-and-Drop Editing: Kadence integrates seamlessly with its Kadence Blocks builder, allowing users to customize pages easily through a drag-and-drop interface without requiring coding skills.
• Pre-Built Designs: Kadence offers a variety of pre-built website templates that can be imported and customized effortlessly.
• Extensive Customization Options: Kadence provides a wide range of customization features through the WordPress customizer. Users can easily adjust global colors and typography settings to match their branding.
• Header and Footer Builder: The theme includes a drag-and-drop header and footer builder, enabling users to customize these elements easily.
• WooCommerce Support: Kadence comes with built-in support for WooCommerce, simplifying the setting up of online stores.

Pricing

Kadence Theme includes a free core theme available in the WordPress repository, which provides basic functionality for users looking to get started without additional investment. For more advanced features, Kadence offers a Pro version starting at $59 per year for a single site license.

Which Is The Best Avada Theme Alternatives for Beginners

Beginners should look for an Avada WordPress theme option that mixes usability and substantial, helpful features. While popular options such as Astra, Neve, Elementor, and Kadence all have appealing features, Breakdance emerges as the clear Avada theme alternative for beginners. Its unique blend of simple design tools and robust features gives beginners everything they need to create professional-looking websites without getting bogged down by technical details. 

Unlike Avada’s steeper learning curve, Breakdance takes a more accessible approach to site design while providing the professional capabilities that users expect. This balance makes it an excellent choice for beginners who want to develop beautifully designed websites without spending months learning difficult tools; yet, depending on their project requirements, users with specific needs may still find value in alternatives like Astra or Elementor.