SamCart vs. ClickFunnels: Which Suits You More?

If you’re in the business of selling products online, both Samcart and ClickFunnels can offer you a superb deal of functionality that will allow you to market your products and manage your sales. Both platforms have several things in common, but at the end of the day, they’re quite different. 

SamCart is a robust shopping cart that revolves around selling products, whereas ClickFunnels is an all-inclusive digital marketing solution that can build entire sales funnels. This SamCart vs. ClickFunnels article attempts to compare the two tools to find out which one offers more value. 

SamCart vs. ClickFunnels: Short Answer

We recommend SamCart for shop owners who are looking for an intuitive and robust platform for creating conversion-optimized checkout pages. But if you’re looking for a platform that can help you devise a complete marketing plan, ClickFunnels is the perfect solution for you. 

SamCart vs. ClickFunnels: Comparison Table

SamCart	ClickFunnels
SamCart is a powerful shopping cart platform that’s designed to help you sell things online.	ClickFunnels is a full-fledged digital marketing solution that can create entire sales funnels.
Pros	Pros
Offers a two-week free trial periodFeatures sales funnels capabilitiesAdvanced stats reporting featuresVarious payment models availableA/B split testing for landing pages	Offers a two-week free trial periodIntuitive drag-and-drop page editorNumerous third-party integrationsWide range of pre-made templatesIn-built A/B split testing functionality
Cons	Cons
Supports few payment processorsLacks digital sales tax calculation	Customer support isn’t exemplaryExpensive compared to other tools

Overview of SamCart

SamCart is a powerful shopping cart tool that’s designed to help businesses sell their products online. While ClickFunnels’ primary purpose is the creation of sales funnels and landing pages, SamCart is a tool that knuckles down to the creation of conversion-optimized checkout pages. 

Just like ClickFunnels, SamCart can integrate with a wide range of big-name service providers to ensure top-notch functionality and ease of following up with your consumers. With SamCart, you can build fully functional checkout pages that come after sales pages in no time.

SamCart is remarkably easy to use. You start by adding the product you’d like to sell and then selecting the payment structure of your preference. After that, you want to select the checkout template that you’d like to use. You can customize the template to meet your branding needs. 

You may also want to add upsells, choose the integrations you want to use, split-test the page, and implement coupons before starting to drive traffic. You also have the ability to bump orders. Now that everything is ready, all you need to do now is to start promoting and driving traffic. 

As soon as a visitor lands on your checkout page, the buying button will prompt, and the visitor will be directed right away to the checkout process. SamCart is ideal for converting warm leads and hot buyers into paying customers. It’s not as good when it comes to cold leads, though. 

Most Notable Features:

• Content Builder: SamCart’s Content Builder is a drag-and-drop editor that allows you to create professional-looking checkout pages for your products that have the potential to convert visitors into paying customers and maximize your profit from all new orders. 

• Checkout Pages: Just like ClickFunnels, SamCart features pre-made templates that you can use to build checkout pages in a matter of minutes. All of the templates flaunt built-in testimonials, security reassurances, and guarantees for your convenience. 

• Cross-Selling Bumps: SamCart allows potential buyers to add additional products to their shopping cart. This helps increase the value of the cart significantly. Also, you can present these additional products at a discounted rate to captivate visitors to buy them. 

• Affiliate Center: Similarly to ClickFunnels, SamCart has an in-house affiliate program that enables you to recruit affiliates that can help promote your products on your behalf. The default affiliate commission is 50%, but you can always customize it to your liking. 

• One-Click Upsells: One-click upsells help you boost the value of your average order. SamCart claims that its upselling feature can help you make up to 3x on every sale by presenting an upgrade or the option to buy an alternative product that’s priced higher.

• Sandbox Mode: This is a SamCart mode that enables you to test your pages in order to ensure that everything is running the way it should before making your pages live. It even allows you to test payments without being charged and without counting the sale. 

• A/B Split Testing: Just like with ClickFunnels, SamCart allows you to run live split tests as a means of boosting your conversions. You can split-test any aspect you want in your page, from the templates and the number of fields to the guarantees and testimonials.

• One-Page Checkout: This is one of the features that help set SamCart apart from other shopping cart tools. Essentially, this feature offers you the flexibility to implement several payment options on a single checkout page, which many shoppers will highly appreciate. 

• Subscription Saver: With this feature, you don’t have to worry about losing money due to bounced or declined payments. This excellent feature sends an email to the customer whose payment was declined or bounces in order to update their payment details. 

• Numerous Integrations: Using SamCart, you don’t have to worry about not being able to integrate with the valuable tools you usually use. You can integrate with various email providers, membership services, payment processors, and other useful integrations. 

Overview of ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is one of the most prominent online marketing solutions on the market, but we still feel the need to give you a bit of background. It’s an all-in-one solution that’s capable of building effective sales funnels and landing pages that can help you generate more leads and sales.

The process of creating sales funnels without help is very time-consuming, which is the primary reason why Russell Brunson, founder of ClickFunnels, was driven to come up with the platform. ClickFunnels enables you to construct complete sales funnels within a matter of minutes.

With the aid of ClickFunnels, you’re able to build funnels and landing pages from scratch using a visual drag-and-drop editor. SamCart also features a drag-and-editor, among numerous other platforms, but it’s ClickFunnels that revolutionized this feature, almost claiming it completely.

Building funnels using the drag-and-drop editor is as simple as selecting the elements you need from the editor’s dashboard and dropping them onto your page. Don’t want to build funnels from scratch? You can always select one of ClickFunnels’ numerous pre-designed templates. 

Aside from building funnels and landing pages, ClickFunnels is capable of creating membership sites, performing upsells and downsells, and managing affiliate programs. It also flaunts its own email marketing tool. ClickFunnels can help you devise complete marketing plans with ease. 

Most Notable Features:

• Visual Drag and Drop Editor: ClickFunnels’ drag-and-drop editor is arguably the best visual page editor out there. It allows you to build landing pages and sales funnels from scratch by just picking the elements you need and dropping them anywhere you want. 

• Pre-Designed Templates: If you don’t want to waste time creating sales funnels from scratch, you can pick from the many templates that ClickFunnels has to offer. Also, you can customize these pre-made templates to meet the requirements of your brand. 

• Backpack Affiliate Program: This is one of ClickFunnels’ premium functionalities, and it enables you to set up and manage your own affiliate program without the need for any third-party assistance. Keep in mind that this feature is only available in the top-tier plan. 

• Actionetics Email Marketing: This is another one of ClickFunnels’ premium functions, and it’s also available in the top-tier plan, ClickFunnels Platinum. To put it simply, it’s an in-house email marketing solution that eliminates the need for a third-party provider. 

• Numerous Integrations: ClickFunnels can integrate with a wide host of services, from email autoresponders like AWeber and MailChimp, all the way to e-commerce platforms like Shopify, content management systems like WordPress, and payment processors. 

• eCommerce Service: ClickFunnels can help you promote and sell any type of product, be it a digital or physical unit. It allows you to integrate with various payment processors, packaging and shipping services like ShipStation, and many other useful services. 

• Membership Sites: Are you looking for a way to earn a solid recurring income? You’re able to create membership sites using ClickFunnels. Essentially, it’ll help promote your exclusive content and have users sign up for memberships in order to gain access to it. 

• A/B Split Testing: Assessing your landing page or sales funnel’s design is made easy with ClickFunnels’ split-testing functionality. This feature enables you to test all elements in your sales funnel or landing page as a means of ensuring the highest conversions. 

• Built-In Analytics: This feature works hand in hand with the A/B split-testing feature, as it helps you keep tabs on the performance of your sales funnels and pages by displaying useful information, including the number of conversions, user behavior, and page views.

• Webinar Funnels: ClickFunnels can help you create various types of funnels, including webinar funnels. As the name implies, this type of funnel promotes your webinars, be it a service-based or product-based webinar, and plays them automatically on-demand. 

SamCart vs. ClickFunnels: Pricing

SamCart

SamCart flaunts a 14-day free trial period, so if you’re not sure whether this is the right platform for you or not, you can always try before you commit. After ending the trial period, you can then select one of SamCart’s three pricing options: the Launch plan, Grow plan, or Scale plan. 

The Launch plan costs $49/month, and it offers a host of services that small-scale businesses can benefit from. Sadly, this plan doesn’t offer upsells, A/B split testing, and affiliate marketing. Not only that, but the SamCart watermark will be on your pages, which is quite a bummer. 

The Grow plan is SamCart’s most popular pricing option. It costs $99/month, and it grants you everything the Launch plan offers, in addition to A/B split testing, zero transaction fees, up to 3 users, prospects collection, and numerous sales plans. Also, the watermark is removed. 

The third and final SamCart plan is the Scale plan, and it’s valued at $199/month. It grants you everything that the above-mentioned plans have to offer, in addition to CRM integrations, priority chat support, WebHooks, and the ability to create up to 10 users. A pretty lucrative offering!

SamCart’s middle and top-tier plan has a lot to offer, but we’re not quite fond of the Launch plan. It doesn’t have much to offer compared to ClickFunnels’ Basic plan. But then again, it costs half of what the Basic plan costs, so we can’t complain, but it could benefit from a few extra features. 

It’s also worth noting that SamCart’s Launch plan doesn’t boast CRM integrations, which can be the result of a notable hindrance if you rely on a lot of third-party services. You can utilize Zapier to integrate with these services. The good thing is, you get an unlimited number of products. 

ClickFunnels

Just like SamCart, ClickFunnels has a 14-day free trial period, so you can test the waters before committing to a pricing plan. Note that for you to be granted access to the ClickFunnels free trial period, you’ll need to enter your credit card information. The billing starts after the trial ends. 

Upon signing up for the ClickFunnels free trial, you’ll be asked to select between one of the two main plans the tool has to offer. The first package is ClickFunnels Basic and costs $97/month. This plan offers you 100 pages, 20 funnels, and a maximum visitors limit of 20,000/month. 

ClickFunnels’ second pricing plan is ClickFunnels Platinum, which costs $297/month. This is a package that grants you an unlimited account, meaning you can build as many landing pages and sales funnels as you want. You can also garner as many visitors as you want. 

ClickFunnels Platinum grants you access to all of ClickFunnels’ premium features, one of which is Actionetics, which is the platform’s in-house email marketing solution. Using Acionetics, you’ll be able to interact with your email leads without the need for a third-party email provider. 

Another one of ClickFunnels’ premium functions is the Backpack affiliate program. As the name implies, this feature allows you to build and manage your own affiliate marketing program. You’ll be able to hire affiliates to promote your products and manage them from within the platform.

ClickFunnels released a new pricing plan in early 2020 called ClickFunnels Collective, and it’s priced at $1,497/month. This plan is devised mainly for people with established businesses and professional ClickFunnels users. So if you’re new to sales funnels, disregard this plan entirely. 

SamCart vs. ClickFunnels: Checkout Pages

When it comes to constructing engaging, conversion-optimized checkout pages, SamCart is the superior platform. Most checkout pages built by other platforms are all about functionality rather than conversions, which is why they often result in users dropping out at the checkout process.

Utilizing SamCart, you don’t have to worry about shoppers dropping out at the last second, as it enables you to create checkout pages that are intuitive and visually appealing. This confers you control over how your checkout pages look and perform, which in turn boosts your conversions.

SamCart is equipped with 18 pre-designed checkout page templates that you can pick from. It’s equipped with wide page templates that feature several columns, and it’s equipped with vertical templates that don’t consume a whole lot of screen size, making them ideal for mobile devices. 

The awesome thing about SamCart’s checkout page templates is that they’re fully customizable. You’ll be able to modify just about anything on the page so that it looks unique and caters to the brand’s requirements. You can add a hero image, modify your copy, among other options. 

It’s also worth noting that SamCart allows you to incorporate popups in your checkout pages. It helps keep your customers invested and reduces the rate of shopping cart abandonment. You’ll also be able to add trust seals to establish trust and increase the number of conversions. 

Another neat function that SamCart has to offer is the ability to display your checkout pages as modal popup windows rather than full-blown web pages. Pretty cool, huh? Okay, so what about ClickFunnels? How does it compare to SamCart’s might in terms of creating checkout pages? 

ClickFunnels is an all-in-one marketing platform, so it’s definitely capable of creating checkout pages, which are called “order pages” within the tool. However, ClickFunnels doesn’t quite live up to SamCart’s capabilities in this area, especially when it comes to customization options. 

Let’s keep in mind that checkout pages aren’t ClickFunnels’ strongest suit, as it’s focused mainly on building landing pages and sales funnels. So to put it simply, if you’re trying to build engaging checkout pages that are guaranteed to boost your conversions, SamCart is the way to go. 

SamCart vs. ClickFunnels: Affiliate Management

Both SamCart and ClickFunnels are pretty reliable when it comes to creating affiliate marketing programs. SamCart’s Affiliate Center allows you to give other people the ability to promote your products on your behalf. It allows you to set custom commission rates and offer creatives. 

ClickFunnels, on the other hand, boasts the renowned Backpack affiliate program. However, in order to gain access to this functionality, you have to be a member of ClickFunnels’ top-tier plan, ClickFunnels Platinum, which costs considerably more than SamCart’s top-tier plan. 

If we were to pick between the two tools in terms of affiliate marketing, we find ourselves leaning towards SamCart’s Affiliate Center for the fact that it’s simply designed and very easy to use. It’s pretty much a simple bar chart that highlights affiliate earning and your latest commissions. 

SamCart vs. ClickFunnels: Upsell Pages

Creating upsell pages is yet another feature in which both SamCart and ClickFunnels are pretty efficient, but which one is better? Well, creating upsell pages is one of SamCart’s primary strong suits, whereas, with ClickFunnels, it’s simply one of the many things the all-in-one tool can do. 

What we’re trying to say is that if a tool’s main purpose is creating checkout and upsell pages, it will probably offer you more convenience than a tool that focuses primarily on other tasks. When it comes to sales funnels, for instance, ClickFunnels would completely obliterate SamCart. 

SamCart enables you to create on-click upsell pages within a matter of minutes. What do these pages do, exactly? Well, an upsell page allows shoppers to upgrade their purchase or purchase more products with a simple click. This spares shoppers from having to re-enter their billing info.

Utilizing ClickFunnels, you’re also able to create one-click upsell pages that pretty much do the same thing as with SamCart. It’s worth noting that billing information gets stored in ClickFunnels automatically, so customers wouldn’t need to re-enter their billing information in the first place. 

It seems like both platforms are equal in this area, right? Wrong! SamCart takes this round, as it allows you to implement exit-intent popups to your upsell pages, helping to keep your customers engaged. Exit popups are available in ClickFunnels, but they’re easier to add with SamCart.

SamCart vs. ClickFunnels: Email Marketing

When it comes to email marketing and automated services in general, SamCart falls short in the face of ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels boasts its very own in-house email marketing tool, so there’s no need to integrate with a third-party email provider. No such feature exists in SamCart. 

ClickFunnels’ in-house email marketing tool, Actionetics, enables you to send broadcast emails, create email autoresponders for products and services, and establish automation rules. Keep in mind that this feature is only available in ClickFunnels’ top-tier plan, Clickfunnels Platinum. 

However, SamCart can natively integrate with various email marketing providers like MailChimp, AWeber, GetResponse, ActiveCampaign, and more. It also features a Zapier integration, so you can integrate with any service you need if SamCart isn’t capable of connecting with it natively. 

Speaking of integrations, SamCart is seriously lacking when it comes to payment processors. It can solely integrate with Stripe and PayPal to receive live payments. ClickFunnels, on the other hand, lets you integrate with a lot more payment gateways, which is a plus for ClickFunnels. 

Final Thoughts

Picking between SamCart and ClickFunnels is pretty challenging because each platform has its strong suits. SamCart is more capable than ClickFunnels when it comes to checkout pages, but ClickFunnels is vastly superior when it comes to creating fully functional sales funnels. 

At the end of the day, ClickFunnels has a lot more to offer you than SamCart in both of its plans. From its remarkable automation tools to impressive funnel building capabilities, ClickFunnels is ideal for devising a powerful marketing strategy. Feel free to let us know what you think.