Divi Theme vs Thrive Themes vs X Theme – Pros & Cons

 

In this post I am going to review and compare some of the best, most powerful and easy to use themes on the WordPress market. And I have used all of these Themes extensively for myself and clients (so this is not just a basic review/overview).

By purchasing such a theme (or theme set) you are buying a future proof and powerful set of tools for your website, that will allow you to build whatever website you imagine. Rather than buying a cheaper one, and being disappointed, or having to add 20 plugins to get it how you want, these themes help you do it all.

Each major theme provider has such a flagship theme, and the ones I am looking at today are:

• Divi from ElegantThemes
• Thrive Themes
• X Theme sold on ThemeForest

If you are interested in a specific theme or just want to know which best suits your purpose, just use the Content Navigator on the side ->

 

Divi from Elegant Themes Review

Divi is a great theme and website builder all in one, and is the flagship theme from Elegant Themes.

It comes with a whole range of built in features and choice which make it a powerful option to have in your theme arsenal.

Note: I used this theme to create my other marketing website: Entice.

You can also check out a whole load of Divi example websites (real life examples) to see what is possible.

Or take a look at my Divi Theme 2.5 Walkthrough and Tutorial

Divi Features

In this section I will show you the main features, by topic, so you can see the kinds of things that you can do and what is included with Divi.

Variety Of Layouts

Divi has a wide variety of layouts that you can choose from, as well as elements that you can easily include on your page – more on that later.

Some of the easy to configure options you have are:

• Header choices (thin, sticky, secondary navigation etc)
• Navigation (top, side, secondary navigation)
• Side bars (left, right, both)
• Full width pages

The image below shows some examples of these:

Pre-Defined Pages And Templates

To help speed up your website development, it is crucial to have pre-built templates and pages. After all, why reinvent the wheel, right?

Divi comes to the rescue here too, with the following pages and templates ready-made:

• About Us, About Me, Our Team, Contact Us
• Various layouts 0f – Portfolio, Gallery, Shop, Project
• Blog (standard), Blog (tile/masonry),
• One Page Website, Sales Page, Case Study, Product Features
• Splash Page, Landing Page, Coming Soon, Maintenance

I am almost out of breath!

And they keep coming up with more. Some of them are impressively professional, and you could almost build a website in an hour!

Check out: my ongoing list of premade Divi layouts.

Fonts & Icons

No theme is complete without a huge list of fonts, to help you make your new website unique – and Divi does not disappoint.

I have counted nearly 100 fonts with Divi, which you can easily choose and enable at your whim. (A full list of fonts here.)

They also include an icon library, so you can create those cool icon circles that everyone loves these days, without needing an image library.

Head over here to see all the icons.

Other Features Worth Noting

Of course, it does not stop there. Divi also have some other features which are worthy of note:

• WooCommerce integration, with predefined product page templates (See a Shop Example)
• Fully Mobile Responsive Layouts of course!
• Video and Parallax backgrounds, to make those rows pop
• Security Checked – Divi has been fully checked for security vulnerabilities by Sucuri

Divi Page Builder

If you have ever used one of the WordPress page builders like Visual Composer from WC Bakery, you will know how easy building websites can be. And Divi is not exception here, with a built-in page builder that is drag and drop simple.

It also comes with a whole swathe of elements that you just have to place on your page, like:

Structural Elements (for structuring your page layout)

• Columns, Rows, Dividers, Sections
• Accordion, Tabs, Toggle

More Fun Elements for Your Page

• Text, Image, Video, Audio
• Call to Action, Newsletter Signup
• Testimonial, Social Follow, Contact Form
• Gallery, Image Slider, Portfolio
• Pricing Tables, Maps, Countdowns

Check out all the Divi Builder modules here.

This is what a page builder layout would look like:

Hopefully that has not overwhelmed you with information, but it is important to know what you are (and are not) getting with these Themes I find.

All in all Divi is quite powerful, flexible and can pretty much create any masterpiece you can come up with.

Divi Booster

One list thing. There is such a huge community of Divi users, that there is now a plugin to help you make the most commonly asked for changes in Divi that have not yet made it into the Theme.

I have never seen such a well supported theme before that someone has made such a plugin. It makes it even easier to use Divi to create amazing websites.

Check Out: Divi Booster plugin and what it can do.

Thrive Themes Review

I have talked about Thrive Themes and their built-in content builder before, but I thought it was worth adding them to this review as they are very similar in offering to Divi and X Theme.

Thrive entered the theme market just last year, but their founder Shane Melaugh has been in the internet marketing and WordPress game for a long time.

Thrive Themes is focused on creating stunning and high converting websites. That is Shane’s trademark – conversion and style.

So if you are looking to make sure your website not only

• looks good
• runs fast and works
• but also converts your visitors into customers

then this might be the theme for you!

Like X Theme, Thrive Themes comes in a variety of Theme flavors which are focused on specific looks or purposes:

• Storied – Blogging Theme perfect for displaying visuals
• Pressive – Perfect for a Marketing/Business website (great typography and design)
• Performag – Magazine style focused on Engagement, Ad revenue & Social Sharing (keep them onsite)
• Squared – Flat design great for any purpose (full of great marketing features)
• Voice – No header (side bar only) focuses on content (great for blogs, podcasts etc)
• Minus – Minimal Theme great for almost anything
• Ignition – Great for products, memberships, services
• Luxe – Designed for a feel of quality and luxury
• FocusBlog – simple business style website or blog

As you can see you get a lot of Themes to choose from when you buy Thrive. Below you can see theme layed out in order:

 

Thrive Themes Features

In general these themes were built with flexibility, modern design and conversion in mind, so you would not be surprised to hear that they offer:

• Mobile Responsive Design
• Built to load fast
• Easy to customize

Features built-in to save on plugins

• related posts
• optin forms
• social sharing
• image galleries
• fonts and icons

Landing Pages

Divi above did come with some landing pages and templates built in, but this is where Thrive excels, they have things like:

• Sales pages
• Optin/squeeze pages
• Leadgen pages, video leadgen pages
• Email confirmation and thank you pages

And many more. In fact the Thrive package comes with about 52 templates. You can see more detail on this in my review of Thrive Landing pages.

Thrive Content Builder

Probably one of the best website builders in the WordPress community, the Thrive Content Builder is powerful and WYSIWYG (which means you change/create and it really looks like the final result. No more preview button needed (although there still is one to check your work).

The builder basically sits on top of your page and allows you to

• drag and drop
• edit elements (size, color, margins, fonts etc)
• move elements
• change layout

It is all very intuitive and simple to use. And actually a lot easier than the other two themes reviewed here (Divi and X Theme).

If you want a full review along with video demo you can check out my Thrive Content Builder Review or see the demo below.

 

Elements for Page Building

The content builder makes page building easy (and blog posts too) and comes with a large range of elements for you:

• Columns, Sections, Tabs/Toggles, Dividing Lines (various)
• Text, WordPress Elements (with an editor), Images (scalable on the fly), Video
• Blog Posts Grid, Buttons, Custom Headlines
• Pricing Table, Optin Forms, Maps, Testimonials, Rating Stars
• Quotes, Click to Tweet, Progress Bar, Counters

And they keep adding more new ones all the time.

X Theme from ThemeForest Review

X Theme is being hailed as one of the best WordPress themes around. And with good reason.

It was developed with 4 distinct sub-themes/stacks (Integrity, Renew, Icon & Ethos), and if you take a look at what each one looks like, you will see that you can accomplish almost any look and feel with this theme.

To give you a taste for what each “stack” is like, here is a short description from the website:

• Integrity – Great for business, all-purpose
• Renew – Clean, concise & flat design
• Icon – Modern, minimal with unique layout options
• Ethos – Magazine and Newspaper sites (featured carousel)

Below you can see some of these “stacks” and how the layouts, and styles vary significantly.

You can more or less create any kind of layout and style that you can come up with.

X Theme – Various Layouts

X Theme Features

X comes with some great FREE extensions in the form of plugins that mean that you don’t have to buy your own. Here are some of the options you have:

• Video Lock (delayed video appearance)
• Content Dock (slide in optin forms)
• Custom 404 pages (ideal for adding search or lead capture)
• Google Analytics (make adding Google Analytics simple)
• Smooth Scroll (a slower scroll, as you see on many modern sites)
• Mail Chimp (easy mail chimp integration)
• Soliloquy Image Slider (simply embed an image slider in your pages.posts)
• Mega Menu (great for sites with large menus)

Shortcodes for Easy Page Creation

Note: more below on how these are integrated with the Visual Composer (ie. you don’t have to work with shortcodes manually)

Built into the X Theme are a whole bunch of shortcodes that make customizing your website simple. For example, some of the custom elements you can add to your website include:

• Columns, Accordion, Tabs, Gaps
• Responsive Images and Video
• Quotes, Drop Caps, Pull Quotes
• Icons, Lines, Featured Headings
• Skill Bars, Maps, Counters

This means that you can build your site quickly and with little to no technical knowledge (although if you are a designer like me, you can also get to the styles easily to customize).

Pre-made Standard Pages

There are also standard pages included with each X Theme stack such as:

• About
• Contact
• Pricing

So you can create a standard website without doing much at all.

Fonts & Icons

You can also easily include any of the 400 Google fonts into your website to customize it with ease.

And there are icon libraries so that you can easily add any icon you want, without needing to go create an image, and add to the size of your website too (icon fonts save you load time and apace)

Page Builder (Visual Composer)

I developed a website with X Theme recently using their free and customized version of Visual Composer which made creating the website a lot easier and faster.

It also integrates with all the shortcodes that X Theme comes with, which means that you can place and customize their unique elements easily without using messy code.

This builder is quite similar to the one in Divi, but is a little more powerful with more options (in my opinion) – or at least it felt that way when I had to achieve some difficult results for the website I was working on.

Either way, rest assured that you do not have to code the pages yourself to get the stunning results you see on the X Theme Website. You can borrow their pre-made pages, import them, and tweak them using the Visual Composer.

Revolution Slider / Slider Revolution

Revolution Slider with an X Theme Variation (Integrity Side Menu)

One of the most customizable and amazing sliders around  is included free with X Themes. You can create stunning sliders with effects like:

• Multiple images
• Video as a slider (or in a slider)
• Parallax background or elements moving apart from each other
• Fully custom fonts, styles, look and feel
• Embed as a header, in a post/page, full-width or not
• Transitions and timing fully customizable

In fact, there are so many features and options with this slider, it deserves a whole review of its own!

Integrates WooCommerce or BuddyPress, Translations and More

The X Themes team haven’t forgotten about all your favorite WordPress plugins either and have made sure that you can seamlessly integrate both WooCommerce and BuddyPress.

They have also made translation a breeze, include right to left languages like Arabic.

X Themes is all in all a very powerful set of themes all built into one, that allows you to create almost anything you could imagine.

Which Theme Is Best For You?

In this section I am going to compare various areas to help you choose the right theme. It will help show where some themes are stronger and others weaker, so might suit you best for a particular purpose.

What Do They Cost?

• Thrive Themes – $49 per theme, $59 for Thrive Content Builder or all Themes and Plugins for $147
• X Theme – $64 one-time
• Divi* – $69 one-time or yearly (more if you want the psd/photoshop files)

*Note on Divi: Although it is yearly pricing, you can buy the theme, install it, and not pay for the next year. You just lose support and access to their other themes (if you have not already used them)

How Many Themes Do I Get With Each?

Currently these are the themes that you get when you purchase each one:

• Thrive Themes – 9 Themes (and growing)
• X Theme – 4 distinct variants/stacks (with lots of customization)
• Divi – 89 Themes (you buy an Elegant Theme membership to get Divi -it comes with all themes & plugins)

Which Has The Best Website/Content Builder?

Although they are all relatively easy to use, Thrive Content Builder is the best around at the moment. (see the video above for a demo).

It is a full WYSIWYG editor so you really can create on the fly and see exactly what you are getting.

The other two themes have built in editors, that play around in the background with shortcodes (so it is a little harder to edit the HTML if you need to). Thrive works directly with HTML, and gives you access to it in the editor.

It is also very easy to tweak the elements and layout through the editor – so changing color, size, margins/padding, font etc, is all a breeze. That is how it was designed.

Which Theme Has The Most Built-in Elements?

It is very hard to say which is the best, but X Theme stands out as having a lot of elements at your disposal.

Having said that, I have made websites with Divi too, but the options are a little more limited (but not significant).

Thrive Themes also has a large range, but they are more marketing focused (so landing pages, optin forms, etc).

In the end you cannot really lose too much with any of them, but if you need a specific element (eg. pricing list, or optin forms) then double check that it comes with it. Some have specific elements like that, others don’t.

Which is the Easiest Theme to Build a Website For a Beginner?

I found Divi very easy to use and create a website with (like my marketing site Entice). It comes with easy to configure layouts, and lots of pre-built options to get you up and running fast.

However, Thrive Content Builder is also very easy to use as it is “what you see is what you get” so you don’t have to guess or preview all the time.

Which is the Most Powerful and Feature-Rich Theme?

I just finished building a very complex and large site for a client here in Switzerland, and we used X Theme with quite a few of the plugins you get with it (Revolution Slider for example).

The stack options (giving you 4 distinct theme sets) as well as the layout power built into the customizer makes this a very powerful (and cheap at $64 one-time payment) Theme option for a more experienced WordPress designer or website owner.

Which Theme is the Best for Conversions (more leads and customers)?

Thrive Themes was built with conversions in mind. It comes with built-in optin forms in the content builder, as well as lots of landing pages (sales pages, squeeze/landing pages, thank you & email confirmation pages).

They have also built the structure  and layout of the themes with conversion in mind, because the company owner is very driven and focused on these topics (as well as website design and speed).

Divi comes second because they also have some built-in landing pages as well.

X Theme has Content Dock plugin (for slide-in optins) and integrated Mailchimp optin forms

NoteL To get full optin form flexibility/options though, I recommend that any website owner uses Thrive Leads which also has built-in integration to almost any email service, 7 optin form options, and A/B testing. It is a great addition to Thrive Themes (or any other theme for that matter).

Which Integrates the Best With Ecommerce?

You have two options to consider if you want to use something like WooCommerce: 

X Theme has 4 unique shop designs.

Divi has a couple of pre-made shop layouts and product pages.

Who Provides The Best Support?

I don’t have enough experience with contacting support for all of these, but the guys atThrive Themes are amazing (fast, helpful, and willing to get onto your site and solve the problem).

I will update this later next week as I need to contact theX Theme guys with an issue I am also having.

In terms of forums the X Theme forums are quite extensive, and so are those from Thrive Themes.

Perhaps it is a testament to how simple Elegant Themes/Divi  is, that I have not needed to call them yet? And I have used about 10 of their themes on various projects.

Final Thoughts

In the showdown between X Theme vs Divi vs Thrive Themes there really is no winner, as it depends on what you want to achieve, what you need on your site, and what kind of help you need building it (website builders, plugins etc).

 

Photo Courtesy of : Maria Georgieva