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 Additionally, as the theme approaches a decade since its release, some users consider it outdated.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.
Before we dive into specific Avada theme alternatives, let’s consider the key features that make a theme or builder ideal for beginners:
With these criteria in mind, let’s explore some of the best Avada theme alternatives 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Neve is available as a free WordPress theme with limited features. Neve Pro starts at $69/year for unlimited websites.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
