SamCart is a checkout.We're the whole business.
SamCart is genuinely good at what it does — order bumps, one-click upsells, A/B testing, abandoned cart recovery, all built in. But a great checkout is one piece of a real business. The moment you want courses with drip and certificates, real email automation, a community, a CRM, affiliates, and funnels, you'll be adding 4–6 tools around it. Simplero is the platform that already includes all of it.
The real cost of a checkout-only stack.SamCart + the tools you'll add around it. Then Simplero, with all of it included.
SamCart starts at $79/mo (monthly billing) and scales with your revenue — the higher your monthly sales, the higher your bill. The price is one thing. The other 4–6 tools you'll bolt on around it are the rest of the story.
Checkout, plus the rest of your business.
- SamCart base$79/mo
- Course platform (Teachable Pro)$99/mo
- Email tool (Kit Creator Pro)$50/mo
- Community (Circle Plus)$89/mo
- CRM / automation$50/mo
- Zapier glue$30/mo
Same stack. SamCart's revenue slider moves up.
- SamCart (revenue-scaled)$149+/mo
- Course platform$119/mo
- Email tool (larger list)$99/mo
- Community$89/mo
- CRM / automation$79/mo
- Zapier glue$49/mo
One platform. One bill. Everything included.
- Checkout (with bumps + upsells)✓
- Courses with drip + LMS✓
- Email + automation engine✓
- Native community✓
- CRM with tags + segments✓
- Affiliate program built in✓
What SamCart doesn't quite do.SamCart has bolted on a Courses App, an Affiliate Center, and AI tools. They're there. They're not the depth a real business needs.
SamCart was built as a checkout, and it's still the best part. The newer additions — courses, affiliate center, basic email, AI — work the way most checkout-first platforms' bolt-ons work: enough for a flyer, not enough for the long arc.
No real email automation engine.
SamCart has cart-abandonment emails and basic order receipts. There's no behavioral automation builder, no tag-based segmentation, no email broadcasts with proper deliverability or list management. Nearly every SamCart user still pays separately for Kit, ActiveCampaign, or Mailchimp on top.
No real CRM, no community.
The customer database tracks orders and tags. It's not a CRM with pipelines, deal stages, segments, or behavioral triggers. There is no native community feature — no posts, threads, paid groups, or member spaces. Bring your own Skool, Circle, or Discord, and a CRM if you need one.
The Courses App is a flyer, not an LMS.
SamCart's Courses App handles video hosting, drip, and quizzes — enough for a side product. For real cohort delivery, completion tracking that drives automations, certificates, deep video analytics, and a course experience that holds up at scale, most serious creators still pair SamCart with Teachable, Thinkific, or Kajabi.
What SamCart users actually say.Verbatim from Capterra and other public review sites. SamCart has plenty of fans for the checkout — and a recurring tune when the bill or the bolt-ons get serious.
We did not cherry-pick — SamCart's checkout earns real praise. The pattern below is what shows up after the praise: pricing pressure, missing features at lower tiers, and the long-term math.
“Very bad upsell management, bad customer UI, and the worst: VERY BAD customer experience / pricing management. You feel like a cow needed to be milked. One example: I wanted to downgrade my subscription — they said they would send me an email, they never did. Very bad dark pattern. Fix your product instead of ripping people off.”
“Pricing is a concern with SamCart, it's more expensive compared to many other platforms that offer the same or more features.”
“There is a huge price jump to get added features such as price bump which I really wanted but isn't offered in the basic package.”
“I was paying the higher $199/month plan just for that feature [retrying failed payments]. I felt that to be unfair and should be a standard part of their plans.”
“I can't justify the $49/month lowest pricing tier with limited features (no order bump, post-purchase upsells or multiple payment options), especially if you're just starting out.”
“I tested SamCart for a month a while back — I liked it, but decided to opt for ThriveCart instead as it was a one-time fee.”
Side by side. Whole platform vs whole platform.SamCart + the tools you'll add around it, vs Simplero out of the box. Numbers verified from each vendor's pricing page.
SamCart's core checkout is excellent — we mark that with a checkmark, not an X. The differences show up in everything you'd otherwise pay other vendors for.
| Feature | SamCart | Simplero |
|---|---|---|
| Starting monthly price | $79/mo (monthly) | $59/mo (Starter, annual) |
| Annual price (entry) | ~$59/mo equivalent (25% off annual) | $708/yr |
| Pricing model | Revenue-scaled (price rises with monthly sales) | Flat tiers by contacts |
| Transaction fees | 0% on preferred processors | 0% on every plan, every processor |
| Checkout (bumps, upsells, A/B) | ✓ Excellent | ✓ Built in |
| Email marketing | Cart abandonment only — BYO Kit/AC | Full email + broadcasts + deliverability |
| Behavioral automation engine | — | ✓ Tags + segments + triggers |
| CRM with pipelines | Customer records + tags only | ✓ Built in |
| Native community | — (BYO Skool/Circle/Discord) | ✓ Posts, threads, members |
| Courses (drip, quizzes, certificates) | Courses App — basic drip + quizzes | ✓ Full LMS + certificates + completion tracking |
| Affiliate program | ✓ Affiliate Center | ✓ Built in |
| Native video hosting | ✓ In Courses App | ✓ Unlimited |
| Landing pages / sales pages | ✓ Sales pages | ✓ Full builder + funnels |
| Founder access | — | Calvin still answers email |
| Years in business | Founded 2013 · ~13 years | Founded 2009 · 17 years |
| Funding model | $82M Series B (Eldridge, 2021) | Bootstrapped · profitable · sovereign |
The difference that doesn't fit in a feature matrix.
A great checkout is not a business platform.
SamCart is genuinely good at converting a checkout page. It's one piece of a real business. We're the whole thing — including a checkout that's plenty good, plus the email, CRM, courses, community, and affiliates SamCart doesn't really do.
Add up the stack. Then add up the years.
SamCart's revenue-scaled price plus the 4–6 tools you'll bolt on around it lands at $400–$600/mo. Simplero Starter is $59/mo flat for all of it. The bigger you grow, the wider the gap.
Founder access is included.
Calvin still answers customer emails. Partner-level access is included; concierge tier ($1,500–$2,500/mo) gives you a direct line to founder + product leadership. SamCart raised $82M from Eldridge in 2021. Different incentives, different room.
What Simplero customers actually say.
“I scored 12 platforms on a spreadsheet. Simplero won. The software is intuitive. The support team is amazing. The founder really cares — Simplero is led by a founding team that really cares and they're always improving.”
“My income tripled, quadrupled in the last six years.”
“I ended up paying my annual plan for Simplero in what I was paying for one month of all my subscriptions.”
“There are no chatbot-gates you have to get through to get support from an actual human.”
Simplero pricing.
500 contacts. Email, courses, community, CRM, automations, affiliates, AND checkout — all of it. 0% transaction fees.
Choose Starter1,000 contacts. Same full platform — for businesses with a real list, real launches, real funnels.
Choose Scale5,000 contacts. For established creators and coaches scaling past six figures. Overage above 10K: $15/mo per 2,500.
Choose SkyrocketAll plans include email delivery, video hosting, courses, community, automations, AND checkout. 0% transaction fees.
Stop paying for six tools to get one business.
Founded 2009 · Bootstrapped · Proud of it.
Make it simplero™
