Have you ever poured your heart and soul into creating an online course, only to find that your checkout process is causing potential students to abandon their purchase?
It’s a soul-crushing experience, one that I’ve personally faced in my journey as an online course creator.
But fear not, because today I want to introduce you to two powerful tools that can revolutionize your courses and checkout experience: SamCart and GoHighLevel.
I will talk about their features, how good they are with course creation and checkout, along with any limitations they have.
Stay with me till the end.
What is GoHighLevel? What Features does it Offer?
GoHighLevel is an all-in-one marketing and sales platform designed to help businesses, agencies, and marketers streamline their operations and grow their customer base.
It offers a comprehensive suite of tools for lead capture, nurturing, and conversion, as well as client management and automation.
Take a look at its features:
- Landing page and funnel builder for creating high-converting web pages
- Lead capture tools like forms, surveys, and calendars
- Multi-channel lead nurturing via email, SMS, voicemail, and social messaging
- CRM for managing contacts, leads, and customers
- Appointment scheduling and payment collection
- Blogging and content creation tools powered by AI
- sAutomated workflows and multi-step campaigns
- White-label branding for agencies
GoHighLevel aims to consolidate all the tools needed to run a digital marketing business under one platform, allowing users to streamline processes, reduce costs, and scale more efficiently.
It is particularly suited for social media marketing agencies, freelancers, and small to medium-sized businesses looking to grow their online presence and revenue.
Also Read: Best SamCart Alternatives
What is SamCart? What are its Top Features?
SamCart is mainly an ecommerce platform focused on increasing sales conversions by optimizing checkout pages and offering innovative features to boost revenue.
It offers features such as:
- Flexible, fast checkout pages that can be deployed anywhere without coding or design skills.
- Upsells, cross-sells, and order bumps to encourage more back-end sales and increase average order value
- Subscription and recurring billing options to maximize lifetime customer value
- Split testing capabilities to methodically optimize checkout pages and sales flows
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SamCart aims to simplify the process of selling digital products online and provide tools to scale up a business efficiently.
It is particularly useful for creators, agencies, and small to medium businesses looking to maximize their ecommerce revenue with a user-friendly, conversion-focused platform.
How Good is GoHighLevel with its Course Creation and Checkout Capabilities?
GoHighLevel does provide robust capabilities for creating and selling online courses.
Let’s dig in.
- GoHighLevel has a built-in “Course Builder” feature that allows users to create, host, and sell courses to their audience. This includes the ability to create custom courses from scratch or use pre-built course blueprints.
- The course creation process in GoHighLevel involves setting up the course details, pricing (one-time or subscription), and integrating with payment processors like Stripe or PayPal to accept payments,
- GoHighLevel offers flexible checkout and payment options, allowing course creators to sell courses either as one-time purchases or recurring subscriptions. Creators can also set up upsells and cross-sells to increase revenue.
- There are no limits on the number of courses that can be created or the number of members/students that can enroll in the courses on the GoHighLevel platform.
- The platform provides additional features like course analytics, community forums, and automation workflows to help course creators manage and market their offerings effectively.
All in all, GoHighLevel is a comprehensive platform that caters well to the needs of online course creators, providing the tools to build, sell, and manage courses all within a single integrated system.
It’s a viable option for those looking to monetize their knowledge and expertise through online courses.
Check Out: SamCart vs Stan Store
How Good is SamCart for Creating Courses and Checkout?
SamCart provides a solid set of features for creating and selling online courses, but it has some areas where it needs to match up with other dedicated course platforms:
Course Creation
- SamCart has a flexible lesson builder that allows adding videos, text, images, files, and more in any order within a lesson.
- It supports multiple content types like videos, PDFs, audio, and downloadable files.
- Lessons can be grouped into units for organizational structure.
- Different access levels can be created to restrict certain lessons to premium tiers.
- However, content has to be added individually per lesson, with no bulk import options.
- It lacks advanced features like quizzes, surveys, certificates, and discussion forums found in dedicated course platforms.
Checkout & Selling
- SamCart excels at checkout pages, with numerous templates, A/B testing, coupons, and conversion boosting tools like upsells and cross-sells.
- It integrates with payment processors like Stripe, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay.
- Courses can be sold as one-time purchases or recurring subscriptions.
- Unlimited courses and students are allowed on all plans.
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Student Experience
- Students access courses through a curriculum page and course player.
- SamCart’s Auto-Enroll technology automatically enrolls students in courses after purchase.
- Course progress tracking and featured courses showcase are available
As you can see, SamCart provides a good set of core features for creating and selling online courses, especially if you are already using it for ecommerce.
But dedicated platforms like Teachable, Thinkific or Kajabi offer more robust course creation tools, student engagement features, and integrations.
SamCart is best suited for creators who prioritize conversion-optimized checkout pages and want to consolidate their ecommerce and course business in one platform.
Check Out: SamCart vs ConvertKit
Are there Any Limitations of Using GoHighlevel for Courses & Checkout?
Even though GoHighLevel has a powerful set of features for creating and selling online courses, there are areas that can be improved.
- Limited Course Creation Features:
- GoHighLevel’s course builder is currently limited to video and image content, with no support for audio or other multimedia formats.
- It only offers 3 pre-designed course themes, which may not provide enough customization options for some course creators.
- Automation-Focused, Not Learning-Focused:
- While GoHighLevel excels at marketing automation, email sequences, and sales funnels, it lacks some of the specialized learning management features found in dedicated course platforms.
- Features like quizzes, certificates, discussion forums, and advanced student engagement tools are not as robust compared to platforms built specifically for online courses.
- Complexity and Learning Curve:
- As an all-in-one platform, GoHighLevel can be overwhelming for users, especially those new to the software, due to the sheer number of features and capabilities.
- The steep learning curve may make it challenging for some course creators to fully leverage GoHighLevel’s course creation and selling tools.
- Lack of Dedicated Course Reporting:
- GoHighLevel does not provide in-depth course-specific analytics and reporting, such as student progress, completion rates, and engagement metrics.
- This makes it harder for course creators to gather data-driven insights to optimize and improve their course offerings.
- Potential Overkill for Simple Course Needs:
- For course creators with basic requirements, GoHighLevel’s comprehensive suite of features and tools may be more than what is needed, resulting in a higher cost and complexity than necessary.
While GoHighLevel offers plenty of useful features for creating and selling online courses, it may not be the best fit for users who prioritize a dedicated, learning-focused course platform with more specialized features and a smoother user experience.
The complexity and learning curve of the platform can also be a drawback for some course creators.
Check Out: SamCart vs Stripe
Are there any Downsides of Using SamCart?
Even SamCart needs to work on a few areas when it comes to course creation and online selling.
Take a look at what is missing.
- Limited Learning and Engagement Tools:
- SamCart Courses only offers basic quiz functionality, with no advanced features like surveys, certificates, or discussion forums.
- There are no community building or student interaction tools, limiting the ability to facilitate discussions and provide a more engaging learning experience.
- Lacks features for live classes, webinars, or one-on-one coaching that are common in dedicated course platforms.
- No Website Builder:
- SamCart does not have a built-in website builder, so you cannot create a full-fledged course website with a homepage, sales pages, blog, etc.
- This means you would need to use a separate platform like WordPress to host your course website, adding complexity and potentially more costs.
- Steep Learning Curve for Purchase Flow Creation:
- Linking different access levels, products, and purchase buttons to create the desired purchase flow can be complicated and challenging, especially for first-time users.
- The process of setting up the course purchase flow is more complex compared to dedicated course platforms.
- Lack of Course Reporting Tools:
- SamCart does not provide any course-specific reporting and analytics, such as completion rates, student progress, or video engagement metrics.
- This makes it difficult to gather data-driven insights to improve your courses over time.
- Higher Pricing Compared to Dedicated Course Platforms:
- SamCart’s pricing, starting at $79/month, might be on a higher-end when compared to other course creation platforms.
- If you only plan to use SamCart for your online courses, you would also need to factor in the costs of additional tools like email marketing and video hosting.
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While SamCart provides a solid ecommerce foundation and checkout optimization features, it lacks some of the specialized course creation, engagement, and reporting tools found in dedicated online course platforms.
This may make it less suitable for users who require a potent and streamlined course management experience.
Also Read: SamCart vs Paypal
Conclusion
It’s a tough one.
GoHighLevel is a feature-rich platform for creating and selling online courses, with its built-in course builder, automation tools, and all-in-one functionality.
However, SamCart remains a strong contender for its conversion-focused checkout experience and potentially lower cost for basic course needs.
Don’t get demotivated by the long lists of their drawbacks. The two platforms are still among the most popular choices for course creation and selling.
Regardless of which one you go with, you are bound to have a great experience. Try one and see it for yourself.
