ThriveCart vs SureCart – Which is Better?

ThriveCart and SureCart are both popular ecommerce platforms designed to provide digital cart solutions for online businesses.

ThriveCart is a powerful, user-friendly shopping cart and checkout platform that helps online businesses sell digital products, courses, and memberships more effectively.

SureCart is a powerful, easy-to-use ecommerce plugin for WordPress that supports selling physical products, digital downloads, subscriptions, and more with a range of payment methods and customization options.

In this article, we will compare the features, customization options, pricing, and additional features offered by both platforms to help you determine which one is better suited for your online business.

Let’s go!

What is ThriveCart?

ThriveCart is a robust shopping cart platform designed to simplify the process of selling digital products online.

It offers a user-friendly interface, pre-designed templates, and features like dunning, bumps, and upsells to maximize earnings per sale.

While it excels in digital product sales, it may not be ideal for physical products or businesses requiring extensive growth tools like CRM or webinars.

ThriveCart stands out for its ability to create high-converting product sales pages, implement fast sales funnels, manage subscriptions, calculate sales tax, and run affiliate programs seamlessly.

Overall, ThriveCart is a powerful tool for quickly setting up and selling digital products online, making it a valuable asset for entrepreneurs looking to streamline their online sales processes.

Also read: ThriveCart vs Kajabi

Overview of SureCart

SureCart is a modern and robust ecommerce plugin designed to simplify the process of selling digital products online.

It offers a user-friendly interface and a variety of features such as multiple pricing options, shipping integration, and coupon management.

SureCart is particularly suitable for beginners due to its ease of setup and intuitive management.

It also provides a headless approach to improve performance and control over data, making it a powerful and flexible solution for building any type of online store.

Check out: SamCart vs ConvertKit

Platform Dependency

ThriveCart

ThriveCart is a standalone SaaS platform that can be embedded anywhere via a standard script or used entirely on their platform by linking to checkout pages.

It does not rely on any specific platform for its functionality

SureCart

SureCart, on the other hand, is a WordPress-based plugin that uses a “headless” approach to render backend and frontend functionality on your website.

This means that while it is technically SaaS, it requires WordPress to function

Verdict: Due to its standalone SaaS nature, ThriveCart is more versatile and accessible to users without requiring a specific platform like WordPress, Therefore, if platform dependency is a critical factor in your decision, ThriveCart is likely the better choice.

Explore: SamCart Review

Checkout Customization

When it comes to ThriveCart vs SureCart in terms of checkout customization, both platforms offer robust options to tailor the shopping experience to your specific needs.

ThriveCart

ThriveCart offers a more advanced page builder with a wide range of templates and design options, allowing for high-converting checkout pages.

It also features a drag-and-drop interface for customizing checkout pages, providing greater flexibility and customization capabilities.

Additionally, ThriveCart supports multiple checkout types, including multi-step, single-step, sales cart, embeddable, and popup checkouts.

SureCart 

SureCart provides a simple drag-and-drop interface for creating custom checkout pages, but with less customization options compared to ThriveCart.

It utilizes the familiar WordPress block editor, allowing you to easily customize the checkout form to match your brand’s aesthetic and capture essential customer information. Although this enables more detailed customization, it requires the WordPress setup.

Verdict: ThriveCart is likely the better choice due to its more powerful and user-friendly page builder and variety of checkout options. But SureCart remains a solid option for WordPress users looking to customize their checkout.

Read this too: ThriveCart vs Hotmart

Customer Account Management

ThriveCart

This platform offers a hosted customer portal that is branded with ThriveCart’s branding and cannot be removed.

Users access their account by entering their email to receive a temporary one-time link, with the email coming from ThriveCart.

SureCart

SureCart provides a completely customizable dashboard and account management area for customers to access on your own website.

It allows you to create custom dashboards for a more branded and integrated experience.

Verdict: SureCart gives you more control and customization over the customer account management experience by allowing you to create a custom dashboard on your own website. SureCart scores better in customer account management.

Also read: Thrivecart vs Shopify

Ease of Use

ThriveCart

ThriveCart offers a more straightforward and user-friendly interface for creating and managing sales funnels and checkout pages.

It provides a simple drag-and-drop page builder for customizing checkout pages, making it easy to create high-converting checkout experiences.

Additionally, ThriveCart offers a comprehensive knowledge base and support through email, live chat, and a Facebook group for users to connect and share tips.

SureCart

This platform is more complex and requires technical knowledge to set up and manage, especially for users without WordPress experience.

It uses a “headless” plugin to render backend and frontend functionality on the website, which can be more challenging to manage for non-technical users.

In addition, it offers a more customizable dashboard and account management area, but this requires more setup and configuration.

Verdict: ThriveCart’s user-friendly interface and support resources make it the easier choice for most users. However, WordPress users who are comfortable with the platform may find SureCart’s customization options worth the additional setup effort.

Check out: Can You Create A Shop With SamCart?

Subscriptions

1. Subscription Management

• • ThriveCart offers advanced subscription management features, including subscription dunning, user management, and sales tax management. It also provides a robust subscription saver feature that helps prevent subscription cancellations by sending reminders to customers to update their payment details.
  • SureCart provides subscription management features but lacks the advanced features offered by ThriveCart. SureCart’s subscription management is more basic and focused on managing recurring payments.

2. Subscription Saver

• • ThriveCart offers a robust subscription saver feature that helps prevent subscription cancellations by sending reminders to customers to update their payment details. This feature is designed to minimize revenue loss due to expired or declined credit cards.
  • SureCart does not have a specific subscription saver feature. It relies on its basic subscription management features to handle recurring payments.

3. Integration

• • ThriveCart offers seamless integration with various tools and platforms, making it easy to manage subscriptions across different platforms.
  • SureCart integrates with WordPress and other platforms but lacks the extensive integration options offered by ThriveCart.

Verdict: Although ThriveCart stands out for its advanced subscription management features, the platform can be difficult to learn and use, especially for businesses without extensive experience in subscription ecommerce.

SureCart is ideal for businesses that want a simple and easy-to-use subscription management platform with a wide range of features.

Explore: SamCart vs Kartra

Sales Funnel Management

1. Upsells and Downsells

• • ThriveCart offers upsells and downsells in a linear format. There are no conditional upsells in ThriveCart. You can only offer one upsell, then a downsell, then an upsell, and a downsell. You cannot create any sort of logic that says “if customer declines this upsell, offer this one instead.”
  • SureCart is yet to offer upsells and downsells. So, if you need upsells and downsells today, SureCart is not the platform to choose.

2. Order Bumps

• • ThriveCart offers order bumps as one-time purchases only. You do not have the option to sell subscriptions as order bumps.
  • SureCart allows you to create Order Bump Groups to automatically add order bumps to checkout forms based on a simple rules engine: “If product is X, Y, or Z, offer this bump.” SureCart also lets you sell subscriptions as order bumps.

Verdict: Since upsells and downsells are currently unavailable from SureCart, the clear winner in this aspect is ThriveCart.

Read this too: SamCart vs Thinkific

Pricing

ThriveCart

ThriveCart Offers a lifetime pricing model, which means you pay a one-time fee for access to all their features.

The current lifetime pricing offer is $495 for the Lifetime plan and $690 for the Pro plan.

Both plans include unlimited products, upsells, and downsells, as well as integrations with popular payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, and Apple Pay. The Pro Plan features additional benefits. 

SureCart

SureCart offers tiered pricing plans as follows:

1. Launch: This is a free plan that comes with all essential features you need to get started. It provides access to auto payments recovery, cart abandonment and basic email support.
2. Grow: Priced at $29 per month or $19 per month if paid annually, this plan has been designed for stores that are focused on generating more revenue. It offers order bumps, one-click upsells, custom email address and subscription saver.
3. Scale: This plan is priced at $59 per month or $49 per month if billed annually. It provides advanced features such as affiliate platform, unlimited team members, and unlimited cart abandonment for fast-growing businesses.

Verdict: ThriveCart’s lifetime pricing model is more cost-effective for long-term use, but SureCart’s tiered plans provide more flexibility and customization options for businesses with different needs.

Also read: SamCart 30-day Free Trial

Conclusion

Both the platforms are great at what they do.

SureCart offers extensive customization options, robust features like upsells and downsells, and excellent cart abandonment recovery tools.

On the other hand, ThriveCart provides a simpler, out-of-the-box solution that is quick to deploy and focuses on creating high-converting checkout pages.

Take the time to consider your needs and evaluate them on those parameters. You will most likely end up picking the right platform.