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ThriveCart Review 2023 (Why It’s The Shopping Cart I Use)

ThriveCart

Larry's Take

ThriveCart is a great shopping cart service for selling digital products. With order bumps, upsells, and down sells, ThriveCart has plenty of methods to increase your sales. It has a powerful affiliate program built-in so no need to purchase additional software. The biggest advantage over competing services is ThriveCart's one-time fee.
9.5 Out of 10
PlatformCloud
DunningYes
Affiliate SystemYes
Price$495 - $690 One-Time Fee
PromotionLifetime License Only $495
Learn More

Pros

  • Flexible Payment Options — ThriveCart can handle practically any online payment method.
  • Advanced Affiliate Marketing — ThriveCart’s affiliate marketing program has many options and is built into the service.
  • Great Customer Service — I’ve had all issues resolved relatively quickly.
  • Easy To Use — You can be up and selling within a few hours.
  • Upsell/Downsell/Bump — ThriveCart offers many ways to increase the lifetime value of your customers.
  • Online Course Platform — The recently added membership system can replace purchasing additional software like Teachable or Thinkific.
  • Cheap — Compared to many other services which charge a percent per transaction. ThriveCart is a one-time fee which could save you thousands in annual fees.

Cons

  • Big Upfront Cost — ThriveCart charges a one-time fee, rather than breaking it down into monthly payments. Though that can save you in the long run. The longer you use it the more you save since it’s a one-time fee.
  • Not Great With Physical Products — If you are selling physical products, you should look elsewhere.

If you want to make serious money from your blog, you must have your own product to sell. 

After all, you have no control over affiliate marketing programs. Plus, they tend to come and go. They’re just not a reliable source of income for your blog.

When you sell your own services, not only do you have complete control, but you can do some good. Your experience, knowledge, and insight can help your audience. 

Sounds great, right? But there’s a challenge: How do you handle sales?

When I first started, you had to roll your own e-commerce system. It took many hours to develop and cost thousands of dollars. 

Fortunately, today, there are hundreds of shopping cart software options to choose from, including Shopify, WooCommerce, SamCart, and one you may not have heard of before — ThriveCart.

Unlike WooCommerce or Shopify, which is best suited for selling physical products, ThriveCart specializes in delivering digital and subscription services. It offers a simple checkout process, and you can even use the software to set up a sales funnel.

Plus, the recently added option ThriveCart Learn makes the service into a full-blown online course platform.

What Is ThriveCart?

ThriveCart is a shopping cart service that allows you to sell digital and physical products. Unlike other shopping cart software, this is a hosted service with no software to install or manage.

ThriveCart (no relation to Thrive Themes) was created by Josh Bartlett in 2016 and is part of WebActix, Ltd.

Screenshots

ThriveCart Features

There are lots of “must-have” features within ThriveCart. In this review, I’ll only scratch the surface of the options available by highlighting just the key features.

Payment Options and Coupons

This is one area where ThriveCart really excels. Whether you’re selling a digital product with a one-time payment or a membership with a monthly fee, ThriveCart will let you do it.

  • One-time fee
  • Multiple payment plans (split-pay)
  • Subscriptions
  • Name your price
  • Free trial period
  • Limited product quantity
  • Automatic sales tax
  • Support for 22 currencies

If you can think of a payment option, ThriveCart can do it.

Coupons are another area where ThriveCart shines. You can offer a limited number of coupon codes with an expiration date. Not only can you display a coupon field, but you can make the coupon link available only via a URL. This way, you can offer a discount to your audience, but they can’t share their coupon code with others. 

ThriveCart offers 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)

Courses (Learn and Learn+)

A new feature that’s built into ThriveCart for free – Learn. This directly competes with ClickFunnels and SamCart which offer similar functionality. It now makes ThriveCart a complete end-to-end solution.

ThriveCart Learn/Learn+ is an online course platform and membership area for the content you create.

No need to purchase additional products like Teachable or create your own private WordPress membership website.

ThriveCart Learn has these features:

  • Project and course management – projects help organize internally your offerings which can consist of many courses
  • Course content access – Once you receive an order, you can release the course content in many different ways:
    • All At Once – Gets all of your course information all at the same time
    • Scheduled – Every day, week, month, or the year after their purchase.
    • Specific Day – A specific day of the month
    • Specific Date – Fixed dates you specify
    • Trail Period – Allows someone to try your course out before paying.
    • Rebilling – Releasing modules/lessons after specific rebills
  • Student Management – control access to your private content

ThriveCart Learn+ adds on these features for an additional one-time fee of $195:

  • Bundles – Sell multiple courses with one purchase. A great way to increase the LTV of your members.
  • Team Members – Add staff and assistants that can help with the management of your courses and members.
  • Import – Allows you to import students for third-party membership systems.
  • Featured Content – Highlight content and courses

ThriveCart Learn hosts all of the membership and login functionality. The only exception is your videos. Videos must be hosted with a service like Vimeo, YouTube, Wistia, or Amazon’s S3.

Subscribers can access the course content via:

youraccount.thrivecart.com/l/signin/

Or, with ThriveCart Pro, you can have a dedicated subdomain name:

abc.yourdomain.com/l/signin/

Since Learn is built into ThriveCart, the order process is seamless. No more need to worry about monthly service fees or to figure out the tech to integrate a membership system.

I do think ThriveCart Learn and Learn+ is a great new addition to ThriveCart.

Though personally, I need much more flexibility. I need the ability to track members with my analytics and other features not available in ThriveCart Learn.

I will continue to host my membership area with WordPress. Just like Teachable, ThriveCart Learn will never have all of the functionality for my member’s area.

Though for most course creators, this is a great new service. I’m sure many will jump on this great deal to purchase. Instead of paying a monthly fee, ThriveCart can do it all for just a one-time fee, which can save you thousands of dollars.

Upsell, Downsell, and Order Bumps

An easy way to increase the lifetime value of customers is by offering more items to purchase at the time of sale. Think of it like buying gum in the supermarket checkout aisle. ThriveCart allows you to upsell, downsell, and make order bumps at the time of purchase.

ThriveCart supports trial offers, multiple payments, and subscriptions, as well. It gives you pretty much every possible option for testing your product and increasing the lifetime value (LTV) of your customers.

Multiple Shopping Cart Options

Depending on your price point and type of product, you can present your shopping cart in multiple ways:

  • Standard — The typical order form page, which is great for big-ticket items.
  • Sales Cart — A landing page and shopping cart combined into one.
  • Embeddable — Add to an existing page that allows ThriveCart integration.
  • Popup — A button-click popup order form. Great for low-ticket/impulse-buy items.

Design Editor

ThriveCart’s recently added visual drag-and-drop editor makes creating your shopping cart easy. There’s also now the option to share premade ThriveCart templates with others. So you can take what others have learned and tested and apply it to your own cart.

Built-in Affiliate Program

In my opinion, most merchants should use some affiliate program to promote their products. It’s an effective way to market your products — you pay an affiliate only when a visitor converts.

ThriveCart’s affiliate program has functionality that should satisfy most merchants and affiliates. So there’s no need to purchase a third-party affiliate program when using this software. This alone can save you hundreds of dollars in additional software — not to mention the pain of integrating.

The program will also allow you to offer an exclusive bonus — a unique feature not seen among even some of the best affiliate systems. It’s an underutilized affiliate marketing technique, but it can help dramatically increase conversions.

Here are some of ThriveCart’s affiliate program features:

  • Manual approval of affiliates
  • Different tiered payouts
  • Automatically scheduled payouts via PayPal
  • Customized rules to perform an action (i.e., subscribe an affiliate to your mailing list when approved and entered into email automation)

ThriveCart’s affiliate program is available only with the “Pro” edition.

Other Features

  • A/B Testing — Test any part of your shopping cart sales funnel
  • Countdown Timer — This built-in timer can be fixed or evergreen.
  • Detailed Reporting — Many different options to display orders and subscriptions.
  • External Analytics — You can add Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel for your order page.
  • Subdomain Option — With a “Pro” account, you can use your own subdomain. This is better for trust and analytics.

ThriveCart Alternatives

There are many alternatives available to ThriveCart. If you are looking for more online course platform checkout Thinkific and Teachable.

For more eCommerce-centric services, check out these options.

Visit SamCartSamCart Review
Rating
8.5/10
Price
$59 - $299 per month
Dunning
Yes
Affiliate System
Yes
Promotion
Get Started For Free
Visit Teachable
Rating
8.0/10
Price
FREE - $119+ per month
Dunning
No
Affiliate System
Yes
Promotion
Try For Free
Visit Thinkific
Rating
8.5/10
Price
FREE - $199 per month
Dunning
Yes
Affiliate System
Yes
Promotion
Sign Up For Free

ThriveCart Pricing

PlanLifetime PriceCoursesAffiliate SystemDunningCustom Domain
Standard$495yes
Pro$690yesyesyesyes

ThriveCart is somewhat unique when it comes to pricing. Most shopping cart services charge a monthly fee. For example, SamCart starts at $59 per month. Some even charge per transaction — the more sales you do, the more you pay!

Not with ThriveCart.

ThriveCart currently has only two pricing tiers, and they cover the lifetime of the service. You pay once, and that’s it. 

While ThriveCart states its current pricing may end soon, I’m not so sure. The company has been offering this promotion for the past three-plus years.

Currently, the only way to get ThriveCart is through an affiliate (such as myself). ThriveCart is currently not available through the general website.

The “‘Pro” edition is the better deal because of these available features:

  • Affiliate system
  • Dunning (rebilling) for soon-to-be-expired and failed credit card transactions
  • Automatic sale tax calculations
  • JV contracts
  • Custom domain name

The custom domain name feature is a must-have and the biggest reason to get the “Pro” version. In today’s world of not allowing third-party cookies, you need a way to measure traffic and conversions to your shopping cart. 

So instead of your cart looking like “larryludwig.thrivecart.com,” it will look like this: order.larryludwig.com.

By using a subdomain of your primary domain name, it not only looks like part of your website but can also be tracked with analytics. I highly recommend you get the “Pro” edition.

Courses are part of both the “Standard” and “Pro” editions. If you are looking for additional functionality, Learn+ is available for $195. It’s available for either edition and is also a one-time fee. See the courses section above for what’s included.

Lastly, if you want to kick the tires and try out ThriveCart’s service, there is a 30-day money-back guarantee. 

ThriveCart Integrations

ThriveCart has Zapier integration, as well as a well-documented API, which I’ve used myself to add integration into the Woopra analytics service.

Payment Gateways

For most merchants, linking up with Stripe and PayPal will be your best option. While Authorize.net is popular, it won’t let you offer Apple Pay and Google Pay to your smartphone visitors. From my experience, you want to make commerce as frictionless as possible. Allowing for easy payment on a smartphone will help increase conversions.

  • Authorize.net
  • PayPal
  • Stripe

Although these are pretty much the standard in online commerce, I wish there were more gateway options.

Email Marketing Providers

Linking up an email service is a critical part of integrating with a shopping cart. Fortunately, there are many options from which to choose.

ThriveCart does offer an option to fire an abandoned cart sequence, should a visitor not place an order. However, from my testing, I’ve found this somewhat flaky. I use another method instead.

  • 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

I personally recommend ActiveCampaign for some of its advanced email automation, but pretty much all of the options can work well with ThriveCart.

Online Course Platforms/Membership Platforms

If you are selling a digital product or a monthly subscription to a private area, you need a membership service with which to work. Fortunately, ThriveCart works with a bunch of membership area services and WordPress membership plugins.

ThriveCart works directly with these membership systems:

It’s also possible to integrate with other membership systems when you use Zapier. 

Although Memberpress is an excellent membership platform that integrates well with WordPress, there are limitations with ThriveCart. Specifically, Thrivecart and Memberpress require two emails for new subscribers — one for a welcome email and the other for a password reset. In my opinion, it makes the onboarding process unnecessarily confusing.

From the options listed above, I use and recommend MemberMouse.

Keep in mind that ThriveCart Learn is builtin, so you could just use ThriveCart for your online course platform.

Webinar Platforms

Unfortunately, if you are looking for direct webinar integrations, ThriveCart shouldn’t be your top choice for a shopping cart. The software can integrate with only one webinar platform:

However, keep in mind that you do have the option to use Zapier to integrate, which should work well for most webinar systems. However, for this ThriveCart review, I did not test any other webinar platforms.

Fulfillment Services

You don’t have to sell just digital products with ThriveCart. If you’re looking to sell a physical product, you have many options to choose from. 

  • Disk.com
  • Google Sheets
  • Kunaki
  • Lulu
  • Printful
  • Shippo
  • ShipStation
  • Shopify
  • Vervante
  • Zapier

Notifications and Sync

Keep your ThriveCart order information exported into Google Sheets automatically or get a Slack notification with each new order. In addition, when you link via Zapier, the options are endless.

  • Google Sheets
  • Slack
  • Zapier

SamCart vs. ThriveCart

Among digital marketers, SamCart is the better-known of the two. But SamCart isn’t without its benefits or issues. See my SamCart review for more in-depth coverage.

The most significant benefit of using SamCart is its flexibility in design. SamCart can create order forms that look better and more like your brand’s design. That’s not to say ThriveCart’s new visual drag-and-drop designer isn’t good. It just isn’t as flexible.

When it comes to affiliate marketing, SamCart also has a built-in affiliate system. However, ThriveCart’s program wins, hands down.

That’s because SamCart’s affiliate program is very lacking in functionality. For example, SamCart does offer some conversion tracking via UTM codes but it is very much an afterthought. ThriveCart, on the other hand, supports a sub ID (named ‘ref’) or installing a pixel. Keep in mind the affiliate option is available only with ThriveCart’s ‘Pro’ option. 

ThriveCart’s affiliate system is one of the best options available. You can use it either built into a shopping cart or with third-party services.

In the SamCart vs ThriveCart debate, they have similar integration options. And one or the other may have a must-have option for you that the other shopping cart service doesn’t. However, with both offering Zapier integration, this issue isn’t necessarily a deciding factor.

Both SamCart and ThriveCart now have a course and membership area option. No need to purchase a third-party service to create courses. While with SamCart courses functionality is available with every plan, unfortunately, you have to pay a monthly fee. Though to its credit, SamCart does have more functionality with its course system.

Unfortunately, SamCart is more expensive to use. The lowest price option, $59 per month, equals $588 per year, versus $495 for a lifetime of the standard ThriveCart edition. And you can grab the ‘Pro’ version of ThriveCart for a one-time payment of only $690.

FAQs

My Recommendation

In my opinion, if you’re looking for a shopping cart service that works great for any info product, ThriveCart is the best option.

Not only have I been using it for myself, but I have recommended it to others in the past two years. The features keep improving, yet I paid only a one-time fee. The new addition of ThriveCart Learn and Learn+ makes ThriveCart pricing hard to beat.

SamCart is a close competitor, but for my needs, I decided on ThriveCart.

Larry Ludwig

About Larry Ludwig

Larry Ludwig is an entrepreneur, financial expert, tech & marketing guru with over 25 years of industry experience.

In July 2018, Larry successfully sold Investor Junkie for $6 million.

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