Today we will talk about ThriveCart alternatives or competitors.
Since you are here after reading the title, I assume that you are aware of the shopping cart software ThriveCart, and know everything about checkout pages.
It is okay if you don’t know about it.
Not everyone reading this article is a businessman or entrepreneur. So to make things easier, I will start with the basics. We all have done online shopping at least once in our life. You see the checkout page when you pay for your products, which is built using shopping cart software such as ThriveCart.
ThriveCart is a shopping cart platform created in 2016 by Josh Bartlett to provide an easy shopping cart solution. Since its creation, this tool has made a name for itself and emerged as a popular checkout tool.
It has several selling points, but if you have to mention only one thing, that would be its pricing. Currently, ThriveCart offers a lifetime membership opportunity for a one-time payment of 495 USD. They also have a PRO account which costs an additional 195 USD. Most business owners go for the pro version. It has all the features you will need.
They regularly update the software with more features, and you will never pay extra for anything.
These pricing offers are available for a limited time.
ThriveCart is supposed to move to a subscription plan of 95 USD per month. So the price that you are seeing is a heavily discounted one.
ThriveCart offers many features, but we won’t talk about them here; we are here to talk about ThriveCart alternatives.
Please read my ThriveCart review to learn more about ThriveCart.
ThriveCart is an excellent platform, but it also has its cons. It lacks a few features, and this is where its competitors come to the rescue.
Downsides of ThriveCart
High one-time fee: ThriveCart’s one-time fee is both a good and bad thing. The good thing is that you only need to pay once.
The bad thing is you have to pay a huge amount at once. They don’t offer a trial. When investing a considerable amount, you might want to try it at least for one week. Although they have a 30-day money-back guarantee, it is not a “no questions asked” policy.
Interface: ThriveCart has a bit of a complex interface. So if someone is just starting out, it will be difficult for them to navigate.
Limited checkout templates: ThriveCart lets you create customized checkout templates, but they don’t have a large selection.
Few payment processors: Integration with payment processors is crucial. Even though it links with the popular payment processors, they could do better. They should add more payment options, including cryptocurrencies.
No webinar platform integration: Although it integrates with many sites, it lacks integration with webinar platforms. It only integrates with Demio.
7 Best ThriveCart Alternatives
The following are the seven best ThriveCart alternatives:
#1. SamCart
SamCart is the most popular ThriveCart alternative.
With this tool, you can customize your checkout pages to increase conversion. The software helps reduce cart abandonment and increase revenue and profit.
SamCart lets you sell physical and digital products and services. This helps you to scale your business and also to maximize profits.
Key Features of SamCart
- 1-Click Upsells
- Templates Library
- A/B Testing
- Subscription Saver
- High Quantity Checkout
Read SamCart vs ThriveCart
1-Click Upsell
Upselling is persuading a customer to buy a more expensive version of the chosen product or add-ons to that product. It is a smart marketing strategy to increase per-customer sales.
SamCart allows you to create an upsell page for a product.
You need to have an upgraded product for the product you will use upsell. Once you have that, you can create an upsell. Fill in the upsell name and description and choose the product you want to upsell.
Once you are done creating that, you will be led to another page. There you will find an ‘Accept Button Text,’ and it is recommended that you mention the upsell price.
Often, customers might not know that they are being charged for that upsell, and later it becomes an issue involving chargebacks and refunds.
SamCart allows you to create five upsells (or down-sells) for a particular product.
Templates Library
SamCart offers many customizable checkout templates.
If you want a beautiful and high converting sales page, SamCart provides all the tools to customize your checkout page. As of now, it offers 18 you can customize to match your brand.
After creating a new product, you have the ‘Checkout Design’ tab under which you can see all the templates.
After selecting the design, you have the ‘Launch Drag & Drop Builder’ that lets you design your page as you want.
You can add many elements, such as:
- Call to action
- Logos, images, videos
- Headlines and text
- Countdown timers
- FAQs
- Testimonials
- Guarantee boxes
- Progress bars
A/B Testing
Through A/B testing, you can test which pages convert best. It is a powerful marketing tool.Here you need to create two different versions for a single product and test the performance. The page that gets the most sales can be chosen as your checkout.
You can even see how your variation is doing and check your test statistics through reporting in the A/B test section.
Subscription Saver
If you don’t have a subscription saver, you might lose a lot of money.
It helps you prevent your subscriptions from getting canceled and losing recurring revenue.
SamCart sends your customers an email after their payments cannot recover that failed payment.
High Quantity Checkout
SamCart lets you pay for multiple products in one go.
ThriveCart enables you to buy one product at a time, which is annoying.
SamCart lets your customers choose more than one product and checkout with all these products. You can also allow them to pay in installments.
SamCart Pricing Plans
SamCart offers three pricing plans:
- Launch: 49 USD per month
- Grow: 99 USD per month
- Scale: 199 USD per month
Why Should You Choose SamCart?
- It has a beginner-friendly interface and is easy to use. It also provides in-depth free tutorials to help you create your checkout page and get it set up in a few minutes.
- The dashboard is clean. With impressive reporting and analytics, you can see all your useful insights regarding sales and profits.
- SamCart is SSL certified, so the transactions are all encrypted and secured.
- The templates are all tried and tested and have proved to increase sales. This saves you from spending your time trying to design and test checkout pages.
Why Should You Not Choose SamCart?
- SamCart’s pricing is higher than some similar platforms. Paying 49 USD per month is pretty high.
- Some of its features are only available in the higher plans. Features like A/B Testing and cart abandonment are available in the highest Scale plan. You need to get at least the Grow plan to avail the standard features.
- There are few payment gateways that SamCart integrates with.
- It doesn’t have an in-built sales tax calculation.
Read my SamCart review.
Let’s move on to the next ThriveCart competitor.
#2. GrooveSell
GrooveSell is a digital sales platform that lets you promote and accept payments for digital products, subscriptions, and services.
It is a shopping cart tool from the GrooveFunnels sales funnel platform whose co-founder is Mike Filsaime, a renowned marketer and the mind behind Kartra.
It’s a free platform and is easy to use.
Key Features of GrooveSell
- Flexible pricing structure
- Sell unlimited products with product funnels
- Free built-in affiliate software
- Cart abandonment
Flexible Pricing Structure
GrooveSell supports a flexible pricing structure. So if you are selling multiple products and you want to set different prices for those products, you can do that easily with GrooveSell.
If you sell a single product, you can also set different prices to attract customers. You can offer a one-time payment, recurring payment installments, and more.
Sell Unlimited Products with a Product Funnel
GrooveSell has the ‘Product Funnel,’ which lets you build a sales funnel for all your products and converts your visitors to customers.
You set your product’s name, description, details, etc. Here you can also create the order bumps and upsells for your products.
There is also no limit to your product funnels; you can create unlimited products and sell them.
Free Platform and Zero Monthly Fees
For a limited time, GrooveSell is free. The brain behind this shopping cart platform is Mike Filsaime, who wanted to give back to the digital marketing community and business owners who were struggling because of the pandemic.
Free Built-in Affiliate Software
We all know that affiliates are an important marketing strategy to boost sales. The problem with other shopping carts is that this option is available only in premium plans (SamCart and ThriveCart).
However, GrooveSell offers it for free.
You can set your desired rates for the commissions and provide the tools for your affiliates.
Cart Abandonment
Cart abandonment is another feature of GrooveSell.
This is an important feature, but other shopping cart software offers it in their highest plans. You get it for free with GrooveSell.
Cart abandonment is every online business owner’s nightmare, and this feature helps you recover abandoned carts.
When a prospect abandons their cart, you will be notified and reminded to follow up with your potential customer and complete the sales process.
Read my GrooveSell review.
GrooveSell Pricing Details
GrooveSell is free. It has:
- No transaction fees
- No monthly fee
- No yearly fee
- No maintenance fee
Why Should You Choose GrooveSell?
- It is a free platform.
- You get GrooveAffiliate and GroovePages for free.
- It has good customer support.
Why Should You Not Choose GrooveSell?
- It’s still in a Beta version.
- Some tools are not yet available.
- It doesn’t show you how to traffic to your website.
- It lacks sales funnel tracking analytics.
Now, let us move on to the next ThriveCart alternative.
#3. CartFlows
CartFlows is a shopping cart platform that is based on WordPress. Adam Preiser and Sujay Pawar launched CartFlows in November 2018.
It has since seen over 74 updates and has a user base of over 223,242 users.
Key Features of CartFlows
- Ready to use templates
- Checkout custom fields
- Custom script support
- One-click upsells, downsells, and order bumps
- WooCommerce integrations
Ready to Use Templates
CartFlows offers six premium and four free funnel templates to help you design funnel processes for your website on WordPress. These templates are conversion optimized.
Checkout Custom Fields
Though this is a premium feature, many other shopping cart software lack it.
With CartFlows, you can add customized fields like ‘country’, ‘subscribe to newsletter’ or ‘age’ or anything of your choice.
Custom Script Support
You can add custom scripts such as a live chat shortcode, custom pixels, bots, and more to power your sales funnel.
One-click Upsells, Downsells, and Order Bumps
CartFlows lets you incorporate upsells, downsells and order bumps into your checkout pages. It also lets you add discount options.
This increases the customer’s transaction value. Also, the number of sales and bumps you can add is unlimited.
WooCommerce Integrations
It integrates with an array of WooCommerce integrations.
CartFlows Pricing Plans
CartFlows has two plans
- CartFlows: This is a free plan, and it offers features like landing page templates, checkout page templates, and upsell pages, although in a limited number.
- CartFlows Pro: The premium version has two payment options: 199 USD per year and 999 USD per year as a one-time payment. This plan offers an unlimited number of templates and additional features like Field Reordering, 2-Step Checkout, A / B Split Testing, and more.
Why Should You Choose CartFlows?
- Easiest learning curve.
- The customer support is responsive and helpful.
- It works with major landing page builders.
- Works well with WordPress and WooCommerce.
Why Should You Not Choose CartFlows?
- It only works with WordPress.
- The knowledge base lacks deep tutorials.
- Most features are available only in CartFlows Pro.
Let’s move on to the next ThriveCart alternative.
#4. PayKickStart
PayKickStart is a customizable shopping cart platform. It specializes in subscription billing and affiliate management and is most suited for subscription selling businesses.
It promises to be a better way for SaaS companies, startups, and subscription-based businesses to handle the complex billing and payments processes.
Key Features of PayKickStart
- Subscription management
- Revenue booster and retention
- Billing and accounting
- Data security
- Integrations
Subscription Management
PayKickStart allows you to track and manage subscriptions throughout the customer life cycle.
This ensures you will build customer relationships, minimize churn and increase the lifetime value.
Revenue Booster and Retention
PayKickStart promises to boost revenues with features like 1-click upsells, coupon codes, and order bumps. It automatically fills in the address details and the checkout fields once a customer returns to the checkout page, making it easy to complete the purchase process.
It helps to retain revenue by allowing you to set email sequences, setting cancellation rules, sending in-app notifications such as ‘subscription renewal reminder’ or ‘trial ending reminder’ or ‘credit card expiring reminder,’ and more.
Reporting and Analytics
PayKickStart gives you detailed and accurate metrics and insights into your business. You can view the various reports related to sales, subscriptions, funnels, affiliates, and traffic on your dashboard.
Data Security
For security, PayKickStart complies with various security standards like PCI DSS Level 3, EU-GDPR, and Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). It also has different login systems like single sign-on and two-factor authentication.
Integrations
PayKickStart integrates with over 60 native platforms. Some platforms it integrates with are Stripe, Authorize.net, Meberful, ConevrtKit, Drip, ActiveCampaigns, ClickFunnels, EverLesson, Pipedrive, Prosper202, and much more.
Pricing Plans of PayKickStart
It offers three plans, and each plan has a 14-day free trial.
- Starter: 99 USD per month (79 USD per month when billed annually)
- Growth: 199 USD per month (159 USD per month when billed annually)
- Scale: 299 USD per month (239 USD per month when billed annually)
Why Should You Choose PayKickStart?
- It is versatile.
- Easy to use funnel builder.
- Feature-rich shopping cart software.
- Great customer support.
Why Should You Not Choose PayKickStart?
- If you are a beginner, you might experience a bit of a learning curve.
- The basic plan doesn’t let you integrate with many platforms.
- Lack of template customization.
- Quite expensive.
Let us move on to the next ThriveCart alternative.
#5. X-Cart
It is an open-source shopping cart eCommerce platform founded by Ruslan Fazlyev in 2000 as the world’s first PHP shopping cart software.
X-Cart offers two products: the open-source software where you need to purchase a license and a hosted solution.
Key Features of X-Cart
- Customizability
- Built-In SEO functionality
- Host online auctions
- Product and inventory management
- Proactive customer support
Customizability
This platform is open source, and with this, you can customize certain aspects of your website. You can also add or remove a certain feature. Because of its advanced technologies, the customizability it provides is unlimited.
Built-in SEO Functionality
It has advanced tools to help you rank high in search results. The SEO settings are convenient to manage.
Host Online Auctions
This feature is unique to X-Cart since I haven’t seen it in any other shopping cart platform. You have the option to set the entry price, auction duration, and minimum bid increments. This is mostly beneficial if you sell antiques or collectibles.
Product and Inventory Management
You can sell almost anything with X-Cart. Since it also is an e-commerce shopping cart platform, there is no restriction with selling physical products or products with variations. Other than that, you can manage and keep track of your products with its inventory tracking features.
Array of Integrations
While you can integrate at least 36 different platforms in the free version, it expands to 400 integrations in the paid version.
X-Cart Pricing Plans
X-Cart has a complicated pricing structure. Too many costs are involved, and it is quite confusing. Besides hosting and licensing charges, it also has a separate charge for customer support. I will only list the licensing and hosting prices.
Hosting charges
- Starter: 29.95 USD per month
- Basic: 49.95 USD per month
- Enhanced: 199 USD per month
- Enterprise: 399 USD per month
Licensing charges
- Free Edition: Free
- Business: 495 USD per month
- Multivendor: 1,495 USD per month
- Ultimate Special Edition: 5,995 USD per month
Why Should You Choose X-Cart?
- Supports many payment processors.
- Being an open-source platform, you can customize it.
- Being PA DSS certified and PCI compliant, your sensitive data isn’t being compromised while making payments.
- X-Cart has a loyalty and rewards program; this way, your customers keep coming back.
Why Should You Not Choose X-Cart?
- You have to pay extra for separate service hosting.
- Since it is open-source, you need to know PHP or must hire an expert, which will cost extra.
- The licensing fees for the software are expensive.
- You need to pay extra fees for customer support.
#6. AbanteCart
AbanteCart is a free shopping cart solution. It was created by Pavel Rojkov in 2010 and publicly released in the year 2011. It is an open-source solution for small and midsize business owners.
Key Features of AbanteCart
- Feature-rich
- Innovative technology
- No ownership cost
- Multiple stores
- Product flexibility
Feature-rich
AbanteCart is equipped with many out-of-the-box enterprise-grade features.
Innovative Technology
AbanteCart shopping cart is powered by the latest open-source internet technologies and concepts, such as PHP 7+, Mysql, HTML5/Bootstrap, Jquery, AJAX, MVC, and API.
No Ownership Cost
You don’t have to pay anything to use AbanteCart.
It doesn’t have any registration, licensing, or subscription fees.
Multiple Stores
With AbanteCart, you can manage multiple stores with a single used admin. The stores have different themes, settings, products, and more.
Product Flexibility
AbanteCart is very flexible with products. You can create countless products. You can also customize, categorize and even migrate and import your products.
Pricing Plans of AbanteCart
Since it’s a free platform, you don’t have to pay for any plans. You have to pay for the integrations, templates, and other tools.
Why Should You Choose AbanteCart?
- Setting up shopping carts is quick.
- The admin dashboard is easy to use.
- It is highly versatile.
Why Should You Not Choose AbanteCart?
- It doesn’t have free integrations.
- Some templates are pricey.
- Theme options are limited.
- The CMS option is missing.
#7. Zen Cart
ZenCart is a free ThriveCart alternative. It is an open-source shopping cart platform that is easy to use.
If you have a basic knowledge of website building and basic computer skills, you can easily install Zen Cart.
Key Features of Zen Cart
- Freely customizable
- Works with any hosting site
- Responsive templates
- Payment
- Use your own domain name
Freely Customizable
ZenCart is licensed under GPL2, so you can freely modify the source code according to your application requirements.
Works with Any Hosting Site
You can install the software on any hosting site as it runs on even the simplest of servers.
Responsive Templates
The templates are accessible on desktop and mobile phones.
Payment
Besides integrating with online payment gateways like PayPal, Square, and Authorize.net, offline payment options like Check/Money Order and Invoice are also available.
Use Your Domain Name
You can create and configure your domain with your hosting company wherever you want.
Zen Cart Pricing Plan
It is a free platform. You can download it for free while the plug-ins and add-on are available separately.
Why Should You Choose Zen Cart?
- Easy setup and customization.
- Good for large businesses.
- Has several plug-ins available.
- An active user base helps solve problems easily.
Why Should You Not Choose Zen Cart?
- Not as robust as other similar platforms.
- Outdated in some aspects.
- Upgrading is difficult and time-consuming.
- Lacks detailed tax reports.
Conclusion
ThriveCart is a good tool for checkout pages. However, for some reason, if you are looking for the best ThriveCart alternative, it is SamCart; it is user-friendly and offers great features.
If you are looking for a free ThriveCart alternative, I would recommend you go for GrooveSell, which comes with a GrooveFunnels subscription.
Here is where this post on the best ThriveCart alternatives ends. What ThriveCart competitor have you selected for your online business? Please share your thoughts through the comments section.
