ThriveCart Review: Is ThriveCart Worth It? 

  • Matthew Woodward
  • Updated on Mar 28, 2024
🔥 Take the 100% free 28 Day SEO Challenge to grow your traffic.

If you are selling products online and don’t have a conversion-focused shopping cart guarantee you are leaving money on the table.

More often than not, your standard online shopping cart can lower conversions rather than increase them.

This leads to a huge loss in sales and revenue.

What’s the good news?

All of this is easy to fix and you don’t need to hire developers.

ThriveCart puts the control back in your hands. It allows you to create high converting checkout pages in minutes.

In my ThriveCart review, I will share with you all the top features and answer the big question…

Is ThriveCart all it’s cracked up to be?

What Is ThriveCart?

ThriveCart is an online shopping cart used to create high converting checkout pages. It allows you to collect payment for:

  • Physical products
  • Digital products

But to say that ThriveCart is simply a checkout system is a HUGE understatement.

ThriveCart is used by thousands of small and large businesses all over the world.

To date, entrepreneurs have sold more than 9.2 million products through ThriveCart – Processing more than $1.2 billion in sales transactions!

(Interested in entrepreneurship? Check out these entrepreneurial statistics).

thrivecart stats

As if that’s not enough…

ThriveCart integrates with tons of different tools and software without requiring any coding knowledge at all. You can sign up and have a powerful shopping cart on your site in minutes.

It’s no surprise that ThriveCart has become one of the world’s most popular online shopping cart solutions.

Who Is ThriveCart For?

The short answer: Anyone who sells digital products online.

ThriveCart does have some limitations with physical products but is one of the best shopping carts for digital products.

If you are selling:

  • Online course
  • Digital programs
  • E-books
  • Software
  • Membership site
  • Digital subscription products

ThriveCart can help you do it better! They have a range of different tools designed to get more customers through your checkout.

ThriveCart Review Of Top Features

ThriveCart has a lot of powerful features.

All the features are designed to help you accomplish two important things:

  1. Grow your sales
  2. Increase average order value

As a business owner, it’s essential to maximise every sales opportunity. ThriveCart has built a complete checkout system to help you accomplish just that.

Let’s review the ThriveCart features.

1. Payment Options, Coupons & Discounts

ThriveCart has a big range of payment options.

Regardless of what payment options you want to offer, ThriveCart will help you do it.

You can collect payment by:

  • One-time fee
  • Payment plans
  • Subscriptions
  • Pay what you want
  • Tripwire

thrivecart payment options

You can even combine any of those options with a free trial period.

Now, this might look like an overload of options – but choosing a payment option for your products is something you should test.

Why?

Different payment options can affect the overall conversion rate of your offers. That’s why you need to see which one will bring in the most $$$.

With ThriveCart, you can split-test different payment options to see which ones work the best for you. Doing this can save you time and money in the future.

Along with all the payment options you have the ability to:

  • Limit the number of products available
  • Automatically add sales tax to orders
  • Receive payment in 22 different currencies

multi-currency payments

Whatever payment options you need to maximise every sale, ThriveCart does it!

Advanced Coupons And Discount Options

Do you offer coupons to new or existing customers?

ThriveCart supports coupons in a number of different ways.

It’s easy to add a coupon/discount section to your checkout page. You can start sending out coupon codes and customers can add them as they pay.

You can even set expiry times on coupons to help increase the scarcity of the discount you are offering.

Shall we take it up a notch?

ThriveCart has a great feature that allows you to create coupons that are only available via a specific URL.

This way you offer discounts to different customers while limiting their ability to share the coupon code with others!

coupon codes

The complete list of coupon options that ThriveCart offers are:

  • Fixed amount discount
  • Percentage discount
  • Free shipping codes
  • Date range availability of the coupon
  • A limited number of times a coupon can be used
  • Coupons sent by triggers through integrations (e.g. a link is clicked)

Whichever way you want to use coupons and discounts in your business – ThriveCart has the features to support you.

2. Upsell, Downsell And Bump Offers

Have a sales funnel with multiple offers?

ThriveCart has the tools you need to sell them at the right time.

At the checkout page, you can add eye-catching order bumps. You can set up order bumps within a few clicks and it’s a great way to increase average order value right as your customer pays.

order bump

Want to increase your average cart order even more?

Create an upsell offer.

ThriveCart allows you to easily build one-click upsell pages. The upsell page loads straight after the customer finishes buying the initial product. With just one click of a button, they are instantly charged for your upsell.

No need to add in their payment details again.

one click upsells

If the customer chooses not to buy your upsell you can have a downsell page that loads and makes a different one-click purchase offer.

These powerful features are the easiest way to:

  • Increase your average order per customer
  • Make more money from your funnel

funnel outline

The ThriveCart builder supports the way you want to sell your products by giving you tons of options to create a sales process that works for you.

3. Shopping Cart Template Designs

Shopping cart pages aren’t usually conversion-focused.

That changes with ThriveCart. You have the ability to not only change the way your shopping cart looks and feels…

But also where it appears on your site.

ThriveCart has a range of shopping cart templates ready to go. All the shopping cart templates are completely customisable to ensure they match your brand.

You can make them look however you want and even split test designs to see what works best for your target audience.

ThriveCart has four shopping cart templates to choose from:

  • Standard
  • Sales cart
  • Embeddable
  • Pop Up

shopping cart templates

Each has its own pros and cons depending on your product and the overall feel of your sales page.

Standard Cart Template

The standard cart is exactly what you expect to see on the average ecommerce site… But with a twist.

The checkout area is split into 2 different sections:

  • The first section has an area for the customer to add their contact details.
  • The second section is where you can add other offers and other sales content like an order bump or upsell.

standard cart template

Both sections can be completely customised with different design features.

It’s simple and works well for online stores that typically sell multiple products at the same time. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

Sales Cart Template

The sales cart template is like a:

  • Shopping cart
  • Checkout page
  • Sales page

…ALL rolled into one.

You have the sales content at the top and a checkout form at the bottom.

standard cart template

This is a great option if you want to catch those impulse buys that don’t require a lot of consideration.

Embeddable Cart Template

ThriveCart allows you to embed a checkout almost anywhere on your website!

You can place the cart directly onto a page or prompt it to show when a button is clicked.

It is secure so customers can buy right then and there. No need to make them jump through a bunch of other pages to pay!

Pop Up Cart Template

Similar to the embeddable cart, you can create a pop-up cart.

You can add a button anywhere on your website. As soon as the customer clicks the button the pop-up cart will appear.

pop up cart button

Customers can securely add their card details and pay then. Quick and easy!

4. Built-in Affiliate Tools

Affiliate tools are often…

  • Difficult to set up
  • Frustrating to use
  • Expensive

ThriveCart has a very powerful affiliate system built into the software.

built in affiliate tools

It allows you to easily set up great affiliate programs to get others promoting your products.

In just a few clicks you can enable commissions to be paid to others who:

  • Promote your products
  • Sell your products

Simply create a registration URL for your affiliates to sign up and be notified every time you have a new affiliate registration.

Don’t want to deal with registrations?

You can have anyone who signs up to automatically be approved and receive a unique affiliate link. This gets your affiliate program working like clockwork without any need for you to do anything else.

affiliate program registrations

One of the biggest features not seen in other affiliate program tools is the ability to offer exclusive bonuses. This means you can automatically give bonuses to affiliates who hit specific targets.

This unique feature allows you to reward your biggest affiliates and keep them engaged.

Payouts to your affiliates are also really easy.

ThriveCart has a native integration with PayPal. Easily schedule automatic payouts to affiliates at the same time every month and pay them directly into their PayPal account.

ThriveCart has built an excellent affiliate tracking dashboard to see just how much money you earned through affiliates.

Each affiliate also receives their own personalised dashboard so they can track their stats over time.

affiliate dashboard

The built-in affiliate program is not only good… It is better than most other affiliate tools.

Note: You need to upgrade to the Pro license to get access to the ThriveCart affiliate tools.

5. ThriveCart Integrations

Integrations can make or break tools.

The ThriveCart team has worked really hard to offer a ton of native integrations. You can use Zapier to integrate with even more tools which make the possibilities almost endless.

thrivecart integrations

ThriveCart also offers API access backed with excellent documentation.

Here is a full list of ThriveCart Integrations:

Payment Gateway

ThriveCart has all the big payment gateways to make transactions as easy as possible (and ultimately you more money).

This includes:

  • PayPal
  • Stripe
  • Authorise.net
  • Apple Pay
  • Google Pay

Regardless of whether your customers buy through mobile or desktop – you can easily collect money.

Membership Platforms

Lots of people use ThriveCart as an online cart for processing purchases that involve memberships. If you have an online course or a subscription that needs a membership platform, ThriveCart plays nicely with most of them.

ThriveCart has native integrations for:

  • LifterLMS
  • MemberMouse
  • MemberPress
  • OptimizeMember
  • Teachable
  • Thrive Apprentice
  • WishList Member
  • Thinkific

They also have an integration with both Kajabi and Kartra through Zapier.

Email Marketing Providers

If you have been selling products online for a while now…

You will know how important email marketing is. Thankfully ThriveCart has a lot of options to choose from.

They integrate with all of the major email marketing platforms and even some of the smaller ones.

In total, they have 41+ email marketing tools that they integrate with. That’s a lot!

You can set up abandoned cart sequences and autoresponders through ThriveCart to ensure that you don’t miss any opportunities to lock down a sale.

Webinar Platforms

If you need integrations to your webinar platform, ThriveCart doesn’t have a lot.

They have 2 native webinar platform integrations:

  • WebinarNinja
  • Demio

Thankfully Zapier comes to the rescue and allows you to connect with most of the others.

Fulfilment Services

Thinking about using ThriveCart to sell your Print On Demand or physical products?

Although ThriveCart isn’t the best option for physical products, it does connect with a number of fulfilment services:

  • Disk.com
  • Google Sheets
  • Kunaki
  • Lulu
  • Printful
  • Shippo
  • ShipStation

If you have a Shopify store you can use Zapier to connect it to ThriveCart.

6. ThriveCart Support & Community

Top notch support is essential for any piece of software.

ThriveCart does a really good job at supporting their community.

If you are ever stuck on something they have a few different support options.

Detailed Documentation

The first place to go if you need some help is the ThriveCart documentation.

They have detailed documentation guides that cover everything from getting started through to setting up each feature.

documentation support

You will also find good documentation on all of their native integrations. I have personally been able to quickly solve tons of issues using their documentation alone.

Useful Support Team

Couldn’t find the answer in the documentation?

ThriveCart has a dedicated support team ready to help. They are attentive and work to solve any problem you have quickly.

The team is clearly knowledgeable about all of the tools and features that ThriveCart offers. They can help you with anything from technical issues to help you get the most out of the product.

Unfortunately, they don’t have a live chat feature so you need to submit a support ticket each time. They are pretty quick to respond though, typically within 24 hours.

ThriveCart Review - Contact Support Team

You can always email them directly as well.

Facebook Community

ThriveCart has spent a lot of time creating a strong Facebook group.

They have over 12,000 members in the group and there are a lot of active users. If you need any help or advice, you can always post on the Facebook group.

thrivecart facebook group

Group members do tend to comment and the ThriveCart support team is always active on there.

GROWTH HACK: Sign up for my FREE ecommerce SEO 7-days course.

ThriveCart Pricing Overview

Pricing is one of ThriveCarts biggest selling points.

Unlike other online shopping cart tools that charge monthly fees and get more expensive with the more sales you make – ThriveCart keeps it simple.

They only have two pricing plans which are both one-time fees.

Plan Lifetime Price  Affiliate System  Dunning   Custom Domain 
Standard $495
Pro $690 Included Included Included

Not bad, right?

You get lifetime access to ThriveCarts features for just a one-time fee. The Pro plan in my opinion is a no brainer. It’s also the plan that I purchased.

I mean, for an extra $195 you get:

  • Affiliate Center
  • Subscription Saver Functionality (Dunning)
  • Automatic Sales Tax Calculation
  • Intelligent Business Projections
  • JV Contracts
  • Advanced User Management
  • Client Usage Rights
  • Custom domain name functionality

The custom domain name functionality alone makes it worth it. Custom domain name means instead of your cart domain being:

matthewwoodward.thrivecart.com“…

…it could be something like “cart.matthewwoodward.co.uk“.

This looks way more professional in your customer’s eyes.

Also with the recent crackdown on data privacy, having your shopping cart hosted on your domain gives you more functionality for tracking data and conversions accurately.

And if you’re still on the fence…

ThriveCart has a 30-day money-back guarantee. Just make sure you read the fine print.

ThriveCart Pros & Cons

There are heaps of reasons to love ThriveCart. It offers users tons of features to help grow sales and increase conversions.

But ThriveCart isn’t perfect. Here is a complete list of the pros and cons.

ThriveCart Pros

  • User-Friendly Interface – Even for beginners ThriveCart is easy to use. It has a clean interface and requires very little technical knowledge to use all of the features.
  • Multiple Integrations – Integrations are an essential part of shopping cart software. ThriveCart has over 200+ tools it can integrate with.
  • Upsell, Downsell And Order Bump Offers – Increasing average order value and selling multiple offers is a dream with ThriveCart. You can split-test each part of the funnel to maximise sales.
  • Complete Control On Coupons & Discounts – You have absolute control over your coupons and discounts. You can be as creative as you want with the discounts to help you generate more sales.
  • Flexible Payment Options – Collecting payment is a seamless experience as ThriveCart integrates with major payment providers like Stripe and PayPal.
  • Great Customer Service – ThriveCarts’ customer service is easy to contact and very helpful. They also have very in-depth product documentation on their website. ThriveCart has created a very active Facebook group to ask questions and get help from other members.
  • Advanced Affiliate Marketing – The built-in affiliate tools make it super quick to set up a powerful affiliate program and manage it easily.
  • On-Time Fee For Life Access – Subscriptions add up over time. Both ThriveCart plans are a one-time fee of either $495 for Standard or $690 for Pro – And you get lifetime access.

ThriveCart Cons

  • Not Recommended For Selling Physical Products – ThriveCart is great for digital products but not for physical products. If you sell multiple physical products, it’s not the best shopping cart solution for you.
  • Not Ideal For Selling Services – ThriveCart is primarily built for selling products. Although you can use it to sell services, it doesn’t offer the best features for it.
  • Lack Of Customisation Features – The builder itself is very solid but the customisation features are pretty limited. If you need lots of customisation, ThriveCart may not be what you want.
  • No Cryptocurrency Payment Accepted – Want to take advantage of the growing popularity of crypto payments? ThriveCart doesn’t currently support cryptocurrency as a form of payment.
  • Doesn’t Offer Emergency Support – Live chat and phone support are not available. That means you need to submit a support ticket through the help desk each time to get help.
  • Big Upfront Cost – The benefit of subscriptions is that you can get started with minimal upfront costs. You will need to pay the total one-time fee upfront to access ThriveCart. They don’t have any payment plans.

GROWTH HACK: Sign up for my FREE SEO training series.

ThriveCart vs SamCart: The Ultimate Battle

Clearly, ThriveCart is a great shopping cart and checkout tool.

But how does it stack up against a market leader like SamCart?

samcart review

SamCart has a very similar set of features to ThriveCart. You can build high converting and well-optimised checkout pages.

SamCart comes with lots of templates and allows you to add order bumps, one-click upsells and downsells to maximise every sale.

With Samcart you also have a ton of integrations to make your whole online sales system come together nicely.

What are the key differences?

Below I’ll show you the 3 biggest differences between SamCart and ThriveCart to determine which platform you should use.

Design Flexibility

The biggest thing that SamCart has over ThriveCart is its flexibility in design.

SamCart allows you more functionality with design tools which means you can make your order forms look more like your overall brand.

I’m not saying ThriveCart’s drag-and-drop builder isn’t good. It just doesn’t have as much flexibility. Most users won’t even notice the differences (or care).

Affliate System

SamCart also has a built-in affiliate system. But it is nowhere near ThriveCarts’ affiliate system. SamCarts affiliate lacks the functionality really needed to build and scale a profitable affiliate program.

Pricing

In terms of pricing ThriveCart really has an unbeatable deal. SamCart starts at $49 per month. If you want access to their complete set of features you can expect to pay up to $199 per month.

ThriveCart offers one-time pricing plans of either $495 or $690. This is much cheaper long-term than SamCart.

My Recommendation: ThriveCart

The clear winner for me is ThriveCart.

Both ThriveCart and SamCart have very similar tools and features. Almost identical in some cases.

Where ThriveCart wins is it’s better:

  • Built-in affiliate system
  • Pricing

Long-term, it just makes so much more sense to invest in ThriveCart.

The slightly better design features SamCart offers just isn’t a good enough competitive advantage for most people to worry about.

ThriveCart’s value for money makes it an easy choice.

Wrapping It Up

The bottom line: ThriveCart is worth it.

ThriveCart gives you the power to do exactly what it claims to do – Increase sales and average order value.

It’s simple to use and has tons of powerful tools and features. The ThriveCart development team continues to add new features and upgrade existing ones.

All of this for a one-time price and lifetime access. Sounds like a good deal to me!

If you are ready to level up your online business add ThriveCart to your sales team.

Want to write product reviews like this one? Use my product review template!

Frequently Asked Questions

No. ThriveCart is not a payment processor. ThriveCart is a shopping cart tool that allows you to customise the checkout process for your customers. ThriveCart does connect with payment processors like Stripe and PayPal.
No, you don’t need to have ThriveCart with Kajabi. Kajabi is an all in one platform that allows you to build, market and sell your digital products. ThriveCart is just an online shopping cart software. ThriveCart does have better shopping cart features than Kajabi and you can integrate both of them through Zapier.

ThriveCart Review

  • Review Of: ThriveCart
  • Reviewed By: Matthew Woodward
  • Rating:
  • Updated On: Mar 28, 2024
Summary:

In my ThriveCart review, I will share with you all the top features and show you why I’m using it to power all of my digital sales.

View More Details

What Are Your Thoughts?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Increase Your Search Traffic
In Just 28 Days…

CLICK HERE TO GET STARTED I’ll show you how step by step

Featured In: