If you're a course creator or a digital product seller, this Thrivecart Learn review is for you. Thrivecart Learn is an incredibly powerful platform offering both highly customizable checkout pages and payment processing, and a robust course platform.
Read on for the details.
*This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click a link and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. I appreciate your support! You can read my full disclaimer here.
You may be asking “What is Thrivecart Learn?” or “Is Thrivecart worth it?”. This Thrivecart review will tell you everything you need to know about Thrivecart Learn.
What is Thrivecart?
Thrivecart does two things: (1) checkout pages and (2) course platforms.
Thrivecart started out as just a checkout page provider. You can create extremely customizable checkout pages in Thrivecart, which leads to higher conversions. Plus, Thrivecart doesn't charge any payment processing fees (though you still have to pay the fees for Stripe or PayPal).
Here's an example of one of my checkout pages.
In 2021, Thrivecart came out with Thrivecart Learn, a fantastic course platform. We'll discuss that below in our Thrivecart Learn review.
Thrivecart Pro features and review
For a $195 fee, you can upgrade from regular Thrivecart to Thrivecart Pro. I highly recommend it.
Thrivecart Pro gives you access to a host of great features that really make Thrivecart worth it.
The extra features include:
- The ability to create an affiliate program for anything you're selling on Thrivecart. Thrivecart manages the whole thing, so it's almost no work for you, and you can have a thriving affiliate program.
- Automatic sales tax calculation (if you need it)
- Intelligent business projections
- JV contracts
- Advanced user management, and
- Custom domain functionality
Honestly, this wouldn't be a Thrivecart review if I didn't tell you that the affiliate program capabilities alone make it more than worth the price of the upgrade.
Thrivecart lifetime price
Thrivecart is currently offering lifetime access to the platform (and all future updates) for a one-time payment. You can get lifetime access.
It currently costs $495, or $690 if you upgrade to Pro (which I highly recommend). Which may seem like a lot, but it pays for itself within a few months when you consider the other platforms that you can abandon if you're using Thrivecart.
When I switched to Thrivecart Learn, I was able to cancel my $119/month Teachable subscription, so Thrivecart paid for itself in six months.
What is Thrivecart Learn: All About the Learn Platform
Thrivecart started out as a checkout cart provider. And they were (and are) excellent at it. They provide highly customizable checkout carts that really increase conversions.
So you may be asking, what is Thrivecart Learn then?
Well, then came big news — in 2021, Thrivecart announced that it was adding a fully functional course platform called…you guessed it…”Thrivecart Learn” or just “Learn.”
That lifetime fee is looking pretty good now, right?
At first I was skeptical about how good the Learn program would be, but I am happy to report that I was wrong. Thrivecart is worth it.
I love the platform and I've migrated all my courses over to Learn.
We'll talk about why in the Thrivecart Learn review below.
Thrivecart Learn features
Membership and course hosting
Thrivecart Learn's main purpose is to be a digital course platform. When people ask “What is Thrivecart Learn?”, that's the short answer to the question.
You can create a course of any size. Add modules and lessons. And then add your content by simply dragging and dropping.
Lots of types of content can be added, including:
Branding your course site on Thrivecart
Thrivecart Learn offers a lot of different ways to brand your course site.
First, you can add a course logo. It will display on your students' dashboard, and within the course (its location depends on which course layout you're using, as discussed below).
This is how my logo looks in my course, Break Into Blogging.
Second, you can add thumbnail lessons for each module and lesson. How they display will depend on your course layout.
Third, you can control the look of the text in your lessons.
You can choose from hundreds of fonts, control the size, control the color, adjust the spacing, and more.
Fourth, you can customize the whole look of your course registration and log-in pages.
You can choose fonts and colors. And you can add blocks like videos and images.
So, there are lots of ways to brand your course with Thrivecart.
Different course layouts on Thrivecart Learn
Thrivecart offers three different course layouts for your digital course.
Your layout can be:
The Sidebar Layout:
As Thrivecart describes this layout:
“This layout is an enhanced version of our original sidebar design, with a list of your modules and lessons in the sidebar, a sidebar that can be adjusted in width based on your needs, full-color customization to fit your brand, and of course – lesson completion indicators when a lesson has been completed by the student – allowing them to easily see where they’ve got to.”
Thrivecart Support
It looks like this:
The Top Menu Layout:
As Thrivecart describes it:
“The Top Menu layout is aimed at creators where the lesson content is the sole focus. With this layout, we’ve removed the sidebar and added everything up in the top menu. Students can continue through your course using the button at the bottom of your content, or they can click on the drop-down menu in the header to see a list of the modules and lessons available to them.”
Thrivecart Support
This is what it looks like:
The Grid Layout:
As Thrivecart describes it:
“When using this course layout, you’ll have a customisable page where you can drag and drop elements around a Grid of your course modules. You can see with this layout, the use of thumbnails is encouraged to give visual immersion for your students. When a student clicks on a module, they’ll be taken to the module overview with a list of all the lessons available within that module. Finally, when clicking on a lesson, they’ll be taken to that focused lesson page similar to the Top Menu layout – only with fewer distractions for your students.”
Thrivecart Support
And it looks like this:
The different layouts offer you lots of options to choose from, and you can really brand your course.
Upsells
Thrivecart offers you the ability to create upsells (up to five!) for your online course.
When enabled, your upsell page will come up as soon as your customer completes their main order. They will be given the option of buying the upsell with one click, or they can click “no thanks” and proceed to the thank you page.
Thrivecart allows you to create upsell pages right on the platform, or, if you prefer, you can create your own upsell page using something like Elementor or Leadpages and embed the Thrivecart button on your own page.
It's incredibly easy to add upsells on Thrivecart, and you can make money doing it!
Recurring subscriptions for memberships
Thrivecart gives you the option of offering one-time payments, subscription payments for a set number of payments, ongoing subscription payments, or a mix of the three.
Enable whichever options you want, and the customer can choose when they're on the checkout page.
Here's one of my pages as an example.
Choose your own price
Additionally, Thrivecart gives you the option of letting your customers choose their own price.
You can set a minimum price (or keep it at $0) and allow customers to pay whatever they want over the minimum price.
Tax calculation included
Thrivecart also gives you the option of including tax, which will be automatically calculated, onto your orders. You can collect local tax and/or VAT tax this way.
Stats
The Thrivecart dashboard gives you up-to-the-minute analytics on how your products are doing.
You can customize the date range and view pretty much any stat you want on Thrivecart.
Integrations
One of the great features about Thrivecart is that it offers a huge number of integrations.
Thrivecart offers integrations to:
You can see a list of all the Thrivecart integrations here.
Thrivecart integrates with popular payment processors like Stripe and PayPal.
It also connects with popular email servicers like ConvertKit, Mailerlite, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign (and a lot more).
Plus, Thrivecart connects to Zapier. So even if Thrivecart doesn't connect directly to your platform of choice, Zapier almost certainly does.
Affiliate program
Thrivecart offers a great affiliate program for all of your products. You can designate:
Triggers/rules
Thrivecart Learn Plus allows you to have “rules” for your course content.
For example, you could say that when someone has a certain tag (tags can be added in Thrivecart checkouts), they get access to a certain piece of course content. I use this in my own courses, which have certain bonuses at certain times.
Here are the “triggers” for rules:
Dripped content
Thrivecart Learn also allows you to have dripped content. Meaning that you could say that students get access to Modules 1 and 2 when they enroll, Modules 3 and 4 7 days after enrollment, and Modules 5 and 6 14 days after enrollment.
Thrivecart Learn Plus features
Bundles
Thrivecart Learn Plus allows you to “bundle” courses together. This means that when a student purchases one course, they will automatically get access to other courses in the bundle.
You could use this for bonus content for your Thrivecart course.
Advanced sequences
Thrivecart Learn Plus also gives you access to “advanced sequences,” which are more complex rules, as discussed above.
Teams
Thrivecart Learn Plus also allows you to add multiple users to your team, so you can give access to your VA or others on your team.
Featured content
Thrivecart Learn Plus gives you access to “featured content,” which gets a prominent place in your course, depending on the layout.
Custom domains
Thrivecart Learn Plus allows you to have custom domains for each of your courses.
For example, my signature course, Break Into Blogging, is hosted at bib.beccakleincourses.co, instead of a Thrivecart link.
You can set a different custom link for each course.
Import students
Thrivecart Learn Plus also allows you to easily import a CSV of students into your course. This makes it very easy to switch from other course platforms.
All you have to do is download a CSV file of your students' names and emails from your old course platform and upload it to Thrivecart. Thrivecart will create accounts for each student and send them an email with access instructions.
I did this when I switched from Teachable to Thrivecart and it worked great.
How to use Thrivecart Learn
Luckily, Thrivecart Learn is very easy to use. Here are some of the basics.
Creating a new course
You can create as many courses as you like inside Thrivecart Learn. There's no limit.
When you create a new course, you'll have a few options, like setting the logo, an author profile picture, the course name, and others. (You can change all of this later if you want).
Choosing a layout
One of the options you'll have when you create a new course in Thrivecart Learn is to choose a course layout. As discussed above, you can choose between:
- The sidebar layout
- The top menu layout
- The grid layout
(You can change this later if you change your mind).
Modules and Lessons
You can add content to your course in the form of Modules and Lessons. Modules are the main sections of your course. Lessons go within each Module. You can have as many of each as you'd like.
For example, you can see here in that Break Into Blogging's “Module One: Defining Your Blog,” I have multiple lessons like “Picking a profitable niche” and “Defining Your Ideal Customer Avatar.”
Using the Learn block builder
Lessons are what hold the actual course content on Thrivecart Learn. When asking “what is Thrivecart Learn?,” this is probably what you're thinking of.
This is where you add text, headings, videos, downloads, images, custom HTML (to embed a feedback form, for example), and pretty much anything else you want.
Embedding videos
Thrivecart Learn does not host videos itself, but it is very easy to embed videos hosted elsewhere. (I host my videos on Vimeo for $7 per month).
All you have to do is add a video block to your lesson and copy/paste the embed code from Vimeo or YouTube or wherever you're hosting your videos. The video will embed right in the lesson.
Here's an example from Break Into Blogging:
Inserting downloads
You can also insert downloadable material into your Thrivecart course. For example, in my courses I always include a PDF transcript of each video and some lessons also have downloadable checklists or workbooks.
Thrivecart does not host the downloads directly, but all you need to do is upload your document to something like Google Drive (which is what I use) or Dropbox. Anywhere you can get a link.
Just copy/paste the link into the downloads content blog in Thrivecart Learn, and you're all set.
Branding your log-in and registration pages
Thrivecart Learn allows you to create custom log-in and registration pages for each course. You can use the block builder the same way you create your course.
You can brand your course with your own colors, add logos, or whatever else you want.
Here's my log-in page for Break Into Blogging:
Setting up a custom domain
As noted above, if you have Thrivecart Learn Plus, you can set up a custom domain for each course hosted on the platform. They'll give you easy instructions to follow.
Branding your course
Thrivecart Learn allows you to extensively brand your course. You can use your course logo, your brand colors, and your brand fonts (unless it's a custom font, which is not yet supported).
You can set the fonts for any block of text. You can set colors for the thumbnails for each lesson and for the course platform itself. And you can brand the log-in and registration pages, as discussed above.
Making certain content hidden
This is my favorite Thrivecart Learn feature. You can make any lesson in your course available to only certain people.
For example, when I'm launching my courses, I use earlybird bonuses. So everyone who buys by the earlybird deadline gets certain bonuses that people who enroll later do not get.
Before Thrivecart Learn came about, I used to have to set up my autoresponder to email these bonuses out. Not ideal.
Now, I can add the bonuses to the regular course, but set it so that only people with particular tags can view it. (You can add tags when the student uses a Thrivecart checkout page to purchase the course).
When you ask “Is Thrivecart worth it?,” this is one of the features that makes me say YES!
Thrivecart Pricing
One-time pricing
Thrivecart is currently running a lifetime access deal. That means you pay once, and then never again. No monthly fees, no annual fees, ever.
Thrivecart currently costs $495, or $690 if you upgrade to Thrivecart Pro (which I recommend, as it includes a lot of really powerful features, such as the ability to run your own affiliate program).
This one-time fee includes both Thrivecart's checkout platform, and Thrivecart Learn.
Learn Plus pricing
As an optional upgrade, you can purchase Thrivecart Learn Plus for a one time $150 fee. We talked about the features of Learn Plus above.
Pros and Cons of Thrivecart Learn
Pros of Thrivecart Learn
There are a lot of “pros” about Thrivecart Learn, but here are some of the biggies.
Integrations
As mentioned above, Thrivecart integrates with lots of other programs, such as ConvertKit.
Additionally, it integrates with Zapier. So even if it doesn't directly hook up to your program, with Zapier it almost certainly will.
Easy to use
Thrivecart Learn is truly easy to use. There's virtually no learning curve.
Content is built with a very intuitive drag-and-drop builder and all of the settings are easy to understand.
No fees ever
The lifetime price of Thrivecart is a huge pro. Thrivecart's competitors charge annual or monthly rates, often more than $100 per month. This means that Thrivecart will pay for itself in well under a year.
Highly customizable
Thrivecart Learn is a lot more customizable than many other course platforms.
You can add your colors to pretty much anything and it has a huge number of fonts to choose from.
You can also choose things like your course layout and the look of your log-in page.
Ability to make certain content visible only to certain students
As I mentioned above in this Thrivecart Learn review, Thrivecart Learn has the ability to restrict certain lessons only to people with particular tags. This makes delivering things like earlybird bonuses so much easier.
Integrates completely with Thrivecart checkout pages
If you purchase Thrivecart Learn, you're also automatically getting access to Thrivecart's checkout platform.
You can create highly customized checkout pages that can substantially increase your conversion rates.
Here's an example of one of my Thrivecart checkout pages.
You can also add bump offers, upsells, and downsells.
And it integrates with Stripe, PayPal, and several other popular payment processors.
Great customer support
Thrivecart also has great customer support. I rarely run into issues, but occasionally when I do, their customer service team has always been able to quickly answer my questions.
Cons of Thrivecart Learn
No hosting for videos or downloads
One con of Thrivecart Learn is that it does not yet have the ability to host videos or downloads for your lessons (though I wouldn't be surprised if they added this feature).
This means that you'll have to host your videos (I use Vimeo) and PDFs (I use Google Drive) elsewhere and insert them into Thrivecart. It's extremely easy to do, but it is one extra set.
No community feature
Thrivecart Learn does not yet have a community feature. So if you want to have a course community, you'll have to rely on a Facebook group, a Slack channel, or an external membership platform like Circle or Mighty Networks.
That's pretty much it!
Who can benefit from Thrivecart Learn?
Pretty much any course creator can benefit from Thrivecart Learn, even if it means you have to switch platforms. I switched from Teachable to Thrivecart Learn, and I've never looked back.
Is Thrivecart worth it?
Thrivecart is definitely worth it.
Both the checkout page platform and the Thrivecart Learn course platform are powerful and easy to use.
Additionally, the one-time lifetime payment will save you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars going forward.
I have zero regrets about my decision to purchase Thrivecrt, and I don't think you will either.
Alternatives to Thrivecart
In terms of Thrivecart as a checkout platform, it's only big competitor is Samcart. But to get all of the features of Thrivecart, you'll pay $199/month. That means that in less than four months, the cost of Samcart will already exceed the cost of Thrivecart.
As for the course platform, Thrivecart Learn, there are other course platforms like Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, Teachery, and Podia (among others). But once again, the cost of these platforms will exceed that of Thrivecart in a matter of months.
Wrap up: Thrivecart Learn Review
I give Thrivcart Learn two thumbs up.
It's cost-effective, powerful, and easy to use. And they're always coming out with new features, so I won't be surprised if I'm updating this post in a few months.
I recommend Thrivecart to any course creator.
Thrivecart Learn FAQs
Does Thrivecart have an affiliate program?
Yes. First, Thrivecart has its own affiliate program, if you want to become an affiliate and promote Thrivecart.
Second, Thrivecart Pro includes the ability to create your own affiliate program for some or all of course offerings.
The Thrivecart Pro affiliate program can be totally automated, so that you don't need to manually approve new affiliates (though you can if you want) or manually pay affiliates (again, you can if you want).
How do students access the course and the content?
As soon as a student purchases your course, Thrivecart will send them an email with log-in instructions. Students can access the course 24/7 on the Thrivecart Learn platform with their own unique username and password.
Can you preview the course area?
Thrivecart does not currently offer the option to students to preview the course before buying it.
(But you can always preview your course at any time).
Can you add team members?
Yes, you can add extra users to your Thrivecart account and give them different levels of permissions.
Can you add videos?
Yes, you can add videos into your Thrivecart Learn courses.
Thrivecart does not host videos itself. But you can host them elsewhere and then embed them into your Thrivecart Learn lessons. (I host mine with Vimeo for $7/month).
Just copy the embed code from your video host, add a video block to your lesson, and paste the embed code.
What are bundles?
Thrivecart Learn Plus allows you to create “bundles.” This means that you're tying two or more courses together, so that when a student purchases Course A, she also automatically gets access to Courses B and C.
Does Thrivecart work with Teachable?
The Thrivecart Learn program replaces Teachable as a course platform.
If you want to use the Thrivecart checkout pages instead of Teachable's checkout pages, you can. But you will need to set up Zapier to hook Thrivecart up to Teachable. (And note that Teachable require you to be on at least the Pro plan to use this feature. The cheapest plan will not work with Zapier).
Can you host courses on Thrivecart?
Yep! That's what Thrivecart Learn is.
How much does Thrivecart cost?
Thrivecart costs $495, or $690 if you upgrade to Thrivecart Pro. That's lifetime access, no fees ever. Additionally, if you want to purchase Thrivecart Learn Plus, that is $150 (again, for lifetime access).
So that's my Thrivecart Learn review. Hopefully you now know what Thrivecart Learn is. And that, in my opinion, Thrivecart is worth it.
Have you used Thrivecart Learn? What course platform are you on? Let me know in the comments!
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