Thrive Themes Alternative: What I Recommend as a Former Thrive Developer

There's a specific kind of frustration that comes from a tool you trusted for years slowly becoming the thing you have to work around. It's not dramatic. It's a slow accumulation — a feature that disappeared, a price that went up, a support ticket that went nowhere, a community full of people asking the same question: is it just me, or has this changed?

It's not just you. And it didn't happen overnight.

My relationship with technology has always come down to one question: is this tool serving the work, or has it become the work? I learned to ask that question early.

I once got suspended for three days for hacking around my company's firewall.

I was a mechanical drafter at an engineering firm, and every conveyor we shipped needed a safety walkway. Every single one added four hours of drafting time — find a previous drawing, modify it to spec, apply all the governing rules for ladder rungs, handrails, platforms. Four hours, every unit, every time.

So I taught myself AutoLISP, a coding language built into our drafting software, to automate it. I couldn't find learning resources inside the firewall, so I went around it. Over 100 IT violations later, I had an automation that produced the whole thing in minutes.

They suspended me. Then they promoted me to computer programmer.

The lesson stuck: when a tool stops reducing friction and starts creating it, something has to change. That's the lens I've used on every software platform since — including Thrive Themes, which I built on for seven years before finally walking away.

Why Thrive Themes Was My Go-To for Almost a Decade

When I eventually moved into running my own business helping entrepreneurs with marketing, I tried a lot of software. As a software engineer and UX/UI specialist, I had a different take than most users — I became agency-certified with platforms like HubSpot and SharpSpring, worked with EngageBay, Infusionsoft, Keap, and more. I built a lot of sites on WordPress using different builders.

Thrive Themes became my favorite. I settled on it for seven or eight years.

It earned that loyalty. Shane Melaugh and Hanne Tiong built something genuinely useful — fast, conversion-focused, and designed with the actual user in mind. The tools did what they said they'd do. Thrive Architect was a legitimately good page builder. The community was strong. The philosophy behind the product felt honest.

Then the company sold.

What Changed After the Acquisition

Awesome Motive — the company behind WPBeginner, OptinMonster, and a portfolio of other marketing tools — acquired Thrive Themes, and the community felt it quickly.

Pricing went up while product improvements slowed. But the change that hit long-time users hardest was more fundamental than that. Under the original ownership, if you let your subscription lapse, the tools kept working — you just stopped getting updates. Reasonable.

That's how most WordPress plugins work. Under the new ownership, that changed. Let your subscription lapse now and the tools lock down. You can't add a page. You can't update an image. You can't fix a typo on your own website.

For people who had built entire sites on Thrive, that's not a pricing decision. That's holding your business hostage.

And then Thrive Automator was discontinued — the tool that connected your website to your CRM, your email sequences, your marketing automations. The connective tissue of a functioning digital business, gone without meaningful warning or a real transition plan.

The community was vocal about all of it:

"You can't add a new page using Thrive Architect and Thrive Themes, you can't add an image to an existing page, you can't even correct a typo. That's not honest in my opinion. Every WordPress plugin continues to work when you stop the subscription, but you don't get updates anymore. It used to be like this when Shane was the CEO." — Eduardo Suaiden Klein, Thrive Themes Facebook Group

"Take a look at Thrive Themes demand now. It's dropping over the years since the new leader took over... The content block and icon? It's stale. Thrive YouTube channel viewership drops too." — Wong Chee Foo, long-time Thrive customer

"No warning, no transition plan. Just a quiet email and blog post saying it's not going to be updated anymore — and now we're expected to start over from scratch with a different tool. This isn't just about a tool — it's about how Thrive made this 'strategic decision' without informing or involving the people who rely on it every day." — Cesar Pinto, Thrive Themes Facebook Group

"It's become clear AM didn't acquire Thrive to invest in or grow the product — we feel like we were acquired as a captive audience to be marketed to." — Corbin Stewart, April 2025

I was in those same groups, watching those conversations happen in real time. And as someone who'd built dozens of client sites on Thrive, I recognized what I was seeing: a platform that had stopped prioritizing the people building businesses on it.

So I started the search again.

What Thrive Suite Actually Includes (And Where It Falls Short)

Before we get into alternatives, it's worth being clear about what Thrive Suite is — and what it isn't.

Thrive Suite is a collection of WordPress plugins. At its best, it includes Thrive Theme Builder, Thrive Architect (page builder), Thrive Leads (opt-in forms and lead capture), Thrive Apprentice (courses and memberships inside WordPress), Thrive Ultimatum (countdown timers and scarcity), Thrive Quiz Builder, Thrive Ovation (testimonials), and Thrive Optimize (A/B testing).

For a WordPress-first user who primarily needs website design and conversion tools, that's a capable bundle.

But calling it a "full suite" has always been a stretch, even in its best years. It was a WordPress plugin bundle — a good one — not a complete operating system for running a business.

You still had to source and pay separately for email marketing, marketing automation, SMS, CRM and pipeline management, booking and appointment scheduling, community features, reputation management, and comprehensive analytics.

Most Thrive users ended up paying for Thrive plus several other subscriptions to fill the gaps. The monthly cost stacked up, and managing five or six platforms that don't naturally talk to each other creates exactly the kind of administrative noise that eats into your actual work time.

Technology is one of the largest line items for most solo and small-business entrepreneurs — and one of the most consequential. The difference between a well-integrated stack and a scattered one can be hundreds to thousands of dollars a year in both cost and opportunity. In the early years especially, when profit often equals your personal paycheck, that matters a lot.

What I Actually Tested Before Landing Somewhere New

When I left Thrive, I didn't immediately know where I was going. I'd been building on WordPress for over 16 years — it wasn't a decision I was going to make lightly.

My first instinct was to find a better WordPress page builder. I tested Elementor, Divi, and several others. Neither excited me. Elementor has its own baggage. Divi is more mature but still felt like swapping one set of limitations for another. I kept running into the same fundamental ceiling: a better page builder still left all the other pieces — email, CRM, automation, booking, courses — disconnected and separately managed.

So I started looking at platforms I'd used professionally before — tools I already had real experience with. HubSpot was the first place I went back to. I'd been agency-certified with them, I knew what it could do, and it's genuinely powerful.

But the pricing structure hadn't gotten more friendly.

Paywalls at every step as you grew — more contacts, more features, more usage — costs climbing whether or not your business was actually making more money. For most of the entrepreneurs I work with, that model creates anxiety rather than stability. It didn't make sense.

SharpSpring was another platform I'd been agency-certified with. I went back and looked at where it had gone in the years since I'd last used it. It hadn't grown much. For where the market was now, it didn't feel like a viable path forward.

The further I got into testing, the more I started questioning whether the problem was which platform I was choosing — or whether WordPress itself was still the right foundation. When I finally did a real side-by-side comparison, what shifted my thinking wasn't just features.

It was everything I wouldn't have to manage anymore: security vulnerabilities, backups, staging environments for bigger updates, plugin conflicts, compatibility issues every time WordPress pushed a core update. I'd been absorbing that overhead for years without fully accounting for it.

For me and for my clients, leaving WordPress meant getting all of that time and risk off the table.

That's when HighLevel started making sense.

Why I Landed on HighLevel — and Built FableForge on Top of It

After my seven years with Thrive ended, I did what I'd always done when a tool stopped serving me: I tested extensively before committing.

HighLevel stood out because it's genuinely all-in-one in a way most platforms aren't. Not "all-in-one" as marketing language — all-in-one as in it actually handles website and funnel building, email marketing, SMS (two-way), CRM and pipeline management, courses and memberships, booking and appointment scheduling, community features, automation workflows, reputation management and review requests, invoicing and contracts, and comprehensive analytics. In one login.

I became an agency partner with them and built FableForge on top of it.

I want to be honest about the trade-offs, because that's how I've always approached technology.

The UI could use work. HighLevel isn't the most intuitive platform out there, especially if you're coming from tools with a more polished consumer-facing design. It was built as a platform for agencies to white-label, and that shows in how it's organized. There's a learning curve.

Here's the thing about that learning curve, though: because it's an all-in-one platform, most people experience the learning curve as steeper than it actually is. You're not just learning one tool — you're looking at email marketing, a CRM, automations, a course builder, scheduling, and more, all at once.

That looks overwhelming.

But compare it to learning Kajabi for courses, Calendly for scheduling, WordPress + Thrive for your site, ActiveCampaign for email, a separate CRM, and an SMS tool — separately, with separate logins, separate support, and no native integration between them. The actual learning investment is less with an all-in-one, even if the dashboard looks more complex on day one.

The cost structure is transparent. The platform itself is $127/month. The only additional costs are for things HighLevel itself incurs: sending emails (via their white-label integration with Mailgun) and SMS (via their white-label integration with Twilio). These are minor and usage-based — not paywalled features, just the actual cost of sending messages at volume. Everything else is included.

For context, a comparable setup pieced together separately — Kajabi or Thinkific for courses, Calendly for scheduling, a CRM tool, an email platform, SMS capability, a contracts tool — typically runs $300–$700+/month depending on the tools and tiers you need.

What FableForge Adds on Top of HighLevel

HighLevel is the engine. FableForge is what we built on top of it specifically for coaches, consultants, and course creators.

When you join through FableForge, you're not staring at a blank HighLevel dashboard trying to figure out where to start. You get pre-built templates and configurations designed around real business needs — opt-in pages, sales pages, course portals, automation workflows — ready to customize rather than build from scratch.

We also add live office hours with real humans who understand your business context. Not a ticket queue. Not a chatbot. Actual people who can look at what you're building and help you move forward.

And for coaches and program leaders who want to give their clients a ready-to-use tech system: our Collab Partner program lets you work with FableForge to build custom snapshots for your clients — creating a meaningful new service offering while genuinely improving their results.

Head-to-Head: Thrive Suite vs. FableForge Suite

What Migrating Actually Looks Like

The fear I hear most often is about the migration itself. Getting off any platform you've been on for years feels risky — you've built things on it, your clients are used to it, and the idea of starting over is exhausting.

Here's what I've seen in practice: leaving Thrive is simpler than staying on a platform that's moving in the wrong direction.

The pre-built templates and configurations in FableForge mean you're not starting from scratch. Core pages — opt-in pages, sales pages, course portals, booking pages — can be up and running relatively quickly. The setup process is supported by real people who understand what coaches and creators actually need.

And unlike Thrive's current subscription model — where letting your subscription lapse means you can't edit your own content — FableForge doesn't hold your business hostage. Your data is yours. Your content is accessible. If you ever choose to leave, you can.

Who FableForge Is and Isn't For

FableForge is the right fit if you're a coach, consultant, or course creator who's tired of paying for five different tools that don't talk to each other, wants one platform that runs the whole business, and values real human support over ticket queues and chatbots.

It's also a strong fit if you've already used some of the tools HighLevel modeled theirs after — if you've been in Kajabi, you'll recognize the course builder; if you've used any CRM, the pipeline will feel familiar. That existing context flattens the learning curve meaningfully.

It's probably not the right fit if you're deeply committed to staying on WordPress and only need a page builder replacement. In that case, Elementor or Divi will serve you better.

And if budget is genuinely the primary constraint right now, Systeme.io's free tier is worth knowing about — it's not as capable, but it's a real place to start.

The goal has never been to convince everyone to switch to the same thing. The goal is to help you make a decision based on what's actually true about your business — not what a sales page told you.

The Bottom Line

Seven years is a long time to rely on a platform. I didn't leave Thrive Themes because something shinier came along. I left because the platform stopped honoring the relationship it had built with the people who depended on it.

If you're in the same position — frustrated, searching, and not sure what to trust after a platform let you down — I get it. The search is exhausting.

The question worth sitting with isn't "what's the best platform" in the abstract. It's: what does my business actually need, what am I actually paying right now across all my tools, and what would genuinely reduce the friction between me and the work I'm supposed to be doing?

For a lot of coaches and solo entrepreneurs I work with, the answer to that question leads to FableForge. For some, it leads somewhere else. Either way, you deserve a platform that treats your loyalty with respect.

👉 Not sure if your current tech stack is actually serving you? Take the free Tech Stack Audit — it's a quick, honest look at what you're paying, what's working, and where you're leaving money on the table.

👉 Ready to see FableForge in action? Visit fableforgesuite.com/join to start your trial or book a Curiosity Call.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is FableForge just HighLevel with a different name?

FableForge is built on the HighLevel platform, but it's more than a rebranded login. It comes pre-configured with templates and automations built for coaches and course creators, along with live human support and a community — none of which you get with a standard HighLevel subscription. Think of it as the difference between buying the engine and having someone who's already figured out how to configure it for your specific use case.

Do I need to stay on WordPress to use FableForge?

No. FableForge is entirely independent of WordPress. You can build your website, funnels, course portal, and everything else directly within FableForge — no WordPress hosting or plugins required.

What does it actually cost?

The platform is $127/month. Email sending (via Mailgun) and SMS (via Twilio) have minor usage-based costs because those are services HighLevel incurs costs on and passes through transparently. There are no hidden paywalls on features.

What happens to my content if I cancel?

Unlike Thrive Themes, FableForge doesn't lock you out of your own content if you cancel. Your data is yours.

Can I migrate from HighLevel to FableForge if I'm already a HighLevel user?

Yes. HighLevel allows sub-account transfers between agencies. The FableForge team can help facilitate the migration. Some proprietary snapshots from your previous agency may not transfer, so it's worth a conversation before making the move.

Is this realistic for someone who isn't very technical?

Yes — and that's a significant part of the appeal. The pre-built templates mean you're not configuring everything from scratch, and live office hours mean you have real help when you get stuck. You don't need to be a developer to get real results. That said, it's not a zero-learning-curve platform — no all-in-one tool is. You're getting a lot of capability, and that takes some time to get comfortable with.

FableForge Suite is a business software platform built for coaches, consultants, and course creators. Built on HighLevel and configured for real businesses. $127/month. Cancel anytime.