Thrivecart Review 2023: Is It Worth It (TRUTH)

Is Thrivecart’s hyper-focused checkout functionality worth integrating over more all-in-one platforms? Does its sole purpose of maximizing conversions justify the price tag? If you are having these questions, then you have landed at the right Thrivecart review page.

With global ecommerce sales projected to hit $6.3 trillion in 2023, standing out requires optimized customer journeys prompting purchases, not abandonment. After thoroughly testing Thrivecart across multiple online stores, I’m ready to provide an unbiased review on its specialty role driving conversions.

In this Thrivecart review, I’ll share my hands-on perspective on its upsell capabilities, templates, integrations, and, ultimately, if it delivers on its core promise of higher conversion rates. 

Thrivecart Review: Pros & Cons

Here we have explained the pros & cons of Thrivecart in detail.

Thrivecart Review: In A Nutshell (2023)

Thrivecart is an e-commerce platform that first came into existence in 2016. It allows merchants to sell physical and digital products as well as subscription services online. The program also provides shopping cart building solutions, payment processing, and services such as upsells, bump offers, and sales funnels to improve your sales chances.

According to the founder Josh Bartlett, the idea behind creating Thrivecart was to improve the cart solutions that were present at the time. Being a software engineer and online seller himself, it was just a matter of time until he would come up with his own solution to the problem. The initial launch of Thrivecart was quiet, but soon it gained momentum and by the end of 2021, it became one of the top checkout services available in the market. 

According to Thrivecart, more than 210k online sellers have used their services, selling nearly 14 million products worth $2 billion in total. 

Bonus: The sales funnel feature of Thrivecart is not that good, but we do have a list of the best sales funnel software for you to check out.

Thrivecart is most suitable for:

• Business consultants who handle a huge number of clients
• Companies that sell membership services such as news, music, ebooks, etc.
• Individual online vendors who sell physical and digital products.
• Online courses and training platforms.
• Digital marketing companies working for small enterprises.
• Software solution companies
• Online businesses that need to ship the products by themselves. 

What Does Thrivecart Have To Offer?

Thrivecart is packed with features to enhance the cart design on your e-commerce platform. It features easy-to-use design tools, making it extremely comfortable to use, even for beginners. 

Here are my top 5 features of Thrivecart which make 

Easy Page Designing

Create an attractive yet highly engaging shopping cart page with an easy drag & drop editor.

Customer Service

A dedicated and highly skilled support team is always there to resolve any of your issues regarding the platform, payments, designing, etc. 

Sales Boost Techniques

Add profit booster techniques to your checkout page with a few clicks such as upsells, recurring charges, bump offers, and much more. 

Seamless Integration

Works seamlessly with multiple third-party services such as membership platforms, shipment services, payment processors, marketing services, and so on. 

Affordable

No more basic, Pro, and Premium plans. Purchase all of the Thrivecart services once and for all, that too at a price your pocket won’t mind. 

Affiliate Program

“Affiliate program is a good way to boost our business and improve sales with the help of third-party promoters. With Thrivecart, you don’t need to purchase an alternate affiliate service which will save you both time and money.

Here you get a comprehensive in-built affiliate management system where you can monitor your affiliates’ performance, set payment rules, and make payments to them. 

Furthermore, you can add your affiliates to a group and apply certain rules such as bonus payments, adding them to the mailing list, inviting them to a webinar, and much more. 

The same goes for the payment rules. You can increase/decrease their profit margins, set the autopayment rules (time, sales, etc), and add/remove affiliates based on their performance. 

Here are some key features of the Thrivecart affiliate program:

• Multi-tier payments to affiliates
• Automatic payments
• Easy filtering by products, sales, date, front-end only.
• Set custom rules for affiliate approval, payment, and upgradation.
• Manually authorize the affiliates. 

Custom Page Builder 

As I stated earlier, Thrivecart comes with easy editing tools to create highly converting checkout pages. You don’t need to have extensive programming or design skills to build a stunning cart page. The platform uses a simple drag-and-drop tool to design the page on top of hundreds of default templates.

You can create visually spectacular product pages, funnel pages, and checkout pages without using much time and resources. The only limitation is your creativity. 

Payments and Tax Calculation

This is the area where Thrivercart really excels. It allows you to sell one-time payment products, memberships, installment payments, and much more. For membership customers, it creates automatic alerts for card expiration, to renew their subscription or for the payment of due amounts. 

If you are planning to offer discounts, Thrivercart has the provision for that as well. You can either directly add coupon codes or place the URL of coupons that are valid until a certain period of time. Additionally, the platform also supports fixed discounts, shipping offers, a percentage discount, restricted coupons, etc. You can also set the alert every time the coupon is cashed in a successful sale.

It supports nearly all major payment gateways and payment processors, including Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal. As of now, Thrivecart supports 22 international currencies. 

Thrivecart also lets you collect sales tax from your customers. The tax estimation feature is bundled with both plans, and there is no additional cost or third-party integration required for it. The tax amount depends on the location where the prospect is checking your website.

It automatically calculates the tax, and based on the price you have set for the item, the tax will be added to it, and the final price will be highlighted on the website. There is no manual intervention needed in this whole process which is a big advantage, especially for beginners who don’t have much knowledge about international taxation.

Multiple Checkout Pages

Thrivecart offers multiple checkout designs – One-step, two-step, popup, and Embedded.

• One-step Checkout (Standard) – if you want to highlight all the checkout information on a single page, you can use the One-step checkout template. It’s the most straightforward way to direct the buyers to an easy checkout. 

• Two-step Checkout (Sales cart) – if you are willing to gain additional business information from the customers, such as mailing address, credit card details, etc., you can try the two-step checkout templates. This also gives you an opportunity to use sales and promotional strategies on the initial page before the checkout. 

• Popup – You can use a popup checkout option on your website, and the buyers will be redirected to your checkout page whenever they click on that popup. This is the best option for impulse-buy items.

• Embedded – You can use the Embedded checkout template if you want the buyers to land on your checkout page from other websites. The website where you are using the checkout must support the Thrivecart integration. 

A/B Testing

In order to transform web surfers into buyers, you need to analyze their online presence and track their online activities. Thrivecart allows you to implement various sales funnel strategies based on the prospects’ behavior, online activities, and patterns.

For example, you can place an impulse-buy product on the checkout page, the very product that the customer has visited multiple times. This is one of the best tactics to motivate the customer to shop more from your store. 

All you have to do is go to the Funnels section and create one for any product you want. You can also use the same funnel for different products, in case you have a lot of products to sell. You can place bump offers, discount offers on additional purchases, add-on product suggestions, and upsells. 

Thrivercart allows you to try different sales funnels to ensure you have the best strategy for every product every time. This term is referred to as AB testing. You can test any part of your checkout page sales funnel and find out which one is working for you the most. 

Reporting & Analysis

Thrivecart allows you to extract valuable market information that can help you set the agenda for future sales. You get access to accurate live metrics and business projections so you can plan accordingly to avoid order canceling and refunds.

With Thrivercart, you can also target the buyers who have left the cart, visited your store multiple times, or have a payment due. This is done by using pre-defined rules set by you. For example, you can analyze the number of clicks on a certain page or product and place a strategic ad for the particular customer on the checkout page. 

The pre-defined rules also help you contact the customer using text, emails, and notifications. 

Furthermore, you can also get the product performance report, estimated daily revenue, and manage customer subscriptions. With Thrivecart, it’s very easy to chase the due payments, and analyze customer details such as card expiration, lifetime purchases, most recent activity, and much more.

How Much Does Thrivecart Cost?

My personal favorite Thrivecart feature is its pricing. Thrivercart is available as a one-time purchase service only. There are 2 plans to choose from – Standard and Pro. Both plans have validity for a lifetime. 

Standard

You can buy a standard plan at a one-time cost of $495. This plan includes:

• Sales funnels and high conversion checkout pages
• Unlimited cart page creation
• Industry-standard customer service
• Market analysis and reporting
• Tax estimation
• Real-time conversion rates and traffic analysis
• Customer behavior rules for better sales strategies

Pro

The pro plan comes at $695. Let’s have a look at its features:

• Smart business predictions and projections
• Automatic tax estimation 
• JV contacts
• Refined user management 
• Unlimited custom domain name
• Dunning (Subscription Save)
• A powerful affiliate management system

Third-Party Integrations

When it comes to third-party integrations, Thrivecart doesn’t disappoint, It supports numerous platforms that you can use Thrivecart with or vice-versa. 

Here is a detailed integration list. 

Autoresponders and Email Marketing Services

Emails are one of the best ways to connect to your customers and Thrivecart supports more than enough email marketing platforms that allow you to reach out to your buyers, contact them about their due payments, send them payment alerts, and product marketing, and much more. 

Here are the top email marketing services supported by Thrivecart:

• AvtiveCampaign
• GetResponse
• Keap
• Hubspot
• Mailchimp

Payment Services

From the buyers’ point of view, having as many payment options as possible increases your chances to close down a sale. While Thrivecart supports Paypal, the biggest payment processor in the world, the company has promised it’s working towards bringing in more payment gateways and providers. 

As of now, Thrivecart accepts payments through:

• Google Pay
• PayPal
• Apple Pay
• Stripe
• Authorize.net

Subscription/Membership Services

For digital products such as music, ebooks, and movies, it’s essential to have a membership service. Apart from the platforms Thrivecart supports, you can use other membership services through Zapier.

Here are the membership integrations supported by Thrivecart:

• Digital Access Pass
• Membermouse
• LifterLMS
• Thrive Apprentice Wishlist Member

Fulfillment Services

If you are selling physical products that require shipping, you need a fulfillment service. As a matter of fact, Thrivercart integrates well with one of the largest fulfillment services – Shopify.

Thrivercart supports the following:

• Kunaki
• Lulu
• Shopify
• Shipstation
• Google Sheets
• Printful

Notification and Sync Platforms

Thrivecart also supports notification and sync services which allow you to document information regarding orders, cancellations, etc. You can also set alert notifications for new orders, delivery, and so on. 

• Slack
• Google Sheets
• Zapier

Thrivecart Alternatives

Note: Samcart is the #1 alternative to ThriveCart. We have also done a detailed Thrivecart vs Samcart comparison here.

Here are a few alternatives to Thrivecart that you can check out:

1. Samcart – Provides hosted shopping cart pages and marketing automations for digital products and services. Offers beautiful templates, 1-click upsells, and abandoned cart recovery. Integrates with payment processors and email tools. More advanced features than Thrivecart.

2. SendOwl – Specialized checkout platform built for selling digital goods like ebooks, online courses, and audio files. Includes affiliate tools, global payments, and bundle creation. They are focused specifically on digital products.

3. PayKickstart – Shopping cart optimized for recurring billing, subscriptions, and SaaS sales. It also handles one-time purchases. It Includes advanced affiliate and commission management capabilities.

The Verdict: Thrivecart Review (2023)

The checkout page is the last hurdle in the sales process and you need to have a creatively designed page, with a winning strategy to ensure that the customers finish the deal anyhow. 

In my opinion, Thrivecart provides everything you need to reduce the abandoned cart rate and boost your sale. There are just enough tools to make the deal irresistible for the prospect. Yes, the huge one-time payment may throw you off, but the platform delivers what it promises.

Also, initially, you may find it difficult to analyze the huge amount of data but after you go through the learning curve, the road ahead is rather simple. Thrivecart is best suited for medium to big businesses that also require market insight, affiliation programs, sales/marketing reports, etc. 

However, if you are looking for beginner-friendly checkout software, Samcart is a great competitor. Its interface is slightly easier to navigate through and has better design features than Thrivecart. Samcart comes in 3 plans: Launch – $49 per month, Grow – $99/month, and Scale – $199/month .

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