ThriveCart vs SamCart 2024 – Best Checkout Software?

If you are searching for a checkout tool, you might have come across SamCart and ThriveCart as these are two of the most popular ones out there.

Although they offer a few similar features, there are plenty of differences between them.

We are going to compare the two tools and discuss their features to help you decide which one is right for you.

ThriveCart vs SamCart: What do They do?

Online business owners are tasked with a variety of roles: building websites, creating content, driving traffic, marketing their products and services and closing sales.

In doing this, it is imperative for them to learn new strategies, use better software and make their systems more efficient.

Many times online business owners struggle to figure out which platforms they need to save them time, eliminate the stress and most importantly, make more revenue.

There are several important things business owners can do to increase their sales. One of them is optimizing their sales process.

Optimizing the sales process isn’t too hard as the business owner doesn’t necessarily have to create something new, but only tweak some things to make it easier for their customer to purchase their products.

Most business owners focus on optimizing their sales pages, landing pages, and Facebook ads but forget about the checkout pages.

Optimizing the checkout page is important as this where many people drop off from the sales process.

SamCart and ThriveCart help the user optimize their checkout page with ease.

Both these platforms allow the user to:

• Create professional checkout pages with pre-designed templates
• Create coupons for providing special offers to customers
• Insert one-click upsells for boosting sales
• Integrate with several autoresponders, payment processors, and CRM tools
• Run an affiliate program for products and services

Let’s get started with our SamCart vs ThriveCart review.

ThriveCart vs SamCart: Feature Comparison

Let’s start with the feature comparison of ThriveCart and SamCart. Both ThriveCart and SamCart offer one-click upsells.

Moreover, they both allow the user to have upsell funnels where they keep selling products one after another and then downsell another product.

Both ThriveCart and SamCart also allow order bumps.

The user doesn’t need any kind of coding experience to use these platforms.

ThriveCart has an advantage over SamCart in how it allows the user to do things.

For example, consider that a business owner is using ThriveCart and the customer buys something from them and they are redirected to a “Thank-You” page.

Now ThriveCart would allow the business owner to make that page available to the customer so that they could come back for downloading something that the user provided them before purchase.

ThriveCart has some features like this that give more control to the user. This is why ThriveCart has an edge over SamCart.

We will now talk about their offerings and features in detail.

Analytics

When the users log into the SamCart dashboard, they are going to see a layout that gives them a high-level point of view of where their business is at, similar to Google Analytics.

SamCart provides several high-level stats in the dashboard that may be useful to the user.

However, it is important to note that stats aren’t 100 percent accurate as there are occasional bugs that the user might run into with software like SamCart.

For example, you may notice miscalculations with the monthly recurring revenue stats among other ones.

ThriveCart comes off as too sales in how it’s trying to sell its products.

They do provide some analytics to the user, but those aren’t comparable to SamCart. They are more basic.

Integrations

When a user is looking for checkout software, one of the important things to consider is the integrations.

Checkout software should integrate with important services that the user already uses like autoresponders, CRMs, payments processors, etc.

Otherwise, they’ll spend hours trying to make the system work.

When it comes to integrations, both ThriveCart and SamCart integrate with the major players like ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, and several other smaller marketing platforms.

However, ThriveCart offers more integrations than SamCart.

ThriveCart Integrations 

• Infusionsoft
• MailChimp
• ActiveCampaign
• AWeber
• GetResponse
• Digital Access Pass
• Any autoresponder
• Wishlist Member
• HubSpot
• LeadPages
• Kunaki
• ConvertKit
• OptimizePress
• Stripe
• Member Mouse
• GooglePay
• ApplePay
• Slack
• Stripe
• Shippo
• Teachable
• Printful
• PayPal
• OptimizeMember
• OntraPort
• MailerLite
• Drip

SamCart Integrations 

• AWeber
• MailChimp
• Infusionsoft
• ActiveCampaign
• ConvertKit
• Constant Contact
• Digital Access Pass
• GetResponse
• Drip
• HubSpot
• iContact
• Kajabi
• Zapier
• Wishlist Member
• Stripe
• PayPal
• OptimizePress
• OntraPort
• Member Mouse
• Maropost

Autoresponder

Both SamCart and ThriveCart allow the user to integrate the autoresponder of their choice with ease.

If a user hooks up multiple autoresponders with SamCart and ThriveCart, they will run into trouble quickly with SamCart.

The reason is that SamCart allows the user to integrate just one autoresponder.

However, with ThriveCart, they have the ability to integrate multiple autoresponders with the service thus allowing the user to segment customers as they wished.

Customer Support

Having good customer support is important; it is one of the factors a user must consider when choosing a new platform for their business.

The user might have the most efficient software, but when they run into a major problem and don’t get any response from the customer support representative, they will hate the software.

People haven’t had a good experience with SamCart’s support and many of them have complained about their bad customer service.

On the other hand, ThriveCart users are satisfied with the support provided by the platform.

ThriveCart’s owner and developers have supported their platform with a full-team customer support team which is why the users are satisfied with their customer service.

If someone wants to know more about ThriveCart’s customer support, they could join their private Facebook group and ask other users about it.

Affiliate Programs

When a user has the ability to run their own affiliate platform, they can have other affiliates promote their product or service.

Both SamCart and ThriveCart give these abilities to the user.

However, there are some differences between each. We’ll discuss them but before that, let’s look at what SamCart and ThriveCart offer to the user:

• The user can create a custom sign-up page for affiliates
• The user can choose which products or services they would like their affiliates to promote
• They can also select the type of commission they would like their affiliates to receive for making a sale
• The user gets an overview of their affiliate sales and other stats like refunds, clicks, etc.
• They also have the option of creating custom affiliate commissions
• ThriveCart gives the user the ability to pay out their affiliates instantly upon sale. This is a time saver for the user and is a good selling point for their affiliate to keep promoting the user’s products, as they don’t have to wait for days to receive their payment.
• The user can easily create affiliates and/or import them into ThriveCart

An important thing to consider is how the user’s affiliates interact with their affiliate center.

Most platform owners don’t consider user experience that affiliates will be interacting with.

So some key things that can be noticed when comparing the affiliate centers of SamCart and ThriveCart include:

• ThriveCart allows affiliates to search for transactions records. This isn’t offered by SamCart.
• Affiliates of ThriveCart will know all details of transactions including payment method, date and time of the transaction and customer email address, etc. Again this isn’t offered by SamCart.
• ThriveCart gives the user the ability to export all customer data and transactions into a CSV with just one-click. This isn’t offered by SamCart.
• SamCart is disorganized with its dashboard – metrics are often inaccurate and difficult to find and understanding. Affiliates will find it extremely confusing to know their numbers.

In short, ThriveCart affiliate features are better than SamCart affiliate offerings. They are easier to use as well.

Related : Affilorama Review – Best Affiliate Marketing Course

Behavior Rules

Behavior rules are something where ThriveCart truly stands out.

This platform gives the ability to set up powerful automations that allow the user to take their business further.

Some examples of what a user can do with the unique behavior rules of ThriveCart include:

• Immediately after a purchase has been made by the customer, the user can add them to a specific campaign, autoresponder, etc. or remove them from it.
• With ThriveCart, the user can add an abandoned cart tag to people who were close to buying their product – for example, when a customer fills the checkout page but doesn’t complete the order.
• If the payment of a customer doesn’t go through, a payment declined tag can be added to them. Then the user can add the customer to a specific follow-up sequence so that updated payment information can be acquired.
• A user can add almost any automation or tag of their choosing for their affiliates – when they make a sale, get approved, have a refund, etc.

These behavior rules are unique to ThriveCart and provide a lot of power to the user with their checkout and follow-up processes.

ThriveCart has the user covered on both the back-end and front-end sales processes.

Templates

Both SamCart and ThriveCart offer several templates to the users. The templates that come with the two platforms are beautifully designed and help in conversions.

The difference between the two platforms in this regard is that in terms of the setup process, ThriveCart is more intuitive.

Because of the ThriveCart’s simple process, the user will be able to set up and get the system running in less time.

Payments

Since a large number of people are using their smartphones and other mobile devices to browse products online and purchase them, it is imperative to have a mobile-friendly checkout process.

Most people don’t like typing their credit card information on a phone. Fortunately, technologies like ApplePay and GooglePay help speed up the process.

ThriveCart fully integrates with ApplePay and GooglePay.

So people who have ApplePay and GooglePay on their phones can use their thumbprint to complete a purchase for the product.

SamCart doesn’t integrate with ApplePay and GooglePay.

PayPal Subscriptions

There is a major difference between ThriveCart and SamCart in how subscriptions and recurring bills are managed when someone pays for a product using PayPal.

The transaction isn’t actually managed by ThriveCart. Instead, the platform acts as a monitoring system while PayPal manages subscriptions.

SamCart, on the other hand, requires the user to set up reference transactions so that the system can take care of recurring billing.

ThriveCart’s approach is cleaner and simpler for the user and the customer. Moreover, it minimizes the user’s liability for managing more transactions.

If the user ever decides to use another shopping cart platform, they can walk away and take all their customers with them, as ThriveCart doesn’t control the transactions.

However, if a user is working with SamCart, they won’t be able to take their customers with them when they leave.

They would have to move to a different platform and lose all of their subscription customers or use SamCart forever.

It takes a lot of hard work to get subscribers and no user would like SamCart for stripping their subscribers away from them for choosing a different system.

Integration with Authorize.net

All business owners want complete control over their subscriptions and transactions.

ThriveCart gives the user the ability to integrate directly with Authorize.net.

Previously, this option was available with SamCart too, but it removed this integration.

Authorize.net allows the user to store their subscription and transaction data in the system.

It’s smart to use a payment processing platforms that store subscription and transaction data on their system because it provides more protection and flexibility.

We will now discuss ThriveCart vs SamCart cost.

ThriveCart vs SamCart: Pricing

ThriveCart is allowing users to purchase a lifetime license at $495 at this time.

This pricing offer is temporary and will be changing soon to a recurring model.

Compared to this, SamCart offers the following pricing options:

• Launch: $49 per month
• Grow: $99 per month
• Scale: $199 per month

ThriveCart has a responsive customer service and the software is constantly updated so users shouldn’t be worried about paying a one-time fee.

They can save a lot of money by paying a one-time fee for ThriveCart instead of paying $99 or $199 every month.

People who are interested in the features of ThriveCart and want to purchase it should do it before the special offer ends.

Once the offer ends, the price will rise and users will have to pay a monthly or annual fee.

SamCart vs ThriveCart: Pros & Cons

Pros

ThriveCart

• One-time fee
• An active development team and regular feature updates
• More third party integrations
• Easier built-in tech for collecting sales tax
• Affiliate platform tools are more flexible
• ApplePay and GooglePay support
• Clear cancellation policy

SamCart

• A more user-friendly and polished interface that helps the user in building funnels
• Larger user base
• More inbuilt templates and checkout pages

Cons

ThriveCart

• A new platform so we can’t be sure how it will perform and support customers in the future

SamCart

• Have launched new features too early in the past, but they eventually improved
• Doesn’t integrate with ApplePay, GooglePay or Authorize.net

SamCart vs ThriveCart – Which Is Better?

Both ThriveCart and SamCart are great. They give the user the optimized sales process they need for converting more sales.

In our opinion, they outperform all other checkout platforms currently available in the market.

When it comes to who is better between Thrive Cart vs SamCart, we will go with ThriveCart. Here is why we believe that ThriveCart takes the lead over SamCart.

Related : Best SamCart Alternatives

ThriveCart offers more integrations and the behavior rules are unique to this platform.

Integrations and behavior rules will save a lot of time for the user.

ThriveCart offers better customer support than SamCart.

If the user purchases ThriveCart now, they will be able to save a lot of money.

This advantage is temporary and may not apply once the recurring pricing model has been introduced by ThriveCart.

ThriveCart offers more payment integrations and gives more control to the user. Moreover, ApplePay and GooglePay integrations allow them to capitalize on mobile traffic.

In terms of features, affiliate program tools, cost-saving, customer support and integrations, ThriveCart is a clear winner.

Therefore, if you are looking for a checkout platform for your online business and want to choose between ThriveCart and SamCart, we suggest you go with ThriveCart.

There is no doubt that ThriveCart will prove to be a better option for you thanks to its impressive features, integrations and affiliate program tools.

We hope you find guidance helpful in selecting the checkout platform that best suits your needs.

For a more in-depth comparison of different business platforms, stay tuned.