Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
And in this Thrivecart review and demo, we're going to be taking a look at the top five
reasons, Thrivecart might not be the best solution for you when it comes to completing
your sales funnel software stack.
So timestamp table of contents in the description, along with some other helpful software reviews
of other sales funnel, softwares, like ClickFunnels, Lead Pages, and ThriveThemes.
As we dive in here, it's important to note that ThriveThemes and Thrivecart are two completely
separate companies.
Now, reason number one, Thrivecart might not be a great solution for you and really the
biggest headache and frustration with the software that could have been great is you
only have four options for how your shopping cart actually looks.
Like you have pretty much zero control over the design of the actual shopping cart page.
So your four options, you have two options for how your actual checkout page is going
to look like.
And then you could do a popup emed, or you can do a full embed on your WordPress site.
And that's pretty much it.
You have four options of how it's going to look.
Two of them are for the actual checkout page.
And after that, all you can do is change the text, a couple of the guarantee seals, and
then insert up to two or three testimonials with a couple of pictures.
And that's literally it.
So this is a plus for some people because it keeps you really focused in on what's important,
but I see it as a big downside because if they had just given us a little bit more control,
like let's say, for example, just being able to put a video at the top of the checkout
page, then you could actually use Thrivecart for your entire funnel.
You could have your sales video up top, and then your checkout at the bottom, or just
a button at the bottom that pops up the checkout.
If they just had that feature, Thrivecart would arguably be in the top spot for shopping
cart software, but it doesn't.
So this is something you really need to know before you dive in and pay, which we'll get
to in number five.
And it's just really frustrating that it could have been a great software, but they just
really dropped the ball when it comes to what you can do with the checkout page.
Now, the second reason Thrivecart might not be for you is if you really do want that embed
function, if you already have a funnel set up on WordPress, I'll get to, if you have
a funnel set up on some other piece of software in number three, but if you're on WordPress
and you already have your funnel all set up and you just want someone to be able to click
a button and a popup pops up so they can enter their credit card information, or you want
to just embed the entire checkout process on your site, you can do that as long as you
have an SSL certificate, but the problem is it takes for ever to load.
And we've tested this on multiple sites and we have optimized the crap out of some of
our sales pages, getting it down to less than a second load time.
And it doesn't matter what we do with the eye frame, for the embed or the popup for
the checkout.
It just takes forever to load.
And forever is like five or six seconds.
And for us, in terms of trying to get people to actually give us our credit card information,
that's a really long time between someone saying, “Okay, fine, I'll give you the information”
and then letting all of those objections start coming in the back of their head while they're
just watching that circle waiting for the page to load.
So that's a huge downside.
So if you're planning on looking for a solution to embed onto a WordPress site, I actually
just wouldn't recommend Thrivecart at all.
You're much better off using a WordPress based checkout solution, which we will get to in
this next reason why.
And that is reason number three, it is redundant.
It is extremely redundant.
So this is primarily going to apply.
If you have a membership website.
Now, when it comes to integrations, Thrivecart has a lot of options.
They integrate with MemberMouse, Digital access pass, Wishlist member, Teachable, and the
one we use MemberPress they also integrate with Optimized press, but Optimized press
3.0 is coming out.
So that's pretty much a useless integration.
And the problem though is with all these integrations, with the exception of Wishlist member, they
all already have the ability to accept credit card payments.
So if you are using those memberships solutions, you don't actually, with the exception of
Wishlist member, you don't actually need Thrivecart because you can already accept payments with
a software that you're already paying for.
And then when it comes to a funnel builder solution, if you're using ClickFunnels, Kajabi
or Kartra, you don't need Thrivecart because they already have an upsell sequence.
And if you're using a page builder solution like Lead Pages and even Get Response now,
those both also have a checkout function.
So the number of solutions that you might already be using, it's very likely that if
you have a membership website or if you're already using a funnel builder software, you
already have all of the options that you, you would need to collect payments.
Now, of course, there is an asterisk here and that is the upsell sequence.
And that's really where Thrivecart shines.
If you want to have upsells, that's the only reason if you already have one of these other
solutions that you would purchase Thrivecart.
But again, if you have Kajabi, if you have Kartra, you have ClickFunnels, you already
have upsells.
If you are going to use MemberMouse or you're going to use MemberPress or you're going to
use Digital access pass, those all also allow you to have upsells.
So what I really recommend is making sure that you actually need Thrivecart, given your
other marketing softwares.
If you're just getting started Thrivecart might actually be a good solution because
then you can pick up something like Wishlist member, which is cheaper because it doesn't
have those payment integrations compared to some of the other solutions on this list.
Also, if you're just looking for a free solution for doing upsells, then you can actually check
out ClickBank will allow you to list your products on ClickBank and then use their checkout
process to have upsells and down sells.
You're going to pay hefty fees in terms of your transaction cost, but you're not going
to pay any fees in terms of software.
Now, speaking of upsells, that is reason number four, Thrivecart might not be for you, and
I've already revealed this, but really the power of Thrivecart is in their upsell sequences.
You can have a lot of upsells and down sells.
You can have up to five upsells and five corresponding down sells and what something is really nice
about their upsell sequences and no we're being negative here, but something that is
really nice is you can have upgrades.
So that means if someone takes you up on an upsell, you can actually change the way their
credit card is being charged.
So they're only charged for the upsell versus the upsell plus whatever product or service
that they just purchased.
So if you have some sort of checkout sequence where you want people to upgrade their membership
or upgrade their package, a lot of the other solutions that we've already talked about,
don't actually have this feature.
So if you have a very sequential membership website, it's a great option because then
you don't have to worry about trying to figure out, okay, well, if they purchase membership
site level one, and then I give them an upgrade to level two, they're actually going to wind
up getting two payments per month the price, whatever price of level two is less, whatever
price of level one is, and they're going to have two charges on their account.
And it's just not going to make sense.
So might as well just take away the first charge and charge them full amount for the
discounted price for a level two, that didn't make sense.
I apologize.
It was try my best to, to communicate that particular feature.
But after that, the upsell and down sell sequences for most marketers, especially new business
owners is completely overkill.
Like their, upsell sequence is great.
If you already have a lot of traffic, you already have a lot of products sitting around,
but if you don't already have, you know, three or four products that you want to add to a
checkout sequence, then Thrivecart, just going to be overkill, and you'll be paying a bunch
of extra money for feature you don't actually need.
So if you're new to this whole sales funnel thing, then Thrivecart definitely isn't a
good solution for you.
Now, reason number five Thrivecart might not be a good solution for you comes down to the
deceptively good looking pricing.
So I'm going to explain this business model, because it's one that's been used over and
over again in this kind of niche, budget software is a service category and it's something that
can catch a lot of people off guard.
So right now, if you go to their site or you click on an affiliate link, you're going to
be given, eventually be given some sort of offer that says you have lifetime access for
about six or $700, which sounds awesome until someone explains the actual software as a
service business model.
Because most other competitors, when you look at like a ClickFunnels, Kartra, Kajabi I mean,
even Samcart at nine 999 a month, Thrivecart looks dirt cheap.
But really what you need to do is look at that $700 price point as a year, if not two
years, max two or three years, absolute max of being able to use the software.
So really even though it's a fixed price, you should look at it as you're paying 300
to 200 dollars a year for this solution, because it's not going to be indefinitely supported.
Typically, the way these companies work is they come up with a nice piece of software,
which is what's Thrivecart is we actually still use it.
And then they'll give a lifetime membership to it instead of trying to collect monthly
fees, because they want to avoid something called churn, where there's a certain drop
off of people each month after they've signed up.
So instead of dealing with trying to get people to stay on the platform, they're just going
to charge one big upfront fee.
And after a couple of years, they're going to make a bunch of money.
It's great.
They've given you a really great deal on a piece of software.
You have the fake peace of mind that you have something for free.
And then what they'll turn around and do is number one, they'll either say, “Hey, sorry,
you know, we're closing up shop.
We're not going to be supporting it anymore”.
So you have a year left.
And then it's just not going to work, which is the worst case scenario, but typically
what they do.
And I think this is where Thrivecart is going to go is they'll create a new version an upgraded
version or version three or 4.0 that you have to pay for.
So technically you did get the first version for free for lifetime, but really if you want
it to keep working, or if you want any sort of reasonable updates, you're going to have
to pay a hefty fee again.
So it's very important that when you're looking at that onetime fee, that you just amortize
it over two or three years, max, it's been around for almost four years now.
So it's very, very likely that by the end of 2020 or 2021, there's going to be a new
version and the software is very likely going to be worthless.
So just keep that in mind with the pricing, nothing is lifetime.
So thank you so much for watching.
I sincerely hope you got some value out of this video and it gave you some useful thought
as to whether or not Thrivecart is a good solution for you.
Of course, disclaimer, here, I personally do use Thrivecart for a couple of our sales
funnels and I use it in conjunction with ThriveThemes because ThriveThemes, although it's great
for WordPress sales funnels, it doesn't actually have the critical part of collecting payments
or protecting a membership site.
So go ahead and hit that like button subscribe for more in depth marketing, software reviews
and demos, just like this one.
And until the next keep building the business you love.