OceanWP vs Astra vs GeneratePress vs Gutenix: Multipurpose Themes

Multipurpose WordPress themes are the right choice if you want to entrust your site to popular page builders. Although all the best WordPress templates 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 popular WordPress themes we’re about to review in this post are OceanWP vs Astra vs GeneratePress vs Gutenix.

In the OceanWP vs Astra vs GeneratePress vs Gutenix comparison, we’ll talk about:

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

It’s worth noting that all top WordPress themes go with a limited free version, which can be a great starting point for you to feel the flow and see the options.

But before we can make any conclusions in the OceanWP vs Astra vs GeneratePress vs Gutenix battle, let’s go through each theme individually:

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 was recently the best new WordPress theme on the market. Initially designed as the block editor-first theme, 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 their library of templates designed for a variety of 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 a variety of best WordPress 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. They can either simplify the theme management process (e.g. use the Astra bulk edit plugin) or enrich your beautiful theme WordPress 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 best templates for WordPress and settings. The prevailing part is Gutenberg-optimized, 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 and tweaks for best WordPress themes to customize for developers.

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 user-friendly WordPress themes includes beautiful design solutions for any niche, ranging from a coming soon page to a turnkey business site of any type.

In the personal OceanWP vs Astra battle, the first 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 add-ons, 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

The last one to compare in the OceanWP vs Astra vs GeneratePress competition is Gutenix. Just like the two WordPress themes, 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

Multipurpose WordPress theme	Supported page builders + themes	Third-party plugin integrations
Astra	Block editor (Gutenberg) – 50 WP templates Elementor – 133 WP templates Beaver Builder – 103 WP templates Brizy – 40 WP templates	WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, LearnDash, LifterLMS
OceanWP	The theme is optimized to work with Elementor, Brizy, WPBakery, Divi, Beaver Builder, Thrive Architect, King Composer, SiteOrigin (74 starter themes in total)	WooCommerce
GeneratePress	Block editor (Gutenberg) – 42 templates Elementor – 14 templates Beaver Builder – 6 templates	WooCommerce
Gutenix	Block editor – 18 templates 15 Elementor templates Brizy – 15 templates	WooCommerce, ZeGuten

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 best WP themes in question? You can check that yourself by downloading best WordPress themes for website hotels. 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?

WordPress Theme	Annual cost	Lifetime cost (one-time payment, no renewal)
Astra	$59 for unlimited sites $276 for unlimited sites (includes extra addons) $523 for unlimited sites (a complete products bundle)	$523 for unlimited sites $996 for unlimited sites (includes extra addons) $1893 for unlimited sites (a complete products bundle)
OceanWP	$39 for 1 site $79 for 3 sites $129 for unlimited sites	$159 for 1 site $319 for 3 sites $519 for unlimited sites
GeneratePress	$49.95 for unlimited sites (plus, 40% renewal discount)	No lifetime plan
Gutenix	$69 for unlimited sites	$174 for unlimited sites

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.

Most Popular Theme: OceanWP vs Astra vs GeneratePress vs Gutenix?

Who after all wins the OceanWP vs Astra vs GeneratePress vs Gutenix battle?

The Astra multipurpose WP 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 block editor in the spotlight, you need the GeneratePress multipurpose WordPress theme. 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 top 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!