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ThriveCart review – Is it really worth it?

April 24, 2019

Wondering if ThriveCart lives up to the hype? Read my review from the perspective of a launch strategist and founder of Love To Launch®.

I'm LAURA!

I'm the founder of Love To Launch and launch director, CMO and team-trainer to the biggest names in the online world. I have two grown up children (proud teen Mum), a luxury travel addict, foodie and latte lover.

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Preamble: I have never written a blog about software before but I wanted to share my ThriveCart review because one of the top questions I'm asked “How can I sell my digital products online?”.

What is ThriveCart
Why do you need it?
Why I needed it
Top Features for product creators
Bump offers
1-click Upsells
Integrations
Easy to use templates
ThriveCart vs other options
Is it really worth the cost?
Never pay for ThriveCart ever again!

What is ThriveCart?

What is thrivecart?In a nutshell, ThriveCart is a software that helps you to promote and take payments for physical products, digital products, subscriptions and services to your customer.

But its features go way beyond just taking payments.

It’s an easy-to-use software for creating checkout pages that convert more clicks into sales and dramatically increases your profits by creating up-sells, down-sells and bumps (more on that later!).

The ThriveCart team have been so clever in making sure that it integrates into many email marketing softwares, payment processors, membership platforms, webinar platforms and just about anything you can think of if there’s a Zapier zap for it!

And that’s where I think it’s biggest strength is.

It doesn’t matter whether you promote your products on your website, Facebook, or even just via email… and who you take payments with… or who sends your emails…

ThriveCart will link to most of the popular apps, platforms and providers in those sectors.

I’ve been using it for almost a year now and it has become an absolute ESSENTIAL and my most regularly recommended tool to my clients… and they love it too.

Why do you need it?

Why do you need thrivecart?It seems that these days having one piece of software to run all your online marketing campaigns just isn’t enough. We sometimes call this a “stack” – a suite of tools and platforms for landing pages, emails, taking payments, delivering products / services to help you achieve your business goals.

ThriveCart offers the missing link that many are facing with their stack (taking payments on high-converting checkout pages), and means you can continue to use your favourite tools without compromising your checkout success.

My missing link

I am an Infusionsoft user (love and hate) and for all it’s sins, there’s nothing better out there for me “right now” that does everything I ned. But the biggest issue I have had with the platform is the checkout pages.

ugly infusionsoft forms Eurghhhh they are soooo frugly (freaking ugly) and they convert like crap.

I then found a really great add-on called Spiffy to make my checkout pages look better, plus they make them mobile-friendly which was great (the Spiffy guys are awesome!)

butttttttt…..

This was costing me $444 a year on top of my expensive Infusionsoft subscription and it was still fairly limited. No upsells, bumps or down-sell features.

When I stumbled across ThriveCart and discovered it could link into everything I used… custom landing pages, Infusionsoft and my membership sites – I jumped for joy and the best bit… I grabbed this lifetime offer at $599 so I’ll never pay for it again ?

My top 4 features for product creators…

These are my personal top features and the ones that you will LOVE if you’re selling digital products…

Bump

Bump offerSuper cool feature that enables you to increase the profit per order and if you can do that every time sometimes buys from you, even if just a small amount, you’ll massively increase your business over time. Every time I launch a product, bumps added around 10% extra profit to my campaign success.

Think of this as a little bump, not a great big massive jump in price.

A bump offer is placed as a checkbox on the checkout page and ThriveCart’s bump is highly visible to your customers. They don’t need to check out twice, just simply tick the box and proceed.

Your goal is to make this a no-brainer offer for your customers so that when they are about to check out – their response is “ooh yes, why not!?”… TICK… Checkout.

Here’s what I recommend…

  • Make it closely related to your product subject
  • Don’t make the price higher than your main product
  • What would really sweeten the deal that they came to you for?

1-click Upsell

upsell offerThis was my main reason for signing up for ThriveCart in the first place.

An up-sell is a 2nd offer you make to your customers immediately once they have successfully purchased something from you.

A 1-click upsell means your customer can add it to their order without having to add their card details again, simply by clicking the buy button once on the upsell page.

This makes it super easy for someone to buy a 2nd offer from you.

The psychology behind these purchases are that customers get a hit of dopamine when they buy something they want, so this is the perfect opportunity to sell more!

I try not to think of this as a psychological trick, but rather an opportunity to give my customers more of what they really want. I also love to reward loyalty so this is my opportunity to give some amazing discounts on other products that I think they might love and to say thank you for their offer.

I see a lot of people offering sometimes 3-5 upsells and it makes me feel so icky. I know that I definitely do not want to be sold to in this way, therefore I do NOT do it to my customers.

Upsells in Thrivecart add on average of 25% to Profit From Products campaign profits and I test different variations / price points for each launch.

There is generally no right or wrong answer for which upsell is best, as each market is different. But do ensure that this does become a testing point for your campaigns!

Here’s some questions to help you get clear on what would work best…

  • What’s the next level up from what they just bought?
  • How can you give them more of what they want?
  • Can you give them more access to you?
  • What would make their purchase more enjoyable / easier?
  • How can you turn them into a long-term customer?

Integrations

Thrivecart integrationsOne of my favourite words but one that strikes fear into the non-techies and I totally understand why! It sounds complicated but its a very important concept to understand.

A tech integration is a way of bridging the gap between 2 softwares so that they work together.

The thing I love most about ThriveCart is that it provides the missing piece of the puzzle in my marketing (high converting checkout pages) whilst linking to everything that I use to run my campaigns and sell / deliver my products and services.

It means, for me, that I can still use my best tools for other jobs…

Landing pages >> Custom designed and built (although sometimes I use a quick WordPress page)
Email >> Infusionsoft
Members site >> WordPress with Memberium

And ThriveCart integrates with them all to make the workflow this…

Landing page to promote a product
ThriveCart takes payment and sends customer order info to Infusionsoft
ThriveCart sends customer to confirmation page on my website
ThriveCart sends a receipt
Infusionsoft then creates the customer’s product access and emails it to them

And it is SUPER easy to set this up in ThriveCart because they don’t use confusing techie language.

But if you don’t use any of the common softwares that integrates with ThriveCart out of the box, you can use Zapier – which links just about any software to anything else! This does add an extra step in but allows you to integrate into just about anything.

Easy to use templates

ThriveCart templatesDespite being a designer / developer by trade there is NO WAY ON EARTH I create anything custom if I don’t have to. Which is why ThriveCart is one of my favourite tools because what they provide out of the box, simply works.

There are a number of checkout templates which are simple, well designed and mobile-friendly – plus they convert so well! You want your checkout to be simple so there is less subconscious friction.

Their core checkout options are…

  • One step checkout (all the checkout elements appear on one page)
  • Two step checkout (checkout split into 2 sections)
  • Embeddable checkout (you can place this in a web page)
  • Popup checkout (load the checkout in a popup when the checkout button is clicked)

And then you have a number of different styling options you can use. I use a simple light background so elements like countdown timers and bump offers jump off the page more.

It really is a testing point in your own campaigns to see which option and style is best for you.

If I’m doing a simple promotion, I choose the one or 2 step checkout with a video to sell my product.

If I’m doing a more complex campaign with a landing page to promote my product, then I often use the popup checkout on the landing page.

ThriveCart vs other options

There are quite a few options out there to host your checkout, and I have tried lots of them (10 years working with clients means I have had to!). But the only one that I think really competes with ThriveCart is SamCart, but I much prefer ThriveCart.

I think ThriveCart’s support is much better and I have had better conversion rates with ThriveCart (most important!) despite the fact on the face of things SamCart’s checkout pages look a little more stylised. (Disclaimer: when I used SamCart they were very early on in the software journey, and maybe their poor support was a teething problem)

But without a doubt, the very best thing for me is that right now ThriveCart is still on a limited lifetime access deal…

Meaning you pay for it ONCE and you never pay for it again, whereas SamCart is $199 a month! ouch!So in just 3 months, it’s paid for itself as its only $599 right now.

But that deal is going to end soon, and will move to a similar pricing model as SamCart ($99 a month I believe) so you’ll want to jump on this straight away if you want to never pay again.

Is it really worth the cost?

Absofreakinglutely. I wouldn’t have spent all this time publshing a 2500 word blog if it didn’t come with my highest stamp of approval.

Running one campaign with a simple bump and upsell can pay for this software forever, so I highly recommend it.

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!

Never pay for ThriveCart ever again!

Thrivecart lifetime offerIf you’re wanting to sell, or are selling, digital products this is one of the rare tools that I strongly recommend you invest in. Click here to learn more about Thrivecart.

If you want to give it a try, then now is the time to do that, because you right now you can get it at one-off low price and never pay for it again as they have a couple of options for lifetime deals.

AND… You have 30 days to try it out so you have nothing to risk!

As a proud partner of ThriveCart I do get a commission if you choose to buy, but as with anything I recommend – I only recommend products and services I have used and got amazing results from. Meaning if I recommend it, you know it comes with a great big huge stamp of approval from me ?

Got questions about my Thrivecart review?

I hope this Thrivecart review has been helpful and if you have any questions, drop me a comment below and I’m happy to help!

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  1. Paula Roa says:

    Hello!!!! I am thinking on buying thrivecart. But I have a question. How do the pay you? PayPal? And antihéroe question: if you have PayPal only, the desing shows credit card payment directly? Or the client have yo have a paypal account. Thank you!

    • Laura - PFP Founder says:

      Hi Paulo! You can use Paypal, or you can use Stripe or Authorize.net. It is possible to use 2 payment options which is what I do, Stripe AND PayPal to give people options if they don’t have a PayPal account. Personally I prefer to use Stripe because PayPal often side with the buyer incorrectly during disputes.

  2. Ariette says:

    thanks so much for your review!

  3. Linda Leyble says:

    Hi! Been thinking about ThriveCart – thanks for the review.?Does ThriveCart have a Landing Page builder – or do you have to use something else. Please let me know.

    Thanks

    • Laura - PFP Founder says:

      It has a checkout page builder (the new version is incredible) – and that’s all you really need. So it’s not a full sales page, but its absolutely enough for most needs!

  4. Hi Laura, would you recommend it for physical products? I sell handbags and have many products with different colour options. I’m just wondering whether it’s easy to add product variants in Thrivecart’s back office or whether you have to set up a new product for each colour for example. It would be really useful to see a sneak peak of what it looks like from inside! Thanks, Alexandra

    • Laura - PFP Founder says:

      Hi Alexandra, its not best for ecommerce – I’d highly recommend Shopify for your products though 🙂 Laura x

  5. Steve says:

    Hey, thanks for the great review. Does Thrive cart allow us to set up multiple products from different businesses?
    I have 2 separate businesses, 1 a membership platform and another a physical product. I also manage a few clients’ businesses. So is it possible to create separate portfolio of products for each of these and track them separately? Also does it allow you to add other team members to help manage?

    • Laura - PFP Founder says:

      Hi Steve!

      You could easily run 2 businesses from one account as long as you’re happy to have the same Thrivecart URL for both or alternatively you could embed the checkout page onto different websites and no one would even know your Thrivecart account URL.

      Each client will need their own Thrivecart if they want full control – you can set up a product for them but you would own the admin dasbhboard.

      YES you can add other team members 🙂

      Hope that helps!

      Laura

  6. Brenda says:

    Thank you very much for this post! I’m starting a business to sell MP3’s and possibly other downloadable products later. Samcart is too expensive, but I love all of their features. Does Thrivecart deliver downloadable products to customers right after they place the order? Thanks for the info. Have a wonderful day. 🙂

    • Laura - PFP Founder says:

      Hi Brenda! Yes you can use a number of different “delivery” integrations to get your digital products to your customers as soon as they have purchased 🙂 It’s a wonderful software and a great alternative to Samcart (especially at the lifetime price!)

  7. Richard says:

    Hi!
    Does Thrivecart give instant delivery of digital products (files, downloads) etc?

  8. Martinique says:

    Why do you not recommend thrivecart for physical products? Also do you use their affiliate feature? If so, what are your thoughts?

    • Laura - PFP Founder says:

      It’s not an ecommerce store so you’ll be missing a alot of account functionality that your customers will require (I recommend shopify)

      The affiliate system is great – I use it a lot with my sales

  9. stacy says:

    Thank you for this detailed review! So helpful! Would you recommend thrivecart for selling consulting services?

    • Laura - PFP Founder says:

      That’s one of the reasons I use it Stacy – I often create invoices from it 🙂 Just simply create a products called “Stacy – consulting package” for example

  10. Great review. I just started using Thrive cart. Setting to the checkout page was a little taxing on my brain, but I got it. I looked up some other cart designs online and that helped me to know what was possible. The things I love are the order bumps and the up sells. I’ve used several others, but they were not what I wanted. Now, its all about figuring out what works best.

  11. Sonia says:

    Great insight. You really appear well versed with Thrive Cart. Question, can you comfortably include multiple videos on a sales or landing page?

  12. Ilse says:

    Hi Laura!
    This article is just what I needed!
    I have a question. I want to use it with Thinkific Course Platform and what I would like to do is that when they buy a service/course I want everything linked in a way that they immediately get an email from my mail chimp and then log in details for their Thinkific Account. Would this be possible or do you recommend something else?
    Thank you! With love, Ilse

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I'm Laura, Love To Launch founder...

Some people call me "Launch Queen" and I'll probably call you "my lovely" - because that's what I call all my friends. I'm the founder of Love To Launch and it's fair to say I eat, live and breathe launches.

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