SamCart vs Stan Store splits on where your buyers arrive. Stan Store ($29 a month, or $300 billed yearly) fits buyers who tap an Instagram or TikTok bio link. SamCart ($79 a month, or $711 billed yearly) fits sellers who send ad or email traffic to full sales pages.
Order bumps and upsells set the price gap. They need Stan Creator Pro ($948 a year) or SamCart Pro ($1,791 a year), per each company’s own pages, and neither takes a cut of a basic sale. CartMango, my own checkout, fits sellers who only need a checkout with order bumps: free right now, from $10 a year once paid plans start in November.
You’re picking where your buyers will pay, and you want an order bump: an extra item buyers tick on the checkout page. SamCart’s own Stan Store comparison page says Stan Store can’t offer one.
It says Stan takes 5% of every sale on its $29 plan, dropped its upsells and has no order bumps before checkout. Stan’s help center says 0% and lists both tools on Creator Pro.
SamCart’s page also says its order bumps come with every plan. Its own pricing page puts them on Pro, at $199 a month.
Below: both companies’ plans side by side, 5 seller situations with a pick for each, and what an order bump costs a year on each.
Key Takeaways
- The order bump costs $948 or $1,791 a year. That’s Stan Creator Pro or SamCart Pro, since SamCart’s $79 Core plan has none.
- Stan Store has a 0% transaction fee. SamCart’s comparison page says Stan takes 5% on the $29 plan. Stan’s fee page says 0%.
- Stan’s $29 plan covers bookings and a community. Creator includes a booking calendar, a course builder and community features. SamCart lists no booking calendar.
- SamCart suits ad traffic to long sales pages. Core sends cart abandonment emails, and Pro adds A/B testing and failed-payment recovery.
- Stan’s funnels have limits. Order bumps don’t work inside a Stan funnel, and funnel checkouts take Stripe cards only, with no PayPal.
- CartMango prices order bumps at $10 a year. Upsells are on its $20 plan, affiliates and courses on $30, and it’s free right now.
SamCart vs Stan Store at a glance
Stan Store pricing is 2 plans open to everyone: Creator at $29 a month and Creator Pro at $99. SamCart sells 2 public plans, Core at $79 and Pro at $199, plus a custom plan priced on a call.
Picking a plan is 1 of many early calls a new store has to get right. The Online Selling Mistakes Challenge emails you 1 common selling mistake a day for 5 days, with the fix for each.
A third Stan plan, Creator Max at $299 a month, adds a custom domain and team seats, but Stan hasn’t released it to all creators yet. SamCart’s free trial lasts 7 days, and Stan’s lasts 14.
On yearly billing, Stan’s 2 plans cost $300 and $948 a year, SamCart’s cost $711 and $1,791, and CartMango costs $10 to $30 a year. None of the 3 takes a cut of a basic sale.
| Plan | Billed yearly | Month to month | Order bumps & upsells | Booking calendar | Courses |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stan Creator | $25 a month ($300 a year) | $29 | No | Yes | Yes |
| Stan Creator Pro | $79 a month ($948 a year) | $99 | Both | Yes | Yes |
| SamCart Core | $59 a month ($711 a year) | $79 | No | Not listed | Yes |
| SamCart Pro | $149 a month ($1,791 a year) | $199 | Both | Not listed | Yes |
| CartMango | About $0.83 to $2.50 a month ($10 to $30 a year), free right now | Yearly only | Bumps on $10, upsells on $20 | No | On the $30 plan, videos hosted elsewhere |
CartMango is my company, as is Zaxaa, the checkout we launched in 2013, so weigh that last row with that in mind. CartMango takes 0% of each sale, and you pay only your processor’s card fee.
Stan leaves card fees to Stripe or PayPal, and for US sellers on Stripe that’s 2.9% + $0.30 a sale. SamCart’s own processor, SamPay, charges 2.9% + $0.30 on both plans with nothing added on top, the same as Stripe’s standard card rate. SamCart also lists a 0.5% tax collection fee on Core and 0.35% on Pro if you use its sales tax tool, and our full SamCart pricing breakdown goes through every line item.
What SamCart’s own Stan Store pages get wrong
SamCart’s comparison page, a SamCart blog post and a SamCart ad landing page all describe a Stan Store that Stan’s own help center doesn’t match. 2 of those pages also put SamCart’s order bumps on a plan that doesn’t have them. Of the 6 claims below, 4 about Stan clash with Stan’s help center and 2 about SamCart clash with SamCart’s own pricing page.
| SamCart’s page says | What the source page says |
|---|---|
| Comparison page: Stan takes 5% of every sale on the $29 plan | Stan’s fee page: “Stan earns 0% from transactions” |
| Comparison page: Stan has no “pre-checkout order bumps” | Stan’s order bump guide puts the bump on the product’s checkout page, before the buyer pays, on Creator Pro |
| Ad landing page: Stan removed funnels and doesn’t allow upsells | Stan’s Funnels FAQ calls its funnels “a completely rebuilt feature”, with up to 5 levels of upsells and downsells |
| Comparison page: Stan has no cart recovery | Stan’s email flows can start “After cart abandonment”, on Creator Pro |
| Comparison page: SamCart includes order bumps and upsells on every plan | SamCart’s pricing page lists both on Pro only |
| Blog post: SamCart Core is $79 a month with upsells, order bumps, funnels and affiliate tracking included | Same pricing page: upsells, order bumps and the Affiliate Center sit on Pro |
You can check the Stan side on Stan’s fee page, which says “Stan earns 0% from transactions made on the platform”, and on its Funnels FAQ.
In October 2025 a commenter with a Stan store wrote on r/digitalproductselling: “They also recently got rid of funnels which I think is ridiculous (although they do have an order bump option).” A month later the same commenter added “I heard recently that funnels is being updated rather than removed altogether”. SamCart’s pages still describe the removal.
SamCart’s pricing page shows flat Core and Pro plans and states no revenue limit. Google’s AI Overview for this search still lists SamCart’s starting price as a “$79/month base rate (scales with revenue)”, a revenue ladder the pricing page no longer shows. The AI Overview also lists 1-click upsells, multi-step funnels and order bumps under SamCart with no plan named.
The AI Overview Google shows for samcart vs stan store. Read the Starting Price row and the Upsells & Order Bumps row.
SamCart still has tools Stan’s plan list doesn’t. SamCart Pro has A/B testing, a failed-payment recovery tool called Subscription Saver and connections to processors such as Braintree and Authorize.net, and Stan’s plan comparison names none of those 3.
If your buyers tap the link in your Instagram or TikTok bio
Stan Creator fits a seller who posts content, answers comments and DMs, and sends everyone to 1 link. It costs $29 a month, or $300 billed yearly. Your store is 1 page built for phones and desktops, and each product opens its own checkout page.
Stan’s plan comparison lists a booking calendar, an unlimited course builder, recurring subscriptions, lead magnets, community features and AutoDM on the $29 plan. AutoDM sends automatic replies on Instagram.
What you give up on Creator:
- No discount codes, order bumps or upsells. All 3 are on Creator Pro at $99 a month.
- A Stan banner on your store. Creator stores show a “Try 14 Days Free” referral banner, and switching it off is a Creator Pro feature.
- Your address stays stan.store/yourname. A custom domain needs Creator Max at $299 a month, which Stan hasn’t opened to everyone.
SamCart can build a link-in-bio page too, but you’d pay $711 a year for a page Stan gives you for $300. SamCart earns that price here only if your bio link points at 1 long sales page rather than a menu of products. For bio-link stores priced on fees alone, our Payhip vs Stan Store breakdown and Gumroad vs Stan Store run the numbers against tools with no monthly fee.
If you’d rather keep your own checkout and only want the link page, LinksMango is a link-in-bio page built by the CartMango team I run. LinksMango’s free plan holds up to 20 product cards that link straight to your checkout, and LinksMango takes 0% of each sale.
If you sell booked calls or a paid community
Coaches who sell 1-on-1 calls should pick Stan Creator, because its booking calendar comes on the $29 plan.
SamCart’s pricing page lists no booking calendar on Core or Pro. A coach on SamCart adds a scheduling tool on top of $79 a month. Buyers then pay on the checkout and book on a separate page, which is 1 more step where a buyer can drop off.
The same goes for a paid group. Stan’s Creator plan includes a community feature for your members, while SamCart’s pricing page lists no community tool for sellers. CartMango has no booking calendar either, and its community feature isn’t live yet, so for calls and communities Stan is the stronger pick of the 3.
What you give up: any follow-up offer after checkout is an upsell, and upsells need Creator Pro at $99 a month.
If you want an order bump at checkout
An order bump is a checkbox on the checkout page that adds a small extra product before the buyer pays. Between Stan and SamCart, pick Stan Creator Pro if it’s the main tool you want, because it costs $843 a year less than SamCart Pro. A 1-click upsell is different: an offer shown right after payment that the buyer accepts with 1 click.
On the 2 platforms in this comparison, the plan with both costs:
- Stan Creator Pro: $99 a month, or $948 a year. Order bumps, upsells, discount codes and email broadcasts arrive together.
- SamCart Pro: $199 a month, or $1,791 a year. Order bumps and 1-click upsells arrive with A/B testing, Subscription Saver and the Affiliate Center.
SamCart Core at $79 a month has no order bumps, so going from Core to Pro to get them costs $1,080 more a year. Stan’s jump from Creator to Creator Pro costs $648 more a year.
Say your bump is a $20 workbook added to an existing order. The card fee on the extra $20 is 2.9%, since the 30¢ is charged once per order, so you keep $19.42 a bump. Stan’s upgrade pays for itself after 34 bump sales a year and SamCart’s after 56. That’s a worked example, not a promise about how many buyers will tick the box.
A commenter in the same Reddit thread doubted Creator Pro is worth it at all: “Only benefit of the pro plan is to have upsells, but is that worth 90 per month? I don’t know”. For the record, Creator Pro costs $70 a month more than Creator, or $54 more on yearly billing.
Stan’s order bump has 2 limits. Stan’s Funnels FAQ says “Order Bumps are not currently supported within Funnels”. Funnel checkouts also accept only the Stripe card field, with no PayPal, Apple Pay or payment plans.
CartMango is a third option if the bump is the main thing you’re after. CartMango’s order bumps come on its $10 a year Silver plan, and upsells and downsells after checkout need the $20 Gold plan. Like SamCart, CartMango has no email broadcast tool: it adds every buyer to the email tool you already use, such as Kit, ActiveCampaign, Beehiiv or BirdSend.
If ads send buyers to a long sales page
Pick SamCart if you run paid ads or email to 1 offer, with a long page that does the selling. SamCart’s page builder makes full sales pages, microsites, link-in-bio pages and opt-in pages, with an AI tool that drafts the copy, while Stan’s store is built around a bio-link menu.
SamCart Core costs $79 a month, or $711 billed yearly, and already includes cart abandonment emails. Baymard Institute’s research puts the average documented cart abandonment rate at 70.22% across 50 studies, roughly 7 in 10 online shopping carts abandoned before purchase. Stan can email those people too, but only through email flows on Creator Pro.
SamCart Pro pulls further ahead for an ad seller. Its A/B testing lets you test pages, prices, headlines and offers against each other, and Stan’s plan comparison lists no testing tool.
What you give up: the price, and email. Pro costs $1,080 a year more than Core, and SamCart’s plan list has no email broadcast tool, so you connect your own email platform.
For how SamCart’s Pro plan compares with a course host on the same job, see SamCart vs Teachable. For a seller whose sales close over calls and texts, there’s SamCart vs GoHighLevel.
If failed card payments would hurt your subscription income
Stan Creator and SamCart Core both sell subscriptions. Stan’s $29 plan includes recurring subscriptions.
Pick SamCart Pro if the subscription is most of your income and failed cards worry you. Subscription Saver retries failed payments and contacts the customer. It’s a Pro feature, so the price is $199 a month, or $1,791 a year.
Stan’s plan comparison lists no failed-payment recovery tool, and its fee page adds a 0.5% Stripe surcharge on recurring payments.
On SamCart, Stripe subscriptions with a fixed end date and every PayPal subscription are lost when you close your account. That holds even when they run through your own Stripe or PayPal account.
If you leave CartMango, the subscriptions you created keep billing and keep paying you. CartMango sells subscriptions on every plan, from $10 a year once paid plans start in November.
The cost of picking SamCart Pro: $1,080 a year more than Core, for a tool that only pays off once subscriptions are a big share of your sales.
Which one fits, situation by situation
Stan Store is the pick in 3 of the 5 situations below and SamCart in 2. The sixth row is for sellers who only need a checkout with an order bump, where CartMango Silver costs $10 a year.
| Your situation | Pick | Cost, billed yearly | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buyers come from your bio link | Stan Creator | $25 a month | No discount codes or order bumps |
| You sell calls or a community | Stan Creator | $25 a month | Upsells need Creator Pro |
| You want an order bump, Stan or SamCart | Stan Creator Pro | $79 a month | No order bumps inside funnels |
| Ads go to 1 long sales page | SamCart Core, Pro for A/B tests | $59 or $149 a month | No email broadcasts on either plan |
| Subscriptions are most of your income | SamCart Pro | $149 a month | Fixed-term and PayPal subscriptions lost if you leave |
| You only need a checkout and a bump | CartMango Silver | About $0.83 a month, free right now | Upsells need the $20 Gold plan |
Month to month, Stan charges $29 and $99 and SamCart charges $79 and $199. CartMango bills yearly only, from $10 to $30 a year.
FAQ
How much does SamCart cost per month?
SamCart Core costs $79 a month and SamCart Pro costs $199 a month. On yearly billing they come to $59 and $149 a month, billed as $711 and $1,791 a year. A custom plan with an account manager is priced on a call, and live support is a $19-a-month add-on.
What’s better than Stan Store?
Gumroad fits if you’d rather pay per sale than monthly: no monthly fee, and 10% + $0.50 a sale on top of card fees. Payhip’s free plan takes 5% a sale on top of card fees. SamCart Pro adds A/B testing and failed-payment recovery at nearly twice Stan Creator Pro’s yearly price. If you only need a checkout with order bumps, CartMango charges $10 to $30 a year, with 0% a sale plus card fees, and is free right now.
What are some good alternatives to SamCart?
Stan Creator Pro has order bumps and upsells at $948 a year, against SamCart Pro’s $1,791. ThriveCart’s Standard plan costs $444 a year, or $47 a month, and lists 1 bump offer and 1-click upsells. CartMango has order bumps from $10 a year once paid plans start in November.
SamCart still wins for ad traffic to long sales pages, as covered above. Our SamCart review covers what SamCart’s own customers complain about.
Which is better, ThriveCart or SamCart?
On price for sales tools, ThriveCart. Its $444-a-year Standard plan lists 1 bump offer, 1-click upsells, A/B testing and cart recovery, while SamCart needs Pro at $1,791 a year for bumps and upsells. ThriveCart’s fee page lists a 0.5% tax fee on Standard, like SamCart Core’s. It also gives a 30-day free trial against SamCart’s 7 days.
Does Stan Store take a percentage of your sales?
No. Stan’s fee page says Stan earns 0% from transactions and you only pay a flat subscription fee, $29 or $99 a month. You still pay Stripe or PayPal. For US sellers on Stripe that’s 2.9% + $0.30 a sale, plus Stripe’s payout fee of 0.25% + $0.25 each time you cash out, with a $1 minimum.
Can SamCart replace a Stan Store link-in-bio page?
Yes. SamCart’s page builder makes link-in-bio pages, sales pages and microsites. You’d lose Stan’s booking calendar and AutoDM, and you’d pay $711 a year instead of $300. The switch makes sense mostly if you also want SamCart’s checkout and cart abandonment emails.
An order bump without the $948 plan
In the SamCart vs Stan Store choice, the order bump pushes you onto the bigger plan: $948 a year on Stan, $1,791 on SamCart.
If a checkout with an order bump is all you need, CartMango puts order bumps on every plan, including the $10-a-year one, and takes 0% of each sale. CartMango is free right now, and paid plans start in November.
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 review: what SamCart’s 1-star reviews are about, and which plan has the order bump
- Payhip vs Stan Store: a free-plan checkout against Stan’s monthly plans, in 5 seller situations
- Gumroad vs Stan Store: the monthly sales level where Stan’s flat fee beats Gumroad’s cut
- SamCart vs Teachable: SamCart Pro against a course host that has order bumps from its first plan