What is Luma?
The most straightforward and obvious comparison is determining the difference between Luma and Hyvä. But we must first understand what Luma is?
Luma is an HTML, CSS, and Javascript package shipped with the Magento core. Every Adobe Commerce site has Luma pre-installed.
Luma’s performance isn’t awful but has a reasonably poor developer experience. This leads to bloat, which hurts site speed even more. We have even seen developers copy the final compiled stylesheet code and make modifications to this (effectively doubling the downloaded stylesheet file code).
Definitions:
Javascript: this is the software development language that enables user interaction. Javascript allows you to click a button with a success message subsequently appearing.
Stylesheet/CSS: stylesheets make the page look pretty. Otherwise, you’d see a white background, oddly-sized images, and Times New Roman font. Very ugly.
HTML: this language provides the overall structure of a website.
What does Hyvä look like?
Hyvä can look like anything you desire. It’s customizable and powerful.
However, the closer you stick to the original design, the less costly to deploy Hyvä. The base feel of this theme is a significant step ahead of Luma. This means even less development time.
Is Hyvä better than Luma?
Out of the box, Hyvä looks better and loads faster than Luma.
The correct answer is more nuanced. Luma works out of the box. All modules support Luma. Thus, if you need a website in quick order, we recommend Luma on Magento 2. You would probably be happier on Shopify. We see an average lower total cost of ownership on Shopify for simple websites.
If you have a significant number of 3rd-party or custom modules, a Hyvä transition will be expensive. That said, all of these modules are rarely necessary. You will probably experience a performance boost by cleaning the house.
How does Hyvä compare with the Smartwave Porto theme?
Porto’s mobile score is 21. Hyvä’s is 85. Hyvä is faster and significantly better built than Porto.
Let’s dissect this answer.
The Porto theme demo is available here. The Google Page Speed report is available here. Porto is famous because it ships in 34 versions. The idea is it's super easy to make your website look good. As we discussed above, if this is all you are looking for, it’s better to go with Shopify.
The stylesheets are poorly constructed, which causes difficulties for the developer and many bugs in the future. Updates are pretty problematic.
Porto Google PageSpeed Results
We do not recommend Porto, and we recommend merchants to switch away from this theme if/when it makes financial sense.
The one thing Porto has going for it is this is a layer on top of Luma. Thus, the module's client-side coding and styling work out of the box. While the colors won’t match, the rest of the functionality should be reasonable.
See the section below "How compatible is Hyvä with my modules?". The short story is that Hyvä is not immediately compatible with all 3rd-party Adobe Commerce modules. The compatible list is growing, but it's not yet exhaustive. A quality developer can build these associations, but this is an extra expense.
How does Hyvä compare with Magento PWA?
Hyvä on a mobile device ranks at 95 thanks to Google Pagespeed. Unfortunately, PWA on a mobile device is 26. Hyvä is faster out of the box and is easier to customize. The image at the right represents the mobile Google PageSpeed score for the Magento PWA demo.
PWA is an excellent option if the budget is proper. PWA is not “production-ready” out of the box and will take time to customize and tweak. There are plenty of opportunities here, but this is only realized if the appropriate budget is available. Adobe continues to invest and progress so that this assessment may be adjusted with time.
Hyvä brings immediate and appreciable value.
As we write in almost every section, Hyvä is not immediately compatible with every 3rd-party module. Hyvä uses an entirely different system for styling and client-side interaction, which may need to be rebuilt for every module.
What is the Hyvä developer experience?
Developers built Hyvä for developers. It was not meant to be a perfect solution out of the box. It is a toolbox that enables an adept frontend developer to craft a beautiful website. Hyvä ditches LESS and KnockoutJS in favor of Tailwind CSS and Alpine JS, respectively.
Even more importantly, Hyvä is well-documented. This ensures developers can get up to speed quickly. Vinai Kopp leads the charge for documentation. Vinai is one of the best-known developers in the Magento community and has been instrumental in training thousands of developers across the globe. His focus on equipping developers with Hyvä's best practices is one reason this theme thrives.
Hyvä themes typically take less time to build than the equivalent Luma theme, including the time, spent rebuilding functionality for incompatible modules. This cost savings makes Hyvä an easy decision for any new build.
How does Hyvä affect the checkout?
It doesn’t! Hyvä operates entirely independently of your checkout at this point.
The checkout experience is complex and can be touchy. Hyvä styles everything that a visitor sees except for the checkout. Luma styles and provides interaction for the checkout.
This reduces the scope and complexity of a Hyvä implementation. The downside is that your developer will have to track your branding variables in two locations.
What if Hyvä stops updating the product?
Hyvä must be updated every time Magento/Adobe Commerce is upgraded. Keep in mind that Luma also requires updates in this scenario.
However, a small risk is if Hyvä dies out, it won’t be “compatible” with future Magento updates. This has happened with several other community-sponsored themes. People get burned out or move on to different projects.
One significant difference between Hyvä and these other community-sponsored themes is that Hyvä has a cost. The others are free or very inexpensive. This is the difference: Hyvä invests in a long-term infrastructure to support a long-term set of goals.
In other words, anything can happen, but we see Hyvä here for the long run.