https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Oe9_SV4jC4
SamCart, an online shopping cart software, was created by Scott Moran and Brian Moran in 2013. It’s been around for a while, but lately, it seems to be everywhere.
A lot of marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs are touting it as the best shopping cart software available today.
But, does it really live up to the hype?
This SamCart review will share my experiences with the software, including who it’s best for, its pros and cons and whether it’s worth it to your business.
SamCart: Is it worth it?
Want to see a demo of SamCart in action? Click Here to get a FREE demo
In my opinion, SamCart is absolutely worth the investment because compared to the majority of other shopping cart platforms, it offers tons of useful features and is optimized to help you increase conversions which ultimately boosts your bottom line.
As a marketer, you know the importance of testing your pages to optimize conversions, and SamCart has done all the work for you to make sure that you maximize the profit you make from each sale.
If you sell a $47 PDF and you use a standard checkout page, you might not be allowed to add an extra sale. But, with an upsell to the same offer (using SamCart, of course), you may be able to sell an additional $60 product to 30% of your customers.
What does this mean for you?
This results in more revenue per sales and higher order sizes. In the end, more money in your pockets.
Sidenote – If you purchase SamCart I would be grateful if you click on this link to buy.
You can read the many testimonials and reviews from satisfied customers to see for yourself.
Who is SamCart Good For?
SamCart is ideal for anyone selling stuff online. SamCart can be used to sell physical or digital products, such as books, courses, seminars, or events. It can also be used to sell services such as consulting on your website.
However, unlike other shopping cart software, it is specifically designed for a specific user. This means it will not be suitable for all.
Depending on whether you are selling information products, software, or memberships, you will find out the various features and functionality of SamCart to help you decide if it is the right shopping cart for your needs.
SamCart Pros & Cons
SamCart, like all other software, comes with its own set of pros and cons. These are the pros and cons of SamCart. I’ve listed them below to help you understand what to expect from this shopping basket.
SamCart Pros
- User-Friendly Platform: SamCart is a user-friendly platform for selling both physical and digital products online.
- Integrations: The software integrates with a ton of marketing tools and services through Zapier.
- Flexible Payment models: SamCart offers flexible payment options, including subscriptions and payment plans.
- Supports One-Click Upsells: You can use one-click upsells, downsells, and even “bumps” to boost your revenue.
- Granular Coupons and Discounts Control: You have granular control over how you use coupons and discounts for your products.
- Affiliate Management – SamCart offers an integrated affiliate program management system that is comparable to other shopping carts. This will make it easy to manage your affiliate program.
- Excellent Support:SamCart is equipped with a wide range of knowledge to assist you with any type of issue. You can also get support through email, Facebook group, and live chat.
- Analytics and Reporting: The platform offers an impressive reporting dashboard that gives you useful insights from your data.
SamCart demo available. Click Here for a free demo
SamCart Cons
- Not Great for Services: SamCart isn’t well-suited for selling services. You can still make it work by being creative in the name of your offer.
- Lack of Design Options: Compared to other shopping cart software in the same price category, SamCart’s design and customization options for its checkout templates are limited.
- No Cryptocurrency Payments: When using SamCart, you need to find a different method for accepting cryptocurrency payments. It also doesn’t have Apple Pay.
- Very Few Payment Integrations: Although SamCart offers a lot of payment options, it only integrates with a few payment processors like Stripe and PayPal.
- High Price: SamCart does offer an impressive range of features, but the pricing is still a bit high for small business owners and individual marketers. This is especially true when compared with platforms such as ThriveCart which offer their services for a one time payment.
Top SamCart Functionality
The one thing that might make you choose SamCart over other types of shopping cart software is its functionality. This is where the real strength of SamCart lies.
Below, we take a look at each of SamCart’s functions, so you can get a better idea of why SamCart is different from the rest, and how it can be of benefit to your business.
One-Click Upsells
This is what makes SamCart stand out from other platforms. The platform has one-click upsells that help you maximize your profits from each sale you make.
You’re wasting a lot of money if you don’t use upsells in your sales funnel. The world’s biggest retailer, Amazon, reports that over a third of its revenue comes from upselling efforts.
SamCart makes it easy to upsell. According to their website, it will increase customer value up to 68%.
Bump Offers
SamCart offers cross-selling order bumps. This strategy is also known as “bundling”, which involves combining the main product with other products in order to increase profits.
McDonald’s will offer fries and drinks along with your burgers to illustrate this concept. You might also be eligible for a half-off gym membership if you buy sports equipment.
For example, if you sell laptops with SamCart shopping cart software you might offer bump offers for laptop bags and antivirus packages ( Avast could really benefit from this) This is a great way to increase customer value.
SamCart makes it easy with just one click. All you have to do is set it up, and the platform will do the rest to get customers to make the purchase through its optimized checkout process.
Checkout Pages
At the time of this writing, the checkout platform of Samcart has 18 professionally designed shopping cart templates – all of which are proven to convert.
The pages are responsive to mobile devices and have a “sandbox” mode which allows you check everything before you go live. This is different from other shopping cart software, where you actually have to publish your page and then test it.
SamCart is used by many well-known marketers. This means you won’t have to spend hours creating and testing checkout pages all on your own. You can simply take the word of the experts that came before you and leverage their hard work to start seeing immediate results in your marketing and sales campaigns.
SamCart’s checkout templates include testimonials, security reassurances and guarantees. These trust elements are designed to increase conversion rates.
Want to see a demo of SamCart in action? Click Here to get a FREE demo
You simply need to choose a template and customize it to your brand’s style and colors.
One-Page Checkout
This is a unique feature that offers you the ability to add multiple payment options to a single checkout page.
Here’s an example of what that looks like:
SamCart can be used to sell an online course at $447. On other shopping cart pages you may have to use separate checkout pages.
SamCart’s one-page checkout keeps visitors on the page as they decide on the best way to pay for your product.
You, as an online marketer, know how important it is to keep your visitors on your site. If they leave, you could lose them all together.
Affiliate Center
SamCart makes it easy for you to not only sell your products online but also to enlist a whole army of affiliates who will promote your stuff and increase your revenue.
In fact, the platform’s affiliate management feature is so robust that you don’t even have to spend any time promoting your products or services.
There is no need to pay for ads or any other type of marketing because with affiliates spreading the word on your product or service, it’s an easy way to generate sales since you only have to pay affiliates once they produce a sale for you.
Subscription Saver
If you sell subscription products online, this is one SamCart feature that you will find extremely appealing.
As you well know, not everyone pays on time, every time. You might miss payments because your credit card expired or you might have unscrupulous individuals who cancel or decline to pay their bills to avoid paying their obligations.
It doesn’t matter what the reason is, it’s bad for the marketer. Often times you won’t be able to get your money, unless you take legal action against the customer.
SamCart protects you from expired credit cards or declined payments. SamCart sends your customers an email whenever a payment is not received.
Customers will receive an email with a link to update their payment information. This saves you from having to waste valuable time chasing down customers who have failed to make their payments.
For those customers who fail to update their payment information after receiving several emails, SamCart automatically cancels their subscription and marks them as “delinquent” so you know exactly who they are and can choose to reach out to them if you want to.
Subscription Saver’s easy-to-read dunning report from SamCart allows you to keep track of what’s happening.
A/B Testing
All marketers have a good idea of how important it is to split test everything. Split testing can be especially helpful if you have a high cart abandonment rate. Even a small improvement can result in a huge increase in your revenue.
This applies to your blog headlines, opt in pages, email subject lines and sales pages.
But, few marketers ever really bother testing their checkout pages. It is absurd that anyone would ignore this important aspect of their sales funnel when they consider how much you can make.
SamCart makes it easy. You can even run live A/B tests on your pages, a feature that is unique as far as shopping cart pages go.
There are tons of different things you can test on SamCart, such as changing the template, trying out a different guarantee/testimonial, etc., removing fields (tests have shown that the fewer fields you have, the better), and much more.
SamCart demo available. Click Here to get a FREE demo
SamCart Integrations
SamCart offers a wide range of integrations that will allow you to connect your shopping cart to the rest of your marketing stack.
These are the major integrations available on the platform:
Payment Providers: One of the first things you’re prompted to do once you log into SamCart is to set up your payment processor. So far, there are only two options available, but SamCart is working on adding new integrations to the shopping cart platform. It’s also important to note that there are no cryptocurrency payments, such as bitcoin, or mobile payments, such as Apple Pay on the platform.
Email Marketing Providers Email marketing is a key integration for most marketers before choosing a shopping cart. The good news is, SamCart supports a lot of email marketing solutions, including iContact, HubSpot, Ontraport, Active Campaign, MailChimp, and Drip.
Membership platforms:SamCart supports many membership platforms including Thinkific and Post Affiliate Pro as well as WishList Member, Digital Access Pass and Optimize Member.
Webinar Platforms: If you host webinars as part of your marketing strategy, you can use SamCart’s checking-out software to sell your products and services. Although there currently aren’t any native integrations for webinar platforms on SamCart, the software easily integrates with Zapier which allows you to connect to a wide range of webinar platforms, including GoToWebinar and WebinarJam.
Fulfillment Services: If you sell physical products using SamCart shopping cart software, you only have one option available to you for fulfillment: ShipStation. Zapier allows you to link to many other fulfillment systems, which can be tailored to your business’s needs.
SamCart Alternatives
There are many shopping cart options available today, as we have already mentioned.
SamCart is only one platform, but it’s not the only one.
Below are four SamCart alternatives. These options may be better or worse depending on what you need. This post has more alternatives.
SamCart vs. ThriveCart
Note: You can read my full SamCart vs ThriveCart Review here.
ThriveCart is an online shopping cart software designed for e-commerce sites. It offers many of the same features as SamCart, such as one-click upsells and affiliate management center.
But, SamCart does have significantly more features than ThriveCart. The one place where ThriveCart outshines SamCart is on price.
SamCart can be purchased at a monthly cost, but you can also get ThriveCart by paying a $495 one-time fee.
This is just one reason why many digital marketers prefer SamCart over the other.
Also worth mentioning is the fact that ThriveCart integrates with most of the major payment processing systems available right now, whereas SamCart only integrates with PayPal and Stripe.
SamCart vs. PayKickStart
PayKickStart is a flexible shopping cart that will help you power your online business in an affordable way.
The software has features such as a sales funnel page builder, a powerful page editor, and checkout form pop-ups, among others. PayKickstart can be integrated with Braintree and Stripe, PayPal and Authorize.net.
This is the main difference between SamCart and PayKickStart. Everything else is pretty much the same.
Both platforms support multiple languages and currencies. Both platforms provide deep, actionable insights via a robust reporting dashboard. They also make it easy to set up shopping carts. Each comes with a smart dashboard and conversion tools.
When it comes to pricing, PayKickStart offers four different subscription plans: Basic $99/month, Growth $199/month, Scale $299/month, and a custom plan that will be tailored to suit your business.
Compared to SamCart’s price, which starts at just $49/month, it’s easy to see why most marketers are drawn to SamCart over PayKickStart.
SamCart vs. Shift4Shop (formerly 3D Cart)
Shift4Shop is a renowned e-commerce platform that was established over two decades ago. The software comes with a lot of features that make it easy to create optimized checkout pages for higher conversions.
It is a great alternative to SamCart for those who want a greater selection of templates for their checkout pages. Shift4Shop has over 50 free templates, each of which contains all the features and elements required to boost your conversions.
When you choose a higher-level plan, you will have access to even more templates. Premium templates are responsive to mobile devices, which will ensure excellent viewing experience for your customers on mobile.
Shift4Shop also allows you to promote your products on social media, and all the plans come with $50 ad credits to get you started reaching a wider audience on different social media platforms.
Shift4Shop prices range from $19/month in “Startup” shops to $229/month in “Pro” shops.
SamCart vs. Clickfunnels
You can read my in-depth SamCart vs. Clickfunnels comparison here.
You can also use Clickfunnels to create beautiful checkout pages.
It supports a wide range of payment processors including Stripe and PayPal. It supports many email marketing and automation tools such as Ontraport, Infusionsoft, and NMI.
Compared to other shopping cart software, Clickfunnels is a more complete system as it allows you to build landing pages as well as shopping cart pages.
This means, in essence, that it’s a lot more than just a shopping cart. It’s an A-Z sales funnel that removes the need for a ton of other marketing tools for anyone who wants to sell services or products online.
I’ve also written this SamCart vs. Shopify Comparison.
Truth be told, Samcart has a lot of competitors because many systems add checkout functionality. Kajabi, Convertkit and Aweber are just a few of the many systems that offer checkout functionality. As good as these platforms can be for their intending purpose, they aren’t nearly as focused as Samcart is.
Pricing
SamCart offers four plans:
- Launch: $49/month
- Grow: $99/month
- Scale – $199/month
- Enterprise: $399/month
The pricing structure is simple, and the features available in each plan build on the ones from the previous plan.
For instance, when you get the Grow plan, you get all the features of the Launch, plus a few advanced features, such as customer management, subscription charge reminders, advanced subscription cancellations, and so on.
The same goes if you opt for the Scale plan. You get all the features available in the Grow plan, as well as additional features like the dunning tool, affiliate center, CRM integrations, and A/B testing.
Each plan comes with a 14-day free trial, as well as a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you pay yearly, you get additional discounts on the fees outlined above.
Support for Product
SamCart provides support via email, chat and Facebook groups. They also have detailed documentation on the site, as well as an intuitive, user-friendly interface that is designed to remove potential roadblocks and help beginners navigate the platform easily.
Want to see a demo of SamCart in action? Click Here for a free demo
SamCart offers more detail about the support they offer.
Intuitive Interface From the moment you log in to the platform, you’ll be guided through the steps necessary to get you set up as quickly and easily as possible.
Help Center: SamCart has a thorough knowledge base with written posts and video tutorials to help you solve any type of potential issues you might come up against.
Live Chat: If you have a pressing problem, SamCart offers support via live chat. Although the reply time can vary, for the most part, SamCart support is very responsive to requests for help.
Facebook Group:SamCart boasts a large Facebook community with over 24,000 members. It also has a support team who will gladly answer any questions you may have on Facebook.
Email Support: Although SamCart doesn’t offer direct contact to the support team, they do offer email support during business hours (that is, 9 AM to 5 PM ET weekdays).
FAQ
What’s Samcart?
Samcart is an online shopping cart that allows you to sell both digital products, online services, and can even be used to sell physical products. It allows you to create sales pages, marketing funnels, run an affiliate program, ecommerce, and more. Samcart is the most popular online shopping cart due to its excellent marketing and wide adoption by business owners all over the world.
What does Samcart do?
Samcart can be used in a number of different ways across a number of different industries. If an individual is trying to sell a product or service online, Samcart can help. They have solutions for course creators, authors, coaches/consultants, agencies, side hustlers, amazon and Etsy sellers, Physical product sellers, entrepreneurs, and even non-profits.
Can You Integrate SamCart with Zapier?
Zapier allows you to integrate SamCart. This will allow you to instantly connect to over 3,000 marketing automation apps and tools to automate your work, increase productivity, and improve your bottom line.
Can SamCart Handle VAT?
SamCart helps keep your online tax simple. SamCart automatically calculates the correct tax rates for your customers and charges sales tax accordingly.
Does SamCart Allow Coupon Codes?
SamCart not only allows coupons, but the platform also has one of the most granular control features (compared to other shopping cart software) over the way you use coupons for your products and services.
Instead of one coupon being applied to all your products, you can apply a coupon to a specific product and a differentcoupon for other products within the same sales funnel.
Can You A/B Test Checkout Pages in SamCart?
SamCart offers a powerful A/B testing tool that will help you increase your conversions. You can test every aspect of your checkout page to find out which versions work best with your audience. The platform also has in-depth tutorials for those who are new to split testing and provides a step-by-step process to help you hit the ground testing.
Does SamCart offer a money back guarantee?
SamCart provides a 30-day money back guarantee if the software is not right for you. Just make sure you cancel your subscription a few days before the payment is due to go off in order to avoid having to needlessly pay for an additional month. The platform also offers a free 14-day trial, which will make it less likely that you will need a refund since you’ll have the chance to get to know the platform in-depth before opting for any of the premium plans.
How Does SamCart Pay You?
With regards to affiliate commissions, SamCart doesn’t pay you. Instead, the vendor or your platform manager will pay you. All supported payment methods are accepted, including Stripe and PayPal.
Is SamCart Legit?
SamCart is definitely legit for digital marketers who want to sell services or products (both physical and digital) online.
It’s an affordable shopping cart software that makes it easy to optimize each of your sales through the use of various payment models, discounts, coupons, and bump offers so you can increase your revenue.
SamCart is a valuable tool that is easy to set up and makes a great addition to any online business.
I would be very grateful if you decide to use SamCart.