ThriveCart review: Powerful tools to help you sell more
Jonas, CMO
ThriveCart claims to be the highest-converting cart for online businesses. It also has features like upsells and order bumps that help increase the amount customers spend when they buy.
That’s powerful: Higher conversions and bigger baskets help you bring in more revenue without needing more traffic. The tool also stands out due to its one-time payment model. While the initial cost is more than other tools, paying upfront could save you big money in the long run.
In this ThriveCart review, I’ll break down what ThriveCart does well, where it could be improved, and whether it’s worth the investment. Then I’ll show you how pairing it with a tool like MailerLite can boost your conversions and customer value even further.
What exactly is ThriveCart?
ThriveCart is an e-commerce checkout page builder that promises to boost conversions and increase the amount buyers spend.
When you create a ThriveCart checkout, you get a URL that you can link to from anywhere on the web, whether your website, sales pages, emails or social profiles. You can also publish the page directly to your website by adding the HTML block to the relevant page. It works with any site builder that allows you to add a custom code block, such as WordPress, MailerLite, or Wix.
ThriveCart integrates with tons of other tools such as email marketing, membership platforms and more, so you can automate actions and create effective sales funnels.
ThriveCart pricing: Is the initial cost worth it?
One of the biggest reasons to use ThriveCart is its one-time fee payment model. At $495, this lifetime pricing model is a big upfront cost, but over time it could save you a ton of money depending on how you use the tool.
As a comparison, Checkout Page, another checkout builder, starts at $29 per month. If you make more than $3,000 per month, you’ll be bumped up to the $99 per month plan. Another tool, SamCart, starts at $79 per month and the price increases as your revenue grows.
It won’t take long for the total spent on these monthly fees to surpass that of ThriveCart’s lifetime deal.
While the regular plan gives you access to everything you need to create an effective cart, some additional features are only available with ThriveCart Pro+. This costs an extra $295 per year.
There is also an additional tool called Learn+, which adds extra features to ThriveCart’s online course platform (more on that later). This is a one-time payment of $195.
Creating a product and a checkout page is super easy
ThriveCart is easy to set up and use. Once you sign up, the tool guides you through the product creation process: it’s just a case of filling in all the relevant fields. This speed is useful if you’re a busy business owner without a lot of time to spend creating pages.
Creating checkout pages is also a breeze. The drag-and-drop builder is user-friendly and will feel familiar to anyone who has used a similar tool before. It also has plenty of pre-built templates to help you create your pages in seconds, as well as blocks and settings that you can use to adjust your pages.
To accept payments, you need to connect the tool with Stripe, Paypal, Authorize.net or another supported payment processor.
This is easy to do from within the dashboard, and between Stripe, PayPal and other payment gateways, you can enable tons of payment options including credit card, Google Pay and Apple Pay.
Conversion features are where the tool shines
ThriveCart offers plenty of tools that help entrepreneurs boost their checkout conversion rate.
Here are some of the many options you can use:
Boost urgency with sales limits (even for digital products) and countdown timers
Reduce barriers to purchase with split pay, free trials, coupons, or choose your own price options
Generate recurring income with subscriptions
Build trust with badges and reviews
Make buying easy with multiple payment options
Overcome objections with FAQs
Optimize checkouts with A/B testing and analytics
Increase transparency with progress bars
This is a comprehensive suite of tools that covers pretty much any conversion-related feature I could think of.
ThriveCart has plenty of ways to increase order value
One of the features ThriveCart is most known for is order bumps. This allows you to add an offer to your checkout page that buyers can add to their purchase by simply checking the box.
Imagine you're selling a course about email marketing, you could use an order bump offer to promote an additional course on email copywriting. It’s a good way to earn extra revenue from people who have already decided to buy.
You can also use multi-page checkouts. This allows you to add order bumps at specific stages of the checkout process, so you don’t disturb the buyer's flow.
For example, when someone clicks on your website to buy a specific product, you could have a pre-checkout page promoting a “last-minute offer” that’s related to the item the person wants to buy. See an example of how this looks in the image below from ThriveCart's website.
Connect and automate with tons of tools
One of my favorite things about ThriveCart is the automation builder. This lets you take action in other tools based on customer behavior during checkout.
These automations are easy to set up. Just head to the Behavior tab in your chosen product and then use the drop-down menus to select the triggers in ThriveCart and the actions in your chosen tools.
Some ways you can use this feature include:
Send emails based on behavior like purchases or abandoned carts
Add buyers to course or membership sites
Fulfill physical product sales via fulfillment platforms
Send order information to a Google Sheet
Add buyers to a webinar
ThriveCart integrates with third-party tools using either its many native integrations or thousands of more tools via Zapier.
Get a (kinda) free learning platform
A big benefit for online course creators is that ThriveCart comes with an online course creation tool called ThriveCart Learn. This could save you a ton of money, since alternatives can be quite expensive.
For example, Teachable starts at $59 with a 5% transaction fee, Podia starts at $39 per month with a 5% transaction fee, and Kajabi starts at $89 per month. The prices for these platforms rise significantly if you move to a more expensive plan.
Learn includes everything you need to create courses. It uses the same no-code and drag-and-drop tools as the rest of the platform, so creating a course will be super easy once you get the hang of the other tools.
The process is basically that you create a course, add modules, lessons, and content, then hit publish.
A time-saving feature I really like is that you can clone a module or lesson. This means you can create the design once and then just change the content after.
Other cool features include Drip, which lets you release modules on a fixed schedule after someone buys, and student profiles, which lets you manage who has access to your courses
The downside is that while essential LMS features are available to all ThriveCart users, some extra tools, such as team plans and bundles, require a Learn+ plan which is an additional $195.
You’ll also need to host your course videos on another platform. I don’t think this is a major issue since it’s very easy to create an unlisted YouTube video and then embed it on your course page.
ThriveCart and email marketing
ThriveCart has an easy-to-use, native integration with MailerLite. Connect the 2 tools by going to the integrations page in ThriveCart, choosing MailerLite and adding your MailerLite API key to the relevant space in the ThriveCart dashboard.
You can then use ThriveCart’s behavior tab to add people who check out with ThriveCart to MailerLite groups. This enables a ton of functionality, such as the ability to send onboarding emails, upsells, review requests and more.
Here are 8 ways you can use email marketing to get more conversions with ThriveCart.
1. Onboard new customers
Someone buying from you isn’t the end of their journey. It’s the start! Begin the relationship the right way by sending onboarding emails with more information about the product they bought.
This is especially useful for subscription and membership programs where getting the person to use the tool is essential to whether or not they continue to pay for the product.
In your first email, tell new customers what they need to know to begin using your product. You can then go deeper by sending content to introduce new features, use cases, success stories, or anything else that will help people get set up.
Create a group in MailerLite for product buyers
Use ThriveCart triggers to add people who buy to the group
Create an automation in MailerLite triggered when someone joins the group
Add emails to the automation with important information
2. Recover abandoned carts
An abandoned cart is when someone starts the checkout process but doesn’t finish it. ThriveCart has an abandoned cart trigger that kicks into action when someone enters their email address in the checkout form but fails to complete the purchase.
Use this trigger to add someone to a MailerLite group and start an automation that sends an email reminding people to buy.
Create a group in MailerLite for people who abandon cart
Use ThriveCart triggers to add people who abandon to the group
Create an automation in MailerLite triggered when someone joins the group
Add an email to the automation reminding people to buy an hour after the abandonment event
Add an action that removes the subscriber from the abandoned cart group
3. Upsell relevant products
Customers who have already bought from you are far more likely to buy again. Use a post-purchase flow to recommend relevant products to people who buy a specific item.
Consider promoting:
Related products
Upgrades to premium versions
Bundled deals
Your most popular items
If you don’t already have products you can use to upsell, consider creating some! The key is to think about the type of product that your existing customers may want to buy.
Create a group in MailerLite for people who abandon cart
Use ThriveCart triggers to add people who abandon to the group
Create an automation in MailerLite triggered when someone joins the group
Add an email to the automation reminding people to buy an hour after the abandonment event
Add an action that removes the subscriber from the abandoned cart group
4. Promote products to subscribers
Our e-commerce data found that over 90% of email marketing sales come from campaigns. These are the regular newsletters that you send out to your email list and they’re an incredibly effective way to get people to buy.
To generate sales with a newsletter, create a new campaign and add the relevant content. You can then add a link to the website page with your ThriveCart cart to the email.
Make the email even more compelling by using MailerLite blocks to add features like reviews, countdown timers, testimonials and more.
When it comes time to send the newsletter, choose to either send it to everyone on your list or use MailerLite’s segmentation and group settings to send different promotions to people depending on factors such as:
Products they bought
Emails they engaged with
Links they clicked on
Location
By making your email targeted to the needs of the specific subscriber, you can increase opens, clicks and, ultimately, sales.
Create a campaign in MailerLite
Add content with links to your ThriveCart checkout pages
Choose which recipients to send the email to
Hit send
5. Generate preorders of new products
Your email list is one of the most effective ways to generate sales of a new product. For example, when Greg from Buildcamp promoted a new course in his newsletter, it sold out in just 6 hours!
I launched a bootcamp recently. It was 50 seats, which all sold out, and I had an additional 250 on the waitlist within 24 hours.
Start by telling your list about the new product and let them register their interest by clicking a link. Or send them straight to a checkout page where they can preorder the product to receive it as soon as it’s released.
Consider incentivizing the purchase by giving people an early-bird discount. Use a countdown timer to highlight when the offer expires and drive more action.
Don’t just stop at a single email. Send multiple messages during the build-up to the new product. Each one can provide more details about why the person should buy. You can also promote the new product in your regular newsletters.
Create a campaign in MailerLite
Add content to either let people preorder or register their interest
Choose campaign recipients
Create follow-up emails or add promotions to your other campaigns
6. Boost course engagement
If you use ThriveCart to sell a course, send emails to boost engagement and keep people learning.
The easiest way is to create an automated sequence with more essential details, lesson reminders and information about how to get the most from the course.
By helping people get maximum value from your course, you’ll increase the chances that they buy from you again.
Create a group in MailerLite for course buyers
Use ThriveCart triggers to add people who buy to the group
Create an automation in MailerLite triggered when someone joins the group
Add emails to the automation with information to keep them engaged
7. Payment notifications
Payment notifications remind people of things like upcoming subscription renewals. This is useful for 2 reasons:
It ensures customers aren’t caught unaware by a bill.
It lets them update their payment details.
ThriveCart has a built-in feature that sends these notifications for you. If you want to customize them or add additional details, you can also create your own notifications using ThriveCart triggers.
Create a group in MailerLite for people whose payment is due
Use ThriveCart triggers to add people to this group at the right time
Create an automation in MailerLite triggered when someone joins the group
Add an email to the automation reminding them to pay
Add an action to remove them from the group after the email is sent
8. Re-engage churned customers
Customers go cold. Email can help you bring them back! Just identify subscribers who haven’t engaged with your content in a predefined period and send a re-engagement email with an offer they can’t ignore.
Use MailerLite’s subscriber filter settings to discover subscribers who haven’t opened or clicked in an email in your chosen period
Send a re-engagement campaign to these people
If people don’t interact with this message, consider removing them from your list
9. Encourage affiliate program signups
ThriveCart Pro+ has powerful affiliate marketing features that allow you to create a program that lets people earn a commission when they promote your products. It’s an effective and risk-free way to generate sales, since you only pay when someone buys your product.
A good way to get people engaged with your affiliate program is to send an automated email promoting your program in the time after they buy. You can also promote the program in your regular email marketing campaigns.
Create an automation in MailerLite triggered when someone buys a product and joins a group
Add a delay to give them time to become familiar with your product
Add an email to the workflow with details of your affiliate program and a link they can use to join
If you have existing customers, you can also the same email as a campaign to promote your program
10. Generate reviews for social proof
Social proof, like reviews and testimonials, is essential for generating sales. But happy customers don’t always leave reviews unless you ask. Email is the perfect way to request reviews.
Once you have reviews, add them to your landing pages and emails to help increase conversions.
Both MailerLite and ThriveCart have prebuilt blocks you can use to add beautiful testimonials to your marketing content.
Create an automation in MailerLite triggered when someone buys a product and joins a group
Add a delay to give them time to use your product
Add an email to the workflow asking them to review your product. Include links to the pages where you want them to add a review
If you have existing customers, you can also add this email as a campaign generate reviews
One question to answer before you buy
So that’s our review of ThriveCart! It’s a feature-packed tool that is great at letting you create high-converting checkout pages. It’s easy to use, has a one-payment pricing model which could save money and it also integrates with tons of tools.
The question for you to consider is how much you value the ability to create an optimized checkout.
If you think that ThriveCart’s features like order bumps will significantly increase the value of each customer and increase conversions, it will be more than worth the price of the tool.
