https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Oe9_SV4jC4
SamCart is an online shopping cart software that was founded in 2013 by Scott and Brian Moran. 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 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.
SamCart: Is it worth it?
SamCart demo available. Click Here for 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.
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.
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. 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 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 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 perfect for anyone who sells stuff online. From physical products to digital products like courses, events, books, and seminars. It can also be used to sell services such as consulting on your website.
But, like all other shopping cart software, it’s specifically designed for a certain kind of user, which means that it won’t be ideal for everyone.
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 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.
- 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 offers an integrated affiliate program management system that is comparable to other shopping carts. This will help you manage your affiliate program quickly and easily.
- 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. 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.
- No Cryptocurrency Payments: When using SamCart, you need to find a different method for accepting cryptocurrency payments. It also doesn’t have Apple Pay.
- Few Payment Integrations: Although SamCart has a ton of payment models, it actually integrates with very few payment processors, like PayPal and Stripe.
- 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 particularly true when compared to platforms like ThriveCart that 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.
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 one of the main features that differentiate SamCart from the rest. 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 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 also offers you 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. 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 this extremely easy to do with just a click of a button. 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.
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.
The pages are responsive to mobile devices and have a “sandbox” mode which allows you check everything before you go 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.
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:
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 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.
Subscriber 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. Some missed payments might be due to credit cards that simply expired, or it might be unscrupulous people who decline charges or cancel their cards to avoid honoring 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 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
Split testing is a common practice among marketers. Split testing is especially useful if your cart abandonment rate is high. A small increase can make a big difference 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. It is absurd that anyone would ignore this important aspect of their sales funnel when they consider how much you can make.
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 to get 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. SamCart has only two payment options, but they are constantly adding more integrations to the shopping 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 Email marketing is a key integration for most marketers before choosing a shopping cart. SamCart supports many email marketing solutions including iContact and 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 are selling physical products with SamCart shopping cart software you only have one option for fulfillment: ShipStation. However, with Zapier, you can link out to a variety of other fulfillment systems to suit your business 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 is an online shopping cart software designed for e-commerce sites. It has many of the same features that SamCart has, including one-click upsells, affiliate management center, etc.
But, SamCart does have significantly more features than ThriveCart. SamCart’s only advantage over ThriveCart is in 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 has features such as a sales funnel page builder, a powerful page editor, and checkout form pop-ups, among others. 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.
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 is a renowned e-commerce platform that was established over two decades ago. It has many features that allow you to easily create optimized checkout pages for better 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 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.
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.
You can also use Clickfunnels to create beautiful checkout pages.
It supports a wide range of payment processors including Stripe and PayPal. It also has support for many email marketing and marketing automation tools, including Infusionsoft, Ontraport, 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.
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. These platforms are great for their intended purpose but not as focused as Samcart.
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. 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 provides support via email, chat and Facebook groups. The site also has detailed documentation. It also features an intuitive interface that makes it easy to navigate.
SamCart demo available. Click Here for a free demo
SamCart offers more detail about the support they offer.
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. Although the reply time can vary, for the most part, SamCart support is very responsive to requests for help.
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 does not offer direct contact with the support team, they offer email support during normal business hours (9 AM to 5 PM ET on 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 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. Samcart offers solutions for authors, coaches/consultants and side hustlers as well as Amazon and Etsy sellers, physical product sellers, entrepreneurs and non-profits.
How do 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 makes it easy to manage your online taxes. SamCart automatically calculates the correct tax rates for your customers and charges 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.
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 offer a money back guarantee?
SamCart provides a 30-day money back guarantee if the software is not right for you. To avoid paying an extra month, cancel your subscription at least a few days in advance. 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. Payments will be made using any of the supported payment methods, such as PayPal, and Stripe.
Is SamCart Legit?
SamCart is a great tool for digital marketers looking to sell products or services 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.