SamCart or ThriveCart for affiliates you recruit

You already decided a network should not be the company on the charge. The partners are people you bring, and the checkout still has to record which link they used, offer a bump, and run an upsell. SamCart and ThriveCart both sell that checkout. What separates them is which monthly plan tracks your affiliates, and which card fees you still pay after that subscription.

A comment on r/marketing calls ThriveCart and SamCart direct competitors. The dollars above are from each company's own pricing page or monthly checkout. The research page states how prices and help articles are handled.

ThriveCart vs SamCart, on the plan that tracks partners

Comparing Core with Standard leaves out affiliate tracking, which is the reason you are here. SamCart's pricing page lists Core at $79 a month. The Affiliate Center, one-click upsells, order bumps, A/B testing and Subscription Saver are on Pro. ThriveCart's affiliate walkthrough says affiliate functionality is not available on the Standard plan. A new account moves to Pro+. The article names older Pro and Client plans as the legacy path, which is for accounts that already have them.

The Standard monthly checkout is the $47 bill after a 30-day trial. It can run a checkout. It cannot run the partner program the walkthrough describes. SamCart's trial, on the pricing page, is 7 days, and it is the trial on the plan you actually buy. Those trial lengths are listed above, beside the subscription that includes affiliates.

How SamCart credits a partner and pays them

The Affiliate Center article says the last referrer gets the credit when two partners send the same buyer. The most recent link is the one that earns the commission. An earlier partner does not keep a share of that order because they were first.

The same article says affiliates earn 0% until you set a rate on each product. A new partner does not start with a default commission rate. The percentage is the one you enter for that product, and a product you leave untouched stays at zero.

Payout is a file. The article says that clicking Payout produces a CSV with a line for each affiliate being paid. You pay that list by PayPal MassPay or by any manual method you choose. The help article does not require PayPal. SamCart does not send the commission itself. The sale still runs through the processor on the account. The CSV is the list you use to pay the partners.

SamPay, on the pricing page, is 2.9% + 30¢ on Core and on Pro. The page lists tax collection at 50 bps on Core and 35 bps on Pro, which is the unit that page uses, on top of the SamPay rate. SamCart describes the SamPay rate as the processor fee. It is a separate bill from the monthly subscription above.

How ThriveCart limits affiliate tracking

The walkthrough is specific about the plan. Affiliate functionality is not on Standard. Pro+ is the upgrade it names for a new account. The same page says ThriveCart is not a marketplace, not the merchant of record, and not a payment processor. The charge hits the processor you connected. You pay partners from that money. There is no pool of promoters waiting inside the product the way there is on ClickBank or JVZoo.

The walkthrough shows the link those partners use. It is the affiliate id, two hyphens, your account name, then the product slug: https://affiliateid--vendor.thrivecart.com/product-name/. A normal subdomain, or a single hyphen between the id and the account, is a different URL from the one that article shows.

The homepage lists one bump offer on Standard, plus one-click upsells and downsells, A/B split testing and abandoned cart recovery. Several order bumps are on the Pro+ side of that plan table, beside the homepage's line that they can raise average order value by 30%. That 30% is the figure ThriveCart prints. It is not a result from this comparison. The homepage also states 0% fees on sales for those plans, and it still links to a lifetime option for a Standard account. The lifetime link is a second way to buy Standard. It is not the affiliate plan, and it is not the only way the homepage sells the product.

What a 2025 thread said about the plan limit

A thread on r/digital_marketing says the writer found affiliate management on Pro+ at $295 a year, after a sales conversation had implied it was included. That yearly number is what the thread reported. It is not the monthly Pro+ checkout above. The part that matches the walkthrough is the plan limit: partner tracking was on the higher plan, and Standard did not include it.

If the offer needs a marketplace that pays the partner for you, this pair is the wrong shortlist. Read network checkout or your own cart for the choice between a network order form and a cart you run.

A year of the affiliate-capable plan

A year of SamCart Pro, at the monthly price above, comes to $2,388. A year of ThriveCart Pro+ on the monthly checkout comes to $1,044. The gap over that year is $1,344, before the processor takes its cut of each sale. Core at $79 a month, and Standard at $47 a month, are cheaper subscriptions and they leave out partner tracking. Those two plans cover the checkout and stop there.

SamCart's pricing page lists yearly billing at 25% off on the Core line. That discount does not move the Affiliate Center onto Core. Pro stays at the monthly price shown above when the subscription has to include partner tracking. ThriveCart's lifetime link, on the homepage, points at a Standard account. It does not replace the Pro+ monthly checkout when the job is tracking partners.

What still comes out of the sale

Neither subscription replaces the card processor. The 0% figure above is ThriveCart's platform fee on the sale. The SamPay line is the processor rate SamCart prints, with tax collection listed beside it in basis points. A Stripe or PayPal account you connect bills on its own. These checkouts do not hold the funds and file the tax the way a merchant-of-record network does.

The fee calculator shows what you keep after a network's cut, at a price you enter. The payout timeline shows when that network sends the money. An offer that needs a marketplace of partners belongs on the ranked list of networks. Head-to-heads between those networks are on the compare hub.

My take

I would start on ThriveCart Pro+. It is the cheaper monthly plan that tracks partners you recruit, and Standard already has the bump and the upsells if you later decide you do not need partners. I would pay for SamCart Pro when Subscription Saver and A/B testing have to sit on the same subscription as the Affiliate Center. I would skip Core and ThriveCart Standard for a partner program.