Detailed Full Review of ThriveCart: All you need to know (2024)

What is ThriveCart?

ThriveCart is a shopping cart solution that helps you launch and manage an e-commerce business. It contains all the essential features to build an e-commerce store and create membership sites.

It eliminates all the design, programming, and technical issues associated with creating an e-commerce business.

Its official website claims to have helped over 159,000 entrepreneurs make over $1.3 billion in sales.

The platform owes its success to features such as visually appealing checkout pages, the ability to create embeddable shopping carts and popups, sales funnels, affiliate campaigns, and more.

ThriveCart Users

ThriveCart is ideal for businesses that are just starting out and want to quickly set up and operate a e-commerce site. It is also suitable for entrepreneurs who are starting their business and have a limited budget.

The target audience is currently the owners of small and medium-sized e-commerce businesses.

ThriveCart helps you:

• Customize your online stores using a “drag and drop” builder.
• Lower your cart abandonment rate.
• Create membership sites.
• Selling digital products through the recurring subscription model
• Create checkout pages and cart pages with high conversion rates.
• Set up an affiliate program.

It's also interesting to note that ThriveCart has features that are specifically aimed at entrepreneurs who sell digital products.

For example, their integrated email marketing toolkit allows for the automated delivery of digital products.

Let's go through ThriveCart and its features in detail.

Features

1. Shopping cart templates and editor.

ThriveCart comes with a drag-and-drop “sales cart” builder that makes it easy to add items and create a cart from scratch.

You don't have to worry about the design because it's all done for you.

Here's a quick overview of the cart page builder:

You can move items from the leftmost and rightmost panels. Drop these items where you want in the main area of the cash register editor.

You can change the settings for each item and even add sub-items for some of them. For example, some elements allow you to add text, a buy button, or images for further customization.

Another selling point is that you can choose a multi-stage cart flow or a single-stage cart flow. This means you can either separate customer and billing information into multiple steps, or show all fields in a single area.

That said, you don't have a wide range of models. ThriveCart offers four frames or templates for you to choose from.

Frame types include:

• Standard - This includes the checkout area divided into two sections.
• Sales cart - Single sales page type checkout.
• Embeddable - The embedded cash register is placed directly into any of your web pages.
• Popup - Checkout added to your website in the form of a popup window.

Note that shopping cart models largely depend on the type of checkout you want to add. This narrows your options even further, when you didn't have much choice at the start.

For example, you have no choice but to use the third template if you want to integrate the payment page into your web page.

You can also import another design or even copy the design from another product.

Overall, the constructor is easy to use, but the model and frame options aren't great.

2. Payment page.

Your checkout page should be clear and simple, designed to appeal to customers who are about to buy.

And Thrivecart's checkout page gives you a fairly clean interface to work with. You can also change it however you want and choose which items and fields to add or remove.

For example, you can choose what information you want to gather about the customer during the checkout process.

You can choose from predefined information fields or even add custom fields to gather additional contact details.

The ease with which you can create this page is worth noting. You don't need outside help or programming skills to get a personalized look that fits your brand.

ThriveCart even allows you to change the order of fields and items on the checkout page. For example, you can choose to collect contact names before email addresses or vice versa. You control all of these parts of your page.

Additionally, you can change the design of your page, including spacing, padding, colors, font, and more.

You can also add a mandatory “Terms and Conditions” checkbox on your checkout page. Your customers will need to agree to these terms before continuing with the procedure.

With the features of the terms and conditions, you can either:

• Add your terms and conditions directly as part of the checkout page.
• Or enter the URL for your terms and conditions page. Note that the URL will open the page in a new tab.

Another benefit of ThriveCart is that it allows you to import payment page templates from other providers. For example, if you already have a checkout page that works well for your store, you can simply import it into the system.

The only thing that's missing is the variety of checkout page templates. However, the company says it will soon be offering a gallery of models with a high conversion rate.

3. Checkout pricing options and payment gateways.

Additionally, ThriveCart provides and allows you to create up to six pricing options at checkout. This allows your customers to choose what they want to buy directly at the time of payment.

Setting up multiple pricing options is easy, and you can do it in a few clicks from the “Product > Payment” tab.

Under the “Payment” tab, you can set up four different options for your payment page.

You can choose one of the supported payment types, including:

• One-time fees
• Recurring subscription model
• Fractional pay
• Pay your own price

You can even combine these payment types and offer different plans at checkout. Besides the various payment options, you can also choose from over 22 currencies and offer free and paid trials.

Although they provide pre-named plans, you can also rename them however you like.

There is even an option to limit the number of products. Plus, you can authorize one purchase at a time or even multiple purchases at the same time.

Finally, the customer arrives on the payment page.

You'll have six models to choose from, with options like... :

• Show price options in a two-column grid
• Show price plans as individual lines
• Include images with plans
• Choose to show or hide prices
• Choose from multiple color options

Here is an example of the checkout page with pricing plans and images:

All of these items can be edited in the drag-and-drop editor, giving you total control over the design of your cart.

When it comes to payment gateways, ThriveCart offers native integration with third-party payment tools like PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, Apple Pay, Google Pay.

Note that Stripe is suitable (for debit/credit card processing + Apple/Google Pay).

While the options aren't too varied, the native integration with Stripe is still a bonus if you want to accept payments via cryptocurrencies.

It's also worth noting that ThriveCart allows multiple accounts per payment processor. This means you can add different products to your account and use different accounts to process payments.

Integrated tax calculation.

You need to calculate the taxes on your e-commerce site. It may seem daunting, but it doesn't have to be.

ThriveCart offers native integration with a third-party tax calculation and collection service - at no additional cost.

Simply check the “Calculate digital sales tax automatically?” box.

However, the process of calculating and collecting tax depends on your region.

ThriveCart is supporting sales tax in the following regions at this time:

• USA
• canada
• THE EU
• australia
• nz
• Chile
• mexico
• Some countries that are not members of the EU, such as the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, and Liechtenstein.

4. Order success/thank you page

The order success/thank you page loads automatically after a customer places an order.

ThriveCart allows you to choose the following options:

• You can show customers a complete breakdown of their purchase/bill.
• Offer a URL that will redirect your customers to their downloads (mainly used when selling digital products) or using custom pages.
• Redirect your customers to a personalized success page.
• Add your audience to your membership site.

It's the penultimate step in the funnel you design with ThriveCart. The final step is to set up automatic email deliveries in case a customer abandons their cart. You can even send downloadable material by email.

5. Create a membership site.

ThriveCart offers three options for the fulfillment area: view invoices, send them to a specific URL, or add customers to the membership site.

An important aspect of the membership site integration is that it automatically adds your customers to your membership site at the time of payment.

It doesn't matter if they don't have an account. ThriveCart will automatically create their account and apply the membership level to their account.

However, note that ThriveCart does not provide built-in membership site creation functionality. On the other hand, it offers native integration with some of the best membership site platforms.

When your customers check out via ThriveCart, their contact details are transferred to your membership site. ThriveCart even creates their account automatically based on the details acquired.

And if it's a brand new account, the membership software you use will send your customers an email containing their access details.

Plus, it allows you to add multiple payment options based on different membership levels. For example, standard plan, advanced plan, etc.

6. Define rules based on customer behavior.

ThriveCart allows you to create rules to automatically trigger an action based on a specific condition.

Behavior rules are easy to set up, and you can execute them through platforms like Demio, ActiveMember360, Memberium, or even an email autoresponder.

First, you will be prompted to choose which rule to trigger, then select the service (autoresponder, Demio, etc.) that will perform the task.

For example, use ActiveCampaign when your customer is “buying the main product” through any price option.

And since ActiveCampaign is a email marketing platform all-in-one, you can then add this specific customer to an email list, a tag, a sequence, send automated email campaigns, etc.

This is just one example of defining rules of behavior. You can play around with other options depending on your business and your target audience.

Here are some of the rules you can choose from:

• Buy the main product
• Refund of the main product
• Abandon the cart
• Payment is refused
• Buy the hump
• Reimbursement of the hump
• Make recurring payments
• Refund of a recurring payment
• Recurring payment failed
• Subscription cancelled

You can use these policies to provide the best, most personalized customer experience possible.

You can even add an autoresponder that ThriveCart doesn't have a native integration for using the option Custom HTML.

In addition, the shopping cart platform keeps track of cart abandonment rates, overdue subscriptions, and more.

Each time a potential prospect abandons your cart, ThriveCart sends a shopping cart recovery email to follow up and retain the customer.

ThriveCart also has a built-in reminder feature to help you recover revenue automatically.

The reminder function helps you:

• Send automatic notifications for overdue payments.
• Notifications when cards are about to expire.
• Continue with late payments.
• Manage subscriptions.
• Send a reminder that the card has expired.
• Adjust affiliate commissions based on the refund rate.

7. Create upsells and downsells

Upsells and downsells are generally associated with more expensive or cheaper products that complement or even replace the original product. Adding upsells and downsells helps you sell more, which increases your business revenue.

ThriveCart makes it very easy to create upsells and sales at a loss, so even an e-commerce newbie can add them to their store.

It all works sequentially. For example, ThriveCart redirects the customer either to the next upsell or to the success page if the customer accepts the upsell.

Or, if the customer refuses to buy the complementary product, they will be redirected to the complementary product or to any other stage in the funnel.

After selecting the “Edit Upsell Page” option, you can either edit the ThriveCart upsell page using the built-in editor or import a design from your system.

8. Features to ensure higher conversion rates.

ThriveCart has tons of advanced features in its arsenal to help you convert customers faster and avoid cart abandonment.

Here are some of the top features that help drive sales and revenue.

1. Discount coupons.

ThriveCart automatically applies discount coupons to customer invoices at checkout. Neither you nor your customers have to add the coupon code manually, which results in faster conversion.

You'll see a bunch of coupons in the area of your dashboard. All you need to do is copy the URL and apply the coupon to a specific product.

2. Countdown.

Counting down is convenient for your business because it allows you to invoke the feeling of scarcity and get more sales and attention from your potential customers.

ThriveCart allows you to choose between:

• Evergreen timers only start when the customer arrives at the checkout page.
• Or fixed timers that are set to end after a set amount of time.

3. A/B testing.

ThriveCart is packed with features. One of these is A/B testing, which allows you to compare various combinations of variations in your model to improve the conversion rates of your online store.

You can select the objective of the split test and choose when the A/B test should end, and decide which test is the winner.

At the end of the test, it will automatically show the best performing basket.

4. Bundles.

Using bundles in your shopping cart is a great way to add value to your customers and promote your monthly subscription.

Bundles are a feature that allows you to offer special prices to repeat customers. It's similar to Groupon and LivingSocial, where you get discounted prices for items.

These offers offer another opportunity to attract prospects, outside of the normal checkout process.

9. Affiliate program.

Deploying an affiliate program to reward your customers is a great way to grow your business, customer loyalty, and revenue.

ThriveCart provides an integrated affiliate program, eliminating the need to integrate a third-party system.

You just need to complete two sections, including:

• Set up your affiliate commissions
• Set up the affiliate target URL, cookie duration, and signup process.

The first step is to set up affiliate commissions.

ThriveCart allows you to set up different commissions for different pricing plans. This is a handy feature for sellers with multiple price levels.

You can also choose fixed commissions or percentage commissions.

Finally, there are options to define how affiliates should be paid and how long they should be paid.

If you use PayPal as a payment gateway on the platform, it will process automated payments for each affiliate.

You can also opt for manual payments from the platform whenever you want.

The next step is to set up your affiliate options.

Affiliate options include:

• Choose how affiliates sign up for the program. You can choose manual approval, automatic approval, or even deactivate new affiliates for a while.
• Choose how to follow prospects via an affiliate link: using the first cookie or the last cookie?
• Select how long the cookie expires.
• Require affiliates to connect their PayPal accounts for payment, or do you pay by other means?
• Finally, add the link where you want affiliates to redirect traffic.

Additionally, you can also enable up and down sales for affiliate commissions. And you don't even need to manually approve affiliates for up or down sales. ThriveCart automatically takes upsell into account when paying affiliates.

10. Analyses and reports.

ThriveCart provides detailed business information, reports, and an easy way to see your metrics and data without knowing any code.

It reveals all the critical business information you need to make smart revenue, profit, and marketing decisions.

Your dashboard contains metrics like:

• Total transactions
• Net income
• Average order value
• Gross income and annual income
• Total customers
• Conversion rate
• Cancellations
• Refund amount and refund rate
• Active subscriptions

You can also customize the details you see on your dashboard. Choose the indicators you want to show and drag the indicator cards in the order that suits you.

Other critical information includes forecasted revenue, forecasts, live traffic, car lifecycle value, etc. It also has the ability to manage subscriptions to reduce churn.

11. Integrations

ThriveCart has a lot of great features. But one of the most remarkable is its ability to integrate third-party tools that allow your store to do things it couldn't do before.

ThriveCart integrates with all major third party tools such as:

• Email marketing providers and autoresponders (MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Drip, MailerLite, HubSpot, Sendy, Moosend, Moosend, ConvertKit, etc.)
• Membership platforms (MemberPress, OptimizeMember, Teachable, Teachable, Thrive Apprentice, Kajabi, MemberMouse, WishList Member, etc.)
• Webinar platforms (Demio and AWeber).
• Fulfilment services (Kunaki, Lulu, Vervante, Pabbly, Printful, etc.)
• Payment processors (Stripe, PayPal, Google Pay, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Authorize.net).

Other major integrations include Slack, Zapier, Google Analytics, Google Analytics, InfusionSoft, LeadPages, ClickFunnels, Instapage, Google Analytics, Google Analytics, Google Analytics, InfusionSoft, LeadPages, ClickFunnels, Instapage, WordPress, and more.

Pricing

ThriveCart handles everything related to management, sales, shipping, billing, and more.

Currently, ThriveCart is offered with a one-time payment of $495 (no recurring fees).

The plan provides lifetime access to all basic features, including:

• Customizable business information dashboard.
• High-converting checkout pages, shopping carts, and sales funnels.
• Rules of customer behavior.
• Unlimited number of payment pages.
• Integrated affiliate program.
• Automatic sales tax management.
• Recovery of abandoned carts.
• Advanced user management.
• And more...

While there's no free trial or freemium plan, the site does offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

The $495 lifetime license seems like a great deal compared to other shopping cart software like SamCart — which starts at $49 per month.

FAQs

Does ThriveCart integrate with other solutions?

ThriveCart integrates with all the best autoresponders, membership platforms, and software in your marketing stack.

Using Zapier, Thrivecart can integrate with almost any tool on the market.

Does ThriveCart help manage affiliates?

Yes. The affiliate platform integrated with ThriveCart Pro manages thousands of customer affiliate campaigns every day!

What payment processors does ThriveCart work with right now?

ThriveCart integrates quickly and easily with Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net. It allows you to integrate multiple accounts from each of them, as well as accept payments via Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Final Verdict.

Shopping cart platforms have evolved over the past two years. While most of them work on the same basic model, some are designed to meet customer needs.

ThriveCart is one of them and is particularly suitable for small businesses, marketers, and e-commerce newbies. It is a complete e-commerce platform that allows you to sell digital and physical products online.

The fact that it is easy to set up, even for non-technicians, is an added bonus.

That said, it's still not an alternative to more advanced e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce and Shopify. ThriveCart is only suitable for selling digital products and a handful of physical products.

However, it has a lot of advanced features aimed at small businesses and digital product sellers. For example, functions like email tracking, sales funnels, one-click up and down sales, behavior-based triggers, etc. are all designed for these businesses.

Trying to find the perfect landing page builder? Check out my article on best landing page creators.