Thrive Themes Review (5 Reasons to Make the Switch)

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Last updated: February 16, 2023

Having used several Thrive Themes products for my websites over the years, I thought it would be good to write a review about their WordPress themes, page builders, and plugins.

I can honestly say that discovering Thrive Themes several years ago was a turning point in my online business. Things have evolved since then, but I am still a happy user of various Thrive products.

This Thrive Themes review takes you through the company and its products, followed by five reasons why I believe you should consider switching to this well-established WordPress developer.

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In operation since 2013, Thrive Themes is a WordPress software development company founded by Shane Melaugh and Paul McCarthy. Both Shane and Paul have a long history of creating online businesses, with Shane being the marketing guru and Paul the technical wizard.

The core idea behind Thrive Themes was to develop WordPress themes and plugins with a focus on conversion. At the time, the market was flooded with fancy-looking themes with tons of features, most of which the average blogger would never use. What was missing in the marketplace was simple, conversion-focused themes.

The other issue Thrive Themes wanted to address was the limitations of the WordPress editor. Thrive’s mission was to develop a true WYSIWYG editor, allowing users to create content quickly and creatively.

As such, Thrive Content Builder was born, later rebranded to Thrive Architect. It’s currently one of the most popular and most advanced WordPress page builders around. Years later, Thrive Theme Builder was introduced, a tool to make the process of deploying and customizing WordPress themes much easier.

With quality products on offer and a solid marketing strategy in place, Thrive Themes has grown to become one of the more respected WordPress developers in the industry. The Thrive Themes company was purchased by Awesome Motive in early 2023, paving the way for stronger growth and tapping into a larger audience.

Let’s quickly run through the core products offered by Thrive, starting with their latest theme builder.

1. Thrive Theme Builder

If you’ve been around for a few years, you will know that Thrive was once one of the most popular WordPress theme builders. Their flagship themes FocusBlog and Rise were super popular, especially in the affiliate marketing world.

I was also a huge fan, and had most of my sites running on FocusBlog. It was a lightweight theme that was easy to configure, free from unnecessary bells and whistles, and had a professional look and feel.

A few years ago, Thrive decided to stop selling their individual themes, and instead, they developed a theme builder product. This product, Thrive Theme Builder, is now available and has so far proven to be a success.

Thrive Theme Builder is a visual theme builder that lets you build, edit and customize all aspects of your WordPress website with a visual drag-and-drop designer.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t had a chance yet to try it out. I switched all my sites to GeneratePress a while back and have no reason to invest in a new theme or theme builder. Read my review of GeneratePress to learn more.

All that said, based on the reviews I’ve been reading and the feedback I’ve been hearing, the new Thrive Theme Builder is a great product. It comes with various pre-designed theme templates that you can use and customize to the way you want your WordPress blog to be.

One of their most popular templates is the Bookwise theme, specifically designed for writers. This theme is also included in my list of best WordPress templates for writers and authors as it looks fantastic and is highly customizable.

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2. Thrive Architect

Their flagship product is Thrive Architect, a WordPress page builder that is currently one of the best in the market for various reasons.

Formerly known as Thrive Content Builder, Thrive Architect provides a true WYSIWYG editor, meaning that you can see exactly what your page will look like in real-life while in design mode.

Thrive Architect has an incredible set of features, which requires a bit of getting used to when first starting out.

But with a very intuitive user interface and tons of helpful how-to videos at your disposal, it doesn’t take long for any user to turn into a savvy web designer.

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3. Thrive Leads

One of Thrive’s most popular and most successful premium WordPress plugins is Thrive Leads, a powerful conversion-focused lead generation plugin that provides a complete list building and conversion solution.

I have been using Thrive Leads on two of my websites (including Blog Pioneer) for over a year now and am super impressed by its capabilities and performance. It truly is a one-stop shop when it comes to list-building.

Thrive Leads also includes an A/B testing module and an advanced reporting and insights module, which really helps with fine-tuning your list-building campaigns for even better conversions.

I strongly recommend Thrive Leads if you’re looking for a solution that allows you to create great-looking popups and other opt-in forms that actually convert. The powerful customization options and excellent reporting modules are valuable extras.

Check out my comprehensive review of Thrive Leads for a more detailed outline of the features of this product.

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4. Other WordPress Plugins

Thrive Leads and Thrive Architect are their biggest WordPress plugins, but Thrive has many other successful plugins, all focusing on increasing conversions.

You can get access to all of these plugins by purchasing a Thrive Suite license. As a Thrive Suite member, you will get access to all their WordPress themes, plugins, and also Leads and Architect.

However, you don’t have to purchase a Thrive Suite license if you’re only interested in one specific plugin. In other words, you can also simply purchase individual licenses.

Examples of other popular Thrive plugins are Quiz Builder, Ovation, Ultimatum, Optimize, Automator, and Apprentice.

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Here are 5 good reasons why you should consider switching your WordPress website and plugins over to Thrive Themes and using their products.

1. Continuous Updates

Have you ever purchased a WordPress theme or plugin and have never, or hardly, received any updates after installing it? Not even after several years of using it?

You might not realize, but it’s crucial that WordPress themes and plugins are always in ongoing maintenance, with continuous updates being released.

Why?

The Internet changes every day; HTML, CSS, and JavaScript standards evolve; WordPress comes up with regular updates to stay ahead; etc.

If you use a theme or plugin that doesn’t get updated, then there is something wrong. This means the development team behind that theme is not looking after their product.

Over time, this can potentially have serious consequences. Not only can your theme quickly get a dated look and feel, but not updating it may also result in compatibility issues with WordPress, plugins, and HTML and CSS standards.

With Thrive Themes, as long as you have a valid Thrive Suite license, you will continuously receive new updates to Thrive products you’re using, whether this is Thrive Theme builder, Thrive Architect, Thrive Leads, or another Thrive plugin.

It’s reassuring to know that Thrive Themes will never stop improving and updating its products.

2. One-Stop Shop

Thrive Themes provides all the tools you need as a WordPress blogger to set up and build out your website. And while their themes and plugins also work really well with tools provided by other developers, it’s just as easy to stick with Thrive and have everything from one and the same reliable developer.

A theme, a landing page builder, and a lead generation plugin are, for many, the core foundation tools needed to set up a professional WordPress blog or website. To get access to all of their products, you will need to purchase a Thrive Suite license.

Thrive Suite

With Thrive Suite, you get access to all of their themes and plugins, to be used on 25 of your own websites for a very affordable price of $149 per quarter, or $299 per year. Thrive also offers a more expensive agency package that allows you to use their tools on websites of clients.

The conversion-focused tools developed by Thrive will suit any type of blogger, but in particular, small business owners and sellers of digital products will greatly benefit from using the Thrive Themes product suite.

If you just want to buy one of their WordPress products, you can certainly do so. There is no need to buy into the Thrive Suite offer.

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3. Great Support + Tutorials

For a software development company such as Thrive Themes, it’s essential to have a solid and well-functioning support system in place.

I have always found Thrive’s customer support to be excellent. The response time is usually acceptable, and most support issues get resolved promptly.

One of the criticisms I’ve heard and read several times is that their support team too easily refers users to the knowledge base or tutorials to resolve things quickly, without properly looking into the reported issues.

I’ve never had this experience, but I understand that this can sometimes happen, especially during busy times. What works best in these cases is to always explain your issue as detailed as possible, ideally supported by screenshots.

Member Dashboard

As a new Thrive customer, you will get access to the Member Dashboard via the Thrive Themes website, where you can find your license keys, download items, and product tutorials.

The Member Dashboard is also home to the Support Forum, where you can submit support tickets and read support tickets submitted by other users. Support tickets are grouped by product, making it easier to navigate through them.

Also accessible via the dashboard is Thrive University, an extensive library of valuable courses around building successful online businesses (see below).

In addition, the Knowledge Base within your dashboard is a huge resource of tutorials, general documentation, and troubleshooting tips.

In addition to all of the above, Thrive Themes also an active blog that regularly gets updated with new content. And most of Thrive’s blog articles are actually very informative and practical.

4. Thrive University

How many WordPress theme developers also give you access to an extensive library of online marketing courses in the form of videos and guides? Not many.

Thrive University is precisely that. The courses in this library are not so much focused on Thrive’s products. Instead, they dive deep into all aspects involved in building successful online businesses.

It’s an excellent place to learn everything you need to know about things like website design, list building, landing pages, effective copywriting, building a sales funnel, maximizing conversions, and much more.

So much work must have gone into building this University, and as a Thrive customer, you get access to all of this at no extra cost.

5. Superior WordPress Page and Theme Builder

Before the introduction of the Block Editor, the default editor in WordPress was fairly basic and was never able to show what a page would look like while in design mode.

The Block Editor has certainly resolved many issues with the Classic Editor. However, there is still a lot of room for page and theme builders that offer more flexibility when it comes to design and user experience.

Thrive resolves that flexibility with their WYSIWYG WordPress page builder (Thrive Architect) that essentially replaces the default WordPress editor, and a powerful theme builder (Thrive Theme Builder) that makes customizing themes so much easier for all users.

This may be a big call, but Thrive Architect is arguably the best WordPress page builder you can currently find. There are a handful of big players in the market, such as Elementor and Visual Composer, but Architect stands out in terms of user-friendliness, robustness, set of features, and performance.

Thrive has managed to create a true WYSIWYG WordPress editor that is fast, reasonably lightweight, and easy to use. There is certainly a learning curve, but that applies to all page builders. It simply comes with the territory.

Templates

One of the best features of both Thrive Architect and Thrive Theme Builder is that they both come with many ready-to-go templates for landing pages and themes.

Choose a template, make some adjustments, change the content, and you can have a professional-looking page or theme up and running within 30 minutes.

Browse Thrive Products

Hopefully this Thrive Themes review has given you some valuable insights. Thrive offers a suite of WordPress products that truly add value and can make your life as a WordPress blogger so much easier.

Once you’re a Thrive user, you will be in good hands for a long time to come, with continuous updates being delivered based on real user feedback.

Review:	Thrive Themes
Summary:	Thrive Themes are the WordPress theme and plugin developer behind revolutionary WordPress products such as Thrive Leads and Thrive Architect. Their products can be purchased as a bundle in the form of a subscription. As a Thrive customer you will get access to a Member Dashboard where you can download products, submit support tickets and browse the knowledge base for product information and tips.
Author:	AJ Mens
Rating:	4.5 (out of 5)