Today there are 200 different shopping cart software platforms to sell your products and services. We spent 73 hours comparing the top 50 to find the five best you can use to increase your online sales.
How We Decided
— We look at every tool in the market.
— We shortlist 50 for in-depth research.
— We recommend our top 5 picks.
200
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200
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50
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73
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Researched
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What is the Best Shopping Cart Software?
Here are our top picks for the best shopping cart software to try this year:
- SamCart — best of the best
- ThriveCart — best bang for the buck
- GrooveFunnels — best free alternative
- 10XPRO — best for digital products
- Shopify — best for physical products
Our Verdict — Best Of The Best
SamCart is the ultimate checkout system for online marketers who want an intuitive, yet powerful shopping cart solution.
Get it if you’re selling info products or services, and are looking to offer the smoothest checkout experience to your customers.
If you plan on selling physical products that have lots of variations like sizes and colors, go with Shopify instead.
I recommend you get started for $49/month on the Launch plan, then upgrade to the Scale plan (with affiliate tracking) for $199/month.
(free 14 day trial)
What We Like
Pay What You Want
“Free+shipping” is probably the most used model to boost customer acquisition efforts, these days.
Problem is, free+shipping not only has been a little overused... but sometimes it might be hard to justify. If you’re selling an ebook or a software… you can’t really account for any “shipping and handling” fees.
Introducing… PWYW (pay what you want). You can set up a cart where the customer chooses how much they want to pay for your product.
That makes for a very compelling offer, and it’s more believable than the standard “you just pay for shipping” type of offers.
And of course, you can set up upsells, order bumps, and all the good stuff that brings the average order value (way) up.
You could even use PWYW for physical products as well. You could sell candle wicks on PWYW, then upsell customers with candle wax and essences, for example.
Payment Plans
Offering payment plans to your customers is an amazing “hack” to increase conversions. In fact, according to SamCart’s massive database, you increase conversions by 17.8% when you offer financing.
When you break down your full price into smaller payments, the perceived barrier looks waaay less scary… which leads to more people taking up on your offer.
You could charge $1000 for a product upfront… or 4 x $250, for instance. The latter is way more inviting and is perceived as less of a burden, to most customers.
Even better: since you’re financing your product for your customers, you could charge 4 x $300, for instance. This price is still way more inviting, and you get a nice little boost on the average value you get from each customer.
Amazing Checkout Experience
SamCart has some incredible checkout design capabilities. For example, here is the checkout page for our Greatest Hits Content course with a headline, description, video testimonials and bullet points about the product:
From the customer’s standpoint, SamCart’s checkout pages are intuitive and a breeze to go through.
They’re highly customizable - you can define colors, add custom fields, change the button’s call to action, include guarantees and testimonials, and so on.
You can even A/B test your checkout, split test offers, prices, calls to action, and even the entire page design, to increase your conversions.
What We Don’t Like
It’s A Little Expensive
Don’t get me wrong, they offer a TON of value to their users, so SamCart is absolutely worth every single dime.
But for people getting started, their plans could feel a little out of reach.
Their prices start at $49/month, with the “Launch” plan… but if you want to offer order bumps and upsells, and get advanced reporting… you’ll have to opt for, at least, the Pro plan for $99/month.
At Content Mavericks we use the Scale plan for priority email support, affiliate tracking, and subscription saver (which automatically sends emails to customers whose credit card payments fail for subscription products).
Reports Can Drive You Crazy
When you’re trying to analyze your data and keep jumping from one report to the other, SamCart automatically changes the dates back to their standard option (past 7 days).
Let’s say you’re trying to look at the numbers for one specific product for the past month, so you set up the filters for that.
Once you hop on to a different screen, all of your filters will go back to the standard date filtering. D’oh!
Products’ Price Points
When you create a product inside SamCart, it looks like this:
If you have versions of your product with different price points… you’ll have to create a new product for each single one.
This can get a little messy for people who have lots of options for their products, such as modular services, or selling apparel, for example.
If you’re selling physical products with lots of variants, check out Shopify instead.SamCart Reviews From Experts
Matthew Woodward
Matthew Woodward
Samcart provides everything you need to process transactions in your business. It's easy to use, integrates with everything and is backed with awesome support.
John Pinedo
Freedom Bound Business
SamCart is a web shopping cart for digital marketing professionals. Whether you’re selling physical or digital products, this software has all the tools & whistles to create checkout pages and scale your business.
Ron Stefanski
One Hour Professor
SamCart makes it easy to optimize each of your sales through the use of various payment models, discounts, coupons, and bump offers so you can increase your revenue.
(free 14 day trial)
Our Verdict — Best Bang For The Buck
At $495 - $690 lifetime for “unlimited everything”, ThriveCart is the most affordable way to sell your products and services online, with all the bells and whistles you’ll ever need.
Get it if you want a straightforward tool with an easy-to-use interface, which you own and won’t have to ever pay a monthly subscription for.
If you’re looking to try out a cart solution, but are not ready to make a big one-time investment yet, check out SamCart with their free 14 day trial.
I recommend you get the $690 “Pro” lifetime deal that comes with advanced features, like custom domain, auto tax calculation, and an affiliate center.
($495 - $690 lifetime)
What We Like
No Monthly Fees
ThriveCart offers lifetime pricing. That means, you pay for it once… and own it for life. If you go for the Pro plan, you’ll pay a grand total of $690, at the time I’m writing this.
This is like paying for seven months worth of SamCart’s Pro plan… and never paying for it again.
Not bad!
Own Your Subscriptions
The way ThriveCart handles recurring bills through PayPal is much better than what most of the shopping carts out there do.
ThriveCart acts like an “assistant manager”, and lets PayPal manage the subscription itself.
That means you won’t have to go through the pain of setting up reference transactions… and if you ever need to walk away from ThriveCart, you can take your customers with you, as your transactions are being handled directly with PayPal.
Free Auto Tax Calculation
ThriveCart makes it extra easy for you to collect sales tax from your customers, when needed. In one click, you can enable automatic tax calculations... for free.
Similar services can run at $99/month and up.
Note: This service is not available for every country (only the ones listed below).
What We Don’t Like
No File Hosting
If you need your shopping cart to host things like PDF’s, videos and such… ThriveCart can’t help you.
You could always use WordPress, Dropbox or your email autoresponder for that… but if you want your shopping cart to host and deliver your files for you, go with SamCart instead.
Not The Best For Physical Products
If you’re intending to sell mostly physical products which have lots of variations (like sizes and colors)... then ThriveCart might not be the best option for you.
You could use their custom fields option as a workaround… but that can get messy.
If you want to sell physical products with many variations, check out Shopify instead.
Long Term Sustainability
ThriveCart has been around since 2016, and even though they’ve been around for a while, they’re still selling their software through a one-time fee for “lifetime” access.
The problem with that is… will they be able to support their own business in the long run?
Since they’re not charging a monthly fee, at some point in time their sales might dip to a point where business is no longer profitable… and no longer interesting for the owners.
Freshworks Reviews From Experts
Larry Ludwig
Larry Ludwig
With bump offers, upsells, and down sells, ThriveCart has plenty of methods to increase your sales. The biggest advantage over competing products is their one-time fee.
Gael Breton
Authority Hacker
ThriveCart only has a one-off price but still offers one of the cleanest and bug-free shopping cart experiences out there with regular new features releases.
John Pinedo
Freedom Bound Business
ThriveCart is an excellent shopping cart platform, and thousands of people are using it for their business. For a lifetime price of $495 ($690 for a Pro account), you get what other shopping carts with the same features charge hundreds of dollars every month.
($495 - $690 lifetime)
Our Verdict — Best Free Alternative
GrooveFunnels is the best way for you to start selling your products and services online, for free.
Get it if you’re just starting out, or are looking for a free tool to test some new product ideas and landing pages.
If you need more functionality or are too picky about user experience, and would rather pay a little to have the “premium” alternative, go with SamCart instead.
I recommend you create a free GrooveFunnels account to test GrooveFunnels. If it makes sense and you’re getting value out of it, upgrade to the lifetime account for $1,397 (or 12 payments of $249).
(free lifetime access)
What We Like
Unlimited, Free Lifetime Plan
If you’re looking for a 100% free solution, GrooveFunnels is your best bet.
You can sell unlimited products to unlimited customers, with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited products… you can send free transactional emails and even send one cart recovery email per every abandoned cart.
You’ll be able to create funnels, offer upsells, downsells, order bumps, connect payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal, and manage/export your customer data.
You even get an affiliate program so you can commission others for selling your products!
It’s A Full Toolbox
When you create your account with GrooveFunnels, you get more than just GrooveSell, which is the shopping cart…
You’ll also get a full suite of apps. An entire toolbox that gives you pretty much everything you need in order to run an online business.
One of the coolest apps you also get is GroovePages. It’s a good page builder you can use to create the funnels and websites that will support your sales, plus more.
Proof Widgets
These are little banners that display social proof on your website.
You can set up Proof Widgets to display who has signed up, purchased, or taken other actions on any page (including checkout pages).
It’s only a little nudge, but it might tip over a lot of the “on the fence” people.
What We Don’t Like
They’re “Under Construction”
The shopping cart and other GrooveFunnels apps are still in the final stages of beta, which means they haven’t been fully developed yet.
You might bump into an eventual bug here and there, and you might feel like some things aren’t fully developed, at times.
The Interface Is Clunky
I feel like the interface isn’t all that intuitive.
One example: I created a test product, to see what the checkout looked like. After I went through all the steps, I tried to preview it… but I couldn’t find a link, anywhere.
After a lot of back and forth, I figured out that, for some reason, I didn't have a domain hooked up to the cart.
So I went to create a (free) subdomain… and it still wouldn’t show up for a few hours.
What I’m trying to say is… sometimes, the software can be frustrating. Their beta status becomes evident every now and then.
Having said that, considering that this is a free product, and a beta version of it… I think it’s understandable.
Gotta Pay $1,397 To Upgrade
Let’s say you decide to give GrooveFunnels a shot, and after a while you feel like you might need to go past the free plan’s limitations on some of the apps, such as GroovePages and GrooveVideos.
Bad news… monthly plans are still not available.
You can only acquire the Pro version of GrooveFunnels through their lifetime access pricing. You can choose between paying:
- 1 x $1,397 (one-time payment)
- 4 x $497 ($1988 total)
- 6 x $388 ($2328 total)
- 12 x $249 ($2988 total)
This might feel a bit pricey to people who are looking for a free plan in the first place. If you’re interested in getting a powerful shopping cart for a lifetime fee, I suggest you go with ThriveCart.
GrooveFunnels Reviews From Experts
Aimee Vo
Aimeevo.com
GrooveFunnels is a sales and affiliate software packed with powerful features. The free addition of GroovePages makes it easy to build powerful sales funnels.
(free lifetime access)
Our Verdict — Best For Digital Products
10XPRO is not only a powerful shopping cart, but a full marketing suite. With its easy-to-use drag and drop page builder you can create full-blown marketing campaigns. This power tool is the choice for the most savvy online marketers today (both beginners and pros).
Get 10XPRO if you want the best out-of-the-box experience, a quick setup, simple pricing, and you’re not super techy. You’ll have fully working checkout pages, landing pages, sales pages, and entire marketing campaigns in no time.
If you plan on only setting up one simple shopping cart to get yourself a few sales, try something simpler like GrooveFunnels to start with.
I recommend you get started with the 30 day trial for $1, then go on the $197 monthly plan. When you get the hang of it and it’s making you money, upgrade to the yearly plan for $1,799 (and save $565 over a full year).
(30 day trial for $1)
What We Like
Pre-Fill Order Forms
10XPRO order pages have a special feature that allows you to pre-fill order forms with a user’s details from your email marketing software.
With this, users land on a checkout page with their first name, last name and email address already prefilled… for a smoother checkout experience.
Advanced Ecommerce Tracking
This is somewhat advanced, but if you’re not techy, you can always hire a developer to help you set it up. In order to set up ecommerce tracking, you can add some of 10XPRO’s special tracking snippets to your thank you page.
With these snippets you can push 9 different data sets back to Facebook ads and Google Analytics, in order to optimize your ads like a pro.
For the data-driven marketer, this will be an incredible feature.
Deploy Full Marketing Campaigns With One Click
With 10XPRO you can deploy full funnel marketing campaigns (i.e. a series of landing pages designed around a specific goal) that are proven to convert, in a single click.
This will help you create marketing assets that increase conversions on your products.
John Lint (10XPRO’s founder) makes sure every landing page template gets battle-tested in multiple markets for conversions, before getting added to 10XPRO’s campaign library (pictured below).
Here are some of the full funnel marketing campaigns you can instantly add:
- Your Website — to quickly setup your own brand website
- List Builder — to grow your email list
- Quick Sale — to sell your courses
- Live Sale — to get a burst of sales during a limited time
- Self-Liquidating Offer — to sell a low-ticket offer, then two 1-click upsells
- Book Funnel — to sell your book
- Membership Site — to get more membership site sales
- And much, much more...
If you want to run any of these marketing campaigns in your business, then 10XPRO has a campaign for it with all the right pages pre-created.
The best part:
You’ll be ready to accept payments, offer 1-click upsells, downsells, offer bumps, and all the good stuff straight from your landing pages.
What We Don’t Like
Old School Design
This is not the first time I’ve said this about 10XPRO, and it might be mostly nitpicking… but some of the templates and checkout page designs feel a little dated.
For example, this checkout page template has everything you need to convert sales... but the general look, fonts and trust icons could use an upgrade to look more modern.
Most of this can be easily modded out. You can tweak this page to reflect your own brand colors and custom graphics, but it does seem that they focused their resources on functionality at the expense of form.
Although, I believe we can agree that’s not the most terrible thing.
No Entry-Level Pricing
As much as I love the simplicity of their pricing model, it would be nice to have a beginner-friendly, entry-level plan, with more friendly pricing for new entrepreneurs who haven’t made their first $1,000/mo online yet.
For those people, it can become really hard to justify a $197 USD/mo investment.
Granted, 10XPRO replaces enough tools to more than compensate for its price, IF, and this is a big if, you’re already using or planning to use the full suite of tools.
If you don’t plan to use other tools like the landing page builder, or the membership area... or if you don’t yet make $1,000/month online... you may want to set a goal for yourself to really buckle down during the first 30 day $1 trial period.
Read our case study on how to make $100,000 from one blog post, and try to grow your online business to $1,000/mo so you can fund your ongoing investment in 10XPRO.
Access Delay
Once you become a customer, you don’t really get instant access to the platform. You’ll be taken to a page where you have to click on a link to activate your license.
Then, they’ll set up your access and inform you through email.
Granted, it only took about half an hour… but that lack of instant gratification could be a bit of a bummer for some, especially when you first buy into a new software.
10XPRO Reviews From Experts
Angela Henderson
Angela Henderson Consulting
10XPRO welcomes creativity and originality. While they do have templates available, they also give you free rein to customize to your heart’s content. This means that just because you use 10XPRO, doesn’t mean all of your marketing strategies will look identical to everyone else’s.
Stevie Says Social
Over time, I’ve been able to start off small, and build a growing empire inside of 10XPRO. All of their funnels are drag and drop, all of the tech is sewn together for you, and as you grow it grows with you. It’s the most advanced software out there, but it’s simple and easy too.
(30 day trial for $1)
Our Verdict — Best For Physical Products
Shopify is the “gold standard” for ecommerce, these days. They offer the quickest and easiest way to start selling physical products online.
Get it if you’re selling lots of physical products, with many variations, such as sizes and colors.
If you’re going to be selling mostly info products or services, go with SamCart instead.
I recommend you get started with the Basic Shopify plan ($29/month), then upgrade to the standard Shopify plan ($79/month) to get detailed reporting features.
(free 14 day trial)
What We Like
Abandoned Checkout Recovery
All of Shopify’s plans come with an auto “abandoned checkout saving” function.
This helps you recover a lot of customers who entered their email address on the checkout page, but may not have had the chance to complete an order, for one reason or another.
Since the native checkout recovery can be a little limiting, you can install an app that will do a better job at it, such as “Abandonment Protector”.
Shopify App Store
Shopify is badass enough on its own, but their app store, which features both free and paid options, allows you to take functionality pretty much anywhere you’d like.
There are over 5,800 apps which allow your Shopify store to:
- Have a drag-n-drop page builder.
- Offer multi-currency options.
- Recover abandoned carts.
- Integrate third-party software, such as accounting software.
And so, so much more:
Shipping Options
Shopify is super flexible with setting up your shipping rates. You can set up your shipping with:
- Free shipping
- Flat shipping rates
- Weight-based rates
- Price-based rates
Or you can have live, real-time calculation of shipping rates. This is not available in every country, but if you’re in the US, Canada or Australia, check out their “Shopify Shipping” program.
On top of that, you can create “shipping zones” to set different shipping rules for different countries, states, or specific geographic areas.
What We Don’t Like
Expensive Custom Report Builder
The basic plan ($29/month) only has basic reporting functionality. If you’d like to go deeper into the data to figure out how to extract more value out of your store visitors, you need to at least have the “Shopify” plan ($79/month).
In order to have access to their “custom report builder”, you’ll need the “Advanced Shopify” plan ($299/month).
You could always use third-party reporting apps to help you extract more info, without having to commit to the higher plans, too.
Blogging Capabilities
Maybe you’re thinking “I wanna get into ecommerce to sell, not to blog!”... but putting out great content not only helps you rank better on Google and scale your organic traffic…
It also helps move people along their buying journey faster.
With the right content strategy, you can turn visitors into leads, and leads into buyers like a sniper, but Shopify’s blogging solution is really, really basic and clunky.
If you’re used to the power of WordPress, for instance… you’ll cringe a bit every time you have to write a new blog post on your Shopify store.
Shopify Payments Availability
Shopify offers their own payment gateway solution, which charges a fee on every transaction (up to 30 cents + 2.9% per transaction).
But if you decide to go with a third party payment gateway for your transactions… Shopify will still charge you a transaction fee between 0.5% and 2%, depending on your plan.
Since a lot of competitors offer 100% free integrations, charging up to 2% for a purchase that they didn’t even transact feels a little abusive, in my humble opinion.
ActiveCampaign Reviews From Experts
Josep Garcia
WebsiteToolTester
Shopify offers you a platform that makes selling not only easy but also provides the tools to improve your sales.An excellent solution both for ambitious beginners and professionals.
Lucy Carney
Website Build Expert
Shopify is the best ecommerce platform on the market today. It’s designed to help people build their own, scalable online store with hundreds of built-in features, and tons of apps.
(free 14 day trial)
Top 10 Shopping Cart Software Questions
What Is Shopping Cart Software?
Shopping cart software is what allows your visitors to purchase your products and services online from your website. It sends the customer information to the merchant, payment processors and other parties so you can get paid. Advanced shopping carts can help you sell recurring memberships, recover abandoned carts, integrate with third-party software, and more.
What Is The Best Shopping Cart Software?
The best shopping cart software is SamCart. SamCart gives you everything you need to sell anything online, starting at $49/month. If you need to sell physical products with lots of variations, like size and colors, choose Shopify instead.
What Is The Cheapest Shopping Cart Software?
The cheapest shopping cart software is E-junkie. For $5 USD per month, you can sell up to 10 products, with unlimited sales and unlimited product downloads. We recommend ThriveCart if you want the cheapest and best shopping cart.
What Is The Best Free Shopping Cart Software?
The best free shopping cart software is GrooveFunnels. With GrooveFunnels you can sell unlimited products to unlimited customers, with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited products 100% free. You can also send emails to your customers for free, and one cart recovery email per every abandoned cart.
How Do I Choose The Best Shopping Cart Software?
The five most important factors you should consider when choosing the best shopping cart software are:
- Ease Of Use - if you don’t have a dedicated developer, is the software simple to set up and use?
- Limits - how many products do you have? How many transactions do you process every month?
- Integrations - can you share sales information with third-party software, such as QuickBooks and your email autoresponder, for example?
- Analytics & Reporting - can you deep dive into your sales data, in order to gather sales intelligence?
- Payment Gateways - do you need to sell in multiple currencies? Want to get paid with Bitcoin? Make sure your shopping cart offers what you need.
What Is The Best Ecommerce Software?
The best ecommerce software is Shopify. Shopify is the “gold standard” for ecommerce, these days. They offer the quickest and easiest way to start selling physical products online.
If you’re selling lots of physical products, or physical products that have many variations, such as sizes and colors… Shopify is your best bet.
Is Shopify A Shopping Cart?
Yes, Shopify is a shopping cart… but it’s not only a shopping cart. Shopify is an entire ecommerce suite, and one of the functionalities that comes with it is a powerful shopping cart, which allows you to sell products to people all over the world, in pretty much any currency.
What’s Better Than Shopify?
The best Shopify alternatives are:
- SamCart — best of the best
- ThriveCart — best bang for the buck
- GrooveFunnels — best free alternative
- 10XPRO — best for digital products
- WooCommerce — best for WordPress users
Does Facebook Have A Shopping Cart?
Yes, Facebook has a shopping cart with “Facebook Shops”. Facebook Shops allow businesses to set up an online store that customers can access on both Facebook and Instagram.
Does PayPal Have A Shopping Cart?
Yes, PayPal has a shopping cart with it’s “PayPal Checkout” feature, which allows customers to purchase your products straight from your website. It can get a bit technical, and you’ll need a developer if you want a fully customized integration.
Top 50 Shopping Cart Software We Considered
The Content Mavericks editorial team researched 200 different shopping cart softwares based on customer reviews, expert reviews, ease of use, affordability, and features. We then chose a shorter list for in-depth research and testing before finalizing our top picks. These are the products we considered that ultimately didn't make our top 5.
1. Gumroad
2. 1ShoppingCart
3. X-Cart
4. PrestaShop
5. Square Ecommerce
6. Wix Ecommerce
7. OpenCart
8. Ecwid
9. Zen Cart
10. Storbie
11. 3dcart
12. WooCommerce
13. SimpleCart
14. E-junkie
15. Selz
16. plug&paid
17. LeadCart
18. Snipcart
19. CubeCart
20. PayMotion
21. ShopSite
22. SmartCart
23. VevoCart
24. CS-Cart
25. Spree Commerce
26. ClickFunnels
27. Kajabi
28. Chargebee
29. Kartra
30. Podia
31. HighLevel
32. PayKickStart
33. SendOwl
34. EasyStore
35. BigCommerce
36. Facebook Shops
37. Constant Contact
38. Big Cartel
39. Shopaccino
40. AspDotNetStorefront
41. osCommerce
42. PinnacleCart
43. Square Online
44. Magento
45. HikaShop
46. ProductCart
47. EasyStoreCreator
48. AbanteCart
49. UltraCart
50. Cartweaver
Top 5 Shopping Cart Software — Summary
Here are our top picks for the best shopping cart software:
- 1ST PLACE: SamCart — best of the best
- 2ND PLACE: ThriveCart — best bang for the buck
- 3RD PLACE: GrooveFunnels — best free alternative
- BEST FOR DIGITAL PRODUCTS: 10XPRO
- BEST FOR PHYSICAL PRODUCTS : Shopify
