ThriveCart is THE BEST Payment Gateway for Digital Products
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by Karl

ThriveCart Review 2024: Why I Love it (And HATE It)

Home / Tools / ThriveCart Review 2024: Why I Love it (And HATE It)
ThriveCart review - is it worth the money

ThriveCart Review 2024: Why I Love it (And HATE It)

Home / Tools / ThriveCart Review 2024: Why I Love it (And HATE It)
ThriveCart review - is it worth the money
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Hey, it’s Karl again. Welcome to my ThriveCart review.

Switching my course from Teachable to ThriveCart was the best decision I ever made… for my course at least.

It’s a marketer’s marketing tool. I went from about $5,000 in sales in my first year to more than 5x that in my first 6 months with ThriveCart.

All of this changed immediately:

  • I went from no upsells to upselling templates, eBooks, and coaching calls… and they actually converted. This all runs for me 24/7 on autopilot.
  • I ditched my clunky landing pages for a shorter, smoother sales funnel with a high-converting layout and proper trust elements. All that has lead to more conversions.
  • I got rid of my virtual assistant (sadly…), because it was easy enough to do it 100% on my own… which is a minor miracle. So, no more monthly salary on the books.
  • I went from paying $149 A MONTH to paying $690 ONCE. So instead of $1,788 a year, I’m not making ANY MORE payments for my course platform.

It really was totally game changing.

If you’re worried that you can’t run your business with it, don’t be. You 100% can run any course, digital product, coaching, or service business with ThriveCart.

There are people running six and seven-figure operations with just this tool. And you’ll only pay once… forever. Pretty sick deal.

But there’s a lot of misinformation out there, and I think most people don’t really understand just how and why ThriveCart is so good for an online business, so I’m going to show you everything you need to know to make a decision with confidence.

Including:

  • Who ThriveCart is for and who it’s not for
  • My experience selling digital products with ThriveCart
  • My experiences with other shopping cart platforms
  • How ThriveCart changed my digital products and course business
  • A thorough review of features like the shopping cart, checkout page, payment processor, and affiliate program
  • The pros and cons of using the platform
  • MEMES

But first, I’ve got a fun little story for you…

Once Upon a Time in Ho Chi Minh City (Why I Switched to ThriveCart)…

I first heard about ThriveCart way back in the day when I was living in Vietnam and trying to launch my first SEO course and coaching services.

I’d been using Teachable for a while (awful idea—complete garbage) and needed to switch to a new platform ASAP.

I was at a DC event – kinda like an entrepreneur meetup – and pretty much everyone I knew there was using one of the “Big 3”: ThriveCart, Kajabi, or Kartra.

Everyone was like “Get ThriveCart, man. It’s $690 FOR LIFE.”

thrivecart as a teachable alternative

I was super skeptical at first. “Isn’t ThriveCart JUST a shopping cart?”

Why pay $690 for a shopping cart when other tools cost $99/month and include a shopping cart plus email, landing pages, customer relationship management, and a dozen other tools? It didn’t make sense.

… turns out I was dead wrong.

First off, the people I was talking to were all making like $5,000 – $10,000/month or more in sales mostly hands-off. Can’t argue with results.

If someone is making the same amount of money in one month as I am in one year, then I’m probably doing something wrong…

And second, ThriveCart is not just a cart. It has a ton of other great add-ons like sales funnels, upsells, analytics, JV contracts for splitting revenue, and a whole course hosting feature – ThriveLearn – that’s just as good as anything on Teachable, Kartra, or Thinkific (not quite at Kajabi level, though).

And it was only $690 for life.

$690? I spend that on a quiet night out with the SEO crowd.

No joke, my whole business changed. I went from $5,000 in sales in one year to 5x that in 6 months with ThriveCart.

It’s night and day compared to Teachable. It’s so much easier, the upsells are way better, and it’s way less rigid.

And all those landing pages I was worried about? I can make the same landers with ThriveCart and they actually convert better, because they’re simpler and more value-packed.

I work less, I spend less each month, and my conversions are way higher. The only headache I had was adding in ActiveCampaign for email marketing, but that took 15 minutes and it works seamlessly now.

I uploaded all my videos into ThriveLearn, spent a few hours creating funnels, and that was it. ThriveCart now handles everything like clockwork and I don’t pay anything per month for it.

Does that mean that ThriveCart is perfect?

No.

Unlike Kajabi or Kartra, it can’t do everything for you.

If you want a community, an app, and all of your landing pages, customers, and blogs under one roof, it’s not going to happen.

But 99% of entrepreneurs either don’t need those things or never use them. How many courses or eBook businesses do you know with an app or blog?

Zero.

If you want to hit the ground running, start selling your products, and save a ton of time and money while doing it, ThriveCart is ideal.

Forget all of that next-level stuff. If you really want all that down the road, you can integrate tools into ThriveCart that do it.

WAIT: Just Who the Hell am I Anyway?

Since you’ve probably never heard of me, I want to explain WHY I think this article is so much different than what’s ranking out there.

I can tell that nearly 100% of the people writing articles about ThriveCart don’t actually use it. I do…

I started doing SEO when I was 12. I’ve had multiple six-figure flips, built SEO courses and coaching packages, and work as Chief Marketing Officer for a major agency.

Collectively, we’ve used tools like ThriveCart, SamCart, Kartra, Kajabi, and Mighty Networks both for ourselves or worked with clients who use them.

So, I might not be that cool, but I know my S***.

That gives me some unique insight into how to build courses and digital product businesses, and into other platforms around the web and how they stack up.

This review is based on my 5 years in the digital products space, talking with other entrepreneurs, and my experience using multiple shopping cart, checkout page, and sales funnel builders.

I want to give you a full picture of things so you can better understand Thrive’s strengths and limitations before buying it.

OK, that was a lot. Ready?

Quick Verdict: Is it the Right Shopping Cart for You?

Let’s just get straight to the point. I spent so long on this article that I never want to hear the word ThriveCart or anything that rhymes with it again.

is thrivecart worth it

ThriveCart is a simple, powerful, and affordable shopping cart platform that’s perfect for digital products like:

  • eBooks
  • Online courses
  • Simple physical products like print-on-demand t-shirts
  • Coaching packages (including membership sites)
  • Business templates or assets like themes or apps

Say you want to sell one of these digital products, here’s what you can do with ThriveCart with very little technical experience:

  • Start accepting payments via PayPal, stripe, Authorize.net, Google Play, or Apple Play
  • Build a high-converting product sales page
  • Build fast sales funnels (though funnels are a bit limited compared to larger platforms)
  • Increase average order volume with upsells, bumps, cross sells, and downsells in a few clicks
  • Host all of your course videos or membership content in the same platform
  • Increase sales and lifetime customer value with retargeting and subscription saving
  • Automatically calculate sales tax
  • Offer multiple payment plans for higher conversions
  • Get a rough idea of future sales with intelligent predicted revenue
  • Grow your business hands off with an affiliate program

ThriveCart isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty damn good. It’s got everything you need to host a product, sell it, increase average order volume, and grow a business (with an integration or two) in one place. And it’s super simple to start selling products immediately.

ThriveCart is not ideal for growing a community, building a massive brand, or anyone who just wants an all-in-one platform that makes life easier… but limits growth.

ThriveCart IS ideal for anyone who wants a platform that will let them sell products quickly, decrease costs exponentially, and make more money on each sale hands off.

The Advantages Over Other Tools

Before we get into the meat of things, I want to show you what makes ThriveCart better than Teachable, SamCart, Kartra, and all the other shopping cart platforms out there.

I think it’ll help you see why I’m such a ThriveEvangelist these days.

  • Savings: ThriveCart costs the same FOR LIFE as SamCart does per year for its basic plan. Hard to argue with that…
  • Better conversions: Imagine getting more people to buy your products AND increasing lifetime value by 50% or more completely on auto-pilot. That’s ThriveCarts #1 selling point. Two-step checkout, more payment options, more payment plans, more upsells, better layouts with better conversion elements – ThriveCart could easily add 25%-50% or more to your bottom line every year.
  • You can’t mess this up: Add products, create some pages, add upsells and bumps, connect PayPal – Boom, you’ve got a business. You really can’t screw this up. If you do, shame on you. With tools like Kajabi or Kartra, the learning curve is huge. Sure, you can do more, but is it worth the weeks it takes to get the hang of things or extra help you have to hire to make your business move? Not really.
  • More flexibility: ThriveCart is like a no holds barred boxing fight – anything goes. With Kartra or Kajabi, you’re at their mercy. Once you have all your videos, emails, landing pages, blogs, and ads in one place, you can’t leave. And you can’t get creative. With ThriveCart, you’re in complete control. Add anything you want, do anything you want, be who you want to be – it’s your world. ThriveCart is just living in it.
  • More payment options: This goes with more conversions, but I want to address it separately here. ThriveCart lets you accept PayPal, credit cards, Google and Apple Play, and Authorize.net. Most other platforms limit you to PayPal and credit cards. This opens you up to way more customers. And you can also offer infinitely flexible payment plans. Free trials, pay as you go, pay what you want, down payments and installments, subscriptions, one-time fees… literally everything. The more options you offer customers, the more likely they are to pay. Simple as that.

The Disadvantages

OK, the party is over. Time to throw some water on the fire here.

  • No top-level features: ThriveCart isn’t as advanced as something like Kajabi or Mighty Networks. If you want to build a massive community, create a native app, or build a fully functioning website, you’re out of luck. However, when the time comes for that, you can just integrate a tool to do it or connect to a custom website elsewhere. And, honestly, how likely are you to create a native app, dude? Have you even made a sale yet?
  • Limited templates: ThriveCart is not ClickFunnels or Kajabi. You won’t have an endless library of templates according to industry or purpose (e.g, a webinar or eBook launch funnel template). You’ll have a few checkout and landing page templates, and that’s it. I like that, since it eliminates option overload and simplifies my thinking process. If that bothers you, you’ll have to integrate another funnel tool.
  • You may need some integrations: Unlike Kajabi or Kartra, ThriveCart requires a few integrations if you want to grow a massive business. You’ll need at least an email marketing tool. That’s all I hav at the moment and it’s working fine.

What I Like About ThriveCart

There’s a reason why it's so popular.

The Best Value for Money

thrivecart is good value for money

It’s excellent value. No ifs, ands, or buts.

For a one-time payment of $690, you get lifetime access to everything you need to sell digital products including:

  • High-converting checkout pages
  • A shopping cart
  • Payment gateways
  • An affiliate program
  • Multiple payment options for customers
  • A simple web page builder to make sales pages and landers
  • Coupon codes
  • Software that auto-calculates digital sales tax

Lack of capital is the #1 reason new entrepreneurs fail in business. They totally underestimate how much it costs to start a new business or launch a product. So paying $690 once is a huge advantage over other business owners paying hundreds of dollars monthly.

Easy to Use

thrivecart is easy to use

ThriveCart is the opposite of every other shopping cart I’ve ever used. Its whole reason for being is to make selling products as simple as possible. Even a total beginner could be up and running in a few days. My friend’s Poodle is launching her first eBook on it next week.

All of this struck me right away:

  • The dashboard is immaculate with zero clutter
  • Complex features like upsells and order bumps are pre-made and ready to go in a few clicks
  • Never made a marketing funnel before? Just use a template, plop some content on the page, and let the tool do the rest. You’ll make sales as long as your offers are good
  • VAT and sales taxes are automatically calculated so you can pay greedy governments money that isn’t theirs to take

It's Super Fast, Really.

thrivecart works fast

Everything loads smoothly and quickly, which is a big plus compared to most other platforms. I’m super impatient, so waiting 60 seconds for anything to load equals rage mode. You’ll probably never experience this with ThriveCart.

There are two reasons for this.

For one, it's a hosted solution, meaning everything comes from their end and not on your website. They’re a big evil company with millions of dollars, so you know their servers are faster than anything a solopreneur can afford.

It’s also a simple tool, meaning there isn’t much burden to begin with.

Profit-Boosting Life Hacks – Upsells, Downsells, and More

setting upsells and order bumps in thrivecart

ThriveCart is like black magic. It really is the #1 life hack for digital businesses.

I don’t know why it took me so long to add upsells and bumps. It was more laziness than anything (and that Teachable made it near impossible).

Now, when people buy my courses or coaching, they immediately get upsells like an eBook, templates, extra coaching, or other done-for-you services. Adding these little “micro-commitments” has an exponential effect on your bottom line.

Now, instead of $397, my average order is around $550. I do no extra work.

It’s just ThriveCart showing my visitors the right offer at the right time, and making it super easy for them to purchase.

ThriveCart has so many little hacks for adding more money to your account:

  • Upsells: Basically asking your customer “would you like fries with that”?
  • Order bumps: Little add-ons below the main offer that add value to the product (e.g, a template to go along with a writing course).
  • Downsells: If they refuse a product, offer them another, smaller product that’s half the price.
  • Subscription saver: If anyone’s credit card gets declined, ThriveCart starts breaking knees until they pay. Actually, they just gently annoy the Hell out of them until they pay. Knee breaking is on you (I know a guy).
  • Cart abandonment and retargeting: Don’t let those big fish get away. If someone lands on your checkout page and takes off, ThriveCart lets you reel them back in with ads, emails, and more.

I know a lot of other online business tools do this too, but ThriveCart is just so much easier, and the layout/elements make it way easier to purchase. Like adding testimonials and trust badges right next to the price is super easy. SamCart doesn’t do anything like that.

Product Overview

thrivecart overview - my experiences

ThriveCart is a shopping cart software that simplifies starting and running an online digital product business.

Its unique advantages include a dead-simple interface, pre-designed templates and funnels for easy marketing, and sales-boosting features proven to earn more money with every sale.

With it, anyone can create basic funnels, accept payments, run marketing campaigns, and earn the max on every sale. Theoretically, with ThriveCart, you can sell a product, accept payments, run sales funnels, retarget customers, upsell them, and run all of your financials plus grow a business with affiliates and ads.

Pros

  • Simple and user-friendly
  • Clean interface
  • The fastest way to go from zero to your first sale
  • Earn the max on each sale with dunning, bumps, and upsells
  • Converts higher than other platforms due to payment options
  • Cheap lifetime deal

Cons

  • Only for products like eBooks, courses, or a membership site – not ideal for physical products
  • No business growth stuff like a CRM or built-in webinars
  • Limited templates
  • No marketplace for expert services or 3rd-party funnels

Deep Dive – Benefits, Features, Pricing, and More

What is ThriveCart and Why Use an Online Shopping Cart in the First Place?

what is thrivecart

ThriveCart is simple and intuitive shopping cart software that allows any digital entrepreneur to instantly set up a store, start accepting payments, and even do a bit of marketing.

Say you want to sell an eBook. Now, you can set up a page to sell your book, start marketing to bring people to your store, and accept credit cards or other payment processors like PayPal, Google Pay, or Apple Pay.

Shopping cart software exists so you don’t have to do everything separately and buy a bunch of different tools.

Normally, you’d need a website to sell your product, an account with Stripe to accept credit cards, and tools like a funnel builder to market to customers.

With a cart tool, it’s all in one place for a one-time fee. You could be up and running in a day.

It comes with pretty much everything you need to sell digital products under one umbrella.

ThriveCart offers:

  • Checkout page features and checkout templates
  • A shopping cart solution
  • A clean and easy user interface
  • Automatic sales tax support
  • Revenue boosting features like coupon codes, split pay, bump offers, and upsell offers that pop up on the checkout page

ThriveCart’s Key Advantage Over Other Shopping Carts

ThriveCart’s #1 unique advantage over other shopping cart solutions is that everything works together to make you more money on every sale.

For example, something cheap like GumRoad just acts as a place to host your products and accept payments. It’s on you to figure out the rest.

With ThriveCart, you can list a product, build a quick funnel, upsell, crosell, downsell, or even just regular sell (that still happens these days) with any type of pricing plan you could possibly think of.

So, you’ll get more sales, with extra money from automated upsells, higher conversions from better templates, pricing options, and payment gateways. And since everything is templated, it’s pretty fast and easy.

Not a bad sales pitch, right?

Let’s cover the key benefits in greater detail so you get a clear picture of how it grows your revenue.

Features Breakdown

The Payment Gateway: Is ThriveCart the Best Payment Processor?

This is why ThriveCart is the shopping cart to end all shopping carts.

Most other shopping cart software tools focus on offering more payment processors. They're thinking two steps ahead and offer more payment plans, pricing options, and convenient payment methods.

The more ways you offer your customer to pay the more likely they are to break through their objections and click “Pay Now.”

Let’s start with the basics first. It offers the most popular payment gateways like:

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

NOTE: Cryptocurrency payments are dicey and the company is currently not accepting them, last I heard.

Those are all the most important payment processors, and it should open you up to the entire non-crypto world. Anyone who doesn’t have a way to pay you through this is hiding from Interpol.

But here’s where ThriveCart starts playing 3-D Chess.

payment plan options in thrivecart

Instead of just “pay me this now,” you get the ability to offer just about any type of payment plan you want.

This includes:

  • One-time payments
  • Payment tiers (e.g, Starter, Gold, and Platinum plans)
  • Pay what you want (the customer pays anything they want…literally)
  • Subscriptions (very flexible)
  • Payment plans (e.g, $1,000 once or 4 payments of $250)
  • Free trials

And it offers a ton of flexibility. Check this out:

customized billing for online products

You can change the frequency, recurring price, and initial price all in one shot. The customizability is beyond pretty much anyone else.

The best part is that this is a revenue-boosting feature. Imagine you’re offering a $500 product and the customer just doesn’t want to get the credit card out.

Well, now you can offer 5 payments of $100 over 5 months or maybe every other month. That’s a lot easier to stomach.

But say they STILL don’t want to buy and decide to click back.

Don’t worry…

You can hit them with a popup that offers them a short paid trial for $10 or whatever. OK, now that gets their credit card out. Next thing you know, they love your product and pay the balance.

See the power? This is EXACTLY what makes it a beast.

The Sales Funnel Builder And Pages

configuring upsells, downsells, and bonuses

I’m lumping these two together because they are inseparable. You can’t have a funnel without pages, and there’s really no point in pages without connecting them in a funnel. And every time you build a funnel, you build pages.

Actually… now that I think about it, funnels are pages and pages can be funnels…

sales funnels and pages

If you aren’t sure what a sales funnel is, it’s basically a step-by-step process that brings the customer to buy your product.

Say they’re browsing the web one day and see an ad for your product and click it.

They’re brought to another page where they learn the benefits of your product and get a special offer.

When they click that, they’re brought to a checkout page where they finally pay, and then a “thank you” page pops up where they can enter their email to keep in touch.

That’s a very basic funnel. The idea is to gently guide them to a purchase rather than just slapping the hood and saying, “wanna buy this bad boy?”

ThriveCart makes building funnels stupidly easy for 3 reasons:

  1. You don’t even need to know how to build one because they have high-converting checkout page templates
  2. Everything is fairly simple and just a few clicks away
  3. Their drag-and-drop page builder makes it easy to edit your templates with custom information

Check out the page builder:

the thrivecart page builder dashboard

Once you choose a template, editing the page is fairly straightforward.

The page editor is very simple. It has key elements on the right, pre-built blocks in the middle, and more advanced color and border style options on the left.

You don’t even need to bother with those if you don’t want to. Just drag whatever you want into the middle and edit.

The benefit here is that most other carts are a bit more complicated, so their simplicity makes your life way easier.

You won’t be smashing your head against the table trying to edit pages.

The real value in a shopping cart like ThriveCart, though, is the templates.

They're is famous for their high-converting checkout page templates. Check it out:

thrivecart checkout page templates

Nice and clean, right? Super easy to make. And there are a ton for purchase as well from 3rd-party designers. I love this one:

thrivecart template example number two

And of course, you get all the normal bells and whistles to add to your checkout page like:

  • Countdown timers
  • Coupon codes
  • Bullet points
  • Buttons
  • Videos (you can embed them)

Again, it lets you take things to the next level by offering single step, multi-step, or popup checkout carts. That’s a lot more ways to convert customers—never a bad thing.

Now I have something very important to tell you…

They use the word funnel very liberally here.

It’s not a traditional funnel builder like ClickFunnels.

What you’re really building is more of an “upsell flow.” What that means is you’re configuring your checkout page and then adding upsells and downsells.

In essence, their idea of a funnel is “your customer goes to buy a product and gets hit with an upsell, downsell, or cross sell offer, and then a thank you page pops up.”

This is a bit different than “complete funnels” where you take leads through multiple steps just to get to checkout.

I’m going to cover all of these terms now in a separate section because they’re pretty groovy.

Easy Revenue Boosts

how thrivecart can increase your revenue

The #1 reason ThriveCart is so popular is that it actually increases your average profit on every sale in ways that other checkout page tools can’t.

It gives you more ways to squeeze out every little bit of juice. Let’s start with the most common way:

1-click Upsells, Downsells, and Order Bumps

“Would you like (insert your upsell product here) with that?” – ThriveCart 24/7

ThriveCart can potentially add extra money to every sale on autopilot. If this were a few years ago, you’d need to hire someone to customize all of this and then integrate it into your site. Now, it’s super easy.

Here's a quick overview of what you get:

  • Upsells
  • Downsells
  • Order bumps
  • Dunning (subscription saver)
  • A/B testing

Let’s take it one by one.

Upsells and Downsells

An upsell is asking customers if they want another related product after purchasing the main product.

This could be something like marketing consulting after they’ve purchased a digital marketing course from you.

It’s super easy to add your own custom upsell pages:

configuring custom upsell pages

Just create one and give it a name, then add it to a product (this is what they call a funnel).

thrivecart allows more than 4 upsells per product

Finally, edit the page:

drag and drop page editor

Once it’s live, the user is automatically taken there after completing a purchase.

This is the best way to increase customer lifetime value. Another option here is a downsell.

Downsells are when a customer doesn’t buy, so you hit them with a lesser offer.

If they don’t want a $1,000 course, you can offer them something like a “mini-course” without the bells and whistles for $499.

To create one, you just select a downsell in the funnel section:

fully customizeable downsells feature

And the process is exactly the same.

Bump Offers

Bump offers are when you offer small add-ons related to the main product.

The difference between bump offers and upsells is that bump offers are tiny add-ons done before the purchase that don’t require much effort to sell.

They’re normally cheaper. Upsells are done AFTER the purchase.

Here’s how it looks in an example checkout page:

thrivecart example checkout page

Dunning (Subscription Saving)

I love this feature. It adds even more value to your business by automatically chasing down delinquents and letting you intimidate them.

Say someone’s card is about to expire or they missed a payment, you can configure dunning to contact them and follow up automatically.

There are a few options here:

  • Overdue payment notice
  • Upcoming payment notice
  • Upcoming credit card expiration notice
  • Credit card expired reminder

Some claim this can add hundreds or even thousands of dollars in lost revenue back into your pocket each year. Judging by how often I forget to update card info, I 100% believe that’s true.

A/B Testing

Some of the most common complaints I hear about other platforms are related to the lack of split testing, which is just another reason that it's is the best cart out there these days.

A/B split testing is when you set up two versions of the same page and see which one your customers like more.

If one converts more customers, you change to that version.

Boom. More money rolling in.

Here’s how easy it is:

Just clone your product page and make whichever changes you want to test. I recommend only testing one change at a time.

configuring a/b testing in thrivecart

Then go to the tab that says A/B test and create it:

creating my own split tests

For simplicity’s sake, let’s just say you want to test which page converts at a higher rate. Just select that variable and select a date to end the test.

how to get the highest cart conversions

From there, the tool tracks everything and shows you the winner:

split testing analytics in thrivecart

Just keep in mind that this is very basic split testing.

That’s fine since it's designed for simplicity.

Most advanced marketers know that time doesn’t mean much when A/B testing. The real metric you need to measure is “statistical significance.”

What that means is you need a significant sample size to determine the winner rather than a length of time. If only 10 people buy a product, it’s not a large enough sample to determine a winner, regardless of how long you ran the test. ThriveCart doesn’t give this option.

ThriveLearn

As a course creator, my biggest issue with ThriveCart was it couldn’t host your videos and I would’ve needed a platform like Kartra or Kajabi anyway. So I thought, why am I going to pay for both when one tool has everything I need?

I guess they were spying on me, because now they have ThriveLearn, a course platform that’s just as good as Kartra and way better than that other platform I had before that shall not be named (it’s Teachable).

ThriveLearn is perfect for courses, short upskilling programs, drip courses, and membership courses. It’s just as good as all those other membership platforms out there except probably Kajabi… but Kajabi is like $300/month.

So, now you can host your course, create quizzes, track user progress, and offer certifications, all within your ThriveCart ecosystem. Which means you can track users, gain insight through analytics, run funnels, and add upsells all in a few clicks with 0 integrations.

Without this, ThriveCart would be a maybe from me. Now it’s a 100% yes.

Other Key Benefits

I want to cover a few supporting features that’ll be super helpful in growing your business. None of these are very special, but it’s helpful to have them.

  • Affiliate center: ThriveCart’s affiliate platform makes it easy to build your business by getting others to promote your product. Affiliate marketing is the easiest and cheapest way to grow in the beginning, since you don’t pay anything until you make a sale. It helps to have the platform built straight into the tool. Just generate the affiliate link, and anyone can start promoting your products to their audience for you.
  • Tax reporting: You can automate collecting sales tax on digital and physical products where applicable. Currently, it supports the US, EU, UK, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico.
  • Business insights: Aside from having everything neatly displayed on the dash, it lets you compare periods of time to see differences in revenue or other metrics like conversions. The prediction engine even shows estimated future earnings …though I’m not sure how accurate it is. Nothing crazy is happening here. The analytics are pretty basic, but again, they’re helpful to have.

Integrations

ThriveCart integration is a very contentious topic among entrepreneurs, so let me spell it out plainly for you.

Yes, ThriveCart integrates with just about everything either natively or via Zapier. That’s great.

Except it’s not always great

On the one hand, it’s cool that you can integrate with webinar platforms, membership site platforms, fulfillment services, and email marketing providers.

On the other hand, PAYING for these other tools AND integrating them is a B***.

The good news is that 90% of entrepreneurs will only need to integrate an email tool and maybe webinar jam. If you’re using a WordPress site, you’ll already have a blog feature. From there, you only need email.

By the time you’re ready for high-end products like a CRM or help desks, you’re going to be so big that you’ll want a serious 3rd-party tool like FreshDesks anyway – not some jr. tool like Kartra HelpDesks.

Pricing – Is it Really Once in a Lifetime?

is thrivecart really lifetime pricing

$690 once, forever is a sweet deal for a shopping cart with this many functions.

You’ll definitely want the Pro upgrade or you’ll miss out on affiliates, dunning, and Simple Sales Tax, which are total game changers. You won’t miss the $195, trust me.

Let’s do some back-of-the-napkin math right quick.

$690 divided by 365 days in a year equals ~$1.80 per day for probably the best shopping cart software on the market. That’s nuts.

If you extrapolate it out even further, it’s even more fun.

If you use it for 50 years, that’s 18,250 days. $690 divided by 18,250 is ~$0.03 cents per day for a complete shopping cart platform.

why thrivecart is the best value for money

Jokes aside, $690 is way too cheap for something this good.

I used to think cheap, one-time payments were a bit suspicious, but it’s actually pretty standard behavior for SaaS platforms these days, especially if they are trying to gain more market share or launch a new version.

They get more capital to re-invest, more happy users (and take more users from competitors), and more chances to make money off you.

And you get a great shopping cart for about the cost of dinner and drinks in San Francisco.

And yes, it really is once in a lifetime.

once in a lifetime deal

Final Verdict – Is ThriveCart the Right Tool to Start an Online Store?

ThriveCart is hands down the best shopping cart out there for digital products like courses, eBooks, a membership site, or coaching packages.

It’s super easy, unreal cheap, and will boost your bottom line on autopilot.

Don’t listen to the haters out there. You 100% can run and grow a digital business with it, especially if you integrate a free email tool like MailChimp. You won’t need anything else.

For a one-time payment of $690 you get a better, simpler tool than something like SamCart and a better course platform than Kartra.

It has everything you need to start running your business and making serious money right out of the box.

The only customers I don’t recommend it for are a community-based course, a very large existing business, or complex physical products. If that’s you, you’ll want Kajabi, Clickfunnels, or some eCommerce platform like Shopify.

For 90% of people reading this – or maybe more – ThriveCart is a steal and will change your business forever. It did for me.

F.A.Q

Q: Can you build a website with ThriveCart?

A: No, you can’t build a website with ThriveCart, but you can build something that looks like a website with it. You can build checkout pages that essentially function as a website or sales page for a particular product you’re selling. But it’s not a real website. ThriveCart is a checkout page builder and cart tool for building high-converting checkout pages. It’s not a website builder. If you need a site, build a WordPress website.

Q: Is ThriveCart a payment gateway?

A: Yes, ThriveCart is the best payment gateway for selling digital products because it has more features than any other shopping cart solution on the market. Not only can you accept payments, but you can also build high-converting checkout pages and cart pages, integrate with webinar platforms, sell physical products, and offer multiple pricing options to visitors. And you can do it all for a low one-time fee. It also has the best template and customization options.

Q: What does ThriveCart cost?

A: ThriveCost costs a one-time payment of $690. It’s $495 for the regular version, but the Pro version comes with a built-in affiliate program, tax calculation, and other helpful features. Most other shopping cart software options cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars more.

Q: What does ThriveCart integrate with?

A: ThriveCart integrates with just about anything you could ever need. This includes fulfillment services, membership platforms, your PayPal account, a custom domain, and other advanced tools for your shopping cart pages. However, all of these online shopping cart tools require additional monthly subscriptions. Most cost at least $20 per month.

Q: Is ThriveCart the best checkout page builder?

A: Yes, in my opinion, ThriveCart is the best checkout page builder because it’s more affordable and has more features than any other tool of its kind. Its checkout pages are exceptional if you want to sell digital products. You can also run a membership site (it integrates with multiple membership platforms), create popup checkout boxes, run A/B tests on your checkout pages, and offer customers different payment plans. It even comes with a built-in affiliate program. And it only costs a one-time fee of $690.

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