This is my in-depth review of ThriveCart.

And YES, I highly recommend you get ThriveCart if it can work for your online business (which it most likely can if you sell digital or physical products, but you’ll find out all the details in this in-depth review + my epic bonus experience).

I wrote this ultimate ThriveCart review and guide to help you understand how ThriveCart works and the exciting things you can achieve with it, including the pros, cons, and much more.

Over the years I’ve tried many different shopping carts, but nothing comes close to the effectiveness and ease of use ThriveCart provides me and my team. 

At the end, you’ll have a chance to leave your own opinion of what you think of ThriveCart and this review so stick around for that. 

This is an extensive in-depth ThriveCart review, and you’ll find the table of contents below for easy navigations to the parts you’re most interested in. 

Let’s get started!

What Is ThriveCart?

ThriveCart is an easy to use shopping cart software that’s designed to help online businesses increase revenue.

Josh Barlett founded ThriveCart in late 2015. It processed 1,000+ orders within 2 weeks of being launched.

Two years down the line, it became one of the most powerful shopping cart software with lots of payment platforms supported, autoresponder integrations, affiliate management system and much more.

The best part: You don’t have to learn how to code or be a techie person to use it.

ThriveCart is awesome and the best investment I made in my business in 2017 when I got it, and it still stands as my #1 business purchase (most value for money as I keep using it every single day). 

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Is ThriveCart Right For Me?

There’s no lack of shopping cart management software on the internet.

In fact, ThriveCart isn’t even as popular as some of its competitors in terms of active users yet (mostly because it hasn’t been around that long).

What differentiates ThriveCart, among other things, is how easy it is and some of its innovative features. The user interface is simple that even a beginner can use it.

So who is ThriveCart for and who is it not for?

Let’s cover this quickly below so we can move onto the good stuff in the in-depth ThriveCart review.

ThriveCart Is Right For You If:

  • You’re an online entrepreneur.
  • You’re a consultant.
  • You’re a physical product seller and your products require shipping.
  • You’re an info product seller (e.g., you sell online courses, ebooks, audiobooks, software)
  • You’re running a membership site and sell subscription products.
  • You’re a digital marketing agency that runs campaigns for other businesses.

ThriveCart Is NOT Right For You If:

  • You sell multiple products on your online store (in that case check out WooCommerce or Shopify which will be much better suited for you).
  • ThriveCart’s supported payment processor options, Stripe or PayPal CAN’T be used in your country. 
  • You’re not interested in selling any kind of product online.

The Ultimate ThriveCart Review

While discussing with a friend last week over Skype, he asked me this question:

“Is ThriveCart any good? How is it different from the other shopping cart management software like SamCart, PayKickstart, ClickFunnels, SendOwl, and the rest?”

Here’s my response:

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.

That’s the purpose of this ThriveCart review.

I want to show you how, regardless of your business model or product (whether physical or digital) how this shopping cart software can help you manage your entire business — especially your sales process.

My Personal Favorite ThriveCart Features

Before I dive into the full ThriveCart review, I just wanted to take a moment and share my personal favorite ThriveCart features.

Here they are:

  • Simple Stripe, PayPal, Google Pay and even Apple Pay integration (ThriveCart is the first cart to integrate with Apple Pay – mobile payments are getting bigger and bigger!)
  • Direct Teachable integration (it integrates with several other membership platforms like Wishlist member etc)
  • Deep Autoresponder integrations (with any autoresponder, in my case it works perfectly with ActiveCampaign)
  •  Easy to use one-click upsells
  • One-click bump offers on checkout pages 
  • Advanced coupon codes (you can do some really cool stuff I haven’t seen before)
  • High-converting checkout pages. And they are adding more soon too, with the ability to customize a lot more on your own!
  • Create a new product in ThriveCart in literally just 2 minutes. Even a non-techie person can use ThriveCart without any problem. Everything is step-by-step!
  • Digital sales tax (VAT) built into the ThriveCart platform (really important, especially if your business is based in the EU)
  • World-class support. Not really a product feature, but it’s so important. I tested ThriveCart’s support, and each time I got an in-depth response to my question very quickly (often within just a few hours). Well done!
  •  The affiliate management system… just WOW, I’m not sure how they did certain things, but you can automatically pay your affiliates, and set specific rules for different affiliates. It’s very intuitive and it has many very useful advanced features I haven’t seen before (that will save a ton of time, like paying your affiliate partners). 

I can go on and on… there are so many useful features and I know ThriveCart will only get better and better.

That being said, let’s dive into a more in-depth review of the key features and benefits ThriveCart can offer you.

Review Of ThriveCart Key Features & Benefits

Are you already as excited about ThriveCart as I am or you still need to be convinced?

I want to provide as much information to you so you can make an informed decision.

Once you become a user, here are some of the features you can access instantly.

More features are being added periodically to ThriveCart, and I will make sure to update this ThriveCart review from time to time to make sure it’s relevant to you (this one was updated November 2018).

1. High-Converting Cart Templates

ThriveCart has a few different high-converting cart templates available that you can use to boost conversions.

You can customize them a bit to suit your products and offer. It’s really simple and you can be done within a few minutes (even if you’re not a techie).

I know ThriveCart is working on something big and they said will add a ton more cart templates and options as well (I’m hoping there will be a drag and drop builder coming so you can customize even more to make it 100% congruent with your brand).

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Cart and checkout pages, layouts, and designs that are mobile responsive and built to emotionally connect with the customer.

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2. 1-click Bump Offer

The term “bump” in this concept means ‘run into’. Imagine what it’s like when you run into your friend whom you haven’t seen for years. For the most part, the relationship is reignited.

That’s exactly what the 1-click bump offer does for you.

Funny enough, the team at ThriveCart uses 1-click bump offer to make more sales by offering a $99 One Time Deal instead of $197 per year. Who would resist that?

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ThriveCart gives you the opportunity to introduce a powerful offer to your customers right on the cart. This bump offer will instantly grab their attention and they won’t let go or resist it.

For example, if you sell an email marketing course, you could set up another “bump offer” for High-Converting Email Subject Lines or Email Script Swipe File.

The chances of your customer adding it to the cart is high because they’re at the point of purchase.

3. 1-click Upsells (and Downsells)

If you’re not upselling your customers right after they purchase on the cart, you’re leaving lot of money on the table. Your sales and revenue will be crippled.

According to Marketing Metrics, “the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%. The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%.”

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Putting the right ‘upsell offer’ in front of a customer who’s about checking out will generate between 10 – 30% more revenue.

This is one of ThriveCart’s many awesome features.

First, to ‘upsell’ simply means to persuade or nudge a customer to buy a more expensive product or another product in general.

In a way, the product you upsell should be complementary to the main offer. The 1-click upsell feature gives you the ability to add ‘upsell offer’ to your product pages at the click of a button.

Simply do it once, it’ll reflect on all your pages unless you give exceptions.

Inside ThriveCart, you can either use your own upsell page or use the cart’s upsell page.

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Here’s exactly how it works on the platform in 3 steps:

  • The customer first gets to the checkout page
  • You introduce the upsell offer with custom page
  • After the purchase and checkout, the ‘thank you’ page appears.
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Source

Note: Whether or not the customer accepts the “upsell offer”, they will still get the thank you page where they can access the main product they purchased. You can also offer a “one-click” downsell or another upsell depending on if they say yes or no.

Upselling your customer is a proven way to increase sales. Many other shopping cart software equally allows upselling. That’s exciting, right?

Unfortunately, if the ‘upsell offer’ is in many cases intrusive or totally annoys the customer at the point of checkout, they’ll abandon the cart altogether.

With ThriveCart, though, you gain insights about the customer purchase history. And you can recommend offers based on their history and even address them by name.

4. A/B Testing

I’m sure you don’t want to spend money, time, and resources on a sales page or cart that will not convert. It doesn’t make business sense.

To save time and maximize results, split testing is a great option.

It can help improve the conversions for your product pages, and the product itself.

Some other shopping cart tools offer this feature so it’s nothing special on ThriveCart. But it’s super easy to do here.

You feel at home when you’re split testing multiple steps or offers in your sales process. The goal is to see which page performs better when customers click to the cart page.

At the end of the split test, you’re able to see the best performing checkout page What you do next is stick with it.

Taking it even further, you can test different variations of your cart to see which one performs better. With ThriveCart, it’s quick and easy to set up.

To create a split test, let’s say you have a cart page that has a testimonial in the header like this:

To create a split test campaign to this cart page, I need a duplicate of it. So I’ll hover on the product and click “clone.”

Next, I’ll click on the product I want to modify and click “edit”. I’ll make changes to it ensuring that the product name is the same, but I’ll add a label to differentiate it from the rest.

Make changes to the product header, the product prize, even the template, and cart page. But don’t do too many changes at once. You can do so gradually.

Once you have done making changes, scroll down and click “Save”.

Then go back to your product and click “A/B test tab” and create a split test.

Next select the first product, then the second. Name your split tests and select your goal. Set when you want the split test to begin and enter the checkout for your A/B test.

Finally, you’ll be given a link to your split test which you can use on your sales pages. That’s how easy it is to create an A/B split test using ThriveCart.

The most important aspects of running an online business is tracking and conversions. And it’s only by split testing can you confidently tell which checkout page or sales page is performing better.

You can’t assume or guess. That’s not the right way to build your online business.

A/B split testing works. Testing little things can make a big difference.

5. Embedded Cart

ThriveCart allows to embed your checkout page on your own website, and it’s really simple to setup as you can see. You just select it from one of the options and then follow the steps.

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For example if you have a WordPress site, you can take the embed code and just add it on your site which is a really neat feature.

Here’s a simple example of what it can look like on a WordPress site:

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6. Webhooks

Unlike an API that needs to be given an instruction, Webhooks notifications are automated calls from one website to the server. Those calls are usually triggered when certain events happen on the website.

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ThriveCart allows Webhooks and members can take advantage of it to recommend offers to users, for example, when they perform an action.

To set it up, follow this path once logged on:

Settings > Webhooks.

Using the POST attribute, you run actions that enable integrations with third-party platforms, send yourself or the buyer additional emails or follow-ups.

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8. Auto-Follow-Up Messages

How often do you send auto-follow-up emails to your customers? If you noticed that customers are abandoning their carts, did you take any action?

You can directly tag people and update customers through auto-follow-up messages.

With ThriveCart, you can set up and customize follow-up messages that will be sent to your customer automatically based on the actions they take (for example when they purchase or abandon the cart).

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9. Affiliate Management Center

The ThriveCart’s affiliate management center is very easy to use. When you first log in, you’ll see everything you need to set up an affiliate program for your product (both digital and physical products).

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You can choose the best way to pay your affiliates, when you want, and with a robust system that even a newbie will understand.

ThriveCart affiliate center will save you time, money, and other resources that’s required when recruiting affiliates, paying out commissions, and giving out bonuses.

When you log into your ThriveCart affiliate management center, you can customize everything.

Are you wondering what specific things you can customize? Here are some of them:

  • Product commissions.
  • How affiliates get paid: Instantly, weekly, after 30 or 60 days etc. You can even do it manually. The options are endless pretty much.
  • Commission type: fixed fee or percentage of sale. (you can eve set individual commission rates for your top affiliates).
  • Bump offer commissions.

10. Product Upgrades

Giving your customer a reasonable option at the point of purchase could yield more conversions. For example, you can upgrade your customer’s purchase by offering an upsell.

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You can replace the product they have already added to the cart, replace the charge, and never cancel the subscription.

What does this do? Well, it helps to increase the customer lifetime value (LTV).

11. Autoresponder Integrations

Businesses that integrate autoresponder to their shopping cart or CRM software dramatically increase your sales and revenue. Why?

There are so many email marketing solutions out there. ThriveCart makes it a lot easier to integrate with the popular once like ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, AWeber, GetResponse, Drip, Ontraport, HubSpot, Keap, MailerLite, etc.

Here’s how to integrate it.

First, go to your Settings area:

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Click on the “view” tab.

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Next, from the list of integrations locate “Autoresponders” and click “View settings” button.

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Locate your autoresponder from the list and follow the instructions.

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Click “Integrate now” to complete the process. That’s how easy it is to integrate your email autoresponder. Now, you can send automated emails to your contacts and increase your sales.

And even if you don’t see your email provider in the list, you can integrate via HTML form or set it up via Zapier… so any email service provider can integrate with ThriveCart!

12. Membership Integrations

Do you have any favorite membership platform you’d like to integrate with ThriveCart?

Currently, ThriveCart integrates directly with popular membership platforms such as WishlistMember, Teachable, MemberPress, Digital Access Pass, OtimizeMember and MemberMouse.

ThriveCart Membership Integrations