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Which Shopping Cart is Best ThriveCart or SamCart?

Sezmi

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Marketing and design are two of the most important tasks in e-commerce.

Which shopping cart software are you using to sell digital goods?

Shopify and WooCommerce can be great tools for selling digital products, but they are not perfect in every case.

SamCart and ThriveCart both have a lot of popularity.

The ThriveCart vs. SamCart Comparison will allow you to decide which shopping cart software is best for you. I’ll cover the key features and costs of each service.

About ThriveCart

Our Take

Josh Bartlett started ThriveCart back in 2016 ThriveCart lets store owners sell digital products through custom landing pages. ThriveCart provides many tools to help you optimize your sales funnel and split-test which landing page works well.

SamCart

Our Take

SamCart can be a good choice if your goal is to sell digital products. The choice is up to you. We prefer the former. SamCart or not, it all depends on your specific needs.

SamCart was established in 2014, by Brian Moran. SamCart’s mission mirrors Thrivecart’s: It helps digital marketers sell digital products. You can increase conversion rates and profit by optimizing your sales funnel.

Features

Now let’s see how SamCart compared to ThriveCart. 

What’s the difference between SamCart and ThriveCart?

SamCart, ThriveCart, and other upsell-friendly programs excel in optimizing conversion rates.

• Upsells and Downsells — You can create orders bumps or upsells on both platforms to help increase your revenue per user.
• Notifications about abandoned carts — Contact your email marketing provider to inform visitors about abandoned carts.
• Payment Options – Customers can choose from multiple payment options including coupon codes, trial periods, and pay-whatever they like.
• Shop Cart Options — Add your shopping cart to your site or make a sales funnel.
• Landing Page Builder — Create unique landing pages for single-page or multi-page sales.
• Subscribers — Offer subscription payments to your product/service to generate regular revenue.
• Affiliate Management — Track sales, manage affiliates, and make payments with our in-house affiliate management center.
• A/B testing — Optimize your funnel with design and copy splitting
• Reporting — Monitor clicks, orders, and conversion rates.
• Transaction fees — You do not have to pay additional fees for payment processing unless the customer charges you seller fees.
• Sales Taxes – VAT and Automatic Sales Tax
• API – Both provide an API to access your orders and customers.
• Courses – Now, you don’t need a third party or create your WordPress member site to host your course.

What’s the difference between SamCart and ThriveCart?

• Pricing Model – SamCart charges monthly, and ThriveCart charges a lifetime fee.
• Affiliate Management – Both shopping carts let you create affiliate programs at home, while ThriveCart provides more sophisticated tracking options.

What is unique about ThriveCart?

• One-Time pricing — Thrivecart’s unique model allows you to pay a one-time fee. This could lead to substantial savings in the long term.

1 Order bumping, upsells and downsells

You can increase customer conversions and lifetime value by using SamCart or ThriveCart to create upsell pages or order bumps that encourage customers to buy lower-priced items.

SamCart and ThriveCart both have the same upsell process. Upsell products can be added to various funnels. You can also do A/B testing, and even create different copy versions.

TIE: ThriveCart, SamCart

2. Payment Options

Customers with more payment options convert at a faster rate.

• One-time payments
• Multiple payment plans
• Free Trials
• Price tiers
• Prices that allow you to pay only what you need

Both shopping baskets let you create coupons and even control when they are used. Coupon codes may be applied to different payment plans and include shipping charges.

Both ThriveCart and SamCart support Stripe and Authorize.net as payment gateways. SamCart also supports Braintree.

Mobile payments are an essential part of ecommerce. These payment options can be used via Stripe or Google Pay.

SamCart has a slight advantage over ThriveCart because it uses better payment processors and offers a variety of payment options.

SamCart wins

3. Design Editor & Templates

SamCart or ThriveCart lets you integrate their shopping carts onto your website.

You can create landing pages with SamCart and ThriveCart to sell. Many options are available for landing pages.

• Checkout page standard
• A popup sales page
• Landing page plus checkout (sales cart)

Both SamCart and ThriveCart support multi-step checkout. You can collect billing information and customer information on separate pages from the product page.

SamCart’s landing page templates are superior to ThriveCart. The templates can be targeted to different niches such as fitness or promoting webinars.

SamCart allows you to create and modify templates, as well as add custom HTML.

Thrivecart’s drag-and-drop editor is more flexible than SamCart. You can also share ThriveCart templates so you can purchase high-quality ThriveCart themes online.

SamCart wins

4. Affiliate Management

ThriveCart is an alternative to SamCart if you believe affiliate marketing can be a profitable sales channel.

You can approve affiliates and track sales. Manage customer returns.

SamCart is less flexible. First, affiliate rates can be set per affiliate.

SamCart relies also on UTM parameters to enable affiliates to track their sales. You need this level of tracking if you are looking to recruit skilled affiliate marketers to help grow your business.

SamCart works well for a simple affiliate program. ThriveCart offers more control over commissions and performance tracking.

WINNER: ThriveCart

5. Reporting

SamCart or ThriveCart lets you dig into your analytics and view information like:

• Sales
• Page views
• Orders and Refunds
• Average order value
• Affiliate performance
• Sales tax
• Subscription revenue

View product-level information and compare performance windows

TIE: ThriveCart, SamCart

6. Pricing

Pricing plays an important role in the SamCart vs. ThriveCart argument. ThriveCart is a one-off fee.

The Standard plan includes ThriveCart for $495. You will have to purchase ThriveCart Professional at $690.

• Management and tracking of affiliates
• The calculation for the automatic sales tax
• Multi-client and multiple users may have the same rights
• You can choose a customized domain name for your shopping cart.
• Dunning — Customers who are nearing the expiration of subscriptions should update their payment information to keep them active on ThriveCart.
• Create joint ventures (JV), and contracts to share revenue.

ThriveCart has a simple pricing structure. For those looking to promote it through affiliate marketing, Pro plans may be available.

A customized domain name is a way to measure the conversions of your blog. It’s better than relying upon third-party cookies that are quickly disappearing.

SamCart charges a monthly fee and provides three levels of functionality, depending on what you need.

SamCart gives you a 20% discount for annual payments and offers a 14-day free trial. Launch plans cost $470 annually while Grow plans are $950 annually.

SamCart has many great features, including upsells and order bumps. However, SamCart cannot be white-labelable once you have paid $490 annually.

If you want to customize your shopping cart checkout, the Grow package will be required.

SamCart, ThriveCart, and PayKickstart don’t charge additional payment processing fees. This is an advantage. However, other payment processors like Stripe and Authorize.net still charge transaction fees.

ThriveCart wins in pricing because it charges a single fee. SamCart, on the other hand, is much more costly after the first year.

WINNER: ThriveCart

7. Integrations

Integrations are an important factor when deciding between ThriveCart and SamCart. You can build standalone sales funnels using ThriveCart but there are numerous ways to incorporate SamCart/ThriveCart in your storefront.

The most used shopping cart integrations are

• Automation: Klayvio
• Email: ActiveCampaign, AWeber, ConvertKit, Drip, GetResponse, Hubspot, MailChimp
• Memberships: Kajabi. MemberPress. MemberMouse. WishList
• Website Builders: Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress

The two systems have minor differences, with SamCart supporting more integrations to membership sites than ThirveCart. ThriveCart lets you integrate with Demio webinar software, which SamCart doesn’t support.

Zapier is a tool that can integrate with thousands of third-party apps, such as SamCart and ThriveCart. It isn’t a problem.

TIE: ThriveCart, SamCart

8. Automatizations

SamCart and ThriveCart don’t have built-in automation features. They rely instead on third-party software like ActiveCampaign for automating your sales funnel.

ThriveCart has a wider range of products and affiliate rules. You can add affiliates or customers to specific groups and then send automatic sequences based on their behavior. ActiveCampaign can be integrated to allow you to layer automated rules.

WINNER: ThriveCart

SamCart vs. ThriveCart Feature Comparison

What is better?

BEST OVERALL: ThriveCart

I would recommend ThriveCart over SamCart for its superior affiliate program, pricing, and customer service.

SamCart gets blown away at thrive cart’s affiliate tracking capabilities. SamCart continues to go up in price over time.

SamCart is superior in design-builder and theme selection to all other platforms. Zapier Integration and similar payment options make it possible to seamlessly integrate the two platforms.

SamCart has a slight edge with Braintree’s payment processor support.