Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the annual final fight between two strong candidates for the title of the Ultimate Champion in the templates lightweight! In the right corner of the ring, there is Avada 5.6, the latest update of the trusted theme, created by ThemeFusion. In the left corner, there is Monstroid 2, the freshest version of the TemplateMoster’s top theme-masterpiece. Let me introduce our judges: high-level attentiveness (to find every smallest feature of competitors), accuracy and the eye for details (to analyze the pros and cons), and customers (all that stuff is made for you, so only you can decide whether developers did a good job).
Let's have a clean fight! Touch your gloves and back to your corners.
Round One: Universalism
Each of the competitors claims themselves as a universal solution that can be used almost for any type of website. And each of them does their best to offer the clients maximum of flexibility and loads of possible uses. As general, the most obvious difference between websites is their design, so that’s why both Avada and Monstroid create a huge bunch of website appearance variants.
Avada 5.6
ThemeFusion team concentrates on creating astonishing demos for different niches and types of business. There are about 45 demos for Avada and their number constantly grows. All of them were created of components available for every user and you can import them easily with just one click. There are demos for SPA salon, sports centre, university, financial advisor, IT company, music artist and much more. You can either customize the ready-made demo according to your needs or build the unique design from scratch.
Monstroid 2
Unlike Avada developers, TemplateMonster team focus on creating components the user can build his website of (yeah, just like LEGO). They do create skins for different purposes, there are 20 of them right now and some new ones will become available every week, but they prefer to make headers, footers and other components to let the user combine them according to his taste. The Monstroid 2 template pack includes about 160 pre-made pages that respond to all possible needs. The general number of professionally designed sections is over 500, so there is a really HUGE bunch of building elements.
Round Two: Page Builder
It is much easier to build a website on WordPress than doing the coding from the ground up. And it is equivalently easier to do the website with the page builder then customizing it via the administrative dashboard. Each of competitors is compatible with a concrete page builder and could be designed with simple drag-and-dropping content elements to the workspace. Both those page builders have some advantages that make them worth using.
Avada 5.6
Avada template and Fusion Builder are inseparable from each other. The theme was created especially for the builder and the builder can’t be used for any other theme. I can’t say it is simple, it has a great number of different useful elements, so it could be a little complicated to get used to. The widgets are divided into understandable categories, so they are easy and fast to find. The customization panel is created in minimalistic design, there’s nothing redundant and it allows to focus on work. You not only can add the content without issues but also delete it all at once with just a click.
Monstroid 2
Elementor Page Builder is one of the most popular among the drag-and-drop builders. Monstroid 2 is created fully compatible with it and that’s even recommended to use Elementor for customization instead of trying to design everything from the dashboard. Elementor too has a great number of elements, organized to a convenient side menu and all the style customization is done there. Unlike Fusion Builder, Elementor is capable of working with any WordPress theme, so if you get it once – you can customize the other websites with it. There are a lot of functionalities, but the options are intuitively understandable. Elementor has a huge community of fans, so if you will meet some problems – it won’t be complicated to find help and support.
Round Three: Plugins
Most of the ready-made themes have built-in plugins that developers consider to be most useful for users. That could be some security, eCommerce or anti-spam extensions – every developer has his own opinion about the must-have plugins. Both Avada 5.6 and Monstroid 2 offer a set of tools that are included in the pack. You can either activate and use them without wasting time for installation or ignore them and choose some other, more preferable ones.
Avada 5.6
This theme offers users a set of tools, that include some features, options and, of course, plugins. I will mention those that are the most useful in my hilarious opinion. First of all, there is a WooCommerce plugin that will help you to transform your website into the online shop or add a merchandise selling page to your blog. The bbPress plugin gives you an opportunity to create good-looking and convenient forums. The iLightbox shows all your pictures in an attractive and eye-catching way. There is a huge bunch of other extensions for Avada and they improve the websites appearance or usability. The only little problem is that all that plugins make the template work slower (it has to send requests to the base regularly), but it is easily resolved by a premium paid hosting.
Monstroid 2
WooCommerce plugin is a must for most of the themes presented on TemplateMonster (except Shopify and OpenCart themes that has their own online shop functionalities). Monstroid 2, of course, has it built-in too. The other plugins, included to the template pack, are for Elementor Page builder. The template has not only JetThemeCore that allows users to install, add and update themes, skins and plugins, but also a whole set of Jet plugins.
- JetElements adds 19 diverse widgets to the Elementor customization menu, including timers, various sliders, pricing tables, testimonials and progress bars.
- JetTabs offer you stylish tabs and accordions with vertical and horizontal layouts.
- JetReviews helps you to make the reviews section of your website more eye-catching.
- JetMenu allows you to create stunning mega menus with content, videos and images in them.
- JetBlog will give you the tools to show your blog in a fancy and attractive way.
- JetBlocks is another plugin that adds a big set of widgets like hamburger panel, login form and authorization link to the panel.
- JetTricks helps you to make your website more dynamic with different animation effects like parallax, sticky columns and unfolding sections.
- JetWooBuilder works perfectly with WooCommerce plugin to allow you the whole online shop visual customization.
- JetEngine affects mostly the administrative dashboard, but it will give you the opportunity to create custom pages and taxonomies on the website.
Round Four: Support
No one is 100% safe from mistakes, bugs and unexpected issues. Users won’t be mad if a problem occurs, they will be mad if you won’t solve it fast. Every software has to have some support team if you want people to buy and use it. The quality of support is very important for user experience, so it is a good idea to compare what both of the competitors do to help users solve appearing with the templates problems.
Avada 5.6
The user who installed the Avada template to his website has three sources to find the answers to his questions: support system that is based on tickets, extended documentation and video tutorials. The videos are nicely shot and describe in details how to use all the features Avada has. The documentation contains some more specific information and if you didn’t found how to solve the issue where – the support team will write it to you via e-mail.
Monstroid 2
The set of supporting tools of Monstroid is a little wider. Besides video tutorials, well-written documentation and fast ticket support there is also a chat. You don’t need to wait a few hours for an answer – you can write directly to a friendly support team member and solve the problems within a few minutes online. If you prefer to talk to people by voice – there is an option to call the support and get all possible help immediately. However, the situations where you will need an urgent help are really rare and it will be quite enough to read the manual to be capable of fixing any problem you meet by your own hands in a blink of an eye.
Summing up
Finish him!
At this point, the winner has to make a final strike and beat his competitor. However, I don’t know who is the winner and can’t cheer him up. Moreover, I have no rights to define the winner, because the objectiveness of my opinion could be questioned. Of course, I love Monstroid more than Avada, but those are you who have to evaluate the best universal template. How do you think – who is better? Maybe you already used one of the themes (or maybe both) and can tell the feelings about it? I will be really pleased to see some feedback and reviews in the comment section below.
| Monstroid2 | Avada | |
| Price | $75 | $60 |
| Category | Multi-purpose | Multi-purpose |
| Type | Premium | Premium |
| Post view counter | Yes (with JetReview Plugin) | Yes |
| Skins | 20+ | 30+ |
| Page templates | 100+ | 40 |
| Blocks | 500+ | 50+ |
| Header styles | 20+ | 7 |
| Footer styles | 20+ | 5 |
| Custom Page Builder | Elementor Builder | Fusion Builder |
| Blog layouts | 50 | 6 |
| Video playlists | Yes | - |
| CSS file size | 250kb | 388 kb |
| Plugins | Free Elementor; +10 JetPlugins: JetElements, JetMenu, JetBlocks, JetBlog, JetThemeCore, JetWooBuilder, JetTricks, JetReviews, JetTabs. JetWooBuilder |
Fusion Builder, Fusion Core, Revolution Slider, Layer Slider |
| Content width | 1170px + Full Width | 1920 px |
| Browser compatibility | Chrome / FF / Opera / Safari / Edge | Chrome / FF / Opera / Safari / Edge |
| WooCommerce | Yes | Yes |
| Portfolio styles | 10 | 13 |
| Responsive layout | Breakpoints | Breakpoints |
| SEO optimized | Yes | Yes |