Product Updates

Thrive Themes Is Joining the Awesome Motive Family

Today, I’m excited to announce that Thrive Themes is joining the Awesome Motive team led by Syed Balkhi.

This is a big step for Thrive Themes and the future of this company.

It’s a big milestone and as one of the founders, it sometimes still seems unreal to me that the company has grown as much as it has.

Paul and I launched the first Thrive Themes product (back then called “Thrive Content Builder”) all the way back in 2013. When we started, we were the almost perfect image of the scrappy startup: 2 guys working out of a garage…

…except there was no garage. We were working out of a little apartment that we shared. 

Thrive Content Builder wasn’t our first product, but as soon as we launched it, we could tell that this one was different. There was more demand for it than for any other product we’d ever created. There was palpably more excitement around it, too.

We kept working on the plugin, started expanding the team, started adding new products and built what would eventually become Thrive Suite.

In the early years, I was the face of Thrive Themes in many ways. I even sometimes get recognized by strangers and they invariably know me as “the Thrive Themes guy”.

From the outside, it may have looked like I am Thrive Themes and Thrive Themes is me. But that is giving me far too much credit.

From my insider perspective, it has always been crystal clear: the story of Thrive Themes is not my story.

Even in the early years, the growth we experienced was only possible thanks to the team we started gathering. And the direction Thrive Themes grew in was only possible thanks to the enthusiastic, active and switched on crowd of customers and supporters we’ve always been blessed with.

Thrive Themes grew fast. Sometimes almost too fast. And along the way, I learned that I’m quite good at building a scrappy little startup, but I’m rather rubbish at managing a team of 50+ people.

That’s why delegation was the name of the game, for many years. My work was about finding people who are better than me at various things and helping them take over my roles in the company.

And soon, there were no more roles to replace. It’s with great pride that I say that my involvement in Thrive Themes has been minimal in the last 2+ years. 

This team consists of people who can do everything I can do, but better. So much so that I’ve considered my role in Thrive Themes to be “Nr. 1 Fan” for quite some time now.

Today, I’m officially and fully stepping out and handing the reins over to Awesome Motive.

With a transition like this come many questions, so let me take a moment to answer them.

Who is Awesome Motive?

Awesome Motive is a company started by Syed Balkhi of WPBeginner fame. Their mission is to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys – which has always been our kind of thing at Thrive Themes, as well.

Even if you’ve never heard of Awesome Motive before, you’ve almost certainly seen or used some of their products.

They’re behind some of the most popular plugins and resources in the WordPress space, including:

  • WPBeginner – the largest free WordPress resource site for beginners.
  • OptinMonster – popular conversion optimization software that helps you convert abandoning visitors into subscribers and customers.
  • WPForms – the most beginner friendly WordPress form builder.
  • MonsterInsights – the most popular WordPress Analytics plugin that helps you grow your business with confidence.
  • AIOSEO - the original WordPress SEO plugin to help you get more traffic.
  • WP Mail SMTP – the #1 plugin that helps improve your WordPress email deliverability.
  • SeedProd – drag & drop landing page builder for WordPress.
  • RafflePress – powerful WordPress giveaway and contest plugin to grow your website traffic.
  • Smash Balloon – the most popular social media feeds plugin for WordPress.
  • PushEngage - leading web push notification software for small businesses.
  • SearchWP - the most advanced WordPress search plugin.
  • AffiliateWP - leading WordPress affiliate management plugin.
  • Easy Digital Downloads - leading eCommerce plugin for selling digital products.
  • WP Simple Pay - simple WordPress payment plugin that lets you accept online payments without creating a shopping cart.
  • WPCode - the most popular code snippets plugin for WordPress.
  • Sendlayer - powerful SMTP email delivery service for websites and apps.
  • … and many more.

Syed Balkhi, the founder of Awesome Motive, is perhaps the most skilled entrepreneur in the WordPress space and I doubt there’s anyone with more experience or know-how when it comes to running, growing and improving a business like Thrive Themes.

We also share one key value: putting people first.

Of course, every company says they care about their people and their customers, but anyone who has worked closely with Thrive Themes or with Awesome Motive knows: for us, this is not just lip service.

As you can probably see now, this is a core reason why I decided to take the step of passing on ownership of Thrive Themes. I believe that the best thing I can do for the growth of this company as well as for the team and the customers is to put it into the best hands in the market.

What Does This Change Mean for Existing Users?

First, let me tell you what it doesn’t mean:

  • Thrive Themes won’t be re-branded to something else.
  • Thrive Themes plugins won’t be renamed or replaced.
  • We won’t suddenly change how we operate, hike prices on existing customers or anything else very non-Thrive like that. 
  • Grandfathered memberships will continue to be honored for our loyal customers who have stayed with us over the years. It has always been our policy to reward loyal customers and that will not change.

Yes, the owners of Thrive Themes are changing, but for the most part, it will be business as usual.

Like I mentioned before, I’ve been watching Thrive Themes from the sidelines for a long time anyway. So my stepping away changes nothing on that front. And the team – the people who have brought you all of our amazing products, features, upgrades and content – they stay the same.

Brad will be leading the Thrive Themes team, with the support and mentorship of Syed Balkhi, to continue delivering the level of value you’re used to from us. This too, is not a change in any way since Brad was going to take on this leadership role anyway, after proving himself over the many years he’s worked with us.

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.

What the change of ownership means is that Thrive Themes is now integrated in a larger family of products and companies, and the team has access to a rich pool of expertise and experience.

Awesome Motive will help Thrive Themes grow better and faster than before and I’m sure you’ll see some of this starting to play out soon.

Thank You

Whenever I think about Thrive Themes, how far we’ve come and what may come next, I always arrive at the same emotion: gratitude.

I can’t express how grateful I am to have had the opportunity to build a company like this. How grateful I am for the people I met and worked with through this company. For the countless memories I have of difficult times and good times. I’m thankful for our customers, who made all of this possible and who have generally been a delight to work with.

As a founder, this has been an adventure for me and it was never just a job. I’m grateful that I get to say: for many years, this was my life.

Yes, this sounds cheesy, but it’s the truth. Ask some of the team members who’ve been around for a while, and they’ll probably remember me choking up while trying to express just how grateful I am during one of our team meetings.

Equally, I’m grateful to be able to acknowledge that the company outgrew me and to have found who I think of as the perfect new owner for Thrive Themes.

And so, when I try to think of how to end this blog post in the most appropriate way possible, all I can think of is:

Thank you.

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Build Your Site

JPEG vs PNG: How to Choose the Right Format (Without Guessing)

Think image format doesn’t matter? It does. More than most website owners realize.

Nearly half of all visitors will leave if your site takes longer than 3 seconds to load. And oversized images saved in the wrong format are one of the main reasons why.

I used to think it didn’t make a difference either, until I studied design at university. That’s when I realized how much image formats impact page speed, visual clarity, and even conversions.

But don’t worry, you don’t need a design degree to get it right. That’s what this guide is for.

By the end of this post, you’ll know exactly when to use JPEG vs PNG, how to keep your images looking sharp, and how to speed up your site without sacrificing quality.

Table of Contents
What Are JPEG and PNG, Really?
How They Compress: Lossy vs. Lossless (And Why It Matters)
📌 The Quick Rule I Always Come Back To
But Why Does it Matter?
JPEG and PNG Image Compression
PNG for Crisp Graphics
The “Not Sure Which One” Case
How to Compress Your Images
What About webp & Other Image Formats?
Over to You


Let's start with the basics:

What Are JPEG and PNG, Really?

For a long time, the terms meant nothing to me. And honestly, unless you're dealing with web design or image optimization, they probably won’t matter — until they suddenly do.

Here’s what I eventually learned:

JPEG (short for Joint Photographic Experts Group) is the go-to format for photos. It does a great job shrinking down image files by compressing them and removing some of the visual data. It’s efficient and fast — but that compression comes at a cost, especially if you’re dealing with text or sharp details.

PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is designed for graphics, not photos. It keeps all the image data intact, so the quality stays crisp even after multiple saves. It also supports transparency, which is a big deal when you want a logo or icon to sit cleanly on any background.

So while they’re both common image formats, they’re built for very different purposes. And using the wrong one can slow down your site or make your images look fuzzier than they should.

How They Compress: Lossy vs. Lossless (And Why It Matters)

Once I understood what JPEG and PNG were, the next big piece of the puzzle was how they actually store image data — and why one file might be ten times bigger than another even if they look exactly the same.

Here’s the short version:

JPEG uses lossy compression.
It shrinks your image file by throwing out some of the visual data. It’s smart about it — it gets rid of details most people won’t notice — but the more you compress, the more noticeable the quality drop becomes. That’s why JPEG is perfect for photos but not great for graphics or anything with sharp edges and text.


PNG uses lossless compression.
It keeps every pixel intact, so the image stays crisp and clean no matter how many times you save it. That makes it ideal for logos, icons, screenshots — anything where clarity and transparency are more important than a small file size.

So whenever you're deciding between the two, you're really asking:

Do I need to save space, or do I need to preserve quality?

Once you start thinking in those terms, the choice becomes a lot easier.

📌 The Quick Rule I Always Come Back To

If you only remember one thing from this post, let it be this:

👉 Use JPEG for photos. Use PNG for graphics.

That simple rule has saved me so much trial and error over the years — especially when I needed to keep a site fast without sacrificing visual quality.

Here’s how I think about it:

  • Photos (like landscapes, headshots, product images) → JPEG
    Smaller file sizes, no one notices a little compression

  • Graphics (like logos, icons, screenshots, text overlays) → PNG
    Clean lines, clear text, and support for transparency

It’s not a perfect rule, but it works 95% of the time — and when in doubt, I’ll test both formats and compare.

But Why Does it Matter?

When you compare an image in JPG and PNG side by side, you will probably not be able to tell the difference. So, if there's no perceptible difference between the images, why not just save everything as JPEG and be done with it?

The answer is: image compression.

Image compression is about reducing the file size of an image as much as possible, without compromising the image data and quality too much. In general, stronger compression = smaller file size = worse image quality. Good image compression is about finding a good trade off between file size and quality.

It's all well and good to look at a high-res picture on your computer. The file is uncompressed and because it's saved on your hard drive you can open it in an instant. But if that same file is on a website, it has to be downloaded. Even on a fast connection, large image files can take several seconds to load. And when it comes to website speed and conversion rates, you don't have several seconds to spare...

JPEG and PNG Image Compression

So, images need to be compressed and in the compression the differences between JPEG and PNG become clearer.

JPEG uses a method of compression that groups together multiple similar pixels and kind of blurs the lines between things. This works fine for photographs, but looks horrible for graphics and screenshots.

Here's what strong JPEG compression does to a graphic:

Crying face emoji with "Needs More JPEG" text.

Those fuzzy outlines and the ghosting around the text are telltale signs of JPEG compression on a file that should have been a PNG.

Here's what the same image looks like when saved as a PNG:

Crying face png emoji with "Needs More JPEG" text.

The reverse isn't quite as bad. If you save a photograph as PNG and compress it, it will still look fine. Take a closer look at gradients and you'll detect some graininess, but it's nothing too bad. The problem here is file size: a JPEG photograph can be compressed to a small file size without much loss in quality, while the PNG just can't be crunched down as much.

Here's how our example files from before compare, after compression:

JPEG and PNG landscape examples after compression

The JPEG image is now well under 1 MB, which is acceptable for a large, main image on the page (you wouldn't want to load many more images of this size, though). The PNG's image quality is still okay, but the file size is about 25% larger than it needs to be.

PNG for Crisp Graphics

Note that if you save a graphic or screenshot as JPEG and compress it heavily, you can achieve a smaller file size than with a compressed PNG. In this case, you should choose image quality over file size: the PNG will look crisper and clearer than a JPEG of equal file size. And it will look much crisper and clearer than a JPEG of smaller file size.

Here's a side by side comparison: compressed JPEG vs. compressed PNG with similar file sizes.

Compressed JPEG example - different image format

JPEG version. File size: 64 KB. Click to zoom.

Compressed PNG example

PNG version. File size: 65 KB. Click to zoom.

Compare these images and see how you feel. You may find yourself insensitive to the fuzziness in the JPEG image, but as I mentioned in the video, to some of us, this is torture...

The “Not Sure Which One” Case

Sometimes, you have an image that doesn't clearly fall into either the "photograph" or the "graphic" category. For example, a screenshot that contains text and sharp lines, but also photographs, like this one:

Screenshot showing text, background shapes and photographs - image format

This example is taken from our "Chic" landing page set for Thrive Architect.

In the case of a screenshot, it's almost always best to save it as PNG. That way, we retain the crispness and readability of the text in the image.

In other uncertain cases, it's best to save the image in both formats, compress them and compare file sizes and visual quality to make the decision of which format to upload to your site.

How to Compress Your Images

Here are some services and tools you can use for image compression:

  • Kraken.io - Excellent image compression while retaining high image quality.
  • The Kraken WordPress plugin - to automatically compress images you upload to your site (note: our themes have this feature built in).
  • WP Smush - another WordPress plugin that auto-compresses your images.
  • Compress PNG - a free image compressor that offers excellent results

What About webp & Other Image Formats?

Beyond JPEG and PNG, there’s one format that’s gaining real traction: WebP.

It was developed by Google specifically for web use, and it often delivers smaller file sizes than both JPEG and PNG — while keeping image quality surprisingly high. It also supports transparency and even animations in some cases.

I’ve started using WebP more often on websites where speed really matters — hero images, blog featured images, product photos — because the difference in load time adds up across pages.

The catch? Not every design tool supports it (yet). But if your theme or image optimizer does, it's worth exploring.

Feature

JPEG

PNG

WebP

Compression Type

Lossy

Lossless

Lossy & Lossless available

File Size

Smallest

Larger

Smallest (usually)

Image Quality

Degrades with repeated saves

Stays sharp

Stays sharp, even smaller

Transparency Support?

❌ No

✅ Yes

✅ Yes

Best For

Photos, image-heavy content

Graphics, text, logos, screenshots

Both — optimized for the web

Over to You

You are now armed with the knowledge and the tools to choose the right image format and keep your website fast and beautiful looking.

Want more awesome tips to take your website to the next level?

If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment below!

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Build Your Business

Membership vs. One-Off Courses – Which is the Better Business Model?

If you want to create an information product business, should you sell individual courses or create a membership site?

The answer seems simple: go for the membership! After all, who doesn't want to get paid every month, forever more?

In reality, things aren't quite that straight forward, though. Read on to find out what the best solution really is...

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Success Stories

Website Makeover: How We Moved a Website from Wix to WordPress & Obliterated its Bounce Rate

For this case study we moved a website from Wix to WordPress. Moving from a totally different platform to WordPress is quite challenging and as a result, there are many interesting lessons in this case study.

For example, you'll discover how we completed a whole website redesign and built out an entire mini-site using just Thrive Architect and the Symbols feature. I'll also explain exactly what we did to fix the one BIG problem the site had (as well as the many little ones).

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Build Your Site

The One-Two Punch of Entertainment and Insight – Content Sensei, Part 2

What makes great content great?

To find out, we want to learn from the master. And the master is some awesome content, in this case. We already had a go at this in part 1 and today we're back with a second example of an expertly crafted article and lessons we can learn from it.

The article's title is a mouthful: Why UX, UI, CX, IA, IxD, and Other Sorts of Design Are Dumb

This article deals with a niche topic related to design, but even if you don't know the first thing about design,you should stick around. There are gems in here that will help you improve your content marketing, no matter what you write about.

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Build Your Mailing List

Are You Stuck in Old-School Email Marketing? Here’s Our 3-Part Solution

Too many online marketers are still trying (and inevitably failing) to succeed with old-school email marketing.

A lot of email marketing advice is based on outdated methods and most list-building tools have failed to stay up to date with the changing landscape of email marketing.

In today's video, you'll discover the 3 most important things you can do to bring your list building up to date (and the features in Thrive Leads that help you do it).

This post follows our Upgrade Opt-in Week, in which we released a series of new opt-in form templates for our users. Now, it's time to not only upgrade your opt-in form designs, but also how you use them.

What is Old School Email Marketing?

Old-school email marketing is a common atrategy that made many people wealthy in the early days of online business. It goes like this:

Step 1: on your website, focus all your efforts on getting leads. Do whatever you can to get people to subscribe to your mailing list.

Step 2: once they're on your mailing list, hit those subscribers with promotional messages and affiliate links, non-stop.

Back when email was a relatively new thing, this worked like a charm. Through the email channel, you had people's (almost) undivided attention. And because there was so little competition, it was easy to build up a large list and simply burn your subscribers out with promotional messages. You'd lose many subscribers, but on the whole, more promotion equaled more revenue.

I even remember a particular marketer's advice to send multiple emails a day, simply because he saw his revenue increase when he emailed more often. Were his subscribers annoyed? Most of them, probably. But his bottom line didn't care.

Nowadays, this approach has become ineffective. The average user gets over 100 emails per day, so your subscribers' attention is everything but undivided. Average click-through rates have sunk to low single digits in most industries. And on top of that, promotional messages are automatically sorted away by various filters and algorithms.

As a result of all this, the old-school approach simply isn't effective anymore.

What Works Now?

Email marketing has become relationship marketing. You have to earn the attention of people in your audience.

Email is a great way to create ongoing communication with your audience and to get people to return to your website. Email is also still a strong driver of revenue for most businesses. But you can't take for granted that an email subscriber cares about you, your business or your messages.

What you can do is make use of one of the oldest rules of sales: it takes multiple interactions between a person and a brand or product before that person is ready to make a purchase.

Email is how you can facilitate these multiple interactions. Use it for your content marketing. Use it to send people useful, relevant content and bring them back to your site repeatedly.

Instead of trying to hit people over the head with sales messages, give people a good reason to visit your website and let your website convince them to become customers (incidentally, this is also a GDPR friendly approach to email marketing).

Upgrade #1: Different Content For Your Subscribers

If you want to use your email marketing as a channel to get turn one-time visitors into return visitors, this first strategy is crucial. The goal here is that:

  1. When a new visitor comes to your website, you can optimize for lead generation.
  2. When an existing subscriber comes to your website, you can optimize for something else.

This "something else" can be one of many things. Maybe you just want to have them engage with your content, share it on social media or leave a comment. In this case, you can show them a "clear" website without opt-in offers and interruptions.

Or maybe you have a beginner/ToFu opt-in offer that you show to new visitors and a more advanced/BoFu offer you show to existing subscribers, to get them to progress in your funnel.

Or, as shown in the video, you have an opt-in offer showing to new visitors and an ad for a premium product such as an online course, which you display for people who've already subscribed to your list.

In any case, the one thing you should absolutely stop doing is to ask your subscribers to subscribe!

The feature in Thrive Leads that makes this possible is called SmartLinks. Whenever you send a link to your site or one of your blog posts in an email, generate a SmartLink first. Click here to learn more about SmartLinks.

Upgrade #2: A/B Test All The Things

Which of the 225 templates we released over the last 7 days is the best one? What converts better: a lightbox opt-in form or a Scroll Mat? Should you show your opt-in overlays immediately or after 10 seconds? Or maybe only when the visitor is about to leave? Will a 2-step opt-in increase your conversions?

The answer to all of these questions is: no one knows.

Sure, there are countless examples and case studies that show one type of opt-in form performing better than another. But for most of these, you can also find a case study that proves the opposite (for example, here's an article that shows how more form fields can sometimes increase conversions).

This is because conversion optimization is extremely context dependent. It depends on your website, your visitors, your industry and countless other factors.

The only way to know what really works best for your business and on your website is to test.

In Thrive Leads, you can A/B test everything. Every single one of the questions above can be answered via A/B testing in our plugin. You can test different form types against each other, test different trigger, different copy, different designs... you name it.


Plus, we've made testing not only possible, but also convenient. Check out the video to see an example of a "lazy" test you can run. And here's a post with another such lazy test that yielded surprising results.

Upgrade #3: Improve Your Lead Quality

It's one thing to get more email leads, but it's another to get higher quality email leads.

Ideally, you can have both. The best way to ensure that you get higher quality leads is to increase the targeting and relevance in your opt-in offers.

The basic and bare minimum for any website is to have a single, generic opt-in offer. A catch-all that is related to your business in general and hopefully appeals to most people in your market.

Once you have that, start thinking about adding more specific opt-in offers. To use the example from the video: on a photography themed website, you may offer a guide to optimizing photographs for Instagram as well as a gear guide. These two offers appeal to different segments of your market.

By sending subscribers to different mailing lists or tagging them based on the offer they signed up for, you can send them more targeted, more relevant content.

In Thrive Leads, you can use the targeting feature to show specific opt-in offers based on posts, pages, tags, categories and so on. Or you can create multiple choice opt-in forms and let visitors self-segment.


In either case, the most important thing is what happens after someone subscribes. You can increase lead quality by sending specific content and follow-up messages that are tailored to the segments in your market.

What's Your Next Step?

With this, we've rounded off our Upgrade Opt-in Week.

Now it's up to you: which of the new templates will you use to breathe new life into your site's lead generation? And which of the techniques shown in this post are you going to apply first, to take your email marketing to the next level?

Let us know by leaving a comment below!

Shane
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Build Your Site

Write Content Like a Boss: What We Can Learn from the (Almost) Perfect Article

If you can write content like this, the world's your oyster.

The content I'm referring to is this article by Precision Nutrition titled: The Ketogenic Diet - Does it Live Up to The Hype?

No matter how you roll with your food preferences, if you do any content writing, this article is a must read. And in today's video, we'll explore exactly what makes this article so brilliant and excavate some valuable lessons for our own content marketing.

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Build Your Site

Building the “I Can’t Believe it’s Not Photoshop!” Homepage from Scratch

The topic for today's landing page build is "I can't believe it's not Photoshop!"

​If that sounds familiar, you're right: we've created a page with this theme before. The great thing about this page build is that it shows you many tricks and advanced effects you can apply, using Thrive Architect.

And of course, we're stepping things up this time around. We're presenting a whole new set of visual design tricks and we've created an entire set of landing pages for you to download.

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Build Your Site

Gradients in Thrive Architect: How to (& How NOT to) Use Them

With Thrive Architect, you can add custom color gradients to any element that has a background. You can even create gradients as overlays on top of images or background patterns.

In this tutorial, we'll take a quick tour through all of the gradient features. Then, we'll take a look at the dos and don'ts of using color gradients in web design, so that your results will loo pro.

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Build Your Site

How to Create Typographic Magazine-Style Layouts

For a conversion focused website, there's nothing more important than text. Your words need to be convincing. If they aren't, nothing else you do on your site matters.

But words don't only have to be convincing. As you'll see in this tutorial, letters, words and typography can become a design element in their own right. Watch the video to see how you can create text layouts with a serious wow-factor!

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