If you are looking for unbiased, comprehensive SamCart reviews and your search has brought you here, congratulations! You are definitely in the right place.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a marketer, an entrepreneur, or a seller of digital products or services – the consensus is clear: You need to leverage all the help and all the tools you can get your hands on if you want to increase your conversions and ultimately, your bottom line in an ever more competitive market.
If you have been in business for a while, you know how long it can take and how difficult it can be to craft truly effective checkout pages that optimize not only number of sales, but also number of products bought and the overall cart total.
Enter SamCart (and other, similar shopping cart softwares). SamCart was designed to help marketers, entrepreneurs and online business owners just like you optimize the checkout process, so that you can sit back and watch as your digital products fly off the shelves and make you money in your sleep.
SamCart has been around since 2013, and has of course only grown in sophistication and popularity since then. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and plenty of high-profile entrepreneurs including Cara Dumaplin, Nicole Walters, Adriene Mishler and Lewis Howes swear by SamCart and are actively using the software to grow their already thriving multi-million dollar businesses. Once you discover what the SamCart software is capable of, it’s easy to understand why.
That’s why, in this review, we will leave no stone unturned. We’ll be be looking at SamCart’s essential features, functions and integrations, as well as the pros and cons of using the software. We’ll also go over the pricing and subscription options, and answer any remaining questions you may be left with in the Q & A near the end. We’ll even bee looking at a lit of viable SamCart alternatives, if you think that SamCart might not be for you.
If this sounds good, then keep on reading.
How SamCart revolutionizes checkout pages
Building sales funnels and checkout pages manually can be quite the time-consuming chore, not to mention how prone to error and personal bias the end result inevitably is.
It doesn’t matter whether you are selling digital or physical products, or even subscription products such as online courses or classes – SamCart makes it so much easier to sell them.
SamCart is often described as a shopping cart software, but it is so much more than that. SamCart comes with number of proven templates, not only for shopping carts, but for sales pages, funnels and pop-ups, too. When you put all of these different elements together in the optimal way, and tweak them to suit the product or service you are selling, selling digital products, services or courses is going to become a walk in the park, so that you can focus on improving and adding to your product catalogue and scaling your business, rather than getting bogged down in manually crafting your funnels and upsells.
Even if you are an experienced marketer who knows a thing or two about crafting funnels, sales pages and pop-ups, there is no chance you are able to do it more effectively than SamCart.
And if you are not experienced, well, signing up for a SamCart membership is the equivalent, and more, of buying years of online marketing experience that you don’t have. Now, that’s an undeniable bargain.
Is SamCart the right shopping cart software for your business?
SamCart is undeniably a powerful and effective piece of kit if you are an affiliate marketer, eCommerce business owner or entrepreneur looking to increase your conversions and sales – and yet, SamCart isn’t going to be an equally good fit for everyone.
If what you are selling online is digital products, including online courses or events, SamCart is going to be an ideal fit.
If, on the other hand, you are selling services, such as for example coaching sessions, it is going to require a little more inventiveness on your part to make your offer fit the format.
SamCart features and functions
Now, it is time for us to go over a summary of SamCart’s many impressive features and functions. Learning more about the different tools and integrations you can expect to discover when you log into your new SamCart account for the first time is going to give you a much clearer idea of whether or not SamCart is the right shopping cart software for you and your business.
Without further ado, let’s dive in.
Integrations
SamCart integrate with a number of different plugins that support its functions and versatility.
SamCart uses Zapier, a third-party tool, to integrate with a large number of marketing apps and services that you might either find helpful or already be using in your business.
When it comes to payment integrations, the options are somewhat limited and only include major platforms, like PayPal and Stripe. If you were hoping to be able to accept cryptocurrency payments, you are going to be disappointed, at least for now. There is every chance that you will be able to accept crypto payments through SamCart in the not too distant future.
One-click upsells
Now, this is a really great feature. If you are not already using upsells in your sales funnel, you might be leaving serious amounts of money on the table every time you make a sale.
The good news about that is that SamCart’s one-click upsell templates can help you fix that, and quickly. SamCart are stating on their website that, once you have set up one-click upsells as part of your sales funnel, you can expect to increase the value of each customer you have by up to 68.1%.
Order bumps
SamCart’s bump offers tool makes cross-sales an equally seamless and effortless part of your sales funnel.
Order bumps, also called bundling, is an effective way of pitching related products or services to the one that the customer has already added to their shopping cart. Let us say, for example, that you are selling an ebook on your website, and the customer has already added it to their shopping cart. The bump offer might be a different book that you have also written, or it might be a related product, such as a course or a seminar that expands on the themes or teachings in the book. As a result, you are able to build up shopping cart sizes and ultimately make bigger sales that increase your individual customer value.
Checkout pages + one-page checkout
SamCart comes with an impressive checkout platform, which essentially a library filled with effective, proven sales funnels that are ready for you to plug and play with – after a bit of tweaking so they suit your specific product or service, of course.
As of this writing, SamCart’s library contains 18 professionally crafted checkout page and shopping cart templates. All of them have been proven to drive high conversion rates. What’s more, they have been developed to be highly mobile responsive, since more and more people are now browsing on their smartphones rather than on laptops or stationary computers.
One really cool detail worth mentioning is that the templates all come with a ‘sand box’ functionality, which allows you to see them in action before you take any of them live.
All in all, the template library is one of SamCart’s best features, since it saves you untold amounts of time and effort – and as we all know, time is money. With SamCart, you don’t need to spend the time it normally takes to build and test your funnels. Instead, you can simply choose the one you want to use from the library of proven options, tweak the style of it (such as the colors and fonts), load your own product into it, launch it, and start seeing results immediately.
You don’t have to worry about the small print either, since all checkout page templates on SamCart come with ready-made testimonials, security reassurances, guarantees, and various other trust elements designed to boost conversions. How practical is that?
SamCart also has a one-page checkout feature worth mentioning here. The one-page checkout feature simply gives you the option of adding multiple different payment options to the same checkout page. It’s always a good idea to give people as many different ways and opportunities to pay you as you possibly can – you’ll see the results of this principle reflected on your bottom line.
Affiliate system
SamCart comes with an effective affiliate system designed to help you promote your products is a breeze. In fact, the SamCart affiliate center is so well crafted that you might find that you hardly have to spend any time and effort promoting your product yourself, once your affiliate feature is up and running!
Recruiting affiliates through SamCart’s affiliate system is by far the best form of marketing – you won’t have to spend anything on ads, and you won’t even have to drive traffic to your own product in order to make sales.
All in all the affiliate center is going to prove a particularly helpful function if you are just starting out and don’t have much of a platform or audience that you can promote your own products and services to.
Subscription saver
Now, here is something truly helpful for small business owners, particularly if what you are selling is a form of subscription service and are charging recurring payments on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.
There are many reasons why a customer might not pay their subscription payments – for example, their credit card might have expired and they forget to update their payment details on your site, or less conscientious people might even cancel their credit cards to avoid paying for subscriptions they have signed up for. Whatever the reason is, though, there is only one solution (Bar taking legal action against your customer, which I am assuming you would rather avoid), and that is to remind them of their obligation.
SamCart’s subscription saver feature allows you to automatically send an email to your customer whenever a payment fails or is declined. In the email, your customer will find a link to where they can quickly and easily update their payment details. If a customer fails to update their card details, even after receiving multiple emails, SamCart automatically cancels their subscription and red lists them so you know who they are.
The subscription saver feature means that you will no longer have to waste any time or effort chasing non-paying customers – with SamCart, it’s all automatically done for you.
A/B testing capability
If you are a marketer, you already know how important it is to split test everything you do. Fortunately, SamCart makes A/B testing quicker and easier than ever before.
For those who may not be in the know, split testing is when you trial more than one different version or option in order to find out what is most effective. Advertising companies do it all of the time, by showing different adverts to different demographics or segments of their audience. The reason why advertising agencies, publishing houses and marketers are constantly split testing is that even a small adjustment or tweak can lead to a big increase in revenue.
Sadly, far too many marketers and online retailers still underestimate the true potential of A/B split testing, and as a result, they are failing to optimize their sales funnels and checkout pages, never realising how much money they might be leaving on the table.
With SamCart, split testing is done for you at the click of a few buttons. You can, for example, run live A/B testing on your site and gauge the results in real time. Some of the things you can do and test out include making changes to the template you are using, try out different guarantees, different testimonials, different upsell features, different payment models and so on. The tracking tools make it easy to see what people respond to better, which is a rather unique ability as far as shopping cart software goes.
SamCart subscription and payment plans
Now that you (hopefully) have gained an overview over the tools and functions that SamCart offers, you are no doubt wanting to know what access to SamCart is going to cost you, and what the different subscription and payment options are.
SamCart offers four different subscription options for you to choose from, as well as a free trial for those who prefer trying before they buy in. As for the paid options, they are called Launch, Grow, Scale and Enterprise, and each of them cater to a different level of business. Needless to say, they each come with a different price tag, too.
Let us take a closer look at each of them, to help you decide which one might be the best fit for your business.
Launch
The SamCart Launch plan is priced at $49/month (or $39/month if you choose an annual subscription). The Launch plan is a great choice if you are just starting out and want to launch your e-business with a stunning one-page website that showcases your products or services.
The Launch plan gives you access to all of SamCart’s core features, 1 admin user seat, all standard features including standard integrations, standard email support and virtual onboarding webinars, plus the Business Success Package which includes flexible customer billing options, dashboard and sales reports, weekly webinars and full access to SamCart University, where you can learn much more about how to build a thriving online business.
Grow
SamCart’s Grow plan costs $99/month (or $79 with an annual subscription) and is aimed at helping you convert more of your visitors into customers and increase the value of each customer and each purchase.
The Grow plan taps you into all the features that come with the Launch plan, and more. With Grow, you get SamCart’s core features, 3 admin user seats, as well as all of the features offered on the Launch plan. In addition to these, you also get enhanced integrations, 1-day email support, a one-on-one launch support call with one of SamCart’s experts, the Profit Acceleration Package, which includes order bump collections and post-purchase upsells, the Marketing Accelerator Package, which includes detailed UTM marketing and tracking reports and a built-in SEO engine, the Conversion Accelerator Package, in which you’ll find multiple customer payment options and custom checkout fields, and finally, the Insight Accelerator Package which entails on-demand executive reports.
Scale
If the Grow plan leaves you wanting more, the Scale plan, priced at $199/month (or $159 if you go the annual subscription route) is the next step up. This plan gives you access to everything SamCart has got, including all of the advanced features you will need for selling at scale.
Specifically, the Scale plan gives you access to all core features, 10 admin user seats, custom CRM and API integrations, priority email support, a dedicated SamCart expert to guide you (This is an extra bonus and only available to those who are on an annual plan), and the Advanced Growth Package which includes cart abandonment conversion, the subscription saver feature, affiliate center, built-in A/B testing capabilities, as well as automated and scheduled executive insight reports.
Enterprise
Finally, for those who are running major enterprises, SamCart offer custom plans to suit any budget and demand.
For Enterprise plan options, reach out to the SamCart customer service team and let them know what you’re after, so they can put together a custom subscription for you, including a custom payment plan.
SamCart pros
You should have gained a rather good overview over what SamCart has to offer, but let’s get explicit. No SamCart review would be complete without an honest look at both the pros and the cons.
We’ll start with the pros.
Easy-to-use platform
Despite its powerful and complex features, SamCart’s user interface is delightfully easy and intuitive to use and to navigate.
As a result, the software is incredibly user friendly and approachable, even for beginners with no setting up websites and sales funnels, let alone programming experience.
The fact that SamCart integrates seamlessly with numerous external marketing tools and apps makes everything even better.
Fine-grained coupon, discount and upsell control
SamCart lets you customize and fine-tune everything from coupons and discounts codes to upsells on your site with a high degree of precision and control. In other words, if you like to micro-manage, you’ll be delighted.
Detailed analytics
SamCart provides its users with detailed analytics, so that you can drive a results-based business and keep improving your conversion rates by making minor tweaks and updates that reflect on your conversion rates, shopping cart sizes and ultimately, on your bottom line.
Great customer support
SamCart comes with a good level of customer support, no matter which plan you are on.
Not only is the email support service fast and expedient, there is also an on-site Help center, a live chat, an extensive FAQ and a Facebook group.
SamCart cons
Most SamCart reviews tend to focus heavily or even exclusively at the pros. In this SamCart review, however, we are also going to talk about the cons. Let’s dive right in.
Not a great fit for services
Although SamCart can be used by those selling services, such as coaching or counselling sessions or live classes of one kind or another, the software isn’t ideally suited for services.
Lacks both design customization and payment options
Unfortunately, SamCart lacks advanced customization option, both when it comes to checkout page design and payment options.
It is best practice to always offer customer multiple payment options to make checking out their online shopping carts as frictionless as possible for them, but as already mentioned, SamCart offers rather limited payment options including PayPal and Stripe, while other major players, including Apple Pay, are left out. You won’t be able to accept payments in cryptocurrency either.
Steep price point
If you are just starting out and only have, say, one digital product in your catalogue so far, you might find SamCart prohibitively expensive.
SamCart Q & A
Still left with some unanswered questions? You might find the answers you are looking for here.
Is SamCart legit?
SamCart is 100% legit.
What is SamCart used for?
SamCart is an online shopping cart software designed to help online marketers, entrepreneurs and retails optimize the checkout process on their websites in order to maximise conversions and sales.
How much is SamCart worth?
The answer to this question is going to be highly individual and dependant on a number of different factors including the quality and appeal of the product or service you have to offer, as well as on how much effort you are able and willing to put in to get your business off the ground.
SamCart equips online entrepreneurs and marketers with the tools and templates they need to craft high-converting checkout pages that maximise conversions and sales, but only you can decide how much that would be worth to you.
Best SamCart alternatives
It should be clear, by now, that SamCart is a solid choice of shopping cart software. Having said that, SamCart is far from the only option. Let’s take a look at some of the alternatives
SamCart vs Kajabi
Kajabi is a comprehensive sales page, checkout page and shopping cart platform developed to help onlline entrepreneurs and markets drive online sales.
Kajabi is specifically geared towards those who are selling services and subscriptions, whether these take the form of courses or coaching sessions. This focus is what distinguishes Kajabi from SamCart and might make it a better choice for online course and service providers.
SamCart vs Clickfunnels
ClickFunnels is a versatile and comprehensive software that lends itself perfectly to just about any business you can think of running.
Wile SamCart focuses heavily on the checkout process, including upselling, bundling and cross-promoting products, Clickfunnels is more broad and includes both checkout templates, sales page templates and email marketing templates.
SamCart vs Shopify
Shopify is very different from SamCart, in that it is a large online platform hosting thousands of individual sellers.
While Shopify can be a good place to start selling your product, it simply doesn’t offer you the same advanced analytics, customisation, upselling and scaling tools that SamCart does. Another significant difference is that with Shopify, you don’t own the platform.
SamCart vs ThriveCart
ThriveCart is a good SamCart alternative for those who are just starting out. ThriveCart offers many of the same features and function, at a smaller cost. With ThriveCart you can create both high-converting cart pages, upsells and affiliate campaigns.
The drawback to this is that ThriveCart lacks the advanced features that SamcCart taps you into.
SamCart vs Teachable
If what you are selling is an online course and you don’t mind it being hosted on a platform that you don’t own, Teachable is a good alternative to SamCart.
SamCart vs Kartra
Kartra is a powerful all-in-one digital marketing, hosting and selling platform and is a good choice for those just starting out.
For those who are more advanced, SamCart has more to offer including more advanced customization options and detailed analytics.
SamCart vs Podia
Podia brands itself as an all-in-one digital storefront and is geared towards the selling and hosting courses, downloadables, webinars and community. No technical skills are required here either, as everything is template based and done-for-you.
Podia bills itself as a more affordable version of SamCart.
SamCart vs WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an e-commerce plugin for WordPress, rather than being a complete solution in and of itself.
This is where SamCart and WooCommerce differ, since SamCart is a complete online sales system which includes customizable checkout pages, one-click upsells and an affiliate center.
SamCart review – conclusion
You’ve made it to the end of this SamCart review, and hopefully, it has provided you with the clarity and the answers you were looking for along the way.
To summarise, SamCart is a rock-solid online shopping cart solution and is a particularly good fit for membership sites, as well as for those selling digital products or online services. In other words, if you sell digital products, including subscription products, you need a software like SamCart to help you maximise the value of each customer you have and ensure that you don’t leave money on the table.
While SamCart is rather pricey and have several lower-cost competitors, including Kartra and WooCommerce and many others, it is also one of the most solid choices of shopping cart software you could possibly make.
If you are still hesitant, you might be heartened to know that SamCart offer a free trial for all of their plans, as well as an iron-clad 30-day money back guarantee. Another way of putting it is that you have nothing to lose and plenty to gain by signing up for SamCart.