I've only ever used WordPress to do my own goofy little websites and I've always made my own custom themes by hand (child themes of various Twenty Twenty themes). It is time-consuming, but I find it fun.
Now I have an actual client who needs their e-commerce site rebuilt. The site is currently using Elementor and Astra, both of which I have never worked with before.
Why would you use both Elementor *and* Astra at the same time?
I understand that Elementor is a site builder for WordPress, but isn't Astra also a site builder? Can't I build a functioning e-commerce site just with Astra?
I've googled this but all the results show me *how* to use both, but not *why*.
FYI, the previous dev who built the site did some horrible stuff to it and it loads in 10+ seconds. When I turned Elementor off, it started loading < 3 seconds. I don't know if that's an Elementor problem or an implementation problem from the previous dev.
>*but isn’t Astra also a site builder?*
No, Astra is just a theme. Not a lot can be done with it without a page builder (if you aren’t a developer)
Astra should work well with Elementor rather than conflict with it.
[https://wpastra.com/theme-for-elementor/](https://wpastra.com/theme-for-elementor/)
i use astra and elementor in my ecommerce and they work fine together. astra is a theme, the paid version gives you plenty of features to implement but not as much as elementor. elementor give you forms and many other advance stuff, specific for e commerce.
so why astra and not a barebone theme? well, you can go with “empty” custom theme, but as you saw its more time consuming. astra has fonts, layouts , basic design,colors build in the theme already
These work well together. Just make sure you chose the option to disable default fonts and colours in Elementor > Setrinvs so these will inherit from Astra.
I find elementor hard to work with when using woocommerce. Many websites will combine a theme with better support for woocommerce with elementor to take advantage of built in components in the theme for the ECommerce side of things.