ThriveCart In-depth Review: Is It Worth Your Money?

It seems to be correctly predicted that by 2024, e-commerce retail sales will exceed 6.3 trillion dollars as each day is passing, malls and shopping centers are dying quickly and more and more e-commerce businesses are opening their doors virtually.

You will all agree that selling digital products online used to be much more complicated than it is today!

To help you sell your digital products, now there are hundreds of shopping cart software options to choose from, including Shopify, WooCommerce, SamCart and one new in the market— ThriveCart.

To help you sell your digital products, there are now hundreds of shopping cart software options to choose from, including Shopify, WooCommerce, SamCart and ThriveCart—which is new in the marketplace.

So, if you came here wondering specifically about ThriveCart, it means you too are considering selling products on your own blog or website and looking for the right online shopping cart solution, right! Well, on this, let us first congratulate you as you have taken a great step.

Now, focusing on your concern whether ThriveCart is the best solution for your e-commerce business, we suggest you read this ThriveCart review thoroughly as it discusses this versatile cart software and its functionality in depth.

So, without wasting any second further, let’s dive into the details—

Note: This review is based on a thorough analysis of the ThriveCart software, including its capabilities, pricing plans, its integration support, and its pros and cons that have been figured out so far.

“If you run an e-commerce website and haven’t yet integrated it with a shopping cart solution, then ThriveCart may suit you well.” 

However, it is worth noting that the company reportedly claims that it is still developing the ThriveCart platform and will make it available in the near future. 

But, on the other hand, it turns out that there have been several ThriveCart software reviews posted on the web by online merchants who claim to have already used the solution.

So, first thing first—

Is ThriveCart Available or Not? 

Well, the answer to this question can be both yes and no. This is because the ThriveCart membership platform is available, but only partially. It is still in the development phase and thus, is only available through its pilot program at a heavily discounted one-time fee.

Note: The Company is currently working on final changes, and it seems like they’re gearing up for the final roll-out.

Although ThriveCart’s main commercial version is yet to go live at full capacity, it has already made a significant impact on the market!

So, keeping that in mind, we came up with an in-depth review of ThriveCart so that all entrepreneurs out there can make the right decision while choosing a shopping cart solution for their e-commerce business.

Introducing ThriveCart

For those who do not know, or are new to the ThriveCart platform, let’s tell you that it is a handy tool to sell physical and digital products, including online courses, e-books and videos.

With it, one can collect leads as well as design checkout page upsells and bump offers to maximize sales. In addition, ThriveCart is explicitly built to provide access to robust email marketing integrations to automate the delivery of products. Not only this, it also supports subscription plans and categorizes customers on the basis of their subscription plans.

Overall, ThriveCart is designed with in mind to help e-commerce businesses sell products and services on their websites.  Thus, it has everything including built-in affiliate management tools that help boost sales and revenue.

It was founded in the year 2016 by Josh Bartlett and over a span of 6 years—ThriveCart’s official website claims that it has helped as many as 212,000+ entrepreneurs, generated revenue of over $2.0 billion in sales and sold 13.6 MILLION+ products so far.

ThriveCart Details

Type	Checkout Platform
Product Description:	ThriveCart is a shopping cart platform that enables businesses to increase revenue with high converting cart pages.
Seller:	ThriveCart
Company Website:	ThriveCart.com
Year Founded:	2016
HQ Location:	Rossland, BC
Twitter:	@ThriveCart
LinkedIn® Page:	www.linkedin.com

Who Is ThriveCart For?

It’s simple—do you want to sell products and services through your website? If the answer is yes, then ThriveCart is for you. To be more precise, ThriveCart is a very versatile online shopping cart and it will work for you, if—

• You are an online entrepreneur
• You run a membership site
• You run a consulting business
• You sell information products such as online courses, e-books, software, audio books, etc.
• You sell physical products that require shipping
• You sell recurring subscription products that require monthly rebilling
• Your digital marketing agency runs campaigns for other businesses

So, basically, ThriveCart is for everyone with an online business, whether you are an e-commerce store, a blogger or an entrepreneur.

Conversely, ThriveCart is “Not” suitable for you, if—

• The payment providers like PayPal and Stripe are not supported and used in your country.
• Your business does not involve selling any type of product online.
• There are *multiple* physical products in your online store. 

With regard to the last one, you need to note that ThriveCart can sell physical products as well, but this only works well if you have a handful of products because things will get more complicated if you have a more extensive library.

Although you can set up each of them in ThriveCart with a dedicated checkout link, let’s not forget the fact that this platform is primarily built for digital.

Tip: In this case, Shopify or WooCommerce would be the right option for you. You use sites like these to display your products and then link them to a ThriveCart checkout.

Despite knowing this, we suggest you don’t be disappointed because thankfully ThriveCart is working on an update for physical products, allowing users more flexibility when selling physical products.

Well, this is one of the reasons that make ThriveCart a worthy contender for a spot in the list of best shopping cart platforms on the market.

What Does ThriveCart Do? ThriveCart Top Functionalities

Part of the reason ThriveCart is considered a highly recommended tool for all types of online entrepreneurs is that it boasts to offer a lot of top functionalities. But, we have narrowed down what ThriveCart can do to the following:

This creates a high-converting checkout page

Captures leads through a two-step shopping cart

It makes one-click bump offers and upsells

Offers embeddable and pop-up cart pages

Manages recurring subscriptions

ThriveCart Powerful Features

ThriveCart has a lot of “must have” features and unless you take a closer look at those features, you won’t be able to understand how it works. So, in this section, let’s make you more familiar with the ThriveCart platform by highlighting the key features—

Well, this is one area where ThriveCart really excels. It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling digital products with a one-time payment or a subscription with a monthly fee, ThriveCart will let you do payment as per your liking. 

To be precise, just think of any payment option you can make and ThriveCart can do that.

It lets you create up to six checkout pricing options and setting up multiple pricing options is simple as you can do it with a few clicks from the “Product > Payment” tab.

Under the Payments tab, you will have the option to set up four different ways for your checkout page—

• One-time fee
• Recurring subscription model
• Multiple payment plans (Split pay)
• Pay your own price

You can also mix and match these payment types, offering different plans at checkout. Not only that, you can also choose from over 22 currency options and offer free trials and paid trials.

Note: While they offer pre-defined plans, you can also rename them however you see fit.

Once this is done, the customer will reach the checkout page. Here, you get to choose from six designs, with options like—

• Show pricing options in a 2-column grid
• Show pricing plans as individual rows
• Include images with the plans
• Choose to show or hide the pricing
• Pick from various color options

Apart from payment options, coupons are another area where ThriveCart shines. It automatically applies discount coupons to your customers’ invoices at checkout.

Although, you will see a bunch of coupons in your dashboard area, at this time, ThriveCart is offering these coupon options—

• Fixed discount
• Percentage discount
• Free shipping
• Date range of coupon availability
• Limited amount of times a coupon can be used
• Triggers when a coupon is used (i.e., email notification)

You can offer a limited number of coupon codes with an expiration date. 

In fact, what is worth mentioning here is that not only can you display the coupon field, but you can also make the coupon link available ‘only’ through the URL. So, you just have to copy the URL and apply the coupon to a specific product.

This is a new feature built into ThriveCart. Learn/Learn+ competes directly with ClickFunnels and Samcart which offer similar functionality. 

Not to mention more, Learn/Learn+ makes ThriveCart a complete end-to-end solution. It’s a membership area for your courses and the content you create, so there’s no need to purchase additional products like Teachable or creating your own private WordPress membership website.

With ThriveCart’s Learn/Learn+, you’ll be able to enjoy these specifications:

• Project and Curriculum Management – Projects help you organize your proposals internally which may include multiple courses
• Access to Course Materials – Once an order is placed you can issue course materials in several different ways—

• All at Once –Receives all your course information at once.
• Scheduled – At every day, week, month or year after their purchase.
• Specific Day – At a specific day of the month
• Specific Date – At fixed dates that you specify
• Trail Duration – Allows someone to try out your course before paying.
• Rebilling – Releasing modules/lessons after specific rebilling
• Student Management – Using this, you can control access to your private content.

Not only that, ThriveCart Learn+ for an additional one-time fee of $195 also adds on these features —

• Bundle – You can sell multiple courses with one purchase. It is a great way to increase the LTV of your members.
• Import – It allows you to import students to third-party membership systems.
• Featured Content – It highlights content and courses to help you find the important ones.
• Team Members – You can add staff and assistants who can help you manage your courses and members.

ThriveCart Learn/Learn+ host all subscription and login functionality, but the only exception is your videos. To host videos, you’ll need to use a service like YouTube, Wistia, Vimeo, or Amazon’s S3.

Coming back to the point, subscribers of ThriveCart’s Learn/Learn+ can access the course content of course material via “youraccount.ThriveCart.com/l/signin/.” On the contrary, with ThriveCart Pro— you can have a dedicated subdomain name: “abc.yourdomain.com/l/signin/.”

To be precise, it would not be wrong to say that the order process is seamless as Learn and Learn+ is built into ThriveCart. 

So, because of this great new addition to ThriveCart, there’s no need to worry about monthly service fees or figure out technology to integrate a subscription system.

Next, it is worth mentioning that ThriveCart provides detailed business insights, reports and a simple way to view your metrics and data without any knowledge of the code.

Basically, it highlights all the important business insights needed to make smart revenue, profit and marketing decisions.

Here’s the list of metrics that your dashboard contains— 

• Net revenue
• Average order value
• Gross revenue and annual revenue
• Total transactions
• Active subscriptions
• Total customers
• Conversion rate
• Cancellations
• Refund amount and refund rate
• Other important insights include Estimated Revenue, Forecast, Live Traffic, Auto Lifetime Value etc.

If you want, you can customize these details you see on your dashboard. To do this, you’ll need to select which metrics you want to display and then, drag and drop that metrics card into any order you like. 

And guess what, it also has the ability to manage subscriptions to reduce churn.

Another selling point is that ThriveCart comes with a drag-and-drop “sales cart” builder that makes it easy to add elements and build a cart from scratch.

Note: All checkout and cart pages, design and layout on ThriveCart are mobile responsive to connect with customers emotionally.

In that process, ThriveCart will provide you with four high-converting cart templates, each of which has been thoroughly tested and proven to boost conversions.

That being said, ThriveCart offers four frameworks or template types to choose from. They include—

• Standard – The checkout area which is divided into two sections, excellent for big-ticket items.
• Sales Cart – Single sales page checkout type that helps you to create highly engaging pages and add testimonials, videos or customer reviews as they act as a social proof and thus generate more revenue by converting your visitors.
• Embeddable – This checkout can be placed directly in any of your existing web pages to allow customers to make transactions easily without leaving the page.
• Popup – You can add this checkout to your website as a popup window to create highly attractive modal popups and let your customers complete the transaction process on the modal window without needing to leave their current web page.

You just need to drag the elements from the leftmost and rightmost panels and then, drop those elements wherever you want in the main checkout editor area.

While the options are limited, the best part is that you can customize them to match your brand and the products you offer.

Note: The ThriveCart team is in the process of adding more templates and customization options to the cart.

This can be done quickly with just a few clicks of the mouse, even for non-tech savvy individuals.

You can change the setting for each element and also add sub-elements for some elements. To be precise, you can add text, a buy button, or a picture to further customize certain elements.

Not only that, you can choose from multi step or single-step cart flow. This means you can either split customer and billing information into separate steps or display all the information in a single field.

However, it’s important to note that shopping cart templates depend largely on the type of checkout you want to add because the four cart design templates are tied to vastly different checkout behaviors.

For example, if you want to embed the checkout page in your web page, you need to opt for the third template. Similarly, if you prefer to go with the pop-up checkout page, you have to choose the final template and so on.

This means, the templates are customizable, but the customizability extends only to the content of the page and not to the overall checkout page appearance.

Since your checkout page should be clean and straightforward to capture customers who are in the shopping flow, ThriveCart’s checkout page gives you a very clean interface to work with.

They are highly optimized for conversions and are designed to reduce cart abandonment rates.

In this regard, what’s interesting to note is that you can even change it however you want and choose which elements and areas you want to add or remove.

For example, you can choose what-all customer details you want to collect at checkout. To be precise, you can either choose from predefined information fields or, add custom fields to collect additional contact details.

If more to mention, the ease with which you can create this page is worth mentioning. You don’t need any kind of help or programming skills to get a customized look for your checkout page to suit your brand.

However, that’s not it! ThriveCart also lets you change the order of fields and elements on the checkout page. 

Understand it this way – you have the option to choose to collect the names of contacts before the email address or vice versa because you control all these parts of your page.

Additionally, you can also make changes to your page’s design, including spacing, padding, color, font, and much more.

Not only that, you can even add a mandatory “Terms and Conditions” checkbox to your checkout page which your customers must accept before proceeding.

With respect to the Terms and Conditions feature, let us make you aware that you can either add your Terms directly within the box on the checkout page or, you can enter the URL on your Terms and Conditions page in a new tab.

On top of everything, what is great about ThriveCart is that it lets you import checkout page designs from other vendors as well. So, if you already have a checkout page that is working well for your store, you can easily import it into the ThriveCart’s system.

However, let’s not forget to mention that the only thing missing is the variety in checkout page templates. But, the company is claiming to offer an immense range of high-converting designs soon.

To mention more, there is this “Automatic Product Behavior” feature also that lets you create rules to automatically trigger actions based on customer behavior in a specific situation.

Doing so is easy to configure, and you can accomplish them through platforms like Demio, ActiveMember360, Memberium, or even email autoresponders.

That said, here’s what you need to do to add a behavior rule—

• Step 1: Click on the “+ Add rule” option and set the rule. 

• Step 2: Next, you can make use of “Custom HTML” or your “Autoresponder” to perform the required action.

In this regard, it should be mentioned that if you already have integration with Autoresponder, it will appear in the window and will also provide you with the lists you have so that you can add them to the respective groups.

These are some of the rules from which you can choose—

• Purchases the main product
• Refunds the main product
• Cart is Abandoned
• Payment is declined
• Refund of a recurring payment
• Recurring payment fails
• Subscription canceled
• Purchases the bump
• Refunds the bump
• Makes recurring payments

You may use these listed rules to offer the best and most personalized customer experience.

In addition to these behavioral rules, ThriveCart also has built-in dunning functionality that not only help you recover revenue automatically but also to—

• Send automatic notifications for due payments.
• Send card expired reminder.
• Notify when cards are about to expire.
• Chase overdue payments.
• Adjust affiliate commissions based on refund rate.
• Manage subscriptions.

ThriveCart offers modal and embeddable carts as well. In this regard, let us tell you that ThriveCart has two types of carts, both of which can be useful in different contexts. 

To explain to you the first, Embeddable carts are created by pasting a piece of code on your webpage. It allows you to have your own checkout page on your website.

It may be suitable for bloggers who prefer to sell directly through their WordPress sites. Not just that, it is also suitable for businesses that want their customers to shop directly from their website.

On the other hand, Modal carts will be suitable for many types of websites, especially websites with multiple products. It is conveniently located inside a “clickable hover” button that follows the customer around the site.

This allows customers to add items to their cart as they shop, which in turn can lead to more sales from each customer.

Being able to properly integrate your shopping cart with the rest of your sales and marketing stack is essential because the depth of your integration (or lack thereof) can be a major determining factor in the success or failure of your business.

So, what we are trying to say is that ThriveCart supports “multiple integrations” and this is one of the many reasons why it is highly recommended for online entrepreneurs (of all kinds).

The ability to integrate with third-party tools that enable your store to do things it couldn’t before– is ThriveCart’s most remarkable feature of all.

As of now, the extensive list of integrations it supports includes popular email marketing, subscription and webinar platforms such as the following—

• Email Marketers: ActiveCampaign, AWeber, Bronto, Campaign Monitor, Campaign Refinery, Constant Contact, ConvertKit, Customer.io, Drip, E-goi, EmailOctopus, Emma, Feedblitz, GetResponse, HubSpot, iContact, iPost, Iterable, Jilt, Keap, Mad Mimi, MailChimp, MailerLite, Mailgun, MailPoet, Market, Hero, Marketo, Maropost, Moosend, Ontraport, Pardot, SendinBlue, Sendloop, SendPulse, Sendy.

• Membership Platforms: Apprentice, Digital Access Pass, OptimizeMember, MemberMouse, MemberPress, WishList Member, LifterLMS, Thinkific, Teachable, and Thrive Apprentice.

• Webinar Platforms: Demio, AWeber and WebinarNinja.

For content creators such as bloggers and e-book writers, ThriveCart is an excellent cart solution as it integrates with multiple payment gateways as well as multiple fulfillment services such as:

Payment Gateways	Fulfillment Services
Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Authorize.net and Stripe (it accepts cryptocurrency payments).	Google Sheets, Lulu, Disk.com, Kunaki, Printful, Shopify, Shippo, Pabbly, ShipStation, Vervante and Zapier.

So, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that ThriveCart continues to add more integration with each update and this is pretty impressive considering ThriveCart’s age as a product offering.

ThriveCart also lets you create beautiful sales funnels with up to 5 upsells and 5 downsells. Adding them helps you sell more, which in turn increases revenue for your business. 

Fortunately, ThriveCart makes creating simple upsells and down sells so easy that even an ecommerce newbie can add them to their store. 

That being said, all you need to do for this is—

• Step 1: Go to the ‘Product’ for which you need to create a funnel.
• Step 2: Then, click on ‘Enable Sales to Funnel’ for the product you have selected.
• Step 3: Next, you need to ‘Configure the Upsell or Downsell’ you want to add to the funnel. [Note: This process works in sequence. For example, if the customer agrees to the upsell, ThriveCart redirects the customer to the next upsell or success page. Or, if the customer refuses to buy the upsell, they will be redirected to the downsell or some other stage of the funnel.]
• Step 4: After that, simply select either ‘Upsell’ or ‘Downsell’ and then, you’ve to edit and customize the “Upsell/Downsell page” to your needs using the in-built editor.

Now that you know how to create a funnel, note that you can use the same upsell/downsell across multiple funnels. So, if you want to import the same page setup and content, you will need to click on the ‘Copy Design’ option when launching the editor.

As you can see, Upsell/Downsell Editor is a simple drag and drop editor that you use to create checkout pages. With it, you can edit the page design for both mobile and desktop views.

However, to know whether it can replace big brands like ClickFunnels when it comes to the funnel feature, you need to read into the “ThriveCart vs ClickFunnels” section below.

Another great feature of ThriveCart is Bump Offers. If you want to add more value to your customers and boost your monthly subscription, then you can definitely consider using Bump offers as it lets you offer special prices to regular customers. 

To be precise, it is very much similar to Groupon and LivingSocial, where you get discounted prices for items.

No wonder these bump offers provide another opportunity to acquire leads – outside the normal checkout process.

If you belong to the category of people who intend to sell products through affiliates, then you should consider ThriveCart. Its affiliate program has functionality that satisfies most merchants and affiliates so; there is no need to buy any third-party affiliate program while using this software.

This affiliate tracing program of ThriveCart offers you the following features—

• Manual approval of affiliates
• Different tiered payouts
• Automatically scheduled payouts via PayPal
• Customize rules to take action (i.e., subscribe to an affiliate on your mailing list when approved and entered into Email Automation)

That being listed, to use these features of this program, you’ll just have to complete two sections, including—

• Section 1: Set up your affiliate commissions.
• Section 2: Set up affiliate target URL, cookie duration, and sign up process.

What’s more, the program will allow you to offer a special bonus – a unique feature (which is not even seen in some of the best affiliate systems). Although it’s an underused affiliate marketing technique, it can help increase conversions dramatically.

Note: ThriveCart’s affiliate program is only available with the ‘Pro’ version.

Among loads of ThriveCart features, one is A/B testing also. It helps to compare different combinations of your template variations to improve your online store conversion rates.

To use the A/B split testing feature of ThriveCart, you need to go to “Product -> A/B Testing.” Through this feature, ThriveCart allows you to split different test options such as—

• Different prices
• Pricing options like the recurring fee, one-time fee, or pay as you wish.
• Payment options (PayPal & Stripe vs. just Stripe)
• Payment button color
• Checkout overall design (2-step vs. 1-step, etc.)
• Test which bullet points work best on the checkout page
• Test two bump offers against each other
• Which fields you should collect on the checkout
• Countdown timer vs. no countdown
• Logo vs. no logo on top
• Test which testimonials work best
• Testimonials vs. no testimonials
• Two boxes shot images testing against each other
• Custom fields on checkout vs. none

From these, you can select the target of split testing and choose when the A/B testing should end, and decide which test is the winner. At the end of the test, it will automatically display the best performing cart.

Hence, it would not be wrong to say that unlike other checkout platforms, ThriveCart gives you so much flexibility by allowing you to test each and every aspect.

Amazingly, ThriveCart has enough automation to work on autopilot. You can set up workflows to manage your customers and associates automatically and to reward affiliates with a commission increase when a specific sales threshold is reached.

Not only that, you can also set up automatic commission deductions based on the number of refunds that come from your affiliates’ traffic. If more to mention, this automation can also be used with ThriveCart’s subscription payment plans, so you can set it up to chase customers when their payments are overdue by a specific number of times.

In short, automation is one of the reasons why ThriveCart is considered such an effective resource and customer management tool.

It is a fact that you need to calculate taxes on your ecommerce site and it can be daunting. But, this doesn’t have to be the case if you use ThriveCart!

ThriveCart offers native integration with third party tax calculation and collection service – at no additional cost. To use this built-in tax calculation feature, all you have to do is check the box that says, “Calculate digital sales tax automatically?”

However, note that the process of tax calculation and collection depends on your region. So, let us tell you that as of now ThriveCart supports sales tax in the following areas:

• USA
• Canada
• The EU
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Chile
• Mexico and some non-EU countries like the UK, Switzerland, Norway, and Liechtenstein.

The next feature is none other than the countdown timer. It is convenient for your business to invoke a sense of scarcity and garner more sales and attention from your potential customers.

So, when you use it, ThriveCart lets you choose between an “Evergreen Timer” that starts only when a customer arrives at the checkout page and a “Fixed Timer” that ends after a certain amount of time. 

The order success/thank you page will automatically load once the customer has placed the order, and it lets you choose the following options:

• You can show your customers complete details of their purchases/invoices.
• You can redirect your customers to a custom success page.
• You can add your customers to your membership site.
• You can offer a URL that will redirect your customers to their download pages (mainly used when selling digital products) or, to access custom pages.

Note: This will be the second to last step in the funnel you design with ThriveCart. The final step is setting up an automated email blast if a customer leaves their cart. You can also send downloadable content via email.

Well, this is another area where the versatility of this platform really shines. ThriveCart allows you to collect different types of payments without the need for any other software or integrations. 

It simply means, apart from one-time sales, with ThriveCart you can create—

• Free Trial – With a free trial your customers can test your product before subscribing to it.
• Tripwire – A TripWire funnel converts cold traffic into payments to entice customers with low-cost introductory offers and then sells them later for other products.
• Split Payments – This lets your customers create their own payment plans, giving them more confidence in their ability to complete a purchase.
• Recurring sales – This can come from products that constantly get new versions and therefore have to be repurchased.
• Pay What You Want (PWYW) – Participatory co-pricing, especially if it’s centered on buyer’s valuation, can definitely attract more sales. This is because buyers feel more in control when buyers are allowed to choose their price.
• Discounts – Needless to mention that discounted prices will attract more sales, especially when you combine them with scarcity elements like countdown timers.
• Flexible Subscriptions – Last but not least, you can get daily, weekly, monthly or yearly subscribers because, the more freedom your customers have to choose, the more likely they are to renew their subscription.

ThriveCart Pricing Plans

By now, as you know, ThriveCart handles everything related to management, sales, shipping, billing and much more. So, if you consider trying out this software, you can check out its pricing plans.

• Plan 1: You can pay $690 for the ThriveCart’s Pro version for a limited time and when the offer expires, ThriveCart will switch to a regular monthly subscription starting at $97/month.
• Plan 2: You can buy ThriveCart for a one-time fee of $495. This means you only have to pay for it once.

Yes! ThriveCart offers a lifetime license with which it provides lifetime access to all core features, including—

• High-converting checkout pages, shopping carts, and sales funnels.
• Unlimited checkout pages.
• Built-in affiliate program.
• Automatic sales tax support.
• Advanced user management.
• Customizable business insights dashboard.
• Customer behavior rules.
• Abandoned cart recovery and more.

However, even though there’s no free trial or freemium plan, ThriveCart does offer a 30-day “pays for itself” refund guarantee. 

Well, it looks like an excellent deal compared to other shopping cart software. But, you should also check out how other shopping carts are priced so that you can get a better idea of ​​where this device stands currently on the market—

Currently, ThriveCart is available in two flavors, namely ThriveCart Standard and ThriveCart Pro.

You can buy a lifetime license for either version, but you’ll have to spend $195 more for the Pro version.

Apart from the price factor, both versions share many features in common, but ThriveCart Pro as expected from an upper variant, has some advanced features to offer which are exclusive to the plan.

To shed some light on this, let us tell you that some features like sales tax calculation and automatic dunning are not available in the standard version. In fact, you don’t even have access to affiliate tracking and custom domains for checkout pages.

In contrast, the Pro version offers advanced user management, where you can delegate administrative access to your team members. Additionally, you can grant user rights to non-members of your company, for example, if you are working with a digital marketing agency.

To make the long story short, the standard version comes with almost all the features ThriveCart has to offer, but for an additional $195, which is still a one-time fee, you can get the Pro version and enjoy features like sales tax calculation, JV contract, etc.

Overall, both ThriveCart Standard and ThriveCart Pro offer users excellent value for money. Hence, it would not be wrong to say that this is an investment that pays off several times more gradually.

Knowing that the shopping cart plays such an important role in your business, it is important that you have the support you need in case you aren’t familiar with the way shopping cart software works, and/or run into a problem.

So, no matter whether it’s understanding the software and finding ways to make the most of it, or if you experience technical challenges, such as setup problems or unscheduled downtime, it is necessary that you get support when needed.

Well in that case, you’re in luck because ThriveCart’s documentation (packed full of detailed support articles, how-to tutorials, and more) will take care of most of the elementary problems you might face when using this shopping cart software.

Not only that, you can also access ThriveCart’s official Facebook academy, where you can interact with the ThriveCart team and an engaged community of over 5,000 members. 

In this regard, it is worth mentioning that ThriveCart’s team at Facebook actively responds to all member queries. So, chances are high that you are likely to get the required answer quickly.

However, we agree that it is not a reliable means of support, especially when you are facing an emergency. But, it’s still helpful to know that you can always find someone on this platform that’s ready to chip in and lend a helping hand at any time of day or night.

Now, regarding live chat, phone support, or any other direct lines of communication, it is unfortunate to inform you that ThriveCart currently has no provision for any of them.

So, if you are facing an urgent situation and need immediate help, the only way to get direct support is by submitting a ticket. Once you do that, it will take up to 24 hours (weekends not included) to get responded to!

That means it’s certainly not ideal for emergencies. But, it is understandable that they do so considering it’s not a monthly recurring bill rather a one-time payment.

No second thought given to the fact that there are many reasons to love ThriveCart such as it offers one of the best shopping cart experiences out there and releases new features regularly. But, like any other software, ThriveCart also comes with its own set of drawbacks. 

So, to be neutral, listed below are some of the pros and cons of this software for you to go through—

• Arsenal of Tools: It comes with an arsenal of tools designed to help boost your conversions and sales. Hence, it would not be wrong to say that this product will pay off quickly for itself with a proven ROI (return on investment).
• No Coding Knowledge Required: ThriveCart does not require users to have coding knowledge and is therefore considered perfect for first-timers who are looking for something that is easy to use.
• User Friendly Interface: ThriveCart’s interface is clean and easy to understand. It is so well laid out that even a complete novice would breeze through the setup process and need not have any technical knowledge to use the tool.
• Multiple Integrations: The platform integrates with every major payment gateway.
• Lots of Pricing Options: ThriveCart has flexible payment models, including subscriptions, trials, and plans.
• Offer Multiple Upsell/Downsell/Bump Offers to Boost Your Marketing: You can use bump offers (i.e., addons on checkout pages to increase average order value) one-click upsell, downsell and more in your marketing.
• Fine-tuned Coupon Control: The platform gives you complete control over discounts and coupons.
• Built-in Affiliate Management: It has built-in affiliate management functionality if you want to set up affiliates to sell your products.
• Easy Reporting Dashboard: ThriveCart offers a reporting dashboard with advanced filters that is not only easy to use but also provides in-depth insights to boost your marketing results.
• In-depth Documentation: ThriveCart has a library full of detailed support articles, including how-to tutorials and much more to offer solutions on all possible issues.
• Facebook Community: There’s also an active Facebook community group of ThriveCart where you can ask questions and build a network with other like-minded people.
• Not dependent on CMS: It works with all CMS platforms including WordPress. However, it integrates with many WordPress plugins.

• Limited template selection: ThriveCart’s selection of templates for high-conversion checkout pages is very limited, and more needs to be designed/ proposed.
• Lack of Customization Features: It lacks robust customization features that are available in other shopping cart options.
• No cryptocurrency payments: If you use ThriveCart, you will need to find a different way to accept cryptocurrency payments.
• No Emergency Support: ThriveCart, unfortunately doesn’t offer any live chat and phone support for emergency situations.
• Physical products are not good for selling: If your business sells many physical products, then ThriveCart may not be the best option for you.
• Inappropriate for selling services: This platform is not designed to sell services.

ThriveCart Competitors

ThriveCart is an excellent option but, this review won’t be complete unless we compare it to a few of its main competitors. So, in this section, let’s take a look at how ThriveCart is different from its three i.e., SamCart, CartFlows and ClickFunnels competitors –

SamCart

Rating: 4.7/5

Price: $49 – $199 per month

Dunning: Yes

Affiliate System: Yes

Promotion: Try Free for 14 Days

Unlike other shopping carts, ThriveCart is thought to be a direct competitor to the more established and arguably market-leading SamCart.

Among digital marketers’ choices, SamCart is the better known of the two but, like ThriveCart, it also has its fair share of issues and benefits. 

However, we are not going to go into that detail, but let’s just mention that the most important advantage of using SamCart is its flexibility in design. 

SamCart can create order forms that look better and more like your brand’s design. In comparison, ThriveCart’s new visual drag-and-drop designer isn’t that flexible.

Moreover, when it comes to affiliate marketing, SamCart has a built-in affiliate system but, in this part, ThriveCart’s program wins, hands down. This is because the affiliate program of Samcart lacks a lot of functionality. 

For instance, SamCart does offer some conversion tracking via UTM codes but is very much an afterthought. On the other hand, ThriveCart supports a sub ID (named ‘ref’) or installing a pixel. So, there’s no second thought that ThriveCart’s affiliate system is one of the best options available. You can use it with a built-in shopping cart or with third-party services.

On top of all, if we compare the prices then unfortunately, SamCart is more expensive to use. The lowest price option is $49 per month, equals $588 per year, versus $495 for a lifetime of the standard ThriveCart edition. So, yes it seems expensive when you can grab the ‘Pro’ version of ThriveCart for a one-time payment of only $690.

Now, coming to the conclusion, let us say that the features offered by SamCart are less than compared to ThriveCart and the cost of SamCart is more than ThriveCart.

CartFlows

Rating: 4.5/5

Price: $239 Annually

Dunning: Yes

Affiliate System: Yes

Promotion:  Try CartFlows Risk-Free for 30 Days

The major deal-breaker between the two is that ThriveCart is a cloud app, so you can embed its checkout pages on any site you want, whereas CartFlows only works for WordPress pages.

However, when it comes to design flexibility, CartFlows surpasses ThriveCart. With CartFlows you can have more customization options, and you can use page builders to design the pages. But this is possible to do with ThriveCart.

Now, it is the price that can be the deciding factor and guess what, ThriveCart is the winner in this aspect. With ThriveCart, you can get its lifetime deal for just $495 and unlike with CartFlows, you have to pay $299/year on its Pro plan.

ClickFunnels

Rating: 4.6/5

Price: $97 per month

Dunning: Yes

Affiliate System: Yes

Promotion: 30-Days Free Trial

Where on the one hand, ThriveCart is a checkout platform that helps you create highly convertible checkout pages; on the other hand ClickFunnels has been one of the most popular solutions for building sales funnels for the past few years. 

To be precise, ClickFunnels allows users to choose from a wide variety of templates for sales, subscriptions, lead capture, events, squeeze pages, and more to use. Not only that, it lets you customize each of these templates to match your branding and style. But, ThriveCart is neither a landing page builder, nor is it a complete sales funnel system.

This means that with ThriveCart you cannot create your own sales funnel. So, in this aspect, it cannot replace ClickFunnels. 

Furthermore, ClickFunnels offers a large number of pre-built templates for you to choose from while ThriveCart only has four templates.

However, it is also worth noting that ClickFunnels also has some significant disadvantages compared to ThriveCart. For example, the platform does not offer direct PayPal integration. There is no Google-Pay or Apple Pay support, and also the software is not compliant for digital sales tax in the EU. Even the affiliate marketing system is only available in the Etison suite at the cost of $297 per month.

So, if you are focusing solely on a shopping cart then, it is clear that ThriveCart is the most economical shopping cart solution and affiliate management tool of choice.

Is ThriveCart Worth Using?

We have covered almost all the features and functions of this software. So, now you have all the information you need to decide whether ThriveCart would be the right choice for your business or not!

Bottom Line

That’s all we have to say about ThriveCart which is a great shopping cart platform with all the features you need to sell products online.

The software has gone through four years of development and now has such a long feature list that will certainly please everyone including the most skeptical marketers.

Despite some things that could be improved, such as the lack of cryptocurrency support, and limited customizability, ThriveCart still provides one of the best and most flexible checkout experiences one can ever see in any shopping cart software.

Not only does ThriveCart have an arsenal of tools to help you make more sales, but it also drives up the value of each sale—and it’s offered at a dramatically discounted one-time fee.

ThriveCart FAQs

Categories: Technology
Source: SCHOOL TRANG DAI