ThriveCart vs SamCart: One Clear Winner You Should Be Using

The first step to getting more sales online is using an advanced shopping cart tool, as they allow you to convert more visitors into sales.

Two tools that do exactly this are ThriveCart and SamCart.

While they are both great for this exact purpose, there are some significant differences between the two.

In this article, we are going to take a look at these differences to help you determine which one is better for you.

ThriveCart vs SamCart: Main Differences

The main difference between ThriveCart and SamCart is that ThriveCart is available on a one-time fee, while SamCart comes at a monthly fee. ThriveCart also has better analytics than SamCart, while SamCart is a little easier to use for a beginner.

Both SamCart and ThriveCart are great checkout tools with powerful features.

ThriveCart vs SamCart: Overview

	ThriveCart	SamCart
Website	thrivecart.com	samcart.com
Founded In	2015	2014
Pricing	Starting at $495 (lifetime)	Starting at $49 per month
Trial?	N/A	14 Days
Money-back Guarantee	30 days	30 Days
Overall Rating	9.5	8/10

What Is ThriveCart?

ThriveCart is a shopping cart tool founded by Josh Bartlett in early 2016.

While it was founded in 2016, it hasn’t actually launched yet, however, it already has some of the best shopping cart features on the market.

What Is SamCart?

SamCart is one of the most popular shopping cart SaaS tools on the market.

It was founded by Brian Morran in 2014 and has rapidly grown in popularity since.

ThriveCart Features

Let’s kick off this battle by taking a look at what features ThriveCart has to offer first.

Here’s a list of them:

• 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
• Apple Pay Support
• Google Pay Support

Not bad at all…

In fact, ThriveCart gives you everything you need to build high-converting checkouts and funnels.

Despite, the huge list, I will try to keep this one short and sweet.

With ThriveCart, you even get some advanced features that most of their competitors don’t have including:

• 2-step checkouts
• Countdown timer on the cart page
• Embeddable Carts
• Video carts
• Advanced Customer filtering
• Advanced Analytics
• Partial Refunds
• Ability for upsells to overwrite previous payments

SamCart Features

So, we have taken a look at ThriveCart, let’s see what sort of fight SamCart will put up against the strong features of ThriveCart.

Here’s a list of SamCarts features:

• Templates
• Drag & Drop Template Builder
• Full Template Library
• Advanced Subscriptions
• Coupons & Discounts
• Smart Pixel Tracking
• Pay What You Want
• Sales & VAT Tax Support
• Apple & Google Pay
• Custom Thank You Pages
• Custom Checkout Fields
• Free & Paid Trials
• Pre-Purchase Add-Ons
• Post-Purchase Upsells
• Multiple Payment Options
• UTM Tracking & Marketing Reporting
• Advanced Reporting
• Customer Management
• Subscription Charge Reminder
• Advanced Subscription Cancellations
• Cart Abandonment
• Built-in AB Testing
• Affiliate Center
• Subscription Saver (Dunning)
• Membership Integrations
• Autoresponder Integrations

One thing to note is that while SamCart calls their analytics “advanced analytics”, they are a little more limited compared to ThriveCarts analytics.

However, ThriveCart does have some of the best analytics (including predicted sales) in the industry, so SamCart doesn’t do too bad of a job.

Also, do you remember those advanced features I mentioned earlier?

They are not available in SamCart, so make sure to keep that in mind.

Here’s a list of those features:

• 2-step checkouts
• Countdown timer on the cart page
• Embeddable Carts
• Video carts
• Advanced Customer filtering
• Advanced Analytics
• Partial Refunds
• Ability for upsells to overwrite previous payments

Sadly, if you go for SamCart you will NOT get access to these features. One place where SamCart does perform better though is the ease of use, as their drag & drop builder is easier to use than ThriveCart.

SamCart also has a few more templates available than ThriveCart.

However, I would argue that the slight learning curve in ThriveCart would be worth it for most businesses, but let’s take a look at the pricing first.

ThriveCart Pricing

As I mentioned earlier in the section about ThriveCart, it hasn’t officially launched yet.

That’s why as of right now, you can actually get lifetime access to ThriveCart for an extremely low one-time fee.

ThriveCart does have two pricing plans available which are:

• ThriveCart Lifetime $495
• ThriveCart Pro Lifetime $695

Here’s a list of features that are only available in the pro version:

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

If you go for ThriveCart, you should definitely consider the PRO version, as you won’t want to miss out on the Pro features and have to pay monthly subscriptions in the future.

SamCart Pricing

SamCart has three pricing plans. All three of them come in at monthly fees.

SamCart Launch $49 per month

Firstly, we have SamCart launch which is the lowest plan.

This plan is fairly limited and I don’t think it will be a good option for most businesses.

Here’s a list of limitations inside of SamCart launch:

• SamCart Branding
• No Pre-Purchase Add-Ons
• No Upsells
• No Multiple Payment Options
• No Advanced Reporting
• No Advanced Customer/Subscription Management
• No Customer Self Cancellations
• No Admin User Roles
• No Cart Abandonment
• No Built-in AB Testing
• No Affiliate Center
• No Subscription Saver (Dunning)

Those are the main limitations of this plan, but there are a few more.

SamCart Grow $99 Per Month

This plan is much better, but it is also double the price.

Here’s a list of limitations for this plan:

• No Customer Self Cancellations
• No Admin User Roles
• No Cart Abandonment
• No Built-in AB Testing
• No Affiliate Center
• No Subscription Saver (Dunning)

SamCart Scale $199 Per Month

Lastly, we have the SamCart scale plan which is the advanced plan with no limitations.

All the features I named as limitations in the previous plans which weren’t available are available in this plan.

Why SamCart May Be Better For You

The only two aspects in which SamCart does better than ThriveCart are ease of use and templates.

SamCart has a little more templates and is a little easier to use. However, in these aspects, I must say that the differences between the two are not massive. In fact, they are rather minor.

You may also like the fact that SamCart offers a free trial so you can run a little test-drive yourself.

Also, keep in mind that they both have 30-day refund policies, so if you go with ThriveCart you still have 30 days of 0 risk.

Why You Should Choose ThriveCart

ThriveCart can be better for you for a number of reasons.

I like to break down the main ones into features and pricing.

Reason 1: Features

Firstly, here’s the list of features only available in ThriveCart:

• 2-step checkouts
• Countdown timer on the cart page
• Embeddable Carts
• Video carts
• Advanced Customer filtering
• Advanced Analytics
• Partial Refunds
• Ability for upsells to overwrite previous payments

Most of these features named are not some small features that nobody cares about, so that’s definitely quite a big reason why you may want to go for ThriveCart over SamCart.

Reason 2: Pricing

ThriveCart comes at a one time fee, SamCart only has pricing plans at monthly fees.

In the future, this point will probably not be valid anymore, as ThriveCart will be changing their pricing plans between $99-$299 per month, but for now, it is.

If you want to get the main features SamCart has to offer, you will have to be on the $99 per month plan and even then, you still don’t get them all.

ThriveCarts pro version does more than SamCarts “Scale” plan and after just 4 months you would have paid more on the SamCart “Scale” plan. Plus, you would have to keep paying too, while with ThriveCart you would have already paid for a lifetime and you would have more features.

While ThriveCart has lifetime plans available, the pricing is a big win for ThriveCart.