Do you plan to sell online, and SamCart is one of the platforms on your radar? If so, it’s essential to know about the platform – how it works, its features, the cost, and more.
SamCart isn’t the only platform you can use, so you must be sure it’s the right platform for your business.
In this post, you’ll find a comprehensive SamCart review to help you make that decision.
What Is SamCart?
SamCart is a platform for anyone who wants to sell anything online. Among other things, it makes it ultra-easy to receive payments.
You can use SamCart as an eCommerce seller, physical product seller, agency, author, entrepreneur, coach & consultant, side hustler, or non-profit agency.
Since its launch, the platform has processed more than 2.2 billion USD in sales from more than 30,000 business users, more than 340,000 sales pages, and close to 10 million products.
Running an online store is easier than ever. SamCart offers easy yet powerful ecommerce tools to help your store flourish in quick time. From sales, marketing, payments and more, SamCart handles it all.
The platform records many users as it’s easy to use. All you have to do is sign up, create your page, publish your page, and stay earning.
However, SamCart has many other built-in features that are invaluable to businesses. The platform has features to help maximize customer value, boost conversions, and, ultimately, run your business with simple tech.
How To Get Started?
SamCart is a premium platform, so the first thing you’ll do is pick a pricing plan. However, you don’t have to pay until after the free trial period.
Signing up for a free trial requires that you enter your payment details. You can only sign up with credit cards, and the platform supports MasterCard, Visa, Discover, and American Express.
Alternatively, you can request a demo if you don’t want to enter your payment details. After completing your sign-up, the website directs you to a welcome screen.
You can set up your store by entering details, including the store name, URL, logo, country, currency, and timezone.
On the next page, you’ll provide your business categorization details. Finally, choose your preferred method of receiving payments, and you’ll arrive at your SamCart dashboard.
Page Builder
With your account activated, the next thing to do is to start building your product pages. The SamCart page builder works efficiently for that.
It’s a drag and drop builder, so it requires no technical knowledge. You can build converting product pages without writing codes.
You first need to add products to your store to use the page builder. Both go hand-in-hand.
You can create products easily from the Products section in the menu tab. The product name, description, pricing type, and price are the details you need to provide.
After creating your product, select the Checkout Design option from the product settings dashboard to access the page builder.
You can choose an empty template and build from scratch or choose an existing template and customize it.
Page Templates
SamCart features a library of pre-designed templates. It saves you time, so you don’t have to build your product pages from scratch every time.
The library features different templates for different product pages. For example, you’ll find checkout templates and product display templates for upsells and others.
The number of templates you can access depends on your pricing plan. Typically, the higher your pricing plan, the more templates you can access.
Running an online store is easier than ever. SamCart offers easy yet powerful ecommerce tools to help your store flourish in quick time. From sales, marketing, payments and more, SamCart handles it all.
You can preview a template from the product settings dashboard by clicking the eye icon on the bottom-left. On the other hand, you can apply it by clicking the tick on the bottom-right.
When you import a template, you can fully customize it with the drag and drop builder. In particular, you must customize it as templates usually come with demo texts and images unrelated to your product.
Custom Domains
As mentioned earlier, you have to enter your store URL when signing up on SamCart. By default, your URL becomes a subdomain on the SamCart domain.
For example, if you enter “myclothstore,” your store URL becomes “myclothstore.samcart.com.” You can make it just “myclothstore.com” by connecting a custom domain.
SamCart makes it easy for users to connect to a custom domain. You can purchase your domain from any registrar and worry less about the technicalities of domain configuration.
You only need to edit the domain DNS records from your registrar’s side and enter SamCart’s IP addresses.
Afterward, add the domain from your SamCart store settings, and you’re done.
Notably, SamCart lets you use a custom domain for all your pages, some specific pages, or just one page.
One-Click Upsells
Upsells are among the easiest ways to increase sales. With SamCart’s one-click upsell, it’s even easier.
The one-click upsells feature is dubbed “SamCart’s most powerful feature” by the platform admins. It’s a simple tool that promises to help double your profits while avoiding the complex work.
You first need to decide on products you want to upsell, then access the Upsells tab from the settings. SamCart lets you create upsells with up to three products.
You can create your upsell by adding products, videos, images, HTML and CSS scripts, and more. As you save changes, you can preview to see how your upsells appear live.
Finally, you have to create a sales funnel to feature the upsells. The platform supports upsells and downsells so you can have it both ways.
Furthermore, using the upsell confirmation option, you can transform one-click upsells into two-click upsells.
A/B Testing
A/B testing, also known as split testing, helps you identify the best product pages. It’s a principal SamCart feature that leads to higher conversions.
When you create a checkout page on SamCart, the platform lets you create one or multiple page variations. You can then compare these different variations and select the best performing one.
Doing this is simple. From a product’s settings page, go to advanced settings and select the A/B option.
You only have to click on “New Variation” and enter a page name to create multiple variations of the main page.
You can then monitor the pages to see how they perform, and the platform recommends at least a hundred views before concluding on the best page.
Reports And Analytics
Reports and analytics are the foundation of understanding whether your business is succeeding. You get a good deal of these with SamCart.
For reports, SamCart features subscription, charges, sales, and traffic reports. For analytics, SamCart features Google Analytics eCommerce and URM parameters tracking.
If you sell on social media — Facebook, in particular — you can access conversions and audience analytics.
Among all, the sales and traffic reports are the most important for understanding your sales performance.
However, the charges report helps you understand what type of payments your customers are making and which were successful and which weren’t.
Running an online store is easier than ever. SamCart offers easy yet powerful ecommerce tools to help your store flourish in quick time. From sales, marketing, payments and more, SamCart handles it all.
When you click on the Reports tab from the SamCart menu, the available options include sales by date, sales by product, and refunded products.
Other options include subscriptions, upsell funnels, charges, and traffic.
Payment Options
The more payment options you feature, the higher the chances of converting your page visitors into buyers.
SamCart supports two main payment options: PayPal and Stripe. Both are widely-used payment options, so there’s a high chance that your customers will have an account with at least one.
Aside from PayPal and Stripe, the platform also supports Authorize.net.
You can also accept credit cards. Similar to signing up, your customers can use credit cards, including MasterCard, Visa, American Express, and Discover.
Furthermore, SamCart lets you accept payment via digital wallets, specifically Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Microsoft Pay.
SamCart natively integrates with all these payment platforms, so adding them to your product pages is effortless.
Coupons & Discounts
Among the many options in the SamCart product settings, you’ll find options to offer your customers coupons and discounts.
Offering juicy discounts and coupons to your customers from time to time helps boost sales and is ideal for rewarding loyal customers.
From the product settings, you first need to enable coupons via the slider before you can add them.
To create coupons, you need to enter a coupon code, description, type, amount, and duration and select the products where you want to apply the coupon.
If you’re selling a subscription product, you can offer coupons and discounts on each subscription or just the first charge.
You can also apply coupons and discounts to specific shipping and payment options to entice customers.
Integrations
What you can do with SamCart isn’t limited to the platform’s native features. You can connect with other platforms as well.
SamCart features not only integrations but also partners. Most of these integrations and partner solutions can help scale your business.
SamCart features about thirty integrations, including email, marketing automation, membership, page builders, and payment providers integration.
Some popular integrations include WordPress, MemberPress, Zapier, Stripe, PayPal, MailChimp, Drip, ConvertKit, and HubSpot.
For partner solutions, you can connect SamCart directly with platforms like Fiverr, Name.com, Arrow, Gravy Solutions, and DotYetti.
Although SamCart is a proprietary platform, it’s still open for improvement suggestions from users. You can contact the admin if you want to become a partner or propose a potential integration.
Mobile Support
Mobile support is one of the areas where SamCart falls short. The platform doesn’t have a mobile app – not for Android and not for iPhone.
Nevertheless, the platform is fully compatible and responsive on mobile browsers. In particular, the admins invested in ensuring that all its sales page templates are mobile-friendly.
When you create a sales page with SamCart – from scratch or with a template – you don’t have to do anything to make it responsive on mobile. All are responsive by default.
Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, SamCart supports mobile payment methods like Google Pay and Apple Pay. For example, your customers who access your sales landing page with an iPhone can quickly pay using Face ID/fingerprint for Apple Pay.
Courses
If you are an online course creator, you’ll appreciate the SamCart courses feature. It’s a solution to help you sell your online courses and other digital products to learners from anywhere.
Like regular products, you have many pre-designed course checkout pages and processes, and you can easily customize them.
You can also access other features like split testing, coupons & discounts and integrate with marketing solutions like Aweber and GetResponse.
Running an online store is easier than ever. SamCart offers easy yet powerful ecommerce tools to help your store flourish in quick time. From sales, marketing, payments and more, SamCart handles it all.
Many popular online course creators use SamCart Courses, including Lewis Howes, Adriene Mishler, Nicole Walters, and Cara Dumaplin.
Using the built-in Digital Product Delivery feature, you can quickly transfer your courses and all their content from a different platform to SamCart.
Security
If you receive payment from others via any platform, it’s critical to ensure that the platform is secure. Well, SamCart is a relatively secure platform, which is why more than 30,000 people use it.
SamCart is certified by multiple regulatory bodies, including GDPR, PCI, and SCA. The certifications protect the data and payment details you and your customers enter on the website.
Furthermore, each sales landing page you create with SamCart comes with built-in SSL and security. Also, each checkout process is protected by the built-in security.
Customer Support
To contact the SamCart customer support team, you either send an email or live chat with an agent.
SamCart is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays only, but you can send a message or initiate a chat 24/7. There’s always someone available to respond. However, the platform has no phone support.
You can get help on your own using the SamCart knowledge base. The knowledge base features articles on getting started, marketplace settings, using the page builder, integrations, reports & analytics, courses, and more.
You can easily find a help article using the search bar at the top of the page, and the articles are well-written and require minimal effort to understand.
Training
Another way via which SamCart helps its users is the free training option. The training primarily teaches you how to build converting product landing pages.
Nevertheless, you can also learn how to double customers’ worth and the best sources to get traffic.
The training has four sections, and each one is more or less a tutorial. They’re concise and yet in-depth. You could learn so much in so little time.
As mentioned earlier, the training is free. It comes at no extra cost, whether you’re on a SamCart subscription or not. You don’t even need a SamCart account to attend the training.
So far, over 71,000 people have completed the SamCart training, most of which attest to its resourcefulness.
SamCart Pricing
SamCart features three pricing plans, which you can pay monthly or annually. You get a 20 percent discount if you pay annually.
The pricing plans include:
- Launch Plan: $49 per month ($39 per month with the annual plan)
- Grow Plan: $99 per month ($79 per month with the annual plan)
- Scale Plan: $199 per month ($159 per month with the annual plan)
You can contact the SamCart sales team to get an exclusive enterprise plan if you’re a more advanced business.
Running an online store is easier than ever. SamCart offers easy yet powerful ecommerce tools to help your store flourish in quick time. From sales, marketing, payments and more, SamCart handles it all.
After paying your subscription, you won’t get to pay any other fee with SamCart. The platform doesn’t even charge transaction fees when you make a sale.
SamCart Pros
- Simple page builder
- Page templates
- Custom domains
- Upsells and downsells
- Reliable analytics and report
- Multiple payment options
- Course solutions
- Split testing
- Secure checkouts
- 24/7 support
SamCart Cons
- No free account
- No mobile app
- Expensive pricing
SamCart Ratings
Ease of Use
From the signup process to setting up your store, adding products, and receiving sales, SamCart is easy to use. The dashboards are intuitive, and you can access most of the essential features from the product dashboard.
For ease of use, SamCart is rated 4.5/5.
Features
Without question, SamCart has all the basic features you need to sell online. If you can’t find a native feature you need, you have many integrations to use.
For features, Samcart is rated 5/5.
Pricing
Pricing is one of the areas where customers have problems with SamCart. The platform has no free plan, and although there’s a free trial, you must enter your credit card details to sign up.
Most users complain of being charged, either because they failed to or because there was a problem cancelling their subscription.
For pricing, SamCart is rated 3/5.
Customer Support
SamCart makes its customer service available 24/7 even though its offices aren’t open 24/7. As a result, you can get support anytime, and many users attest to this.
Furthermore, the support channels – LiveChat and email – are easy to use, and the support team is knowledgeable and professional.
For customer support, SamCart is rated 4.3/5.
Top SamCart Alternatives
If SamCart doesn’t satisfy your business needs, here are some top alternatives you can go for:
1. ThriveCart
Like SamCart, ThriveCart can help you sell anything online. The platform has more users than SamCart at over 210,000.
With ThriveCart, you can create pages from templates, build one-click upsells, access intelligent business insights from reports, split-test pages, and access different payment options.
All the above features are available with SamCart. As a result, you’ll agree that ThriveCart and SamCart have more similarities than differences.
You can opt for ThriveCart if you need a cart-building solution with many integrations. While SamCart supports around 30 integrations, ThriveCart supports more than 45 integrations.
Nevertheless, most of the major integrations on ThriveCart are available on SamCart.
The most apparent difference between both platforms is the pricing model. With SamCart, you pay monthly or annual subscriptions. With ThriveCart, on the other hand, you pay a one-time fee, and you can use the platform for life.
The price is $495, but it can change at any time.
ThriveCart helps you design high converting cart pages within minutes. Get on top of your affiliate & upselling campaigns to grow your business in quick time. Try ThriveCart today!
2. SendOwl
SendOwl is described as the “wise way to sell & deliver your digital goods.” Clearly, it’ll make an ideal SamCart alternative if you sell digital products, like courses, for example.
You can sell e-books, audiobooks, event tickets, software, photography, memberships, and more.
SamCart and SendOwl feature many similar built-in features. You can access flexible payment options, discounts & promo codes, upsells, and analytics & reports with SendOwl.
However, as an exclusive digital product solution, SendOwl features some unique features. These include content dripping, pdf stamping, and code & license key generator.
Like SamCart, SendOwl features subscriptions. However, SendOwl has a major advantage over SamCart as it features a free plan.
You can sign up for the free plan and only pay a 5 percent fee when you make a sale. While SamCart doesn’t collect any transaction fee after you pay a subscription, the SendOwl method is ideal if you prefer a pay-as-you-go model.
3. Gumroad
Gumroad is relatively more popular than SamCart because of its pricing solution. You can signup and use Gumroad without any monthly fee. You only pay when you make sales.
Interestingly, the more sales you make, the less the fee you pay. The Gumroad fee when you hit $1,000 in sales is 7 percent. When you make $100,000, it reduces to 3 percent.
With Gumroad, you can sell anything. It features a flexible page editor to help you quickly build and customize your product pages. You can create discounts and access deep analytics.
Like SamCart, you can host your product pages on Gumroad’s servers with a subdomain. You can also use a custom domain, and connecting one is easy.
Furthermore, Gumroad supports various currencies so that you can reach a global audience. The primarily supported currencies include the USD, Euro, British Pounds, and Chinese Yuan. Gumroad also makes it easy to process VAT.
Conclusion
SamCart has all the features needed to build sales pages for physical and digital products. It’s easy to use and secure, so neither you nor your customers are exposed to any risk.
The major downside to the platform is the pricing model. Nevertheless, its several intuitive features make up for the price.
In conclusion, I will recommend SamCart as a reliable online selling platform for your digital products.
Tom loves to write on technology, e-commerce & internet marketing. I started my first e-commerce company in college, designing and selling t-shirts for my campus bar crawl using print-on-demand. Having successfully established multiple 6 & 7-figure e-commerce businesses (in women’s fashion and hiking gear), I think I can share a tip or 2 to help you succeed.