I’ve been using ThriveCart for several years now, and I’ve generated over $20,000 selling my digital products through this platform.

As you can see in the screenshot:

After testing dozens of checkout platforms and shopping carts, I’ve learned firsthand what actually converts visitors into customers and what just looks pretty but doesn’t perform.

ThriveCart has been making waves in the digital marketing space with its lifetime deal promise and powerful checkout features – but is it actually worth your investment?

In this updated 2025 review, I’m sharing my completely honest experience after years of daily use and thousands in revenue generated.

Type	Checkout platform
Price	$495 [Lifetime deal]
Features	Digital product selling, upsells and order bumps, built-in affiliate program, built-in A/B split testing, built-in sales tax calculation system.
Are Zapier and Webhooks integration available?	Yes
Bump offers available?	Yes
Competitors	SamCart, CartFlows, ClickFunnels

Quick Decision

What do I like about ThriveCart? 👍

• Clean, conversion-focused checkout pages: The checkout experience is modern and streamlined, which genuinely helps boost conversions. No clutter, just what customers need to complete their purchase.
• Lifetime deal value: That one-time $495 payment instead of monthly fees like most competitors is a game-changer. Unlike SamCart’s recurring costs, you pay once and own it forever.
• Advanced A/B testing capabilities: You can split test up to 14+ different aspects of your checkout – something SamCart can’t match. No need for external tools when the testing is built right in.
• Flexible affiliate management: The attribution options (first-click vs last-click) and cookie periods (7 days to lifetime) give you control that other platforms don’t offer. Plus, you can set multiple target URLs for each product.
• Comprehensive payment support: Beyond just PayPal and Stripe, you get Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other processors. The automatic coupon URL feature is brilliant for conversions.

What bugs me about ThriveCart? 👎

• Aggressive Pro+ upselling: Despite marketing a “lifetime deal” ThriveCart constantly pushes its Pro+ subscription ($295/year) through intrusive banners and by gating new features behind this additional paywall.
• Limited funnel building: Unlike ClickFunnels or Kartra, you can’t create complete sales funnels. It’s primarily a checkout platform, not a full funnel builder.
• Basic design customization: There’s no intuitive drag-and-drop builder for highly attractive pages. The templates are limited and not fully customizable compared to dedicated page builders.
• No free trial with high upfront cost: That $495 lifetime fee feels risky when you can’t test-drive the platform first. It’s a significant investment without knowing if it fits your needs.
• Membership site limitations: You can’t use it as a membership platform or sell services effectively. It’s really built for digital and physical products only.
• Limited regional payment options: ThriveCart is adamant about limiting its integrations with region-specific payment gateways.

Upfront bottomline ✨

Let me be straight with you – ThriveCart excels at one thing: being a powerful checkout and affiliate system without recurring fees.

If your main goal is selling digital products with optimized checkouts, strong affiliate management, and you hate monthly subscriptions, ThriveCart delivers excellent value.

But here’s the reality – it’s not a complete marketing solution.

You’ll still need other tools for landing pages, email marketing, and funnel building. Think of it as the best checkout component of your marketing stack, not the entire stack itself.

The lifetime deal makes it financially attractive long-term, but that upfront investment without a trial period is definitely a leap of faith.

But here’s the BIG thing that has annoyed me:

The lifetime deal is marketed as offering “all future updates,” but many users are surprised to find this isn’t entirely true.

Despite paying for the lifetime deal, you’ll constantly encounter paywalled features labeled as “Pro+” that require an additional $295 annual subscription.

This creates a frustrating experience where core new functionalities are placed behind additional paywalls, contradicting what many customers understood from the lifetime deal promise.

👉 ThriveCart is ideal if you want a checkout powerhouse without recurring fees, but less suitable if you need full funnel building and extensive design freedom.

Explore ThriveCart

Interface

The user interface is one aspect where ThriveCart needs some some more “Organizational” improvement.

Right off the bat, it’s not intuitive, and it takes a while for you to understand what options do.

Once you get used to the interface, it’s smooth.

Now.

You may know that in spite of buying ThriveCart lifetime deal, you will be upsold to their Pro Plus plan. The upselling is quite intrusive with a persistent banner.

Also, there are some menus when you click on those menus, you will be told that you need to unlock this feature or get the Pro Plus upgrade which costs $295 on an annual basis.

👎 This constantly reminds you of the fact that ThriveCart is getting some of its newest features in spite of the fact that you bought their lifetime deal with all future updates.

ThriveCart products

ThriveCart allows you to create both digital and physical products with a straightforward setup process.

When creating a new product, you choose the type of product you’re creating, which you can change at any time.

You need to fill in all the product details like name, checkout page URL, product status, and other essential information.

Similar to SamCart and Kartra, you can add upsells, downsells, and bump offers for each product to increase sales.

When adding a bump offer, the system asks you to specify whether you’re adding a digital or physical product type.

For physical products or bump offers, you get shipping and product fulfillment options under the fulfillment tab.

Now about coupons:

Each coupon offers two options:

1. Copy URL: The “copy URL” automatically applies the discount on checkout pages, increasing conversion rates.
2. Copy Code: The “copy code” option quickly copies to your clipboard

When creating coupons, you’ll enter a name, code (3+ characters), and details.

There are three discount types to pick from: free shipping, fixed price, or percentage off.

You can apply these to your whole funnel, just the main product, or the main product with a bump offer. And yes, you can even stretch those percentage discounts to cover recurring payments too!

👉 Bottom line: ThriveCart excels at selling both digital and physical products with flexible setup options, powerful bump offers, and conversion-boosting coupon features that enhance your checkout experience.

Course creation (ThriveCart Learn)

ThriveCart Learn offers an integrated course hosting solution that comes included with your ThriveCart lifetime account.

While it’s functional for basic course delivery, it’s essentially a simplified course platform compared to dedicated solutions.

Key features:

• Host courses, create quizzes, and offer certifications within the ThriveCart ecosystem
• Customize branding to maintain your identity throughout the learning experience
• No additional monthly fees (unlike Kajabi or Kartra which charge $100-300+ monthly)
• Optional Learn+ upgrade available for a one-time fee (adds bundles, student imports, custom subdomains)

Limitations:

• No internal video hosting (requires embedding from third-party platforms like Vimeo).
• Lacks advanced features found in dedicated platforms like Teachable or Kajabi.
• No built-in community features or robust discussion capabilities.
• Limited membership management (issues with cancellations and access periods).

ThriveCart Learn works best when viewed as a course platform that complements your existing ThriveCart checkout and funnel system rather than as a comprehensive course solution.

It’s ideal for creators who prioritize cost-effectiveness and simplicity over advanced features.

While the ThriveCart Learn comes with the lifetime deal.

See here:

They also have a ThriveCart Learn Plus upgrade (comes at a $195 one-time fee) that comes with even more features.

Here’s a concise comparison of both their products:

Feature	Thrivecart Learn (included)	Learn Plus (upgrade)
Included with Lifetime	Yes ($495 one-time)	No; requires Learn Plus upgrade
Students/Courses	Up to 50,000 students/unlimited courses	Unlimited
Certificates	Customizable	Custom + automatic send-out
Drip Content	No	Yes
Gamification	No	Points, badges, rewards
Team Access	No	Yes
Course Bundles	No	Yes
Student Import/Tagging	No	Yes
Email Tool Integration	Basic	Advanced options

ThriveCart Learn Plus, even with all these features, lacks community building functionality which is the future of e-learning!

👉 Bottom line: ThriveCart Learn provides a straightforward, integrated course solution without recurring fees. While it lacks some advanced features of dedicated platforms, it’s sufficient for basic course delivery and seamlessly connects with ThriveCart’s sales systems.

Funnel building

ThriveCart’s approach to funnel building is straightforward but limited compared to dedicated funnel platforms.

With ThriveCart, you can create sales funnels with a maximum of 5 upsells and 5 downsells.

The setup is simple – you head over to the product for which you need to create a funnel and click on “enable sales funnel” for your chosen product.

Next, you configure the upsells or downsells you want to add to your funnel. You can select the upsell, then edit and customize the upsell page as per your needs.

The upsell editor is a drag-and-drop editor, similar to what you use for creating checkout pages.

You can edit the page design for both mobile and desktop views, making funnel creation accessible even without advanced tech skills.

These funnels focus primarily on checkout rather than comprehensive marketing journeys. ThriveCart works well as a shopping cart but can’t match dedicated funnel builders like ClickFunnels for advanced funnel capabilities.

👉 Yes, they have something called ThriveCart Pro+ (addon billed annually at $295) that comes with more advanced functionalities like funnel comparisons, segmentation feature, and advanced reports. But still, it can’t replace dedicated funnel building tools.

👉 Bottom line: ThriveCart offers efficient checkout-focused funnels that are quick to set up, but if you need comprehensive funnel marketing capabilities, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

Landing page builder

Conventionally, ThriveCart used to be just a checkout platform.

More recently, with their enhanced editor, they have rolled out a lot of new templates not only for checkouts but also for creating landing pages.

Let’s take a quick look at the effectiveness of their landing page builder.

You can see their landing page builder is fairly functional with their new enhanced editor.

You get plenty of blocks to create high-converting landing pages:

• Progress bars
• Hero areas
• Call outs
• Countdown timers
• Testimonials

👉 Bottom line: I won’t be saying that their landing pages are super powerful like that of Elementor enabling you to create parallax and advanced effects, but it’s good for the job.

Checkout experience

ThriveCart truly shines when it comes to checkout experience – this is where the platform excels.

ThriveCart provides various types of checkout pages to optimize your conversion rates:

1. Embeddable checkouts: These allow customers to make transactions easily without leaving your page.
2. Popup checkouts: You can create highly engaging modal popups that let customers complete transactions without leaving your current web page.
3. Single-step checkouts: These provide a convenient and simpler shopping experience. The chances of visitors buying your products are higher compared to multi-step checkout pages.
4. Multi-step checkouts: With multi-step checkout pages, customers feel more secure as they fill in details across multiple pages.
5. Sales cart checkout pages: You can create highly attractive pages and add testimonials, videos, or customer reviews as social proof, generating more revenue by converting visitors.

And as you can see, there are also various templates for checkout pages.

For example, we are selling our Notion LifeOS.

You can see the above is the checkout page, and similar to their landing page editor, checkout editor is also fairly good, coming up with various features to customize the appearance of testimonials, order bumps, and various fields.

😊 Almost 90% of the people who buy our CoreSystem product also opt for Core AI order bump.

👉 Bottom line: ThriveCart offers versatile checkout options that boost conversions through multiple formats (embeddable, popup, single/multi-step) and customizable templates with proven order bump effectiveness.

A/B Testing

This is where ThriveCart truly outshines its competitors – the A/B testing capabilities are exceptional.

To create A/B split testing, you go to Products → A/B tests.

ThriveCart allows you to split test various options like:

• Pricing options (recurring fee, one-time fee, or pay as you wish)
• Payment options (PayPal & Stripe vs. just Stripe)
• Payment button color
• Test which testimonials work best
• Checkout overall design (2-step vs. 1-step, etc.)
• Test two bump offers against each other
• Which fields you should collect on the checkout

To begin split testing, you choose the two products you want to test and name the test for identification.

Then you select the goal of your split testing from 3 options:

1. Highest income [across entire funnel]
2. Highest cart conversion
3. Lowest cart abandonment

Like most checkout platforms, ThriveCart asks you to choose an end date for the split test to run. After this, you specify the checkout page URL for this split testing.

This level of testing granularity sets ThriveCart apart from competitors and makes it particularly valuable for conversion optimization.

👉 Bottom line: ThriveCart’s A/B testing capabilities stand out with comprehensive options for testing pricing, design, and checkout elements, making it an invaluable tool for optimization-focused marketers.

Automation

ThriveCart offers basic automation capabilities through its product behaviors feature.

With ThriveCart, you can add behavior rules to trigger events based on customer behavior.

To send emails and follow-up sequences, you can integrate ThriveCart with any email marketing software.

For adding a behavior rule, you click on “Add rule” and set the rule.

Next, you can use custom HTML or your autoresponder to perform the required action.

If you already have integration with an autoresponder, it will show up!

👉 Bottom line: The automation features are basic but functional for essential post-purchase workflows. For more sophisticated automation, you’ll need to rely on external email marketing platforms and tools though.

Affiliate Management

ThriveCart comes with a built-in affiliate platform that lets you encourage your fans and audience to promote your products and get paid for their work.

You can enable or disable the affiliate feature for individual products.

Setting up commissions:

You can choose either fixed or percentage-based commissions, and also pay affiliates manually or through PayPal/Stripe, and set specific payment timeframes.

You can auto-approve or manually approve affiliate sign-ups.

Now here’s the thing:

For tracking affiliate links, you can set up either first-click attribution or last-click attribution.

This is a huge advantage with ThriveCart – it allows you to set up first-click or last-click attributions on your own. This isn’t the case with other checkout platforms, which have one attribution set by default that you can’t change.

You can also set up the cookie period with ThriveCart, choosing from a minimum of 7 days to a maximum of lifetime period.

This is one of the best features that makes ThriveCart excel over say SamCart. With most checkout platforms, you can’t find this much flexibility.

Now, you can create multiple affiliate URLs for your affiliate partners to promote.

You can add multiple target URLs for a single product with a simple click on “Add more URLs”.

For example, if you’re promoting a SaaS product, you can have multiple pages like the trial page, features page, discount page, etc.

You can specify these page URLs by naming them individually.

Affiliate dashboard and analytics:

The affiliate dashboard provides comprehensive insights – you can see how your affiliates are performing, commissions they earn, number of active affiliates, and sales generated.

You can analyze sales generated for specific products or during specific time periods by applying appropriate filters.

ThriveCart provides details like the number of clicks made by each affiliate, sales done, conversion rates, and refund rates.

You can download all transaction reports as CSV files, and the payments tab shows details about automatic and manual payments, including failed payments.

👉 Bottom line: ThriveCart’s affiliate management is exceptionally flexible with customizable commissions, attribution options, and detailed analytics. It surpasses most competitors in terms of tracking flexibility and control.

Integrations

ThriveCart has native integrations with most popular webinar platforms, email marketing software, membership site platforms, payment gateways, CRMs, and automation software.

ThriveCart offers robust integration capabilities, connecting seamlessly with third-party applications through Zapier and webhook integration. This flexibility allows you to build a comprehensive tech stack by connecting with popular platforms like ClickFunnels, Trello, WooCommerce, Kajabi, Slack, and many others.

For payment processing, ThriveCart supports major gateways including Stripe, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Authorize.net.

However, they remain inflexible when it comes to supporting region-specific payment processors (Considering it a checkout solution), which can be limiting for international businesses requiring local payment solutions.

👉 Bottom line: ThriveCart covers the essential integrations well, especially for email marketing and payment processing, but may require workarounds for more complex tech stacks.

Pricing and lifetime deal

ThriveCart has been running its lifetime deal for a long time. At $495, you get lifetime access to ThriveCart.

Normally, it costs $95/month and $1,950/year. If you want to save huge amounts, the lifetime deal is the way to go.

However, there’s a catch: ThriveCart aggressively promotes their Pro Plus upsell after purchase.

Also they have persistent feature-gating (I described above) can feel frustrating after making what you thought was a “lifetime” purchase.

👉 Bottom line: The lifetime deal makes ThriveCart incredibly cost-effective if you’re committed to using a checkout platform long-term. However, the lack of a free trial makes that $495 investment a significant leap of faith, especially when you factor in that you’ll still need other tools for complete marketing functionality.

Verdict

ThriveCart is an excellent checkout platform that excels at what it’s designed for – converting visitors into customers and managing affiliates effectively.

The lifetime deal at $495 offers exceptional long-term value compared to competitors’ recurring fees. Features like advanced A/B testing (14+ aspects), flexible affiliate management, and seamless payment processing make it a conversion powerhouse.

However, ThriveCart isn’t a complete marketing solution.

You still feel like you need a more powerful website building tool with funnel building functionality. To give it a test drive if it suits your business, there is no option for a free trial.

However, you can choose ThriveCart if you prioritize checkout optimization, affiliate management, and hate monthly fees. But skip it if you need extensive design freedom, comprehensive funnel building, or prefer testing before buying.

However, do note ThriveCart Learn adds course creation capabilities, making it more versatile for digital product creators who want everything in one ecosystem.

For straightforward product sales with optimized conversions, ThriveCart delivers excellent value.