# SamCart vs ThriveCart (2026): plans, upsells and fees · OfferROAS

> Source: https://offerroas.com/compare/samcart-vs-thrivecart

Head-to-head

## SamCart vs ThriveCart (2026)

Both take the order, show a bump and sell the offer after payment. What separates them is which plan you have to be on before those mechanics switch on.

By [Marcus Flynn](/authors/marcus-flynn), tracking and attribution editor. Updated 12 October 2026.

**Disclosure:**We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings. 

Pick ThriveCart if you want order bumps and one-click upsells on the plan you pay for today and you already build your pages elsewhere; pick SamCart if you sell subscriptions that need failed-payment recovery, you want AI to draft pages and products in the same account, and you will budget for its Pro plan.

Quick answer

**ThriveCart** is our top pick for most people. ThriveCart is the cheaper route to a checkout with an order bump and one-click upsells: both come on Standard, the entry licence, and ThriveCart takes 0% of sales. Affiliates, dunning, extra bumps and custom domains wait on Pro+, so price that tier if your offer runs on rebills or partners. 

* **SamCart.** Best for Subscription sellers who want AI-built pages and failed-payment recovery on one hosted checkout, and will pay for Pro. From $79/mo.
* **ThriveCart.** Best for Paid-traffic sellers who already have landing pages and want bumps and upsells on the entry plan with no platform fee. From $37/mo.

### Side by side

__Feature comparison across 2 tools__
| Tool       | Upsells              | Affiliates | Recovery                | Trial   | Billing                     | From   |
| ---------- | -------------------- | ---------- | ----------------------- | ------- | --------------------------- | ------ |
| SamCart    | Pro only ($199/mo)   | Pro only   | Subscription Saver, Pro | 7 days  | Monthly or yearly           | $79/mo |
| ThriveCart | Included on Standard | Pro+ only  | Dunning, Pro+           | 30 days | Monthly, yearly or lifetime | $37/mo |

### SamCart: pros and cons

##### What works

* Pro gathers the whole revenue kit in one plan: one-click upsells, order bumps, A/B testing, an Affiliate Center, advanced analytics, API access and routing to third-party processors.
* Subscription Saver, SamCart's recovery tool for failed subscription payments, comes with Pro. That matters most when rebills carry the margin of the offer.
* AI writes sales copy, designs pages and can generate a digital product inside the same account, so a seller with no page builder can launch from SamCart alone.
* On SamPay, card processing is 2.9% plus 30 cents and SamCart adds no platform fee on top.

##### What to watch

* Core at $79 a month sells the main product and nothing more: order bumps, one-click upsells and split tests all need Pro at $199\. For a paid-traffic funnel, the real entry price is the Pro one.
* Sellers who reached the upgrade call the pricing expensive, and review-site complaints describe support as slow and email-only.
* The free trial lasts 7 days, which is little time to connect a processor and an email tool and watch real orders arrive.
* Letting SamCart collect sales tax adds 50 basis points on Core and 35 on Pro.

### ThriveCart: pros and cons

##### What works

* Order bumps and upsells are part of Standard, the entry licence, at $37 a month billed annually or $47 month to month.
* ThriveCart advertises 0% platform fees on sales across its plans, so the processor's rate is the only cut taken from each order.
* Licensing is flexible: monthly, annual, or a lifetime Standard licence that is still on sale, and lifetime owners keep their plans.
* Courses and communities live in the same account, and the monthly plans start with a 30-day free trial.

##### What to watch

* Four features need Pro+, at $67 a month billed annually or $87 monthly: the affiliate center with automated payouts, subscription dunning, multiple order bumps and custom domains. A lifetime Standard owner who needs them pays for Pro+ on top of the licence.
* ThriveCart's own pages do not advertise an AI page builder, so pages come from a separate tool or from its funnel templates.
* It is a checkout for selling offers, and users point out it is not a full shopping cart for browsing a product catalog.

### The real differences

#### ThriveCart vs SamCart: where the upsell sits on the bill

Both tools replace the checkout step of a funnel with a hosted order form, an order bump next to the card fields, a one-click offer after payment and subscription billing for continuity products. Buyers treat them as direct competitors, and on a feature list they look close. The invoice is where they part.

SamCart's pricing page lists one-click upsells, order bumps, A/B testing, Subscription Saver, the Affiliate Center, advanced analytics, API access and third-party processors under Pro, at $199 a month. Core takes the order and stops there. ThriveCart's pricing announcement puts order bumps and upsells on Standard, its entry licence.

For a seller sending paid traffic to a front-end offer, that gap carries most of the decision. The bump and the post-purchase offer are where average order value comes from. On SamCart they cost $2,388 a year at monthly list price before the first sale. On ThriveCart the same two mechanics come with a licence that runs $444 a year on annual billing.

#### Subscriptions and failed payments

Continuity offers leak revenue when cards expire or get declined. SamCart's answer is Subscription Saver, a Pro feature for recovering failed subscription payments. ThriveCart lists subscription dunning on Pro+, at $67 a month billed annually or $87 monthly. Recovery is a paid tier on both, and the size of the step differs: moving from ThriveCart Standard to Pro+ adds $40 a month on monthly billing, while SamCart's move from Core to Pro adds $120.

If rebills carry your margin and you were buying SamCart Pro for the upsells anyway, Subscription Saver comes with it at no extra cost. If recovery is the one upgrade you need, ThriveCart Pro+ reaches it for less.

#### AI-built pages or pages you already have

SamCart now calls itself the digital business platform that builds, runs and scales an online business. Its homepage shows AI that writes sales copy, designs pages and can generate a digital product, alongside a courses app. A seller starting from an empty account can get a product, a sales page and a checkout out of one login.

ThriveCart describes a creator stack: checkout, funnels, courses and communities, with 0% platform fees on sales. Most operators running paid traffic already build landers in a dedicated page tool and need the cart to take the order and run the post-purchase flow. That is the job ThriveCart's Standard licence is priced around.

#### Affiliates, processors and the lifetime licence

An affiliate program sits on the upper tier of both. SamCart's Affiliate Center comes with Pro, and ThriveCart's Affiliate Center with automated payouts comes with Pro+. ThriveCart also keeps multiple order bumps and custom domains for Pro+, so a Standard checkout carries a single bump.

Payment handling follows different models. SamCart Pro opens API access and third-party processors with payment routing, and its own SamPay charges 2.9% plus 30 cents with no platform fee added. ThriveCart runs on the processors you connect and takes 0% of each sale.

ThriveCart still sells a lifetime Standard licence beside the monthly plans, and customers who bought one keep it. That licence covers Standard features. A lifetime owner who later wants affiliates or dunning pays for Pro+ as well, so count both before treating lifetime as the cheap option.

#### SamCart vs ThriveCart vs Shopify

Shopify comes into this search because all three take money online. It does a different job: a catalog store with many SKUs, inventory, shipping and a browse-and-cart experience. SamCart and ThriveCart are checkout-first tools for selling one offer at a time through a funnel, which is the shape of a digital product, a coaching program or a continuity subscription. ThriveCart users say as much about their own tool, describing it as a checkout rather than a true shopping cart.

SamCart lists Shopify among the platforms it migrates sellers from, next to Kajabi, ThriveCart and ClickFunnels. Its target is the seller whose store has turned into a single-offer funnel. If you ship physical inventory from a catalog, keep the store. A store on WordPress can add an order bump and post-purchase offers inside WooCommerce instead, which our [CartFlows review](/reviews/cartflows) covers.

#### What users report once the trial ends

Operators who moved from ThriveCart to SamCart describe SamCart as plain and dependable at its core job. Price is the complaint that follows once they need the upgrade features, and review sites carry reports of slow, email-only support.

Long-time ThriveCart owners tend to stay, mostly for the value of a licence that already includes the funnel mechanics. The friction in their threads is the Pro+ add-on that affiliates and dunning require.

Trial length decides how much of this you see before paying. SamCart gives 7 days on Core and Pro. ThriveCart gives 30 days on its monthly plans, enough time to run a launch through it and read the order reports.

For a cart built around high-volume continuity billing, see the [Checkout Champ review](/reviews/checkout-champ). Payment gateways sit one layer down, covered in [NMI vs Authorize.net](/compare/nmi-vs-authorize-net). Every other checkout and tracking matchup is in the [head-to-head index](/compare).

### What each one costs

Both vendors publish their prices. The table sets the four subscription plans side by side, plus ThriveCart's lifetime licence.

| Plan                | Monthly     | Annual      | What the plan adds                                                         |
| ------------------- | ----------- | ----------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| SamCart Core        | $79/mo      | 25% off     | Checkout pages and products, no bumps or upsells                           |
| SamCart Pro         | $199/mo     | 25% off     | Bumps, upsells, A/B tests, Subscription Saver, affiliates, API, processors |
| ThriveCart Standard | $47/mo      | $37/mo      | Unlimited digital products, order bump, upsells, integrations              |
| ThriveCart Pro+     | $87/mo      | $67/mo      | Affiliate payouts, dunning, multiple bumps, custom domains                 |
| ThriveCart lifetime | One payment | Not offered | Standard features for the life of the licence                              |

Over a first year, ThriveCart Standard paid yearly comes to $444 and Pro+ to $804\. SamCart Pro is $2,388 at the monthly rate, or about $1,791 with the yearly discount. Core is $948 a year at the monthly rate, more than a yearly Pro+ licence from ThriveCart, and it still carries no bump or upsell to raise order value.

Processing sits outside these numbers. SamCart's SamPay rate is 2.9% plus 30 cents with no platform fee added, and its built-in sales tax collection costs 50 basis points on Core or 35 on Pro. ThriveCart takes 0% of sales and you pay the rate of whichever processor you connect. SamCart's free trial runs 7 days on either plan, ThriveCart's 30 days on the monthly plans. ThriveCart quotes the lifetime price on its own checkout page.

Prices and buying terms checked on each vendor's own pages, current as of 12 October 2026.

Our pick

### ThriveCart

ThriveCart is the cheaper route to a checkout with an order bump and one-click upsells: both come on Standard, the entry licence, and ThriveCart takes 0% of sales. Affiliates, dunning, extra bumps and custom domains wait on Pro+, so price that tier if your offer runs on rebills or partners.

### Frequently asked questions

Can I add an order bump on SamCart Core? 

No. SamCart reserves bumps and one-click upsells for Pro, so a Core checkout sells the main product with no offer beside it or after it.

Is ThriveCart's lifetime licence still for sale? 

Yes. ThriveCart says the lifetime option remains available next to the new monthly plans, and older lifetime licences carry on unchanged.

Which one has the longer free trial? 

ThriveCart, with 30 days on its monthly plans. SamCart's trial is a week on either of its two plans.

Can SamCart or ThriveCart replace Shopify? 

Only when your store is really one offer sold through a funnel. A catalog with inventory, variants and shipping still needs a store platform.

Does either cart take a percentage of my sales? 

ThriveCart advertises a 0% platform fee. SamCart adds none on SamPay beyond its 2.9% plus 30 cent card rate, though its tax collection costs extra basis points.

### Sources

#### From SamCart and ThriveCart

* <https://www.samcart.com/>
* <https://www.samcart.com/pricing> SamCart pricing
* <https://thrivecart.com/> ThriveCart home
* <https://thrivecart.com/blog/new-monthly-pricing-model/> ThriveCart: new monthly pricing model

#### Other sources

4 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context. 

1. \[\] [r/marketing: Is there better software than Thrivecart? ](https://www.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/1umrsfh/is%5Fthere%5Fbetter%5Fsoftware%5Fthan%5Fthrivecart/) Reddit
2. \[\] [r/digital\_marketing: Order Upgrades (Thrivecart Alternative?) ](https://www.reddit.com/r/digital%5Fmarketing/comments/1ex2vmu/order%5Fupgrades%5Fthrivecart%5Falternative/) Reddit
3. \[\] [SamCart reviews on Capterra ](https://www.capterra.com/p/204117/SamCart/reviews/) Capterra
4. \[\] [r/digital\_marketing: Do any of you really use thrivecart? ](https://www.reddit.com/r/digital%5Fmarketing/comments/13n9fw0/do%5Fany%5Fof%5Fyou%5Freally%5Fuse%5Fthrivecart%5Fif%5Fso%5Fare%5Fyou/) Reddit

### How we compared these

We do not run paid campaigns through either tool. We read each vendor's own documentation and pricing, verify every number against the source, and weigh the long-term reports of operators who run them at real spend. The full rubric is on the [methodology page](/methodology).

### Related reading

* [CartFlows review for WooCommerce checkout](/reviews/cartflows)
* [Checkout Champ for high-volume DR continuity](/reviews/checkout-champ)
* [Konnektive vs Sticky.io for continuity billing](/compare/konnektive-vs-sticky-io)
* [NMI vs Authorize.net payment gateways](/compare/nmi-vs-authorize-net)
* [ClickFunnels review](/reviews/clickfunnels)
* [Builderall vs CartFlows stack decision](/compare/builderall-vs-cartflows)
* [CartFlows alternatives](/alternatives/cartflows)
* [How we research checkout tools](/methodology)
* [Checkout and software head-to-heads](/compare)

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