Sometimes I wonder if we go to all the extra work to transition to new software/app/platform/system for the same reason why we collect gadgets.
This imprinted instinct to chase better equipment that gives us an edge on the hunt. No hunt, no food.
And if we found a better tool, a better spear, a better way—there is the instinct to share with the fellow hunters. With the tribe.
Fast forward to modern now, and we are flooded with ‘reviews,’ ‘discoveries,’ and ‘top lists.’
You’ll find the most hardcore evangelists of certain apps, plugins, or brands coming out with their big breakup video every second year. The “Why I left XX and why you should too.”
This is not another of those.
But beyond the lil’ self-irony, there’s an important (and sad) learning point about integrity and greed—and also a realization about productivity: how less is more.
3 main (t)reasons
For those TL;DR hamsters, who are always late from somewhere…
Workspeed
The win is not in ‘everything too’ but in ‘already there.’
Thrive was sold badly
With the founders’ exit, the ‘give first’ spirit left for ‘milk first.’
Too expensive given the alternatives
$500–$800/year is just not a good deal.
Why I left Thrive Reason 1:
Workspeed over possibilities
As someone who’s worked day in, day out with visual builders over the past 7–8ish years, I fully understand their proposed advantage: “You can build anything you imagine.”
But is that truly your advantage or their job proposal?
Anything (takes forever)
The truth is, anything is not what you want. What you want is a converting site that gives a great impression and then shows heart and smarts to your viewers, building trust with a smooth XP. This then turns them into customers.
The best-performing sites feel like an escape from noise—a welcoming resting place. They’re rarely the jaw-dropping magazine tabloid. (More on that in a sec.)
Continuing on this thread of wants and needs—what you need is to get there fast.
Workspeed. The theme and elements should guide and aid your copy. Design should be a touch, not a syrup.
In Thrive (and Elementor, btw) it takes forever to adjust everything in place. Then you spend another hour fine-tuning the mobile view, especially when columns or negative margins are involved. Often, you need to duplicate the whole block to create a hidden mobile-only version that you can only edit in desktop view. And now you have duplicate text, so if someone updates the desktop-only element (a price, for example), the mobile version might get left out.
Somehow, both Kadence and the high-end, pixel-perfect wizards of Webflow & Framer handle these better. More often than not, mobile looks right out of the box (except for numbered 2-column layouts, where the number order gets mixed up).
Limitless
Limitless options can be a distraction. I’ve seen this time and time again—people spending weeks on nuances that don’t matter, just because the tool offers all the options.
You also don’t want to struggle to make things even remotely good-looking. Struggling throws your flow off. It should be smooth and silky.
This is where modern Gutenberg block builders shine. Pre-built style elements you can select inline without leaving typing.
If you’ve written a draft elsewhere, unlike drag-and-drop tools, you can just paste it in and easily format it.
Less is fast. So less becomes more. And honestly, WP themes and blocks have improved so much lately that you can build any essential style and layout you want—5x faster than with Thrive or Elementor.
If you really need to create ultra-modern designs, Thrive—and WP in general—will become thin anyway. In this case switch to Webflow or Framer altogether.
Over time, I realized I use the same 4–5 elements in Thrive Architect. Thrive Theme Builder is great but takes 2 extra days compared to Kadence Theme to reach practically the same spot.
Why I left Thrive Reason 2:
Loss of goodwill and mojo
If you have come across any of my reviews, you know that I don’t recommend things lightly. I have to love it. Admire it.
I was a promoter (& affiliate) as well as an expert of Thrive plugins. And most of all, I am a fan of its original founder, Shane.
You see, Thrive was a fairy creature in the jungle of WP plugins and paid software in general. It was made with real expertise in marketing, with real heart and integrity towards its customers. Serve first, give, teach, and win over by it.
Better and better innovations, updates, additions, tutorials, and courses… all just added to the growing collection of Thrive Suite.
I was using their original visual builder called Content Builder, and the early plugins, like the Smart Widget and Headline Tester… even though they weren’t particularly good.
But then they rolled out Architect, which at the time was the best visual builder on WordPress. Faster, leaner, more pleasant than Elementor (with some clear inspirations from its UX). Probably only Instapage’s editor and templates came close.
You could do anything in Architect visually. Create any layout, style, element, form, tab, effect, and experience you could see on the net. Every element was yours to tweak to the last detail.
And then they launched Thrive Theme Builder—allowing the same visual drag-and-drop freedom to control every-single-element in your template, just like on your pages.
And then—after the weak first iteration—their course (learning management) plugin, Apprentice, inherited this same visual builder and the same ‘to-the-last-bit’ freedom to create your online course space.
The price went up a bit, but not unreasonably, and Shane and Hannah still kept the unwritten gesture of plugin subscriptions—cancel and you still have a fully workable app—since you host it yourself. You just wouldn’t access updates and support.
Ąnd so I was happy to pay—me, the clients I brought in, and thousands of others—because the updates came frequently and were awesome, and so was the support.
Just to put this into perspective, they re-built their support and ticket management system in the backend to be able to serve even better. Something surely costly, negligible for conversions (everybody claims “world-class support”), and yet they did it because it was advantageous to the customers.
Serve first. As much of a cliché as it is, again echoed everywhere—it is so rare to see it done, it is almost weird.
Thrive, under Shane and Hannah, was a fairy creature.
And it was shocking—and sad—to see how quickly it twisted once ownership changed. Thrive was bought by a usual greedy umbrella company, a collector of WordPress IPs.
Why I left Thrive Reason 3:
Fees – Double the double
And then finally: Cost per alternatives. What you pay and what else you can get.
Even in WP, looking at the annual cost of the full Kadence library (with its connected cloud hub), Thrive Suite just doesn’t make economical sense.
The new landlords started with the same grand gesture they do with all their acquired apps:
Double the price right away, and show it like the original is a generous, timely discount.
800/y 399/y – 50% off for now!
(renews at normal price—bend over please)
And then raised more and more, without any new plugin or major update rolled out. I suspect they axed half the dev team along with the other half of the support, for profitability-optimization (milking).
The true-by-word world-class support system has been dulled down, with a noticeable drop in wait time and quality.
I fully transitioned all my projects about 6 months ago, but a couple of my clients are still on Thrive. And working on sales pages this Black Friday—it was fucking torture after getting used to the workspeed in Kadence.
I also noticed quite a few reliability, freeze, and glitch problems. The lockdown in Ultimate failed completely—so we had to turn it off day 2, sending a “wops, bad link” email, which is always fun.
I see that about all major influencers have aborted ship by now too. You don’t see any of the usual “Why choose Thrive in 2025” or “This new update changes everything” posts that accompany trending apps.
I see now, as we still have these Cyber Monday deals dragging till Christmas, that they dropped the just-now deal to $209/yr to then renew at $600. (I think that’s also a drop; they tried to go higher… not sure.)
For that much
To put that $600 (50/mo) into perspective, that is All Kadence, with a good host at WPX, plus a pro image-to-AIFF/WebP converter and SureTriggers. And a pro typeface.
Or mid-tier in Framer or Webflow if you want the awe.
If you are godfathered at ~200/year or so, and already built 2-3 larger projects, then… hm…to be honest I’d still plan to gradually phase out.
You are still losing on workspeed, and it’s not like the suite will keep up with the new tech.
How does the transition hurt
Well, not much.
Switching to Kadence Theme was easy and fast, without any loss of function and style whatsoever. (A lil’ sidenote—I’m using the pro theme.)
Transitioning from Architect to Gutenberg depends on the level of styling you used. Sales pages you’ll have to rebuild, but that’s a good time to get used to the Kadence blocks. Again, worth upgrading to pro, particularly because of the Snippet library they have.
These are—unlike Thrive Blocks—gorgeous and instantly usable. So building a well-made sales page is faster and a much better XP.
As for blog posts, I simply deactivated Architect, and it seems all is fine. Text and images render back smoothly, thanks to Shane’s all-for-the-user philosophy back then.
Buttons and content blocks will turn crap though, so you’ll have to quickly redo those again.