ThriveCart in Focus: Will It Reign Supreme as the Top Shopping Cart Solution in 2025?

Selling digital products online has become a lot simpler than it used to be. While there are now many tools available to help with this process, they vary greatly in quality and features.

For my own business, ThriveCart is an indispensable tool for selling my program, Step Through The Portal. It serves as the core platform for managing sales, checkout processes, and affiliate partnerships.

In this review of ThriveCart, I’ll help you understand whether it’s the right shopping cart system for your needs. Let’s get started.

ThriveCart is an all-in-one shopping cart platform designed to help you launch and manage your ecommerce business effortlessly. It offers all the tools needed to build online stores, membership sites, and digital product funnels without requiring complex coding or design skills.

Their website states that ThriveCart has empowered over 159,000 entrepreneurs to achieve more than $1.3 billion in sales. The platform’s success stems from features like attractive checkout pages, embeddable carts and popups, upsell funnels, and affiliate management tools.

ThriveCart is perfect for new and growing ecommerce businesses aiming to get their online store quickly up and running. It’s especially useful for entrepreneurs working with limited budgets who need a straightforward solution.

This platform mainly targets small to medium-sized online store owners. It helps you:

Additionally, ThriveCart features tools tailored for digital product sellers, such as an integrated email marketing system for automated product delivery. Now, let’s look at what makes ThriveCart stand out with its key features.

ThriveCart includes a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor for creating checkout carts, making the setup process straightforward. You can simply move elements from the panels on the sides into the main checkout layout, customizing each component easily.

You’re able to modify settings for individual elements and add sub-elements like text, images, or buttons for further personalization. This flexibility allows you to design checkout pages that align perfectly with your branding and conversion goals.

AnotherThe main advantage is that you have the flexibility to choose between a multi-step or single-step checkout process. This allows you to either separate customer and billing information into different stages or display all fields at once for a more streamlined experience.

However, ThriveCart offers a limited selection of templates, with only four main frameworks to pick from. These include:
– Standard, which features a checkout area divided into two sections
– Sales Cart, designed as a single-page sales checkout
– Embeddable, allowing the checkout form to be embedded directly into your website
– Popup, which displays the checkout as a popup window on your site

Keep in mind that your options for shopping cart templates depend heavily on the type of checkout you want to implement. This choice is limited; for example, if you want to embed the checkout page into your website, you’re restricted to using only the third template. Additionally, you have the option to import other designs or duplicate existing ones for different products.

Overall, while the builder itself is simple and user-friendly, its template and framework choices are somewhat limited and may not offer much variety.

Your checkout page should be clean, simple, and designed to guide customers smoothly through the purchasing process. ThriveCart provides a straightforward interface that allows easy customization — you can decide which customer details to collect and adjust the layout without any coding knowledge. You can also reorder the fields or add custom fields to gather additional information, tailoring the checkout to your preferences. The drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to modify elements, layout, spacing, colors, and fonts to match your branding. Furthermore, you can add a mandatory “Terms and Conditions” checkbox, requiring customers to accept your policies before completing their purchase.

With the Terms and Conditions feature, you can either:
– Enter your terms directly into a box on the checkout page, or
– Link to a separate URL for your terms and conditions, which opens in a new tab for the customer.

Another advantage of ThriveCart is its ability to import checkout page designs from other providers. If you already have a checkout page that performs well for your business, you can seamlessly bring it into ThriveCart. However, the platform currently offers limited variety in checkout templates, but they have announced plans to add a library of high-converting designs soon.

In the section on checkout pricing options and payment gateways, ThriveCart allows you to create up to six different pricing plans. This flexibility lets your customers pick and pay for exactly what they want during checkout. Setting up multiple pricing options is straightforward—you can do it with just a few clicks within the “Product > Payment” tab.

Within this tab, you’ll find options to configure four different types of payment methods supported by ThriveCart. These include one-time payments, subscription models that recur periodically, split payments, and customers paying what they choose. You can also combine these payment types to offer varied payment plans, giving your customers more flexibility. Additionally, over 22 currencies are supported, and you can set up free trials or paid trials for your products.

You can rename pre-defined plans to suit your branding and impose limits on the number of products purchased. Customers can make either single or multiple purchases at checkout. The checkout interface itself can be tailored with six different layout designs, such as displaying pricing options in a grid or as individual rows, adding images, hiding or showing prices, and selecting from various color schemes.

An example of a customizable checkout page with pricing plans and images is shown in the provided example. The entire layout is editable through a drag-and-drop editor, giving you complete control over the look and feel of your cart.

For payment processing, ThriveCart integrates natively with popular third-party payment systems like PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. Stripe is particularly versatile, handling debit and credit card payments along with Apple and Google Pay. While the options are somewhat limited, native Stripe integration is especially useful if you want to accept cryptocurrencies or other modern payment methods. ThriveCart also supports multiple accounts per payment processor, allowing you to use different accounts for various products or payment types.

ThriveCart simplifies tax calculations by integrating directly with a third-party tax service at no extra cost. You just need to enable the setting that says “Calculate digital sales tax automatically,” and the platform will handle the rest, making tax compliance much easier for your online store.

However, the specifics of how taxes are calculated and applied depend on your location.

Currently, ThriveCart supports sales tax collection in the following regions:

Once a customer completes their purchase, the thank you page will automatically load. ThriveCart offers several ways to customize this page to enhance customer experience. You can display detailed invoice information, provide a link that leads to digital downloads or custom pages, redirect to a custom success page, or even add the buyer to your membership site. This step is essential in your sales funnel, just before setting up automated follow-up emails if a customer abandons their cart, and you can also send downloadable content via email.

This step completes your sales funnel, just before automating follow-up emails for cart abandonment. You can even send downloadable materials through email if needed.

ThriveCart provides three options for handling customer access post-purchase: displaying invoices, redirecting to a specific URL, or adding customers directly to a membership site. A key feature is that it automatically adds your buyers to your membership platform during checkout, making it seamless to manage access and deliver content.

Even if your customers don’t have an account beforehand, ThriveCart handles it seamlessly by creating their account during checkout and assigning the appropriate membership level automatically. However, it’s important to note that ThriveCart itself doesn’t feature built-in tools for creating membership sites. It does, however, integrate smoothly with several leading membership platform options, which you can find listed in the best membership site platforms for 2025.

When customers complete their purchase through ThriveCart, their details are transferred directly to your membership site, with ThriveCart even creating their account automatically based on the information provided. If the account is new, your chosen membership software will send a welcome email containing access details. This process simplifies managing memberships and ensures new customers get instant access. You can also set up multiple payment options for different membership tiers, such as Standard or Premium plans, to cater to various customer preferences.

ThriveCart also provides the ability to set automations based on customer actions. You can create rules that trigger specific responses when certain conditions are met, such as a purchase or cart abandonment. Configuring these rules is straightforward and can be linked to services like Demio, ActiveMember360, Memberium, or even email autoresponders. For instance, you could set a rule to add anyone who purchases your main product via any payment plan to a specific email list or tag them for follow-up. Just select the trigger condition and the platform that will execute the action. For example, when a customer makes a purchase through ActiveCampaign, they can automatically be added to a mailing list, tagged, or enrolled in a sequence for targeted email campaigns. This allows for highly personalized customer engagement based on their behaviors.

You can customize rules to track various customer behaviors such as abandoning a cart, refunding a product, or experiencing a failed payment. Here are some of the common triggers you can use: purchases, refunds, cart abandonment, declined payments, recurring payments, failed subscriptions, and cancellations. By applying these rules, you can enhance customer experience and improve your chances of retention and upselling. If you want to include integrations not natively supported by ThriveCart, you can use the Custom HTML option to connect with other autoresponders or marketing tools.

ThriveCart also monitors metrics like cart abandonment rates and overdue subscriptions, automatically following up with customers by sending recovery emails to encourage completion of their purchase. Its built-in dunning system further automates revenue recovery by sending notifications for upcoming or overdue payments, managing subscription statuses, and reminding customers about expired credit cards. Dunning also helps adjust affiliate commissions based on the refund rate, ensuring fair and accurate payouts.

Creating Upsells and Downsells is another key feature. These strategies involve offering customers additional products of higher or lower value, often as part of a sales funnel. ThriveCart makes it simple to add upsell and downsell offers in a smooth, sequential flow. When a customer accepts an upsell, they are redirected to the next offer or a success page; if they decline, they may be taken to a downsell or another step in the process. You can either customize the default ThriveCart upsell pages using its editor or import your own designed pages to match your branding.

To maximize conversions, ThriveCart offers numerous advanced features designed to reduce cart abandonment and increase sales. One of the most straightforward is the use of discount coupons. ThriveCart allows you to set up coupons that are automatically applied during checkout, eliminating the need for customers to manually enter discount codes. Your dashboard displays active coupons, making it easy to manage promotional campaigns quickly, and the entire checkout process is streamlined for higher conversion rates.

You need to copy the URL of the product and then apply a specific coupon code to get discounts. This process allows you to access the discounted price directly when purchasing.

The countdown timer feature helps create urgency by showing a limited-time offer. It encourages customers to act quickly, increasing sales and grabbing more attention. ThriveCart offers options like evergreen timers that start when a customer reaches the checkout or fixed timers that count down to a set end time.

ThriveCart comes equipped with powerful tools like A/B testing to compare different versions of your sales pages or checkout templates. You can set your goals, determine when the test should end, and select the winning variation. After testing, the platform automatically displays the most effective cart for your customers.

Additionally, using Bump Offers enhances your sales strategy by allowing you to present special deals or discounted products during the checkout process. This feature is similar to popular group-buy sites like Groupon and helps promote your subscriptions or add extra value for your customers.

Starting an affiliate program is a smart way to grow your business and increase customer loyalty. ThriveCart includes a built-in affiliate system, so you don’t need third-party tools. Setting up involves configuring your commission structure and defining how affiliates will promote your products, including target URLs, cookie durations, and sign-up processes.

ThriveCart lets you assign different commission rates for various pricing tiers and choose between fixed or percentage-based payouts. You can also control how and when affiliates receive their commissions, making it a flexible solution for expanding your reach.

If you’re using PayPal for your payments, the platform will handle automatic payouts to your affiliates. You also have the option to manually process payments whenever you prefer. The next step involves setting up your affiliate parameters.

Affiliate options include choosing how new affiliates register—whether through manual approval, automatic approval, or temporarily disabling new sign-ups. You can decide whether to track leads using the first cookie or the last cookie, and set the cookie’s expiration duration. It’s also possible to require affiliates to link their PayPal accounts for payments or to choose alternative payment methods. Additionally, you need to specify the page where your affiliates will redirect their traffic.

Furthermore, the system allows for upsell and downsell commissions. You won’t need to approve these transactions manually because ThriveCart automatically accounts for upsells when calculating affiliate payouts.

ThriveCart also provides comprehensive analytics and reporting features. It offers valuable data insights and reports that let you monitor your business performance without needing to code. These metrics help you make informed decisions related to revenue growth, profits, and marketing strategies.

Your dashboard displays key figures such as total transactions, net revenue, average order value, gross and annual revenue, total customer count, conversion rate, cancellations, refunds, and active subscriptions. You can personalize this dashboard by selecting which data points to view and rearranging the layout to suit your preferences.

Other important insights include projected revenue, forecasting capabilities, real-time traffic analysis, automatic lifetime value calculations, and subscription management tools designed to minimize customer churn.

ThriveCart also excels in its ability to connect with numerous third-party systems, making integrations with other tools and platforms a standout feature.Tools that empower your store to achieve capabilities it previously couldn’t.

ThriveCart seamlessly connects with many popular third-party tools such as email marketing services (like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Drip, MailerLite, HubSpot, Sendy, Moosend, ConvertKit, among others), membership platforms (such as MemberPress, OptimizeMember, Teachable, Thrive Apprentice, Kajabi, MemberMouse, WishList Member, etc.), webinar providers like Demio and AWeber, fulfillment services including Kunaki, Lulu, Vervante, Pabbly, Printful, and more. It also integrates with payment processors like Stripe, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Authorize.net.

Other significant integrations encompass Slack, Zapier, Google Analytics, InfusionSoft, LeadPages, ClickFunnels, Instapage, WordPress, and others.

ThriveCart offers a comprehensive pricing plan. It manages all aspects of selling, managing, and shipping products with a single payment of $495, which is a one-time fee with no recurring charges. This lifetime license grants perpetual access to essential features such as a customizable insights dashboard, high-converting checkout pages, shopping carts, sales funnels, customer behavior rules, unlimited checkout pages, an integrated affiliate program, automatic sales tax calculation, abandoned cart recovery, advanced user management, and more.

Although it doesn’t offer a free trial or freemium model, ThriveCart provides a 30-day money-back guarantee, ensuring the purchase “pays for itself.” Compared to alternatives like SamCart, which begins at $49 per month, ThriveCart’s single payment is a very attractive deal.

Here’s a quick overview of ThriveCart’s advantages and disadvantages:

Pros:
– Built-in tools for tax calculation and processing.
– User-friendly drag-and-drop editor for carts and checkout pages.
– Broad range of third-party integrations.
– Support for flexible payment options.
– Features designed to increase conversion rates, including bump offers, automated coupons, countdown timers, email follow-ups, and automation.
– One-step upsell and downsell functionality.
– Native affiliate management system.
– Detailed reporting and analytics.
– Cost-effective lifetime access.
– Embeddable and popup checkout options.
– Custom domain support for checkout pages.

Cons:
– Not ideal for managing large volumes of physical product sales.
– Limited selection of checkout templates and landing pages.
– Customization options are somewhat restricted.

In summary, shopping cart platforms have advanced significantly in recent years, with some prioritizing customer experience. ThriveCart stands out as a suitable choice for small businesses, digital product sellers, and marketers, providing a full-featured e-commerce tool for selling both digital and physical items. Its ease of setup makes it accessible even for those without technical expertise. However, it doesn’t replace more comprehensive e-commerce solutions like WooCommerce or Shopify, especially for extensive physical inventory management. Nonetheless, it offers many built-in features tailored for digital sales, such as email automation, sales funnels, one-click upsells, behavior triggers, and more.

Consider ThriveCart if:
– You’re running a small online business.
– You primarily sell digital products.
– You need flexible payment plans.
– You want an integrated tax calculation tool.
– You seek a built-in affiliate center.
– You’re aiming to create high-converting checkout pages and carts.

Additional resources on related topics include:
– A detailed review of Clickfunnels and its features.
– A comparison between Kartra and Clickfunnels.
– A guide to the top landing page builders for increasing leads.