TL;DR: Thrive Actions in Thrive Architect and Thrive Leads
New in Thrive: every form you build in Thrive Architect or Thrive Leads now has a Thrive Actions tab. When someone submits the form, it can give them access to a Thrive Apprentice course or start a Thrive Ultimatum countdown just for them.
3 things worth knowing:
- One submit captures the lead and opens the course: offer a free mini-course for an email address, with no second tool and nobody to approve by hand.
- Each person's countdown starts when they ask for it: an evergreen offer starts its own clock for every person who submits the form.
- It all happens in the form editor: add a delay or a condition if you want one, and check the submission log to see what happened on every signup.
If you run a lead magnet or a time-limited offer, this one's worth a few minutes of your time.
Someone finds your free mini-course, types in their email and clicks the button. Your form says thanks and passes their details to your email list, and that's usually where its part ends. Someone still has to open the course for them, whether that's an automation you've set up or you, by hand, once you spot the signup.
Until now, if you wanted a form to open a course, you needed Thrive Automator or another automation tool.
So I'm excited to share this one: your forms can now finish the job themselves, with Thrive Actions.
Thrive Actions is a new tab in your form settings in Thrive Architect and Thrive Leads. You choose what should happen when someone submits, such as opening a Thrive Apprentice course or starting a Thrive Ultimatum countdown, and from then on the form does it for every person who signs up. Here's what that opens up.
One Form, Two Jobs
Your form already captures the lead. Now the same submit can move that person forward as well, so the moment they sign up becomes the moment they start.
Here's what that puts in your hands:
The lead and the lesson arrive together: one submit captures the email and opens the course, and nobody waits on you to let them in.
Each person gets their own deadline: an evergreen countdown starts when someone asks for it, so every visitor gets the full offer window, whenever they happen to find you.
Nothing new to learn: you set it up in the form editor you already use, in Thrive Architect or Thrive Leads.
Your other connections keep working: the same submit can still go to your email service and to a webhook, and if one connection fails, the others still run.
One form can treat people differently: a condition decides who gets the action, and a delay decides when it happens.
Put together, a signup becomes someone's first step into your course instead of a name waiting on your list.
What One Signup Looks Like Now
The easiest way to show you what this changes is to follow one person through it. So we set up a free four-week strength course on a demo site, with one signup form that opens the course and starts a member offer, and signed up as a visitor called Jordan. Here's that one signup from both sides of the screen.
What Jordan sees: a page offering the free course, with a short signup form. They type in their name and email and click Start My Free Course.
What's behind the form: in Thrive Architect, that same form has two Thrive Actions saved on it. One opens the free course, and the other starts a seven-day member offer.
What lands in Jordan's inbox: as soon as the course opens, Thrive Apprentice sends its Course Welcome email, with a link to log in, a link straight to the course and their username.
What Jordan sees on their next visit: a countdown for the seven-day member offer, running for them alone, so their offer window started the moment they signed up.
What you see: the form's submission log shows both actions fired. Open a row and it tells you exactly what happened, in this case that Jordan was given the course and a new account was created from the email they submitted.
All of that came from one submit, and nobody had to step in. Now for the bigger picture, because a free course is only one of the things a form can do with Thrive Actions.
Two Actions, Each With an On and an Off
Thrive Actions can do two things, and each one works in both directions. That means your forms can handle more than the first signup, like the day someone leaves a waitlist or asks to pause their access.
When you click + Add Thrive Action, you'll see both:
Here's what each one does when someone submits the form:
Action
Thrive Apprentice access: Grant
What happens when someone submits the form
Opens the course or bundle you chose. If there's no account for that email yet, Thrive Apprentice creates one first. Submitting twice never grants twice.
Action
Thrive Apprentice access: Revoke
What happens when someone submits the form
Removes access to the course or bundle and keeps all of their progress.
Action
Thrive Ultimatum campaign: Start
What happens when someone submits the form
Starts the countdown of a running evergreen campaign for that person. If the campaign uses a top ribbon, they'll see it on their next visit. The countdown follows their email address, so they don't need an account.
Action
Thrive Ultimatum campaign: End
What happens when someone submits the form
Ends that person's countdown.
That covers more than a free course. A waitlist form can grant a bundle when someone joins, and a second form can revoke it when they ask to leave. A "pause my access" form can revoke a course and end a countdown in one go, because a form can hold one Thrive Apprentice action and one Thrive Ultimatum action at the same time. Each form holds one action per product, so you grant on one form and revoke on another.
Between grant and revoke, start and end, you're covered from the day someone signs up to the day they step away. And because their progress stays, everything's still there if they come back.
Set It Up Without Leaving the Form Editor
Because Thrive Actions lives in the form's own settings, adding one feels like connecting your form to anything else. There's no separate screen to find and no code to write, and the whole setup takes a few clicks:
- In Thrive Architect, click your form to select it, then click the Thrive Actions tab under Connection. For a Thrive Leads form, go to Thrive Leads » My Forms, open the form's three-dot menu and click Edit form, then select the form and open the same tab.
- Click + Add Thrive Action and choose Apprentice access (for Thrive Apprentice) or Ultimatum campaign (for Thrive Ultimatum).
- Choose Grant access or Revoke access (or Start campaign or End campaign), then pick the course or bundle, or the campaign.
- Click Continue, then click Save Work in Thrive Architect, or Save changes in Thrive Leads.
Your saved actions show up as cards on the tab, each marked Active, with a line telling you when it fires.
Two tips before you publish:
Switch on spam protection for Grant access forms.
Anyone can submit a form, and a Grant access form creates accounts, so the window recommends spam protection. Click Enable spam protection to switch on Thrive spam protection, which helps stop bots from creating accounts through your form.
Tell new students how to log in.
The Grant access action creates the student's account and opens the course, but it doesn't log them in or send them a password. Thrive Apprentice's Course Welcome email takes care of that part, and it's the email Jordan got in the example above. In Thrive Apprentice, open the course and check that Enable Course Welcome E-mail is switched on (new courses have it on already). Then make sure the New Course Welcome template includes a login link and a way to set a password, such as the [set_password] link, so the email they get right after signing up tells them how to get in. (This guide shows where to find both.)
From the next signup on, the course opens and the welcome email goes out, whether you're at your desk or not.
For every setting in one place, check out How to Use Thrive Actions to Grant Apprentice Access and Start Ultimatum Campaigns From a Form in our Knowledge Base.
Make It Wait, or Make It Choose
Some follow-ups land better a few days after someone signs up, and some offers are only right for certain people. Two optional switches in the same window handle both: a delay decides when an action runs, and a condition decides who it runs for. Both start switched off, so until you turn one on, the action runs as soon as the form is submitted.
Time delay: switch on Time delay and choose how many minutes, hours, days, weeks or months after the submission it should run. That's how you'd unlock a bonus course three days after someone joins, or open an offer two days after they sign up. The action waits in the background and runs once the delay has passed.
Add a condition: switch on Add a condition, pick one form field, choose equals, does not equal or contains, and type the value. The action only runs when the submission matches.
Say your free course signup form asks whether someone has trained before. The Grant access action can open the course for everyone straight away, while a Start campaign action, set to wait two days and with a condition on that answer, starts your membership offer only for the people who said yes.
So one form can do the work of several, and each follow-up arrives when it makes sense for that person.
For every option with examples, see How to Add a Condition and a Delay to a Thrive Action.
See What Happened on Every Submission
Sooner or later, someone emails to say they signed up but can't see the course. With the submission log, you can answer that yourself in a minute instead of guessing: click All logs on the Thrive Actions tab and search for their email.
Here's what the log gives you:
Here's a skipped row from the demo. Jordan signed up a second time, so the countdown that was already running for them wasn't started again:
That turns "I can't get in" into a quick look you can do yourself, with the reason sitting right there in the row.
For what each status means and how to fix a failed run, see How to Read the Submission Log for Thrive Actions.
Smart Defaults That Protect Your Students and Your Setup
A form that hands out course access has to behave when real people use it, like when someone signs up twice, when you change your mind about an action, or when something on your site isn't set up right. Thrive Actions handles these for you, so you can switch an action on and get back to your work:
Who Benefits Most From Thrive Actions
If you build forms in Thrive Architect or Thrive Leads, Thrive Actions is ready for you as soon as you update. Here are a few examples of who will feel the difference first, and what it could look like for them:
Course creators with a lead magnet: offer a free mini-course in exchange for an email address. Every signup gets the course and your Course Welcome email right away, and you get a new lead with a real reason to come back to your site.
Membership owners running time-limited offers: start an evergreen offer, like a seven-day member offer, from a signup or "tell me more" form. Each person gets the full window from the moment they ask, and with a delay, the offer can wait until they've had a couple of days with your free content.
Agencies and freelancers building for clients: build a course-unlock form in the editor your client already knows. There's no extra plugin on the client's site to install or support, and your client can check the log themselves when a student says they can't get in.
Thrive Actions FAQs
Here are quick answers to a few questions you might have before you add your first action.
Do I still need Thrive Automator for this?
For this job, no. Thrive Actions take the place of the Thrive Automator recipe that grants access when a form is submitted, so that job now lives in the form itself.
How do new students log in after a Grant access form?
Through the Course Welcome email. Switch it on for the course and include a login link and a way to set a password, as covered in the setup tips above.
Can one form grant and revoke access?
Each form holds one action per product, so use one form to grant and another to revoke. One form can still hold a Thrive Apprentice action and a Thrive Ultimatum action together.
Why isn't my Thrive Ultimatum campaign in the list?
Only evergreen campaigns that are running are listed. If yours is missing, check that it's evergreen and start it in Thrive Ultimatum, then open the dropdown again.
Does it work with Thrive Leads forms?
Yes. Open the form from Thrive Leads » My Forms with Edit form, and you'll find the same Thrive Actions tab under Connection.
Turn On Thrive Actions Today
Thrive Actions is live now, so if your Thrive plugins are up to date, the tab is already waiting in your form settings.
- Update your Thrive plugins from your WordPress dashboard.
- Open a form in Thrive Architect or Thrive Leads and click the Thrive Actions tab.
- Click + Add Thrive Action, choose what should happen and save.
Then sign up through your own form once and open All logs. When your test email shows up next to Fired, that's your course opening on its own, and it'll do the same for every signup after it.
And if you also sell through a checkout on another site, Incoming Webhooks in Thrive Apprentice opens courses for your buyers the same way. Between the two, a course can open whether someone signs up on your site or pays somewhere else.
We have more announcements coming, so stay tuned.
We're always working to make Thrive Suite a better platform for your business, and updates like these are exactly how we do it — one well-built improvement at a time.
— Angie & The Thrive Themes Team
P.S. Don't have Thrive Suite yet? If you'd love your signup forms to hand out courses and offers on their own, join here and come join the fun.
