Avada Theme Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme

The Avada Theme has been the #1 best selling wordpress theme on envato market for years. It now comes with a frontend live visual builder and also offers a backend builder. With Avada, you can visually builder your WordPress website from the frontend. It also comes with a good amount of templates and a very large helpful community.

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Contents

Avada Theme

Avada Theme Pros

New Front End Visual Builder
Large Helpful FaceBook Community
Includes Several Plugins For Free
60+ Templates To Choose From
Can Use The Theme Customizer While Building Your Website

Avada Theme Cons

Leaves Shortcodes If Deactivated
Can Be Bloated, Has Many Extra Plugins To Function
1 License Per Website Is Limited
Has A Learning Curve, Not The Easier For Beginners
No Theme Builder and No Product Builder

The Avada theme is one of the most popular themes on ThemeForest, with more than 550,000+ sales and 5-star ratings. But is the Avada theme really worth all the hype?

In this review, we’ll take a look at the theme’s features, talk about it’s pros and cons, and help you decide if it’s the right theme for you.

1. Ease of Use – 4/5

Let’s kick this review off with the ease of use when it comes to installation and using the page builder.

Installation

For starters, installing Avada is easy. The theme can be installed following the same steps as any other third-party WordPress theme.

You’ll need to login to your WordPress dashboard and then go to Appearance > Themes. Once there, click on the Add New button and select the zip folder containing the Avada theme. The theme will then install and you’ll need to activate it.

After the theme has been installed, it will prompt you to install required plugins, in this case the Fusion Core and Fusion Builder plugins. Before you can continue with the plugin installation, though, you’ll need to create an Envato token to verify your purchase. You can then install the required plugins.

Once all those steps have been completed, you can start working on your site either by creating a page from scratch and using the Fusion Builder plugin or by importing one of the 60+ demo sites.

If you want to get a head start on the site build, going to Avada > Demos will allow you to import a demo site of your choice. Keep in mind you’ll be prompted to install additional plugins that are necessary for the demo content to be imported correctly.

Using the Page Builder

After the demo content has been imported, you can edit the pages. Avada comes with its own page builder plugin called Fusion Builder. You can use it on the front end as well as on the backend to edit your page.

It’s worth mentioning that if you’re using the backend version of the page builder, you can’t see the changes as you’re making them.

If you’re using the front-page editor, you’ll see the changes in real-time and you can also use the theme customizer while you’re building your site.

While the overall installation process is not too complicated, it can be a little overwhelming for beginners, given that there are quite a few additional steps to complete before you can finally start working on your site.

On top of that, importing the demo content prompts you to install additional plugins as a separate step.

As such, Avada has somewhat of a learning curve which makes it not the easiest theme for beginners to use.

2. Features – 3.5/5

The Avada theme doesn’t lack features. Let’s take a look at some of the main features more in-depth below.

Fusion Builder

As mentioned earlier, the Fusion Builder can be used both on the backend and front-end of your site. But, since you can’t see the changes you’re making, it makes very little sense to use the backend builder.

The front-end page builder looks modern however, the sheer number of options and controls can be overwhelming at first glance. The builder allows you to add more columns, duplicate columns and rows, adjust margins and paddings with a simple drag and drop, delete columns, and more.

Hovering over an empty section of your page will reveal a + icon that you can use to add elements to the page. You can add alerts, buttons, charts, blog posts, WooCommerce products, and plenty of other elements.

You can also save elements to your library and reuse them on any other page or post of your site. Each element and column has design settings built into the page builder so you can style your site as you’re creating your page layouts and adding elements.

The Fusion Builder plugin also allows you to see how your site will look on various screen sizes and you can adjust whether a certain element shows up on desktop, mobile, tablet device or on all three. It’s worth mentioning that both mobile and tablet devices allow you to preview your site in both landscape and portrait orientation.

Additional Plugins

The Avada theme comes bundled with 5 additional premium plugins which include Slider Revolution, ACF Pro, Layer Slider Pro, Fusion White Label Branding, and Convert Plus. It also includes free plugins such as Contact Form 7, The Events Calendar, bbPress, and Yoast SEO.

Demo Sites

One of the advantages that the Avada theme has are the numerous demo sites that can be imported with one click. Currently, there are over 60 premade sites which range from yoga websites to gallery and portfolio websites, food or restaurant websites, and more.

Customization Options

While you can adjust the styles for individual elements as you’re building your page, keep in mind that the Avada theme comes with a pretty robust Theme Options panel. Here, you can set global styles for your colors and fonts, upload your logo, style your sidebars, and more.

3. Reliability – 4/5

The Avada theme has been around since 2012. Given that it continually remains in the ThemeForest top-sellers list, it’s no wonder that the theme developers continue to push new features.

Pair that with an extensive knowledge base and an active community, a solution for any potential problem is relatively easy to find.

The biggest disadvantage of the Avada theme is that if you decide to switch to another theme, it will leave a shortcode mess behind. This means that all the pages and posts created with the Avada theme will need to be recreated within a different theme or with a different page builder plugin.

Another point to consider is that Avada doesn’t come with a theme builder or a product builder. If you’re thinking about using this theme to develop fully custom sites for yourself or your clients, Avada is not the theme for you.

4. Support – 3.5/5

When you purchase the Avada theme, you’re entitled to 6 months of support. Per ThemeForest, support includes:

Availability of the author to answer questions
Assistance with reported bugs and issues
Help with included 3rd party assets

The link to their support page will take you to Theme Fusion’s support section where you will find documentation and video tutorials that help you learn how to Avada and Fusion Builder work and how to use them. You can also submit a ticket if the provided resources don’t help you resolve the problem you’re encountering.

Keep in mind that you’ll have to register for an account in their support center before you’re able to submit a ticket.

In addition to the above, Avada has a very active Facebook group where you can interact with other Avada users and ask questions.

5. Pricing – 3/5

The Avada theme can be bought from ThemeForest for $60. This includes the ability to install the theme on one website and 6-months of support. If you want to extend the support for another 6 months, you’ll have to pay an additional $18.

This means that if you plan on using the Avada theme on multiple websites, you’ll need to purchase it again for an additional $60. When you compare this to other popular WordPress themes, it’s easy to see that investing in Avada doesn’t really pay off.

Final Thoughts

The Avada theme offers a lot at first glance. This includes its own front-end page builder, several premium plugins, and over 40 demos to get you started. However, this theme is not without its shortcomings. For starters, the theme will leave a shortcode mess if you decide to uninstall it, not to mention all the extra plugins make the theme very bloated and resource-heavy on the servers. The theme is also not very beginner friendly.

If you’re looking for a theme that can be used for multiple websites and in multiple niches and you’re well versed in WordPress, the Avada theme might be the right choice for you. But if you’re a beginner and want a theme that’s easy to use, Avada is not the right choice.

As always, weigh the pros and cons outlined in this article carefully before making the final decision.