ThriveCart

Thrivecart is a standalone cart platform to sell digital or physical products.

Before getting into the review, let me quickly explain why you might need an external cart if you're a course creator and how it works:

If you use a platform like Clickfunnel, Teachable, Kajabi?

You will already have an integrated cart.
But sometimes, these platform have some limitations on the delivery and features: upsells, physical delivery, handling fees, tiered access,...

That's why you might want to use a cart that handles the payment and will then integrate with your online course platform to give the correct access to the proper digital product there.

ThriveCart offer all the bells and whistles of a cart and the flexibility you might need:

The basic way you'll use the cart is by creating products and funnels, just like you might natively in course hosting platform.

You'll then integrate these with the platform you use (let's say Kajabi), either natively or via Zapier, so that correct access is granted.

You can then either link out to a Thrivecart checkout page from a sales page or embed it.

The payment will be processed in Thrivecart with the integrated payment gateway (Stripe, Paypal,...).

But having advanced control on the checkout process can help with some limitations like: affiliate management and cookies.

This is maybe the Achile?s heel of the platform.

Now keep in mind that using such carts is in and of itself an advanced tool to add to your tech stack (most course creators will just use the native cart of their course platform).

But ThriveCart isn't the easiest cart to use.

Although the back-end has a relatively simple design, it sometimes feel unintuitive.

And a good deal of poking around might be necessary to wrap your head around how it works.

If you're not techie then you might get frustrated?

When it comes to the end user experience, here again the platform can disappoint a little bit. The checkout page is customizable and optimized for conversion:

But some parts like the embed upsells can really be off-brand if you have a stylish design in your funnel, which can create frictions with the purchase process.

ThriveCart has a bit of a unique pricing strategy compared to most other cart platform, since it only sells with a one-time price:

So it starts at $495 for the Standard Plan and $690 for the Pro Plan.

Which does require an initial investment, but can pay off very quickly compared to a monthly fee some other cart have.

Especially with the advanced features and integration the platform has and the regular updates you'll get.

You'll obviously never pay additional handling fees.

Thrivecart support is very reactive and easy to submit a ticket to.
Although you won't have access to a direct messaging option, the response time is rather quick.

You'll also have a well rounded knowledge base with video tutorials walking you through each settings, making the somewhat clunky back-end a little easier to navigate.

Community wise, you won't be disappointed but the fellow online business owners you meet. The Facebook group has almost 10k people and is very active.