https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL7ggP2EsjY
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.
It is being praised by many business owners, marketers, and entrepreneurs as the best shopping cart software on the market today.
But does it 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.
Is SamCart Worth it?
SamCart demo available. Click Here to get a FREE demo
SamCart I believe is a great investment. It offers tons of features, compared to other shopping cart platforms, and is optimized to increase conversions , which in turn will boost your bottom line.
Marketers know how important it is to test your pages in order to maximize conversions. SamCart has taken care of all the details so you can make the most of every sale.
So for example, if you sell a $47 PDF on your website, and use a standard checkout form, you may not be able to add an upsell. You may be able sell another $60 product to your customers if you add an upsell (using SamCart).
What does 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 do purchase SamCart, I’d be grateful if you supported me by clicking on this link to purchase.
You can read the many testimonials and reviews from satisfied customers to see for yourself.
SamCart is Good for Who?
SamCart is perfect for anyone who sells stuff online. SamCart can be used to sell physical or digital products, such as books, courses, seminars, or events. You can even use it to sell services, such as consulting services 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.
So, depending on whether you sell information products, software, memberships, or services, read on to discover the different features and functionality of SamCart so you can determine whether or not it’s the ideal shopping cart for you.
SamCart Pros and 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.
- One-Click Upsells Supported: You can use one-click upsells and downsells to increase your revenue.
- Granular Coupons and Discounts Control: You have granular control over how you use coupons and discounts for your products.
- Affiliate Management: SamCart has an in-built affiliate marketing program management system that rivals other shopping carts. This will help you manage your affiliate program quickly and easily.
- Great Support: SamCart has a vast knowledge base to help you with all types of issues. Support can be obtained via email, Facebook group and live chat.
- Analytics and Reporting: The platform offers an impressive reporting dashboard that gives you useful insights from your data.
Want to see a demo of SamCart in action? Click Here to get a FREE demo
SamCart Cons
- Not Great for Services: SamCart isn’t well-suited for selling services. However, you can still do so by being creative with how you name your offer.
- Limited Design Options: SamCart’s checkout templates design options are not as extensive as other shopping cart software within the same price range.
- You cannot accept cryptocurrency payments using SamCart. 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 its true strengths lie.
We take a look below at each function of SamCart, to give you a better understanding of what makes SamCart different and how it can benefit your business.
One-Click Upsells
This is what makes SamCart stand out from other platforms. You can maximize your profit from every sale with the platform’s one-click upsells
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 SamCart makes upselling easy and seamless, and according to their website, once you set it up, it will increase your customer value by up to 68.1%.
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.
An example of this concept at work is when McDonald’s offers you fries and drinks with your burgers. Or, if you purchase sports equipment, you might also get an offer for half price gym membership or something like that.
So, for instance, if you sell laptops using SamCart shopping cart software, you might also offer bump offers of laptop bags, antivirus packages (Avast could really use this) , etc. as a way to increase your customer value.
SamCart makes it easy with just one click. It’s easy to set up and customers will make purchases through the optimized checkout process.
You can check out these 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.
All the pages are mobile responsive and they have a unique “sandbox” mode that allows you to check that everything is working perfectly before going live. This is unlike other shopping cart software where you have to publish your page, then test it.
A lot of well-known marketers use SamCart which means that you will be able to avoid having to spend countless hours designing and testing checkout pages 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.
All the checkout page templates on SamCart also come with built-in testimonials, security reassurances, guarantees, and various other trust elements designed to boost conversion rates.
Want to see a demo of SamCart in action? Click Here to get a FREE demo
All you have to do is pick a template to use, and then customize it to match your brand colors and style.
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:
For instance, if you are selling an online course for $447, you can use SamCart to offer your customers a payment plan whereas, on other shopping cart pages, you might have to use separate checkout pages to achieve that.
SamCart’s one-page checkout keeps visitors on the page as they decide on the best way to pay for your product.
As an online marketer, I’m sure you know the importance of being able to keep your visitors on-page, otherwise, you risk losing them altogether if they leave for any reason.
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.
The platform’s affiliate management function is so powerful that you don’t even need to spend time promoting products or services.
Affiliates are a great way to promote your product or service without having to spend money on advertising or other marketing. You only pay them once you make a sale.
Subscription Saver
If you sell subscription products online, this is one SamCart feature that you will find extremely appealing.
You know that not everyone pays their bills on 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.
In the email, there will be a link where customers can update their payment information on file straight from their inbox. 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
Split testing is a common practice among marketers. Split testing is especially useful if your cart abandonment rate is high. 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.
However, very few marketers bother to test their checkout pages. When you consider just how much money you stand to make by optimizing your pages, it makes no sense that someone would knowingly ignore such an important part of their sales funnel.
Luckily, SamCart makes this part easy, as well. 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 for a free demo
SamCart Integrations
SamCart has many integrations that allow you to connect your shopping cart with the rest of your marketing strategy.
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. You should also note that the platform does not accept cryptocurrency payments such as bitcoin or mobile payments such as Apple Pay.
Email Marketing Providers: For most marketers, email marketing is among the most important integrations to consider before choosing a shopping cart solution. 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: SamCart’s check-out software can be used to help you sell your products and services if you host webinars . SamCart doesn’t have any native integrations to webinar platforms. However, Zapier allows you to easily connect to a variety of webinar platforms including WebinarJam and GoToWebinar.
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
As previously mentioned, there are tons of shopping cart solutions available on the market today.
SamCart is just one of many, and although it has amazing features and functionality, there are a few others that can give this platform a run for its money.
Listed below are four SamCart alternatives, and depending on the specific features you need for your business, these may prove to be a better (or worse) option. If you’re looking for more options, check out this post which has more alternatives.
SamCart vs. ThriveCart
Note : You can find my SamCart and ThriveCart Comparison Review here
ThriveCart, an online shopping cart software for e-commerce websites, is available. 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.
While SamCart is offered at a monthly price, you can get ThriveCart for a one-time fee of $495.
This is one of the many reasons why a lot of digital marketers prefer this SamCart alternative over all the rest.
It is also worth mentioning that ThriveCart integrates seamlessly with all major payment processing platforms, while SamCart can only be integrated with Stripe and PayPal.
SamCart vs. PayKickStart
PayKickStart allows you to easily manage your online business with a flexible shopping cart.
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 are compatible with multiple currencies and languages. They offer deep actionable insights through a robust reporting dashboard, and both shopping cart solutions are easy to set up. 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.
SamCart’s monthly price is only $49/month. It’s easy to see why marketers prefer SamCart to PayKickStart.
SamCart vs. Shift4Shop (formerly 3D Cart)
Shift4Shop, a well-known e-commerce platform, was founded over 20 years ago. The software comes with a lot of features that make it easy to create optimized checkout pages for higher conversions.
This makes it a good alternative to SamCart, particularly for anyone who wants a wider variety of checkout page templates to choose from. Shift4Shop offers over 50 templates free of charge, which include all the elements and features you need to increase your conversions.
You will get more templates if you select a higher-level plan. The premium templates are mobile responsive, ensuring excellent viewing experiences for your mobile customers.
Shift4Shop allows you to promote products on social media. All plans include $50 in ad credits that will help you reach a larger audience on various social media platforms.
Prices for Shift4Shop range from $19/month for “Startup” stores to $229/month for “Pro” stores.
SamCart vs. Clickfunnels
You can find my SamCart and Clickfunnels comparison here.
Clickfunnels is yet another great shopping cart software you can use to create attractive checkout pages.
It comes with support for a variety of payment processors, including PayPal and Stripe among many others. It also has support for many email marketing and marketing automation tools, including Infusionsoft, Ontraport, and NMI.
Clickfunnels offers more functionality than other shopping cart software. You can create landing pages and 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.
Also, I wrote this 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.
You get the same if you choose to go with the Scale plan. All the features of the Grow plan are available, along with additional features such as the dunning tool and affiliate center, CRM integrations and A/B testing.
Every plan includes a 14-day trial and a 30-day guarantee. If you pay yearly, you get additional discounts on the fees outlined above.
Product Support
SamCart offers support in a variety of ways, including email, live chat, and a Facebook group. The site also has detailed documentation. It also features an intuitive interface that makes it easy to navigate.
Want to see a demo of SamCart in action? Click Here to get a FREE demo
Here is a more detailed look at the support offered by SamCart.
Intuitive Interface: From the time you log on to the platform, you will be guided on the steps to take to help you get set up as quickly 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. SamCart support is responsive to all requests, despite the fact that the response time may vary.
Facebook Group: SamCart has a huge Facebook community of over 24,000 members and includes a support team that will happily answer all your questions 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 is Samcart?
Samcart allows you to sell digital products and online services. It can also be used to sell physical items. You can create sales pages, marketing channels, run an affiliate programme, and much more with Samcart. Samcart is the most popular online shopping cart due to its excellent marketing and wide adoption by business owners all over the world.
What is Samcart used for?
Samcart can be used across many 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.
SamCart Can Handle VAT
SamCart makes it easy to manage your online taxes. All you have to do is add your marketplace address and VAT ID wherever applicable, and SamCart will automatically find the right tax rates for each of your customers, and then charge them sales tax accordingly.
Does SamCart Allow Coupon Codes?
SamCart allows you to use coupons. It also offers one of the most precise control features (compared with other shopping cart software) over how coupons are used for 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.
SamCart:
SamCart has a robust A/B testing feature designed to help you boost your conversions. To find the best version for your customers, you can test all aspects of your checkout page. You can also find detailed tutorials and a step by step process for split testing on the platform.
Does SamCart have 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. You can also try the platform for free for 14 days before you decide to purchase any premium plans.
What does SamCart pay you?
With regards to affiliate commissions, SamCart doesn’t pay you. Rather, you get your payments directly from the vendor or your affiliate manager on the platform. All supported payment methods are accepted, including Stripe and PayPal.
Is SamCart Legit?
SamCart is a great tool for digital marketers looking to sell products or services online.
It is an affordable shopping cart software which allows you to optimize your sales by using various payment models, discounts and coupons.
SamCart is a valuable tool that is easy to set up and makes a great addition to any online business.
If you do decide to try SamCart, I’d be greatly appreciative if you use this link to suppo