An Honest ThriveCart Review: Is the LifeTime Deal Worth It?
A peak inside my ThriveCart account — and a recommendation based on the features in your business.
I still remember the second I pushed the “buy button” for getting the lifetime license for ThriveCart.
It was still very early in my business, only about a month after launching. At the time, the purchase felt quite scary. It was by far my largest investment at that point, and $495 felt like such a huge sum of money.
It still is a huge sum of money — but today, I am constantly patting my former self on the back for making that smart choice.
I haven’t paid a penny in fees for a course platform or sales platform since then, nor will I have to do so going forward. If I had to pay monthly fees for a sales platform and a course platform (plus Zapier to connect them), I would easily have spent $100 a month.
In other words, I paid for five monthly fees and got unlimited access to a platform I really trust for all the years to come for free!
Today, I’ve sold products for almost $20 000 on ThriveCart, and completed almost 9000 transactions on ThriveCart. A substantial part of this income has been due to the bumps and funnels ThriveCart adds every time I sell a product (even the freebies) — and the income increase month over month.
Here is a quick peak inside my account:
In addition, I have 88 approved affiliates selling my products on the platform — and I’ve enrolled more than 1500 happy students in my courses:
And given this pretty comprehensive experience with ThriveCart, I wanted to share my honest ThriveCart review with you and go through the most important features, in order to help you consider if it might be best option for your business as well.
ThriveCart funnels
OK, so the ThriveCart funnels are really the true magic of ThriveCart. Every time I set up a product, I also make a funnel inside ThriveCart.
I choose a bump product, and then I decide on upsells and downsells. I usually include three or four products in the funnel, but it is possible to set up a bump offer and five funnel products. After setting it once, I only copy the design from former funnels, so the whole thing is set up in less than a minute and just made by clicking.
And once this is set up, every time someone checks out — including from freebies shared by me and my affiliates — the customer are offered the products in the funnel for a special price.
For instance, these are the stats for order bump income last month:
And these are the stats for upsells for the past six months:
As you can see, it really adds up! In the first six months of 2024, I made $2730 from order bumps and upsells in ThriveCart — and that is net revenue, after paying affiliates!
And of course, this does not include the products customers came from — only products that are offered automatically by ThriveCart, without me lifting a finger (after doing the initial 1-minute setup).
That allows me to make steady money, even when promoting completely free products.
Oh, I should also mention here: My focus has largely been on selling low-cost products, so many of these products are fairly low-priced. When doing the same with a bit more expensive courses, the income will naturally increase. In total, about 40% of paying customers chose to add extra products. Imagine the potential!
ThriveCart Integrations
One of the first things that caught my attention was ThriveCart’s wide range of integrations. This platform seamlessly integrates with numerous payment gateways, membership platforms, email marketing tools, and more. This eliminates the hassle of bridging gaps between your favorite tools and helps streamline your sales process (bye-bye, Zapier!).
For me, the most important integration is with ConvertKit, which I use all the time. That means that when I set up a product in ThriveCart, me ConvertKit tags show up inside ThriveCart and I can easily choose the tag that will trigger a delivery email of the product. Easy-peasy automations, which saves me massive amounts of time.
And again, time saved and easy automations means more potential for passive income!
ThriveCart Learn
I’d say ThriveCart Learn is a super-duper addition for those of us in the e-learning space.
It’s straightforward, user-friendly, and makes course delivery a breeze. The interface is intuitive, and even if you’re not tech-savvy, setting up and managing courses becomes an uncomplicated task.
I’ve written a more extensive review of ThriveCart Learn, which you can read here:
And if you’re looking to learn how to use the platform to make courses that engage students throughout, I wholeheartedly recommend The ThriveCart Bootcamp. (If you’re getting ThriveCart through my link, you can actually score this course — valued at $147 — as a free bonus. You’ll find more information about this towards the end of the article.)
ThriveCart Learn Plus
ThriveCart Learn Plus offers some more advanced features suitable for those who have a more extensive course library and need added functionality.
So, do you need ThriveCart Learn Plus? Well, that depends on your situation. I wouldn’t recommend getting them from the start if you are just starting out, as I think you can run a very advanced business without. You can easily add ThriveCart Learn Plus later if the need arises.
I have ThriveCart Learn Plus now and I am really happy about it — most importantly because I can sell bundles of courses together as well as use some fun, extra strategies for engaging students. However, I didn’t add Learn Plus until after a year of using ThriveCart — and I was very happy with just ThriveCart Learn for the first year.
To consider if it is right for your business, I would consider if you have enough courses that selling them in bundles of two and three courses together makes sense — and if you want to set up more advanced engagement sequences (please note that there are some pretty advanced options available without as well, so make sure to try with that first).
ThriveCart Pro
ThriveCart Pro is an important add-on, which allows you to host your own affiliate program on the platform. Once you have it, it is very easy to set up the affiliate program — you can actually easily do in a couple of hours. (Getting affiliates does take longer, though — this is just the setup.)
So should you get ThriveCart Pro? Well, again, it depends on your business. If you have a lot of products and think affiliates could be a great option, I think it is better to just get started. Selling through affiliates is a bit of a snowball effect, it will grow as time goes by and you get more and more affiliates.
However, if you are just getting started, you can easily add this part later. I added it after a few months and never looked back.
ThriveCart Coupons
The coupon system in ThriveCart is both robust and flexible. Whether you’re looking to offer percentage-based discounts, flat rate cuts, or even time-sensitive offers, ThriveCart has you covered.
It’s really an excellent tool for promotional campaigns and can significantly boost conversions when used correctly.
I use coupons discounts all the time, and I have about 250 different ones. Some are to make the product free for certain customers that has the right code (perfect for bundle participation), some take off a percentage (I have some evergreen coupons like this running in my email automations) and some are specific to customers who are claiming store credit etc (I set these up to work only once). In addition, I often make specific coupons for affiliates, so that they can run custom sales when they want to.
In general, I spend less than ten seconds setting up a coupon, and I can easily choose which period it will last for, what the discount is, how many times it will work etc from dropdown menus.
ThriveCart Pro
If you’re looking for an all-encompassing solution, ThriveCart Pro is where it’s at.
I bought the ThriveCart Pro after being on the platform for about six months, because I wanted to set up my affiliate program and realized that I absolutely wanted to do it inside ThriveCart, because I already had all of my products there.
And I must say, I am SO impressed with how easy it is to manage an affiliate program inside ThriveCart. Each time I set up a new product, I just click a few extra selections and it is set up for affiliates. I can choose when I want to pay, how much I want to pay — and if I prefer auto payments, ThriveCart manages everything and I don’t have to do anything to serve and pay my affiliates (except spend the money they make for me). Super-impressed!
Do I recommend that you get ThriveCart Pro straight away? Well, it depends on your business. If you are in the early stages, like I was, I’d recommend just getting the normal account to secure the lifetime deal — and you can expand with an affiliate program and other pro features later. If your business is already mature, you can just as well get it while prices are low.
ThriveCart LifeTime Deal
Ooh, you’ve probably heard about the ThriveCart Lifetime Deal. I have already heard lots of rumours that this one is going away, so if If you’re on the fence about it, I highly recommend just jumping in, as this is the cheapest price I’ve seen anywhere for the lifetime deal.
For me, the lifetime deal was a game-changer. In a world where recurring payments are the norm, securing access to such a powerful platform for a one-time fee just had incredible value.
As I said in the beginning, I am already making more than the price of the lifetime deal in income from the automated funnels (which is money I would not have gotten without ThriveCart).
And in addition, I would have spent the amount I paid for the lifetime deal in about six months, if I had paid monthly fees — so the deal is really both saving me money and making me money. How’s that for a magic trick for making a money machine?!
The “Pay-For-Itself” Guarantee
Worried your results won’t be the same as mine?
Well, ThriveCart is actually willing to bet that they will be. Therefore, they have a “pay-for-itself” guarantee. They are so confident in their platform that if you feel it hasn’t boosted your results beyond your initial investment, their team pledges to help until it does.
And, if things don’t align, they offer a full refund within the first 30 days of purchase. I haven’t seen any other guarantees coming close to this, and for me, this is proof of how valuable the platform is.
As you can probably tell, I am pretty thrilled about my lifetime deal with ThriveCart. It has been a game-changer for me because it helps me make all that extra money while also keeping my monthly costs super-low.
And now that I’ve gotten the hang of the course platform, it is so easy for me to make new products and courses to make passive income on. Highly recommended for all course creators out there!
Awesome bonus for you!
Oh, and if you do decide that either ThriveCart or ThriveCart Learn Plus is right for you, you can score a pretty amazing bonus for free:
If you use my aff link to buy either one, I’ll let you into my course The ThriveCart Bootcamp (normal value of the course is $147!) for free!
The course is filled with strategy lessons, ideas, tips and tricks to make the most of ThriveCart, including ten tried-and-tested strategies for how I successfully engage my students inside ThriveCart Learn.
You can read more about The ThriveCart Bootcamp here.
And if you get the standard or Pro account, you’ll also get $200 store credit to spend on any of my popular courses — you are free to spend them on existing or future courses. Please email me on christina@passiveincomejourneys.com or reach out via chat to claim the bonus!
There is more info on the bonuses here — just remember to send a copy of your invoice to claim them to christina@passiveincomejourneys.com so I know that you used my link and that you want the bonuses.
And full discosure: This article contains affiliate links to ThriveCart. That means that if you buy through the links, I might get a commission — at no extra cost to you, of course. I only recommend products I use myself and love — and think you will love, too (and to be honest, there are not that many products I love enough to recommend).
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