ThriveCart vs. SamCart: Which is the Best Shopping Cart Builder?

ThriveCart is an online shopping cart and checkout page builder while SamCart is a full-on digital ecommerce platform — both tools can help you sell almost any type of digital and physical product.

But can a checkout page software really stack up against an all-in-one digital product ecommerce platform (which also creates checkout pages)?

In this ThriveCart vs. SamCart battle, we’ll pit both platforms against each other — comparing essential features, extras, and pricing options — so you can choose the best checkout page builder for your online business.

Ready to see which platform wins? Let’s dive in.

Founded by Josh Bertlett in 2016, ThriveCart helps online businesses optimize checkout pages to eliminate drop-offs in their sales funnel.

Most business owners optimize their sales pages, landing pages, Facebook ads, etc but forget about checkout pages — yet they improve the overall shopping experience of a website.

This is where ThriveCart comes in handy.

With ThriveCart’s feature-set, you can do the following:

SamCart predates its counterpart by 3 years.

Founded in 2013 by Brian and Scott Moran, the SamCart platform gives you everything you need to sell digital and physical products online.

Although SamCart pulls together products and checkout pages in one place (to help increase conversions), its expensive pricing is a put-off.

But it’s easy to overlook its high pricing, especially if you’re still using a legacy shopping cart.

SamCart’s feature-set is better for:

ThriveCart comes with a basic drag-and-drop editor, but it has a lot going on and it’s less flexible compared to SamCart.

For someone new to their editor, it can feel a little overwhelming.

Forget its steep learning curve, ThriveCart’s editor does well on other fronts. For example, it lets you create landing pages you can sell from.

The drag-and-drop builder is also useful as it can drive your potential customers directly to a sales page — especially if you’re using social media, email marketing, or paid ads to send traffic to a funnel.

When it comes to checkout templates, ThriveCart has fewer templates and they’re not shareable.

But if you want to solve this issue, you can buy pre-made ThriveCart themes online (if you’re ready to spend a bit of money).

Now, let’s see if SamCart’s design editor is a better fit for you.

Unlike ThriveCart, SamCart creates better landing page templates.

This platform boasts a dozen templates targetting different niches, including promoting webinars or fitness.

SamCarts also comes with a drag-and-drop design editor for designing checkout page templates or editing pre-made templates.

In essence, SamCart’s design editor allows you to create custom templates matching your brand’s colors and theme quite easily.

The best part about SamCart’s design editor is that it also allows you to add custom HTML features, or add widgets such as frequently asked questions (FAQs), various information tabs, or testimonials.

For this reason, our score sheet starts at ThriveCart: 0 - SamCart: 1

In terms of payment plans, the ThriveCart platform supports PayPal, Authorize.net, and Stripe.

Besides offering payment processors, go for a shopping cart that creates and customizes coupon codes (or shows you when and how to apply them).

Ensure you can also edit eligible products, duration, amount, and discount type for your coupon codes.

For the record, coupon codes are applied to different types of payment gateways. So, make sure you can exclude or include shipping costs.

ThriveCart also offers mobile payments via Stripe for Google Pay and Apple Pay.

This is important for a shopping cart platform to have.

Now, let’s see how SamCart’s payment plans stack up against ThriveCart’s.

Like the ThriveCart platform, SamCart also offers numerous payment options, including (but not limited to):

ThriveCart comes with fewer built-in automation tools.

However, this shopping cart platform relies on third-party applications to create custom automation rules.

A good case in point is ActiveCampaign — a third-party application that automates your sales funnels on ThriveCart’s platform.

Compared to its competitor, ThriveCart boasts multiple affiliate rule options and products.

It lets you add affiliates and customers to specific groups, and then sends out automated sequences based on their behavior.

Can SamCart match ThriveCart’s automation capabilities?

SamCart connects to Zapier to help you run actions within other tools.

For example, SamCart creates custom automated responses when any of the following “triggers” happen within its platform:

When it comes to affiliate marketing, ThriveCart seems to do better than its counterpart, and for a good reason.

First of all, both shopping cart platforms come with an affiliate center, which does the following:

SamCart offers a more basic affiliate program.

It’s less advanced and less flexible compared to ThriveCart.

Additionally, it heavily relies on UTM parameters (or short pieces of code that you can add to links) to help its affiliates track their sales.

Besides having a simpler design, SamCart’s built-in affiliate (global) settings can't be adjusted per product or affiliate.

Even worse, with the SamCart affiliate system, you can’t create a bonus for visitors who sign up with your affiliate link or add a pixel when using SamCart’s affiliate platform.

It gets even more challenging when you’re a super affiliate and you want to track conversions. SamCart limits your options to just using the Marketing Analytics option, which you must upgrade to the Scale plan to access.

It’s a no-brainer, ThriveCart clearly wins in terms of the affiliate program.

Score: ThriveCart: 2 - SamCart: 2

ThriveCart integrates with popular third-party apps in the market:

SamCart also integrates with similar third-party apps as those of ThriveCart.

However, SamCart hardly supports native integrations with Demio, but it has more membership site integrations than its counterpart.

Both SamCart and ThriveCart use Zapier to integrate with hundreds of third-party applications. In all honesty, this is no dealbreaker!

When it comes to integrations, there’s no major difference between both shopping cart platforms. For this reason, it's a stalemate.

Both platforms win.

Score: ThriveCart: 3 - SamCart: 3

While other platforms charge per transaction (or set a standard monthly fee), ThriveCart offers a Lifetime Account with a one-time pricing plan — where users pay a one-time annual fee of $495 (lasting the lifetime of a service).

If the one-time fee isn’t your cup of coffee, you can subscribe to ThriveCart’s Pro Account for $690 — a one-time price plan granting you full access to the platform's services.

ThriveCart provides you with a 30-day money-back guarantee to test-drive what their platform offers.

Can SamCart dethrone ThriveCart in terms of pricing? Let’s find out.

SamCart platform comes with 4 pricing plans:

If these 2 contenders aren’t worth your while (or don’t suit your business needs), we suggest you look elsewhere for an alternative.

Luckily, there's an online marketing platform that has all the tools you need to grow your business — and without the hefty price tag.

We’re talking about systeme.io!

Although both ThriveCart and SamCart show dominance as shopping cart platforms (and include funnel-building functionality), it's not enough to completely run an online business.

This is where systeme.io comes in.

Systeme.io is an online marketing powerhouse with everything you need to start selling digital and physical products.

Here are some of the digital marketing features we have to offer: