If you’re an entrepreneur selling online courses, memberships, coaching packages, or any other type of digital product, you need a robust shopping cart platform to help you convert customers and increase sales.
Disclosure: Bear in mind that some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.
Enter ThriveCart – an all-in-one e-commerce solution for payments, online course delivery, affiliate management, and more!
I’ve been using ThriveCart for a couple of years now. In this recap article, I mention it as my best purchase of 2022. It simplified my tech stack and made it easier for me to create and sell digital products without worrying about usage limits or monthly subscription fees.
In this in-depth ThriveCart review, I’ll cover the key features, benefits, potential drawbacks, pricing, and who it’s best suited for. You’ll get a comprehensive look at everything ThriveCart has to offer so you can determine if it’s the right platform for your business.
Let’s dive in!
An Overview of ThriveCart’s Main Features
ThriveCart packs a ton of features into one sleek platform:
High-Converting Checkout Pages
ThriveCart makes it easy to create optimized checkout pages that convert visitors into customers. You can choose from their library of conversion-optimized templates for checkout pages, sales funnels, landing pages, and more. You can also purchase templates designed specifically for your niche from creators like The Thrivecart Template Shop.
With in-built drag-and-drop content modules, you can customize your pages to match your brand in minutes. customize your pages.
Incorporate elements like testimonials, guarantees, urgency boosters, and more to increase conversions. ThriveCart handles all the technical complexity behind the scenes so you can focus on design.
Customization Options Galore
The user-friendly editor provides endless customization options for your checkout pages and flows. Easily tailor pages to match your brand style and messaging.
ThriveCart is flexible enough to support one-page, multi-step, embeddable carts, popups, affiliate pages, and more. Change colors, fonts, content, and layouts to create the optimal experience.
Revenue-Boosting Functionality
In addition to streamlined checkouts, ThriveCart enables you to incorporate features to boost revenue like:
- One-click upsell funnels
- Post-purchase bump offers
- Subscription payment plans
- Memberships and online courses
- Free or discounted trials
- Coupon codes and discounts
Test different offers and incentives to maximize customer value. The drag-and-drop editor makes it fast and easy to build conversions-maximizing funnels.
Robust Integrations
ThriveCart smoothly integrates with email marketing platforms, membership plugins, accounting systems, and other tools you use to run your business.
Connect your email autoresponder to automatically send order confirmations and receipts. Sync member access permissions and more. Eliminate redundant data entry and workflows.
Powerful Business Insights
The built-in business insights dashboard provides key metrics like conversion rates, average order value, projected revenue, and churn rate so you can identify opportunities for improvement.
Easy-to-interpret reports and graphs help you track performance over time and make data-driven decisions to accelerate your growth.
Automation Rules
Automation rules allow you to set conditions that trigger actions like sending follow-up emails to cart abandoners, applying discounts for loyal customers, modifying affiliate commissions based on criteria, and much more.
This saves time on manual tasks and helps you proactively engage customers based on behaviors and attributes. ThriveCart’s automation takes your business to the next level.
Integrated Membership Management
For membership sites and subscription services, ThriveCart allows you to seamlessly control access permissions after customers purchase. Connect your membership plugin to instantly grant access upon successful order completion.
Customers can effortlessly sign-up and pay for memberships directly on your ThriveCart checkout pages. Simple yet powerful functionality.
Top Payment Processor Integration
Easily connect your Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net and other payment processor accounts to handle transactions securely. Let customers pay with credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and more.
Managing payments through a single unified platform reduces admin work and complications. No need to manually reconcile reports across systems.
Tools for Legal Compliance
ThriveCart provides features to simplify GDPR compliance including customer consent checkboxes, data erasure options, terms and conditions updates, and more control over data handling.
While you maintain responsibility for ensuring regulatory adherence, ThriveCart gives you tools to more easily build compliant checkout processes.
Zapier Integration
For connecting with other apps and services, ThriveCart offers a Zapier integration.
This allows you to easily automate workflows and connect ThriveCart with tools like webinar platforms, CRMs, accounting software, and more.
Interconnectivity means ThriveCart seamlessly fits into your current tech stack. You don’t have to start from scratch.
ThriveCart Pro Plan Unlocks Advanced Features
ThriveCart’s Pro plan includes several advanced features for businesses managing subscriptions, affiliates, and tax:
Robust Affiliate Center
Having an army of partners and affiliates promoting your offers is incredibly powerful. And ThriveCart saves you from needing a separate tool to manage it all.
ThriveCart’s built-in affiliate management system lets you easily run an affiliate program right from your ThriveCart dashboard.
Approve affiliates, create promotional assets for them, customize commission rates, and automatically pay partners when they drive a sale.
You also get advanced capabilities like:
- Multi-tier commission structures – pay affiliates different rates for direct sales vs 2nd tier etc.
- Flexible payout schedules – pay affiliates on a weekly, monthly, or custom cycle
- Affiliate portal for your partners to access stats and assets
- Affiliate-ready marketing collateral to provide to your partners
- Automated approval workflows and application scoring
ThriveCart Pro provides enterprise-level affiliate marketing tools with everything you need to build an affiliate program right out of the box.
Subscription Saver Reduces Churn
If you offer subscriptions or membership plans, you want to minimize churn. The Subscription Saver tools in Pro help with retention.
When a customer’s credit card expires or a payment fails, ThriveCart can automatically send “dunn” emails to get updated payment details.
This saves you from losing subscribers by catching payment issues early. Make sure your recurring revenue stays recurring with fewer lapsed payments.
Simple Sales Tax Functionality
While ThriveCart doesn’t offer formal tax advice or replace the need for tax experts, the Pro plan provides helpful sales tax tools.
Based on the customer’s location, ThriveCart can calculate estimated tax rates for you. Reports summarize tax collected so you can transfer this data.
This can save you time manually calculating sales tax or using complex standalone tools. ThriveCart makes sales tax simpler.
Business Forecasting and Projections
The Pro plan unlocks forecasting and projections so you can better understand your future revenue.
ThriveCart analyzes your sales data and trends to generate projected values like:
- Average Order Value
- Projected Monthly/Annual Revenue
- Customer Lifetime Value
With metrics like these, you can make smarter business decisions and future investments. ThriveCart gives you visibility into what’s ahead.
Advanced User Management
For larger teams, the Pro plan’s advanced user permissions come in handy.
Granular controls allow you to specify who can access different parts of your ThriveCart dashboard and data.
Give virtual assistants only limited access. Grant full admin powers to your core team. Manage users exactly how you need.
Custom Domain Names
With ThriveCart Pro, you can use your own custom domain name for checkout pages instead of thrivecart.com subdomains.
This adds a layer of branding professionalism for you. No more weird or confusing URLs – your checkout lives on yourdomain.com seamlessly.
So in summary, ThriveCart Pro takes your commerce operations to the next level with advanced features tailored for growth and scale. But the core platform starts you off with a great foundation too.
ThriveCart Learn Enables You to Sell Online Courses
ThriveCart includes a free learning management software (LMS) called Learn. With ThriveCart Learn, you can create, market, and sell online courses right within your ThriveCart account.
Key features include:
Unlimited Courses and Modules
ThriveCart Learn lets you create as many online courses and content modules as you need – no arbitrary limits.
Build courses with distinct topics or offer one mega-course with 100+ modules. Organize beginner, intermediate, and advanced training. Take a modular approach with micro-courses.
With unlimited potential combinations, structure your curriculum as you see fit.
Drip Feed or Instant Access
ThriveCart gives you flexibility in how students access your course content.
For instant access, provide all modules upfront after purchase. Or slowly drip content over days, weeks or months with automated sequenced delivery.
Mix and match – make some modules instantly available while scheduling others to unlock over time. ThriveCart supports hybrid approaches.
You control the pacing and sequencing that best fits your teaching style and content format.
Flexible Content Hosting
ThriveCart doesn’t directly host your videos and downloads. But you have plenty of integration options to embed your videos and host your digital downloads.
No proprietary lock-in. Use affordable hosting solutions of your choosing. ThriveCart just pulls it all together into your course seamlessly.
Automated Course Enrollment
New student signup and course access is automatic based on your ThriveCart purchase settings.
A customer buys a course bundle? They are instantly enrolled into each course in the background. No manual intervention needed.
ThriveCart ties payment to course access for smooth onboarding every time.
Preview and Test Courses
See exactly how your course looks and behaves for students, before you publish. Fix issues early.
Test course access, module rollouts, emails, and integration functionality. ThriveCart lets you experience the student perspective first.
Custom Branded Pages
Match the course login pages, student portals, emails, and pages to your brand with custom CSS.
Provide a seamless experience with your brand colors, logo, and formatting applied to all course touchpoints.
So in summary, ThriveCart Learn empowers you to create professional online courses, simplify sales and enrollment, and scale your student base.
ThriveCart Learn+
ThriveCart Learn+ is an optional paid upgrade to Learn. It’s packed with powerful features that take your online courses to the next level. Here are the additional features that Learn+ brings to the table.
Sell Course Bundles
Provide even more value by bundling courses together.
Offer a discounted package that grants access to multiple courses at once. Bundle intro and advanced material. Upsell your flagship bundle.
Bundles allow you to create tiered learning tracks and comprehensive educational collections.
Advanced Team Management
Bring team members into your ThriveCart account and grant them selective access to just manage and view courses.
Let your teaching assistants handle interactions for specific courses. Your web developer can help with technical setup. Customer support can handle enrollment issues.
Configure fine-grained permissions so each person sees only what they need to do their job.
Seamlessly Import Students
Managing a growing student base? Learn+ makes it a breeze to import students directly into your courses. No more manual data entry or tedious spreadsheet work—simply upload your student list, and watch as ThriveCart does the rest. It’s quick, easy, and oh-so-efficient.
Harness the Power of Course Tagging
Organization is the key to success, and Learn+ gives you the tools you need to stay organized like a pro. With course tagging, you can categorize your courses, making it easier for students to find what they’re looking for. Whether it’s by topic, level, or format, tags help streamline the learning experience for everyone involved.
Dive Deep into Advanced Analytics
Knowledge is power, and Learn+ puts the power of data at your fingertips. Dive deep into advanced analytics to gain valuable insights into student behavior, course performance, and more. Track enrollment trends, monitor engagement metrics, and fine-tune your teaching approach based on real-time data. With Learn+, you’ll always be one step ahead.
Who is ThriveCart best suited for?
Digital Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners
ThriveCart caters to a wide range of online entrepreneurs, including small businesses, coaches, consultants, educators, and B2B SaaS companies.
It’s particularly well-suited for those selling digital products, and is an excellent choice for anybody selling:
- Online courses, coaching packages, or video training
- Virtual summits and live events
- Software, apps, or other digital downloads
- Podcast or audio content
- Memberships and subscription programs
- Informational products like ebooks, guides, and templates
If you already have an audience and want to generate revenue from your website traffic, email list, social following or other assets, ThriveCart makes monetization easy.
Affiliate Marketers
ThriveCart is great for affiliate marketers. If you’re promoting a product that is managed via ThriveCart’s affiliate platform, you can:
- See who purchased via your affiliate link, the commission amount earned per transaction, and the exact date you’ll be paid.
- Assign a special bonus to any product you promote, so that once a person purchases via your affiliate link, they’ll automatically receive the bonus.
- Promote a blog post or freebie, and still get paid if the person you directed to that freebie eventually makes a purchase.
- View all the different brands you’re an affiliate for in one convenient dashboard (only applies to brands that have their affiliate programs on ThriveCart).
The Key Benefits of Using ThriveCart
After reviewing ThriveCart extensively, these benefits stand out:
Perfect for Selling Digital Products and Services
While generic shopping carts work for physical products, ThriveCart is purpose-built for digital products.
With its ability to deliver digital downloads, drip content, create membership portals, and more, ThriveCart provides the exact features online businesses need.
Whether you offer online courses, videos, PDFs, audio files, coaching packages, or memberships, ThriveCart can handle fulfillment and delivery.
The Core Tools You Need in One Place
ThriveCart eliminates the need for separate tools to facilitate the checkout process, payments, email integrations, and more.
It integrates with PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net to accept payments and credit cards. It manages subscriptions and memberships directly within the platform. It also seamlessly integrates with email services like MailerLite, ConvertKit, and ActiveCampaign to capture leads and send follow-up messages.
ThriveCart brings everything together under one roof, streamlining your workflow and saving you precious time and energy. Now you can manage almost all aspects of your online business seamlessly from a single platform.
Time Savings
ThriveCart automates many repetitive tasks associated with checkout and payment processing. For instance, you can set up automation rules to follow up with abandoned carts, send invoices, or modify affiliate commissions based on criteria you define.
This saves you time on manual admin work so you can focus on other high-value projects. ThriveCart streamlines operations for greater efficiency.
Affordable Pricing
ThriveCart is currently available for a one-time payment, which provides full access forever without monthly fees. This is an incredible value compared to competitive solutions.
Lifetime deals allow bootstrapped startups and lean businesses to leverage powerful tools affordably. The price may increase in the future, so act fast to lock in savings.
Seamless Integrations
ThriveCart seamlessly integrates with many other apps and platforms you rely on for your business like email services, membership plugins, payment processors, and more.
Robust integrations avoid data silos and enhance workflows. You can connect tools you already use and optimize efficiencies.
It also offers a developer-friendly API to build custom integrations. So you can connect ThriveCart with all the other tools you use to run your online business.
Regular Updates and Improvements
ThriveCart is constantly releasing updates including new features, templates, and enhancements.
As part of the limited lifetime deal, you get access to all future upgrades and additions at no extra cost.
You can take advantage of new innovations to stay ahead of competitors. Your lifetime license ensures you always have the most advanced tools.
Thrivecart Cons or Disadvantages to Consider
Despite its many advantages, ThriveCart may not be the best solution for every scenario. Here are some cons or disadvantages of using ThriveCart:
Can be expensive for very small businesses
The lifetime deal ThriveCart offers is an amazing value for the money. However, for a brand new entrepreneur or small business just getting started, the one-time $495 fee may still be too much.
For established businesses, ThriveCart’s professional design capabilities and conversion optimization features are well worth the investment. But a brand new or really small business may not need all those features, and so many not be able to justify the one-time-payment as an upfront cost.
Limited shop capabilities
ThriveCart focuses on building optimized checkout pages and funnels. It is not a full-featured online store builder.
You don’t get things like product listings, ratings and reviews, complex product options, and robust shopping carts.
If you need to add lots of different products to a cart or showcase an in-depth catalog, ThriveCart may not be the best choice.
It’s made for simplifying the checkout process, not replicating the capabilities of platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce. Keep this in mind when deciding whether or not to buy it.
Not inclusive of users from emerging markets
The internet is a global marketplace, but unfortunately, ThriveCart’s currency and payment processor options aren’t as diverse as they could be.
Currently, ThriveCart only supports major players like Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net for payment processing.
There is not much flexibility to use alternative processors (such as Paystack, Flutterwave, and Razorpay) that may be more favorable to customers in developing markets.
Also, the currency options are limited to only 22 currencies, including USD, CAD, GBP, AUD, and Euro. So ThriveCart is not friendly to sellers in emerging markets.
If you or your target audience are based outside the usual digital hotspots, you will struggle to make sales, receive affiliate commissions, and even to pay your affiliates.
Not ideal for physical/shippable products
While you can use ThriveCart to sell physical products using integrations, that is not its main focus.
For a shop with dozens or hundreds of shipped products, where you need to calculate real-time shipping rates at checkout, ThriveCart may not be robust enough.
There are better solutions for managing inventory, shipping, and logistics at scale. ThriveCart shines better with digital products and services.
Some limits in design functionality
While ThriveCart offers a variety of templates and customization options for checkout pages and sales funnels, it may not provide the same level of flexibility and creativity as some standalone website builders or design tools.
If you’re accustomed to dedicated page builders such as Elementor or SwipePages, you may feel a bit limited when designing or customizing your ThriveCart sales and checkout pages.
However, for many users focused on functionality and ease of use, the trade-off in design flexibility may be worth it for the streamlined selling process and robust features ThriveCart provides.
Bugs and glitches from frequent updates
ThriveCart improves the platform through very frequent updates, which is awesome! But it can occasionally introduce bugs.
After updates, some users may report issues with payment integration, design, cart functionality, etc. Usually temporary glitches, but something to be aware of.
Rapid iteration can sometimes break things. ThriveCart addresses these problems, but instability right after an update is a potential downside.
Overall though, the pace of progress far outweighs the minor annoyances. And ThriveCart offers reliable customer support if you ever get stuck.
Requires external hosting for videos and documents
If you’re interested in the Learn platform for delivering your online courses, you should note that you cannot host your videos and downloads directly in ThriveCart. You will have to host them elsewhere, and then embed them into your course.
This is quite easy to do and is certainly not a dealbreaker for most users, as there are plenty of affordable storage solutions to choose from.
- Digital Downloads: If you’re going to sell digital downloads such as ebooks, printables, workbooks, etc, consider hosting them on platforms such as Amazon S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.
- Videos: If you’ll be delivering video workshops, masterclasses, trainings, etc, consider hosting them on platforms such as bunny.net, Screenpal, Vimeo, or Wistia.
- Audio files: If your users will mostly be listening to your programs, consider using software such as PodOps, Hello Audio, or SoundWise.
Most of these can be embedded directly into your Learn platform so that your users can access them without navigating away.
While ThriveCart offers a variety of templates and customization options for checkout pages and sales funnels, it may not provide the same level of flexibility and creativity as some standalone website builders or design tools.
ThriveCart Pricing Overview
ThriveCart currently offers a limited-time lifetime deal or you can pay monthly. Here’s an overview:
ThriveCart Lifetime Deal
$495 one-time payment for access to ThriveCart forever.
Monthly subscription estimate
~$65/month for Basic plan (billed annually) ~$95/month for Pro plan.
Note that there is currently no subscription plan available. This is only an estimate of what a subscription to ThriveCart would cost if it were available.
Upgrades
ThriveCart currently offers two upgrade options. The Pro add-on, and the Learn+ add-on. Each addon is optional. The addons cost an extra $195 each.
If you were to buy the lifetime deal with both add-ons, you would spend a total of $885.
The lifetime deal provides tremendous value if you plan to use ThriveCart for more than 2 years.
Common Questions About ThriveCart
Here are answers to some frequently asked questions:
What payment processors does ThriveCart support?
ThriveCart integrates with major players like Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net for credit card processing. So accepting payments is quick and easy.
Can ThriveCart calculate sales tax for me?
Yes, ThriveCart does provide basic sales tax functionality. It can calculate estimated tax rates based on the customer’s location and product type.
This can save you time manually calculating tax. However, keep in mind that ThriveCart’s sales tax tools are not a replacement for formal tax advice. You are still responsible for ensuring tax compliance.
Does ThriveCart work for physical products?
ThriveCart is primarily geared towards digital products and services. But with extensions and integrations, you can use it for physical/shippable products too.
It connects with shipping providers like ShipStation and Shippo to calculate real-time rates, print labels, and track shipments. Inventory sync with services like Stitch Labs is also available.
So while optimized for digital, ThriveCart can accommodate physical products via its ecosystem of integrations.
Is there a ThriveCart free trial?
There is no traditional free trial, but ThriveCart does offer a 14-day money-back guarantee. So you can request a refund if you don’t like it within the first two weeks.
This allows you to test out the platform extensively and return it if it’s not the right fit. Much better than a basic 1-3 day free trial!
Does ThriveCart integrate with email and membership platforms?
Yes! ThriveCart integrates seamlessly with most major email marketing and membership management tools.
For email, it connects with MailChimp, ConvertKit, Drip, ActiveCampaign, and dozens more.
Membership platforms like Kajabi, MemberPress, WishList Member, and more are also plug-and-play.
ThriveCart is designed to complement your existing marketing stack.
Are there any monthly fees with ThriveCart?
ThriveCart estimates their monthly fees to be $95 per month, or $1950 a year. However, you currently cannot sign up for a monthly or annual subscription. The only way to get access to ThriveCart (at the time of writing this) is to purchase their lifetime deal for a one-time-fee of $495. This gives you lifetime access (for the lifetime of the product), without ever having to pay recurring fees.
This is an amazing value if you plan to use ThriveCart for more than 2 years. Once this deal expires, regular monthly pricing kicks in.
Can I sell course bundles with ThriveCart?
Yes, course bundles are available through the ThriveCart Learn+ add-on. This allows you to group multiple courses into a single purchase.
It’s great for marketing a comprehensive package or “master class” bundle. Learn+ unlocks this and other advanced course sales features.
Does ThriveCart have abandoned cart recovery?
Absolutely! ThriveCart’s built-in automation makes recovering abandoned carts easy.
You can set up emails to go out automatically to shoppers who left items in their cart. Special discount or incentive offers can help get them back to checkout.
ThriveCart provides the tools you need to re-engage slip-through-the-cracks shoppers.
Can I offer free trials and subscriptions?
Yes, you can! ThriveCart empowers you to reel in subscribers with enticing trial offers and seamless subscription options. Whether you’re wooing potential customers with a risk-free trial or locking in recurring revenue with subscription plans, ThriveCart has the tools you need to make it happen.
My Final Verdict on ThriveCart
ThriveCart delivers tremendous value as an all-in-one platform for digital entrepreneurs.
While it may not be a fit for every business, it’s a great option if you want to sell online courses, memberships, coaching services, and other digital products.
It simplifies the core commerce operations – checkout, fulfillment, marketing automation. It eliminates the need for a patchwork of platforms, and frees you up to actually create and deliver an amazing product.
The ThriveCart lifetime deal pricing is extremely enticing as well.
Overall, ThriveCart has earned my strong recommendation. It delivers tremendous value and is likely to become your trusted companion as you grow and scale your online business.
Disclosure: Bear in mind that some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.