Thrive Architect vs Elementor 2021: Which One Is Worth The Hype?

Welcome to my comparison review of Thrive Architect Vs  Elementor. This article is tailor-made for web designers or someone looking to build their first blog. Thrive Architect and Elementor are both plugins that’ll make your life so much easier when it comes to web page building. 

We have already covered everything regarding Elementor in our detailed Elementor Review.

You might have noticed websites that look so much more glamorous than others. While it is not easy to create fantastic looking websites, it is not difficult either. Choosing the appropriate page builder is almost half the work. Page builders like Thrive Architect & Elementor are the secrets to building stunning websites.

Both Thrive Architect & Elementor will allow you to create alluring WordPress websites that look professional. The best thing about both of them is that you can create appealing websites without a single line of code. These plugins have been widely recognized as two of the finest WordPress web page builders out there. 

Although they are similar in a lot of aspects, there are some subtle differences as well. Depending on your needs, Thrive Architect could be more suited for you than Elementor or vice-versa. Let us look at them more closely to determine a distinction that would help you choose one.

Thrive Architect vs Elementor: Overview

Thrive Architect

Brought to the market 7 years ago, Thrive Architect from Thrive Themes is built for the non-techies. Their parent company Thrive Themes has all the products that are necessary to create a high-converting website.

 

Thrive Architect is a visual page builder for the construction part of a website. They have a ton of landing page templates to further simplify your foray into web page building. Thrive Architect has very enticing one-time payment plans that are perfect for beginners. \

Elementor

Even though it was introduced quite recently in 2016, Elementor has rapidly conquered the web page builder user base. It is an Israeli software company that allows WordPress users to edit their websites with the utmost ease.

 

With over 5 million active downloads and counting, it wins the popularity contest by a country mile. It is also absolutely free to download and use, which explains its huge popularity. There is also a paid version named Elementor Pro that comes with beefed-up features compared to the free one. 

Thrive Architect vs Elementor: Ease-of-use

Thrive Architect was made for those who wanted to build stunning websites without the need for coding. It has the drag & drop option that web designers just love. Lately, it has started providing more advanced options to ensure that its features are not limited. 

 

However, this has compromised its user-friendliness somewhat and made it slightly more convoluted. You will have to take some time and get to know its features better before commencing the web page designing.  

Elementor also has a drag and drop interface which makes it a joy to use. Like Thrive Architect, Elementor also requires no coding and can be used by an absolute beginner to create beautiful web pages. 

It comes with right-click options and keyboard shortcuts that make it massively user-friendly and increases accessibility.

Verdict: Both of them were fairly easy to use for a non-techie like me. However, Elementor wins this round by being much more simple and user-friendly than Thrive Architect

Thrive Architect vs Elementor: Key Features & Benefits

Similar Features

1. Drag & drop editor

The drag & drop option will let you build a website easily as the name suggests. It is the fastest way to customize a website without the need for back-end coding.

Thrive Architect contains hovering buttons that will expand into a sidebar with a single click. You can select the required designs and drag them onto the main panel. There is also an option to resize this window and move it around wherever you want. 

Elementor has a toolbar on the left side of the screen from which contains a multitude of templates and designs. You can drag & drop any option as you please to customize your web page. 

 

2. Designer templates

The designer made templates simplify the process of building a website since they are pre-made and ready to use. These templates can be further customized to suit your style of the brand. 

Thrive Architect offers 294 pre-made designs and 100+ full website packs with new layouts being added every week. These full website layout packs offer several different templates in a particular niche for various pages like:

• Home
• Support
• Blog
• Contact

Elementor boasts of a comprehensive selection of over 300+ designer-made templates for a variety of niches. But they are all single-page templates and they can’t match the full website pack that Thrive Architect has to offer. However, they have started to launch full website packs and could match Thrive Architect in years to come. 

3. Widgets

Widgets are stand-alone user interfaces that will increase the aesthetic appeal and provide the functionality to your website. 

Thrive Architect provides you with a plethora of options to choose from on the widget front. You can also install Thrive Clever widgets to build your own widgets or combine existing widgets to create intricate widgets. Given below are a few widgets which are available to choose from in Thrive Architect:

• Follow me widget
• Popular posts widget
• Recent posts widget
• Opt-in widget
• Call to action widget
• Counter widget
• Countdown widget
• Content reveal
• Guarantee boxes
• Pricing tables
• Content boxes

And much more.

Elementor offers over 90+ widgets that range from basic elements to advanced widgets that are available only on the Pro version. You also have the option to add third-party widgets or even build your own if need be. Given below are a few of the built-in widgets available to choose from in Elementor:

• Icon box
• Sound cloud
• Counter
• Accordion
• Menu anchor
• Countdown
• Gallery
• Flip box
• Author box
• Breadcrumbs
• Sitemap
• Upsells
• Product stock
• Menu cart

And much more…

4. Theme builder

Theme builder allows you to edit every part of your website without the need for coding. This means you won’t have to settle for WordPress default themes and can create your own headers, footers, and blogs. 

There is not much to separate from Elementor and Thrive Architect when it comes to theme building. Both plugins are quite powerful and offer plenty of customization. Theme builder can be used to:

• Modify the header & footer to personalize your website according to the brand needs.
• Customize the layout of blog posts on your website by designing new templates.
• Create a 404-page template to provide your viewers with a more user-friendly experience.
• Create a unique template for archive posts.
• Design your own personalized search pages to set your brand apart.

5. External plugin support

Third-party extensions can customize and improve the page builders further to suit your style of branding. 

Thrive Architect is feature-filled and hence, does not have a large market that churns out extensions to further enhance Thrive Architect. Most of the applications you will need are built-in & there are still a decent number of extensions available. Listed below are a few third-party plugins that are made available for Thrive Architect:

• Drip
• ConvertKit
• iContact
• Mailpoet
• HubSpot
• Mandrill
• reCaptcha
• KickTipp
• Twitter
• Zapier

Elementor is free, and this would automatically attract a large market of third-party plugin developers. There are plenty of developers producing various plugin extensions to cover every need you could think of. This makes Elementor a bit more versatile than Thrive Architect. Listed are a few external plugins that are made available for Elementor:

• NavMenu addon for Elementor
• Hotel booking & Elementor integration
• Anywhere Elementor
• Elementor addon elements
• StylePress for Elementor
• Powerpack
• Envato elements

Unique Features

Thrive Architect

1. A/B testing

This feature will let you test the success rate of your landing pages and choose the most effective one. You can lean down your website by choosing only the best high-converting landing pages.

This is possible through the Thrive Optimize add-on that is available on your dashboard. 

2. Contact Form element

Most page builders need an add-on to include a contact page. Thrive Architect will save you from this hassle by providing options to build your own contact page.  

Elementor

1. Popup builder

As the name suggests, the popup builder lets you build popup messages, notification boxes, etc. It is a pretty useful feature for driving more traffic to your website. 

Elementor comes with a built-in popup builder that will allow you to popup options to the viewers like:

• Email notification popups
• Registration popups
• Promotion or offers popups

2. WooCommerce builder

I found a great deal online and shipped a 100 scratch-reveal world maps from China. The thing was, I didn’t have an eCommerce store. 

Thankfully, Elementor Pro came in-built with WooCommerce builder. This feature helped me build my own mini eCommerce store without using any coding.  

Verdict: Even though both Elementor and Thrive Architect is packed with features, Thrive Architect just about clinches it by having more built-in features. This would allow you to carry out designing web pages without having to search for third-party plugins. 

Thrive Architect vs Elementor: SEO friendliness 

Search engine optimization or SEO determines the visibility of your website to viewers. Experts say that low page speed and use of shortcodes in WordPress plugins can negatively impact SEO. Shortcodes are simplified codes that allow non-designers to unlock the functionalities of a web builder. 

These shortcodes can also create an additional problem. If you ever want to uninstall a page builder, there is a good that these shortcodes won’t be removed. This is troubling on the SEO front as an unclean removal could cause complications and slow down the webpage considerably. 

Thrive Architect is an SEO friendly page builder that has one of the fastest load times. This is possible as Thrive Architect comes built-in with all the necessary features. Shortcodes don’t present a problem in Thrive Architect. 

Thrive Architect has lots of built-in features like contact form elements, A/B testing, adding meta descriptions, etc. This allows it to be free from external plugins like Yoast SEO to make the web structure more SEO friendly.    

Elementor is the most SEO friendly page builder in WordPress. Its strict code standards and fast page loading make it more useful in that regard. External plugins like the Yoast SEO plugin can be used to further enhance SEO. 

Verdict: SEO ranking depends on a lot of factors. In my experience, both Thrive Architect & Elementor are very SEO friendly. And hence, this round ends in a tie. 

Thrive Architect vs Elementor: Mobile Page Building

About 4 billion people around the world use smartphones and they vastly outnumber PC internet users. So it becomes critical that the website you are building is mobile-friendly to tap into this massive potential viewer base. 

Thrive Architect has features specially curated with the mobile crowd in mind. The mobile responsive features in Thrive Architect are:

• Preview of different screen sizes with a single click.
• Edit the visibility ratio of every single element.
• Instant mobile responsive editing.

Elementor is largely a mobile-friendly page builder. It provides a lot of customizable features for mobile viewing without the need for any external plugin. 

Verdict: Both page builders provide adequate mobile responsive interactions. However, I found that the extra features in Thrive Architect made it more reassuring and hence wins this round.  

Thrive Architect vs Elementor: Performance & Speed

All the features available in the world will be for nothing if your web page takes sweet time to load. Having fast-loading web pages are critical to the success of any website.

 Apart from being more SEO friendly, faster loading websites would also make your website visitors happy. Also, browsers are inclined to spend more time at the website that has faster page loads compared to a competitor. 

From several speed tests I conducted, it was seen that Elementor was slightly faster. This should come as no surprise since Thrive Architect is loaded with features. This would increase the page size and will take slightly longer to load. 

However, when I rolled out my websites with all the pages, Thrive Architect was faster. This can be attributed to the fact that Thrive Architect doesn’t require external plugins for regular functioning. 

Thrive Architect makes the following plugins redundant:

• Shortcode plugins
• Contact form plugins
• Click-to-tweet plugins
• Font icon plugins
• Table builder plugins
• Animation plugins

Verdict: Elementor is leaner than Thrive Architect. But the in-built features allows Thrive Architect to be faster in the long run and hence wins this round.  

Thrive Architect vs Elementor: The Pricing Battle

Thrive Architect does not offer a free version. However, they do have one-time payment plans. The plans differ based on the number of websites. Thrive Architect comes with three purchasing plans: 

 

• Single license pack plan – This allows you to avail of all the services of Thrive Architect for one website at a one-time fee of $67. One full year of support is provided along with unlimited free updates 
• 5 license pack plan – This includes everything in the Single license pack and can be used on up to 5 websites for a one-time fee of $97. 
• Thrive membership plan – This plan includes everything above and can be used on up to 25 websites. Thrive Membership plan will give you unlimited support for a monthly fee of $19.

Thrive Architect also has a 30-day money-back guarantee in case you are not satisfied with the product.

Elementor is free to download and use with no annual fees as well. This makes it a godsend for those who want to design a web page on a budget. 

However, if you need features like theme builder and pop-up builder, you’ll have to opt for Elementor Pro. Elementary pro comes with three purchasing plans:

• $49 per year plan – The personal package is the most affordable plan and provides all benefits of Elementor Pro for one website
• $99 per year plan – The plus plan allows you to use designing three websites using Elementor Pro.
• $199 per year plan – This expert package allows you to design up to a thousand websites using Elementor Pro, which is essentially unlimited.

Verdict: Being a frugal-minded penny hoarder, I would choose free above everything else. Thrive Architect is not expensive at all, but Elementor wins this round for obvious reasons.  

Thrive Architect vs Elementor: Customer Support

Elementor has an extensive and detailed support page with hundreds of articles to help you get started and master Elementor. 

They also have a YouTube channel with hours of video to enhance your ease of understanding. Elementor has a community forum to answer all your questions that the articles and videos fail to address. Elementor Pro users can enjoy 24/7 support.

Before I switched to the Pro version, the support I received from Elementor was painfully slow. This might be a deliberate ploy to convert their free users into paying clients. Guess you literally can’t complain when it’s free. 

Thrive Architect also contains an extensive range of documentation to help you get familiar with various features Thrive Architect has to offer. They have a community forum and a Facebook group to answer any additional queries you may have. They also provide an option for you to chat with their technical support 24/7.

Verdict: Elementor support is slow-responsive. Thrive Architect has not had a problem in that regard. That is why Thrive Architect wins the battle of customer support.

Thrive Architect vs Elementor: Pros & Cons

Quick Links:

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FAQs on Thrive Architect Vs Elementor

☞Is Elementor free?

☞Yes! Elementor can be installed for free and there is also no annual fee to be paid for using Elementor. However, Elementor Pro needs to be paid for if you want an upgrade to more features and benefits. The price for Elementor Pro is $49, $99 & $199 per year for personal, plus, and expert plans respectively.

☞Do I have to pay annual fees for Thrive Architect?

☞Yes and no. Thrive Architect consists of two one-time payment options for purchase at $67 and $97. There is also a $19 per month plan that has to be paid annually.

☞What happens after my one year of support with Thrive Architect?

☞You can easily renew your support plan for a small fee of $40 after the first free year.

Thrive Architect vs Elementor: The Final Verdict

In this bout between Thrive Architect and Elementor , no one was able to land a knockout punch. Even though Thrive Architect won most of the rounds, Elementor has its own benefits. The winner would vary according to the user’s perspective. If you are an absolute beginner looking for a page builder, then Elementor is ideal for you. But if you are seasoned and would like to have a lot of options, then go for Thrive Architect. In the end, there is no wrong option here. These two are the very best page builders for WordPress Sites.