Thrive vs ClickFunnels: Which Suits Your Business More?

It’s been a while since we’ve done any comparison posts, but we’re back at it again with a hatful of face-off posts coming your way. In this article, we’re looking to compare two distinctly different funnel tools that can be of considerable help to your business. Today, it’s Thrive vs. ClickFunnels. 

ClickFunnels is a sales funnels builder, whereas Thrive is a suite of WordPress plugins. While it may seem like we’re comparing apples to oranges, both platforms have the capability of forging high-yielding conversion-optimized sales funnels, which is the primary focus of this article. 

Thrive vs. ClickFunnels: Short Answer

If you’re trying to build an authority WordPress website/blog without having to pay much, Thrive is an ideal pick, but you’ll need a solid WordPress background. If you’re looking for a quick way to build high-converting funnels to sell digital and physical units, ClickFunnels is your best bet. 

Thrive vs. ClickFunnels: Summary

Thrive

ClickFunnels

Thrive is a collection of plugins and tools that are designed to be used with WordPress, but it can be used to build sales funnels as well.   Pros: Affordable price and great valueSubstantial template selectionAn excellent suite for WordPressBoth a website and blog solutionIn-built A/B testing mechanismsFeatures a powerful theme builder Cons: Only works for WordPress websitesDoesn’t support third-party pluginsNo payment processor integrations

ClickFunnels is an all-in-one digital marketing tool that you can utilize to develop funnels for promoting both your products and services.  Pros: Offers a 2-week free trial periodBuilt-in A/B testing mechanismsAll-in-one sales funnel solutionSells products and servicesIncludes pre-built sales funnelsEmail and payment integrations Cons: Quite costly compared to ThriveThe user interface can be confusingNot the fastest-responding support

Thrive vs. ClickFunnels: Overviews

Before we compare the two tools we have today, it’s only right that we introduce them first just in case this is your first time hearing about either Thrive or ClickFunnels. Let’s jump right into it. 

1. Overview of ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is an all-in-one digital marketing platform and sales funnel builder. It consists of a series of webpages that help convert visitors into paying customers. ClickFunnels offers users a host of pre-built sales funnels that you can utilize to sell and promote products and services. 

ClickFunnels also offers you the chance to create your own funnels with the aid of a simple drag and drop editor. You don’t even need a solid coding background. Further, the platform boasts an extensive set of tools that you can use to track the performance of your sales funnels. 

Most Notable Features:

• Pre-Built Funnels and Templates: While you can create your own sales templates and funnels with ClickFunnels, you can make use of one of the many pre-designed templates and sales funnels that the platform offers for quick and easy implementation. 

• Intuitive Drag and Drop Editor: Designing your own sales funnels and templates using ClickFunnels is as easy as dragging and dropping a number of blocks and elements with the aid of an intuitive drag and drop editor. No coding experience required whatsoever. 

• Backpack Affiliate Program: Not only can you build high-conversion sales funnels with ClickFunnels, but you can also design and manage your own affiliate programs. To put it differently, you’ll be able to recruit affiliates that can help you promote your products. 

• Integrated Email Marketing: ClickFunnels flaunts its own email marketing solution that goes by Actionetics. The feature is only available with the Etison Suite plan. Clickfunnels can also integrate with third-party email services such as Mailchimp and AWeber. 

• Integrated eCommerce Service: ClickFunnels offers you the ability to sell and promote your physical or digital products online as well as your services. It also allows you to take payments and integrate with ShipStation so that you can manage and ship your products. 

• Webinar Hosting: Using ClickFunnels, you’ll have the ability to host webinars. Not only that, but ClickFunnels also offers you the ability to employ its webinar funnels in order to gain traction for your webinars. Webinars can be run automatically on-demand. 

• Numerous Integrations: One of the reasons why ClickFunnels is a leading software in the marketing arena is that it can integrate with major services like Shopify and Zapier. It can also integrate with WordPress, giving Thrive a serious run for its money.

• A/B Split Testing: Like most reputable online marketing platforms, ClickFunnels grants you the ability to split test your web pages and sales funnels to pinpoint the designs that achieve the highest conversion rates. You can split-test almost all elements with this tool. 

2. Overview of Thrive Themes

Thrive Themes isn’t necessarily an all-in-one digital marketing solution, rather, it’s a collection of plugins and tools that are catered to WordPress. This substantial array of tools can be utilized to build sales funnels and other types of websites, as well as keep tabs on their performance. 

Just like with ClickFunnels, you can make use of an extensive range of pre-built funnels as well as utilize the website builder to create your own. Thrive Themes also offers a ton of plugins like a quiz creator, countdown timers, and testimonials that you can integrate into your funnels. 

Most Notable Features:

• Thrive Themes: This is basically an extensive selection of themes that you can use to build your own site. However, the themes are only suitable for WordPress. The platform is entirely catered to WordPress, so keep that into consideration as you’re reading. 

• Thrive Architect: This is Thrive’s very own website building tool which you can employ to build landing pages, sales pages, homepages, and more. Moreover, you can use this tool to add various elements to your pages like buttons, videos, and pricing sections.

• Thrive Leads: This is a feature that allows you to create types of opt-in forms including pop-up forms, in-line forms, sticky forms, slider forms, and more. It also engages with an inbuilt analytics tool to notify you of which forms are achieving the highest conversions. 

• Thrive Ultimatum: This is a brilliant tool that allows you to implement countdown timers on any or all of the offers on your website or sales pages. The second the timer runs out, the offer ends automatically. It’s quite an effective method to increase your conversions. 

• Thrive Ovation: This is another neat feature that will help increase your conversions by gathering testimonials from followers and consumers using submission forms and social media networks. You can show these testimonials whichever way you want on your site. 

• Thrive Quiz Builder: As the name implies, this is a feature that you can utilize to create quizzes on your website. You also have the ability to link these quizzes to your offers. To add, you can A/B test your quizzes to discern the ones that are performing the best. 

• Thrive Optimize: This is basically a split testing feature that allows you to A/B test your pages with numerous variations in order to pick the one that delivers the highest number of clicks and sales. This is an essential feature to look for in any digital marketing tool. 

• Thrive Comments: Online marketing relies heavily on consumer engagement, and with the aid of Thrive Comments, you can implement a comments section on your web pages in order to create more engagement in your community, which helps build brand loyalty. 

• Headline Optimizer: The traction that your posts can garner is profoundly influenced by the headlines you use. With the aid of the headline optimizer, you can create a wide host of headlines for a single post and perform split testing to see which title works better. 

• Landing Pages: Thrive features a remarkable selection of pre-built landing pages for all purposes, including opt-in pages, webinar pages, sales pages, and more. With the aid of this selection, you’ll find it easy to build sales funnels that cater to your specific needs. 

• Effective Widgets: Thrive is equipped with an array of helpful widgets that you can use to show relevant content to your viewers. This is especially useful if your site boasts a lot of content, as that’ll help your visitors view posts that are relevant to their interests. 

Thrive vs. ClickFunnels: Plans and Pricing

Despite the notable price difference between the plans offered by both Thrive and ClickFunnels, you get your money’s worth with both tools. This section will help break down their pricing plans, but before we do that, here’s a table that summarizes the payment model for each platform.

Payment Model	ClickFunnels	Thrive Themes
Free Trial	Yes	No
Credit Card to Start	No	Yes
Freemium Account	No	No
Cancel Anytime	Yes	Yes
30-Day Guarantee	Yes	Yes
Monthly Subscription	Yes	Yes
Annual Subscription	Yes	Yes

ClickFunnels Pricing

There are two pricing plans that you can subscribe to if you choose to employ ClickFunnels: the basic plan ($97/month) and the Etison Suite plan ($297/month). There’s also an annual discount plan that costs $997/year. The latter option, in our opinion, is the best option for ClickFunnels. 

ClickFunnels’ basic plan offers you everything you need to build sales funnels and pages. We’re noticing that most users start with this plan then upgrade later. The Etison Suite plan features all that ClickFunnels has to offer, including email automation, affiliate program, opt-ins, and more. 

Thrive Themes Pricing

Thrive Themes is significantly more affordable than ClickFunnels, starting at just $19/month and topping at $69/month. Just like ClickFunnels, Thrive Themes flaunts two pricing plans as well as an annual discount of 24% no matter which of the two pricing plans you subscribe to. 

The first plan that Thrive offers is the individual plan, which costs $19/month if billed annually or $30/month if billed quarterly. This plan grants you access to the entire Thrive suite, but you can only use the tools provided on 25 of your own websites, which is satisfactory for bloggers. 

The second plan is the Agency plan, which costs $49/month when billed annually or $69/month when billed quarterly. The offerings of this plan in terms of tools and services is the same as the individual plan, but you can use them on 50 of your sites, which is ideal for digital agencies. 

Thrive vs. ClickFunnels: Integrations

In terms of integrations, both Thrive and ClickFunnels are nothing short of impressive. The main difference between the two is that ClickFunnels boasts its own email marketing service, which is Actionetics, whereas Thrive boasts third-party email marketing integrations only. 

Email Integrations	ClickFunnels	Thrive Themes
Actionetics	Yes	No
Mailchimp	Yes	Yes
AWeber	Yes	Yes
HTML Forms	Yes	Yes
Convertkit	Yes	Yes
ActiveCampaign	Yes	Yes

When it comes to other integrations, both platforms have a lot to offer. Thrive offers integrations for MailerLite, MailRelay, Amazon Web, Facebook, Twitter, Google.org, WebinarJam, Postmark, ConvertKit, Infusionsoft, and MailPoet, which is very impressive for the price you pay. 

ClickFunnels, on the other hand, offers integrations for Constant Contact, GoTo Webinar, Twilio, ClickBank, Infusionsoft, Ontraport, Maropost, Ever Webinar, WebinarJam, ActiveCampiagn, and Stripe. As you can see, both platforms are very well-versed in terms of integrations. 

Thrive vs. ClickFunnels: Features

Feature	ClickFunnels	Thrive Themes
Landing Page Templates	Yes	Yes
Landing Page Builder	Yes	Yes
Sales Funnel Templates	Yes	No
Mobile Responsive Pages	Yes	Yes
Complete Page Hosting	Yes	No
Funnel Builder	Yes	No
Share Funnels	Yes	No
A/B Split Testing	Yes	Yes
Custom Webhooks	Yes	No
Email Auto-Responders	Yes	No
Affiliate Tracking Software	Yes	No
Membership Sites	Yes	Yes

The table above pretty much sums everything you need to know about both platforms, but there are a few things that we’d like to expand upon, starting with hosting, using ClickFunnels, it’s not necessary for you to pay for hosting, as ClickFunnels will host the website for you. 

Thrive doesn’t offer a hosting service, but it grants you full control of your website even if you’re not a subscriber. The same doesn’t apply to Clickfunnels, as you only own your web pages only if you’re subscribed. This is crucial to take into consideration before choosing between the two. 

Another factor we’d like to go over is the ability to receive payments. ClickFunnels features an onboard payment integration that allows you to take payments without a third-party integration. With Thrive, you have to add a third-party payment integration to receive payments. 

You should also know that while Thrive allows you to collect leads with the aid of opt-in forms, it doesn’t allow you to store your leads without a third-party CRM system integration. ClickFunnels lets you store leads and sort them into lists based on the actions that your leads have taken.

Another thing you need to be mindful of is that ClickFunnels has an email autoresponder while Thrive doesn’t. In other words, you can send automated emails to your leads using ClickFunnels without any third-party integrations. With Thrive, a third-party tool is needed to pull that off.

The final facet we’d like to cover as far as features and integrations is the fact that ClickFunnels allows you to make one-click upsells or down-sells so that you can promote your products after the checkout page. Thrive requires a third-party integration in order for you to do that. 

Thrive vs. ClickFunnels: Final Thoughts

We’re pretty fond of both Thrive Themes and ClickFunnels, and we think that each platform has a lot to offer if implemented for the right reasons. Thrive is an excellent way to build funnels on a budget, but that’s about it. For more functionality, you’ll need to integrate third-party services. 

If you’re someone that’s looking for an all-in-one solution that takes away the hassle of having to pick and choose from numerous third-party services, ClickFunnels is your best bet. Also, bear in mind that ClickFunnels has a free trial period, whereas Thrive doesn’t. ClickFunnels for the win!