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SamCart, an online shopping cart software, was created by Scott Moran and Brian Moran in 2013. Although it’s been around for some time, it has become more popular in recent years.
It is being praised by many business owners, marketers, and entrepreneurs as the best shopping cart software on the market today.
But, does it really live up to the hype?
In this SamCart review, I am going to share my experience with this software: who it’s good for, it’s pros and cons, and whether or not it’s worth it for your business.
Is SamCart Worth it?
Want to see a demo of SamCart in action? 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 means more revenue per sale, as well as a higher average order size, which ultimately leads to more money in your pocket.
Sidenote: If you do purchase SamCart, I’d be grateful if you supported me by clicking on this link to purchase.
The countless reviews and testimonials from happy customers speak for themselves:
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 & 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 PlatformSamCart allows you to sell physical and digital products online using a simple platform.
- Integrations: The software integrates with a ton of marketing tools and services through Zapier.
- Flexible Payment Models: SamCart also has flexible payment models, including payment plans, subscriptions, and trials.
- 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.
- Reporting and Analytics: The platform has an impressive reporting dashboard that provides you with useful insights from your data..
SamCart demo available. Click Here for a free demo
SamCart Cons
- Not Great For Services:SamCart doesn’t work well for selling services. You can still make it work by being creative in the name of 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.
- No Cryptocurrency Payments: When using SamCart, you need to find a different method for accepting cryptocurrency payments. Apple Pay is not available.
- 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 offers a wide range of features but is still expensive for small businesses and individuals. This is especially true when compared with platforms such as ThriveCart which offer their services for a one time payment.
Top SamCart Functionality
SamCart’s functionality is what might convince you to choose it over other shopping cart software. 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 one of the main features that differentiate SamCart from the rest. 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 over a third of its revenue comes from upselling efforts.
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, also known as “bundling” is where you bundle the main product or service with complementary products to increase the profits from each sale.
McDonald’s will offer fries and drinks along with your burgers to illustrate this concept. 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. This is a great way to increase 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 different from other shopping cart software, where you actually have to publish your page and 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. Take the advice of others and use their experience to see immediate results in your sales and marketing 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 for 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 single-page checkout keeps customers on the page while they choose the best payment method for their 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 allows you to sell products online and recruit affiliates to promote your products and increase your revenues.
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
This SamCart feature is very appealing if you are selling subscription products online.
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.
Regardless of the reason why payments don’t go through, it’s bad news for the marketer because oftentimes you can’t get your money (barring taking legal action against the customer).
SamCart helps to guard you against expired credit cards and declined payments by sending your customers an email on your behalf whenever a payment fails.
In the email, there will be a link where customers can update their payment information on file straight from their inbox. This will save you time and prevent you from spending valuable time trying to find customers who have not paid their bills.
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.
You can keep tabs on what’s going on in Subscription Saver via SamCart’s simple and effective dunning report.
A/B Testing
All marketers have a good idea of how important it is to split test everything. 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.
But, few marketers ever really bother testing 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.
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.
Want to see a demo of SamCart in action? 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.
Here are some of the main integrations 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 a wide range of membership platforms, including Thinkific, Post Affiliate Pro, WishList Member, Digital Access Pass, Optimize Member, and Membermouse.
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. 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
There are many shopping cart options available today, as we have already mentioned.
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.
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 one of the many reasons why a lot of digital marketers prefer this SamCart alternative over all the rest.
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 allows you to easily manage your online business with a flexible shopping cart.
The software includes features like a page builder for sales funnels, powerful page editors, and pop-ups for checkout forms. You can integrate PayKickstart with Braintree, Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, and Easy Pay Direct.
This is the one main difference between PayKickStart and SamCart. All other aspects are 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.
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 offers over 50 templates free of charge, which include all the elements and features you need to increase 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 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 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.
It’s more than 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
Pricing is straightforward, and each plan has the same features as the one before.
You get the Launch plan and the Grow plan.
You get the same if you choose to go with 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.
Every plan includes a 14-day trial and a 30-day guarantee. Additional discounts are available if you pay annually.
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 for a free demo
Here is a more detailed look at the support offered by SamCart.
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. Through excellent marketing and widespread adoption from business owners everwhere, Samcart is the leading online shopping cart on the market.
What does Samcart do?
Samcart can be used in a number of different ways across a number of different industries. Samcart is a tool that can be used to help individuals sell products or services online. Samcart offers solutions for authors, coaches/consultants and side hustlers as well as Amazon and Etsy sellers, physical product sellers, entrepreneurs and non-profits.
Can You Integrate SamCart with Zapier?
You can integrate SamCart with Zapier, which will then allow you to instantly connect with over 3,000 marketing automation tools and apps to help you automate your work, supercharge your productivity, and boost 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.
For instance, instead of having any one coupon applied automatically to all your products, you have the option of applying one coupon to specific products, and a different coupon to other products in 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 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.
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 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