Awesome Motive has acquired Thrive Themes, its second acquisition of 2023 following the Duplicator plugin deal that was announced earlier this month.
Thrive’s premium plugin suite reports more than 200,000 users. This includes Thrive Architect, a visual drag and drop page builder, an LMS course builder, and other marketing-focused plugins for generating leads, creating quizzes and testimonials, and doing A/B testing.
In 2013, Thrive Themes co-founders Shane Melaugh and Paul McCarthy began their company with early products Hybrid Connect, Viral Quiz Builder, and WP Sharely. Ten years later the product suite has grown to nearly a dozen conversion-focused tools that Thrive Themes sells for $299/year.
Although the co-founders will not be joining Awesome Motive, the team that is currently maintaining and supporting the plugin is being acquired. In the Thrive Themes announcement, Melaugh said the company’s products will not be rebranded or replaced. No price hikes are planned for existing customers and Awesome Motive plans to honor legacy memberships.
“It has always been our policy to reward loyal customers and that will not change,” Melaugh said.
“I’ve been watching Thrive Themes from the sidelines for a long time anyway. So my stepping away changes nothing on that front.
“It will still be the same people building the products, and the roadmap we laid out for 2023 and beyond won’t change because of this acquisition.”
So much consolidation in WordPress is very very bad. Orignal products founders come with a Vision which gets lost in take overs. We have so much talent quitting WordPress lately and new talent does not want to enter WordPress. No body wants to learn WordPress. I have a feeling that Gutenberg