SamCart vs ClickFunnels: Why You Might Need Both

If you sell products online, both SamCart and ClickFunnels can help you more effectively reach your customers, market your products and manage sales.

While SamCart and ClickFunnels share several common elements, they’re different applications with different feature sets. SamCart is built from the ground up for selling products and services, while ClickFunnels is an all-in-one tool designed to help you create effective sales funnels.

Below, we’ve compared both applications in greater detail, with a full comparison of features like templates and page builders, checkout pages, email marketing tools and integrations with other applications.

If you’re interested in both tools but can’t decide which to use for your business, read on for our complete comparison, review and verdict on which application is the best choice.

Features

SamCart and ClickFunnels are both designed to help you achieve the same goal — sell your product or service — but in different ways. As such, the two applications share a few common features but are ultimately very different tools.

The key difference between SamCart and ClickFunnels is that they occupy different parts of the sales process:

● SamCart is a cart and checkout page tool that’s designed for the final stage of the buying process, when a customer has already decided to purchase your product.

● ClickFunnels is a funnel creation and email marketing tool that’s built for the “interest” stage of the buying process, when customers are interested in your product but need more persuasion to become customers.

This means that the strong points of each application are different; while ClickFunnels excels at funnel creation, SamCart is the stronger performer when it comes to cart and checkout pages.

Checkout Pages

SamCart is one of the most powerful applications on the market for creating engaging, effective and conversion optimized checkout pages.

Checkout pages are common “choke points” for marketers. Because many checkout pages are designed for functionality rather than conversions, customers often drop out of the sales process at the checkout, resulting in an abandoned cart and a lost sale.

SamCart lets you make your checkout page both more intuitive and more visually appealing by giving you an incredible level of control over how your checkout page looks and performs for a customer.

There are 25 sales checkout page templates included with SamCart, ranging from wide pages with multiple columns to vertical checkout pages that take up minimal screen real estate and look great on mobile devices. Here are some examples:

• Professional Coaches: This sales page template will help you quickly and easily create an incredible sales page that allows you to earn money around the clock. Instead of hopping on 1 on 1 calls to close people, you can send them to this page.
• Yoga & Fitness: This will for sure be a popular one for all the health and fitness digital sellers out there.
• Bold Podcast: For anyone looking to turn their podcast listeners and followers into customers.
• Creative Workshop: This is great for people looking to cash in on hosting a virtual event and selling access to it. The foundation of this template is the high-converting two-column layout that has proven to work well for these types of events.
• Simple Course: Simplify your sales process and convert more of your followers into buyers for digital products. You can easily add in a video, edit the bullet points, and guarantee and get a new high-converting product page up in seconds.
• Nonprofits: This is for anyone trying to rally followers around a cause. Our “Pay What You Want” feature can be used for donations alongside this template to make it a valid nonprofit “sales” page

All of the checkout templates included with SamCart are customizable, letting you add your product photo as the hero image and modify the copy to match your product’s key benefits, unique selling points and value proposition.

Using SamCart, you can also add pop-ups to your checkout page to keep customers engaged and lower your cart abandonment rate, improving your return on investment and helping you to generate more revenue from each visitor.

Other features include the ability to add trust seals to your page to further increase conversions, as well as the option to display your checkout as a modal pop-up window rather than loading a completely new page.

ClickFunnels also includes checkout pages (called “order pages” within the application) but just doesn’t match the incredible range of templates and custom design options offered by SamCart.

While SamCart specializes in checkout pages, the order pages in ClickFunnels feel like a bit of an afterthought. If your goal is to create an engaging, conversion optimized checkout page for your product, you’ll definitely like the templates and design options available in SamCart.

Upsell Pages

SamCart and ClickFunnels both include the option to create upsell pages for product upgrades and services. Just like with checkout pages, SamCart offers a more complete solution, while the upsell pages in ClickFunnels feel like one of many useful features included in the software.

SamCart allows you to quickly and easily create one-click upsell pages. These pages allow your customers to upgrade their purchase and add additional products with a single click, all without ever having to reenter their billing information.

ClickFunnels also includes a one-click upsell feature that lets customers add product upgrades and additional items easily. Since billing information is stored in ClickFunnels, there’s no need for customers to reenter their credit card number in order to purchase upsells.

One feature that makes SamCart stand out is the ability to add exit pop-ups to upsell pages to keep customers engaged and increase your conversion rate. Using an exit pop-up, you regain the opportunity to market to your customer and get the chance to show an extra call to action.

Affiliate Management

SamCart includes an affiliate management system that lets you create new affiliate accounts and give other people the ability to market your products for you. Using the Affiliate Center in SamCart, you can set custom commission rates and provide creatives for your affiliates.

The affiliate interface in SamCart is nicely designed and easy to use, with a simple bar chart displaying your latest commissions and affiliate earnings. As a product owner, you can track your affiliates’ earnings at a glance and easily contact your top lead/sales generators.

ClickFunnels also includes an affiliate management system, although it’s only available in the more expensive $297 per month plan. The affiliate management system (called “Backpack”) is very similar to the standard Affiliate Center included in SamCart.

Email Marketing and Automation

SamCart is a checkout/cart tool, and as such it doesn’t include any email marketing or campaign automation tools.

However, it integrates natively with marketing tools software like AWeber, Drip, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, Constant Contact, GetResponse, Ontraport and MailChimp, giving you the ability to send your customer email data to a wide variety of third party email marketing applications.

While the standard version of ClickFunnels does not include marketing automation tools, they are available in the $297 per month Actionetics upgrade, which lets you send broadcast emails, create automation rules and build email autoresponders for your products and services.

Pros & Cons of SamCart

SamCart is designed specifically for checkout and cart management, making it a great tool if you need help with this specific part of the sales process. However, it doesn’t offer the same range of features as ClickFunnels, meaning you’ll need to rely more on integrations.

Pros

● SamCart is one of the most effective cart and checkout tools on the market, letting you sell anything from physical products to intangible goods and services.

● Features like one-click upsells, order bumps and abandoned cart prevention make it easy to enhance your conversion rate and generate more revenue from every order.

● SamCart includes an affiliate management system, letting you add affiliate accounts, manage your affiliates and view how much you’re earning from customers referred by your affiliates.

● Although SamCart doesn’t include any marketing automation features, it integrates with a huge range of leading email marketing and automation applications.

● SamCart is significantly cheaper than ClickFunnels, with a basic plan available for just $19 per month, plus a 1% processing commission.

Cons

● There are no email marketing or automation features included with SamCart, meaning you’ll need to rely on integrations with other applications for the marketing side of your online business.

● Many features, including one-click upsells and split testing, are only available in the more expensive Pro and Premium versions of SamCart.

Overall

SamCart’s genesis comes from its founder who feels strongly that the ebook publishing industry (and, to a lesser extent, selling service products) is a far more profitable niche than selling physical products. While SamCart can successfully be used to sell products, the customizable templates from SamCart are streamlined and optimized for selling books and services. They look great on mobile devices. You can add your product photo as the hero image and modify the copy to match your product’s key benefits, unique selling points and value proposition

If you want to create intuitive and effective checkout pages that increase your conversion rate and help you generate more revenue, SamCart is the stronger of the two options. However, it doesn’t offer any marketing features and should be used as part of a larger marketing toolkit.

Pros & Cons of ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is designed for solo marketers and small teams, with a focus on ease of use and features over power. This means that it’s a great option if you want every feature you need in a single product, but not the best tool if you need a more focused feature set.

Pros

● ClickFunnels is one of the most comprehensive marketing funnel tools available today, with a huge range of features that cover everything from landing page creation to sales funnel management, marketing automation and upsells.

● Because ClickFunnels includes checkout pages and payment processing, there’s far less of a need to use multiple applications to market and sell your product.

● ClickFunnels includes a huge range of pre-made funnels, letting you quickly develop email sequences for your subscribers in just a few clicks.

● Compared to most marketing applications, ClickFunnels feels intuitive and easy to use, even for absolute beginners.

● One-click upsells and downsell pages allow you to quickly and easily add items to your checkout process and increase your average earnings per sale.

Cons

● Because ClickFunnels includes a feature for almost everything, it doesn’t offer the same level of depth and focus as SamCart.

● The checkout page design and customization options in ClickFunnels are very limited, whereas SamCart includes a large range of highly customizable checkout templates.

● Affiliate management, which is available as a standard feature in SamCart, is only part of the $297/month Actionetics and Backpack version of ClickFunnels.

● Although ClickFunnels offers a large range of features, many are not included in the standard version and are only available in the more expensive $297/month package.

Overall

ClickFunnels is an extremely comprehensive tool that offers everything from marketing funnel development to product sales, upsells, affiliate management and email marketing. While it’s a great application, its focus on features means it doesn’t match the power of SamCart.

Pricing

There are three pricing plans for SamCart. Those plans are descriptively named Launch ($49/month), Grow ($99/month), and Scale ($199/month). All these plans include a rich set of base features, such as:

• Trials (Free and Paid)
• Fully Customizable Emails
• Advanced Subscriptions
• Custom Domains
• Digital Product Delivery
• Coupons & Discounts
• Smart Pixel Tracking
• Pay What You Want
• Sales & VAT Tax Support
• Apple & Google Pay
• Custom Thank You Pages
• Free SSL Certificate

1. The Launch product ($49/mo.) allows you to get your business started with a beautiful website to present your company and its products. It does include SamCart branding. Some other advanced features available in the other plans are not included in the Launch Plan, and you are limited to one administrator. You get 2-day email support.
2. The Grow plan ($99/mo.) includes all the features in the Launch plan and adds additional capability to manage your business, your customers, and your subscriptions, including:
• White labelling (not SamCart branded)
• 3 Admin Users
• Advanced Reporting
• Customer Management Features
• UTM Tracking & Marketing Reporting
• Subscription Charge Reminder
• Advanced Subscription Cancellations
• Pre-Purchase Add-Ons
• Post-Purchase Upsells
• Multiple Payment Options
• 1-day email support
3. The Scale plan ($199/mo.) includes all the features in the Grow plan and adds additional capability to support AB Testing, affiliates, and integration with a wide range of other products like CRM. Scale includes:
• AB Testing
• 10 Admin Users
• Priority email support
• Subscription Saver
• Custom Integrations with Webhooks

Fundamentally, each level adds importing features such as AB-Testing, cross selling/upselling, and integrations with other packages. SamCart is an extremely capable solution to support your business. Select the plan that supports your business needs.

ClickFunnels is available as part of two plans. The $97 per month ClickFunnels plan includes the standard funnel creation and management tools, with support for 20 funnels, 100 separate pages and 20,000 visitors per month.

The $297 per month plan, which includes access to Actionetics and Backpack, features email marketing and marketing automation tools, affiliate management and priority support from the ClickFunnels team.

Final Verdict

SamCart and ClickFunnels are both powerful applications that you can use to sell your products online. However, they have very different purposes — one a specialized cart and checkout page tool, and the other an all-in-one funnel management and marketing toolkit.

On the whole, SamCart is the stronger of the two applications for creating and managing your checkout and product sales process, while ClickFunnels is a more complete all-in-one tool for email marketing, sales funnel management and the entire sales and marketing process.

Get SamCart if…..

You already have an email marketing and marketing automation application, and just need an excellent cart and checkout platform for accepting payments, managing sales and delivering your products and services to customers.

As you’d expect from a specialized, standalone application, SamCart gives you an incredible degree of control over how your cart and checkout looks, feels and performs.

Get ClickFunnels if…..

You’re looking for an all-in-one tool that you can use for building your landing page, marketing your product, connecting with your audience via email and managing sales, all without using a variety of different applications and relying on integrations to manage your online business.

As an all-in-one marketing application, ClickFunnels includes a huge range of features that just aren’t available in a specialized product like SamCart.