The Thrive Architect Review

When it comes to WordPress plugins, there are a few that cause endless debates, arguments and discussions, one of those being page-builders. Thrive Architect is one of those page builders that makes an appearance as being one of the most popular and diverse builders out there. 

This Thrive Architect review will look at the different parts of the page builder plugin, it's features, why they are useful and a few of the other page builders out there. 

To put simply, Thrive Architect is one of the ten different tools or plugins that Thrive Themes offer, and is one of the most popular that they sell.

It is a Drop & Drop style page builder designed to allow you to quickly build websites, landing pages or even simple blogs. 

Much like the new WordPress builder, it uses blocks and elements to allow you to build pages or posts as you see fit, but we will talk about that a little more further down this Thrive Architect review. 

Once installed, Thrive Architect transforms your blog or website into a Drag & Drop builder. You can then select either the page or post that you want to create, you simply select the edit with Thrive Architect option, and you are good to go. 

After you have go to your newly built page or post, you will be shown a few options, giving you the ability to go play with pre-built pages or just a completely blank slate for you to go wild on!

Drag & Drop Elements

Every element can be dragged over and simply slotted into place. 

What Are The Different Blocks In Thrive Architect?

There roughly 43 different building blocks that can be found within the Thrive Architect plugin, below are a few of the ones I most frequently use.

The Foundations

Text Block

The text block is exactly what it says on the tin, it's the core foundation to any blog posts or article, and it makes up the majority of these posts. Each Text Block can be updated and edited how you so wish. 

The old plugin used to separate, paragraphs and normal text, this has now been merged into a single block and you can make any part of a text block into a number of different paragraph fields. 

Images & Video

Pretty self explanatory to be fair, having images or videos within posts can really drive up encagement, but also time spent o the page. Things that search engines love!

The video block does allow you to grab videos from URLs, files, YouTube and other sites like Vimeo, so you have lots of choice. You can also choose if the videos or images have backgrounds or frames around them. 

Table of Contents

It doesn't seem like a big issue, but this was one of the original reasons I got Thrive Architect, I was fed up with the rubbish table of content plugins that you get. This block can be thrown anywhere, you can select up to 3 different headings you want to display and you can play around with the colour and the feel. What more could you want!

Buttons

You can add a variety of different buttons onto the pages, you can put them under text, inside columns, at the end of articles, next to icons, basically wherever you see fit. 

As with the rest of Thrive Architect, you can change the colour, shape, how much text you can and even add icons inside of them to make them more visually appealing. 

Content Boxes & Columns

These two kind of go hand in hand, as it changes the dynamic of the page in different ways. 

Columns allow you to split your posts or pages up, much like a newspaper might look. Giving you a different look and feel. They can be used alongside the content boxes, to separate or section off your pages. I like to add notes or helpful text into content boxes to jazz up the look of it. 

More Building Blocks

So aside from the standard 'foundation' works that you would expect from page builders, Thrive Architect also provides you with a ton more blocks that can be used to brighten up your pages. A lot of the blocks given actually replace additional plugins that could have potentially slowed down your site. 

Pricing Tables

Another plugin that I used to have to use, especially for Amazon affiliate sites, having a pricing table is awesome to quickly and easy show a number of different pricing options, such as funnel software, hosting or even something like Thrive Architect. 

Post Lists

If you want to make a home page look awesome, or you might want to have a 'blog post' list showing certain posts, then this block can really useful. It will allow you to select certain categories or types of posts that you want ti display within the element.

Toggles

For those who like to add FAQ's under their blog posts, or might want to try and keep some of their longer posts a little shorter, Thrive allows you to add a toggle feature to the post, hiding off the extra bits and pieces.   

Contact Forms

Pretty much as simple as it sounds, you can add in a quick contact form, customising the email-responder or place you want the emails to go to. As with other blocks withi nthe Thrive plugin you can change the look and field as well as adding or removing standard & custom fields.

Call To Actions

The beating heart for many affiliate marketers, call to actions or CTA's for short, allow you to combine a button, as well as different types of text to draw the customers eyes towards the offer. You get a number of different styles and templates to choose from so you can add the CTA's without having to build your own. 

Sharing Buttons

I don't really use the share buttons that often, but they are great if you want to try and get viral traffic. You can add these share buttons to pretty much any part of the page to allow your viewers to share your article or landing page. 

Maps

If you run a physical store, or you want to be able to send people to a certain location, you can add a map of your choice to the page. 

Social Media Blocks

An add on, or even an addition to the Sharing Buttons, you can also add Disqus comments, Facebook comments and even Twitter buttons into your pages.

Again, not something I actively use, but that's mainly down to the fact the people who read these articles, are not ones who like to share random articles with friends. They want to read some reviews and then go make a mint online!

Content Reveal

Great for adding a bit of 'fun' to your posts. You can hide parts of your page and make it appear only when certain actions have been done, such as scrolling down the page enough. 

Countdowns

You get evergreen and standard within Thrive Architect, the main difference between the two, is that you can set the evergreen to always count down to a certain number (i.e you set it at 4 hours and it will reset itself to 4hours every time someone comes to the page, unless it's the same person) or you can just have a normal countdown timer that will slowly count it's way towards a certain date & time. 

Really useful for landing pages that might have a time sensitive offer. 

And so much more

There are a ton more blocks that can be added to pages and posts, but I either don't actively use them, or just don't really think anyone cares about them enough to list them in detail. You have the ability to add testimonials, audios 'more tags', icons, lists, guarantee boxes, search posts diviers and even custom HTML if you really want to. 

How Customisable Are The Different Blocks?

Every single block that you can add to the page has its own set of parameters and options, as well as having a standard set of customisation such as font size, block size, formatting, colour etc.  

For some of the blocks you can select pre-built templates to save yourself time. 

The sheer amount of customisation here is brilliant. It requires zero coding, you can change the size of images instantly, or create professional looking pages within short frames of time. 

Thrive Architect Pre-Built Pages

Another useful addition, is that of the pre-built sales pages or lead capture pages. 

To get these, all you need to do is open a standard WordPress page and then select the icon with the gear and a page. From here you get the option of choosing a landing page. 

There are around 150 different landing pages or sales pages that you can choose from to get you started easily. 

They are a great alternative to other products such as ClickFunnels or BuilderAll, especially if you already own a WordPress website. You can simply add one of these pre-built landing pages and funnels. 

They are super easy to set up, usually they only require you to hook up your chosen autoresponder, such as GetResponse or Aweber and then they are good to go. Well, once you give it some text, but that's pretty standard!

These quick and easy to add sections means you can grab potential leads and customers emails, names, phone numbers etc with ease. It took 2 clicks for me to set up the one above and it looks clean and professional.  

As well as the addition of the 'Leads Lite', Theme Architect also works alongside any theme you run on WordPress. That means if you suddenly change themes halfway through, the content you have already placed on pages doesn't get lost, or become all odd looking. It just stays as it is within the Themes styling. That's a life safer for people like me, who try to change their blog themes at least every 5 days....

As with all good things, there is usually a cost associated with it. 

Thrive Themes Architect actually has 2 different price options, as well as the additional option of getting all of their tools and themes etc for a monthly price. Check out the Price Table block below to see the different costs.

Thrive has now been updated, and Thrive Suite has been born! At $19 per month, you are given access to everything that Thrive has to offer. 

I genuinely love Thrive Theme Architect. I find it an easy to use, simple, clean and professional looking Drag & Drop builder that makes creating well laid out pages a complete doddle. 

If you have a rubbish host, then it can cause a few issues, but most of the time it works well, I have had some issues with plugin clashes, but that is sadly quite normal for any WordPress plugin. 

I have been using Thrive Architect across a number of sites these days, from e-com stores, funnel sites, Amazon affiliates sites, and of course, this blog. It is quite versatile and allows me to build a huge variety of different websites without having to run 20 or 30 different plugins!