ThriveCart – The All In One Membership and Course Solution

As small business owners it’s important to find affordable options for ourselves as we are starting up.

Bills add up very quickly and it can often feel like a sinking ship situation.

When I decided to create my first online course offering I searched the internet high and low. I asked in the various groups I was a member of which platforms everyone was loving and why.

It didn’t take long for me to learn about ThriveCart.

Please note that this post contains affiliate links. When you purchase through these links I will earn a commission from your purchase but the price you pay will not be altered in any way.

What is ThriveCart?

ThriveCart is an all in one platform that is created for business owners to be able to host their memberships, course offerings and even manage their affiliates. Of course it does even more than that once you’ve integrated your Authorize.net, Stripe or PayPal account.

The most amazing selling point about this platform is that it is created to handle all of your growing business needs at one singular price.

Yes, you read that correctly. They charge one flat price and here’s the best part…you get LIFETIME access.

Benefits of Choosing ThriveCart

Before you can decide if ThriveCart is the right option for you it’s important to know more about the amazing features it has to offer. And of course how they compare to other similar products currently on the market.

Memberships

When doing my research it became very obvious to me that there were three main platforms creators used for their memberships Teachable, Kajabi and ThriveCart. I’m going to break each of these down so that you can see why ThriveCart is the best option for housing a membership long term.

Teachable

Teachable is a great tool and took the online world by storm years ago when every creator started using it to host their courses and memberships. With a starting point of free it seems like a great beginning tool but the fact is that if you plan to grow you are wasting time starting here.

The free option on Teachable only allows you to have one course offering at that level. If you add a second course then your price goes up to $39 a month. This might not sound too bad to some but when you compare it to ThriveCart’s lifetime access pricing at $495 ( $690 if you upgrade to pro) it quickly shows that in just over a year, 13 months to be exact, you will be saving your money back on the monthly fee. Plus, you can roll out more than the five courses allowed at the Basic level in Teachable which can help you create more income.

Kajabi

The next option that I dug into was Kajabi. To be completely honest I found Kajabi to be super expensive. As in why the H is this so expensive when I am only hosting 3 products?!?! Kajabi’s starting price point comes in at a whopping $149 a month!

So why did I look longer than two seconds at this platform?

Kajabi has one really great feature…it doesn’t take a transaction fee.

That may seem like a silly reason to look at a platform long term but if you are running numbers and know that you are only planning to have a course or two then maybe this is the right fit for you. I personally didn’t see this as a long term solution for anything. I knew I wanted to have several courses and of course make them evergreen so this was NOT a solution for me.

ThriveCart

So now let’s look at ThriveCart. I’ve already told you the price point above of $495 for lifetime access. Confession I did go Pro for $690 on my account and I LOVE it but it’s not necessarily needed to get started and you can upgrade at anytime.

For ThriveCart I can have multiple memberships and there is no price increase for adding more…and more…and more memberships as I grow.

In fact to date I have two memberships in ThriveCart. Eventually I would like to add more but realistically the memberships I offer (Homemaker You-niversity and Business on a Budget) are there as starting points for beginners and I prefer the evergreen products since it allows me to create more along the way.

Course Offerings

Being able to offer courses was the next big item to look at. As I mentioned above I planned to use evergreen courses as a primary source of income so being able to house several different specific courses was key for me.

Teachable had another major flaw here. On the Basic plan it can only house 5 courses and then you have to upgrade to the next level of membership (UGH!).

By this point based on price alone I had already eliminated Kajabi because it wasn’t cost effective. I did look to see what it could offer for courses though and with only 3 courses available at the cheapest level it was a hard pass for me.

Why ThriveCart Wins Hands Down

At this point I eliminated Kajabi entirely from my searching. The price point was crazy high for the value that I was getting from the purchase.

This meant that a side by side comparison of ThriveCart and Teachable was my final option.

Here’s the quick comparison I was looking at for reference of what I was planning to create, costs of fees, cost of product and long term use.

When I put these items down on paper like this it was very obvious to me which way I was going to go with my purchase.

Not only would I be able to create amazing courses and memberships using their platform but I would also be able to create affiliate options (including having the system pay them for me – thank you automation!).

If you’ve been considering adding courses and memberships to your business offerings then you have to consider ThriveCart as a solid option. While the up front cost is greater than the other platforms the long term investment pays for itself in just over a year.

You can learn how to set up your ThriveCart membership in this post.