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You can build your online course-based business in a weekend with Thrive Apprentice. Before picking a platform to start selling online courses, read my review of Thrive Apprentice. I’ll share the pros and cons of the platform and compare it to the other top online course platforms.
Now, if you’ve created a digital product and a sales funnel for it…
And you have all your download files ready and you’re close to launching it – congrats! But hey, you’re not done yet.
You need a system in place to deliver your course. If it’s just an eBook, you could easily provide a download link and be done with it. But what if it’s a full-blown video course?
You may have chapters and modules, and you want your customers/students to follow your training in a step-by-step manner. You’ll also want to protect your content from those who haven’t paid.
Maybe you’d prefer to drip the content where your students get access to 1 chapter and 7 modules each week. This bite-sized approach to consuming content will keep them focused and on track without making things seem too overwhelming.
In order to do that, what you need is a Learning Management System (LMS). With such software, you’ll be able to lay out your course in an organized manner so that learning will be a pleasant experience for your students.
One of the most popular LMS software used by thousands of online marketers is Thrive Apprentice. Let’s see why it’s so popular…
Who are Thrive Themes?
Company Background & Overview
Thrive Themes is your all-in-one toolbox to create a WordPress website that converts visitors into leads and customers. The company, founded by Shane Melaugh and Paul McCarthy in 2013 has quickly become one of the most trusted vendors in the digital marketing and affiliate marketing space.
Shane is a marketer and is the brains behind the marketing aspect and conversion elements of the themes. Paul is the tech and the developer who lives behind the scenes. Both realized they required the strengths the other had so decided to partner up and combine forces.
Thrive Themes includes Thrive Apprentice (affiliate link), which is a learning management system built with all of the essential features you’ll require to create an online course, including:
- Code-Free Course Builder: Here’s a feature that allows you to create your course outline, plus individual lessons, without employing a line of code. Easily organize courses into modules, chapters, and lessons, with drag-and-drop functionality allowing you to reorder them at any time.
- LMS Visual Editor: Use Thrive Apprentice’s visual builder to create an online school with different templates and branding from those used on your primary site. You’ll enjoy being able to customize templates for individual courses and lessons.
- Difficulty Levels: Thrive Apprentice automatically includes easy, intermediate, and advanced levels. However, you can also add as many difficulty levels as you desire.
- Access Restrictions: Gain the ability to regulate who can access each course. This includes the option to create subscriber-only courses.
- Create Course Bundles to Increase Customer Value: There’s so much earning potential in bundling your courses. The system allows you to group two or more relevant courses together.
- Integration With Membership & eCommerce Plugins: You can sell your Thrive Apprentice courses through integrations with MemberPress, ThriveCart, WooCommerce, PayPal, and more.
What is Thrive Apprentice?
Okay, perhaps you might still be wondering: “What is Thrive Apprentice? and what does it do?”
A conversion-focused website, landing pages, lead generation quizzes, online courses, evergreen scarcity campaigns, … With Thrive Suite you can easily turn your WordPress website into a full-blown online business. Convert visitors into leads and customers into raving fans!
Create a Thriving Online Business
Owning and maintaining an online business gives entrepreneurs the freedom to make money from anywhere in the world. The idea is enticing and more possible than ever, but many entrepreneurs don’t know where to start. The most important step in starting a profitable online business is to find a business idea that matches your skills and strengths.
Whether you are looking to become a full-time entrepreneur or just to start a part-time business for passive income, your product or service should fulfill a specific consumer need. Thrive Themes can help you to launch your online business successfully. Yet, whilst you can take a look at their Blog, let’s dive deeper.
- Create Landing Pages & Funnels: Once you have your website, it’s time to create landing pages and funnels. With Thrive Suite, you get access to Thrive Architect which includes 290+ landing page templates.
- Build An Email List: Yes, the foundation of every online business is building an email list. And of course, you can build one with Thrive Suite. Add any type of opt-in form to your website: ribbons, slide-ins, pop-ups, welcome mats, multiple-choice, yes/no,… in just a couple of clicks.
- Get Curious with Quizzes: Thrive Suite gives you access to Thrive Quiz Builder so you can start reaping the advantages of knowing your audience inside out. Imagine you’d never have to worry about coming up with blog post content topics, having an email list that’s perfectly segmented, and being able to get to know your future customer before sending them to the perfect offer…
Benefits of Thrive Apprentice
When you purchase Thrive Themes Apprentice, you’ll also get access to the full Thrive Suite, which includes several plugins. Some of these can be directly connected to Thrive Apprentice:
- Thrive Architect: A visual page builder plugin. Note that the original Thrive Apprentice course builder uses this plugin for creating lesson pages.
- Thrive Quiz Builder: This plugin can be used to create surveys, quizzes, and polls for your audience. You can also use it in conjunction with Thrive Apprentice to add quizzes to your courses.
- Thrive Comments: This plugin can be used to gamify your comments section, including the comments on your courses.
The Thrive Suite also includes tools for theme building, marketing automation, lead generation, and more. You can see more details on the Thrive Suite homepage.
Now you’ve got a decent understanding of Thrive Apprentice, let’s dive into the heart of this Thrive Themes Apprentice review: Evaluating the benefits.
No Subscription/Transaction Fees
This is one of the strongest selling points of Thrive Apprentice. Unlike Teachable, Kajabi, or other solutions, there’s no monthly fee with Thrive Apprentice.
You’ll keep 100% of the profits without needing to pay any transaction fees. Many marketers on a tight budget prefer Thrive because it’s a cost-effective solution.
Full Control
WordPress is awesome because it allows you to create a course platform with 100% ownership and control.
Thrive Apprentice was created as an LMS plugin that safeguards this total ownership advantage by never holding your course content hostage. What that means is that you’ll be installing it on a site you own… then you’ll customize the layout for your course.
Unlike other LMS where you’ll be adding your content to someone else’s site, with Thrive Apprentice, you’re not relying on anyone else.
Just imagine what happens if the site your content is being hosted on shuts down or gives you the boot? You’d have to set everything up again elsewhere. With Thrive Apprentice, you are in FULL control of your site.
Because you’re creating courses on your WordPress website with Thrive Apprentice, YOU own your content. Period.
Launch A Membership Site
Create your Membership Site fast and start selling with Thrive Apprentice. Set up different membership tiers in minutes with simple access restrictions and display rules. Display clear visual labels for all your free and member-only website content.
Show custom messages or redirect visitors to sales pages when visitors try to access premium content. Bundle and sell your courses with exclusive members-only blog posts, videos, worksheets, downloads, ultimate guides, and ANY other type of content you like with their WordPress LMS plugin.
Assemble Lessons with Ease
There are many tutorials to guide you on how to use this theme. Once you install the Thrive Apprentice plugin, you’ll have an intuitive feel as to how to use it. It’s really simple.
The interface is clean and clutter-free. While it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles as the other more advanced LMS software, there’s a certain beauty in its simplicity.
Simple Layout & Customization
You can plan your course into modules, lessons, and chapters. You can upload text-based lessons and/or video tutorials. The setup is very straightforward.
Your customers will automatically know how to navigate through your course because it’s well laid out for them.
Wide Range of Features
Thrive Apprentice is one of the tools in the Thrive Suite. You’ll have to buy the entire suite to get the Apprentice plugin. But don’t panic. You’re getting a ton of value here.
You’ll have the Thrive Architect page builder, Thrive Leads pop-up plugin, Thrive Ovation to get testimonials, and much more. In fact, the Thrive Suite is so versatile you’ll be able to use it for most of your business needs without buying more software.
Integrates with SendOwl
Your Thrive Apprentice plugin now integrates with SendOwl. Thrive Apprentice handles the actual access restriction while your checkout tool handles payments. Then after purchase, your checkout tool updates Thrive Apprentice who should get access so customers can immediately begin taking their course.
Other Thrive Apprentice native integrations with WooCommerce and ThriveCart make setting up this mission-critical function SIMPLE.
So, you can use SendOwl to process sales, run an affiliate program, and then link it to your site which will give paying customers access to the content while protecting the content from those who haven’t paid for it.
Related: How to Sell Online Courses with Thrive Apprentice & WooCommerce
Drawbacks of Thrive Apprentice
I’ll be frank here. Thrive Apprentice is NOT the best LMS on the market. Far from it. What it is though is an effective and inexpensive solution for marketers to lay out their courses.
There’s no built-in quiz functionality; to add quizzes, you must also install the Thrive Quiz Builder. Even the progress monitoring isn’t very advanced. Managing your students is basic at best.
However, it’s still very effective because when an LMS has too many features, it can get distracting. The truth is that just like how most people never complete reading the books they buy, most don’t complete the courses they buy either.
When you keep things simple and focused, there’s a higher chance that your students will complete the training… and that’s what you want. In this aspect, Thrive Apprentice shines.
Thrive Apprentice’s Pricing Summary
Thrive Apprentice is included in Thrive Suite, which is for individuals and is priced at $19 a month. While that sounds a lot, just wait to see what’s included.
- Use of all Thrive Themes on up to 25 websites.
- Use of all Thrive Plugins.
- Free product updates as they are released.
- Customer support.
Thrive provides free updates for the life of your subscription along with access to tech support and the freedom to use products on any website you own to a maximum of 25 unique sites.
Is Thrive Apprentice Worth the Money?
If you’re on a tight budget and just want a simple, no-frills way to deliver your training in a systematic manner while keeping the content protected, Thrive Apprentice is all you need.
Whether you’re a coach & consultant, infopreneur, blogger or affiliate marketer, or eCommerce business, you don’t have time to waste. Being able to implement a new idea quickly is critical to your success. Imagine setting up a new lead generation funnel in just minutes rather than hours or days. How much faster would you be able to grow your online business, using Thrive Apprentice?
Thrive Apprentice also DOES NOT require any membership plugins like MemberMouse, MemberPress, or WishList Member to protect your courses from unauthorized access. That being said, Thrive Apprentice DOES integrate with these 3 tools if you want to use them.
You’ll not need to pay a monthly fee. Your customers will still get a course that’s laid out neatly for them. And you’ll also have access to all the other tools in Thrive Suite that will help in your other marketing needs. This is a win-win.
Nevertheless, it’s also for this reason, that I only recommend Thrive Apprentice if you plan to use Thrive plugins other than Apprentice and the Quiz Builder. So, my final verdict is to give Thrive Apprentice a try as a learning management system if you’re a budget-conscious marketer.
>>> Click Here To Get Thrive Suite Today <<<
Alternatives to Thrive Apprentice
While ThriveThemes has an all-in-one offering, here are the top alternatives to Thrive Apprentice:
- Udemy – Read my comprehensive review
- Podia – Read my comprehensive review
- Thinkific – Read my comprehensive review
- LearnDash – Read my comprehensive review
- Teachable – Read my comprehensive review
FAQs Regarding Thrive Apprentice
Thrive Apprentice is the only LMS plugin for WordPress that gives you the power to visually customize your course environment and build your lesson content with an unparalleled drag and drop editor. You have FULL visual editing capabilities across your entire course environment.
Can I Create Several Course Websites?
If you purchase Thrive Apprentice as part of Thrive Suite, it comes with 25 licenses. This means you can install Thrive Apprentice on 25 websites! If you purchase the standalone plugin, you can install it on just one site. On each WordPress site, you can create as many courses as you like.
Can I Create An Online Course As A Lead Magnet?
Yes of course! You don’t need any tools other than Thrive Suite to do so.
Is Thrive Suite A Recurring Fee Product?
So, the question really is exactly how much is Thrive Apprentice? Thrive Apprentice is part of the Thrive Suite, which has two pricing plans: A quarterly pricing plan for $90 a quarter, and an annual plan for $228 a year. Both plans come with full access to the Thrive Suite, including all features of Thrive Apprentice.
Can I Sell My Course Using PayPal Or Stripe?
Thrive Apprentice integrates with SendOwl, ThriveCart and WooCommerce. These checkout tools allow you to easily integrate with PayPal, Stripe, and many other payment providers.
What Happens If I Don’t Renew My License?
Your existing website, opt-in forms, landing pages, quizzes, online courses, A/B tests, etc. will stay intact and working. The only difference is that getting support, updates, and using our premium templates requires an active license.
Is Thrive Apprentice A Standalone WordPress LMS Plugin?
Yes, you can purchase Thrive Apprentice as a standalone WordPress LMS plugin, which you can install on one website.
Do I Need a Membership Plugin?
Probably not! If you use Thrive Apprentice alone or with one of ThriveTheme’s checkout integrations (SendOwl, ThriveCart or WooCommerce), your content is protected.
You can also create Thrive Apprentice products that protect pages and posts on your site, which makes it a full-featured membership plugin as well as an LMS plugin! Learn more about it here.
Is Thrive Apprentice a WordPress Theme for Online Courses?
No, it’s not. Thrive Apprentice is a WordPress plugin that allows you to create your own design template to make courses that look great!
In Thrive Apprentice, you’ll customize everything from lesson and module pages to the fine details of the navigation sidebar. It’s also the only course builder that allows you to customize your online teaching space!
To get started, select your favorite pre-built templates—there are lots to choose from! And from there, you can customize as much or as little as you want before you upload your content.
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