ThriveCart vs ClickFunnels: One Takes The Crown (See Why!)

Building sales funnels is essential to almost any online business.

Two popular pieces of software to help you build sales funnels are ThriveCart and ClickFunnels.

Today, we’re going to be comparing both of them to see which of these two options will help you sell more of your products.

ThriveCart vs ClickFunnels: Key Differences

The main difference between ThriveCart and ClickFunnels is that ThriveCart comes at a one-time-fee, while ClickFunnels users pay a monthly subscription fee. ThriveCart also has better checkout tools, while ClickFunnels has a few added features.

Both options are popular platforms used by online businesses of all sizes. 

ThriveCart vs ClickFunnels: Overview

	Thrive Cart	ClickFunnels
Website	thrivecart.com	clickfunnels.com
Founded In	2015	2014
Pricing	Starting at $495 (Lifetime)	Starting at $97 per month
Trial?	N/A	14 Days
Money-back Guarantee	30 days	30 days
Overall Rating	9.5/10	7.5/10

What is ThriveCart?

ThriveCart is a shopping cart solution that helps online businesses sell more by allowing them to create higher-converting checkouts. 

It was founded by Josh Bartlett in 2016, but it hasn’t actually been officially launched yet.

Despite, it not being officially launched yet, ThriveCart offers some of the best shopping cart tools on the market. 

What is ClickFunnels?

ClickFunnels is a funnel builder software founded by Russell Brunson in 2014. 

It aims to be an all-in-one solution that removes the need for integrating different pieces of software.

ClickFunnels is also one of the most popular sales funnel solutions on the market, as it has over 120,000 users. 

ThriveCart Features

As I mentioned earlier, ThriveCart has some of the best cart features on the market.

Here are the features ThriveCart has to offer: 

• 1 Click order bumps
• 1 Click upsells/downsells
• Embeddable Cart
• Funnel builder & Templates
• Split-testing
• Affiliate Center
• Webhooks
• Auto-follow up
• Autoresponder integrations
• Coupons
• Customer hub
• Detailed Analytics
• Discount URL
• Dunning/Auto-retry
• 2 Factor Authentication
• Two-step cart
• Instant affiliate payments
• Link tracking
• Membership integrations
• Modal Cart
• Predicted sales
• Product upgrades
• Automatic receipts
• Retargeting
• Digital sales tax calculator
• Subscription management
• Secure URLs
• Advanced Trials (for example $1 trials)
• Unlimited Carts
• Video carts

ThriveCart gives you everything you need in terms of building high-converting funnels and carts.

You don’t just get all the tools you need to turn the largest number of visitors into sales as possible, but also the tools to make the most money out of every sale. 

What’s great about ThriveCart is that you can either build your entire funnel inside of ThriveCart and launch it there, or you can also grab the cart and embed it onto any page you like outside of ThriveCart.

That’s something I really like about ThriveCart, as your cart never gets locked into their eco-system.

ClickFunnels Features

ClickFunnels isn’t too far behind ThriveCart when it comes to the shopping cart features either, but they definitely can’t match what ThriveCart does.

It’s also worth noting that ClickFunnels does have a lot of added features like membership sites or Webinars, but there have been quite a lot of members reporting problems with these features.

They definitely aren’t as good as getting a separate piece of software for that feature.

Shopping Cart Features

ClickFunnels has some good shopping cart features too such as:

• Order bumps
• 1 Click upsells/downsells
• Two-step cart
• Split-testing
• Coupons (Not as advanced as ThriveCart)
• Affiliate Center (Only in platinum)

As you can see, ClickFunnels has the basics, but they can’t quite match ThriveCart’s list.

You also can’t embed your Cart on your external pages, so anything you create in ClickFunnels is going to have to stay in ClickFunnels.

Funnel Builder & Templates

ClickFunnels has a funnel builder and over 100’s of templates that are super-easy to edit.

It comes with templates for all kinds of funnels, so you won’t have any difficulty building the pages you need.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of the way the funnels look, but some people have had great success with them.

I’ll let you be the judge on that.

Webinars

ClickFunnels also has a built-in webinar feature, meaning you can stream webinars.

However, a lot of people I know who use ClickFunnels also use WebinarJam to host their webinars as they report ClickFunnels’ webinar sites being quite buggy.

For example, if the users refresh the page, the Webinar will start from the beginning. 

Or, the link also doesn’t expire, so your Webinar could say running Wednesday 11 pm EST, but your visitors could arrive sometime on Thursday and it would play the webinar acting like it’s Wednesday. 

Just make sure you are aware of that. 

Email Marketing

ClickFunnels also has some email automation features, but again, they don’t quite compare to your normal autoresponder. 

It will give you the basics, but the automation builder is not as visual as you may be used to and it also does not have as many triggers as a normal autoresponder. 

With that being said, for a lot of businesses, it will be enough.

Membership Sites

ClickFunnels’ next feature, is the Membership sites which is also a great feature.

However, it’s a similar situation to the Webinars. 

The end-user experience is pretty bad and there are also quite a lot of bugs. 

For example, many users have left ClickFunnels as it was incredibly easy to get free access to their paid membership sites because of a bug with ClickFunnels. 

Affiliate Program

Lastly, we have ClickFunnels’ affiliate program.

And, that’s probably one of the best things about ClickFunnels’ as they offer 40% recurring commissions and many more bonuses including dream cars (Yes, Dream cars).

ThriveCart Pricing

ThriveCart hasn’t officially launched yet.

This means, the plans are lifetime deals at this moment, but this won’t be the case for a long time.

In the future, they are expected to start at $99 per month.

Here are the lifetime deals available right now:

• ThriveCart Lifetime Deal $495
• ThriveCart Pro $690

What’s the difference between the two plans? 

These features: 

• Affiliate Center
• Subscription Saver Functionality
• Automatic Sales Tax Calculator
• Intelligent business projections
• JV Contracts
• Advanced User Management
• Client Usage rights
• Customer domain name functionality

If you are going for ThriveCart, I would recommend picking up the pro version.

Purchasing all these features separately could add up to huge costs, probably even in monthly subscriptions. 

Or, there would also be a lot of time and spreadsheets involved in trying to do all these calculations manually. 

ClickFunnels Pricing

ClickFunnels has three pricing plans.

• ClickFunnels Standard – $97 per month
• ClickFunnels Platinum – $297 per month
• Two Comma Club X – $2,497 per month

The main differences between the standard and platinum plans are the features.

Here are the features only available in the Platinum $297 plan:

• Email marketing
• Affiliate Management
• Priority support
• Additional Training resources

The two comma club is just for enterprise businesses who need more users. 

Why You Might Want To Use ThriveCart

Overall, ThriveCart has better tools for your sales funnels and shopping carts. You can also embed the cart which easily allows you to take your cart out of ThriveCart, while still being able to use it.

Using ClickFunnels, that’s not possible.

ClickFunnels does have some pretty hefty monthly fees too. 

ThriveCart comes at a relatively small one-time fee, meaning your expenses would be significantly less. 

Even, if you needed all the features ClickFunnels has to offer, integrating ThriveCart with external pieces of software would usually cost less and give you a better quality of those features. 

Why You Might Want To Use ClickFunnels

There are a couple of reasons why you may want to use ClickFunnels too.

Firstly, they do have cool awards such as the two comma club for generating $1,000,000 through a sales funnel.

They also have a great affiliate program with special bonuses including dream cars. This also explains why they are heavily promoted by so many marketers.

Or, ClickFunnels could also be a great option for you if you don’t like integrating pieces of software and just want everything to be in one dashboard.

Final Thoughts

ThriveCart and ClickFunnels are both great.

But, when it comes to value for money, ThriveCart is the clear winner of this battle.

Take this example…

If you want to use ClickFunnels and want to have affiliates promote your products, you need to be on the $297 plan.

After 1 year, you would have paid $3564.

On the other hand, you can get a ThriveCart Pro lifetime license for $695, at least while it’s available.