The shopping cart is a helpful tool used by online stores to keep track of the items a customer selects for purchase.
Your online shopping cart may be your most crucial business tool. It can make or break your business, so choose wisely.
This comparison evaluation compares ThriveCart and SamCart, the two leading industry players.
Overview: ThriveCart vs. SamCart
ThriveCart Overview
Josh Barlett built ThriveCart to minimize their workload, work flawlessly, and save dollars in buying shopping cart software.
The company is now one of the most prominent online all-in-one platforms for selling digital and physical products. You can promote online tutoring, consultancy, etc. with it.
ThriveCart’s main benefit is creating checkout pages and high-converting shopping carts to maximize revenue.
ThriveCart: Key Features
- Bump Offers and Coupons: ThriveCart lets you add discounts, bump offers, and coupons to your products.
- Ready to Use Templates: ThriveCart has an array of templates to improve the landing page creation experience with little effort.
- ThriveCart’s drag-and-drop page builder makes bespoke product and sales funnel pages simple.
For More, check out my detailed ThriveCart Review.
Samcart Overview
SamCart is a shopping cart software like ThriveCart, with some key distinctions.
Brian Moran, CEO of āGet 10,000 Fansā and TrainBaseball.com, created it to give his company the best shopping cart software.
SamCart is among the world’s largest shopping cart software companies, and it serves thousands of customers every day, many of whom are household names in their respective industries.
In addition, they have released a service under the name CreatorU. If you want to learn the ins and outs of running an online business, then this is the place to do it.
SamCart: Key Features
- Fantastic Interface: SamCart’s platform is simple and intuitive for novices and experts.
- SamCart lets you offer membership sites as well as items and services, unlike ThriveCart.
- You may personalize a SamCart sales funnel to match your brand.
Key Differences
Below, we’ve outlined several key distinctions between the two systems. Understanding the differences between the two options will help you choose the one most suited to your company’s requirements.
1) Pricing
There is a $495 one-time cost with ThriveCart.
There is a monthly price for using SamCart, and that fee is anywhere from $49 to $399.
2) Cart Design
The ThriveCart platform’s shopping cart designs aren’t as cutting-edge as competing cart software.
SamCart is an improved, cutting-edge, and user-friendly shopping cart solution.
3) Memberships
One significant difference between the two solutions is that ThriveCart lacks a robust membership system.
SamCart is a good subscription option because it is tailored to membership communities. Subtle variations across the systems regarding adaptability, UX, and templates exist.
4) Payment Integrations
The ThriveCart platform is compatible with both Apple Pay and Google Pay.
SamCart does not provide assistance for these or any other forms of mobile payment.
In contrast, ThriveCart provides a superior experience in several respects, including a lower monthly charge and a more convenient two-step checkout process. Not only does it have the ability to track links and forecast sales, but it can also calculate sales tax.
Sales Funnels
You can market and sell the products and services you provide with the help of sales funnels that you build using either SamCart or ThriveCart.
A more in-depth examination of each platform’s sales funnel customization options follows.
Thrivecart
Select the “New funnel” button within ThriveCart to build your sales channel. The sales funnel can be activated for any of your goods.
You can increase the attractiveness of your product or service by including upsells, downsells, discounts, and bump offers.
Copy/paste page text or use the same upsell on other funnels. This can save you a lot of time if you handle several products.
Samcart
You may find funnels under SamCart’s “Upsells” section. Simply select it, label it, and describe your funnel, and you’re done!
Your sales funnel, complete with upsells, downsells, and order bumps, may then be fleshed out.
Unlike ThriveCart, SamCart lets you do A/B tests on your funnel pages and the elements inside those pages.
Winner: Thrivecart
SamCart has a more thorough A/B testing capability for sales funnel pages, but ThriveCart wins due to its robust capabilities that allow precise control over upsells, downsales, and bump offers.
Listing Products
The success of a campaign relies on the accuracy of the product or service listings in the shopping cart software.
The products that can be sold on each software and how the sales process works are outlined below.
ThriveCart
ThriveCart may be used to sell both digital products and physical ones. To catalog a specific product category, click on its name in the “Products” menu.
To add a new product, follow these steps after clicking “Create a new product”:
- Bump, coupon, or discount offers
- Affiliate requests for product promotion
- Payment gateway integration
- Prices for products
- Product URL
These steps are designed to improve your sales and bring in more money.
SamCart
Both SamCart and ThriveCart allow you to list products. Select “New products” and fill out the form fields to add a new product.
- Description
- Name
- Price
And More
The next step is to select a payment schedule (one-time, recurring, etc.). Select a product category, add a photo, and set up promotions.
Winner: SamCart
SamCart is simple to use because of its straightforward design and intuitive layout. When it comes to cataloging items, SamCart is superior to ThriveCart.
Design Customization
The software carts also vary significantly in terms of design and personalization.
The following section examines the variations in the platforms’ respective shopping cart and product listing sections.
ThriveCart
Customization and Design are solid points for ThriveCart. However, there is room for improvement in the page builder.
Although it is not quite as cutting-edge as SamCart’s page builder, it offers comprehensive features for creating efficient sales funnels and checkout sites. ThriveCart also provides you with several guarantee seal templates to use in your marketing.
SamCart
Edit your membership site, sales page, or product page with a few simple clicks with SamCart’s intuitive drag-and-drop page editor. It consists of widgets & fundamental components such as:
- Progress bar
- Countdown timer
- Testimonials
- FAQs
SamCart has pre-made collections of templates for things like headers, guarantees, and call-to-action buttons. The ThriveCart page builder does not include these unique elements.
SamCart’s capacity to render stores responsive on mobile devices is another plus. Your e-commerce platform must be mobile-friendly to accommodate the growing number of customers who use it from their smartphones.
Winner: SamCart
SamCart triumphs because its mobile-friendly shopping cart pages may be easily customized to any aesthetic preference. Stay tuned, though, because ThriveCart is currently improving its software.
Reporting
The most effective marketers choose shopping cart software that prioritizes reporting and analytics.
Reporting features of ThriveCart and SamCart are compared here below.
ThriveCart
ThriveCart provides detailed, easy-to-read analytics statistics on metrics such as the following:
- Average Order Value
- Automatic Sales Tax
- Rebills
- Affiliate Commissions
- Affiliate Orders
- Net Revenue
- Total Refunds (customers, amounts, rates)
- Conversions
- Orders
- Checkout Views
And more…
You can compare two product reports over a look-back time in ThriveCart. The sleek reporting interface displays facts in simple graphs. You may easily disable unnecessary stats to simplify viewing.
SamCart
SamCart performs similarly but offers sales report analysis by product, date, subscription, and traffic. You can also filter reports by upsell funnels. This is not possible on ThriveCart.
Accessible CSV export and detailed affiliate sales reports are available.
SamCart’s reports are simpler than ThriveCart’s, making them more appealing to beginners and technically challenged customers.
Winner: Draw
SamCart’s interface is more streamlined and organized, whereas ThriveCart’s is more robust regarding reporting options. There is no clear winner because each has its own benefits that may appeal to different types of advertisers.
Integrations
Integrations between platforms are compared in this section. As new features are introduced to the software, this list will evolve. For more details, you may also click through to the respective integration pages for each platform.
ThriveCart
The extensive list of integrations makes ThriveCart a fantastic marketing stack solution.
Integrations include:
- Many fulfillment services: ShipStation, Google Sheets, Kunaki, Disk.com, etc.
- Demio and other Zapier webinar integrations
- Drip, Sendy MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, and Aweber are a few email marketing services.
- Thinkific, WishList Member, Teachable, and MemberMouse are the names of Membership platforms.
- Apple Pay, Authorize.net, PayPal, and Stripe are the names of Payment Providers.
SamCart
The shopping cart software offered by SamCart is competitive. It has an incredible array of add-ons that rivals Thrivecart’s:
- ShipStation and other Zapier-integrated fulfillment platforms.
- Kajabi, with several additional Zapier-integrated webinar platforms, is one option.
- Drip, iContact, HubSpot, Ontraport, MaroPost, and MailChimp are some examples of email marketing services.
- Stripe and PayPal are the payment providers (yeah, so this isn’t the best).
- Platforms for managing members include MemberMouse, OptimizeMember, Thinkific, and Kajabi.
Winner: Thrivecart
ThriveCart comes out on top since it centralizes all the necessary integrations for an e-commerce store. While SamCart shares many similarities with the competition, it falls short regarding native integration, especially with payment and fulfillment services (which may be obtained, albeit indirectly, through additional integrations).
Affiliate Program
Suppose you rely heavily on affiliates to sell your items or promote your business. In that case, you’ll be happy to know that both platforms include robust affiliate platform centers that make setting up and managing affiliates simple.
Each is broken down below for your perusal.
ThriveCart
The ThriveCart shopping cart software package includes a built-in affiliate management feature. The reporting dashboard that ThriveCart’s affiliate service uses is intriguing to customers because of how easy it is to use.
It offers a wealth of information to sift through and is user-friendly enough for people of varying literacy levels to use it effectively for research purposes.
In the Affiliate Center, you may adjust global variables, including compensation percentages, available products, and applicable rules and policies. You’ll find further granular control over your affiliates as you move from tab to tab.
SamCart
SamCart’s affiliate program is more advanced than that of competing shopping carts. You can advertise your products and hire and coordinate any number of affiliates as you need to boost sales and revenue.
The software has an attractive user interface and provides comprehensive, straightforward reporting. It equips you with an array of features you need to research and make choices that will advance the development of your affiliate business.
Winner: Thrivecart
ThriveCart is the best affiliate management platform since it allows custom affiliate commissions. Even within a team, members may have varying preferences. Second-tier affiliates can also be compensated for sales made by their affiliates.
Pricing
Many business owners think about the cost of shopping cart software before making a final decision.
As a result, we included a discussion on cost in our comparison of ThriveCart vs SamCart.
ThriveCart
The Standard plan at ThriveCart costs $495 for a lifetime, while the Pro plan costs $690.
Reasons why this is a great buy include:
- Rebilling feature
- Automatic sales tax calculation
- Custom domain name
- An affiliate management system
Marketers looking for a one-stop-shop e-commerce solution may consider ThriveCart.
Since ThriveCart only costs $495 once, it’s an attractive offer for every marketer, no matter their field.
RELATED – ThriveCart Vs ThriveCart Pro
Samcart
Compared to ThriveCart, SamCart has significantly higher prices. The system supports four unique packages:
- Launch: $49 monthly
- Grow: $99 monthly
- Scale: $199 monthly
- Enterprise: $399 monthly
You can try the service risk-free for 14 days with every subscription.
You are free to cancel your SamCart subscription at any time within the first 30 days if you don’t think it’s a suitable fit for your business.
Winner: Thrivcart
If you’re solely concerned about cost, then you should use ThriveCart. Whatever your needs are, SamCart has features that can be useful for your company’s future.
You should consider your individual requirements rather than merely the cost when deciding which software to use to increase sales and profits from each client.
The software will swiftly recoup its costs, regardless of your option.
Added Marketing Competencies
These two platforms have features that can’t be found in other shopping cart software. In this section, We compare and contrast each platform’s additional features, such as marketing automation optimization and other crucial advertising tools.
ThriveCart
You’ll be able to maximize the amount of money you make off each sale by using ThriveCart’s one-click transactions, bump offers, upsells, and downsells. You can offer consumers discounts using the platform through flat prices or percentages. When promoting limited-time discounts or seasonal products, coupons can be made active or inactive for specific time frames.
In ThriveCart, you may configure various triggers, like when clients leave their cart empty, their payment is declined, or their credit card expires. The software automatically sends an email based on that customer’s prior behavior.
SamCart
SamCart does not include an autoresponder or comparable email automation system, unlike ThriveCart, which would make sending emails and follow-up sequences to customers easier.
You must use a third-party email marketing solution to accomplish this. Then, you can leverage the customer’s actions to start pre-programmed responses. However, SamCart’s trigger options are constrained when compared to ThriveCart.
Winner: Thrivecart
With its many marketing features and tools to enhance conversions, ThriveCart wins in this category.
Final Thought on ThriveCart vs. SamCart Comparison
You’ve learned enough from this ThriveCart vs. SamCart comparison to make an educated decision for your company. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which platform you use because they’re both top-notch shopping cart programs.
If you’re a marketer or business owner looking for a shopping cart solution with everything you need (and can use forever) for a low one-time cost, Thrivecart is your best bet. If you are a new digital or physical goods entrepreneur looking for shopping cart software with modern, optimized themes and a powerful affiliate center, SamCart is the way to go.
Further Read: