24 Feb 2021
Pagespeed Comparison: Themify vs Divi, Elementor, Astra, Avada, OceanWP, Beaver
Since the release of Themify v5, we have received an overwhelming amount of positive feedbacks about the pagespeed and performance improvements. We've helped many users achieve a 90+ pagespeed score on their sites, which they weren't able to with other themes. In this post, we will present a pagespeed comparison of Themify Ultra versus Divi, Elementor, Avada, Beaver, Astra, OceanWP, all of which are extremely popular themes and page builders in the WordPress market. We are presenting an unbiased comparison using the builtin features from each theme, without any third party cache or minify plugins. The pagespeed test was audited using Google Pagespeed Insights and we've recorded the whole process, which you can watch below. When it comes to pagespeed, we are thrilled to show how Themify outperforms other themes and builders.
Why Is Pagespeed Important?
Pagespeed is very important in not only being more efficient, but also in providing a much better on-page user experience. A slow website not only irritates your visitors, it can also harm your site SEO and business. According to this study conducted by Section.io, there is a 9.6% bounce rate when page speed is 2 seconds and a 32.3% bounce rate when page speed is 7 seconds, which means over a quarter of users will click away if a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Similar studies on how page speed affects SEO and site traffics are also available from other reliable sources such as Neil Patel, SEO Clarity, and Pingdom.
In 2020, Google has made pagespeed and user experience a critical ranking factor on their search engine results. That means if your site loads fast, you have better advantage in the search result placement. If your site/business relies on search engines to drive traffic in, we highly recommend you hop on to Google Pagespeed Insights to analyze your site's pagespeed.
Site Setup
We have setup a WordPress multi-site for the pagespeed test. Each site has the same content, with WooCommerce plugin activated. There is no server cache/CDN or any cache plugin installed. At the time of recording the video, the following are installed on the site.
- WordPress 5.5.3 (mult-site enabled)
- WooCommerce 4.8.0
- Themify Ultra 5.1.4
- Divi 4.6.5
- Astra 2.6.0 + Elementor 3.0.13
- Avada 7.1.1 + Avada Builder 3.1.1
- OceanWP 2.0.0 + Beaver Builder Lite 2.4.0.5
Themify Performance Features
Themify has a number of builtin features that can help speed up page load such as lazy load, caching, Gzip, and WebP image. On our demo, we have the following options enabled: Themify Cache, Gzip Scripts, Themify WebP Image, and jQuery Defer.
Pagespeed Audits
The comparison is done using Google Pagespeed Insights to audit the pagespeed on a sample page, home page, shop page, and a product page. You can access the reports below which includes the demo link and pagespeed report link. You can also watch the full length video capturing the whole process.
Result
Below is the summary of the pagespeed result of each site and page.
| Sample | Home | Shop | Product | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ultra | 99 | 97 | 96 | 90 |
| Divi | 93 | 87 | 80 | 70 |
| Astra + Elementor | 96 | 73 | 92 | 80 |
| Avada | 45 | 58 | 51 | 47 |
| OceanWP + Beaver | 80 | 73 | 72 | 64 |
Sample Page
The sample page is auto generated by WordPress when you create a new page. It only has a text block without any rich media content such as images, videos, etc., making it the lightest page on the site.
- Ultra - Sample Page (view demo)
- desktop = 99, mobile = 91 (view pagespeed report)
- Divi - Sample Page (view demo)
- desktop = 93, mobile = 69 (view pagespeed report)
- Astra + Elementor - Sample Page (view demo)
- desktop = 96, mobile = 85 (view pagespeed report)
- Avada - Sample Page (view demo)
- desktop = 45, mobile = 29 (view pagespeed report)
- OceanWP + Beaver - Sample Page (view demo)
- desktop = 80, mobile = 59 (view pagespeed report)
Home Page
On the home page, the layout is built with a page builder. Since Astra and OceanWP theme doesn't have a built-in page builder, we use Elementor and Beaver Builder to build the page layout. Each demo home page has the same background images, text, icons, and banner images.
- Ultra - Home Page (view demo)
- desktop = 97, mobile = 82 (view pagespeed report)
- Divi - Home Page (view demo)
- desktop = 87, mobile = 55 (view pagespeed report)
- Astra + Elementor - Home Page (view demo)
- desktop = 73, mobile = 52 (view pagespeed report)
- Avada - Home Page (view demo)
- desktop = 58, mobile = 26 (view pagespeed report)
- OceanWP + Beaver - Home Page (view demo)
- desktop = 73, mobile = 50 (view pagespeed report)
Shop Page
On the WooCommerce shop page, each demo shows 12 products with 5 top-rated products on the sidebar. All demos uses the same products' information and images.
- Ultra - Shop Page (view demo)
- desktop = 96, mobile = 91 (view pagespeed report)
- Divi - Shop Page (view demo)
- desktop = 80, mobile = 47 (view pagespeed report)
- Astra + Elementor - Shop Page (view demo)
- desktop = 92, mobile = 51 (view pagespeed report)
- Avada - Shop Page (view demo)
- desktop = 51, mobile = 34 (view pagespeed report)
- OceanWP + Beaver - Shop Page (view demo)
- desktop = 72, mobile = 45 (view pagespeed report)
Product Page
The product page is a single page consisting of a large product image and 3 product gallery thumbnails. On the sidebar, there are 5 top-rated products with thumbnails. Again, all demos have the same product images uploaded.
- Ultra - Product Page (view demo)
- desktop = 90, mobile = 69 (view pagespeed report)
- Divi - Product Page (view demo)
- desktop = 70, mobile = 37 (view pagespeed report)
- Astra + Elementor - Product Page (view demo)
- desktop = 80, mobile = 52 (view pagespeed report)
- Avada - Product Page (view demo)
- desktop = 47, mobile = 30 (view pagespeed report)
- OceanWP + Beaver - Product Page (view demo)
- desktop = 64, mobile = 41 (view pagespeed report)
Conclusion
Based on these results, Themify Ultra surpasses the other popular themes and builders on pagespeed performance. Whether you are using WordPress for a simple website or for a site with heavy content, Themify has proven that you can easily achieve a 90+ pagespeed score on your site. Consider switching to Themify Ultra now!
Credit: Video by James Welbes.
Feb 24, 2021 @ 06:23
Impressive pagespeed score. I tried Divi and Astra with Elementor as combo, it is hard to get high score on Google Pagespeed Insights without a cache plugin (I normally use Autoptimize or WP Rocket) and CDN services because they are heavy on the scripts and CSS files. I checked the page load size on your Ultra demo, it is very light. How did you make it so light with all those images and icons?
Feb 24, 2021 @ 17:48
Themify framework lazy loads the images/videos and load the scripts on demand, that is why the initial page size is small. Read more details on this post: https://themify.me/blog/pagespeed-v5-release
Mar 02, 2021 @ 23:46
Same way as spikey (Astra/Elementor/Rocket)… not great pagespeed. I have already change some website with themify. Thanks!
Feb 24, 2021 @ 06:30
Gotta say this is the most amazing update. Pagespeed is definitely the thing in 2021 for SEO. If you google up SEO guides, most of them are about pagespeed. I’m happy you guys made this move. Kudos!
Feb 24, 2021 @ 14:50
Themify is always my first choice. Cheers!!
Feb 24, 2021 @ 15:14
I didn’t have to understand how it worked because with my site (ultra + themify builder pro + themify custom post type builder + themify builder search …) my score is worse than with Wp Rocket and a CDN. Yes, I have a very fast server and have optimized my images. In addition the Google result indicates an excessive size DOM… In short, it doesn’t work for me.
Feb 24, 2021 @ 17:04
If you get excessive size of DOM, it means you have too many content on the page. Try to reduce the content and that issue will be resolved.
Feb 24, 2021 @ 19:44
The excessive DOM appeared with Ultra 5. The page is very simple : a slider + a search option + a list of the last 6 custom posts. All done with Ultra + Builder Pro and other themify ad-ons. I think I should open a thread in support.
Feb 24, 2021 @ 21:23
Ultra doesn’t cause excessive DOM as you can see on our demo: https://themify.me/demo/wp/ultra/. Excessive DOM means there are too many HTML tags on the page (reference: https://www.corewebvitals.io/pagespeed/fix-avoid-excessive-dom-size-lighthouse). If you are experiencing that issue, please post the ticket on our support forum. Our support team can assess the issue and provide some suggestions.
Feb 24, 2021 @ 16:58
Why not testing WP-Astra with Gutenberg? Also: were the caching options e.g. of Avada enabled? This test is not much of worth as you compared caching with no-caching, themes with pagebuilders, etc.
Feb 24, 2021 @ 17:03
As mentioned in the post, we are comparing with the built-in features. We can do an update post to compare with caching plugin enabled.
Feb 24, 2021 @ 16:58
Having these options on the theme settings is nice, however,
This test seems to be an unfair one,
Because if you would enable Gzip, Cache, WebP & Jquery scripts
for all other themes, the results would be different.
Feb 24, 2021 @ 19:41
Even after buying Themify I checked sometimes other builders… But every time after few minutes in their demos I know that I no need them at all… So its like being happy one more time from the same thing…
Feb 24, 2021 @ 21:51
Before I didn’t understand the value of page speed until I went online on a 3G network in small town. It does make a difference on lighter sites. Now I learned what is Google Pagespeed Insights, Web Vitals and Lighthouse. I see a lot of WP users still uploading large images taken from their phones and they don’t check the page size and speed. You guys did an amazing job on the v5 update with lazy load and script load on demand. I’m very happy with the changes.
Feb 25, 2021 @ 03:02
This is a fantastic result. I just recently updated to Ultra v5. It took me some time to re-match the appearance for my site. But I’m very happy with the pagespeed score improvement. Don’t need Autoptimize and Super Cache now. Going to build my husband’s site with Ultra. Will submit to your showcase when it is ready. Keep up the good work guys and girls!
Mar 10, 2021 @ 10:38
It works nicely, the pagespeed run. My website will pick up good track this year with this enhancement.
Mar 19, 2021 @ 19:13
This is the most fantastic update from you guys. My client sites are so much faster and lighter even on shared hosts. My clients still don’t understand the value of pagespeed yet, but eventually they will see why it is important to have a fast loading site. Will slowly update all sites to the new version. Good work guys!
Apr 08, 2021 @ 14:25
Page speed has never been this efficiently-run before. This is such a good treat from Themify.
Apr 15, 2021 @ 20:26
Wow, I was very impressed with the speed of the Ultra, I was surprised not only by the performance, but also by the design that I like a lot !!!
Thanks for sharing this content !!!!
Jan 05, 2022 @ 17:27
Page speed is important to users because, well, faster pages are more efficient and provide a much better on-page user experience. Per a recent Kissmetrics infographic, if a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, over a quarter of users will click away and choose a different search result.