The SamCart vs Shopify choice comes down to what you sell. Pick Shopify to ship physical stock, at $19 a month billed yearly. Pick SamCart for digital offers with order bumps and 1-click upsells, which need Pro at $149 a month billed yearly. All prices come from each vendor’s pricing page.
Month to month, Shopify Basic is $25 and SamCart Pro is $199, and SamCart’s Core plan has neither feature. Card fees sit on top: SamPay charges 2.9% + 30¢ a sale, and Shopify Basic adds 2% on outside processors. For digital sellers, CartMango, which I run, covers the bump and upsell job free until October 2026, then about $1.67 a month, billed yearly.
These 2 tools end up side by side because both come up when you search for a way to sell online. They were built for different jobs, and picking the wrong one shows up on your card statement every month.
Buy SamCart’s $79 plan for its best-known feature, the order bump, and you find the bump lives on the $199 plan. Open a Shopify store to sell 1 PDF and you pay for inventory and shipping tools you never touch.
Below, each tool is priced for the job it was built for, using numbers read from both pricing pages. You will see which seller situation points to which tool, what each pick costs, and what you give up with it.
Key Takeaways
- SamCart’s $79 Core plan has no order bump. Bumps, 1-click upsells and your own processor start on Pro: $149 a month billed yearly, or $199 month to month.
- Shopify Basic costs $25 a month, or $19 billed yearly. The $39 and $29 figures printed on most comparison pages are out of date.
- On Shopify, an order bump inside the checkout needs Shopify Plus. Basic stores can add a 1-click upsell after payment with an app like Aftersell, at $34.99 a month.
- Card fees sit on top of every plan. SamPay charges 2.9% + 30¢. Shopify does not print its US card rate, and Basic adds 2% on outside processors.
- Shopify suits sellers who ship things, SamCart a funnel built on a few digital offers. CartMango Gold runs the bump and upsell for about $1.67 a month, billed yearly, after its free beta.
SamCart vs Shopify: what each one is built to do
SamCart is a checkout and sales-page tool for a handful of offers. Shopify is a full online store.
If you are new to selling and still choosing tools, the Online Selling Mistakes Challenge walks through the 5 mistakes that cost solo sellers the most, in 5 short daily emails.
Both tools take payments and both can sell a download, so there is real overlap, and the overlap is where sellers get stuck. The 2 pricing pages show the split plainly. SamCart’s lists digital products, courses, services, subscriptions and physical goods, and not one of its feature rows mentions inventory or shipping. Shopify’s lists inventory locations, shipping rates and in-person sales, and never once uses the words upsell, order bump or digital.
Shopify still sells files. It needs its free Digital Products app to send the download link, with a 5 GB cap on each file. Our walkthrough of selling digital products on Shopify covers that setup screen by screen.
So start with which of the 5 situations below you are in, because each one points somewhere different.
What the same job costs on SamCart and Shopify
Running an order bump and a 1-click upsell costs $149 a month on SamCart Pro, $53.99 a month on Shopify Basic with an upsell app that still leaves out the checkout bump, and about $1.67 a month on CartMango Gold, all on yearly billing, with card fees on top of all 3. That is the job SamCart is known for: a bump on the checkout page, plus an upsell offered right after payment. Both price columns in the table are per month, and the first compares every plan on yearly billing, because that is the only way CartMango bills. Aftersell only bills monthly, so its $34.99 is the same in both columns.
SamCart Core costs $59 a month on yearly billing and runs neither the bump nor the upsell, while Shopify Basic adds the upsell through Aftersell at $34.99 a month and keeps the checkout bump behind Shopify Plus.
| Plan | Billed yearly | Billed monthly | Bump in checkout | 1-click upsell |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SamCart Core | $59 | $79 | No | No |
| SamCart Pro | $149 | $199 | Yes | Yes |
| Shopify Basic | $19 | $25 | Shopify Plus only | Only with an app |
| Shopify Basic + Aftersell | $53.99 | $59.99 | Shopify Plus only | Yes |
| CartMango Gold | About $1.67 | No monthly plan | Yes | Yes |
CartMango is my product, which is why it sits last. It covers the checkout half of the job and nothing else, and it is free until October 2026.
On a yearly bill, SamCart charges $711 for Core and about $1,790 for Pro, while Shopify prints only the $19 monthly figure for Basic on yearly billing, with no annual total. Our SamCart pricing breakdown walks through each SamCart plan in more detail.
Card fees come on top of every row
SamCart runs every sale on Core through SamPay at 2.9% + 30¢, the same headline rate as Stripe’s pricing page. Bringing your own processor is a Pro feature, listed on the Pro card as “API + 3rd Party Processors”. SamCart’s plan table also lists a tax collection charge of 0.5% on Core and 0.35% on Pro.
Shopify does not print its US card rate on its pricing page at all. The one percentage it does print is the surcharge for using an outside processor instead of Shopify Payments: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. CartMango takes 0% of each sale. You connect your own Stripe or PayPal account and pay their rate directly.
Why the Shopify bump needs Shopify Plus
Shopify’s help centre has a table comparing checkout customization by plan. The row for apps that change the information, shipping and payment pages carries a cross under Basic and a tick under Shopify Plus, which starts at $2,300 a month. Shopify’s developer documentation says the same about the code those apps rely on.
A seller asked about exactly this on the Shopify Community forum, looking for a checkout upsell app that works without Plus. A reply in August 2026 put it plainly: “without Plus, no app can put an offer inside the checkout itself.” What a Basic store can do is show an offer on the page between payment and confirmation, which is where Aftersell’s Post-Purchase plan at $34.99 a month does its work. If a 1-click upsell after payment is new to you, our guide to the upsell page explains how it differs from a bump.
If what you sell goes in a box
Pick Shopify. Of the 2, it is the one built around stock you have to count, pack and ship, with inventory locations, shipping settings and in-person selling on its pricing page. Basic costs $25 a month, or $19 a month billed yearly. New stores get 3 days free, then pay $1 a month for the first 3 months. Grow, at $65 a month or $49 billed yearly, adds room for up to 5 staff accounts.
SamCart’s own page says it can sell physical goods, and for a single physical product sold through 1 sales page that works. Its feature list has no inventory or shipping rows, though, so a catalog with sizes and stock levels is a poor fit. What you give up with Shopify: the checkout bump, unless you move to Plus, and the card rate, which you only see once your store is set up.
CartMango cannot help you here, and I would rather say so than bend the table.
CartMango is a checkout for digital products, and its feature list covers file delivery and no shipping. When my wife started out as an insurance agent in 2023, she asked me how to stand apart from the other agents. My advice was to tell a prospect who was already well covered that he did not need more insurance, and let that commission go. My bet was that he would appreciate the straight answer, and maybe refer her to people he knew. Same rule here: if your product ships in a box, go with Shopify.
If your first product is a single download or course
For 1 ebook, 1 template pack or 1 course sold from 1 page, with no upsell planned yet, any of the 3 tools works.
The choice comes down to what you pay for tools you are not using. SamCart Core, at $59 a month billed yearly, gives you its page builder, a checkout and its Courses App with a members area. If your first product is a course, that last part is real value, because Core hosts it today.
Shopify Basic, at $19 a month billed yearly, gives you a full store and the free Digital Products app to deliver the file. You pay for a catalog, inventory and shipping you will not touch, and each file is capped at 5 GB. Our guide to online stores for digital products shows where that trade starts to make sense.
CartMango Silver is free until October 2026, then about $0.83 a month, billed as $10 a year, with a hosted Mini Page for the sales page and a checkout behind it. The limits are 10 products and 2 GB of file storage on that tier, and CartMango does not host courses yet. Course hosting is planned for October 2026, on its $30 plan.
You give up the bump on Core, $19 a month of unused store on Shopify, and course hosting on CartMango until that launch.
If the extra sale at checkout is the whole plan
Order bumps and 1-click upsells turn a single-product sale into a bigger order, and some sellers build their whole business around them. For that seller the choice narrows to SamCart Pro or CartMango, with Shopify a distant third.
SamCart Pro, at $149 a month billed yearly or $199 month to month, puts bumps, 1-click upsells, A/B testing, an affiliate center and failed-payment recovery in 1 place. If you want to split-test your checkout, that is a real reason to pay for Pro, since CartMango does not list A/B testing on any plan.
CartMango Gold, free until October 2026 and then about $1.67 a month, billed as $20 a year, runs order bumps, upsells, downsells and cart abandonment emails. Order bumps alone come with the cheaper Silver plan. Shopify can only do half of this below Plus. An app like Aftersell adds the 1-click upsell after payment for $34.99 a month, and the bump inside the checkout stays out of reach until the $2,300 plan.
The trade: SamCart Pro costs $149 a month billed yearly, CartMango skips A/B testing, and Shopify Basic skips the bump.
If buyers pay you every month
For a digital membership, pick CartMango if you want the subscriptions to stay yours when you leave, or SamCart Pro if you want failed-payment recovery built in. For a physical subscription box, pick Shopify.
Memberships, subscription boxes and payment plans all bill the same buyer again and again, and here the question that matters is what happens to those buyers if you ever switch tools. SamCart sells subscriptions on every plan, and Pro adds Subscription Saver to retry failed payments. The catch sits in the exit: SamCart subscriptions billed through PayPal, and fixed-term ones on Stripe, stop coming to you if you leave SamCart, even when they ran through your own account.
Shopify handles subscriptions through its free Shopify Subscriptions app, built by Shopify itself and rated 3.7 stars from 822 reviews. It suits a physical subscription box better than a digital membership, since the store is still built around shipping.
CartMango includes subscriptions on every plan. If you leave, the subscriptions you created keep billing and the money keeps reaching your Stripe or PayPal account.
If your shop mixes boxes and downloads
Pick Shopify Basic, at $19 a month billed yearly, with the free Digital Products app for the files. 1 store, 1 checkout and 1 order history covers both, and nothing else in this comparison handles the physical side as well. SamCart is the weaker pick for a mixed shop. It can take the payment for a physical item, but a mixed catalog needs the stock and shipping tools SamCart’s feature list does not include.
Know the app’s limits before you commit: 5 GB per file, and editing or deleting a file breaks the download link for everyone who already bought it. Mixed shops get a closer look in our Sellfy vs Shopify comparison and our Payhip vs Shopify breakdown.
Where the page 1 comparisons go wrong
Most comparisons ranking for SamCart vs Shopify quote plans that no longer exist. 4 of them list SamCart’s old Launch, Grow and Scale plans, with 4 different price lists between them: Launch anywhere from $49 to $79, Scale from $199 to $319. None of them names Core or Pro.
The Shopify side is no better. 4 pages give Shopify’s starting price as $39, and 3 more as $29. Not one of them shows the $25 monthly price on Shopify’s pricing page today.
The AI summary at the top of Google carries the same drift. Its AI Overview says Shopify plans “start around $32 to $39 per month” and calls SamCart’s $79 tier the “Launch plan”, a name SamCart has since dropped.
2 feature claims on page 1 are wrong too. 1 guide says SamCart has no payment processor of its own, when Core runs every sale through SamPay. A second says SamCart includes upsells and order bumps by default, when both start on the $199 Pro plan.
Before you buy SamCart for the bump, read the Pro card. The $79 headline price is Core, and Core has no bump.
Which one to pick, in 1 table
Shopify wins 2 of the 5 situations below, the 2 with a physical product, and the other 3 split between SamCart and CartMango on price and features. Every cost is per month on yearly billing, the only way CartMango bills, and CartMango is free until October 2026.
| Your situation | Pick | What it costs | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| You ship physical products | Shopify Basic | $19 a month | Checkout bump needs Plus, card rate unpublished |
| 1 download or course, no upsell yet | SamCart Core or CartMango Silver | $59 a month, or about $0.83 a month | Core has no bump, CartMango courses not yet, planned for October 2026 |
| Bumps and upsells are the plan | SamCart Pro or CartMango Gold | $149 a month, or about $1.67 a month | SamCart costs more, CartMango has no A/B testing |
| Buyers pay monthly | SamCart or CartMango | $59 a month, or about $0.83 a month | Leave SamCart and you lose its PayPal subscriptions |
| Boxes and downloads together | Shopify + Digital Products app | $19 a month | 5 GB per file |
FAQ
How much does SamCart cost per month?
SamCart Core costs $79 a month, or $59 a month billed yearly ($711 a year). SamCart Pro costs $199 a month, or $149 a month billed yearly, about $1,790 a year. There is also a custom plan for high-volume sellers, and new accounts get a 7-day free trial.
Card processing through SamPay adds 2.9% + 30¢ a sale, and dedicated live support is a $19 a month add-on.
How much does Shopify take from a $20 sale?
On Basic with an outside payment processor, Shopify adds 2%, which is 40 cents on a $20 sale, on top of whatever that processor charges. With Shopify Payments there is no surcharge, but the card rate itself is not printed on Shopify’s pricing page, so you only see it once your store is set up.
Is SamCart worth it?
SamCart is worth it if you use what Pro includes: bumps, upsells, A/B testing and an affiliate center, for a few offers selling steadily. At $79 a month for Core, you are paying for a checkout and page builder without the features SamCart is known for, which is a hard sell for a first product.
Is Shopify still worth it in 2026?
Yes, if you sell physical products. Basic at $25 a month, or $19 billed yearly, is cheaper than most comparison pages suggest. For a single digital product it is harder to justify, since you pay for a store, inventory and shipping you do not use.
Is it cheaper to sell on Etsy or Shopify?
A standard Etsy shop has no monthly fee, but Etsy’s fee policy charges $0.20 per listing and 6.5% of each sale, and its Offsite Ads take 12% or 15% of any order they bring in. Leave card fees aside, since both charge them, and Etsy’s 6.5% costs more than Shopify Basic’s $25 a month once your sales pass about $385 a month.
What are some good alternatives to SamCart?
The right one comes down to which SamCart feature you want to replace. Our list of SamCart alternatives prices 8 of them, and our ThriveCart vs SamCart comparison puts it against the other checkout built around funnels.
Selling the file without paying for the store
If what you sell is digital and the bump and upsell are the plan, you need the checkout half of both tools and not the rest. CartMango handles that checkout half.
CartMango runs order bumps on every plan, from about $0.83 a month billed as $10 a year, and upsells and downsells on its Gold plan at about $1.67 a month, billed as $20 a year, with a hosted Mini Page for the sales page and 0% taken from each sale. It is free until October 2026. Once the beta ends, Gold costs about 1% of SamCart Pro’s $149 a month on the same yearly billing, and the SamCart vs Shopify choice becomes one you only need to make if you ship something.
About the Author
👋 I’m Welly, founder of CartMango (the site you’re on), a checkout platform for digital product sellers. We’ve previously processed $179M+. I also run BirdSend (email marketing tool, 3.1B+ emails sent). On the side I show other non-techie digital sellers how I use AI workflows to automate 50%+ of my operations. Find me on LinkedIn.
Related Reading
- SamCart pricing: what Core and Pro really cost once card fees are added
- Selling digital products on Shopify: the free delivery app, its 5 GB cap and the yearly bill
- SamCart alternatives: 8 checkouts priced against SamCart
- Sellfy vs Shopify: for sellers who want a ready-made shop instead