Thrivecart is the shopping cart service we use and highly recommend to anyone selling digital courses.
Why? One of the six key pillars for a successful and profitable launch is collecting payments.
What will you use for checkout? How will you be accepting payments?
Although most course hosting platforms are already equipped with payment processing capabilities, they also usually come with limitations.
If you’re looking for a shopping cart that works well with your evergreen funnel and/or has the capability to:
- provide payment plan options
- accept payment from several payment processors (including Apple Pay, Google Pay, Paypal, and Stripe!)
- include bump offers, OTOs (one time offers), upsells, or downsells
…then ThriveCart is the best investment for your course launch goals!
What is ThriveCart Used For?
ThriveCart is a shopping cart solution that lets you build checkout pages and collect payments for your services or digital courses.
And even though the best online course platforms to host your course have the capabilities to accept payments, your options are limited.
When we made the choice to go with ThriveCart, we were using Kartra.
Read about why we left Kartra here.
While Kartra was an all-in-one, we found that we were limited when creating upsells on our funnel so we needed a shopping cart that could fully support what we were looking to create.
An upsell is a sales strategy that gives your new customer the opportunity to enhance their experience by purchasing an “add-on” product (premium product or upgrade) right before, during or immediately after check out.
Like us, every client I’ve had that uses Paypal or an all-in-one platform also ends up having to sign up for ThriveCart because their platforms can’t handle upsells, bump offers, and other sales techniques as their businesses and needs grow.
ThriveCart Features
Because it’s a standalone product (vs being in a limited all-in-one solution), you have access to a variety of features that you’ll definitely need as your course sales increase and your business grows.
Payment Options
If you want to offer payment plans or a membership monthly fee, most online course platforms and all-in-one solutions do not have this option. If so, it comes with limitations.
ThriveCart let’s you set up payment options for your course, services, or whatever you’re selling, such as:
- Multiple payment plans (monthly)
- subscription/membership options
- One-time payment
- Name your price
You can also set up a limited quantity for your product or a free trial period for your customers.
And if you want to offer a coupon code at any point, you have that option with ThriveCart as well!
Ease of Use
When we made the switch to ThriveCart, it took practically no time to get up and running (including integrations).
There are built-in templates for your checkout pages with a drag-and-drop editor that lets you customize your page and get it set up in no time.
And because it’s so easy to use, I could easily hand it off to someone on the team.
This was never the case before because there were a lot of different things that needed to be considered when creating a payment link… but that became irrelevant with ThriveCart.
A note in full transparency– I can’t remember ever needing to use ThriveCart’s customer support so I can’t say too much about that. BUT I’ve heard great things about their customer support from clients and colleagues!
Affiliate Marketing
If affiliate marketing is on your current or future marketing plans, then you’ll love ThriveCart.
ThriveCart Pro has a built-in affiliate tracking system so that you don’t need to rely on a third-party solution for affiliate marketing.
The platform creates unique tracking IDs for each affiliate that signs up to promote your products to make tracking and payments a breeze!
ThriveCart:Learn, their brand new course hosting option
ThriveCart recently introduced ThriveCart: Learn.
Personally, I use MemberVault to host all of my courses and products, but a couple of clients recently started using it and have said good things!
ThriveCart: Learn is free for all ThriveCart members!
Values
Back in 2020, I created a spreadsheet to document the BLM and Values statements for some of the tools in the market, especially the tools that we use inside of Freedom Driven Success.
I wanted to make sure that our values aligned with our financial investments, and ThriveCart didn’t disappoint.
Although ThriveCart had not posted a public statement, they did provide a statement via Support Request.
You can see their response under the “Payment Processing + Carts” tab on this spreadsheet. (To read it, make sure to make a copy of this file!)
ThriveCart Pricing
“Ok Jess, got it. ThriveCart is a better shopping cart service than what I currently have in my online course platform. But how much does ThriveCart cost?”
ThriveCart charges a one-time fee of $495 for lifetime access.
ThriveCart Pro is an additional $195 for lifetime access.
In comparison to other shopping cart services and their monthly fees, the investment for ThriveCart is a no-brainer!
ThriveCart vs SamCart- which is the better choice?
SamCart is ThriveCart’s biggest competitor, although most people tend to just use PayPal or an all-in-one like Kajabi and realize they need something more comprehensive.
In the past, I used SamCart. SamCart worked well for us but our biggest motivator to make the switch was pricing.
When you look at the pricing between SamCart and ThriveCart, it made ThriveCart a no-brainer ($99 a month vs $495 lifetime).
ThriveCart also offers built-in sales tax collection and the option for your customers to pay using ApplePay, which SamCart does not!
ThriveCart vs ThriveCart Pro- Is ThriveCart Pro Worth it?
ThriveCart Pro is an additional $195 investment, but it is also lifetime access to the Pro features.
Are those features worth the additional investment?
One of our favorite ThriveCart Pro features is dunning.
Dunning is the process of recovering payments, whether from missed payments or billing issues.
ThriveCart Pro allows you to customize the automatic payment recovery emails that get sent out.
We love this because we allow ThriveCart to handle payment reminders and issues first vs using our team’s time.
Our team steps only when/if these automated emails don’t get it handled.
The second feature? ThriveCart Pro’s built-in affiliate management tool!
It is convenient to have an affiliate management tool right inside our shopping cart service vs needing a third-party tool!
And although the affiliate option can be a bit wonky with upsells (ask Emily King how we know — she’s been an affiliate partner for us that experienced the wonkiness first hand as we figured out the kinks. 😉 )…
Dunning plus the built-in affiliate management tools make ThriveCart Pro totally worth it!
Even with the $195 upgrade (which we have for the affiliate and dunning option), you would only get about seven months worth of SamCart, but this time… FOR LIFETIME.
If you are building funnels and/or have passive offers, it’s a no brainer.
Is ThriveCart Right for Me?
If you’re an online entrepreneur who:
- wants to have an affiliate program for your service or course
- is looking to have multiple points of purchase (SLO funnels, order bumps, etc)…
- needs more payment options than just credit card info or PayPal
- wants all the data around your sales, churn rates, LTV, etc
Then I highly recommend ThriveCart for your business. Check them out here!