Samcart vs Thinkific: The Better Selling Platform

There are so many online platforms that help your marketing and development need online learning materials and products.

To give you an easier time, we picked two of the best out there: SamCart vs. Thinkific.

But which one would you go to for your marketing needs?

In this article, we’re going to talk about the difference and uniqueness of the two platforms so that you can come up with a final decision.

What’s SamCart?

Samcart is an online digital eCommerce platform for businesses that wish to sell their products online. These products can vary from DIFFERENT CATEGORIES such as:

• Clothing Apparels
• Books
• Online Courses
• Coaching
• Consulting

If you’re looking to sell multiple products to your clients, SamCart can be a great platform to enable you to do so.

It’s one of the many platforms that offer various user-friendly features and processes for purchasing your product.

How to Get Started with SamCart?

It’s pretty simple. Just follow their 4-step procedure:

• Sign up for an account (email & password only)
• Adjust your company settings (fill out your company information)
• Connect with your preferred payment processor (link your payment system to a gateway)
• Set up a list and page for your items for sale (Set up your store pages)
• Promote your products through their marketing tools!

It’s as easy as that.

It’s straightforward and quick to follow; afterward, your business will go online, and time to wait for people to start purchasing products!

Overview of SamCart’s Unique Features

If you’re looking for a great eCommerce site, it should have an accessible approach for people and offer convenience from purchasing to refunds.

Does SamCart have those? Let’s take a closer look.

Payment Gateways

ONLY TWO payment partners are available with SamCart (Striped and Paypal), limiting your payment options and accessibility.

Unfortunately, Google, Apple, and Crypto are UNAVAILABLE for SamCart for your customers.

This limits the payment services for each user, especially when each location has a specific gateway & checkout process needed.

Luckily, Samcart has several payment alternatives you can use.

Payment Options

SamCart may only have two gateways available for payments, but there are other alternatives for checking out your items. Some of them are:

• Free or paid trials
• Monthly subscription or yearly plans
• Capable of accepting 8 types of currencies for your items
• One-time or ongoing membership payments

These alternatives don’t hinder SamCart’s ability to give a client a BETTER EXPERIENCE checkout procedure for your products, thus making it almost unrivaled with its competitors.

Unique Checkout Templates

Who knew there could be templates for Checkout pages?

This is a GREAT FEATURE for eCommerce platforms as it could be the determining factor of a customer’s decision to purchase or not.

Checkout pages should be simple, creative, and user-friendly to have a great checkout process experience.

SamCart has a wide array of design templates for your checkout pages. These can save up some valuable time on designing a new one for effective checkout pages.

SamCart lets you have worry-free checkout pages for increased bounced rates, conversions, and purchases.

Cart Designs as Well?

Surprisingly, SamCart has also designed your cart designs and layout as well.

Similar to check-out designs, your Add-to-Cart layout is also another important detail that needs attention. SamCart’s design adds that finishing touch before your customer purchases.

They offer various ranges to choose from, such as pop-ups or ads, to fill in every checklist of what a customer will expect on their purchase.

Drag-and-Drop Editor

Another unique feature SamCart has is its drag-and-drop editor option. You can design your website easily with fewer clicks and increased movement.

This also applies to clients who have started shopping.

They can easily pick any item they want with just a few simple clicks and immediately proceed to the checkout process. 

It makes the experience BETTER with less-hassle and increased add-to-cart items.

Split-Comparing Availability

When looking for an eCommerce platform, you must find one that has A/B experiment services.

SamCart offers A/B testing between the two choices. You SHOULD identify the requirements needed to make your purchasing experience better than before.

How to access it? It’s as simple as a checkout.

Go to the advanced tab in your account and assign a name to the variation test. After the variation, you have the choice to modify it with your preference.

Order Bump

Order bumps are elements that add value to your customer’s purchase by bumping a similar and related order to their initial one.

This will eventually increase your earnings and give your audience what they need and want with order bumps.

To access this, go to the Upsells tab in your account setting. But before you can place a bump, you need requirements such as your item to be listed.

Bump orders will show IMMEDIATELY after being added to your account. You can also edit the rate, but it requires a MORE COMPLICATED step.

Upsells

Similar to order bumping, upselling will also give the person’s item of interest a bigger value.

Create more personalized and engaging content such as videos, messages, and promos to increase your revenue and conversions. You also give your audience their needs and wants.

Now that’s what you call a WIN-WIN!

To access it in SamCart, go to the Upsell Dashboard in your account, and pick an item, create a copy, add a video, or any type of content that people would like to see on your item page.

Discounts and Coupons

Everybody loves discounts and coupons on their eCommerce store, plus it’s beneficial for your business. It increases your sales funnels and conversion rates whenever a person buys your product.

It’s a GREAT WAY to reward reoccurring and loyal customers in your store and give them the appreciation they need.

Making coupons and discounts on Samcart is easy. Just direct your customers where the coupons are already applied to.

When creating coupons, you can modify their:

• Duration or valid period
• Flat-rate or percentage off
• And the amount of the coupon (how many times can it be used)

Free Trials

Free trials are one of the best methods to have customers’ experience your business as a whole.

They get to try out your products and experience them WITHOUT any hassle of filling out payment plans, subscription payments, and account sign-ups.

This is especially effective when your products are courses and interactive lessons.

They’ll appreciate this and remember to go back to your store.

Email Marketing Integration

Marketing initiatives are one of the pillars of your e-commerce store’s success. Fortunately, Samcart has marketing integration tools to help you in the field.

Samcart has partnered up with marketing services such as Mailchimp, Drip, iContact. These give you the integrations you need to keep your clients updated and satisfied.

Customer Support Excellence

Whenever you need help, you can trust the support team of SamCart. They have a variety of choices to help you with your subscription and other concerns.

These include:

• Email Support
• Live-chat service
• Peer-to-peer Facebook chat
• Directly to their assistance center

If you’re stuck navigating their site, you can look for an article in their blog section to lend you a helping hand.

The articles consist of how-to videos and images that will help navigate their page sections.

Marketing Program Integrations

Samcart has partnered up with marketing integration services such as:

• Hubspot
• Intercom
• Active Campaign
• Infusionsoft

They provide you the marketing tools you need to launch your products, content, and store pages.

Additionally, it has available Zapier integration settings to make your processes flow smoothly through automation.

Zapier can easily connect one app (Google Mail) to Samcart for automated content sent to your clients.

Built-In Affiliate Center

One of the most effective and fastest marketing strategies to promote your product is to let bloggers, influencers, and affiliates promote your content & products to their audience.

In the premium strategy of SamCart, you will have access to a built-in affiliate center for you to manage bloggers or organizations to market your products for you.

Accurate Data Tracking Features

Samcart makes it easier for you to plan your next campaign or product with their accurate analytical tracking tools.

Track and identify keywords, relevant statistics, campaigns, pain points, and images that offer you the best results and revenue to develop new ones 101% more successful than before.

Let’s Summarize the Benefits & Disadvantages of Samcart

As you can see, there are TONS of benefits that you can get when using Samcart as your main selling site. Of course, it also has its disadvantages as an e-Commerce site.

Now, let’s summarize each advantage and disadvantage so that you can accurately decide on picking SamCart for your selling needs.

Now, What Is Thinkific?

Similar to Samcart and Teachable, this is another e-Commerce site that lets you sell your products online.

The only difference is it focuses on selling online materials to the general population INSTEAD of multiple product types.

We’re going to look at how this LMS site stands as the primary educational e-Commerce site.

User Interface

The user interface is one of the key factors to make websites stand out.

This LMS has the content choices you need to make a great site for selling your business.

You can organize structures and formats of your site easily, plus it gives you the choice of multiple designs and layouts to choose from.

It has its own drag-and-drop element to make things easier for you—NO NEED for any advanced knowledge on front-end coding such as HTML & CSS.

A great addition to the site is a live streaming service on top of your multi-media files.

This way, you can answer questions IN REAL-TIME through video channels like Youtube, Zoom, and other live streaming sites. 

Student Management

Your LMS site should be able to provide your students and professors the community they need – a classroom they can have conversations in.

This site offers a community-building option for students and teachers to simulate classroom sessions within the LMS site.

You can hold discussions and have your students help each other, just like in a classroom.

Marketing Integration

You can also utilize Zapier integration on the site. No matter which plans you get, you’ll have access to Zapier.

Zapier can come in handy when you’re looking for multiple marketing services sites to help promote and boost your campaigns on your educational site.

With Zapier, your students can get notified on the fly with emails about your available course, discounts, and even coupons about your materials.

What Are Its Benefits and Disadvantages

Even though it’s one of the best learning management sites out there, it still has its cons on being one. Let’s weigh its benefits and disadvantages should you decide to get it.

Is Kajabi a Good Alternative?

User Interface

The LMS site has its own drag tool for easy use and content structuring. Graphic designers will definitely love this benefit.

It also doesn’t require coding knowledge such as HTML & CSS as both sites have easy and accessible web page creators.

You also have an abundant list of design and layout choices, giving you many options and creative freedom.

You can pick from a modern and minimalistic design to a simple yet elegant theme for your web page.

These themes are designed to make the experience for your student clear and visible in following instructions and guidelines.

Marketing Integration

Kajabi also boasts an efficient and effective email marketing integration section.

This LMS site uses its OWN integrated marketing tool instead of third-party marketing support for your content needs.

You get a lot of possibilities in the personalization and customization of email content.

Your students will appreciate your engaging and light-hearted emails and updates amidst the stress of classes.

What to Pick? Samcart vs. Thinkific

Now we’ve seen the difference between Samcart vs. Thinkific, and now it’s time to choose what’s the best ecommerce platform for your business.

The verdict? IT DEPENDS on your business model. They both are unique in their own way.

Each has its own set of interfaces and perks designed to fit the purpose of its goal and mission of serving its clients.

Why Choose SamCart?

It acts as a GENERAL selling site for products that you have within your business.

There are multiple options available to customize your site as it serves as a general area for selling items of different categories.

• It has shopping characteristics, such as discounts & coupons, to make each purchase more valued than before.
• Payment alternatives to compensate for lack of payment gateway
• It also comes in with designs to further amplify the shopping experience to the maximum. This includes the shopping cart, checkout section, and payment tab.
• Partnered with multiple marketing sites to make email content updates visible and engaging for people to purchase again.

Why Choose Thinkific?

Simply put, it is best suited for school experiences.

• It primarily focuses on promoting online educational materials and sources for students and teachers who need information and knowledge.
• Offering additional choices to developing your website and content with the simple and basic steps, no coding experience required, for your students to enjoy and appreciate while studying
• The layout & themes are designed to be visually appealing for students, preferring minimalistic and sleek rather than explosive and big.
• It has its own unique characteristic of having live-streaming system integration to make things easier for students.
• It lets you answer your students’ questions in real-time, offering 100% accurate and on-time answers for their projects.
• Simple web design control to make it easier for you to structure and organize your site content

Conclusion

Here’s the thing. Both are great choices when picking one to sell content and products for.

They have great characteristics to help you market and sell items to preferred customers for companies.

Your business model will ultimately decide your preferred site.

• If you’re looking to partake in an e-Commerce business, Samcart is best suited for your needs.
• If you’re dedicated to giving online educational content to students and teachers, Thinkific might be the choice for you.

We hope we helped you decide on which you will pick as your e-commerce site with this article.

If you have an article you would like to share about the two platforms’ differences, please do so. These articles will also help other users in deciding the best site for their business.