5 Best Thrivecart alternatives for SMBs—A detailed comparison
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Thrivecart is a great way for online businesses to connect with customers, sell their products and services, scale their company, and boost their sales—but it’s not the only way. While it might be an ideal solution for some entrepreneurs, it certainly isn’t a catch-all solution for everyone—no platforms are.
That’s why we’re breaking down some of our top Thrivecart alternatives. We’ve done most of the legwork for you—we’ll discuss why you might be looking for a Thrivecart alternative, Thrivecart’s features and pricing information, some criteria to keep in mind when searching for a checkout page solution for your business, and five Thrivecart alternatives that suit a wide range of use cases. Let’s begin.
Create a beautiful sales experience from start to finish
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Why choose an alternative to Thrivecart?
While Thrivecart is a great shopping cart solution, there are a few reasons you may be looking for an alternative. First, some users find Thrivecart’s page-building functionality a bit limited when compared with other competitors. For instance, if you’re looking for advanced design options or animations, Thrivecart might not be the best choice for you.
Additionally, some Thrivecart customers have found the platform to be inflexible when setting up multiple sales funnels with different fulfillment options. While it’s doable, it might take a bit of trial and error or spending time talking to their customer service team.
Last, and potentially most important for entrepreneurs and small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with limited financial resources, Thrivecart’s pricing scheme is a bit unusual. Instead of paying monthly, Thrivecart asks users to pay $495 upfront for a “lifetime” account.
While this could be a good value if you love using Thrivecart and keep using it for years into the future, it’s a large payment to make if you’re not really familiar with the tool. Flodesk Checkout, on the other hand, costs $456 for a full year, and you have the option to opt-out at any time or pay monthly.
Thrivecart’s key features
- Unlimited carts
- You can create checkout pages, sales funnels, affiliate campaigns, and online courses
- On-page, embeddable, and pop-up carts
- An easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor
- “Profit boosters” like one-click upsells, bump offers, trials, and subscriptions
- Simple sales tax functionality
- Subscription management features
- A/B testing
- You can put your business on autopilot with intelligent behavior rules
- Easy to integrate with the tools you already use like Drip, Hubspot, and Mailchimp
- Intelligent business insights with detailed metrics and forecasting
- A 30-day “pays for itself” guarantee
Thrivecart’s pricing
Instead of paying monthly, Thrivecart asks for a one-time payment of $495 for a “lifetime” account.
It’s a pretty steep expense at the outset, so this kind of pricing plan might not work for everyone. However, it does come with a 30-day “pays for itself” guarantee and gives you unlimited access to the platform.
What to look for in your sales funnel software
Need a quick list of criteria, qualities, and capabilities you should keep in mind while searching for the perfect Thrivecart alternative? We’ve got you covered.
- Aesthetics and customization: Since you’ll be using your shopping cart platform or sales funnel software to sell your products and services, it’ll be an extension of your brand. Make sure you can customize it so that it looks like an extension of your brand. Otherwise, you’ll risk negatively impacting your customer experience. And while attractive aesthetics aren’t everything, your checkout pages should look fresh, professional, modern, and aligned with your business’s online presence.
- Flexibility: Since business needs are in a constant state of flux, your sales funnel software needs to be flexible too. That means choosing a platform that can sell digital products and physical products, integrates with a variety of payment gateways, and offers diverse payment options. Your customers will appreciate having a range of options available to them, and it’ll make your life easier throughout all the different stages of business growth.
- Specific use cases that align with your online business: The term “sales funnel software” is pretty broad. Some options focus on landing pages, others prioritize checkout pages, and others still are all about email automation, email list management, and marketing. While many Thrivecart alternatives include a combination of the above features and cover lots of bases, platforms usually have specific specialties. Make sure you choose a sales funnel software that specializes in your online business’s top priorities.
- Price: Every online business will have to do some accounting and internal calculations to figure out how much they can afford to pay monthly or yearly for shopping cart or sales funnel software. If you’re an SMB or solopreneur with a tighter budget or narrower profit margins, you’ll want to find the most affordable solution possible (and ideally choose something that includes lots of features in one place). On the other hand, if you own a more well-established business, you might be able to afford a more expensive tool.
- Free trial: Choosing a sales funnel software with a free trial means you can try the platform for yourself before you commit to it. This ensures you’re not paying for something you’ll struggle to adopt across your company or won’t end up using effectively.
5 Best Thrivecart alternatives
One of the most difficult parts of running an online business is figuring out where and how to sell your products and services. There are lots of ecommerce platforms, shopping cart tools, and Thrivecart alternatives out there, but do you ever really know how well they’ll suit your business until you try them out for yourself?
At the very least, this list will help you get started. We’ve broken down the top five Thrivecart alternatives according to features, pricing, and top use case.
1. Flodesk
Although Flodesk is a relatively new email service provider (ESP)—only having been founded in 2019—it has quickly become one of the most popular and fastest-growing email marketing platforms on the market. Widely renowned for its stunning designs, intuitive platform, creative edge, and affordable flat rate plans, Flodesk is passionate about helping online businesses enrich their brand identity and achieve new levels of success.
Flodesk recently launched a brand new, in-demand checkout product that makes it even easier for SMBs and creatives to generate income online. Flodesk Checkout makes it easier than ever to sell products and services online, and its checkout and sales pages are just as beautiful as the rest of Flodesk’s content.
Top features
- Flodesk Checkout lets you sell products and services online and monetize your content
- An intuitive drag-and-drop email builder that’s simple enough for beginners and powerful enough for experts
- A sign-up form and landing page builder
- An impressive library of stunning, professionally designed templates for emails, forms, and landing pages
- The ability to set up powerful marketing funnels and automations so you can make money while you sleep
- Great content personalization features
- A variety of native integrations like Shopify, Slack, Instagram, and Typeform
- Tons of educational resources like Flodesk University, the Flodesk Insiders Facebook group, and our blog
- A comprehensive 30-day free trial
Flodesk pricing
Flodesk has a 30-day free trial that you can sign up for with no strings attached. Once you’re ready to upgrade to a paid plan, there are a few different options available depending on the products you’re interested in:
- Email: $38 per month
- Checkout: $38 per month
- Everything: $64 per month
All Flodesk’s plans are flat rates, so they don’t increase regardless of the number of emails you send, subscribers you add, or transactions you carry out.
You can also save on the cost of one month if you sign up for a yearly plan upfront.
Best for
Creatives, entrepreneurs, and SMBs that are passionate about design and want an efficient, intuitive way to sell their products and services online or monetize their content.
Monetize your content and accept payments online
Design beautiful sales, checkout, and delivery pages that make selling your goods and services easier than ever before.
2. SamCart
SamCart was founded in 2014 and is one of the most widely-used online shopping cart software solutions out there. The platform is popular for a variety of industries, including agencies, physical product sellers, course creators, side hustlers, and nonprofits.
While SamCart has almost all the features any online business could want to sell physical and digital products, it’s on the expensive side and takes a bit of time to get the hang of. That makes it more suitable for more well-established businesses that don’t mind putting some effort and money into their ecommerce solution.
Top features
- A drag-and-drop sales page builder with a selection of pre-built templates to work with
- Localization features so you can showcase your products and services in different languages and currencies
- You can add “one touch” purchases with apps like Apple Pay and Google Pay
- Custom domains
- Revenue optimization features like pre-purchase order bumps, one-click upsells, A/B testing, and smart pixel tracking
- Core commerce features like advanced subscriptions, partial refunds, payment processors, coupons, and discounts
- A large selection of built-in integrations (and even more when you connect Zapier)
- 7-day free trial
SamCart pricing
SamCart doesn’t have a free plan, but they have a 7-day free trial. After that, they’ve got three different tiers of paid plans to choose from:
- Launch: $59/month
- Grow: $119/month
- Scale: $299/month
SamCart also has discounts available for users who sign up for a yearly plan upfront.
Check out the best SamCart alternatives for high conversions and good rates.
Best for
Online businesses that have a healthy budget, don’t mind a bit of a learning curve, and want an effective way to sell their products and services online.
Compare SamCart’s top alternatives for a deeper look at your options.
3. PayKickstart
PayKickstart has been around since 2009 and has come leaps and bounds since then. It’s now a sophisticated, industry-leading shopping cart platform that’s especially well-known for its subscription and affiliate management features.
The platform is a little pricey and can be difficult to get a hang of at first, but it’s a great Thrivecart alternative for online businesses that are already making a healthy regular income and are looking for a range of advanced features.
Top features
- Easily customizable checkout experiences with over 50 templates to choose from
- Payment processing features like online card payments, digital wallets, bank transfers, and PayPal
- You can set up coupon codes, order bumps, one-click upsells, cart recovery, and pay what you want
- Subscription management features like fixed price and usage-based subscriptions, freemium and paid plans, one-time charges, and trial management
- Revenue retention features like dunning management, customer reminders, and cancellation savers
- Automated customer communications
- The ability to set up self-serve customer portals
- Affiliate management features
- Detailed reporting and analytics, including useful marketing metrics for ecommerce
PayKickstart pricing
PayKickstart has a 14-day free trial. When you want to commit to a paid plan, they’ve got three options available:
- Starter: $99/month
- Growth: $199/month
- Scale: $299/month
Users can also get two months free when they sign up for a yearly plan instead of paying month-to-month.
Best for
Those with larger budgets who want a great shopping cart platform with unique, specialized features like subscription management, revenue retention, and affiliate management.
4. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source ecommerce solution that was founded in 2008. Since it’s a WordPress plug-in, online business owners with WordPress websites all over the world use it to sell their products and services. While it takes a little bit of know-how to set up WordPress navigation, WooCommerce is an affordable way to put together an impressive online store for your business.
Top features
- You can set up a professional online store from scratch or by working with a Block Theme template
- Cart and Checkout blocks
- Features to increase and replicate sales, like coupons, points, rewards, and gifts
- WooCommerce payments let you accept a range of online and in-person payments, track revenue, and manage all your payment activity in 18 countries and over 135 currencies worldwide
- Code-free customization so you can set up an ideal shopping experience for your customers
- You can market your online store with Facebook Ads, Google Listings, and third-party marketplaces
- The option to set up WooCommerce Shipping
- A WooCommerce mobile app so you can run your online shop from anywhere
WooCommerce pricing
WooCommerce pricing works a little differently than the other Thrivecart alternatives on our list. The good news is, like WordPress, WooCommerce is free and open source. However, there are still some costs associated with using WooCommerce as a shopping cart tool:
- If you use WooCommerce Payments for payment processing, you’ll pay 2.9% of the total plus $0.30 per transaction for US payments. There’s an additional 1% fee for cards issued outside the US.
- You may still have to sign up for external tools for customer communications or search engine optimization (SEO), for example.
- WooCommerce offers lots of extensions and themes that can enrich and enhance the customer experience, some of which are free and some of which you have to pay extra for.
Best for
Those who have a WordPress website and want an easy way to set it up to sell their products and services online.
5. SendOwl
SendOwl markets itself as an all-in-one solution that’s designed to help online creators sell everything from ebooks to software to audiobooks to event tickets. Overall, SendOwl has tons of great features and an intuitive platform, making it a great choice for any entrepreneur who wants to set up a shopping cart or checkout page to generate more income for their business and scale effectively. The only downside is the fact that their pricing system is largely based on sales rather than monthly payments, which can make it hard to budget and forecast costs.
Top features
SendOwl has a variety of features that encompass a series of specific tools and capabilities. Here’s a selection that is most relevant to entrepreneurs looking to build a checkout page and sell their products and services online:
- Sell: Shopping carts, responsive, on-site checkout pages, multiple languages and currencies, payment links, and flexible payment options
- Deliver: Physical and digital products, memberships, subscriptions, and drip content
- Market: Discount and promotional codes, one-click upsells, cart abandonments, pay-what-you-want pricing, email marketing integrations, and product update emails
- Customize: Custom branding and checkout fields, three checkout templates, custom email templates, and embedded buttons
- Analyze: Order reports, zero download reports, full product reports, discount code reports, and income, upsells, and abandoned cart analytics
SendOwl pricing
SendOwl has a 30-day free trial. Otherwise, they have two different payment options:
- Free: $0/month with unlimited subscriptions and unlimited usage. However, SendOwl charges 5% of sales.
- Growth: $19/month with unlimited subscriptions, standard usage of 100 orders a month, and 10GB of storage (over usage charges apply). SendOwl keeps 0% of sales, but they do charge a 1% subscription fee (minimum $0.25) for each recurring payment.
Best for
Those looking for a free digital sales platform that only charges based on sales.
Selling digital products? Compare the top SendOwl alternatives of 2023!
Choosing the best Thrivecart alternative for your business
Overall, one of the most important decisions that online businesses have to make is how to effectively sell their products and services. Doing so is easy with a great checkout page or ecommerce platform, but there are different options out there that suit various stages of business growth.
While Thrivecart has lots of great features and can help business owners set up enticing checkout pages, the large upfront payment it requires might be too high for entrepreneurs and SMBs that are just getting started. Likewise, they could improve their overall user interface (UI) and user experience (UX), and there are certainly more modern, intuitive competitors out there.
If you own an online business and are looking for an intuitive way to set up stunning, effective checkout pages, send out top-notch email marketing, and monetize your content, give Flodesk a try. Sign up for our 30-day free trial—no strings attached—and see for yourself.
