Samcart and Thrivecart are two leading brands to create a digital shopping cart for your online business. Both of these pieces of software can connect to your payment processors and use powerful online marketing tools such as a sales funnel to help increase conversions.
Who is Samcart Best For?
Samcart has a few standout features that make it an excellent option for certain entrepreneurs.
So if you’re looking for elegant and straightforward checkout pages, easy drag-and-drop design for your sales page, and some basic digital marketer features, this is going to be the software for you.
Samcart is by far the more simple of the two software we are talking about today. It doesn’t have the same level of connection with an affiliate program or the refined marketing features that Thrivecart has.
However, this might be a good thing for your business.
Starting simple is a great way to build success. If you jump into the deep end, you’re going to spend a lot of your money and time working to stay afloat rather than learning how to swim.
Samcart is a powerful tool for beginner entrepreneurs who are just cutting their teeth in online business.
While a decent portion of this success comes from the simple and effective design of Samcart, another piece of this comes from its cost.
We will get into detail on this and just a little bit, but for now, it’s worth saying that Samcart has a lower bar of entry when it comes to managing costs for your business.
Thrivecart, on the other hand, it’s for a different set of businesses.
Who is Thrivecart Best For?
Thrivecart is a powerful tool that connects your physical and digital product with your customer’s mobile devices.
The service comes with a robust affiliate center.
Thrivecart has gone out of its way to connect with email marketing, split testing, and a whole host of payment processors.
You’ll find no shortage of external partners that Thrivecart has built-in connections with.
If your business is already starting to expand into more complicated analytics and data, Thrivecart can help you push this to the next level.
Thrivecart also works with mobile payments. As mobile increasingly becomes the dominant market share for online interactivity and business, Thrivecart stays one step ahead of the competition by focusing on this arena.
Again, we have to tease the payment section ahead of time. Thrivecart offers a one-time payment rather than a monthly subscription.
This plan will save you money in the long run as long as you’re willing to put up a decent chunk of change without a payment plan or free trial. With that said, you might be able to find a coupon code if you’re lucky.
Samcart Features
Samcart curates its features for individuals who are looking to get started with an online business. It has a learning library, a podcast, lessons, and other features that will help you learn how to use the tools of the trade when it comes to selling online and handling your marketing and analytics.
Samcart may be a bit behind the competition regarding the bundled features with its service, but it is constantly adding new options into its software.
Here’s just a few recent additions that make Samcart stand out.
- Recently introduced integration with pixel tracking.
- Samcart puts entrepreneur education first with their digestible marketing podcast and built-in lessons.
- A focus on subscription-based transactions
- Pre-loaded “zones” make shipping & handling calculations simple.
- Additional support for “physical” goods
- You can customize Samcart across multiple brands on one account.
Thrivecart Features
Thrivecart stands out when it comes to the suite of features that are offered. You’ll be able to find a much more nuanced and water selection of options inside the service. With that said, it has a very steep learning curve.
Users of Thrivecart will be expected to already have a good grasp of digital marketing practices and how to handle their own online business.
You won’t find much hand-holding here, but you will find a breadth of features that might be missing elsewhere.
- Profit Boosters — These are Thrivecart’s features that are designed to promote upsells, including sales funnels and bumps
- The ability to add pop-up and embedded carts for added utility
- Integrates with other standard business tools like Drip and Hubspot
- Live analytics gives you truly granular data
- Retargeting, Link Tracking, Video Carts, and Two-factor Authentication are just a few of the dozens of other built-in features
Samcart Plans
Samcart offers are all based on their monthly fee plans. To be upfront, you can buy a yearly subscription for 20% off the total, but that still costs more than the lifetime one-time payment for Thrivecart pro.
Here’s the cost breakdown for Samcart:
Samcart now features three payment plans. These are Launch, Grow, and Scale.
Launch is the basic plan, and it starts at $49 a month. This plan gives you the ability to create a single sales page that has Samcart branding.
This plan could be a decent option for a beginner entrepreneur looking to test the waters of more independent online sales options.
Grow opens things up to a little bit more complex utility at $99 a month. The most significant difference here is that you’ll not be able to create multiple pages and have access to granular marketing data.
Scale is for the big time. This plan is $199 per month and gives you everything inside of the Grow option in addition to much more support and the kind of resources that the large-scale operation could make use of.
The best thing about Samcart is that they offer a free trial. So you can dip your toes in the water and make sure that this is the kind of service you’re looking for before committing to these plans.
Of course, you can also cancel these payment plans at any time. You can test out Samcart before jumping ship to another platform.
The trial and cancellation policy is also an excellent option for short-term businesses like pop-ups and companies looking to do more complicated market research for online sales.
Thrivecart Plans
Thrivecart offers come at just two price points.
The essential Thrivecart plan costs $495. It is a one-time purchase that covers the lifetime of your use of Thrivecart.
You’ll get everything that the service offers as it grows and changes throughout the years with a single purchase.
We need to highlight right up front that this $495 payment is more affordable than one year of Samcart at its most basic cost.
If you’re willing to pay this kind of money upfront, you can save yourself a lot of hassle dealing with subscription services and lesser service options.
Thrivecart Pro costs a whopping $690 upfront for a one-time cost. There are no recurring fees, and this cost will give you access to Thrivecart Pro for as long as this product exists.
The pro options, much like Samcart, open up new marketing potential and give you further access to the service.
Rather than paying for a month-to-month subscription service over several years, you’ll be able to pay a one-time purchase for this online shopping cart platform that will last you for years.
When it comes to cost, Thrivecart is the clear winner.
What People Are Saying About Samcart
One of the best ways to check the status of any digital service is to see what people are saying online.
So your best source of information about these products will be from the people who have used them.
Keep in mind that, as with all customer service and online sales, dissatisfiedcustomers will have disproportionately loud voices when it comes to their relationship with a product.
With that said, Samcart is notorious for having lackluster customer support.
As a result, plenty of entrepreneurs and companies have voiced their concerns about how Samcart responds to their customer service needs.
Since Samcart is all about helping you convert online payments, it will play a critical role in your operations. So it’s a little difficult to hear that their customer service has some negative comments given the importance of this software.
What are people saying about Thrivecart?
Thrivecart Reviews
Thrivecart’s reviews, on the other hand, are much more positive.
The price point and features are two of the primary sources of Thrivecart’s glowing reviews. Many people are impressed by the low-cost and one-time lifetime payment. It’s refreshing to see a digital service have a single lifetime cost rather than a perpetual subscription model.
Thrivecart also stays a few steps ahead of Samcart when it comes to features. This is another source of positive online commentary for the service.
From the outside looking in, it appears that Thrivecart is doing a better job of cultivating its consumer base and making sure that they are satisfied with their product in the long term.
Given that you’re going to have to pay a few hundred dollars upfront to get to use this service, it’s no wonder that they’re going the extra mile to make sure that everyone is happy with these costs.
