What is SamCart and how does it work?

Everything below comes from SamCart's own pricing page and help center, read on the day this was written. It covers what SamCart does and how a sale moves through it, step by step.

What is SamCart used for?

SamCart is used to sell things from a page you control, with the page, the checkout and the delivery all in one account. It calls itself a digital business platform, and the tools on every plan match that.

Every plan gets unlimited pages, products and checkouts. The page builder makes sales pages, small sites, link-in-bio pages and opt-in pages. There is a Courses app with a members area, cart abandonment emails that follow up with buyers who leave the checkout, and an integration engine that connects SamCart to email, membership and CRM tools. An AI assistant called Sam can draft an ebook, a course outline or sales copy, and design pages.

So SamCart is more than a checkout. You could run a small product business on it with no other website. If you already have a site, SamCart's help center describes a feature called Checkout Anywhere that puts a SamCart checkout on another site, so you can keep your pages where they are and use SamCart only to take the money.

How does a sale work on SamCart?

A buyer lands on your sales page, clicks through to the checkout, pays, and gets the product on the next screen and by email. Here is each step in order.

1. The sales page. Built in SamCart, or on your own site with a SamCart checkout added to it.
2. The checkout. The buyer can pay by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal or Venmo, or split the cost with Klarna, Afterpay or Affirm. A returning buyer can use a stored card.
3. The order bump, on Pro. A checkbox on the checkout that adds a second product before the buyer pays.
4. The one-click upsell, on Pro. An offer shown after checkout that the buyer can take with one click.
5. Delivery. For a download, SamCart shows a secure link on the order summary page right after the purchase and sends it again in the receipt email. A course goes into SamCart's members area.

After the sale, buyers can use a customer portal to see their purchases, update a card or manage a subscription without emailing you. On your side, SamCart's order management lets you find the order, issue a refund or change a billing date.

What can you sell on SamCart?

SamCart's pricing page says you can sell digital products, courses, services, subscriptions or physical goods, and every plan allows unlimited products.

For digital files, SamCart's article on delivering digital files says it hosts files of up to 1 GB at no extra cost. It accepts .png, .jpg, .mp3, .mp4, .pdf and .zip files. Download links do not expire unless you set a time limit. If your file is bigger than 1 GB, or a type it does not take, such as an EPUB, you can paste a link to the file in Dropbox or Google Drive instead.

Courses live in the built-in members area, so a buyer does not need a login on another platform. Subscriptions are sold through the same checkout, and the Pro plan adds a tool called Subscription Saver that retries failed payments and reaches out to the customer. Physical goods use the same checkout as everything else.

SamCart's help center also lists calendar bookings, marked as a beta feature, so a paid call can be the product. Bookings can only be turned on for a main product, not for an order bump or an upsell.

How do you get paid on SamCart?

Through a payment processor connected to your SamCart account. The default is SamPay, SamCart's own processor, at 2.9% + 30c a sale on both Core and Pro. Each plan card says there are no added fees on SamPay.

SamCart's FAQ says it "does not take a dime over what the credit card companies charge" when you use SamPay or Stripe. It adds that other processors, such as Braintree or Authorize.net, may carry small added fees. The same FAQ says you do not need a merchant account of your own: SamCart can set one up for you inside the app, or you can connect Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Authorize.net or Easy Pay Direct. The plan table lists third-party processors as a Pro feature, so check which ones your plan allows before you plan around one.

One line in the table is easy to miss. SamCart lists tax collection at 50 basis points on Core and 35 on Pro, which is 0.5% and 0.35%. The page does not say what that percentage is charged on, so ask SamCart before you build a budget around it. The pricing page also does not say how often SamPay pays out to your bank.

Who is SamCart for?

SamCart names its plans by stage, and each plan says who it is for. Core is "Start selling" and has everything needed to launch, with one team seat. Pro is for growing, and adds order bumps, one-click upsells, A/B testing, an affiliate center, advanced analytics and ten team seats. Done For You is built and scaled for you, with a dedicated account manager, at a price set on a call.

Core is $79 a month and Pro is $199, with 25% off if you pay yearly. There is a full breakdown of what SamCart costs, including what each yearly plan totals and when the trial charge lands. SamCart's own FAQ says billing starts automatically when the 7-day trial ends, on the plan and cycle you chose at signup.

Its solution pages are aimed at sellers in health and fitness, business and finance, self-help and wellness, and arts and creative work. That fits course creators, coaches and small teams who send buyers to their own pages. If your buyers come from a social profile instead, there is a side-by-side of SamCart and Stan Store, which is built for that.

When would I send you to SamCart instead of Stakk?

If you need courses, subscriptions, bookings, physical goods, file hosting or a team working in one account, Stakk is the wrong choice and SamCart will serve you better. Stakk has no course hosting, no subscriptions or recurring billing, no bookings, sells in US dollars only and caps prices at $999. It also does not host your files: you paste a link to where the file lives, and Stakk emails that link to the buyer once they pay. And if cost per sale is the whole decision, use Systeme.io or Whop instead. Systeme.io charges no transaction fees on any plan, including a free one, and Whop charges 2.7% + $0.30 on a domestic card with no monthly cost. Both take less per sale than our 10% + $0.50.

What Stakk does differently is the checkout. The order bump rides the same charge as the product, so it carries one fee rather than two. The upsell after payment is one tap against the card the buyer just used. It is a second charge, so our fee applies to it again. Both are on every account, with no $199 plan needed first, and the money lands in your own Stripe account rather than a balance we hold. The layout came out of funnels that ran for agency clients before Stakk existed. If you want to weigh more options first, there is a longer list of SamCart alternatives.

Want SamCart's bump and upsell without the $199 plan?

Stakk is 10% + $0.50 a sale with card processing included, and no monthly fee. You connect your own Stripe account, add a bump and an upsell to any product, and a month with no sales costs you nothing. When a sale comes in, the money is in your Stripe account, not in a balance we hold.

Start selling on Stakk, free