Charging your clients should never be a pain in the backside. In fact, since frankly speaking most people in the world have some money related issues and insecurities, I believe that automating the payment process is crucial to help you focus on things that are more important for your client attraction – like creating compelling content for your visibility and tapping into your creativity and self-expression to ensure it magnetizes the right people to you. And when that happens the  transaction needs not create any anxiety or issues, all you need is to send the a link to pay (or a link to the page on your website with the checkout embedded). And then the client can decide – without any pressure (remember half of the world is Emotional by their Human design Authority and need time to sleep on their decisions) – if they want to pay in full, avail of a payment plan (optionally if you offer them) or subscribe to a form of membership offer. 

This is what ThriveCart can do for you so easily! The ThriveCart hosted shopping cart platform makes it simple for you to sell products and services online, add bump offers, upsells and downsells, create Joint Venture partnerships and affiliate marketing solutions for your programs and offers with ease. And all without heavy monthly fees either! More on that later. This is an ideal solution for your coaching, consulting or service providing business, and I have been using mine since 2018 successfully and would not look any other way. This is that top 3 software solutions that I swear by in my business. The flexibility of creating payment solutions is pretty impressive and it is only getting better as the company is constantly investing resources into developing features and options – without any extra charge to their existing clientele. In fact, as I am typing this review, we are anticipating a major update to multiple key features and payment providers, including Crypto options for payments. I personally do not use Crypto (perhaps, not yet) – but I am excited at the opportunity to have more options and more flexibility.

Even since 2018, the checkout design and functionality has been so well upgraded. The checkout builder (drag-and drop style, so very easy to use for anyone non-techy) is perfect to build full sales pages if you wish (so you do not even need to have a website – for example, if you sell via messenger or on calls with just a program overview shared via Google Sheets or Evernote. Then you can have a standalone checkout page – and you can add video and lots of other blocks to encourage the sale right on the page – as well as on the Success page too! How nice it is to see a quick thank you video after one decided to invest a hefty amount, right? 

And there is an option to import some premade design templates too. Some are free, and some are paid, but what are a few bucks to save you lots of time trying to make something look professional?

If you have a website, like this one, for example, I have built on WordPress using Divi – a theme with a drag-and-drop builder solution that I have been using for many years – I just create a very simple checkout in ThriveCart – setting it to Embedded style and then simply paste a piece of generated code on the sales pages and landing pages I create on this website – simply to minimise the clicks required to sign up to my offers. Have a look at this Marketing Blueprint By Design™ page as an example (opens in a new tab).

There is a basic ThriveCart option, but honestly, the saving does not justify what you are missing, so I would recommend going for the full package (ThriveCart pro and Learn+) – or at the very least grab ThriveCart Pro as the sales taxes and some other great options only come with that level. Trust me. This will be paid off within 6-8 months, compared to most alternative solutions. And then you never have to pay a penny and yet avail of all updates and other goodies – like access to an excellent support team for free.

What does it do?

Just off the top of my head, ThriveCart Pro helps you to:

• Create unlimited professional-looking checkouts with multiple versions if you need to. This really helped me with my membership and group programs with various pricing levels. You can also offer various pricing levels and payment on the same checkout – for example, pay in full, or split pay. You can easily set up and sell subscriptions.
• Connect to your payment gateway provider, like Stripe or Paypal, and more.
• Easily integrate your email marketing software, like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Encrarge, etc., so based on the purchase, they can be added to specific lists or tagged to trigger automated welcome emails or even whole sequences.
• Redirect your new client to wherever you want, or use the inbuild success page.
• Automatically add a client to your membership platform (I used Wishlist Member,  but many others are available for direct integration).
• It comes with its own optional platform to host your online courses and other digital products. (Learn, the basic version comes free with a purchase of a ThriveCart Pro account, but the upgrade to the full version, Learn+, is well worth it)
• Automatically calculate and collect sales taxes (this was a godsend as my personal anxiety with VAT calculations and all things accounting actually helped me back from growing my business properly – ThriveCart took care of it all quickly). It even has options for VAT number validation and reversal for internal EU B2B transactions. SO GOOD!
• Issue professional-looking invoices for purchases – very handy, especially with monthly payments, so you do not have to worry about it. Plus, you can always easily re-send the invoice if it goes missing.
• You can pause and restart subscriptions with a click of a button.
• There is an inbuild Dunning option (emailing clients whose payments fail etc.) You do not have to enable it, but again, anything that causes anxiety should be automated, in my opinion.
• You can use it for your freebies, although I prefer less bulky solutions for that in my business, I use ConvertBox for my opt-ins and popups – run by the same company, by the way.
• If you collaborate with another coach, you can easily split the revenue with the JV option – making the financial side of collaboration smooth and simple.
• If you want to offer commissions to people who promote your offers, there is such a brilliant Affiliate Platform option included.

What does it not do:

• It does not work as an online shop checkout like on an e-commerce site that allows adding several products and then paying for them simultaneously. ThriveCart is created with digital products in mind. However, if you are happy only to sell one physical product in a transaction, setting it up with a shipping address and appropriate sales taxes collection, etc., is easy enough.
• You will need to have separate email marketing software. ThriveCart integrates with so many different tools, but it does not send emails (except for purchase receipt). This is not a big deal as there are tools, even like Mailchimp, that are perfect for beginners, if you do not have a big list already, and they have a free level to cover your thank you emails to welcome sequences.
• You will need to have a payment provider account- Paypal, Stripe, Authorise.net, etc., that will actually charge your clients. ThriveCart works by managing their payments and creating a much more compelling purchase experience than if you tried their inbuild options. And especially with sale taxes and the invoice information requirements (here in Estonia, every purchase we make requires our full business details and full seller details, which Paypal/Stripe does not accommodate in their native solutions.
• This tool is not part of Thrive Themes and their features.

How to purchase:

As you might have guessed I am creating this review because I love this tool and I want more people to run their coaching businesses without any issues with collecting payments from clients. It is something that can feel so horrible that it can make one hate their business, I have been there, and it felt awful! And, of course, as a token of their gratitude, ThriveCart creators offer me a commission on every referral I send to them, which makes it a little bit more sweet for me. It does not cost you a cent more to ensure I get credited during this transaction. Current price for ThriveCart Pro is $690USD.

Here is how it works- every highlighted  like this link to ThriveCart on this page, as well as every button has my affiliate information attached. But if you click on the link in this browser and then move to another browser to purchase, that information is not passed on and I do not get credited with my referral fee. It is very easy to see if the link worked as my name will show just underneath the total amount – watch this quick video to show you how to purchase to make sure your purchase is credited to my affiliate referral:

And for set up and support, there is also an incredibly easy to understand knowledge base library plus any issues you can generate a support ticket – the support team is beyond incredible in my experience – not that I had to use them often, but they manage to sort out anything I need in no time – or explain very clearly how to do it on my end).

And if you have any more questions and you want to see what else they do, there is informaiton on their own page, just click the button below. Lastly, I just want to say that i try and test so many tools (a true 1/3 Human Design profile person) and this is one of those rare tools that not only I ended up using consistently and profitably, it is also the most reliable one I have experienced amongst many others that were just cumbersome and disappointing (like Kajabi, Simplero and Clickfunnels, for example. Not to mention how expensive they are considering all imperfections). I think sometimes having all in one solution is the worst thing one can go for- because the solutions within are so imperfect, it is much easier to have a small number of super reliable tools to use in your business and ThriveCart Pro is definitely in the top of my list. I hope you find this referral valuable!