Thrive Architect Review: Is This Page Builder Worth it?

In this Thrive Architect review, you will learn if you should invest your money in this WordPress page builder while there are many alternatives like Elementor, Divi, and SaaS tools like Clickfunnels.

We live in an age where we want to do every sort of task faster and more easily. I am pretty sure you will not throw away a chance if you had to make your web page-building process easier.

I have been blogging for over five freakin’ years. If I have learned from it, you should be excellent in content marketing if you want to grow your blog more quicker. It doesn’t matter if you have written the world’s top content about ABC topics.

You won’t get the expected results if you fail to represent them to the audience. Like visual content (ex: images, videos, GIFs) matters in content marketing, being good at building visually appealing landing pages will make your business arrangements easier and more comfortable. Believe me. It does.

If you’re a WordPress blogger, you might have accustomed to the default WordPress editor. However, at present, we need an advanced page builder for WordPress.

One visual web page builder for WordPress is Thrive Architect, previously known as Thrive Content Builder.

Today, I will review Thrive Architect and share my experiences using it so far and critical reasons why you may want to use it for your business.

What’s Thrive Architect?

Thrive Architect is a visual drag-and-drop website builder for WordPress.

thrive-architect-front-end

Thrive Architect is one product of ThriveThemes. Other products they offer.

  • Thrive Leads – Lead generating plugin for WordPress. Check ConvertBox vs Thrive Leads review for more details.
  • Thrive Themes – High-quality themes for WordPress
  • Thrive Quiz Builder – Create stunning, high-converting quizzes.
  • Thrive Clever Widgets – Display widgets in different locations.
  • Thrive Headline Optimizer – A/B Test headlines.
  • Thrive Ultimatum – Scarcity marketing tool for WordPress.
  • Thrive Ovation – Testimonial plugin for WordPress. 
  • Thrive Comments – New comment management system for WordPress
  • Thrive Apprentice – A course plugin for WordPress

I have had a ThriveThemes membership since 2016. Therefore, I have access to all plugins and future plugins at a reduced price. They are rolling out new updates for their primary products, such as Thrive Themes, and releasing new products. So, I recommend getting a ThriveThemes membership before its price increases!

In my opinion, the best product of ThriveThemes is the Thrive Architect. It boosts your creativity and makes it easier to create visually appealing web pages without hassle.

Many web pages you have found on Pitiya are made with Thrive Architect. Now, you may have already seen dozens of visual page builders for WordPress. However, Thrive Architect is different from them. 

Why is Thrive Architect different from Competition?

Make Landing Pages in Speed of light.

Drag and drop elements make it so easy to design any web page smoothly and faster. Select the appropriate element you want to use, click “click-to-edit,” and enter your content.

thrive-architect-drag-drop-elements

Landing Page Templates

Thrive Architect comes with tons of high-converting landing page template sets for each niche. 

Have a business in the Medical care niche? Load the “Medical” template set and build your website without hiring freelancers. 

thrivebiz-landing-page-templates

Want a template for webinar registration? Filter “Webinar” landing pages and load a favorite one.

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Looking for a high-quality lead generation landing page template? Thrive Themes has got you covered!

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Unlike other visual landing page builders or WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors, with Thrive Architect, you can edit landing pages very quickly, no matter what theme you use for your WordPress site.

Pre-built conversion elements

Thrive Architect isn’t a typical front-end visual editor. You get most elements you want for building a web page for every type of site.

  • Use Countdown timers to create the urgency and scarcity factor. 
  • Add testimonials to build the trust factor.
  • Insert your CTA links in eye-catching buttons.
  • Embed your videos in perfect locations on web pages.
  • Add star ratings.
  • Display credit card icons to boost the conversion rate of the checkout page.
  • Progress Bars
  • Reveal exclusive content at the correct times.
  • Use fill counters to represent your data attractively.

These are just a few pre-built conversion boosting elements you can use in Thrive Architect. I wonder if there is any other front-end visual editor with these excellent elements.

Customization Ability

With the new Thrive Content Builder (version 2.0) or Thrive, Architect, you get many customization options. To be honest, in the beginning, I was confused about how to use it. However, with a few tries, you will find how powerful Thrive Architect is.

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You can completely design a fully responsive web page without knowing a single HTML tag!

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That’s a massive feature in Thrive Architect.

Just imagine you can design separate web pages for desktop, tablet, and mobile users exclusively. Fortunately, Thrive Architect has designed to load needed codes in each device type. So, if you hide a particular element (ex: iframe window) in mobile view, all content, codes, and external files won’t fetch in mobile view.

Talking about responsive design reminds me that you can create mobile-only web pages.

Thrive Architect Features

Thrive Architect is a perfect substitution for the default WordPress, web page builder. Not only can you build custom blog post pages, but also build sales funnels within your current WordPress blog!

Smooth Drag and Drop Visual web page builder

Build any type of web page with these available elements.

thrive-architect-drag-drop-elements
Thrive Architect Elements

Design 100% responsive web pages

With over 100s different mobile device models, you may be worried about whether your potential customers could accurately see your sales letter. If you are building a sales letter with Thrive Architect, you have nothing to worry about.

thrive-architect-responsive-design
Build Cross-Browser Friendly Web Pages

Every element, column, video, and visual content is made to be fully responsive.

Beautify your blog post pages

The days are gone when you have to use custom-made images for every type of custom design. You can design every imagined plan with Thrive Architect.

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Add borders
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Style images
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Create full-width background sections
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Background images, videos, patterns, and colors.
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Create colorful gradients using the editor

Customize as you want on the go

Designing a visually appealing web page is difficult due to conflicting reasons. Ex: You have no idea how to set the margin within the first two columns under a page section and add a table of content to your blog post.

But, Thrive Architect makes it easier than ever to customize every pixel you want. Yes, every pixel.

You can easily set margins and paddings.

set-layout-position-thrive-architect
Set margins and paddings of content

Add any color you have ever seen or not.

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Save colors for future usage.

Add custom tooltips, and hover effects as you want.

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Design custom tooltips: Light, Dark Color Styles

Add animations to web pages.

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Add basic animations and actions using pure CSS!

Add icons, custom fonts, and style text as you feel good.

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Use Icons in the visual editor
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Use any font in-universe with Font options!
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Add inner or outer shadows.

Add frames to videos and customize how the video should appear.

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Different video styles

You can do all of these without coding a single HTML line. How awesome is it?

Lead generation

Still, Email marketing might be the #1 marketing channel for every sort of business. Whether you’re a solopreneur, online marketer, blogger, or a local business like a dental clinic, you must utilize email marketing.

The default WordPress editor certainly isn’t the best place to design lead capture pages. However, with Thrive Architect, the sky’s the limit for you to create high converting, attractive lead capture pages and even add lead capture forms into blog posts.

Here are a few key features of the Lead generation feature of Thrive Architect.

  • Direct integration with all major email marketing services using API.
  • Add customers to other email marketing tools with the HTML form post method — Ex: in-house email marketing software and third-party apps such as UpViral.
  • Integrate with multiple email marketing services. So, you can add subscribers or customers to numerous email lists in different email marketing services.
  • Add custom fields. So, you can collect just more than email addresses such as name, phone number, address, and other fields you want.
  • Redirect subscribers to a custom thank you page or display a custom message after registration.
  • Custom error messages.
  • One-step or two-step signup forms. (In two-step signup forms, potential subscribers click on the CTA button, and the signup form appears)
  • Easily customize the lead capture form’s design.

Drag and drop the “Lead Generation” box to where you want to display the email signup form. Here’s the default look of the lead generation form.

lead-generation-form-thrive-architect
Default lead generation form in Thrive Architect.

Connect the lead generation form with your current email service provider so Thrive Architect will automatically add new subscribers to your email list.

  1. They will be listed here if you already have connected services via API.
  2. Add new API connections: Currently, Thrive Architect supports all major email service providers, including Aweber, GetResponse, Mailchimp, Convertkit, Ontraport, ActiveCampaign, Drip, InfusionSoft, and other services such as WebinarJam and a few membership platforms.
  3. Integrate any platform which supports HTML configuration. For example, if your current service provider supports creating HTML signup forms, you can create a basic or a plain email signup form and paste the HTML code here. Thrive Architect will automatically send user submissions to your service.  
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Connect with your ESP or other marketing tools

Edit form fields and add custom fields. If you want to make the “Name” a required field the user must fill, you can tick the “required” box.

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Add new fields

Change the method of how you want subscribers to want to know they have successfully submitted the data or signed up for your list.

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Post-Opt-In action

Content Blocks

Thrive Architect makes it easier to design visual web pages and ease it by enabling to save content templates for further use. Furthermore, the ThriveThemes team releases new content templates for its subscribers.

WordPress Content

You might want to use the default WordPress editor to add specific content for your landing page. You can easily drag and drop the WordPress content box to the front-end editing workspace.

add-wordpress-content-thrive-architect
Insert your WordPress content

Click-to-Tweet boxes

Add custom tweet messages to your current blog post pages to increase social sharing. You can also add your Twitter handle to get you mentioned on Twitter.

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Click to Tweet Options: Set Tweet

Countdown timers

Increase scarcity element by adding a beautiful mobile-friendly countdown timer to your landing page.

There are two types of countdown timers.

  1. Standard Countdown timers: Countdown time is absolute, and you can set it accordingly.​​​​​
  2. Evergreen countdown timers: Countdown time will reset every time the user enters the webpage.

However, you cannot add counting up timers in Thrive Architect. For that, you have to use a free HTML widgets provider such as Powr.

Evergreen Countdown Timer

You can even display a custom message after the countdown time comes down to zero.

complete-message-thrive-architect-countdown-timer
Countdown Evergreen options

Page Events

You may want to display a custom message or a CTA link in a popup box that shows up once a visitor clicks on a link or a button.

Or even better, you might want to give a discount or a coupon code for a 30-day free trial when a visitor tries to exit from one of your pages. You can easily do it with Thrive Architect WordPress page builder.

Select trigger

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Select a page event

Select action

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set action for the trigger

Customize message

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Customize message. You can also show an opt-in box.

Page event setting

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Exit intent event trigger

Social Share buttons

Apart from displaying social sharing buttons in the sidebar or above/below blog posts by default, you can display social sharing buttons in WordPress posts or static pages within the content.

You can select one of a few designs available.

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Social sharing button styles

Set a custom share URL and display the social share count after a certain amount of total shares.

change-social-share-settings-thrive-architect
Social networks, custom share URL, display share count

Tables

What are other better ways to compare a few products or services with yours than using tables?

You can easily create tables and customize their design.

Select rows and cells

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Select the table type. You can add/remove and change columns and rows later.

Change table appearance

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Table Options

Columns

Sometimes you want to split a section or a web page into a few parts and different content. If you do it with purely HTML, you want to use CSS to set up margins, alignments, padding, and even customize appearances in other device types.

However, Thrive Architect makes it so easier to create columns.

Select column layout

select-column-layout-thrive-architect

Select columns layout: You can change the column’s width later. 

Change Column Options

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Column options

Table of Content

Adding a table of content into a long blog post improves the user experience, and Google rewards your post by showing direct links to each section.

Many bloggers use custom WordPress plugins for adding a table of content. However, with Thrive Architect, you can add a table of content into a blog post with three clicks!

Drag and drop the “Table Of Contents” box to the workspace.

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Table of Contents

Select headings and a number of columns.

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Table of Contents options

Like other elements, you can customize the Table Of Contents widget’s appearance.

Dynamic Animations & Actions

Do you want to amaze readers by giving a free guide, checklist, or even a PDF version of a blog post? Use the Content Reveal tool for it.

You can also set how it should show up.

Do some advanced stuff easily, like auto-playing a Youtube video once someone clicks a button on your page.

autoplay-video-onclick-thrive-architect

Settings for playing a YouTube video automatically when clicked on a button.

Fill Counters

People grasp visual elements better than text content. Fill counters are great, especially for demonstrating data for your readers.

Styled Lists

Add visually appealing yet conversion-boosting styled lists into your blog posts, pages, and sales letters using styled lists.

You can change the colors, icons, font styles, font families, etc., of each list element.

styled-list-options-thrive-architect
Styled list options

Landing Page Templates

ThriveThemes releases batches of landing page templates. Each one includes.

  • Homepage template
  • Lead registration template
  • Email confirmation template
  • Thank you page template
  • Webinar registration template

You can select the appropriate template set for your requirement.

landing-page-sets-thrive-architect
Default landing page template sets

“Bright” landing page set alone has 13 different kinds of landing page templates.

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Landing page templates under Bright Landing page templates set

You can use an existing landing page template or create a page from scratch.

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Blank landing page template

Edit source code

Do you want to edit the source code of your web page? Or copy and paste the current content into another separate page?

edit-html-thrive-architect

Preview web page looks on mobile, tablet, and desktop

Now you don’t have to have an Apple iPhone, or Samsung Galaxy Note 3, to preview how your web page will look on each device type.

Thrive Architect has an inbuilt tool for it.

preview-webpage-devices-thrive-architect
Preview webpage in Mobile, Tablet, and Desktop user’s view

Mobile-only web design

Because the number of mobile internet users has already surpassed the number of desktop internet users, you should change your blogging strategies and design web pages for mobile visitors. You can easily design mobile-only web pages by showing and hiding each piece of content.

For example, if you have embedded a YouTube video on your web page, you may not want to display a video on the web page for mobile users. Instead, you could display the YouTube video’s thumbnail and fetch the video with the ‘onclick’ function. 

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Hide elements in Mobile devices

Custom HTML/CSS

If you want to add custom HTML, CSS style, or even embed an external widget, you can do it using the Custom HTML/CSS element box.

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Add custom CSS

You can insert custom HTML or JavaScript scripts into a web page.

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Add custom HTML or JavaScript code

Other notable features and advantages

Apart from the above features and tools, this Thrive Architect review is incomplete without noting these amazing and beneficial features.

Efficient Editor

Here’s the “Paragraph/Text” editor of Thrive Architect

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  1. Copy element
  2. Delete element

Other options allow you to do these things.

  • Change font weight and style and add an underline to the text. 
  • Create an ordered or unordered list.
  • Change text alignment.
  • Change text type.
  • Hyperlink a chunk of text.
  • Insert the “Read More” tag.

Add links to posts and affiliate products within Thrive Architect visual editor.

If you’re using Thrive Architect to create blog posts, you can easily add links to published articles, pages, and even affiliate links.

Enter your search term to generate suggestions, or easily enter the URL you want to add. There are also options to add “nofollow” and “_blank” tags to the hyperlinked content.

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Insert a hyperlink to a text: enter the URL, or enter a search term to start searching.

Select the blog post you want to link to.

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Insert a link to the blog post

Layers

When building web pages with more dynamic content, we have to use different content elements and different layers. It is even more challenging for a web developer to create a dynamic website from scratch and edit it later. Luckily for us, Thrive Architect highlights each layer on the top of the visual editor.

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Know what you’re editing with the top layers bar. Navigate through deeper layers easily.

Disqus and Facebook comment systems

If you are building a sales letter (video sales letter even better), you might want to add Disqus or Facebook comment systems. Thrive Architect has facilitated it.

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Insert Facebook comments system for web pages

Keyboard shortcuts

You should use keyboard shortcuts to save time and efficiently complete computer tasks. Thrive Architect supports a few keyboard shortcuts, which you can use to save time and hard work.

Here’re a few keyboard shortcuts for Windows users. Use the Command key instead of CTRL for Mac users.

  • CTRL + S: Save document
  • CTRL + R: Redo
  • CTRL + Z: Undo
  • CTRL + K: Create a Hyperlink

Benefits of Using Thrive Architect 

  • Works with most WordPress Themes
  • A Low-Weight WordPress Plugin
  • All-in-one Front end visual editor for WordPress: Comes with conversion-boosting elements, landing pages, mobile-only web design, animations & actions, and layers.
  • Easy to operate.
  • No Coding Needed
  • Lifetime, Unlimited Free Updates
  • Forum for asking questions and finding answers
  • Use on Unlimited Websites You own
  • Cost-Effective

Thrive Architect Pricing

ThriveThemes offers two pricing plans.

  1. Thrive Suite – $99/quarter or $299/year – Include all plugins, including Architect
  2. Thrive Architect – $97year
  3. Thrive Architect + Thrive Optimize – $167/year

Check out Thrive Architect.

Pros & Cons of Thrive Architect

What I Like

  • All-in-one visual front-end editor for WordPress
  • An Independent WordPress visual editor plugin. So, it works with all WordPress themes seamlessly.
  • Drag-n-drop elements
  • Customization options
  • Thrive University Courses (Learn how to use Thrive Architect for building high converting web pages and funnels)
  • Regular Updates (ThriveThemes team fixes bugs often and releases new features, tools, and integrations)
  • Active Forum (Ask any question from billing to refund from ThriveThemes’s Forum)
  • Use Thrive Architect on Unlimited websites you own under regular license and unlimited client websites under Agency License.

What I Don’t Like

  • Sometimes, Thrive Architect editor doesn’t load the last saved version due to a cache issue. You have to clear cache and/or load the web page with Thrive Architect visual editor in an Incognito window (In Google Chrome Or Private Window in other web browsers).
  • Too much Comfortable. It makes me so lazy! 🙂

Should You Buy Thrive Architect?

Since it was released, I have been using Thrive Products for over a year and Thrive, Architect. There are dozens of alternatives for Thrive Architect currently. Examples include Elementor Pro, Divi Visual Editor, Visual Composer, Cornerstone by The X Theme, and Fusion Builder by Avada.

However, as far as I have heard, hundreds of users have moved to the Thrive Architect, not only Thrive Architect WordPress plugin is cheap, but also its simplicity, powerfulness, and comfortability. In simple words – I am addicted to Thrive Architect.

If you want a powerful yet simple, easy-to-use WordPress visual editor plugin, I recommend purchasing Thrive Architect.

If you want to grow your blog fast, I strongly recommend subscribing to a ThriveThemes Membership. You won’t regret it. I recommend.

They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

So, you have nothing to worry about. Check out what you can do with Thrive Architect over here.

So, how do you review Thrive Architect as a blogger and a business owner? What’s your favorite feature of Thrive Architect?

Thrive Architect $67
  • Customization options
    (4.6)
  • Elements
    (4)
  • Updates
    (4.7)
  • Landing page templates
    (4)
  • Support
    (3.7)
4.2

Summary

Thrive Architect helps you build high-converting landing pages in WordPress without having to put a single line of code. Its elements and features make WordPress a powerful platform for building high-efficient and converting funnels without having to use a third-party tool like Clickfunnels.

Pros

  • Includes all features
  • Unlimited free updates
  • Access to premium content

Cons

  • Bugs with specific themes and plugins from time to time

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