Best ThriveCart alternatives in 2026

For years ThriveCart was the easy answer for creators: a good checkout with order bumps and one-click upsells, sold once, for life. That second part is what changed. In 2026 ThriveCart moved new customers to monthly and yearly plans, and its own blog explains why: people wanted to try it before paying for a lifetime license. A lifetime Standard license is still for sale, but the tool is now a subscription decision for most new buyers, and that is when people start comparing.

I spent nine years as CTO of a direct-response company, where I built our checkout with multi-MID routing, the funnel system and the attribution behind it. The lesson I took from that job is that a cart is never just a cart. "Sales that didn't reach the CRM. Recovery calls that didn't fire. Postbacks that broke when URLs changed." Every one of those started as a small gap between the checkout and the tools around it. So I read ThriveCart alternatives less as "which checkout looks best" and more as "what happens to the order after the card goes through".

Why people look for a ThriveCart alternative

Some reasons come straight from ThriveCart's own pages. Others are about fit. The common ones:

• The pricing model changed. New accounts now pay $47 a month for Standard or $87 for Pro+ (less on yearly billing). Pro+ features on a lifetime account cost $790 up front and then $295 a year from year two. If you bought ThriveCart because it was a one-time cost, the math is different now.
• A/B tests stop at the checkout. ThriveCart's help center says its tests are "only on hosted checkout products as we cannot optimize third party pages". If your sales page, presell or upsell page is where the money is decided, you can't test it there.
• The useful extras are on Pro+. Standard includes one order bump. Multiple bumps, subscription dunning and the affiliate center with JV contracts are Pro+ features.
• Processor changes. Authorize.net is supported "in maintenance mode only", and ThriveCart is moving everyone to Stripe Connect+. From 8 October 2026, payments through its legacy Stripe integrations carry a 0.5% external payment integration fee. Stripe Connect+ stays at 0%.
• You outgrew the cart. Paid traffic, several merchant accounts (MIDs), a call center or a CRM with pipelines are jobs ThriveCart was never built to do.

None of that makes ThriveCart a bad tool. It makes it a tool with a shape, and the question is whether your business still fits it.

The best ThriveCart alternatives at a glance

Starting prices are monthly, on monthly billing, from each vendor's pricing page on 29 September 2026. Most are cheaper on yearly billing.

How we picked

We didn't run a lab test, and we don't give star ratings. We compared each tool on its public pricing page, feature pages and help center on 29 September 2026, against the jobs a ThriveCart user actually hands to a cart:

1. The checkout itself. Your own domain, the processors you already use, subscriptions and payment plans.
2. Order value. How many order bumps, whether upsells are one-click (charged to the saved card without a second form), and which plan they're on.
3. Affiliates. Whether there's a built-in affiliate center, on which plan, and whether it pays affiliates for you.
4. Testing. What can be split tested: only the checkout, or the pages before and after it too.
5. Cost over time. Monthly price, transaction or platform fees, and whether a lifetime option exists.

When I compare carts, the row I read first is order value. Anyone can take a payment. Whether the tool helps you earn more from the same buyer is what separates them.

The eight alternatives, one by one

A disclosure first: we make ElasticFunnels, and we list it first because it is our site. We've tried to be as fair to the others as we'd want them to be to us. If something here is out of date, email [email protected] and we'll fix it.

1. ElasticFunnels: best for paid traffic

I built ElasticFunnels for the way we used to sell, so read this entry knowing that. It covers the whole order path: the presell or VSL (video sales letter), the checkout, the bumps and upsells after it, and the report that ties each sale to its ad. Where ThriveCart tests the checkout, ElasticFunnels tests any page, and it serves every variant under the URL the ad or affiliate link already uses, so changing a test never breaks a link.

Best for: vendors and media buyers running paid traffic to their own offers, where every test and every declined card costs money.

Standout features:

• Split tests on any page, presell to upsell, under one URL.
• A custom checkout on Stripe, PayPal or NMI, with order bumps and one-click upsells and downsells that charge the saved card on Stripe, NMI and PayPal.
• MID routing for sellers with several NMI merchant accounts: orders split by weight, filtered by card brand, product and amount, with daily and monthly caps and a per-MID sales, revenue and refunds report.
• Subscriptions with dunning, retention offers and intro-price steps.
• A built-in affiliate program: commission groups, creatives, payouts and a postback per affiliate.
• Courses and a passwordless members area, a CRM with custom pipelines and a call center.
• An AI page builder that builds any page you describe, and a page cloner that turns a URL into an editable page.

Pricing: Starter is $97 a month, Growth $197 and Scale $497. Every feature is on every plan; plans differ by visits, brands and other usage limits. There is a 0.5% fee on orders taken through the EF-hosted checkout, and none on sales through external platforms. 14-day free trial, no free plan and no lifetime deal. Full details on the pricing page.

Pros: tests the pages ThriveCart can't; bumps, upsells, affiliates and dunning without a plan upgrade; built for several merchant accounts.

Cons: costs more a month than ThriveCart, and there's no lifetime license. Email campaigns run through an integration such as Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign, not a built-in newsletter tool.

Consider it if… ads drive your sales and you want to test the page that sells, not just the form that takes the card. Full comparison: ThriveCart vs ElasticFunnels.

2. SamCart: best like-for-like checkout

SamCart is the tool ThriveCart is most often compared with, and for good reason: both start from a hosted checkout for digital products and build out from there. SamCart has added AI page, copy and document tools and a courses app on top of the cart.

Best for: creators and digital-product sellers whose traffic arrives warm, where the checkout is the funnel.

• Standout features: clean checkout templates, courses on both plans, AI page tools, and on Pro: one-click upsells and order bumps, A/B testing, Subscription Saver, the Affiliate Center and third-party processors.
• Pricing (Sep 2026): Core $79 a month, Pro $199 a month, 25% off on yearly billing. 7-day free trial. No added fee on SamPay; sales-tax collection costs 50 basis points per transaction on Core and 35 on Pro.
• Pros: quick to set up, a polished checkout, routing between processors on Pro.
• Cons: the tools ThriveCart includes on Standard (one-click upsells, bumps, A/B tests) are the upgrade to Pro, and tests cover checkouts and upsell flows, not the pages before them.
• Consider it if… you want a newer checkout with AI tools and don't mind paying Pro prices for the order-value features. Head to head: SamCart vs ThriveCart.

3. PayKickstart: best for affiliates and subscriptions

PayKickstart is a checkout and billing platform with an affiliate program at its center. It sells one feature set and prices it by the revenue you process, so a small seller and a large one get the same tools.

Best for: software and membership sellers who live on recurring billing and affiliate launches.

• Standout features: one-click upsells and order bumps, dunning by email and SMS, cancellation saver, first- and second-tier affiliate commissions, partner contracts and an affiliate marketplace. Connects PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, Braintree and Easy Pay Direct.
• Pricing (Sep 2026): from $79 a month for up to $3,000 in monthly revenue, rising by revenue tier, with an overage percentage above each tier. A pay-as-you-go Launch plan costs $0 a month and 6% of revenue. 14-day free trial.
• Pros: nothing locked behind a higher plan; the deepest affiliate tooling on this list.
• Cons: the price grows with your revenue, which is the opposite of what ThriveCart lifetime buyers wanted. Page split testing isn't listed on its pricing page.
• Consider it if… affiliates and subscription recovery drive your revenue and you'd rather pay by volume than by plan.

4. ClickFunnels: best for one offer with email and courses

ClickFunnels bundles pages, funnels, a checkout, email, courses and a community under one login. Order bumps and one-click upsell pages are part of every funnel, and it takes no percentage of your sales.

Best for: a business built around one offer, where the list and content do much of the selling.

• Standout features: funnel templates, A/B testing on every plan, email and courses built in, and Payments AI, which connects its own gateway plus Stripe, PayPal and NMI.
• Pricing (Sep 2026): Launch $97 a month, Scale $197, Optimize $297, Dominate $5,997 a year. 14-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
• Pros: one login for pages, email and courses; bumps and upsells on every plan.
• Cons: its help docs say each funnel step can hold one variant page. The Affiliate Center is on Optimize and Dominate only, and each workspace runs in a single currency.
• Consider it if… you want to replace ThriveCart and your email tool with one bill. Full comparison: ClickFunnels vs ElasticFunnels.

5. Kajabi: best for courses and communities

Many ThriveCart users sell a course, and Kajabi is built around exactly that: course hosting, a community and a branded app, with checkout and funnels around them.

Best for: course creators and coaches who want the product and the cart on one platform.

• Standout features: up to six order bumps per offer with Enhanced Checkout, up to 10 upsells and downsells per offer, unlimited marketing emails and landing pages, and an affiliate program on Growth and Pro.
• Pricing (Sep 2026): Basic $179 a month, Growth $249, Pro $499 (20% off yearly), capped at 5, 50 and unlimited products and 2,500, 25,000 and 100,000 contacts. No revenue share, but using a third-party processor adds 2%, 1% or 0.5% depending on the plan. Its help center describes a trial of up to 14 days.
• Pros: the best course and community experience on this list; generous bump and upsell limits.
• Cons: the most expensive entry price here, and affiliates need Growth.
• Consider it if… the course is the business and you'd pay more to stop stitching ThriveCart to a course platform. Full comparison: Kajabi vs ElasticFunnels.

6. Systeme.io: best on a tight budget

Systeme.io is the low-cost all-in-one: funnels, a checkout, email, courses, a blog and an affiliate program in one account, with a free plan that never expires.

Best for: a first offer, or a ThriveCart user who mostly wants the cost to go away.

• Standout features: order bumps and one-click upsells, unlimited email, an affiliate program even on the free plan, and 0% transaction fees on Stripe and PayPal.
• Pricing (Sep 2026): Free (2,000 contacts, 3 funnels, 1 A/B test, 1 upsell, 1 order bump), then Startup $17, Webinar $47 and Unlimited $97 a month, with two months free on yearly billing.
• Pros: the cheapest way to get bumps, upsells and affiliates.
• Cons: A/B tests, upsells and bumps are capped per plan (10 of each on Startup). Its site says a native AI page builder is still on the roadmap.
• Consider it if… price is the reason you're leaving ThriveCart. See also Systeme.io vs ElasticFunnels.

7. Lemon Squeezy: best merchant of record

Lemon Squeezy is a different kind of cart. It acts as the merchant of record, which means it is the legal seller: it calculates, collects and pays sales tax and VAT on your behalf, and you get paid out.

Best for: software, templates and digital downloads sold to buyers in many countries.

• Standout features: hosted and overlay checkouts, subscriptions with trials and upgrades, license keys, discount codes, bundles and upsells, and an affiliate platform.
• Pricing (Sep 2026): no monthly fee; 5% + 50¢ per transaction, plus 1.5% on international and PayPal payments, 0.5% on subscription payments and 3% on affiliate referrals.
• Pros: tax handled for you; nothing to pay until you sell.
• Cons: percentage fees grow with revenue. After Stripe acquired it, its own 2026 update says it is moving users toward Stripe Managed Payments, and one-click post-purchase upsells and order bumps aren't described in its docs.
• Consider it if… global tax compliance worries you more than order bumps.

8. Payhip: best simple digital-product store

Payhip is a storefront for ebooks, courses, memberships and downloads, with coupons, cross-sells and an affiliate program. Like Lemon Squeezy, it collects and pays digital EU/UK VAT and US and Canadian sales tax for you.

Best for: writers, educators and small creators with a handful of products.

• Standout features: every feature on every plan, courses and memberships, cross-selling with a discount, and upgrade discounts.
• Pricing (Sep 2026): Free plus 5% per sale, Plus $29 a month plus 2%, Pro $99 a month with no transaction fee. Stripe and PayPal charge their normal rates on top.
• Pros: starts at $0 and stays simple.
• Cons: it doesn't pay your affiliates for you (its help center says you handle payouts yourself), and it's a store more than a funnel.
• Consider it if… you sell a few digital products and ThriveCart felt like more cart than you needed.

ThriveCart alternatives compared feature by feature

What each tool says it offers on its own pages, checked on 29 September 2026. "Pro" means the vendor's higher plan.

"Not stated" means we couldn't find it on the vendor's public pages, not that the tool lacks it. For ElasticFunnels, "Yes" means on every plan.

Lifetime license or monthly plan?

This is the question under most ThriveCart comparisons, so it deserves its own section. A lifetime license is a bet that the tool stays good and stays around. A monthly plan is a bet that the tool keeps earning its fee.

The arithmetic is simple. ThriveCart Standard's $495 lifetime license equals about ten and a half months of its $47 monthly plan. Keep it two years and it has paid for itself twice. That's why I'd tell anyone who already owns a lifetime license to be sure before walking away from it.

The license doesn't cover what it can't do, though. If a test on your sales page would lift conversion by a point, or a second order bump would add a few dollars to every order, that money shows up every month too. For a creator selling a $200 course to a warm list, the license usually wins. For a seller spending five figures a month on ads, the tool's monthly price is rarely the number that decides profit. Price it against the order value it can add, not against zero.

How to switch from ThriveCart

Switching carts is less work than switching a whole funnel stack, but it has one hard part: active subscriptions. Plan for that first and the rest is a checklist.

1. Export your data. Customers, orders, affiliates and their commissions. Keep a copy even if you don't import it anywhere.
2. List every product, bump, upsell and coupon. Include prices, payment plans, trial periods and which upsell follows which product. This list is the spec for the rebuild.
3. Decide what happens to active subscriptions. Recurring charges run on the payment details your processor holds and the billing schedule your cart manages. Some teams let existing subscribers finish on ThriveCart and send only new buyers to the new cart; others move them with their processor's help. Don't cancel ThriveCart until the last rebill you depend on has run.
4. Connect the same processor. Use the Stripe or PayPal account you already have, so refunds and disputes for old orders stay where they were.
5. Rebuild or clone the pages. In ElasticFunnels, the page cloner turns a live URL into an editable page; elsewhere you rebuild in the new editor.
6. Recreate affiliate links. Affiliates will need new links, so tell them before the switch, not after.
7. Point your domain. Move the checkout domain or subdomain with a DNS change once test orders work end to end, including an upsell and a refund.
8. Move one product and one traffic source first. Compare sales per visitor for a week or two before moving the rest.

ElasticFunnels doesn't have a one-click ThriveCart importer. The page cloner and a product list get you most of the way, and we'll help with the rest on a demo call.

Which ThriveCart alternative is best?

• You want the same kind of cart, newer: SamCart.
• Affiliates and subscriptions are the business: PayKickstart.
• You sell a course or run a community: Kajabi.
• You want pages, email and checkout on one bill: ClickFunnels, or Systeme.io if budget comes first.
• You sell software or downloads worldwide: Lemon Squeezy, for the tax handling.
• A few digital products, minimal setup: Payhip.
• Paid traffic, several merchant accounts, tests on every page: ElasticFunnels. Start with the 14-day free trial.

Deciding between two? These go deeper: SamCart vs ThriveCart, ClickFunnels vs SamCart, ThriveCart vs ElasticFunnels and SamCart vs ElasticFunnels. For the wider market, see our guide to the best sales funnel software, and for the upsell flow itself, the tutorial on a post-purchase upsell and downsell.

Most people who leave ThriveCart aren't leaving a bad checkout. They're leaving a pricing change, or they've grown into problems a cart doesn't solve. Work out which of the two it is before you pick, because the answer points to very different tools on this list.