ThriveCart Review [2021]: Pros, Cons, and Alternatives

If you’re looking for an in-depth ThriveCart review, you’re in the right place.

It’s likely that if you’re here, you’re looking for a way to collect payment without manually sending invoices or installing ugly Paypal buttons. You might also be interested in features that can help you increase the average value per sale like upsells, downsells, and dunning for memberships.

What is ThriveCart?

ThriveCart is a shopping cart software that enables you to collect payment online without invoicing.

The company was founded in 2016 by Josh Bartlett, and it’s grown to have a raving community of avid fans, and rightfully so.

The software is a very robust, hosted software solution full of many features that help you to sell online in a professional and credible way.

How does ThriveCart Work?

With ThriveCart, you’d input your product or service catalog, choose pricing and payment options (one-time, pay what you want, subscription, or split-pay), customize your shopping cart pages, and begin selling your products and services online.

ThriveCart will keep analytics for you, so you’ll know how many people are visiting your shopping cart pages, conversion rate, and lifetime customer value.

You can also manage an affiliate program in ThriveCart: invite affiliates, import affiliates, and customize each affiliates’ experience. You can have different commission rates for each product or service, monitor # of clicks, # of conversions, and more.

What does ThriveCart Integrate with?

ThriveCart integrates with leading payment processors, email marketing services, membership services, webinar software, and Zapier (which opens the door for loads of integrations).

Payment Processors

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

Email Marketing

ThriveCart integrates with email marketing services like:

• Convertkit
• ActiveCampaign
• Infusionsoft
• Ontraport
• Hubspot
• Mailchimp
• Drip
• Moosend
• Aweber
• GetResponse
• MailerLite
• Sendy

Membership Software

• Kajabi
• Memberpress
• LifterLMS
• Teachable
• Memberpress
• MemberMouse
• OptimizeMember
• Thrive Apprentice

Notification Platforms

• Google Sheets
• Slack

Fulfillment Services

• Lulu
• Kunaki
• Pabbly

Webinar Software

• Demio

Zapier

• CRM
• Accounting
• Other Memberships or Course Software
• Other Email services
• Other Webinar services
• Other Fulfillment Services
• Community software or Forums
• And, More

Who is ThriveCart Best for?

From observation, I’ve seen ThriveCart used mostly for small businesses, and people with smaller teams. It’s perfect for digital product-based businesses who deliver their products or services thru virtual events, memberships, a learning management software, or other product fulfillment solution.

ThriveCart doesn’t deliver files, courses, or products of any type. It’s solely designed to accept payment and increase order value.

ThriveCart has ways to input various payment options, but it might not have all of the features a retail physical product business may want. If you sell products where you’d need lots of customization options on the checkout page (size, color, custom message, etc.), ThriveCart may not be the best option.

For service-based businesses, it’s best for those who are okay with doing their estimates, proposals, and quotes prior to using their checkout software. The “pay what you want” feature can be used by customers to pay amounts you’ve sent in an estimate, quote, or proposal.

For nonprofits or fundraisers, the software can be used to collect donations. The “pay what you want” feature is perfect for collecting donations or raising funds. Unfortunately, if you wanted to offer “pay what you want subscription” options, the software isn’t able to do that at the time of this writing.

Businesses who accept a large amount of revenue thru tips can use the pay what you want feature to accept tips. You can input specified tip amounts, but the software doesn’t have the functionality to upsell a percentage of the order price, or upsell a pay what you want amount, so you’d have to follow-up via email, social media, or some other way to upsell for tips.

The software is capable of processing lots of transactions without fail, so I’ve seen people use the software to process millions of dollars in sales.

I haven’t seen ThriveCart used as commonly for midsized or large companies (with 100 team members or more). There are limitations with how many admin users who can use the account, but it may still be workable if you reach out to the ThriveCart development team.

Overall, I’d recommend ThriveCart for small businesses (with small teams who would be using it).

Does ThriveCart offer Tools or Training?

They have tutorial videos attached within various parts of the members area, so when you’re setting things up, you can refer to the tutorial for help. They also have a Knowledgebase and Help articles.

Does ThriveCart Have Good Customer Support?

According to customers, the customer support is responsive and polite. They offer tech support thru their ticketing system and community support thru their Facebook group.

For most customers, the Facebook group and ticket support system is sufficient, so you’ll see their customer satisfaction rating is very high in most places online.

Unfortunately, they don’t offer any priority support options like live chat, phone support, or other options you might want if you have an emergency issue.

What does ThriveCart do Well?

• They have high customer satisfaction ratings
• They’ve added features consistently, so you’ll see reviews that are outdated because of ThriveCart’s consistent development
• They created a software that enables you to sell unlimited numbers of products or services
• They don’t charge processing fees
• There’s no subscription or ongoing payments
• The software rivals with the features of leading shopping cart software
• It’s simple to use
• They provide detailed analytics (even per-product)
• They’re updating the software regularly

What doesn’t ThriveCart do Well?

• They don’t have pay what you want subscriptions
• You can’t upsell pay what you want, % of order value, or tips
• They don’t offer priority customer support
• The software doesn’t integrate with payment processors like Amazonpay

What do Other Customers say About ThriveCart?

If you’re considering ThriveCart, you might want to know what other customer experiences are like. I’ve compiled positive and negative reviews, so you can see the positive and negative things customers say about ThriveCart.

Positive ThriveCart Reviews

I actually use ThriveCart and it’s been working for me to process multiple 6-figures in sales on just ThriveCart alone since I started using it. It’s not 100% perfect (although it’s quite close), but it serves me and should serve you well.

Navid Moazzez

Right now there’s no better cart available for small businesses and marketers and it’s available on a special one-off lifetime license.

Ian Broadie, Founder, IanBrodie.com

I use it on all my launches, recommend it to all my students (who also rave about it) and the only time I’ve needed to contact support are to understand some of the more advanced functions that I want to experiment with.

It has been such a reliable tool for me, and when you’re running big launch campaigns you NEED reliability to give you confidence and speed. the last thing I want to be doing during a launch is worrying about whether my checkout pages are going to work!

Laura, Founder, LovetoLaunch.com

Despite being one of the newer carts on the market, and despite not even being publically released yet, ThriveCart is already a very worthy contender for for the top spot.

Gael Breton, Co-Founder, Authority Hacker

If you want a professional level shopping cart that can handle multiple six figures in transactions each year…

But you don’t want to have a recurring monthly fee…

And you want the ability to create a variety of upsell funnels, downsell funnels, bump offers, etc…

…Get ThriveCart today before they switch from the lifetime license to a monthly pricing model!

Miles Beckler, Founder Milesbeckler.com

Negative ThriveCart Reviews

It’s very difficult to find negative reviews of ThriveCart. Instead, you’ll find people who make comments like:

• The carts don’t have many customization options
• Or, reviews where a competing cart is being promoted
• But, none demonstrate the “lack of customizations” or clearly say, “ThriveCart isn’t a good product”.

How Much Does ThriveCart Cost?

ThriveCart is currently being offered at a one-payment Lifetime license for $495, and the Pro account for $609.

However, they’ve been talking about changing their payment model to a subscription to support ongoing advancement of the platform…

So, Get in while the Lifetime License offer lasts!

My Final Opinion

I started using ThriveCart in November 2020, after almost 6 months of using SamCart, and experience using other checkout solutions including Leadpages, Podia, and others. I really enjoyed the SamCart software, but when an affiliate introduced me to ThriveCart, I found it easier to use, the checkout pages are more customizable, and the features that come with ThriveCart, require you to be on the $199/mo plan. I’ve been able to lower my costs significantly by $2000+ annually by switching to ThriveCart, and I haven’t lost functionality at all!

In fact, since switching to SamCart, I have more features I like: embeddable carts, pop-up carts, stats per product, more affiliate center features (like custom commissions, more detailed analytics, etc.), and better A/B testing functionality.

If you’re looking for a shopping cart software that’s robust, competing with the leaders in the market, while also being more affordable, ThriveCart is the best option for you. Get ThriveCart while they Lifetime Offer is still available.

ThriveCart Alternatives

• SamCart – See Full Review
• Podia – See Full Review
• Leadpages – See Full Review
• Clickfunnels – See Full Review
• Shopify – See Full Review
• Kajabi – See Full Review
• Kartra – See Full Review
• Teachable – See Full Review

Verdict: ✅ Recommended