Thrivecart vs Flodesk Checkout (which selling tool is best for your business?)
As someone who has used both Flodesk and thrivecart for years, I’m excited to share my comparison of their e-commerce tools!
If you’re looking at software options to use for selling your digital products, services, subscriptions, courses or other offers for your online business, you’ve probably come across Thrivecart and Flodesk Checkout in your search.
Many people know me as the ultimate Flodesk fangirl… I’ve used, recommended and partnered with them since 2019 (I’m even an official Flodesk University instructor!), BUT I am also an avid user of Thrivecart as well - using it as the platform to sell my online courses.
This means I’m able to share an objective comparison of Thrivecart vs Flodesk Checkout, with suggestions on who each tool will suit best!
Table of Contents
*Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links for Thrivecart & Flodesk, which means I get a small commission if you sign up with my link. Please know I’d never recommend a tool that I don’t personally use and love, so thank you in advance if you do :)
What is Thrivecart?
Thrivecart* is an online payments platform, where businesses can easily create checkouts and sales funnels to help them sell a number of different types of products - although it’s known for working best with digital products, courses, services, masterclass etc (vs physical products).
One of the main reasons it’s so well known is for its sales funnel features, which allow you to create highly optimised landing pages and checkout pages with order bumps, upsells, downsells, affiliate programs and more!
Thrivecart is also very well known for its incredible one-time lifetime payment offer*! This offer means you can use this powerful online selling software and its features (without any limits!) without a subscription - you only pay ONCE.
What is Flodesk / What is Flodesk Checkout?
Meanwhile Flodesk* is an email marketing platform (the one I personally use, love and recommend all the time!), where you can use sign up forms to grow an email subscriber list, and send them beautifully designed emails and email automations. I have a full guide on why and how I use Flodesk here.
HOWEVER, they also have an add-on tool called Flodesk Checkout, which is also an online payment platform (similar to Thrivecart), where you can create landing pages and checkout pages, with different sales funnel features too. This add-on connects seamlessly with their email marketing platform.
Does Thrivecart do emails?
Thrivecart does not have an email marketing platform or any email marketing features. So while it will send automated emails to your customers (eg. receipts, confirmations etc.), there’s no way to natively send promotional emails to your customers or specific individuals.
In order to do this, you need to connect Thrivecart to a separate email marketing software. It’s easy to do this, however, either with one of Thrivecart’s one-click integrations (eg. with Flodesk, Mailerlite, ConvertKit, AWeber), or by connecting it with a third-party automation tool like Zapier.
Does Flodesk work with Thrivecart?
Yes, it’s really easy to connect Flodesk’s email marketing software with their simple Thrivecart and Flodesk integration!
If you go into Thrivecart and go to ‘Integrations’, you will see Flodesk here. When you click ‘integrate now’ and ‘authorize’, it will ask you to log into your Flodesk account to authorise the connection, and will automatically connect the tools together.
Then, whenever you set up a product in Thrivecart, if you go to the ‘Automation’ tab, you can set up an automation rule to add customers to specific Flodesk email subscriber segments.
Simply select ‘Flodesk’ from the ‘use’ dropdown, and choose what you want to happen with this integration. There are lots of options - whether you want to add a subscriber when they purchase, or remove a subscriber if they have a refund etc. I have a full tutorial on this inside my Email Marketing with Flodesk online course.
Thrivecart vs Flodesk Checkout Comparison
Check out the table below for an in-depth comparison of both Thrivecart and Flodesk’s key features.
| Features | Thrivecart | Flodesk Checkout |
|---|---|---|
| Landing Page & Checkout Page Design | While Thrivecart's landing page & checkout page templates are designed to be highly optimised, they are all quite 'salesy' and promotional looking, and don't lend themselves easily to more creative, design-led businesses. They're also quite clunky to edit and build! Although you can embed checkouts onto other websites or use 'modal' carts. | Design is where Flodesk really thrives and they're well known for their beautiful email designs. This translates to their Checkouts platform, where their landing & checkout pages are very creative and design-led, and typically more 'minimal' looking. They're also more intuitive to edit and build, I personally find. The actual checkout pages are more restricted with what elements you can add to them, though, and you can't currently embed checkouts or use modal checkouts on your websites - they have to be linked to / hosted in Flodesk. |
| Selling & Payments | Thrivecart offers lots of different options for different payment plans, subscriptions, trial periods, and automated rules based on types of payment plans chosen. Thrivecart uses Stripe, allowing users to pay by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, buy now pay later platforms and more. | Flodesk Checkout offers some different payment plan and subscription options, but no advanced rules based on these choices. Flodesk also uses Stripe, allowing users to pay by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and buy now pay later platforms. |
| Sales Funnel Features | Thrivecart is well known for its advanced sales funnel features, offering multi-step checkouts with custom fields, order bumps (with specific rules & automations),and multiple upsell and downsell options for your checkout workflows, with custom thank you page redirects too. | Flodesk Checkout offers an upsell feature (which works like an order bump in Thrivecart),but no additional checkout workflow steps. You cannot currently add custom fields or thank you page redirects either. |
| Discounts | Thrivecart offers a more advanced discount/coupon feature which can have expiries, disable after number of uses, and have their own automation rules. | Flodesk Checkout have a discount feature but currently you cannot set these to automatically expire or have more complex rules. |
| Product Delivery / Fulfilment | There are a few different fulfilment options with Thrivecart. You can use their own 'Learn' platform to host and connect to online courses, use their integrations to connect with a range of other tools such as membership, course or other software, send customers to a URL, or just send them an invoice. It depends on what product or service you're selling! | With Flodesk Checkout you can provide a link that can take customers to a download or external url, or just display instructions/next steps. You could then provide more details in an automated email workflow (via Flodesk),or connect Flodesk to Zapier to integrate it with a range of other tools like membership or course hosting platforms, ecommerce or other software - again it depends on what product or service you're selling! |
| Affiliate Programs | Thrivecart allows you to create affiliate programs for your products so that people can be incentivised to share your offers and earn a commission. | Flodesk Checkout doesn't have the ability to create affiliate programs. |
| Analytics & Reporting | Thrivecart has in-depth reporting abilities so you can see sales and page view data on all your products, with the ability to filter by location, different time ranges and UTM tracking. | Flodesk Checkout has good reporting abilities so you can see sales and page view data for all your products. |
| Email Marketing | Thrivecart doesn't offer any email marketing features; you have to connect a third party email marketing tool to send promotional emails to customers (eg. you can connect Flodesk!) | Flodesk Checkout connects seamlessly with Flodesk's Email Marketing platform, so you can easily add specific customers to different segments and send them promotional emails and automations. |
Thrivecart Pros & Cons (and who it works best for)
TL;DR - here are the main, summarised pros and cons of using Thrivecart vs Flodesk Checkout:
Pros of thrivecart
The one-time payment lifetime offer* means you pay once and don’t need a subscription for all these features
Has its own ‘Learn’ platform for hosting online courses/digital products (if that’s what you’re selling!)
Lots more options for where to use checkouts (eg. embedded or ‘modal’)
Lots more sales funnel features for more advanced workflows needing upsells, downsells etc.
A few more advanced payment and discount options
Ability to create affiliate programs to generate more sales
Cons of thrivecart
It is more complex with a steeper learning curve for beginners
The landing page and checkout builder is quite clunky to edit
No email marketing features
Who would thrivecart work best for?
Anyone looking to sell online courses/digital products, as you can use the ‘Learn’ platform built in to Thrivecart
More established businesses or those who know they need more advanced sales funnels (and are comfortable setting these up)
Businesses from whom online selling will be a big part of their business and want to scale into more advanced features like affiliate programs etc.
Flodesk Checkout Pros & Cons (and who it works best for)
TL;DR - here are the main, summarised pros and cons of using Flodesk Checkout, vs Thrivecart.
Pros of Flodesk checkout
Intuitive and easy to build really beautiful, design-led landing pages
Minimal, sleek sales page & checkouts work really nicely for a creative audience (not too ‘salesy’ looking)
Connects seamlessly with Flodesk Email Marketing without any integrations needed
Cons of flodesk checkout
Is a monthly subscription cost which can add up over time
Doesn’t offer course/digital product hosting so would need integrating with a separate tool
Only offers one ‘upsell’/bump feature so not as advanced for sales funnels
Doesn’t offer more complex automation / rules features for different payment plans and integrations
No affiliate program option
who would flodesk checkout work best for?
Flodesk email marketing users who don’t want to have to learn another tool and prefer to keep it simple
Flodesk email marketing users who just want to sell the occasional product/service/masterclass and this isn’t a core part of their business
Flodesk email marketing users who don’t need advanced sales funnels features
Try Flodesk for free & save 50% off your first year!
Why I use Thrivecart to sell my online courses
As you can see, even though from the outset it looks like these tools are REALLY similar, there are quite a few key differences, and Thrivecart definitely has the most powerful set of features. For me, the top 3 reasons I use Thrivecart for selling my online courses vs Flodesk Checkouts are:
Thrivecart’s lifetime offer (one-time payment vs subscription)
Thrivecart’s lifetime one-time payment offer* is essentially the same cost as ~1 year of Flodesk Checkout. But because you only have to pay ONCE, after that year there are no ongoing subscription costs (and trust me, these add up when you have an online business!). I’ll be honest that this is realistically the main reason why I use Thrivecart - those cost savings really add up over the years.
Thrivecart’s ‘learn’ add-on can host my online courses
Since Thrivecart added an online course hosting feature to their platform - all included in the one-time lifetime offer! - it was a no brainer for me to move my courses over from Teachable, saving me £000s a year on course hosting costs! Because this is all integrated into one tool now (Thrivecart), it makes it super easy for me to set up checkouts and online payments for all my courses, without the need for any third-party tools for integrations for that.
Thrivecart’s advanced payment options
Along with some of the other features mentioned above, Thrivecart does offer more powerful and advanced options for things like pricing and payment options, allowing you to offer many different types of plans that have their own automation rules, trial periods, bump offer rules and more.
However I do use Flodesk’s email marketing* and I integrate this with Thrivecart as shown in the section above. I also have a guide here on why & how I integrate Thrivecart and Squarespace together.
Thrivecart and Flodesk Checkout FAQs
Can you sell physical products with thrivecart and flodesk checkout?
Yes you can sell physical products with either tool, and they will let you set shipping rates and collect shipping information. I only recommend using these tools if you have a very small range of physical products though, as these tools aren’t really built for large physical product catalogues. If you have lots of products you’d be better off using an e-commerce platform (like Shopify or Squarespace) as these offer better features and bulk editing options for physical products.
Can you use Flodesk checkout without Flodesk email marketing?
No, Flodesk Checkout is only available as an add-on to Flodesk’s Email Marketing tool, they are not separate platforms.
What is Thrivecart Pro+?
When you check out to purchase Thrivecart you might see the option to upgrade to ‘Pro+’ for a yearly subscription. This upgrade will get you additional features such as tax inclusive pricing, multiple order bumps, more in-depth reporting and more.
Save ££ with this Thrivecart lifetime offer!
If you use my sign up link, you can get an unlimited lifetime ThriveCart account* (including online course builder) for a one-time payment of $495, with no recurring subscriptions!
This offer has literally saved me £1000s each year on subscription costs that I was previously paying for online payments/ecommerce and course hosting.
