Optimizepress Vs Thrive Themes – Full Comparison and Who Wins?

This Optimizepress Vs Thrive themes comparison post was earlier published on 5th February 2019 as an Optimizepress 3.0 Vs Thrive Architect comparison. Since it is a long time that these 2 products hit the market, there’s a lot of change and it became imperative that I update it.

Backstory!

(If you would like to get straight to the comparison, then click here)

Optimizepress – once the messiah of all marketers.

In those days, if you had to build a landing page for your product launch or, website or, even your blog, you only had 2 options. It was to either hand code the entire page or, use Optimizepress.

But then things changed and the product went through an evolution; versions in technical terms. Version 2.0 was released a few years back.

And finally came Optimizepress 3.0, a couple of years back.

Optimizepress has gone through a ton of changes since they first launched. Their version 1.0 was a shortcode based landing page builder.

Designing your website using shortcodes wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Coding and publishing, then refreshing the page to see how it looks, all of it was a pain in the wrong place.

But it still was a blessing to people like us who wanted to build their own landing pages and didn’t have the budget to shell out a few hundred dollars to get a designer to design the landing pages.

Optimizepress was a savior when it came to building squeeze pages, too. It did not really make sense to pay a designer to design a squeeze page, especially since they were never cheap.

Optimizepress simplified squeeze page creation in spite of the fact that we had to use shortcodes.

While we are on the topic of shortcodes, and that I made it look like a horror movie. It wasn’t really as difficult as it sounds because OP made it simple.

You didn’t have to write a single line of code. All you had to do was select pre-designed blocks and edit it to add your text. Then just click add and the shortcode will get added to your WordPress editor.

And all of the squeeze pages were beautiful, high converting designs.

But then like everything else on the internet, things changed. Technology advanced and the market was filled with Landing page builders – Instabuilder, WP Profit Builder, Thrive Architect and many others with much more advanced features.

The focus shifted to user friendliness because that was the area where OP had a problem.

All of the new entrants in to the landing page builder market started building an interface that was easier to use.

So, what happened to Optimizepress, when all of these changes were happening.

Optimizepress was very much there in the market.

But they failed to keep pace with the changes and lagged behind in the race. (Remember the story of Yahoo).

That was when Thrive Themes entered the market with their revolutionary drag and drop and inline editing feature and everything about building landing pages changed.

Optimizepress, who had failed to keep up with the initial changes itself, was further pushed back.

Thrive themes was soon adopted by a lot of marketers (read as “me”). A few others also switched over to Profit Builder (read the review here) who could provide better functionality at a reduced cost.

It took a little more than 9 years from OP 1.0 being released, for James Dyson to release the 3rd version of Optimizepress landing page builder – Optimizepress 3.0

And it made perfect sense to compare Optimizepress to Thrive Architect.

That’s when I first wrote this post.

But then things changed again.

When I first did this comparison – Optimizepress 3.0 Vs Thrive Architect, both these were more of a landing page and squeeze page builder.

Thrive has now evolved to be a complete suite with them adding a blog theme builder as well. Optimizepress too changed and became a full fledged suite.

Hence it became important that I update this comparison.

In fact now the comparison will be an Optimizepress Vs Thrive themes comparison.

Will Optimizepress be able to match up with the features of Thrive themes. Let’s do this quick comparison and see how it goes.

Optimizepress Vs Thrive Themes

Thrive Architect, which is the landing page builder software is a part of the Thrive Themes bundle.

Though it is also available as a stand alone option, I would recommend you to go for the bundle because that has a lot of added benefits.

Thrive themes is a complete suite of products you will need for your marketing. It has –

1. Thrive Leads – Which is an optin form builder with a lot of functionalities in it
2. Thrive Quiz Builder – a quiz builder that you can use to build quizzes for your audience and accordingly segment them and build your email list
3. Thrive Ovation – to capture and use Testimonials from your customers and readers
4. Thrive ultimatum – which is a simple plugin to create evergreen countdowns
5. Thrive Headline Optimizer – A/b test your headlines and pick the ones that get the most results.
6. Thrive Comments – a plugin to organize, manage and display the comments on your blog in a nicer way
7. Thrive Clever Widgets – a plugin to take control of how, where and when your widgets should be displayed
8. Thrive Architect – the landing page builder
9. Thrive Optimizer – a plugin to A/b test your landing pages.
10. Thrive theme Builder – A theme builder for WordPress

Now that’s one huge list of plugins. Isn’t it?

Thrive themes earlier came with a handful of premium WordPress themes. But then, after the introduction of the theme builder, those themes are no longer relevant and hence been removed.

Both Thrive themes and Optimizepress are memberships. So you have to pay an annual recurring charge to get the latest updates and support for all of the plugins and themes.

Optimizepress used to be a one time in their version 1.0 but changed to a recurring payment since their version 2.0.

And it is the right thing to do considering the time and effort that goes into keeping the codes updated.

Here’s what Optimizepress includes –

1. Optimizebuilder Landing page builder – to build your landing pages, sales pages etc.
2. OptimizeUrgency – a scarcity plugin to add scarcity alerts to your pages
3. OptimizeFunnels – A funnel builder with some really powerful features
4. OptimizeLeads – A hosted optin form builder service
5. OptimizeCheckouts – A solution to accept payments on your websites
6. OptimizeMentor – A course management platform builder

From the last time I did this comparison, Optimizepress has changed and added some of these new plugins to their offering which makes it stand the competition.

Now onto the real DUEL in the ring – Optimizepress vs Thrive Themes: The Comparison.

Pricing for the Suites – Optimizepress 3.0 Vs Thrive Architect

For approximately the same number of installations, the 2 are priced as follows –

Thrive Themes – Thrive has two payment options, quarterly and yearly. The price is $299 per year for installing on upto 5 websites. If you choose to pay quarterly, it comes to $149 per quarter.

The pricing strategy is simple with no discounts on renewal.

Optimizepress 3.0 – OP is priced at $249/year for 5 websites and $199/year for installing on 1 website. Just as in Thrive, Optimizepress 3.0 also doesn’t offer any discounts on renewals.

When I had written this post about a couple of years back their pricing strategy was slightly different.

There was even a one-time payment option available. But over the last couple of years or, so they have revamped the entire thing, which is a good thing at least from a customer’s point of view.

Here is what I had written back then –

Now, this only includes 1 year of updates and support which practically means that after 1 year you will not get any updates if you don’t renew. And with the number of changes that WordPress goes through and the number of versions that they release, it is just a matter of time when the plugin will be incompatible with the latest version and hence becomes obsolete.

So that means that you will have no option but to renew the license, which they usually price at about 50% of the original cost of the plugin.

This pricing strategy is somewhat deceptive. I would rather have liked it if Optimizepress put an annual charge to the plugin. At least that way I knew I will be paying an annual charge till the time I want to use the plugin.

Just as I wished, Optimizepress changed their pricing strategy to an annual charge till the time you want to use the plugin.

You have an option of cancelling your subscription in both the cases but then you wouldn’t get any further updates or, support for these products.

If you look at the pricing, Optimizepress 3.0 is priced a little better, about $50 lesser for the 5 website license. If you are looking to build only a single website, then you can also go with the 1 website license though it will be slightly costlier than the 5 website option.

If you compare this pricing with Thrive Themes, while they give you a quarterly payment option, they don’t have any plans that suits customers who want to use it on a single website.

But if you are looking at it from a value perspective, the $199/ year plan that Optimizepress offers isn’t any beneficial for you as a customer.

You might as well pay $50 more and get the 5 license plan. Isn’t it?

So from a pricing perspective, Thrive Themes wins because in spite of being priced a little higher their package offers you a lot more for every dollar spent (when you consider the many plugins that come with the plan).

Another benefit with Thrive Themes is that you also have the option of going for individual products if you don’t want to go for the complete suite.

Then again, something that you might want to keep in mind is that, if you are planning to purchase anything more than 3 of the Thrive plugins, then going for the Thrive Suite is recommended. Because that will save you a few dollars!

Core Product Features – Landing Page Builder

Now let us look at what the core product in both these packages – the landing pages have to offer.

Thrive Architect is a superb plugin and I think it is what changed the entire editing experience in WordPress. Their inline-editor is smooth as butter and the editing experience in itself is superb.

The folks at the Thrive themes have an excellent team who keep building and enhancing this experience which is evident from the changes that this plugin has gone through over the last 5-7 years.

Thrive Architect was earlier called as Thrive Content Builder. The name change itself reflects on what the plugin would have undergone in terms of a change, fundamentally.

The changes they implemented ranged from simple changes like changing the position of the editor buttons and elements to drastic changes like changing the complete editor itself for smoother editing experience and transitioning.

The best part of all this is that all of these changes are part of an existing framework.

So they wouldn’t ask you to pay anything extra and they wouldn’t price the entire thing again and ask you to buy and install a new plugin.

In comparison, Optimizepress were the ones who revolutionized the landing page builder market.

But their team was a little laid back in terms of adapting to the market requirements.

If you know about what happened to Nokia in the mobile phone market, you will realize what I am talking about.

It is important to keep up with the market requirement and Optimizepress somehow was a little lazy in this. And maybe that is where Thrive themes capitalized.

On top of this, whenever they come out with a newer enhanced version, they have a different pricing structure altogether, which they seem to have done away with this time (hopefully).

So when they released Optimizepress 2.0, they wanted all their existing users to buy it again. And this was a completely different plugin, so you had to uninstall the earlier version and install the newer one.

Again the landing pages you built with the earlier version didn’t work with the new version. I would still have been okay with this considering the framework was completely different.

But having to buy the plugin again was a little too much to ask. They could just have pushed the new version to their existing customers with the expectation that there will be an annual charge and that they will have to renew the license every year.

From the perspective of enhancements too, they are pretty slow.

They have introduced the inline-editing option in Optimizepress 3.0 when Thrive themes introduced it almost 4-5 years before they did it.

Isn’t that a little too slow from the perspective of adapting to the market?

Just take a look at the inline editor below and you will find a lot of similarity to the Thrive Architect inline editor when they launched.

Optimizepress has now evolved over the last couple of years or, so and their inline editor has also undergone a lot of changes just as Thrive Architect went through.

The editor is now very smooth and intuitive. The experience with editing and creating a landing page is awesome and to some extent they have done the catching up really well.

While I am still a little skeptical at how proactive and prompt their future developments will look like, their recent approach to developments looks promising.

On the landing page builder front, while I am still a little inclined towards Thrive Architect, I will rate both Thrive and Optimizepress as a TIE.

User-Friendliness

The entire landing page editor in Thrive Architect itself is very simple to use and even if you are a newbie who has had no experience in building landing pages, you can put together a beautiful landing page by simply picking one of the many beautiful templates that are available and then customizing it to your taste.

They have refined a lot of features like selecting a font-group for the different elements in the landing page, creating a re-usable element, etc.

Their pre-built blocks make landing page creation extremely simple.

Most of this editing and designing experience is carried forward into all of their other plugins. In fact all of their other plugins integrate nicely into Thrive Architect.

And with the theme builder too, they have followed the same pattern.

Thrive theme builder is the best theme builder you will see on the market today.

You can design beautiful themes for your WordPress blogs using their simple drag and drop options. You will be surprised at the many options that you will find in this theme builder.

There are a lot many other excellent features in Thrive Architect which are not available in their competitors including Optimizepress 3.0.

One of this feature is the ability to edit images and use it in the landing page. You wouldn’t need Photoshop if you are using Thrive Architect. You can create beautiful image based backgrounds and edit them to look as if you had edited them in Photoshop.

In comparison to all this, Optimizepress 3.0 offers nothing new.

In terms of the overall features too, OP is a little behind Thrive Themes.

So again, from the perspective of an overall features per dollar spent, Thrive Themes is much ahead of Optimizepress 3.0.

Support – Promptness and Help

Now we come to the last aspect which is the Support.

I didn’t find a lot of difference in the response times of the support staff in both of them.

But one thing that is worth mentioning is that the support staff at Thrive themes is a little extra polite and can still give you some basic help and support even if you didn’t renew your subscription.

Now that Thrive themes has been bought over by the folks at Awesome Motive, which is the company owned by Syed Balkhi ( You might know him from WP Beginner and Optin Monster), I am expecting a lot of more feature additions, integration and development from them.

But the folks at Optimizepress were a little too blunt in saying “No” to support. So, if you did not renew your license and wanted some help from them, even if it is very basic, be ready to hear a blunt “Sorry, we cannot help”, from them.

Though I wouldn’t blame them for this because ideally you are not entitled to any support if you do not renew your license and if you have that expectation, then that in itself is wrong.

Thrive themes also has an excellent forum from which you can get answers to most of your problems. But this too is only available for their members. So if you subscription expired and you didn’t renew it, then you wouldn’t be able to use this.

So from an overall support perspective, based on the approach of the support staff, I think Thrive Themes wins again, though Optimizepress is not far behind.

Optimizepress Vs Thrive Themes – Overall Verdict

The primary difference between Optimizepress Vs Thrive themes is in the value for money. For the same amount of dollar that you spend, you get much more in Thrive than what you would get in Optimizepress.

And that too with the added benefit that you don’t have to rely on an additional theme to customize your site the way you want and to make it look as a continuation of your landing pages.

The decision was pretty easy.

In more than one aspect, Thrive Themes is better than Optimizepress. So if you are looking for a good landing page builder solution, then Thrive Themes is what you should go with.

But then that doesn’t really end there.

Thrive themes gives you a lot for every dollar you spend. Add to it the new theme builder and you have an amazing package which is not worthy of ignoring.

I am a fan of Thrive Themes and absolutely love them.

But just as they say, “Your first love is always closer to your heart”. So, somewhere I have a soft corner for Optimizepress because they taught me the art of building landing pages.

And with their recent addition of the Funnel Builder, they are in some position to compete with Thrive themes which lacks a ready-made funnel builder. So Optimizepress is a good Clickfunnels alternative in case you are looking for one.

If you aren’t looking for a lot of things and are okay with passing off everything else for a landing page builder from the oldest creator of one, then Optimizepress is the way to go.

But again that will be your personal choice and decision. (Disclaimer..lol)

Since I am an affiliate marketer and I build WordPress blogs from an affiliate marketing perspective, I would recommend Thrive themes. I like them from a Landing Page Optimization aspect as well.

But you can check out both of these at the below links –

• Optimizepress
• Thrive Themes

Do let me know your thoughts about this comparison. If you would like me to compare any other features, just comment below and let me know and I will add that to this post.

What’s your favorite page builder? Comment below and let me know why you like it.

[Post originally published on 5th February 2019 and updated on 27th May 2024]