Thrive Content Builder Review

It's pretty standard set of features for content builders, seems fine to me. I haven't used it, but I saw a lot of similar features built in in themes that cost $45. The only difference is that you're able to use this plugin on unlimited number of sites, so I would say it's a fair deal!

there are lots of content and visual bulider are there .. at much less $ ..

Being that I haven't seen any other WP builders quite like this one - which looks like a dream to use - I am pretty impressed and since I have a lot of sites to build/ rebuild I think I will buy it while it's only $49/year unlimited sites (not developer license though, that's a lot more $; but I'm not in the business of selling/flipping sites).

Several people said there are cheaper builders of this type out there. So my question is:
what are they?
have you used them?
do they do everything this does?
do they work well or have bugs?

My main concern is bugs. Not that there's any real comparison but I used to use webs.com to build sites and they have some similarity to this. But oh my gawd, webs.com is the most frustrating GUI in the world to use. The idea is that you just add a box, add this add that just like you want it... but then when you look at the page it inevitably has errors that you did NOT put there! So then you spend (waste) tons of time trying to get it the way you put it on the edit page, but it won't go so you end up compromising with something you didn't want, OR spend up to an hour (I'm serious) trying to get it how you want it.

Again I know there is no comparison since this is a WP plugin and Webs is a web-based beginners site building software/site. But the point is, DOES this Thrive Content Builder really work exactly as it says or is it buggy?

Guess I'll buy it and find out. But in the ensuing 30 days I'd be interested in others comments and reviews and any other content builders you can refer me to. I am currently using ClickBump which is drag and drop for the most part but honestly it's so complicated sometimes to get things the way you want them, you have to really become familiar with the settings and stuff and while I do like it and recommend it, for what it is, THIS looks more like what I would like. IF it works as described and isn't too buggy....
???

More reviews please! And suggestions of other similar plug-ins or themes...

I kinda dislike Thrive's marketing with all the usual IM crap tactics, but actually I don't know anything about the product. However, there are other visual site building tools for WordPress, and Thrive may work pretty well if it fits your need.

WPMU ran an article about these tools some time ago. There's a lot more in the comments, partly because their article was a bit limited and partly because it seems to be hard to even agree on definition of a visual content/site/page/whatever builder.

I've tried the following:
- PageLines. A bit expensive and has (had?) weird licensing schemes, but seems to be one of the best platforms.
- Headway. Truly visual site building, but bypasses normal WordPress structures for it's own template stuff. Really cool in some ways, and seems to work if your site is relatively simple, but when you hit the limits it becomes extremely infuriating.
- iThemes Builder. Not as much a visual site builder as the others, but allows you to customize the basic site structure from the admin. Works best with my approach.

I have talked to a client and he told me that Thrive Content Builder works like a charm. Hopefully, we can start working on our projects and he wants me to use this builder.

I bought Thrive Content Builder and as you can see up above in this thread, I was VERY excited about it.

Unfortunately my experience with it was not at all a good one.

I found it very buggy. What do I mean by that?

Well, like I would create a Download button box with a content box integrated with it (a drag and drop function) and then when I would try to edit it, the shape of the thing would get lost (it had an arrow on the right end and suddenly the arrow end would become a rectangular end! WTF?!).

Or I would be editing a content box with mostly text and the text would show black on a blackish background even though I had actually chosen something like white text on a red background! Then when I would stop editing it, it would show the right way. But a) it was hard to even see what I was doing with it showing black text on a blackish background, and b) I thought the whole idea was WYSIWYG!

Editing a content box also would be buggy, just trying to change a font or text color, I would have to poke around with my cursor to try and hit just the right spot in the box before it would come up for editing...

If it were just a few things I would have put up with it but it was one thing after another and finally I realized "This thing isn't really ready for market!"

I wish it was!

As it is, it was a total waste of money and very frustrating to boot.

Is it just me? I think not. I tried it with both Chrome and Firefox (older and newer versions) and I have a fair amount of experience with other themes and plugins like Instabuilder, Clickbump, Elegant Themes, and others. None of these others give me this kind of bugginess.

I mean no disrespect to the developers of TCB - in fact I really hope they work out the bugs! I would love nothing more than to be able to come back here and say "Hey! It works great now!" and I will try it again in, say, 6 months, and see if it has solved these problems. I think it's a great IDEA and hope they perfect it!

I own the developer license of TCB and it has some odd behavior as ScrooG mentioned. Takes some getting used to and it can be a major PITA at times. I don't use it much, but they are always updating it and adding new features, so I just decided to hang onto it.

Given that you're bringing this up 5 months later, what specific bugs do you have with the software that haven't been addressed in updates?

The bugs that you've mentioned in your post were all solved months ago... So I'm keen to understand what you're still having problems with so that we can solve them.

Also, have you reported these bugs in the support forum?

OK thanks for the info.

Given that you haven't used it for a few months, and you're still a member because you bought it from the initial offer, you might want to check out the latest version at some point and give it another try. Our latest additions, including the landing pages has proven very popular.

Incidentally, Joan (the person who you're agreeing with above) has since come out in another thread and stated that the product is "almost perfect now" despite, like you, having struggles initially.

Part of the sales pitch for the initial launch was:- "This is a new product, so we're giving you early access for a reduced price with a promise to update this over time from your feedback to try and make it the best on the market".

If you wanted a finalised, finished product at the time of purchasing, you made a mistake in buying at the early bird stage. To put this into context, the price of the plugin has now doubled since you purchased, simply because it is a more mature, developed version. This is how the early-bird pricing model works, and we were very transparent about this at the time. We kept our end of the deal - we're currently working on the 58th version of the product.

Your standpoint at the moment is that you don't have time to tell us what's wrong with the product, but you have to time to bash it, in multiple threads, across the Warrior Forum without any specifics relating to the problems you had.

We're basically saying: Tell us what issues (with specifics) and we'll fix them, as we have done for the past 8 months, until you have no more problems.

We can't say fairer than that.

Looks interesting, let me know when it has been completed.

It will never be completed.

It's a continual development process, iteratively improving the product over time indefinitely.

I purchased the Content Builder when it first came out....experienced some of the bugs but hung in there. There have made major updates to the plugin and added a bunch of new features. I use it on all of my sites and client sites!! It's super easy to use and has all of the options I need for my sites.

I purchased Thrive Content Builder when it was first released. It was buggy but knowing Shane, I realized the potential and upgraded to Dev.

In recent months, it has grown and has awesome features. They have wonderful support and an excellent product.

I am a proud owner of Thrive Themes and Content Builder. Have used them on ton of complex client projects without any issues.

But, the reason of jumping in this thread is to know your experience on different products (as I am planning to purchase some of these on Year end discount deals).

1. My experience with pagelines is not too cool, used it on client site and it is pretty inconvenient
2. I have used headways, it is really cool but has a bit of learning curve
3. I have ultimatum, it is very nice to design templates customized for clients but it also has learning curve.
4. Insta-theme is just ok, has too much compatibility issues and support sucks
5. Profit builder is pretty cool and very flexible, and I have used it on a lot of projects without much issues.
6. I have tried many more drag n drop but I don't think those are worth mentioning.

So as far as my experience is concerned, Thrive Content Builder is the best and Profit Builder is also an excellent product to have in the toolbox.

Please let me know your experiences.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks

Thrive is the best for when you want more control of the finer details of your pages. I don't think anything else even comes close.

We use Thrive, Profit Builder, and Optimize Press 2.0.

Hard to beat Profit Builder for out of the box templates that have high impact for greater sales conversions. But we still mostly use Optimize Press for our sales pages currently.

We use Thrive for client sites, like author sites/pages, church sites/pages, etc... It gives us a lot more flexibility to provide clients exactly what they want.

I have. And honestly it depends on your goals and how much control you want (aka how much can you learn). Profit Builder is excellent, has a lot of control, but is not quite as flexible as Thrive. Thrive on the other hand doesn't have templates per se and really does expect you to build your page. However, unlike Profit Builder where you can save a full template page, Thrive in addition to this lets you save elements that you have created (say an opt-in form for instance), so that you can drop it onto another page. PB also has an edge in eye catching graphics, just slightly.

Thrive's membership is an excellent value, but you need to set time aside to really learn it.

What about resource usage such as CPU, memory, etc.? Any known problems?

Mark

No issues with it, but you do need to have a decent host (aka one that doesn't have next to no memory limits and is a bit flexible), shared works fine for me, I use http://bigscoots.com

Another plus for Thrive when it comes to building actual sites is that the navigation block is properly responsive.

Not the case with Profit Builder and Instabuilder.