Thrive Architect is the new and improved version of the Thrive Themes WordPress plug-in that makes your website beautiful and responsive.
Thrive's self-description: "Thrive Architect is the visual page builder that is built from the ground up for business and conversion focused websites. And because we know that entrepreneurs are busy, Thrive Architect is built with an obsessive focus on being as fast as possible to use. We’ve removed every possible barrier between the business idea in your head and a professional presence of that business on your website."
Note: I am neither affiliated with nor receiving any compensation/discounts from this company in any way. I have only ever spoken to their tech support people. This is a no pulled punches review of all the things that made me want to break my computer. (Plus, the things that make it great.) The opinions expressed are my own, and you may have an entirely different experience.
What Thrive Architect Does
Architect offers you the ability to create a What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) website design. The goal is to take your WordPress site design and make it look great on any platform. I believe the tech term is "responsive."
It does this by giving you an extensive list of options in the sidebar when you load it up on a post or page. You can choose to add text, headers, images, tables, tables of contents, and just about anything you could want for building a website.
First Impressions
When Thrive updated their product to Architect, I hated it. You know that frustration when something just doesn't work right? You can't figure out how to get it to do what you want or find an option that should be there?
Usually, the solution is going to Google, type the problem into the search bar and find someone else's answer. When it's new, there are no solutions. At least accessible ones. So in my frustration, I emailed their tech support with my question. I got a reply the next day that boiled down to, "we checked to see if you were paying for this first and because you aren't the person paying for it we won't help you." (One of our clients has it installed.)
Are you kidding me!?
Talk about a way to instantly make someone despise you. In my rage-logic, I couldn't help but wonder if the people running this company realize how many business owners don't actually write their own content. They don't have time for that. That's why they hire writers.
So I embarrassingly had to tell my client that the new software was buggy and held off using it for a few weeks.
A Few Months Later...
I decided to give it another try. Maybe they got some of the bugs worked out, so I loaded it up from and tossed in some text.
I think the designers built it with the idea that you would type directly into the text boxes. In my case, my process looks more like the following:
- Type everything in Hemingway Editor
- Edit
- Copy text into Grammarly
- Edit
- Copy text from Grammarly to Notepad to remove any formatting
- Copy from Notepad into WordPress
The issue arises that in the old Thrive, the Enter key created a new text box. This one doesn't. So I have to copy and paste each paragraph individually, which is a pain, but at least it works, and the result is elegant.
I have the Thrive Architect Tutorials bookmarked for quick reference when I want to play around with it. But they have a pretty solid library of how to do stuff now.
As I worked through the tutorials and finally sorted out how to do everything, Thrive Architect started to grow on me. It's not intuitive. It isn't forgiving either. If you aren't familiar with the program, you will want to hit or scream at something more than once. But once you get used to its quirks, it does what it's supposed to do. Plus, I suppose they never said it was easy to use.
Pros
- Gorgeous websites
- Converts your website to mobile exceptionally well
- Lots of formatting freedom
- More options than most people will use
Cons
- You need a second monitor with the video tutorials
- Not intuitive
- Customer service is the worst
- Doesn't play nice with Yoast SEO
Final Thoughts
It's beautiful. It does what it's supposed to. You have tons of options.
If you aren't the person using it, awesome. If you are paying someone by the hour and using it, consider switching to per project unless they have experience with it.
Bonus Section: How to Make a Table in Thrive Architect
Step 1: Go down to "add table" on the left-hand bar
Step 2: Click to add it to the next section or drag the button where you want the table on the screen
Step 3: Select the size of your table
Step 4: Don't try to click the cells like a typical table making software.
Step 5: Go back to the left-hand options bar and drag a "paragraph" into the cell you want to add text to
Step 6: Wonder why on earth the designers chose to do this. Conclude it's because they don't write many posts with tables.
Step 7: Repeat Step 5 for every single cell
Step 8: Fuss with the text like you would normally
Step 9: Go back to table options and add the cell borders
Step 10: Realize you need a second table and mentally thank the designers for adding a "copy" button.
Step 11: Tweak the second table and move it to where it's supposed to be
Step 12: Finish the post then get a well-deserved beer (or wine, or cider) and call it a day