Thrive Themes Review: Kick-Ass Themes & Plugins To Boost Conversions

Make some room in your day – this Thrive Themes Review requires a good amount of your time.

Thrive Themes (currently Thrive Suite) has been around for nearly ten years.

Nowadays, the company is one of the most respected and beloved WordPress themes, tools, and plugins corporations.

But how good is the Thrive team?

Does Thrive deserve all the hype, or are its affiliates overselling its capabilities?

These are valid questions.

I’m ready with the answers!

This post contains affiliate links – visit my affiliate disclosure.

Is Thrive Themes Worth It?

Before my Thrive Themes review dive into all the company’s products, let’s take a step back and look at the subject as a whole.

As someone who has been a user almost since Thrive’s birth, I can give you my word that they are more than worth it.

However, words have little to no impact unless there are facts to back them up.

Let’s see – I have Thrive Suite on all my other businesses except on this one (Cash Embrace is going through a testing phase).

At this moment, Thrive has over 30,000 users – the number is increasing steadily every year.

Now, why do all those content creators choose to put their faith in the company?

By all means, bloggers, marketers, and content creators who understand the business side of their work pick Thrive above all its competitors for a simple reason:

They know that there are in the business of selling. Likewise, marketers need tools that are all about increasing conversion rates.

And being the type of company that provides conversion-focused products is the path Thrive has been carving for itself since its existence.

Related: What To Blog About (When You Don’t Know What To Blog About)

Thrive Themes Summary

Currently, you already know that I have a deep appreciation for the Thrive company.

Be that as it may, my fondness has nothing to do with the love at first sight-scenario.

No, it’s a result of my long-term relationship with Thrive Suite, during which I was able to test and compare its products with the rest in the field.

With that said, Thrive Themes offers budget-friendly, easy to customize, and highly effective WordPress themes, page builders, tools, and plugins.

Isn’t it time for a closer look?

Thrive Themes

Price	Starts from $19 per month
Free Trial	No, but there is a 30-day money-back guarantee
Products	1) Thrive Theme Builder 2) Thrive Architect 3) Thrive Leads 4) Thrive Quiz Builder 5) Thrive Ovation 6) Thrive Comments 7) Thrive Optimize 8) Thrive Ultimatum 9) Thrive Apprentice 10) Thrive Automator 11) Thrive Suite (Includes All Of The Above)
Features	1) Fast Loading Time 2) Mobile-Friendly 3) High Conversion Rate
Funnel Building	You can build high-converting courses and webinar funnels with Thrive.
Landing Page Builder	Thrive will give you access to over 100 conversion-focused landing page templates. Feel free to build all kinds of landing pages with Thrive Architect.
Thrive University	As a Thrive Suite member, you’ll have constant access to Thrive University, where you’ll learn how to create websites, landing pages, opt-in forms, etc.
Thrive Updates	Every user receives updates and notifications for the newest products and features.
Thrive Competitors	1) Elementor 2) Beaver Builder 3) Elegant Themes (Divi)
Who Is Thrive For?	1) Bloggers 2) Affiliate Marketers 3) Online Course Creators 4) Infopreneurs 5) Coaches 6) Consultants 7) Agencies 8) e-Commerce Busines Owners

No worries – that’s not all the info I have to share about Thrive.

You’ll learn everything there is to know about each of the products as this Thrive Themes review unfolds.

Don’t Have A Blog Yet?  Build One Today Following This Step-By-Step Tutorial

Thrive Themes Pros And Cons

Quite frankly, Thrive Suite is about so much more than just WordPress themes, tools, and plugins.

Yes, I’m well aware that none of them comes free of charge.

But let’s think about something else:

Most of the time, newbie bloggers spend days or weeks customizing a free website theme they’ll eventually replace when their business takes off.

What’s the price tag of that time?

In my experience, going straight for the good stuff saves you more than it costs you.

That fact hits even harder when we talk specifically about Thrive Themes:

Above all, they are advanced and simple to use at the same time.

The drag-and-drop editor will allow you to build beautiful pages with no coding or tech experience.

Ultimately, Thrive Themes are designed with one goal in mind – boosting your conversion rate to a whole new level.

In other words, using Thrive will help you turn visitors into subscribers and customers.

Still, there is no such thing as a perfect theme or tool, and Thrive is not an exception.

So, have a look at everything you need to consider before you decide to invest your money:

Pros:

1. Main Focus On Conversion: These days, not too many vendors on the market can showcase such a vast portfolio of marketing, optimization, and lead generation tools as Thrive.
2. Tons Of Available Page Templates: You can pick from almost 300 templates that will allow you to create web pages in minutes.
3. Great Thrive Themes Integration: Feel free to integrate with many other marketing tools or services (plugins, platforms).
4. Easy To Use: Considering working with Thrive doesn’t require tech or coding skills, even beginners would be able to handle it.
5. Amazing User Experience: If you build your website with Thrive, your readers will enjoy their experience while visiting your blog.
6. A/B Testing: The Architect, Leads, Optimize, and Quiz Builder all come with built-in testing abilities.
7. Free Training: Take advantage of the wealth of knowledge you’ll receive as soon as you gain access to Thrive University.
8. Mobile Responsive: Both the page builder and the templates are fully responsive on mobile.
9. Constant Updates: Every Thrive member gets product updates on a regular basis.
10. Perfect Fit For WordPress: Thrive Themes, plus tools and plugins, work more than well for WordPress blogs.

Cons:

1. Learning Curve: Since Thrive provides tons of products, you’ll have to devote time to learning how to make the best of them for your business.
2. Only Works On WordPress: Unfortunately, Thrive Themes will not work on any other blogging platform other than WordPress at this time.
3. Lacks Certain Payment Processor Integrations: Chances are, you may have to use other payment cart solutions such as ThriveCart or SendOwl.
4. Thrive Apprentice Doesn’t Come With Payment And Membership Features: So, you’ll need to connect it with another shopping cart solution.
5. Longer Support Response Time: Sometimes, it may take a while until you get the professional help you need from the support team.

Thrive Themes Product Reviews

At the time of writing this Thrive Themes review, the company provides tons of conversion-focused themes, tools, and plugins.

If you decide to invest in Thrive Suite, you’ll gain unlimited access to all of them.

I’ve mentioned the products briefly already.

Now is time to look at each of them closely:

Thrive Theme Builder

Previously, the Thrive company was offering a handful of gorgeous themes. I had Rise for the longest time and there was nothing about that theme that I didn’t love!

Right now, all those themes are gone and replaced by the Thrive Theme Builder.

To clarify, the Thrive Theme Builder is the ultimate tool for building a highly responsive and well-converting WordPress website.

Heads up – don’t confuse it with Thrive Architect – a plugin/content editor I’ll discuss later in my Thrive Themes review.

Let’s keep our focus on the Theme Builder:

Having access to it will save you tons of time and potential headaches because you won’t ever have to settle with the elements another theme provides.

Instead, you’ll be able to build and modify in real-time every single aspect of your website.

For example, you can use it on your homepage, content pages, category pages, blog posts templates, sidebars, headers, footers, 404s, etc.

What I Like About Thrive Theme Builder

• It integrates easily with Thrive Architect and other Thrive products.
• Suitable for beginners: The Builder comes with pre-designed sections of every area of your blog.
• Mobile responsive design: You don’t have to worry if your brand new theme is 100% responsive.
• Fast loading time: That is thanks to the built-in speed tools and recommendations.
• Highly-customizable features: Basically, that applies to all the features.

What I Don’t Like About Thrive Theme Builder

• Only one companion theme is available (Shapeshift): However, you’ll be able to build many different sites using the available page templates and design elements.
• Thrive Theme Builder might be overwhelming at first: It provides a lot to work with, but you’ll get used to it fast.

2) Thrive Architect

Thrive Architect is a drag-and-drop page builder that will significantly advance the marketing side of your business.

Formerly known as the Thrive Content Builder, Architect comes with tons of new features:

Basically, think of it as the primary product of Thrive. And it is, considering it will allow you to build any kind of web page you want.

For example, you can use Thrive Architect to create homepages, sales pages, landing pages, webinar pages, product launch pages, thank you pages, lead generation forms, and other pages.

Expect a lot of flexibility with this page builder – much more than you can get out of the default WordPress editor.

Also, you’ll have all the creative control you need over your site since the Architect will allow you to modify pages without any coding.

What I Like About Thrive Architect

• Quite easy to use: This builder is created with beginner bloggers in mind.
• Tons of landing pages sets are available: There are even landing pages templates to make your job easier.
• Great user experience: Everything you’ll create with Thrive Architect will be as beautiful as it is responsive

What I Don’t Like About Thrive Architect

• It may slow down your site a bit: Thrive has done wonders to improve the loading speed when users work with the Architect. Still, every page builder will affect your loading time, at least to some degree.

3) Thrive Leads

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Needless to explain, considering its name, Thrive Leads is a plugin that will help you build your email list.

What makes it an incredible tool is that it will provide you with everything you need to attract thousands of email subscribers.

Being able to display opt-in forms anywhere, all over your website, you’ll never have to worry about your conversions again.

You can use any form of content (text, image, video, product) and insert it into your chosen opt-in.

The tool’s editor will let you modify your forms in any way you like, and the A/B testing tool will help you optimize them.

What I Like About Thrive Leads

• You’ll receive over seven different opt-in form types.
• Thrive Leads offers asset delivery mechanisms for delivering lead magnets and eBooks without having to use an email autoresponder service.
• Users will take advantage of the A/B testing feature (with traffic distribution and automatic winner selection feature).
• In-built analytics.
• Easy integration with over 35 marketing products and services.

What I Don’t Like About Thrive Leads

• At the time of writing this Thrive Themes review, you can’t track clicks as a conversion while using Thrive Leads.

4) Thrive Optimize

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To sum up, Thrive Optimize is a tool that will improve your conversion rates by giving you the chance to perform A/B split testing on your web pages.

Doing A/B testing on your content has to be an inseparable part of your marketing strategy:

When you send traffic to two versions of the same page, you’ll be able to see which one does better with the audience.

It’s all about keeping an eye on your conversions and adjusting them for ultimate results.

What I Like About Thrive Optimize

• Easy to use and highly-effective A/B split testing tool.
• In-depth reporting and analytics on your conversions.
• It integrates with Thrive Leads so you can split test your opt-in forms as well.
• You can use the automatic winner feature.

What I Don’t Like About Thrive Optimize

• Currently, Thrive Optimize is connected to Thrive Architect, so you need to have both tools.
• Thrive Optimize works for WordPress web pages but not for posts.

5) Thrive Headline Optimizer

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I know what you’re going to say – there are free tools like CoSchedule we’re already using to help us with our post titles.

Be that as it may, the Thrive Headline Optimizer is simply capable of so much more.

Grabbing this tool will allow you to A/B split test all your headlines.

Having access to that data will show you which pages can use improvement in the click-through rate department.

This is how you should use the Thrive Headline Optimizer:

First, you’ll enter multiple titles for a single web page.

Then, the tool will display different versions to your readers.

Later on, Thrive Headline Optimizer will measure the engagement and reveal which headline performs the best.

In short, you’re looking at an invaluable tool:

Running it will let you discover the titles keeping the visitors longer on your page and reducing your bounce rate.

What I Like About Thrive Headline Optimizer

• Doing A/B split testing on your headlines will improve the overall click-through rate on your site.
• You can pin multiple titles against each other to see which one performs better with your readers.
• It will reduce your bounce rate and keep readers longer on your blog.

What I Don’t Like Thrive Headline Optimizer

• Actually, this section of my Thrive Themes review will stay empty – there is nothing I dislike about Thrive Headline Optimizer.

6) Thrive Quiz Builder

Is there anyone who doesn’t understand the importance of doing online quizzes to engage the audience?

Hopefully, you realize their marketing power and the advantages a quiz will deliver for your business not that you’re reading this Thrive Themes review!

With that said, the Thrive Quiz Builder will provide you with everything you need to create irresistible quizzes for your readers:

Generally, the tool will display different calls to action to different readers.

Depending on their answers, you’ll be in the perfect position to offer specific opt-in forms, and that will do wonders for your email list-building activities.

What I Like About Thrive Quiz Builder

• Different quiz question types.
• A/B split testing and analytics features.
• All quiz templates are mobile-friendly.
• Beginner-friendly and simple to use.

What I Don’t Like About Thrive Quiz Builder

• Unfortunately, the tool doesn’t offer an abundance of quiz styles.

7) Thrive Apprentice

Alright, Thrive Appentice is a tool that exists to help bloggers who would like to start selling online courses.

Organizing and displaying a digital course on a WordPress site is what the tool does best.

Feel free to use to create stunning lessons pages and organize them into chapters for the student’s convenience.

These days, Thrive Apprentice works with all WordPress themes. Also, it integrates with most major website tools and plugins.

On top of that, it integrates with SendOwl as well.

What I Like About Thrive Apprentice

• Newbie-friendly.
• Easy integration with other WordPress tools and plugins.
• You’ll have all the creative control you need as a course creator.
• No transaction fees for course delivery.

What I Don’t Like About Thrive Apprentice

• Don’t expect shopping cart functionality.

8) Thrive Comments

Allowing comments on your blog prompts user engagement – we all know that.

More importantly, increasing content on a web page through new comments is a clever way to boost your SEO effort.

Thrive Comments will replace the current comments system on your articles.

The tool has fantastic features, such as upvoting, opt-in display after a reader leaves a comment, etc.

What I Like About Thrive Comments

• Better user experience for your audience.
• Boosting your email list with new leads.
• Tons of highly-effective features.
• Improves the engagement of all your blog posts.

What I Don’t Like About Thrive Comments

• Not too many styles of commenting forms are available yet.

9) Thrive Ultimatum

Above all, Thrive Ultimatum is an incredible tool that will increase the sales of your digital products by using scarcity tactics.

It will give you the opportunity to create fixed date campaigns, limited offers, and deadlines for specific sales.

Make no mistake – a scarcity tactic works really well when you apply it to the right audience.

What I Like About Thrive Ultimatum

• Increases sales and overall conversion rate on offers.
• Tons of effective features that give fast results
• The tool uses scarcity tactics.
• Many design types.
• You can embed a countdown timer in web pages.

What I Don’t Like About Thrive Ultimatum

• An integration with Thrive Leads is necessary for better functionality, so you need to have both tools.
• Doesn’t work on emails.

10) Thrive Ovation

To sum up, Thrive Ovation is a plugin you can use to manage your testimonials.

Thousands of bloggers use it to collect testimonials as a form of social proof.

One of the best things about Thrive Ovation is that it will automatically grab testimonials and display them for all your future clients to see.

Expect the plugin to show client testimonials all over your website if you see that fit.

What I Like About Thrive Ovation

• Beginner-friendly and simple to use.
• Improves your brand awareness by displaying social proof.
• Plenty of highly-customizable templates.
• You can import testimonials via Social Media.
• Allows adding more questions to forms.

What I Don’t Like About Thrive Ovation

• Thrive Ovation only works if you invest in Thrive Architect or the whole Thrive Suite.

11) Thrive Clever Widgets

My Thrive Themes review is ready to show you the last product from the company – Thrive Clever Widgets.

Basically, this is a plugin you can use to display widgets contextually in your blog post.

In other words, you’ll be able to display different widgets in different articles.

Think of it as one more way to boost the conversion rate of your content.

Thrive Themes Review – What Is Thrive Suite (Previously Known As Thrive Themes Membership)?

Earlier, I mentioned that Thrive Suite gives access to everything the company has to offer.

Yes, joining Thrive Suite will allow you to use every single builder, tool, and plugin you see above in this article.

But that’s not all you’ll get:

Thrive Suite also comes with full tech support, access to Thrive University, and the ability to use the company’s products on a total of 25 websites.

Now, Thrive offers one more option – the agency membership. That membership is a better fit for larger agencies since it will let them use all products on 50 sites.

Thrive Themes Vs. Other Products

As a rule of thumb, no review is complete unless there is a comparison between its subject and the competition.

Needless to say, my Thrive Themes review will not be an exception to that rule.

With so many competitors online, would Thrive Themes WordPress manage to stay one step ahead?

Well, this section will cover that:

Thrive Theme Vs. Elegant Themes

First thing first, don’t expect me to trash Elegant Themes just because I’m a huge fan of Thrive.

On the contrary, I find the Elegant Themes products kick-ass and awesome on many levels.

Thrive and Elegant Themes have somewhat similar backgrounds:

Both companies used to be all about theme builders. At some point, the two of them extended the range of their products to tools and plugins for WordPress sites.

Currently, Elegant Themes provide two products you can see as a direct competition to Thrive: the page builder Divi and the opt-in form plugin Bloom.

Let’s focus on Divi, shall we?

Thrive Themes Vs. Divi

Alright, here is the essential info about Divi, in my opinion:

Basically, Divi is a professional page builder that has tons of premium features to offer to its users.

Just like Thrive Architect, Divi integrates with WordPress to allow you to design stunning web pages on your own.

Quite frankly, the features of the two builders are more than similar.

However, I find Divi to be much more challenging to work with when you’re a beginner.

As someone who used to have Divi for a while, I can tell you that Thrive is so much easier to master.

What about Bloom?

Bloom does almost everything Thrive Leads do, but it’s less flexible and customizable.

While Elegant Themes’ Yearly Membership is cheaper than Thrive Suite, it won’t provide you with a course builder, quiz builder, A/B testing tools, and other perks.

2) Thrive Themes Vs. Elementor

Generally, Elementor is very similar to Thrive Architect and Thrive Theme Builder – you can use it to build your whole theme.

Its Pro version costs only $49 a year. To clarify, that’s cheaper than Thrive Suite.

Meanwhile, you’ll be only getting the page builder. Thrive Suite will give you all the marketing and conversion-focused tools, plus its builder.

Elementor is all about gorgeous design, and Thrive is all about conversion – let’s put it that way.

Also, it’s worth mentioning that Elementor doesn’t have A/B testing or analytics features – Thrive doesn’t lack advanced reporting!

3) Thrive Themes Vs. OptimizePress

There is one crucial thing you should know about Thrive Themes vs. OptimizePress:

The former works with multiple plugins and the latter works under one.

So, using one plugin will let you do all the work in one dashboard. But you’ll see yourself stuck with plenty of redundant features.

Don’t get me wrong – OptimizePress is not that bad, not at all:

You’ll find its drag-and-drop builder flexible – it does provide marketing elements too.

Moreover, it has over 300 page templates – that’s a lot, isn’t it?

OptimizePress integrates easily with many third-party tools and will let you sell anything you want on your site.

Prepare for a nightmare if you decide to uninstall it – it’s very challenging to do so.

Ultimately, Thrive Themes will ask you for $19 per month to use all its tools on 25 websites.

Spending $99 per year for one site license is what you’re in for if you choose to go with OptimizePress.

4) Thrive Themes Vs. ClickFunnels

For starters, ClickFunnels is not for bloggers who are on a tight budget:

Nowadays, it will cost you $97 per month, while Thrive comes at $19 per month.

As you can see, this cloud-based platform is quite expensive.

If you ask me, that’s not the only disadvantage of ClickFunnels:

With Thrive Themes, you’re using WordPress. Subsequently, you have all the marketing and creative control you may need as a business owner.

ClickFunnels is cloud-based, and that means you’ll depend on the platform, so forget about controlling much of your site.

On a lighter note, ClickFunnels is super fast and great if you’re not tech-savvy.

I’ll let you decide if that’s enough to make up for the rest!

5) Thrive Themes Vs. LeadPages

LeadPages is another fast, beginner-friendly cloud application that provides a great user experience.

Landing page creation and lead generation are its two main features.

Not that long ago, the company launched Leadpages Checkouts – a feature that will allow you to collect Stripe payments. That’s not possible with Thrive at the moment.

Still, I believe Thrive Themes is the better option between the two:

Most of its features are unavailable in LeadPages.

Besides, LeadPages will cost you $48 per month, while you can gain access to the whole Thrive Membership for $19 per month.

Thrive Themes Pricing

Until I’m on the subject of prices, let’s move this Thrive Themes review further and discuss the cost of joining the company.

In 2021, Thrive stopped allowing its members to purchase separate tools or plugins.

What this means is that you have to purchase Thrive Suite to gain access to all products or stay without none of them.

It’s not that hard to understand the logic behind such a decision:

Buying one product will provide you with certain functionalities and advantages.

But investing in all of them, you can use everything Thrive has to offer on a total of 25 websites.

With that said, you can get Thrive Themes for $19 per month paid annually ($299) or $99 paid quarterly.

Thrive Themes Speed

To be honest, one of the most common complaints regarding Thrive Themes online is about their speed.

Previously, many users were sharing their frustrations about slower websites after installing the Thrive Products.

Years ago, when I first got Thrive, I was experiencing similar issues.

Not anymore, though:

The team behind Thrive was working hard for years to fix any speed problem that may occur after using the company’s products.

I’m glad to tell you that their effort wasn’t in vain:

These days, the Thrive Theme Builder comes with a built-in module that focuses on website speed.

Each of the sections you see will play a huge role in making your blog run as fast as possible.

For example, Project Lightspeed focuses on CSS and Javascript optimization, while Minification and Catching will compress scripts and style coding.

Next, the Image Optimization and Delivery will take care of image compression until your photos reach their smallest size possible.

And the Accelerated Mobile Pages will make sure that your site loads faster on mobile.

Thrive Themes Support

As I’ve mentioned earlier, having Thrive Suite will give you access to full tech support.

Feel free to ask a question or seek help by submitting a ticket inside your Thrive dashboard.

Most of the time, you’ll receive an answer within 24-48 hours. There is no chat option at the moment.

Also, Thrive Themes has an enormous forum where you can submit queries as well.

Thrive Themes Review – Frequently Asked Questions

Who Owns Thrive Themes

Thrive Themes was founded back in 2013.

Shane Melaugh and Paul McCarthy are the creators of Thrive.

Shane is a marketer with years of experience – he is the brain behind the marketing and conversion aspects of the company’s products.

Paul is a developer, and his influence is more on the tech side.

What Is The Thrive Themes Refund Policy?

Thrive Themes Refund Policy is your guarantee that you can receive your investment back in 30 days after completing the purchase.

What Are The Thrive Themes Integration?

Currently, Thrive Themes integrates with most major third-party products and platforms.

Does Thrive Themes Work On WordPress.com Blogs?

No, Thrive Themes work only on self-hosted WordPress.org websites.

How Often Does Thrive Themes Release New Features?

In short, Thrive Themes release new features and improvements all the time.

My Closing

Hopefully, my Thrive Themes review is an eye-opener for every marketer who needs conversion-focused themes, tools, and plugins.

Above all, what you’re getting as a member of Thrive is an incredible value for money.

In my opinion, if you want to build a hugely successful and high-converting website, Thrive Themes are worth considering.

But enough about me, what’s your opinion about Thrive?

Is there something you don’t understand about the products?

Or maybe you have a question?

Let me know in the comments section, and I’ll get back to you!