If you are looking to create an online store, you have a choice to make between pieces of software you want to use.
Two popular solutions to create an online store or sales funnel are ThriveCart and Shopify.
When deciding between these platforms, you have to realize how much more profit you can make when you choose a tool like ThriveCart that implements up-sells and custom order forms for conversion optimization.
Both options offer great tools to help you sell your products online. That’s why we’re going to be comparing them today, to help you find the best option for your business.
Here's What We'll Cover...
ThriveCart vs Shopify: Key Differences
The key differences between Shopify and ThriveCart are pricing and features, while Shopify comes at a monthly fee, ThriveCart is priced on a one-time fee. ThriveCart has better tools to help you increase conversions, while Shopify has a lot of features specifically for E-Commerce.
Overall, they are both great for their own purposes.
ThriveCart vs Shopify: Overview
| ThriveCart | Shopify | |
| Website | thrivecart.com | shopify.com |
| Founded In | 2015 | 2011 |
| Pricing | Starting at $495 (one-time) | Starting at $29 per month |
| Trial? | N/A | 14 Days |
| Money-back Guarantee | 30 Days | N/A |
| Overall Rating | 9.5/10 | 8/10 |
What is ThriveCart?
ThriveCart is a popular shopping cart solution that helps businesses sell more products through its conversion-focused tools.
Josh Barlett founded ThriveCart in 2016 and it has since then become one of the best shopping cart solutions on the market, despite not officially launching yet.
What is Shopify?
With over 420,000 websites using Shopify, it’s the most popular E-commerce platform not hosted on WordPress.
They power websites such as FashionNova, YEEZY, and Kylie Cosmetics which are all massive businesses!
Shopify was founded by Tobias Luetke, Scott Lake, and Daniel Weinand in 2014.
ThriveCart Features
ThriveCart has a great list of features to help businesses build higher converting checkouts and sales funnels.
These are the primary features inside of ThriveCart:
- 1 Click Order bumps
- 1 Click upsells & downsells
- Embeddable Cart
- Funnel builder & Templates
- Unlimited Bandwidth & Customer Data
- Split testing
- Affiliate Center
- Webhooks
- Auto-follow up
- Autoresponder integrations
- Coupons/Discounts
- Customer hub
- Detailed Analytics
- Discount URL
- Dunning/Auto-retry
- 2 Factor Authentication
- 2-step cart
- Affiliate management
- 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
As you can imagine, combining all of these features is pretty powerful.
ThriveCart makes it pretty easy for business owners to increase their conversions online, especially with their comprehensive checkout tools such as:
- 1 click order bumps
- 1 click upsells (and downsells)
- 2-step carts
- Cart split-testing
One thing I love about ThriveCart is the ability to take the Checkouts you create inside of ThriveCart and embed them anywhere else. This means, your cart never gets stuck in ThriveCart and you can always use your cart on any other page.
ThriveCat also gives you great analytics and even predicted sales which can always be extremely useful for planning and making sure your business is headed in the right direction.
Shopify Features
Shopify has a little fewer features than ThriveCart and seems somewhat basic compared to it.
But, let’s not forget that Shopify does also have an app store, so you can get more features added to Shopify if you need to (which you probably will).
Here are Shopify’s primary features:
- Fully customizable website, online store, and blog
- Free/Paid Themes (Templates)
- Unlimited bandwidth, product inventory, and customer data
- App store
- Most payment gateways supported
- Analytics & Reports (Advanced in higher plans)
- Staff accounts
As you can see, Shopify gives you the basics to get an online store going which can make it an attractive option for beginners.
You can also get more apps through the app store, but keep in mind each app usually has a separate cost attached to it.
If you are looking to get features like Order bumps and one-click upsells, you will have to use an App like Zipify too which starts at $67 per month.
Just be aware of this if you do decide to go for Shopify, as the cost of these apps can quickly add up.
ThriveCart Pricing
As mentioned earlier, ThriveCart is pretty new and hasn’t even officially launched yet.
For this reason, the plans available right now are lifetime options.
Usually, software like ThriveCart would cost at least $99-$299 per month and that’s what the future price is expected to be.
But for now, we are quite lucky as these lifetime deals are available:
Here are the features only in the ThriveCart Pro plan:
- Affiliate Center
- Subscription Saver Functionality
- Automatic Sales Tax Calculator
- Intelligent business projections
- JV Contracts
- Advanced User Management
- Client Usage rights
- Customer domain name functionality
I would definitely recommend considering the Pro plan, as you don’t want to beat yourself up in the future when these features are only available at much higher prices.
Purchasing these features separately can be pretty costly and they can help you save a lot of time or make more sales.
Shopify Pricing
Unlike ThriveCart, Shopify comes at a monthly fee.
Shopify has three pricing plans, but the main differences between them are the fees, reports, and staff accounts.
Keep in mind, the fees are per transaction but may vary depending on the payment processor.
Shopify Basic ($29 Per Month)
The normal fees for this plan are 2.2% + 20p and it comes with 2 staff accounts.
This plan does not include professional reports or the advanced report builder.
Shopify ($79 Per Month)
The usual fees for this plan are 1.9% + 20p and it comes with 5 staff accounts.
This plan does have professional reports, but no advanced report builder.
Shopify Advanced ($299 Per Month)
The usual fees for this plan are 1.6% + 20p and it comes with 15 staff accounts.
This plan does have professional reports, as well as the advanced report builder.
Which One Is Best For You?
Choosing the right software for you depends on your business.
If you are looking for something extremely basic, Shopify can be a great option as it offers everything you need to get started.
However, if you are looking for something more advanced with better conversion tools, you should definitely consider ThriveCart. It offers some of the best shopping cart tools on the market at a one-time fee.
If you would decide to go for Shopify and wanted to add just order bumps and upsells later on that would cost you an additional $67 per month with something like Zipify.
With ThriveCart you can get a lifetime subscription at a ridiculously low price compared to all of its competitors, so just take that into account.
Nonetheless, ThriveCart and Shopify are both great options. The better choice just depends on the size and needs of your business.
Shopify also has a few more tools specifically for E-commerce and Dropshipping (such as Shipping options), but for most businesses, I think ThriveCart would be the better choice.
Even on the basic Shopify plan with no apps at all (which is extremely rare) after two years, you would have roughly paid as much as you would on the ThriveCart Pro plan.
That’s why I’d go with ThriveCart in most situations.
ThriveCart
ThriveCart is the best shopping cart platform I’ve ever used, hands down!
If you haven’t invested in ThriveCart yet, I’d highly recommend taking advantage of their lifetime deal since it will be going away very soon! It’ll save you a ton of money in the long run with this special offer I negotiated for our readers…
