Thrive Themes Review: A Look At The Full Membership

If you’re an affiliate marketer who uses WordPress, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about Thrive Themes. In case you’re not familiar, Thrive Themes’ unique selling proposition is that they make “conversion focused’ WordPress themes and plugins.

In my Thrive Themes review, I’ll tell you more about just what that means, as well as everything that you get when you buy a Thrive Themes Membership.

In general, I’m a big fan of Thrive Themes, which is why I use it on my own personal site. If that’s not a personal endorsement, I’m not sure what is! Still, I’ll do my best to cover both the good and the bad when it comes to the Thrive Themes membership.

What Does “Conversion Focused” Actually Mean?

I’ll start with how Thrive Themes describes what it means. Then, I’ll give you my take on it as a unique selling proposition after having used Thrive Themes products for almost a year.

Here’s what they say:

Themes & plugins, built from the ground up to make your entire website convert more of your visitors into subscribers, customers & clients!

Alright, that’s some nice marketing speak. But here are my own thoughts on what that actually means after using my Thrive Themes membership:

Thrive Themes’ products usually go one step further than the competition when it comes to targeting, segmentation, and optimization.

For example, other email opt-in plugins give you tons of cool email opt-in forms. Thrive Leads does that too…but also helps you segment subscribers to different lists based on certain criteria and A/B test your forms.

I’m not saying you won’t find other singular plugins that do things similarly. But Thrive Themes’ draw is that they do that for almost every product that you put out.

I personally have no idea if the actual design is any more “conversion friendly” than other solutions – but the focus on A/B testing, segmentation, and targeting is why I’m a fan of Thrive Themes’ products.

What’s Included With The Thrive Themes Membership?

While you can always buy plugins and themes individually, Thrive Themes Membership often offers a better value by putting together everything under one plan.

With the membership, you get access to every single theme and plugin that the company makes. That means:

Thrive Architect – a powerful visual, drag and drop page builder with tons of pre-built landing page templates.
Thrive Leads – a detailed email opt-in service with a variety of helpful features that go beyond most list building plugins.
Thrive Optimize – run A/B tests on the designs that you create with Thrive Architect.
Thrive Ovation – helps you collect and display testimonials on your site.
Thrive Ultimatum – helps you create evergreen countdown timers to drive urgency.
Thrive Quiz Builder – helps you create interactive quizzes…and display offers or add visitors to your email list based on how they answer.
Thrive Comments – create a more engaging comments section.
Thrive Apprentice – build online courses.
Thrive Headline Optimizer – A/B test your blog post titles.
Thrive Clever Widgets – show different widgets based on categories, tags, and more.
Every Single Theme – currently, Thrive Themes offers 10 different themes

Beyond all of the products, you also get access to Thrive University, which is a variety of courses designed to help you learn digital marketing. Some courses are free, while others are only available as part of the membership.

I’ve never used the University, so I won’t focus very much on it for my review. I have read Thrive Themes’ blog posts and they certainly publish quality content…but I just don’t have time to go through full courses.

Going over every single product in detail would take far too long, so I’m only going to look at the two biggest tools in detail.

Thoughts on Thrive Architect

Thrive Architect is Thrive Themes’ relaunched page builder plugin, which was formerly known as Thrive Content Builder.

It gives you a visual, drag-and-drop interface to design your content. It also puts a heavy focus on inline editing, which means that you can edit text by clicking and typing on the page rather than working in some abstract sidebar.

Like other WordPress page builders, you get a diverse set of elements that you can drag over to your design and further customize.

For example, here’s an idea of what you can build with Thrive Architect, as well as what it looks like to edit the landing page on my personal site:

I don’t want to cover the aspects of Thrive Architect that overlap with other page builders – those are fairly similar.

Rather, I want to focus on the elements that make Thrive Architect stand out:

You don’t need to set a column structure. Instead, you can just drag elements next to each other to split them into multiple columns. This saves a ton of time and makes things more flexible.
Thrive Architect syncs with other Thrive Themes products to make it easy to bring those elements into your designs. E.g. you can easily add Thrive Leads opt-in forms to your Thrive Architect designs.
You can add cool animation effects to buttons that grab people’s attention.
You can quickly switch between design styles. E.g. jump from a minimal style right to a flat style.
The interface is smooth and glitch-free.

Another nice thing is that, if you integrate it with the Thrive Optimize plugin, you can also run A/B tests on the designs that you create with Thrive Architect. This is really great if you’re using Thrive Architect to build landing pages or other marketing-focused pages.

For more detailed thoughts on Thrive Architect, check out our full Thrive Architect review.

Thoughts on Thrive Leads

After Thrive Architect, I’d say Thrive Leads is the other “flagship” product offered by Thrive Themes (not that the other plugins aren’t beneficial themselves).

Like many other email opt-in plugins, it lets you create a variety of email opt-in types like lightbox popups, welcome mats, in-content boxes, and more.

But where it excels is that:

You can use Thrive Architect to create your own opt-in designs.
It includes a tool to exclude certain traffic from seeing opt-ins. E.g. you can remove the opt-in form from links that you include in your newsletters. Not many solutions let you do this. OptinMonster is the only other one that I know of.
You can A/B or multivariate test your opt-in forms to find the best-performing designs.

For more detailed thoughts on Thrive Leads, check out Joe’s dedicated Thrive Leads Review.

How Thrive Themes Products Work Together In Your WordPress Dashboard

Another thing that’s nice about Thrive Themes’ plugins and themes is that they all work together inside your WordPress dashboard. That is, you don’t get a separate “tab” for each new theme or plugin that you activate.

Instead, they’re all collected into the Thrive Dashboard tab, from where you can manage all of your general Thrive Themes features:

Not only does this simplify things, it also allows new plugins that you install to inherit some basic configuration settings from your general Thrive Dashboard.

Having all of your tools under one tab makes it feel like a cohesive “membership”, rather than a set of disconnected tools.

A Look At The Thrive Themes Member Dashboard

Inside the actual Thrive Member Dashboard at Thrive Themes’ website, you’ll find a few different things:

Download links for all of your products
Access to Thrive University courses
Detailed tutorials and videos for using the various plugins and themes
A support forum if you have additional questions

I’d say that the key differentiating features here are the depth of Thrive Themes’ support documentation.

Many theme shops have poor documentation, whereas Thrive Themes’ documentation is some of the best in the business.

Not only do you get tons of text tutorials, you also get high-quality video tutorials for most of the functionality. These videos don’t just help you use the product at a basic level – they ensure that you get the most value from every Thrive Themes product that you use.

How Much Does Thrive Themes Membership Cost?

Ok, I’ve talked about all of the features…but how much does the Thrive Themes membership actually cost?

There are two options:

Thrive Membership – $19 per month (billed annually at $228) – use all the products on up to 25 of your own websites.
Agency Membership – $49 per month (billed annually at $588) – use all the products on up to 50 of your own sites OR client sites.

So if you want to use the Thrive Themes products on sites that you build for clients, you’ll need to go with the pricier Agency Membership.

If you’re scared by that upfront cost, you can also pay quarterly (every 3 months):

Thrive Membership – $30 per month (billed quarterly at $90)
Agency Membership – $69 per month (billed quarterly at $207)

Obviously, you save a lot if you go with the annual option.

What Types Of Sites Need the Thrive Themes Membership?

Ok, it’s probably become pretty clear that I’m a big fan of the Thrive Themes membership…but I don’t think it’s for everyone.

If you’re just a casual webmaster who isn’t into optimization, list building, or other more “advanced” marketing tactics… I don’t think it makes sense to pony up for the Thrive Themes membership.

You can certainly benefit from specific Thrive Themes products, notably Thrive Architect. But I would recommend just picking a specific plugin and purchasing it for the one-time price.

Thrive Themes’ products definitely cost a premium – so if you’re not going to actually take advantage of all of those “conversion focused” features, you’re likely wasting money.

On the other hand, if you’re a serious marketer who’s willing to put in the time to run A/B tests, optimize your email list growth, and segment your audience…then paying for the whole suite of products (as well as regular updates) is a great investment, in my opinion.

Yes, $228 per year is more expensive than other popular memberships like Elegant Themes. But I truly do think Thrive Themes’ “conversion focus” is worth the extra money…if you’re going to actually use those features to optimize your site (and make more money than you would otherwise).

Thrive Themes Review: Final Thoughts On The Whole Package

I’m always hesitant going with a single company to handle all aspects of my site’s functionality, but Thrive Themes’ membership and popularity was enough to win me over. And I think it should be enough for you, as well.

Again, if you’re interested in specific looks at Thrive Themes’ products, check out our Thrive Architect review and Thrive Leads review. And for a look at a different membership club, you can also check out our Elegant Themes review. Generally, I think the Elegant Themes membership is a better option for creatives who aren’t necessarily as laser-focused on conversion rate as digital marketers are.

Get Thrive Themes Membership

Colin Newcomer

Colin Newcomer is a WordPress writer for WPKube. He uses WordPress more often than any sane person should.

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View Comments

Tyler says:

May 16, 2021 at 3:49 am

Thrive Themes sucks now, do not purchase from them.

Recently screwed over their most loyal customers by switching to an SaaS-only model that is basically a slap in the face to anyone who purchased licenses upfront. You cannot upgrade now without paying monthly for Thrive Suite. Absolutely disgusting greed from this company.

Side note, their customer service isn't equipped to offer meaningful help. Takes almost 24 hours for a response and the "solutions" are useless.