Thrive Architect: Will This Plugin Improve Your Website's Conversion Rates?

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Are you looking for tools to build a website for your online business?


Then chances are that you’ve considered using WordPress — one of the world’s most commonly used website builders.


But WordPress is known for its limits on page design, making it frustrating to use on its own — and so the world of WordPress plug-ins evolved.


Thrive Suite emerged, and with it came Thrive Architect.


As one of the nine tools of Thrive Suite, Thrive Architect is a front-end visual website builder that’s focused on conversion rate optimization (CRO).


With this tool, you can design quality WordPress pages that would otherwise be impossible unless you’re an expert at coding a website.


All to increase your website’s conversion rate — getting you more sales leads and more revenue.


We’ve done a complete review to help you decide whether or not this WordPress plugin is for you.


Let’s delve into the features.

1. Thrive Architect features

Thrive Architect is one of the tools available with Thrive Suite — its focus is on building landing pages, sales pages, and blog posts with ease.


This tool aims to ensure that your website is optimized for converting more visitors into leads and paying customers.

features

The features of Thrive Architect allow you to create WordPress websites with a wide variety of templates to choose from.


Here’s a highlight of the features this plug-in has to offer:

  • It works with all WordPress themes
  • You can edit using a drag-and-drop interface, with no need for coding
  • You can choose from a variety of templates to design any page
  • There are different building blocks with sets of conversion elements
  • Every template is designed with CRO in mind

Let’s get into the details of these features.


And if you don’t want to read about each feature in detail, skip ahead to ‘Thrive Architect pros and cons’ below for a quick recap.

1.1. Compatible with all WordPress themes

WordPress themes

Source: Kinsta.com

Thrive Architect is compatible with any WordPress theme.


So, if you have an existing WordPress theme for your website, you don’t have to worry about changing the entire aesthetic of your online business.


It means your themes will seamlessly integrate between Thrive Architect and WordPress — that’s one less thing for you to worry about.


However, the downfall is that you can’t use Thrive Architect on free WordPress websites, as it doesn’t allow you to use plug-ins.


This means that you’ll need a hosted WordPress website to use these tools.

In reality,


Thrive Architect is only really a bonus for paying WordPress users.

1.2. Fast drag-and-drop editor and easy interface

 Thrive Architect editor

When you load up the Thrive Architect editor, everything follows one simple click-to-edit idea which lets you see your edits instantly.


If you want to move something, simply click, drag, and drop.


Thrive Architect’s interface is relatively easy to use and is ideal for:

  • Creating landing pages either from scratch or using templates
  • Upgrading your blog posts with new designs (but there are no blog templates available to use)
  • Adding high-converting product and sales pages

This removes some obstacles between you and your perfect website.


Simply because no coding knowledge is needed, and you won’t waste money on hiring a website developer to design your website for you.


The drag-and-drop editor helps you take control of your website’s design.


However, the panes with editing tools can become a bit cluttered, and when you do extensive editing, you can inadvertently make it messy.


The interface is overwhelming, and you’ll probably be left searching through a ton of customization options to find what you want to change.


It’s also hard to find tutorials on what you need to do — because it’s often hidden in a much larger tutorial (and support takes a while to respond).


If you like a clean, simple tool that gets the job done in a few clicks (exactly like systeme.io does), then Thrive Architect might not be for you.

1.3. Smart pre-built landing page templates

1.3.1. Landing pages templates set and customization

Landing pages templates

Thrive Architect comes with 290+ page templates for you to customize.

Here are a few features they include:

  • Ultra-flexible column layouts without extra sections as containers
  • Attention-grabbing text and image combinations
  • Total font customization with complete control over typography
  • Full-width layouts responsive to different devices
  • Hover effects that you can apply to every type of element
  • The ability to style every little detail of your webpage

You’re likely to find a few templates you could use, and if you don’t, Thrive Architect is fully compatible with your existing WordPress themes.


Thrive Architect is limited for use on no more than 25 WordPress websites, which can be an obstacle depending on the size of your business.

1.3.2. Making your landing pages mobile-friendly

Making your landing pages mobile-friendly

Thrive Architect also comes with a built-in tool that allows you to preview your website on different devices.


This is expected from any website builder worth its salt — on average, 50.84% of website traffic comes from mobile devices.


If you're not able to reach your audience through mobile-responsive pages, you’ll miss out on competitors who are.


While you’re editing your pages, you can get a quick peek at how it will look on both desktop and mobile devices.


Thrive Architect’s elements and building blocks are designed to be mobile-responsive — so you won’t have to go around tweaking things to make your website look good on mobile devices.


In short, what you see on your end is exactly what the reader will see once the site is published and live.

1.4. Pre-built conversion optimization elements (CRO)

conversion optimization elements

Source: Kinsta.com

CRO simply means incorporating certain strategies into your online business to get more out of your existing website visitors.


Thrive Architect’s elements are designed to increase your website’s conversion rates — but this is made intimidating with the lack of guidance.


Because there are no pre-built CRO templates for blog posts, it leaves a big chunk of your website’s content entirely up to you to customize.


Let’s have a look at how they included this strategy in their plug-in.

1.4.1. The conversion-focused blocks of Thrive Architect

Thrive Architect has the following built-in CRO building blocks:

  • Call-to-action buttons — Give your visitors buttons to click on
  • Testimonials — Show your visitors the most powerful form of social proof for any website: testimonials from other customers
  • Styled lists — An oldie but a goodie; the bullet point list with custom icons and styling lets you present your selling points in a very concise and easy-to-understand way
  • Credit card icons — Fully scalable credit card icons give your visitors a clear signal for a purchase and create trust
  • Lead generation forms — Add fully customizable lead generation forms anywhere inside your content to grow your mailing list
  • Content boxes — This has long been a staple of conversion-focused design, helping you highlight the important parts of your copy
  • Animated countdown times — Add a sense of urgency to your pages with the animated countdown timer and evergreen countdown timer
  • Content reveal — Hide content blocks until a certain time
  • Pricing tables — Add fully customizable pricing tables anywhere inside your content to increase sales
  • Contact forms — Insert a contact form on your page and customize every element of the form in true click and edit fashion
  • Guarantee boxes — Use the pre-designed guarantee-box element on sales pages to decrease buying resistance and increase conversions

1.4.2. A variety of elements

Apart from the CRO building blocks, Thrive Architect has all the customizable elements you’d expect from a website editor.

website editor

These elements all sound great, don’t they?


We’re sorry to say that there’s a fatal flaw in Thrive Architect’s variety of building blocks and elements to build into your website.


A major concern of Thrive Architect’s (previous) customers is that the pages take notoriously long to load — probably because it’s packed way too full.


Google recommends <3 second load time, and in our changing world the loading speed of your website correlates directly with conversion rates.


While its features may be conversion-focused, if your page takes too long to load, the visitors will never see it anyways and they will bounce.


If that isn’t bad enough, Google also uses your website’s loading time as a factor in your rankings in search results — meaning that even a few seconds extra will cost you hundreds of leads.


In today’s competitive climate, that’s more than you can afford.


You need a website builder that balances content with speed so you can target the right person at the right time — and avoid losing sales leads.


Your professional and optimized website won’t get you sales if your customers are getting frustrated just getting it to open.

1.5. Integrated lead generation options

Thrive Architect includes a lead generation element, which you can use to add customizable opt-in forms anywhere in your content.


Thrive Architect makes the integration of tools for email marketing, ecommerce, and content sharing easy to connect to the page builder.


With Thrive Architect, you can fully integrate all of these services:

Thrive Architect services

Thrive Architect’s features include lead generation tools to build your email lists and audience as marketing tools.


For example, the Lightboxes function allows you to create customizable pop-ups that are triggered at set times or when the visitor performs a specific action (like intending to leave your website).


Because you get the entire Thrive Suite when you purchase Thrive Architect, you’ll also get access to Thrive Leads for more options to generate leads.


However, you can’t use third-party plug-ins with Thrive Suite, so if there’s something you need that they don’t have — you can’t sidestep it.


You’ll have to live without the third-party plug-ins you need.

1.6. Other tools and features that are supported

woman working

Source: Elink.io

Let’s have a look at some included extras that Thrive Architect has to offer:

  • Thrive Architect frequently adds new features, and you get access to all the updates if you subscribe
  • A support team can assist you when needed (but customers’ experience tells us it can take quite a while before you get a response)
  • If you stop paying your subscription, your existing websites will remain intact and working — but no access to support, updates, or Thrive Architect’s premium templates

2. Thrive Architect pros and cons

Thrive Architect undoubtedly has a lot of useful features to offer.


Let’s do a quick recap of what we liked and disliked.


That way you can make a realistic choice on whether Thrive Architect is the WordPress plug-in you’re willing to pay for.


After that, we’ll walk you through what Thrive Architect will cost you and the WordPress plans you need as a minimum to use the tools it has to offer.

Pros

  • If you’re a WordPress user, then rest assured — Thrive Architect is designed with all your needs in mind, because it’s built for it
  • We love the drag-and-drop editor that makes it easy for you to see exactly what your website and pages look like to your audience
  • You don’t need any coding experience, making Thrive Architect perfect for entrepreneurs who don’t want to waste their limited time
  • The customization options are extensive, giving you complete control over the look of your website
  • There’s a large selection of page templates
  • The focus on CRO is what businesses need in competitive markets

Cons

  • You can only use Thrive Architect (and Thrive Suite) with WordPress hosted websites and pages — not for free pages or pages created with any other tool besides WordPress
  • There are no pre-built blog templates
  • The editor interface can get overcrowded very fast — especially when you’re making quite a few changes at once
  • The long loading times will make your website’s visitors bounce and go to your competitors’ fast-loading pages

3. Thrive Suite pricing

3.1. What is the Thrive Suite?

Thrive Architect comes as part of the Thrive Suite which gives you a variety of tools to build, edit, and optimize your website.


The other tools included are:

  • Thrive Theme Builder — allowing you to visually create your WordPress website with various themes to choose from
  • Thrive Quiz Builder — where you can collect new leads with quizzes
  • Thrive Leads — a tool that helps you build your mailing list
  • Thrive Optimize — a CRO tool you can use for A/B testing to increase conversions on your landing pages
  • Thrive Comments — which allows you to increase engagement with your website by allowing gamified comments
  • Thrive Apprentice — an online professional course building tool
  • Thrive Ultimatum — which enables evergreen countdown campaigns
  • Thrive Ovation — a tool to let you collect and display testimonials on your website through automation

Unfortunately, you can’t buy Thrive Architect all on its own — you have to buy the entire Thrive Suite to get access to this tool.


But luckily, this plug-in suite isn’t too expensive — at least not on its own.


The pricing gets a little complicated because to use Thrive Suite you need to have the high-level paid plans of WordPress.

3.2. Pricing options and the real costs to get started

Thrive Suite offers two pricing options (a quarterly and an annual option).

Google Analytics
Google Analytics

Both these options come with:

  • A 30-day money-back guarantee that you can use to get a full refund if you’re not satisfied with the features of the plug-ins
  • Unlimited support and updates are driven by the customer support team
  • Installation of up to 25 WordPress websites, meaning you’ve got lots of room to grow your business

Let’s have a look at the two pricing options of Thrive Architect.

  • The quarterly plan will cost you $30/month, so you’ll have to pay $90 when you sign up, as it covers three months’ use of Thrive Suite
  • The annual plan will cost you $19/month, meaning you’ll pay $288 when you sign up (saving you $72 for choosing to bill annually)

This doesn’t sound too bad, right?


Keep in mind that you’ll be paying Thrive Architect’s prices in addition to what you’re paying to use WordPress (which is billed annually or monthly).


And since you need at least the Business or Commerce plans of WordPress to be able to use plug-in tools like Thrive Architect, you can expect to pay quite a bit just to get started on both platforms.

Let’s break it down.


If you use WordPress Business ($25/month billed annually):

  • WordPress Business + Thrive Suite (quarterly) = $300 + $90 = $390
  • WordPress Business + Thrive Suite (annually) = $300 + $288 = $588

And if you use WordPress Commerce ($45/month billed annually):

  • WordPress eCommerce + Thrive Suite (quarterly) = $540 + $90 = $630
  • WordPress eCommerce + Thrive Suite (annually) = $540 + $288 = $828

Now that is a steep price to pay all at once.


Even if you get billed monthly for using WordPress, it’ll still put you between $123 and $347 out of pocket.


And that’s just for getting started!


Let’s look at a more affordable alternative — because we know that no business has money to waste.

3.3. Systeme.io as a more affordable alternative

Systeme.io logo

Systeme.io logo

Why don’t you consider building your website with an all-in-one tool instead of paying for plug-ins because of WordPress’ limitations?


The only alternative you need to be considering is systeme.io — to make sure that you get the right offer to the right person at the right time.


Let’s have a look at systeme.io’s features and pricing plans.

3.3.1. Systeme.io features

The all-in-one nature of systeme.io enables you to replace all other third-party tools and software you’ve been using for your online business.


Let’s take a peek at what systeme.io has to offer:

Tools
  • Create and automate sales funnels — to sell physical and digital products all in one easy-to-manage place
  • Send marketing emails — to send unlimited emails to your audience, automate your emails, and track its success with analytics
  • Build websites with our drag-and-drop editor — to create the website you want with our templates (or make one from new) and add a blog
  • Manage your affiliates and get an extra passive income — to track your affiliates, integrate your lists and payments, and publish your offers
  • Create and sell online courses — to build courses from templates or from scratch, integrate course access with payments, and sell it!
  • Automate your business’ marketing — to capture leads automatically, automate and personalize emails, add automation rules, and automatically trigger emails and membership access

All these features are built-in because we know that time is money.


And we also know you don’t have money to waste.


Need to hear it from someone else? Have a look at one of our reviews:

testimonials from systeme.io’s customers

Have a look at more testimonials from systeme.io’s customers to see why this is the only tool you’ll need to create and launch your website.

3.3.2. Systeme.io’s pricing plans

After reading systeme.io’s features and everything that’s included, you’re probably wondering: Where’s the catch?


There isn’t one.


In fact, we’ve made it as easy as possible for you to get started — with our very affordable pricing plans:

Systeme.io’s pricing plans

All of our plans (even the freemium account) include:

  • Unlimited emailing to your contacts
  • Unlimited file storage space so you can create funnels based on our tried and tested templates
  • Unlimited members on your site
  • No transaction fees
  • Access to our affiliate program to increase your income through referrals to systeme.io
  • 24/7 online support whenever and wherever you need it

With our Freemium plan, we guarantee you a free account for as long as you want — and our most expensive plan only costs $97/month.


And the difference?


Systeme.io provides you with unlimited everything.

4. Conclusion

By all standards, Thrive Architect is a powerful tool to have in your arsenal as you grow your online business.


Thrive Suite has very few limitations, and it’s backed by continuous updates and a whole support team at your disposal.


You can instantly edit any of your WordPress web pages, and there’s virtually unlimited customization on every element available.


It takes you beyond the limits of WordPress itself.


Thrive Architect’s features give everything you need to create a professional website at an affordable price, and without WordPress’ hassles.


We highly recommend Thrive Architect for anyone who wants to design an effective WordPress website — especially with no coding knowledge.


But in case you’re not a WordPress user, check out systeme.io if you want all the same features without the WordPress brand — or the steep costs.


Or if you prefer an all-in-one tool instead of using (and paying) for lots of plugins — sign up for our forever free plan today!


Trust us — you’ll save a lot of money by switching.

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