Nine Multipurpose WordPress Themes Compared

The short answer

What is a good alternative to Astra, Divi or Elementor?

Canvas is a premium WordPress theme and website builder, and it is an alternative to all eight products here for anyone who wants to build in the editor WordPress ships with the design work done for them. Avada, Divi and Elementor edit pages in builders of their own. Astra, Kadence, GeneratePress, Blocksy and OceanWP start with a free theme and sell a paid layer above it. Canvas is one paid product with 258 blocks, 183 patterns and 80 complete demo websites in every plan, from $39 a year for 3 websites. Several of the others have free editions and far larger install bases, and the section on where they are ahead says so.

The table

Ten things buyers actually compare

Where a vendor does not publish something, the cell says so instead of guessing. Where a vendor's own pages disagree with each other, both figures are shown.

Canvas compared with Avada, Divi, Elementor, Astra, Kadence, GeneratePress, Blocksy and OceanWP, on figures read from each vendor's public website on 4 September 2026.
Comparison	Canvas	Avada	Divi	Elementor	Astra	Kadence	GeneratePress	Blocksy	OceanWP
Editing model	WordPress block editor and Site Editor	Live Visual Builder, its own editor	Divi visual builder, its own editor	Elementor Editor, its own editor	WordPress editor with Spectra blocks, or Elementor and Beaver Builder	WordPress editor with Kadence Blocks	WordPress editor with GenerateBlocks	WordPress editor, Elementor, Brizy or Beaver Builder, options in the Customizer	Elementor or Gutenberg, options in the Customizer
Blocks or elements	258 blocks, 179 of them free tier	183 elements	200+ elements as published	32 free widgets, 57 on Essential, 85 at the top tier	Not published	30+ blocks as published	6 GenerateBlocks blocks	14 theme blocks	18 widgets
Complete demo websites	80 complete websites in 16 categories	113 prebuilt websites	2,000+ layouts as published, 139 in the gallery	100+ website kits	387 shown in the library	87 in the gallery, 200+ on the pricing card	80+ starter sites	47 starter sites	About 450 cards shown, 240+ claimed
Header builder	Header, footer, top bar and mega menu built from blocks in the editor	Header Builder	Theme Builder	Theme Builder on Pro plans	Header Footer Builder, mega menu on Pro	Header, footer and navigation builder in Essentials	Theme Builder elements in GP Premium	Drag and drop header builder in the Customizer	Customizer header options, sticky header on the Pro Bundle
AI included	Text and image credits in every plan	Not published	Divi AI, included with the Divi Pro bundle	Elementor One credits, unused credits do not roll over	ZipWP bundled with the plus AI plans	Inline AI tools, AI design tools on Elite	Not published	Not published	Not published
Starting price per year	$39 a year	$69 once on ThemeForest	$89 a year	$60 a year, Essential	$99 a year, renews at $149	$99 a year, Essentials	$59 a year for GP Premium, $149 for GeneratePress One	$69 a year, Personal	$42 a year on sale, $52 regular
Sites on the starting plan	3	1 live site and 1 staging site	Unlimited	1	3	Not published	500	1	1
Lifetime option	Not offered	One-time purchase with lifetime updates	$249 once, or $297 with services renewing at $212 a year	Never offered	$279 for Astra Pro + AI	No lifetime tier	Not offered on the pricing page	$199 for Personal	$168 for Starter on sale
Refund window	7 days on first purchases	No policy of its own, refunds follow Envato	30 days	30 days, annual plans only	14 days	30 days, in a policy the product page does not link	30 days	14 days	14 days, after a support ticket
What happens at expiry	The site keeps rendering, the service pauses	Updates continue, support ends after 6 months	Themes keep working, members area, updates and support stop	Site stays online, Pro widgets, templates, updates and support stop	Sites stay as they are, updates, support and premium imports stop	Not published on the product page, the terms say materials may not be used after expiry	Site keeps working, download access stops	Website remains intact, no features removed	Licences last one year, updates and support stop

Canvas figures are counted from the shipped theme and plugin. See the pricing page for what each plan includes and the block library for the full inventory.

The difference

Where Canvas differs

Six things that follow from building on the editor WordPress ships.

Blocks, not widgets

Canvas ships 258 real WordPress blocks that save as standard block markup. Avada, Divi and Elementor render through editors of their own, and GenerateBlocks ships 6 blocks, Blocksy 14 and Elementor Pro 85 widgets at its top tier.

Every demo is a whole website

Inner pages, menus, forms, real content types and a published page count, on every one of the 80. Several libraries here are larger. None of them tells you how complete a single entry is.

The header builder is in the editor

Headers, footers, top bars, mega menus and page titles are records composed from 14 header blocks in the block editor. Blocksy and OceanWP build theirs in the Customizer, Elementor in its own editor.

AI is in the licence

Text and image credits arrive every month with every plan. Elementor One is a separate subscription whose credits do not roll over, and Divi AI comes with the Divi Pro bundle or costs $115 a year on its own.

Everything in every plan

There is no feature ladder. Starter, Pro and Agency ship the same 258 blocks, 183 patterns and 80 demos, and differ only by sites, AI credits and Agency's multisite activation.

Render but freeze, in writing

If your licence lapses the site keeps rendering every premium block, and updates, demo imports, AI and premium editing pause. It is on the pricing page, not buried in the terms.

The other side

Where others are ahead

A comparison that only flatters the author is worth nothing. Two places where these products beat us today.

Install base and reviews

Astra publishes more than a million active installations and 4.9 stars from 6,518 WordPress.org reviews. GeneratePress publishes 7.2 million downloads and 100,000 customers, and OceanWP nearly 10 million downloads and 5,714 reviews. Canvas is new as a WordPress theme, though its design language comes from the Canvas HTML template, so judge it on the inventory you can count and the demos you can preview, not on a number we have not earned yet.

Site limits and refund windows

Divi licenses unlimited websites on one subscription and GeneratePress covers 500, while Canvas covers 3, 10 and 100. Divi, Elementor, GeneratePress and Kadence all publish 30-day refunds against our 7 days. If either of those decides it for you, they are the better offer and we would rather say so here.

Sources