Updated: July 12, 2018
As online business owners, we're tasked with many roles: creating content, building websites, marketing our products and services, writing copy, driving traffic, and closing sales. In doing this, we need to learn new strategies, learn new softwares, how to integrate everything, and the list goes on.
Many times we're left scratching our heads trying to figure out what technologies we need to save us time, eliminate the technical stress, and, most of all, make us more revenue.
One of the most important things an online business owner can do is optimize the sales process in their business. By doing this, you don't normally have to create anything new, but rather you need to tweak a few things and make it easier for your customer to purchase what you offer.
Of all of the work you might be able to do to optimize your Facebook ads, landing pages, and sales pages, most people forget about their checkout pages. This is where most of your people drop off in the sales process and never come back to buy your stuff.
It's time to fix that… and there are two checkout page softwares that will help you easily do this. Let's explore each one and decide which is best for you.
ThriveCart and SamCart, an overview of two checkout page tools:
ThriveCart and SamCart are tools that allow you to:
- Quickly create checkout pages with professionally designed templates
- Insert 1-click upsells so you can boost sales
- Integrate with the leading email autoresponders/CRM tools and payment processors
- Create coupon codes to provide special offers to your customers
- Run your own affiliate program for your products and services
- Much more…
Key differences between ThriveCart and SamCart
It's tough to decide which checkout software to use when the features seem so similar. Let's explore some of the key differences that will make this decision simple for you…
Integrations
Being able to integrate your systems into the important services that you already use, like CRMs, autoresponders, payment processors, etc. will be the difference between long hours of headaches trying to “make it work” or being able to click a few buttons and sleeping well at night.
Let's explore a comparison of ThriveCart's and SamCart's integrations so you can best decide which would better suit your systems set up. And remember, it's wise to think ahead to integrations that you might need in the future. It's better to prepare yourself now with something that integrates to more software services.
[mks_col]
[mks_one_half]ThriveCart's Integrations:
- Authorize.net
- ActiveCampaign
- AWeber
- Any autoresponders (using HTML)
- ConvertKit
- Demio
- Digital Access Pass
- Disk.com
- Drip
- GetResponse
- GooglePay
- Google Sheets
- HubSpot
- InfusionSoft
- iPhone/ApplePay (payments)
- Kunaki
- LeadPages
- MailChimp
- MailerLite
- Member Mouse
- MemberPress
- OntraPort
- OptimizeMember
- OptimizePress
- PayPal
- Printful
- Shippo
- Slack
- Stripe
- Teachable
- Wishlist Member
- Zapier (allowing you to integrate with just about anything you want!)[/mks_one_half]
[mks_one_half]SamCart's Integrations:
- ActiveCampaign
- AWeber
- Constant Contact
- ConvertKit
- Digital Access Pass
- Drip
- GetResponse
- HubSpot
- iContact
- InfusionSoft
- Kajabi
- MailChimp
- Maropost
- Member Mouse
- OntraPort
- OptimizePress
- PayPal
- Stripe
- Wishlist Member
- Zapier[/mks_one_half]
[/mks_col]As you can see, there are many similarities with the integrations of each platform, but ThriveCart does offer more and are offered deeper integrations than SamCart. These deeper integrations will save you loads of time and custom coding/hacking together systems.
Autoresponder Support
If you're not building a list of your customers, then you're leaving a lot of money on the table. With both ThriveCart and SamCart, you are able to integrate your autoresponder of choice with ease.
When we were doing our testing of the two products, we then played with the idea of hooking up multiple autoresponders. We did this because we wanted to put our buyers into a different autoresponder than our prospects.
We quickly ran into trouble with SamCart…
With SamCart, we were limited to ability to just integrate one autoresponder to the software. But when we tried ThriveCart, we had the ability to integrate with multiple autoresponder services, thus allowing us to segment prospects and customers just as we wished. Big win for ThriveCart in this respect.
Customer & Tech Support
Having great support can make or break a business. This is one of the very first factors we test when reviewing a new product. You might have the best software or service in the world, but when you run into that inevitable problem and CAN'T get a response from a support representative, then you run into big troubles.
This is exactly what we noticed when we asked multiple people about the support they've received from SamCart…
Many told us, and even gave us screenshots, of their experiences with SamCart's support. Here's an example of a SamCart customer on Twitter:
I went on Facebook to find people talking about ThriveCart and quickly got sucked into a never-ending rabbit hole of ThriveCart love…
Unfortunately, it's difficult to know if support is good for a product without purchasing and trying for yourself. Fortunately, when we looked deeper into ThriveCart, we quickly noticed that their developers and owner have successfully created and supported their software with a full-time support team for nearly 10 years. They've done this with previous softwares like Easy Video Suite and Easy Video Player, both which have thousands of customers.
Our suggestion is to ask to join our private ThriveCart Facebook group and ask some current buyers of ThriveCart and get their story with support.
Affiliate Platform
Having the ability to run your own affiliate platform gives you the ability to have other qualified affiliates promote your product or service. Luckily, both ThriveCart and SamCart give you these abilities. But, just as you thought, there are some key differences with each. Let's get into it…
ThriveCart & SamCart both gives you these options:
- Create a custom sign up page for affiliates to join your affiliate program
- Choose which products/services you’d like affiliates to promote
- Select what type of commission type and structure you’d like affiliates to receive when they make you sales
- How to manage affiliates with ease
- A dashboard overview of how your affiliate sales and stats are looking
- View detailed stats from your affiliates (sales, clicks, refunds, etc.)
- Create custom affiliate commissions for specific affiliates
- How to create and import affiliates into Thrivecart
ThriveCart specifically gives you these extra benefits with their affiliate center:
- Create a custom sign up page for affiliates to join your affiliate program
- Choose which products/services you’d like affiliates to promote
- Easily create and/or import affiliate into ThriveCart (without needing people to sign up themselves)
- The ability to pay your affiliates out instantly upon a sale (or any other time of your choosing). This is a HUGE time saver for you and is a big selling point for your affiliates to love you and keep promoting your products (they don't have to wait to get paid out)
- And much more. Here's an entire video walk through that breaks down ThriveCart's affiliate program in detail
Something else to keep in mind is how your affiliates will interact with your affiliate center. Most product owners don't think about the user experience that affiliates will interact with, so here are some key things we've noticed when comparing both affiliate centers from an affiliate's perspective:
- ThriveCart gives you a quick overview of all of your affiliate stats in a simple page. SamCart compiles all data onto one page and makes it very confusing to find what you're looking for
- ThriveCart let's affiliates search for specific transactions records (SamCart doesn't offer this)
- ThriveCart affiliates will know details of all transactions: payment method, customer email address, time & date of the transaction, etc. (SamCart doesn't offer this)
- ThriveCart gives you the ability to export all transactions and customer data into a CSV with one-click (SamCart doesn't offer this)
- SamCart is very disorganized with their dashboards, metrics are usually inaccurate and/or difficult to find/understand, and knowing your numbers as an affiliate is extremely confusing. We've experienced this by being full-time affiliates using the backends of both ThriveCart and SamCart. ThriveCart wins, hands down.
If you are looking for the best system to run your affiliate program, ThriveCart wins in all aspects. Even through ThriveCart gives a lot more features, the user experience makes it extremely simply to navigate to what you need, quickly.
In-Depth Behavior Rules
This is something that is truly unique with ThriveCart and SamCart leaves a lot to be desired. With ThriveCart, you have the ability to set up powerful automations that allow you to really take your business further.
Here are some examples of what you can do with ThriveCart's unique behavior rules:
- Immediately after a customer purchases, you can add/remove them from a specific autoresponder, tag, campaign, etc.
- Add a tag or remove a customer from an autoresponder sequence if they refund
- Add an abandoned cart tag to people who almost bought your product (this is done when people fill out your checkout page, but don't complete their order)
- Add a payment declined tag to people who's payment doesn't go through. You can then add them to a follow up sequence to get them to update their payment information.
- Add almost any tag or automation of your choosing for your affiliates: when they make sales, have a refund, get approved, etc.
These in-depth behavior rules are completely unique to ThriveCart and gives you a lot more power with your checkout process and follow ups. We all know that the real money and profits are made AFTER the initial sale, so ThriveCart has you covered on both the front-end and back-end sales processes.
Mobile Payment Options
With the large majority of people using their mobile devices to browse online and purchase products, it's essential to have a checkout process that is mobile friendly.
Mobile now represents 65 percent of digital media time, while the desktop is becoming a “secondary touch point” for an increasing number of digital users.
– Marketing Land
Most people don't like to type in all of their credit card details on a mobile phone, but there is great technology, like ApplePay, that helps speed up the process.
ThriveCart is the only cart that is fully integrated to work with ApplePay. This means that if people have ApplePay set up on their phones, they just need to use their thumbprint to make a purchase for your product! Really cool.
Unfortunately, there is not an option for this with Android phones yet, but it's coming soon (once Android opens up the ability to make the feature). At this time, SamCart does not have an option to integrate with ApplePay.
PayPal Subscriptions
There is a key difference between how ThriveCart and SamCart manage subscription and recurring billings when someone uses PayPal as a payment method. ThriveCart doesn't actually manage the transaction. Instead it acts as a “monitoring system” of those transactions and PayPal takes on the burden of managing subscriptions. On the other hand, SamCart requires “reference transactions” to be set up so the SamCart system can manage these recurring billings.
The approach that ThriveCart takes is much cleaner, simpler for you, the customer, and minimizes liability for you to manage more transactions. If you ever decided to use a different shopping cart platform, you'd be able to walk away and still take your customers with you. This is because Thrivecart doesn't actually control the transactions.
But if you were to have SamCart, you wouldn't be able to leave with your customers. You would have two options… stick with SamCart forever or move to a different cart and lose all of your subscription customers. You worked really hard to get those subscribers, so don't let a shopping cart like SamCart strip them away from you if you choose different systems.
ThriveCart is the only checkout platform of its kind to work directly with PayPal (native integrations and support). SamCart doesn't offer the same level of support with PayPal.
Authorize.net Integration
It is important for all business owners to be in control of their transactions and subscriptions (as we mentioned in the above PayPal section). Another key difference that ThriveCart gives you is the ability to directly integrate with Authorize.net. SamCart used to give you the option to do this, but ended up removing this integration and leaving many customers in a panic.
Luckily, Authorize.net allows you to store transaction and subscription data in THEIR system, so many were able to make the move to ThriveCart without too much issue. But the lesson here is that it is smart to have the ability to use a payment processor that stores data on their system as an extra layer of protection. This will allow you to be flexible in the future. It's a good thing to keep in mind before deciding which checkout platform to invest in.
Templates
Both ThriveCart and SamCart offer a variety of templates you can use “out of the box”. In both cases, all templates are beautifully designed and made to convert the most sales.
The biggest difference is that ThriveCart is a bit more intuitive when it comes to the set up process. Because of the simple process that ThriveCart has built, you'll be up and running quicker than SamCart.
We were told recently by the owner of ThriveCart that there will soon be a more “drag-and-drop” design template for your checkout pages. It will basically allow you to create any look of your choosing. Updates like this happen almost weekly, so we're excited to give this a try very soon.
All Other Features
We could go on and on, but these were the main highlights that we saw when diving into each software. Here's a list of both of the product features if you'd like to explore further: ThriveCart & SamCart
Here's a comparison chart that we were able to come up with the key features we tested:
Pricing
This is a key difference between these two, but there is a good reason for it. At the moment, ThiveCart is in a pre-launch phase where they are bringing in customers while they are preparing for launch. During this pre-launch phase, ThriveCart is allowing people to purchase a lifetime license for a one-time investment. This is a temporary pricing offer that will be changing to a recurring pricing model within a handful of months.
On the other hand, SamCart has a recurring pricing model and is broken into the following tiers:
- Basic: $19/month
- Pro: $99/month
- Premium: $199/month (this tier is the closest match to what ThriveCart gives you)
Keep in mind that the current pricing of ThriveCart is temporary and will be changing soon. At the moment, you can get in for a one-time investment for a lifetime license.
ThriveCart's platform is fully supported as a constantly updated software and responsive customer service team every day. They've been working in the software field for well over 10 years, so don't be worried about a one-time fee. This post will be updated once the pricing model changes when ThriveCart launches. But at the moment, this is a massive difference between SamCart and ThriveCart and an opportunity for you to make an save a lot of money in the long run.
ThriveCart can be purchased for this one-time fee by clicking this link. You can read about the special, but we'd recommend getting it sooner than later. The price will be rising (it already has recently) and will change to an annual/monthly fee soon.
Which Is Better, ThriveCart or SamCart?
We have spent hours and hours of time in each of these softwares and both are great. They will get you the optimized sales process that you need to convert more sales and will outperform other checkout processes on the market.
But after digging in and taking a hard look at all features and costs savings, you can't beat ThriveCart. Here's a quick recap why ThriveCart is the winner:
- Increased about of integrations & behavior rules: This will save loads of hours because it's ready to hook up to your current systems
- THE best customer support: We know this for personal experience and constantly hear people saying that ThriveCart support is the best they've ever dealt with
- Better payment options: You'll get more payment integrations, more control, and can use ApplePay integrations to capitalize on your increasing mobile traffic
- Quicker setup: You'll be able to get your checkout process up in less time and less hassle
- Cost savings: This is temporary, as this will be going to a recurring model soon, but it's a great time to get in now
Getting Started With ThriveCart
Because we've spent the time testing both checkout softwares, we wanted to make it easy for you to get started FAST.
We've set up a private page just for our friends invest in ThriveCart, to experience it's in-depth features, and to get started immediately. We've also put together an exclusive bonus package if you purchase through the following link (details can be seen there).
Simply click here and learn more. You'll go to a page with a full rundown of ThiveCart and how to get started.
As a little bonus, we'll be here for any support and questions that you might have with ThriveCart. Just drop us a line on the blog here and we'll get in touch!
We've also set up an exclusive group on Facebook just for ThriveCart. We discuss strategies and best practices to make the most of the checkout software. Click here and request to join. You'll be able to meet some of the best in the online business space 🙂
Finally, here's a visual chart we made of Thrivecart vs. SamCart.
