Shopify vs SamCart 2024 Comparison: Who’s Better?

Shopify vs SamCart: which ecommerce platform really offers the most value to business owners in today’s online world?

On the one hand, Shopify has a much larger presence in the ecommerce space than SamCart. It’s already earned a reputation as one of the most reliable and intuitive tools for building and managing your online store in the world. On the other hand, SamCart offers its own unique benefits.

As a platform designed primarily for creators, SamCart offers access to an easy-to-use ecosystem, exceptional sales tools, and a fantastic dedicated “courses” app for online educators.

Today, we’re going to take a closer look at the unique features and benefits of each platform, to help you make the right choice for your company.

Shopify vs SamCart at a Glance

	Shopify	SamCart
Features	Comprehensive ecommerce, website building, marketing, and inventory/order management tools for online and omnichannel sellers. Integrated payment processing and solutions for fulfillment.	Creator economy-focused platform for selling products through a convenient online checkout with one-click upsells, cart abandonment tools and support for multiple payment methods.
Best for	Online sellers looking to take advantage of omnichannel sales capabilities and high levels of website customization.	Creator economy vendors looking to sell various subscriptions, physical products, digital products, and courses.
Website building and templates	Complete website builder with premium and free themes, extensive customization, and external channel support.	Basic shopping cart software with checkout customization options.
Sales and ecommerce	Omnichannel sales support with a world-class integrated checkout, multinational selling, and a variety of payment options. Plus, marketing tools are also included.	Supports sales for courses, subscriptions, online tools, and digital products. Included upselling, downselling and cart abandonment tools.
Business management	Automation tools with Shopify Flow, fulfillment and shipping network access, analytical tools, VAT and Tax tools, inventory, order and product management, and more.	Upsell popups, order bumps, A/B testing, advanced reporting features, smart pixel tracking, affiliate tools, and customer hub for profiles.
Customer support	Extensive customer support via chat, email, phone (in some locations) and a dedicated help center.	Live chat and email support, and a help center with guides and FAQs.
Apps and Integrations	Thousands of free and premium app integrations, and custom options for advanced sellers on Shopify Plus.	API support, over 100 applications and plugins and custom integrations.
Pricing	3-day free trial followed by Starter plan ($5 per month), and premium core plans starting at $39 per month.	7-day free trial followed by monthly subscriptions starting at $79 per month.

Shopify vs SamCart: An Introduction

Let’s start with a brief overview of the two platforms. Both Shopify and SamCart are ecommerce platforms, offering business owners a variety of features, from secure payment processing to marketing capabilities.

They’re both extremely intuitive platforms, promising vendors an easy way to access advanced features, and grow their online presence. They also both come with access to a range of apps and integrations, ensuring you can expand your online store as much as you like.

Let’s take a closer look at the two options.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is one of the world’s leading “complete commerce” platforms. Launched in 2006, it has emerged as one of the most popular tools for building online stores, with millions of users worldwide.

Shopify combines easy-to-use website building tools, with payment processing solutions, hundreds of integrations, as well as marketing and sales tools.

Shopify supports all kinds of retail companies, whether you’re selling products or services and subscriptions.

Plus, it offers access to omnichannel sales solutions, so you can easily combine your online store sales, with offline transactions through the Shopify POS, marketplaces like Amazon, and even social media channels.

Learn more about Shopify by reading our review.

What is SamCart?

Compared to Shopify, SamCart is a much newer addition to the ecommerce market, focusing on the evolving creator economy.

The platform allows sellers to create a comprehensive online checkout, where they can sell digital downloads, services, and more. The solution comes with one-click upsell solutions, cart abandonment recovery tools, and support for multiple payment methods.

Plus, SamCart can even help companies automate things like customer support and payments. There are subscription options available, and an app for selling online courses.

The only downside is that you won’t actually build a full website with SamCart. Instead, you simply use the tool to add ecommerce functionality to your existing site.

Shopify vs SamCart: Website Building and Templates

While Shopify and SamCart have a lot of overlapping features, there are some major differences in the functionality of the two platforms.

Shopify focuses on supporting all kinds of commerce companies, while SamCart concentrates on content creators and those selling digital products.

Here’s a rundown of the features you can expect from both platforms when it comes to selling.

SamCart Templates and Website Building

SamCart is a comprehensive sales solution for members of the creator economy. It’s designed to help content creators, streamers, online educators, and other professionals sell a host of digital items, with minimal effort.

However, it’s worth noting that it’s actually a form of “shopping cart software”, rather than a full tool for building an online presence.

Though there are mobile-responsive and professionally designed templates available on the platforms, SamCart templates are mainly intended for creating a single page website.

You can customize your checkout and sales pages with a range of different types of content, such as videos, text, and bullet points. Plus, all templates are mobile responsive. However, you can’t build a comprehensive site.

On the plus side, you can add SamCart to any existing website you may already have. Companies can use the “embedded checkout” solution to integrate a checkout page into any page on an existing website.

Or you can opt for as “popup checkout” which launches a checkout experience with a click of a button. SamCart’s “Checkout OS” includes:

• Mobile friendly and responsive design tools
• Information autofill options
• Easy to use “buy now” buttons
• Custom field addition and removal

Shopify Website Building and Templates

Unlike SamCart, Shopify is a comprehensive website builder and ecommerce platform in one. You can sell products through the platform either online or in-person. Plus, there are options for integrating your store with marketplaces and physical POS solutions.

Shopify comes with an easy-to-use website building tool, complete with customizable sections for your entire website.

You can create comprehensive product pages, design blogs, and take advantage of Search Engine Optimization. You can also integrate your site with popular social platforms.

There are tons of store themes to choose from, designed for different types of businesses, and there’s no limit to the customization options available.

Plus, as a hosted SaaS solution, you don’t have to worry about hosting your own site. Shopify handles everything for you.

With Shopify, you can even purchase your own site domain, to boost your chances of creating a memorable business brand.

Shopify vs SamCart: Sales and Ecommerce

As mentioned above, SamCart and Shopify handle sales and ecommerce a little differently. SamCart primarily focuses on digital products, with a comprehensive checkout solution. Shopify, on the other hand, allows companies to sell virtually anything.

SamCart Sales and Ecommerce Tools

With SamCart, you can sell your products through your own dedicated sales or checkout pages, or embed your checkout into your existing store. There’s also a handy “courses” app, which is ideal for content creators selling educational products.

The courses app makes it easy to create an entire online course in minutes, with convenient features like content tiers, lessons, quizzes, worksheets, and dripped content.

Plus, you can personalize the experience with custom text, audio, videos, and images. The app even includes a simple student management tool, where you can track your community and monitor their progress.

As an added bonus, SamCart also offers “course cross-sells”, allowing companies to suggest recommended courses and lessons to their existing community members. The app includes auto-enrol technology, featured course libraries, and hosted video services.

SamCart also offers a range of tools to help scale your business. You can add “upsell” options to your checkout and sales pages, giving customers the freedom to add more products to their cart, even after they checkout.

There are convenient upsell templates to choose from, as well as “downsell” options if you want to reduce your risk of abandoned carts by offering consumers a cheaper version of their desired product.

Speaking of cart abandonment tools, SamCart also allows you to save your customer’s inventory and credit card information, so they can complete transactions faster. What’s more, there are tons of payment methods to choose from, including buy now pay later options.

Shopify Sales and Ecommerce Tools

Shopify is a little more comprehensive in its commerce options. With the Shopify platform, you can sell online or in-person, with a world-class integrated checkout.

Shopify also has its own Shopify POS solution, where you can sync your online and offline inventory in an instant.

Shopify supports wholesale and B2B sales, as well as sales of physical and digital products. There’s also “Shopify Markets”, which allows you to sell internationally to customers, managing customs, taxes, VAT, and even currency conversions instantly.

As an added bonus, Shopify supports a huge range of payment options, including buy now pay later solutions, credit card and debit card payments, mobile wallets like Google Pay and Apple Pay, and more.

You can also choose to use Shopify Payments as your integrated payment processor, or connect other solutions like Stripe and PayPal to the Shopify ecosystem.

To help increase your sales potential, Shopify comes with powerful segmentation tools, like Shopify Audiences, to help you track high-value and high-intent customers.

While there are no built-in upselling and cross-selling tools on Shopify, you can access a range of integrations to help with this.

Shopify’s comprehensive app market is home to a huge selection of sales solutions. You can access tools to help you reduce cart abandonment rates, increase average order values, or even send dynamic product suggestions to your customers.

Just keep in mind, some of the add-ons and integrations Shopify offers for boosting your sales strategy may come with an additional fee.

One thing that Shopify offers that SamCart doesn’t have, is built-in marketing tools. You can access social media integrations directly, chat with customers through Shopify Inbox, and get to know your target audience with in-depth insights.

There’s even a “Shopify Email” service, which allows you to create automated email campaigns to nurture your leads.

SamCart vs Shopify: Management Tools

Whether you’re selling physical products with Shopify’s wide array of powerful tools, or building a sales funnel for your online courses and digital downloads, you need a user-friendly backend for managing everything. Fortunately, both SamCart and the Shopify commerce platform offer a wide range of useful management tools.

SamCart Management Features

At the heart of SamCart’s management toolkit is a powerful selection of analytical and reporting solutions, designed to help you organize and grow your online store. Not only does the backend feature exceptional ease of use for any online business, but it makes it easy to start A/B testing sales strategies, and checkout templates.

Within the management dashboard, you’ll find a simplified reporting solution, perfect for making data-driven decisions based on valuable business insights. You can track active subscriptions, monthly recurring revenue and more in seconds.

The A/B split testing solution built into the platform ensures you can easily determine which checkout process or strategy is driving the most sales for your business.

You can test everything from your knowledge base to your strategies for using “order bumps” and upsell popups.

SamCart offers access to advanced reporting features, as well as smart pixel tracking, with insights from Google, Facebook, and other online environments.

Plus, there’s a customer hub for monitoring consumer profiles, and a robust affiliate center, where you can recruit and manage people who can help promote your business, without hiring a dedicated digital marketer.

Unfortunately, since the ecommerce solution isn’t intended for selling physical products, there aren’t any inventory management or shipping tools included, although you could always look into potential integrations. However, you can build your income by setting up subscription options.

Shopify Management Features

For entrepreneurs, Shopify offers a far more robust range of management features, intended to support every kind of store. You can set up comprehensive automation strategies, using Shopify Flow, making it easier to monitor the movement of inventory of products between channels.

Ecommerce business owners can also access order tracking tools, rapid insights into inventory counts, and create staff accounts for their team members.

Shopify features its own shipping tools, so you can control your order fulfillment strategy from a single backend environment.

Plus, there’s the option to outsource fulfillment and returns to Shopify’s fulfillment network. Or, you can use a POD or dropshipping app from the Shopify app store to explore other business models.

Like SamCart, Shopify also has a fantastic range of analytical tools available, including custom drag and drop report builder options, and real-time dashboards where you can monitor essential metrics.

Unlike SamCart, however, Shopify provides companies with ways to scale their business with funding too. You can access Shopify Capital when you want to grow.

Plus, there’s the Shopify Balance feature, which ensures you can access the revenue you obtain from your store as quickly and painlessly as possible. While Shopify doesn’t have its own built in affiliate marketing solution, there are plenty of options to choose from in the app market.

Shopify vs SamCart: Ease of Use and Customer Support

One point worth noting when you’re comparing Shopify and SamCart, is both tools are extremely easy to use. If you use SamCart to sell online, you’ll be able to set up a custom checkout or sales page in a couple of minutes, and you can sell unlimited products.

While you can’t create a full store, like you would with Shopify, leveraging SamCart’s pre-designed templates for online selling takes virtually no effort.

You can rest assured your landing pages and sales pages will work on all mobile devices, and the subscription saver tools make it easy to ensure you’re earning recurring revenue from your ecommerce store.

Similarly, Shopify has a fantastic reputation for simplicity. Creating your store takes very little time, even if you’re building a comprehensive website with a blog and multiple pages.

Shopify will walk you through the process of building your storefront with a drag and drop editor. Plus, there are plenty of FAQs and guides available for beginners too.

Shopify also gives you the option to hire experts to assist with building your store and optimizing your conversion rate if you need extra help. Speaking of customer support, SamCart offers access to self-service resources like a knowledge base and blog. Plus, you can reach out via email or chat.

Shopify also offers email and chat support. Unfortunately, neither platform offers a phone option for communication.

Shopify vs SamCart: Apps and Integrations

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Shopify and SamCart both offer a range of integrations for business owners, but there are more options available on Shopify.

SamCart offers native integrations with over 100 applications and plugins, or you can use the platform’s custom API feature to create automations. The API plan is currently only available on the Scale plan.

Alternatively, Shopify’s app store is home to thousands of apps, including almost 3000 free options. You can find all of the integrations you might need in a couple of minutes. Plus, if you want custom integration, Shopify offers tools to help you develop automated workflows.

SamCart vs Shopify: Pricing Plans

Finally, let’s take a look at how much you can expect to pay for Shopify and SamCart.

Shopify Pricing

Shopify also offers a free trial to beginners, alongside a selection of premium options. Once again, annual plans will have a small discount applied, so you can save money if you purchase a longer-term package.

If you’re looking for a basic way to add ecommerce functionality to an existing store, you can access the “Starter” plan for $5 per month, but this doesn’t include any website building tools.

Other payment plans include:

• Basic Shopify: $39 per month with all the basic features you need for a store, plus 1,000 inventory locations, basic reports, and 2 staff accounts.
• Shopify: $105 per month for all the features included in the basic plan, plus advanced reports, 5 staff accounts and additional sales channels.
• Advanced Shopify: $399 per month for all the features of Shopify, as well as custom reports, and 15 staff accounts.
• Shopify Plus: Starting at $2,000 monthly for all the features of the advanced Shopify plan, plus a comprehensive range of customization tools.

One point to note is Shopify pricing can come with transaction fees. You’ll need to account for additional payment fees if you’re using a solution other than Shopify Payments for payment processing too, so keep this in mind.

SamCart Pricing

SamCart offers a 7-day free trial to beginners, followed by 3 paid plan options. You’ll save a little cash by opting for an “annual” plan over a monthly subscription.

On a monthly basis, plans include:

• Launch: $79 per month: Anywhere checkout, one click checkout, digital payment options, no code sales pages, pre-built templates and 1 admin user.
• Grow: $159 per month for all the features of the Launch plan, plus checkout automations, one-click upsells, add-ons and order bumps, subscription management, 3 admin users, and cart abandonment tools.
• Scale: $319 per month for all the features of Grow, plus access to the SamCart API, A/B testing tools, subscription saver tools, an affiliate center, CRM integrations and 10 admin users.

Shopify vs SamCart: The Verdict

Overall, both Shopify and SamCart are excellent solutions for online sellers. Both companies are reliable providers, with excellent customer service and tutorials available on their websites to help you get started.

Each tool is also brimming with easy to use ecommerce features and includes payment gateways for managing transactions.

However, SamCart is likely to be the best option if you’re a creator, looking to sell digital products and build your own affiliate program.

Alternatively, Shopify is a more comprehensive commerce tool, intended for all kinds of selling. The right option for you will ultimately depend on the type of business you want to build.

FAQ

Is SamCart the same as Shopify?

Shopify is a comprehensive ecommerce platform that supports website building and multiple sales methods. SamCart focuses on the development of individual pages and customizable checkouts for selling mainly digital products.

Is SamCart worth it?

SamCart is more expensive than Shopify, but it does offer a fantastic range of features for a reasonably affordable price, including in-built marketing and upsell tools, and cart abandonment features which may not be present on other platforms.

Is SamCart good for beginners?

Yes, SamCart is suitable for beginners. The setup process is easy for users with no technical knowledge, and there are plenty of tools to help you increase your conversions. You can set up sales funnels in less than a day.