[Resolved] GP vs Astra 2

[FunkyCss]

Hi , I am sorry if this is not a common forum subject but i would like to give you my latest experience with GP and New Astra theme .

First of all i cant work with other theme than GP for a year now , i like all the concept the support the way Tom has on his mind a Theme of Wp should be . I love the hooks and the in General the elements addon and the just enough options and not fancy crap other themes have without ever needed by someone , i cant find something i dont like actually.

But yesterday i tested in my Semi Dedicated Server , a site with woocomerce plugin only and nothing else , Just Woo Astra Free and GP free .

I was really concern that all my test show ASTRA much faster and with less Requests , Astra 700 ms the worst speed test and GP the worst 1.6 sec with double almost request .

The same results with more loading time with the premium Versions , this actually made me curious cause i have tested a million times in the past Astra vs Gp and all the times GP won ! and i have commented a lot of times in forums and facebook groups about this kind of results cause i love this theme .

I dont want to make you crazy or something , maybe my test is not that accurate and not right ! i am not a Pro on this one , but maybe you should consider of giving a test and if a theme can be faster why not you too !

Ok Gp win without any extra plugins , but woo is something most people are using wordpress those days and this is something you have to consider i guess!

All the love

Andreas

[Tom]

Hi Andreas,

Thanks for the post! Performance is my favorite subject, so let’s take a quick look.

I have a local server with no content and no plugins. All I’m doing in these tests is changing the theme.

First, let’s take a look at the speed of GP vs Astra in the Customizer using Blackfire (https://blackfire.io), which is an awesome performance testing tool.

I assume we’re talking about the Customizer here, as that’s what Astra is highlighting in their 2.0 post.

Now I should start by saying that we always take performance into consideration when writing code, but we’ve never specifically focused on Customizer performance. In GP 2.4/GPP 1.9, we’ve tested the Customizer performance and improved things a bit. However, I’ll use the current version of GP in these tests.

So, I’ve tested GP 2.3.2 and Astra 2.0.1.

Here’s GP in the Customizer:

Time: 466ms
Wait: 205ms
CPU: 260ms
Peak Memory: 25.8MB
Network: 99.4kb
SQL Queries: 6.79ms

Here’s Astra in the Customizer:

Time: 540ms
Wait: 224ms
CPU: 315ms
Peak Memory: 27.9MB
Network: 116kb
SQL Queries: 7.01ms

So as we can see, GP is faster in every way with no plugins installed. I’m happy about this, as these scores don’t include the tweaks I’ve made.

Now, let’s check with WooCommerce only. WooCommerce itself has bad performance in my experience. The fact that GP is the faster base theme tells me it should perform better when compared with any other plugin. The only way Astra could be faster is if they’re disabling core aspects of WooCommerce in the Customizer, which I would never do (asking to break something with an update).

GP + WooCommerce in the Customizer:

Time: 697ms
Wait: 316ms
CPU: 381ms
Peak Memory: 36.7MB
Network: 143kb
SQL Queries: 39.8ms

Astra + WooCommerce in the Customizer:

Time: 794ms
Wait: 334ms
CPU: 460ms
Peak Memory: 40.1MB
Network: 144kb
SQL Queries: 31.5ms

So again, GP wins out with WooCommerce activated.

Now one thing I know they did was combine all of their scripts and styles. I’ve played with it and ran tests, and I’m not sure it’s worth it, especially with HTTP/2. Let’s take a look at the Network tab in Chrome Developer Tools.

GP + WooCommerce in the Customizer:

Astra + WooCommerce in the Customizer:

We can see here that GP still performs better, and has fewer requests in the Customizer, even though we haven’t done any specific Customizer optimizations, yet.

I’m pretty happy with these results at this point, and the GP scores will get better in the next versions.

We can also take a look at the front-end of the site (no Customizer).

GP + WooCommerce on the front-end:

Time: 428ms
Wait: 271ms
CPU: 157ms
Peak Memory: 27.7MB
Network: 133kb
SQL Queries: 28.1ms

Astra + WooCommerce on the front-end:

Time: 499ms
Wait: 317ms
CPU: 182ms
Peak Memory: 28.9MB
Network: 133kb
SQL Queries: 62.7ms

We can check the Developer Tools network info on the front-end as well:

GP + WooCommerce on the front-end:

Astra + WooCommerce on the front-end:

Thanks again for the post! I hope this helps 🙂

[Anil]

Nice study Tom 🙂

[FunkyCss]

Hallo Tom ,

Thank you for your reply i really apreciate to see the passion you guys have for your product , thats the reason that i am supporting it and all the comunity .

I guess when you say the ” Result in the Customizer ” it has to do something with blackfire.io ?

My first topic was not for the results of the customizer of GP but the theme itself , in any case i am pretty sure something on my test has been wrong , i will give a more try and maybe i will check it by server cause as i said before all my previous tests in the past have shown GP Always faster than any theme i have checked also Suki that i believe that is fast but GP again won .

We cant wait for the New Updates of GP , is like a Xmass Present to us you should now ! hah!

Andreas

[Tom]

I tested the Customizer as I believe that was the main feature in Astra 2.0 – improved Customizer performance.

I also included some non-Customizer numbers when using WooCommerce, which show that GP is faster/lighter in the same environment.

Blackfire.io is just a testing tool that allows us to test the performance of the code.

New features and improvements coming soon! 🙂

Thanks!

[Author]

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