Starter Templates Plugin Review for Elementor & Gutenberg Sites

QUICK VERDICT: Starter Templates is one of the most widely used WordPress template plugins, with over 2 million active installations and more than 4,700 five-star ratings on WordPress.org. It offers a genuinely useful free tier, a deep library of designs, and now an AI-assisted site builder powered by ZipWP. For beginners and freelancers building simple sites quickly, it delivers strong value. However, several practical limitations, including its tight coupling with the Astra/Brainstorm Force ecosystem, the deprecation of Beaver Builder support, vendor lock-in concerns, and a premium tier that demands additional plugin purchases, make it a more nuanced choice for agencies and power users than the marketing suggests.

Overall Rating: 4.1 / 5

1. Overview: What Is Starter Templates?

Starter Templates is a free WordPress plugin developed by Brainstorm Force, the same team behind the Astra theme, Spectra page builder, CartFlows, and ZipWP. Its core purpose is simple: allow users to import a professionally designed, full website or individual page template into their WordPress installation in a few clicks, rather than building from scratch.

The plugin was originally called Astra Sites and was built primarily as a companion to the Astra theme. Over time it evolved into a broader product that works with multiple page builders, added an AI-powered site generation mode, and accumulated a massive user base.

As of early 2026, the plugin reports over 2 million active installations and over 5,000 websites being built with it daily. These are remarkable figures that reflect genuine adoption, not marketing spin. But popularity alone does not make a tool right for every use case, and this review will examine both what the plugin does well and where it falls short.

Who Makes It?

Brainstorm Force is an Indian WordPress product company founded around 2009, headquartered in Nagpur. They operate an ecosystem of interconnected products: Astra (theme), Spectra (block builder), Starter Templates (this plugin), ZipWP (AI site builder), SureForms, OttoKit (automation), and CartFlows (sales funnels). Understanding this ecosystem context is important because Starter Templates does not exist in isolation; it is a gateway product that funnels users into the broader Brainstorm Force suite.

2. Installation and Initial Setup

The plugin is available for free on the WordPress.org repository under the slug astra-sites. Installation follows the standard process: Dashboard > Plugins > Add New > Search “Starter Templates” > Install > Activate.

Once activated, the plugin adds an entry under Appearance > Starter Templates. First-time visitors are greeted with a clean onboarding screen that asks you to choose between two modes:

• Build with AI: Connects to ZipWP, gathers business information, and generates a website automatically.
• Classic Templates: Browse and import from a library of pre-built site designs.

The onboarding flow is clear and deliberately low-friction. No account is required to browse classic templates. However, the AI builder requires creating a free ZipWP account, which is a minor hurdle some users may find unnecessary for a tool they expected to work entirely inside WordPress.

One practical note: while the plugin is free, certain premium templates require an active Brainstorm Force bundle license (Essential or Business Toolkit). The system makes this clear at the point of selection with a visible upgrade prompt, which is preferable to hiding the limitation and frustrating users mid-import.

3. Template Library: Depth and Quality

The template library is, without question, the plugin’s primary selling point. At the time of this review, the library includes:

• 100+ free templates for Elementor
• Hundreds of block-editor (Gutenberg/Spectra) templates
• 200+ section patterns for mixing and matching
• Full website kits spanning multiple pages (Home, About, Services, Contact, Blog)

Categories cover a wide range of use cases including business, agency, portfolio, restaurant, healthcare, real estate, education, eCommerce, non-profit, construction, beauty and spa, law firms, fitness studios, coaching, and more.

Template Quality Assessment

Visually, the free templates are competent and in most cases professional enough for small business use. They follow modern design conventions: clean typography, ample whitespace, hero sections, feature grids, testimonials, and CTA blocks. They are not groundbreaking in originality, but they are functional and well-structured.

The premium templates, accessible through bundle plans, are noticeably more polished. They make use of advanced Spectra Pro or Ultimate Addons for Elementor features that free plugin versions cannot replicate, which is a fair tradeoff but also a mechanism that encourages upselling.

A key distinction the documentation is explicit about: the main difference between free and premium templates is design quality and the premium plugins used, not the type of website you can build. You can construct any site type with free templates; the premium library offers more refined starting points.

Page Builder Compatibility

Starter Templates officially supports three environments:

• Spectra (Brainstorm Force’s own block builder for Gutenberg)
• Elementor (the market-leading third-party page builder)
• WordPress Block Editor (native Gutenberg, without any additional builder plugin)

It is important to flag one significant recent change: Beaver Builder support was deprecated in March 2025. Users who built workflows around the combination of Astra, Starter Templates, and Beaver Builder now need to either use a legacy filter to re-enable deprecated templates or migrate to a supported builder. This decision, while defensible from a maintenance perspective given presumably low usage numbers, illustrates how tightly Brainstorm Force’s roadmap drives feature availability in this plugin.

The plugin does not support Divi, Bricks Builder, Oxygen, Breakdance, or other builders. If your agency or workflow is built on any of these, Starter Templates is effectively not an option for you.

4. The Import Process: How It Actually Works

The import workflow is genuinely well-designed and is a significant reason for the plugin’s popularity. Here is how a classic template import proceeds:

Step 1: Browse the template library with filters for builder, category, and keyword search. Full-site previews load on the plugin’s own preview server, giving you an accurate visual before committing.

Step 2: Select a template and choose color palette and typography variations. Several templates offer multiple preset colour schemes that you can toggle before importing, a practical time-saver.

Step 3: The import screen shows exactly which plugins will be installed as dependencies (WooCommerce, WPForms, etc.) and gives you the option to import or skip customizer settings, widgets, and demo content.

Step 4: Import runs as a background process with a progress indicator. Most full site imports complete in under two minutes on reasonably fast hosting.

If a previous template was imported, the system detects this and offers to preserve or overwrite existing content, which prevents accidental data loss.

Import Reliability

This is an area where real-world experience diverges somewhat from the marketing narrative. Template imports are generally reliable on fresh WordPress installs. Problems tend to emerge in these circumstances:

• Low memory hosting environments: The plugin has added memory-limit detection (as of March 2025) to show user-friendly messages when imports fail due to insufficient PHP memory, but the fix is still on the user’s hosting side.
• Existing sites with page builder content: Importing a template onto a site that already has Elementor or Spectra content can sometimes cause conflicts or overwrite settings users expected to keep.
• Elementor-specific import issues: The changelog shows recurring fixes for Elementor template imports across multiple recent versions (4.4.27, 4.4.42), suggesting this path is less smooth than the Spectra/Gutenberg path.
• CLI import edge cases: Agencies using WP-CLI for automated imports have encountered intermittent widget-missing issues that have been addressed but recurred across versions.

None of these are showstopper problems for the majority of users, but they are worth factoring in if you are using the plugin at scale across client sites with varied hosting configurations.

5. The AI Website Builder (ZipWP Integration)

In late 2023 and throughout 2024-2025, Brainstorm Force added AI-powered site generation as the headline new feature of Starter Templates. The AI builder is powered by ZipWP, a separate product and brand from Brainstorm Force. Inside the plugin, it appears as a seamlessly integrated option, but technically it routes your business data through ZipWP’s external platform.

How the AI Builder Works

The flow is as follows: you describe your business name and type, optionally add contact details, select from AI-suggested images (sourced from Pexels or Unsplash), choose a site structure, pick desired features (e.g., WooCommerce, booking plugins), and hit Build. The AI generates a multi-page website with generated copy, selected images, and imported pages in typically under two minutes.

For its intended audience, beginners and small business owners who want a live website quickly, this works impressively. The AI-generated content is competent placeholder copy that covers the expected sections, and the image curation is contextually appropriate in most cases.

Limitations of the AI Builder

The AI builder has real limitations that users should understand before committing:

• Account dependency: A ZipWP account is required. You are no longer operating within your own WordPress installation alone; business description data is sent to an external service.
• AI content quality: The generated copy is functional but generic. For any client-facing site, every line of AI-generated content will need review and rewriting. Treating it as final copy would be a mistake.
• AI credit system: On free and entry-level plans, AI usage is metered through a credit system. Agencies building multiple sites per month will encounter credit limitations.
• Template variety for AI mode: As of mid-2025, AI-generated Elementor templates were only just introduced. The AI mode has historically offered fewer aesthetic choices than the classic template library.
• ZipWP refund policy friction: Independent review platforms including Trustpilot contain user complaints about billing disputes with ZipWP’s auto-renewal practices. Since ZipWP is a separate subscription from Starter Templates itself, users who upgrade to paid AI features should read the terms carefully.

6. Free vs. Premium: What Do You Actually Get?

This is arguably the most important section for anyone evaluating the plugin practically.

Free Tier

The free plugin from WordPress.org gives you access to:

• 100+ Elementor templates at no cost
• Spectra/Gutenberg templates (substantial library)
• 200+ section/block patterns
• Full site imports
• AI builder with ZipWP free plan (limited credits)
• Color and typography customization before import

For a solo operator or small business building their own site, the free tier is genuinely sufficient for many projects. The quality gap between free and premium is real but not dramatic.

Premium Access

Premium templates are not unlocked by purchasing Starter Templates itself. They are included in Brainstorm Force’s bundle plans:

• Essential Toolkit: $119/year (3 sites) or $599 lifetime — unlocks 180+ premium templates plus Spectra Pro and Ultimate Addons for Elementor.
• Business Toolkit: $159/year (1,000 sites) or $699 lifetime — adds CartFlows Pro and more.

Crucially, the base Astra Pro plan ($69/year) does not include premium starter templates. This surprises many users who buy Astra Pro expecting the full premium template library and find they need to step up to a bundle plan. The documentation makes this clear, but it is not prominently communicated in top-level marketing.

The premium templates also rely on Astra Pro, Spectra Pro, or Ultimate Addons for Elementor being active. Importing a premium template without the required premium plugins produces a degraded result because those templates use design features exclusive to the paid plugin versions.

What Happens When Your License Expires?

This is an important practical point: if your bundle license expires, previously imported templates remain intact and functional. You lose the ability to import new premium templates and receive updates. This is a reasonable policy, but it also means that agencies who rely on premium templates for ongoing client work need to maintain active subscriptions.

7. Performance and Site Speed

This is an area where Starter Templates performs acceptably but requires nuance.

The plugin itself, when used only for importing and then deactivated, adds zero permanent overhead. Brainstorm Force explicitly states the plugin is only needed for importing; once a site is live, you do not need to keep it active.

However, the templates themselves import a stack of associated plugins: Astra theme, Spectra (or Elementor), WPForms, and optionally WooCommerce or other tools. The performance of your site depends almost entirely on how well you configure and optimize those plugins, not on Starter Templates itself.

One pattern worth noting from independent community discussions: sites built with the full Brainstorm Force stack (Astra + Spectra Pro + Starter Templates + additional plugins) can accumulate a significant number of autoloaded database options and plugin dependencies over time. This is not unique to Brainstorm Force products, but it is a management consideration for sites that start lean and grow over years.

For Gutenberg/Spectra-based templates specifically, performance tends to be strong because Spectra is purpose-built around the native block editor and avoids the JavaScript overhead associated with Elementor’s legacy editor infrastructure. Elementor-based templates, by contrast, will carry Elementor’s known performance characteristics.

8. Ecosystem Lock-In: An Honest Assessment

This deserves its own section because it is the most significant strategic consideration when adopting Starter Templates.

Starter Templates is not a neutral, standalone template library. It is a gateway to the Brainstorm Force ecosystem. The plugin installs and often activates the Astra theme as a dependency. The best templates are built for Spectra. The AI builder routes through ZipWP. Premium features require Brainstorm Force bundle plans. This creates a coherent, well-integrated product stack, but it also means that as you build more sites on this foundation, switching costs increase.

Some community members have raised concerns that feature additions over time have replaced previously free capabilities and that updates occasionally introduce instability. These are legitimate criticisms worth weighing, particularly for agencies committing client infrastructure to any single vendor’s ecosystem.

For individual site owners or freelancers who are comfortable within the Astra/Spectra/Starter Templates ecosystem, this integration is actually a strength, as the pieces are designed to work together. The concern is more relevant for experienced developers who want full control, builder-agnostic flexibility, or the ability to exit the ecosystem without rebuilding sites.

9. Support and Documentation

Brainstorm Force maintains extensive documentation at startertemplates.com/docs, covering everything from getting started to edge cases like CLI imports and multisite setups. The documentation is generally well-organized and kept reasonably current with new releases.

Support channels are:

• WordPress.org forum: Free users. Response times vary; the team monitors this actively.
• Ticket system: Premium users receive prioritized support. Multiple independent reviewers report sub-24-hour response times, with many under 12 hours, for ticketed support.
• No live chat, no phone support.

Community sentiment on support quality is broadly positive for premium users. Free-tier support on WordPress.org is more variable, which is standard for products at this scale.

The team maintains an active changelog at startertemplates.com/whats-new and releases updates frequently, which signals active development. The frequency of releases also reflects a product that still has rough edges being patched regularly.