SamCart vs SureCart: the recurring payment problem (2026)

SamCart is a premium shopping cart platform with monthly pricing from $79/mo. SureCart is a WordPress ecommerce plugin with a free plan (1.9% per sale) and Pro tiers from $179/yr. Neither lets you keep recurring payments if you leave.

The Revenue You Earned, Controlled by Someone Else

Then you decide to switch platforms.

With SamCart, your recurring payments don’t come with you. Stripe fixed-term subscriptions, all PayPal subscriptions, and all non-Stripe payment methods are gone when you leave. This happens even when you’re connected to your own Stripe or PayPal account. You built those customer relationships. SamCart controls whether you keep the revenue from them.

SureCart has the same problem, just structured differently. SureCart manages subscriptions on its own servers, not directly on Stripe or PayPal. Your customers’ recurring payments run through SureCart’s infrastructure. Leave SureCart, and those active subscriptions stay behind.

Picture this: you’ve spent a year growing a membership to 150 paying customers at $39/month. That’s $5,850 in monthly recurring revenue. You want to move to a different platform. You can’t export those active payment agreements. You’d have to contact every customer and ask them to re-enter their payment details somewhere new. Some will. Most won’t bother.

That revenue you worked to build? A chunk of it disappears.

And this isn’t only a SureCart vs SamCart issue. It’s a pattern across the cart industry. Platforms build their business models around keeping you locked in. The switching cost isn’t a fee. It’s your customers.

The frustrating part is you did everything right. You created something people wanted to pay for. You convinced them to sign up. You earned that recurring revenue. But because of how these platforms handle subscription data, the platform sits between you and your income. Not as a tool you control. As a gatekeeper that controls you.

When you’re choosing between SamCart and SureCart, or any cart system, this is the first question worth asking: if I leave, do my customers’ payments follow me?

For both SamCart and SureCart, the answer is no.

How to Break Free From Recurring Payment Lock-In

If you’re selling digital products with recurring billing, the platform you choose should meet a few non-negotiable criteria before anything else.

First: your recurring payments should live on Stripe or PayPal, not on the platform’s servers. If you leave, your revenue leaves with you. No exceptions.

Second: protected download links. If a customer shares your download link, can anyone grab your files? Some platforms protect against this. Others don’t.

Third: real human support. When your checkout breaks on a Saturday night, how quickly does someone respond? Not a chatbot. A person.

Fourth: transparent pricing. No hidden transaction fees that grow as your revenue grows. No revenue caps that force you into a more expensive plan.

That’s the thinking behind CartMango (full disclosure: this post is published by CartMango, and we include our limitations alongside the comparison). CartMango connects directly to Stripe or PayPal. Your recurring payments stay in your account, not on CartMango’s servers. Download links are protected. Support comes from the founder, with an average response time of 2 hours 16 minutes. And the platform is free until 2027: zero monthly fees, zero commission on sales.

Now, CartMango doesn’t do everything. It doesn’t have an LMS yet. Native connections are still growing. It’s not a WordPress plugin. But on the four criteria above, it checks every box.

SamCart meets some of these. It has protected downloads and quick checkouts. But your recurring payments are locked in, pricing starts at $79/mo with revenue caps, and live support costs an extra $19/mo.

SureCart also offers download protection and has a free plan. But that free plan takes 1.9% of every sale, and your recurring payments live on SureCart’s servers, not on Stripe or PayPal directly.

No platform is perfect across the board. But knowing what matters before you buy helps you avoid regret six months from now. Whether you’re selling a digital course or a subscription-based membership, that matters more than any feature list.

SamCart vs SureCart vs CartMango

Here’s how all three platforms compare across the features that matter for selling digital products and services:

These are the links for each platform: SamCart, SureCart, CartMango.

CartMango Is Not for Everyone. And That’s the Point.

CartMango is not a WordPress plugin. It’s not a page builder or a store builder. It’s a hosted cart for solo digital creators who want to start selling without managing servers, plugins, or hosting.

If you’re a coach, consultant, or independent creator selling ebooks, templates, courses, or digital downloads, CartMango covers the core: checkout, Stripe and PayPal processing, protected file delivery, upsells, downsells, order bumps, and subscription billing with trials.

What it doesn’t have right now: there’s no LMS on the platform yet, though it’s on the roadmap. If you need to host video courses inside the platform today, you’d pair CartMango with a separate tool for the time being. Affiliate management is coming soon. Native connections are still growing, more limited at the moment compared to SamCart’s Zapier library, though CartMango’s Make.com connection already covers thousands of apps.

CartMango is not for agencies managing multiple WordPress stores. It’s not for physical product sellers who need shipping and inventory tracking. It’s not for someone who needs WooCommerce-level ecommerce on a self-hosted site.

It’s for one kind of seller: the independent creator who wants to sell digital goods, keep their recurring payments, get human support from a real person, and pay nothing for the platform while getting started.

You sign up, connect Stripe or PayPal, upload your product, and you’re live. No server configuration. No plugin compatibility issues. No annual renewal surprises.

Both SamCart and SureCart serve different types of merchants who want different things from their cart. CartMango gives you more flexibility on pricing and payment ownership, but fewer features right now. That trade-off is honest and deliberate.

Free until 2027. All features included. Zero commission. Zero monthly cost.

SamCart: The Premium Shopping Cart for Course Creators

SamCart is an advanced shopping cart platform built for creators who sell digital products and online courses. It’s known for high-converting checkout pages, a built-in learning management system, and an affiliate program that lets you recruit partners to sell on your behalf.

SamCart is not a full ecommerce solution like Shopify or WooCommerce. It doesn’t give you an online store with a product catalog and browsing experience. It’s a cart. You send traffic to a checkout page, and SamCart handles the sale. That focused approach is what makes it attractive to course creators and coaches who already have an audience and want to increase sales from that traffic.

What SamCart offers

• Built-in LMS for hosting and delivering online courses
• One-click upsells and downsells after the initial purchase
• Order bumps at checkout
• Buy now, pay later (BNPL) for customers
• Subscriptions with trials and setup fees
• Flexible coupons and discount codes
• A/B testing on checkout pages
• Built-in affiliate management with a dashboard for tracking partners
• Abandoned cart recovery to recapture lost sales
• Quick checkouts with no login required

SamCart provides a polished checkout experience. SamCart shines when you have a single high-value product or a small number of products and want to boost the conversion rate on each sale. If you’re building landing pages and sending paid traffic to them, SamCart’s checkout flow is designed for exactly that. Through Zapier, your apps work seamlessly together with SamCart connecting to email tools, webinar platforms, and CRMs in the background.

SamCart pricing

• Launch: $79/mo (up to $3,000/mo revenue)
• Grow: $219/mo (up to $10,000/mo revenue)
• Scale: $849/mo (up to $100,000/mo revenue)

Live support costs an additional $19/mo. Without it, you’re limited to email and ticket support during weekdays.

The revenue-based pricing means your costs grow as your business grows. At $10,000/mo revenue, you’re already at $219/mo in platform fees before Stripe or PayPal processing. For multi-million dollar businesses, these costs stack up fast.

The limitations

The big one: recurring payments are lost if you leave SamCart. Stripe fixed-term subscriptions, all PayPal subscriptions, and all non-Stripe payment methods disappear. Even when connected to your own Stripe or PayPal.

No free plan. No free trial on any tier. No free migration. If you want to test SamCart, you’re committing to $79/mo from day one.

SamCart doesn’t offer a built-in online store or product catalog. If you want to sell physical products alongside digital ones, SamCart can handle checkout but lacks shipping management, inventory tracking, or storefront features the way a full ecommerce platform would. It also doesn’t offer a CRM, so you’d need a separate tool for managing customer relationships beyond the sale.

SamCart’s checkout pages live on SamCart’s domain, not yours. That means your checkout doesn’t contribute to SEO on your own website. If organic traffic and search rankings matter to your strategy, that’s a limitation to keep in mind.

The pricing tiers have revenue caps. If your online business grows past the cap on your current plan, you’re forced to upgrade.

Best for

Affluent creators who want a full-featured shopping cart platform with a built-in LMS, affiliate management, and high-converting checkout pages. Best for sellers of online courses, coaching programs, and digital products who already have traffic and are ready to sell. If you don’t mind paying premium monthly fees, SamCart covers a lot of ground.

This is the link for SamCart.

SureCart: The WordPress Plugin for Selling Without WooCommerce

SureCart was created as a lighter alternative to WooCommerce for WordPress users. Where WooCommerce tries to handle everything from physical product shipping to subscription management with dozens of extensions, SureCart takes a more focused approach. It’s a WordPress plugin that handles ecommerce without the bloat.

What makes SureCart different from other WordPress ecommerce options: product data, orders, and subscriptions are stored on SureCart’s servers, not in your WordPress database. This keeps your site faster but means your business data lives on their infrastructure, not yours.

What SureCart offers

• Funnels with upsells and downsells on all plans
• Order bumps at checkout
• Buy now, pay later (BNPL) support
• Subscriptions with trials and setup fees
• Flexible coupons and discounts
• Quick checkout process with no account required
• Multiple payment gateways: Stripe, PayPal, Mollie, Paystack, Razorpay
• Protected download links
• WordPress block editor support for designing checkout pages
• Auto payment recovery for failed charges

SureCart comes with native connections to LearnDash, LifterLMS, TutorLMS, SureMembers, and BuddyBoss. Through SureMembers, SureCart supports advanced user management for membership sites, letting you control access levels and content gating. For WordPress users who run membership sites or sell online courses alongside digital products, these connections make SureCart a practical choice. SureCart also connects to thousands of apps through OttoKit or Zapier for broader workflows.

In terms of ease of use, SureCart is noticeably faster than WooCommerce. The admin interface is modern and clean. For WordPress users who don’t need WooCommerce’s full catalog of extensions, it’s a user-friendly change of pace.

SureCart pricing

• Free Launch: $0/mo with 1.9% transaction fee on every sale
• Pro (1 store): $179/yr
• Pro (5 stores): $249/yr
• Pro (unlimited stores): $399/yr

The free plan looks appealing until you run the numbers. At $5,000/mo in revenue, 1.9% means $95/mo in platform fees, or $1,140/yr. The Pro plan at $179/yr is cheaper the moment you cross about $785/mo in revenue.

The limitations

SureCart manages subscriptions on its own servers, not directly on Stripe or PayPal. If you leave SureCart, your recurring payments don’t follow. For sellers building subscription-based recurring revenue, this is a real concern.

No LMS built in. While SureCart connects to LearnDash and LifterLMS, you need to purchase those separately. No affiliate management. And while SureCart handles both digital and physical products, it requires a self-hosted WordPress site. Non-technical users who don’t already run WordPress will need to set up hosting, install WordPress, configure SSL, and maintain everything themselves. That’s not for everyone.

No free migration from another platform. If you’re switching from SamCart or any other cart, you handle the migration yourself.

Best for

WordPress users who want a modern ecommerce plugin without WooCommerce’s overhead. SureCart is a strong fit for agencies managing multiple stores and sellers who want to sell physical and digital products from their WordPress site. Whether you’re selling physical products, digital courses, or subscription-based memberships, SureCart handles it. Best for users comfortable with WordPress who want a cleaner, faster alternative to WooCommerce.

This is the link for SureCart.

Pricing Simulation: SamCart vs SureCart vs CartMango

Every sale includes Stripe/PayPal processing fees (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction). Here’s what each platform actually costs at different revenue levels.

Assumptions: $50 average order value, cheapest qualifying plan for each platform. For SureCart, the Pro plan at $179/yr ($14.92/mo) is cheaper than the free plan’s 1.9% fee at all four revenue levels below.

SamCart’s savings are dramatic because its platform fees scale with your revenue. At $1,000/mo, you save $948/yr by using CartMango instead. At $50,000/mo, that jumps to $10,188/yr.

SureCart’s savings are flat at $179/yr regardless of revenue. The only difference between CartMango and SureCart Pro is the annual subscription cost. Both charge zero per-transaction platform fees (on the Pro plan), so the savings equal the subscription price.

One thing to note: SureCart’s Free Launch plan charges 1.9% per sale, which at $10,000/mo revenue would cost $190/mo ($2,280/yr) in platform fees alone. At that level, the Pro plan at $179/yr saves $2,101/yr compared to staying on Free Launch. If you use SureCart, upgrading to Pro early pays for itself fast.

SamCart has no free plan and no free trial. You’re paying $79/mo minimum from day one, regardless of whether you’ve made a single sale.

SamCart vs SureCart vs CartMango: Which One Fits Your Business?

These are the links for each platform: SamCart, SureCart, CartMango.

Each of these platforms serves a different kind of seller with different priorities.

Choose SamCart if:

• You want a full-featured shopping cart with a built-in LMS and affiliate management
• You sell online courses or coaching programs and need high-converting checkout pages
• You have an established online business generating consistent revenue and don’t need a free plan
• You don’t mind paying $79/mo or more for a premium platform with lots of options
• A/B testing and conversion rate tracking are part of your sales funnel strategy

SamCart is the most feature-rich option in this SamCart vs SureCart comparison, but it’s also the most expensive. If you want to cover every angle of your online retail and digital sales operation, SamCart gives you everything in one place. Just know your recurring payments don’t leave with you.

Choose SureCart if:

• You’re a WordPress user who wants ecommerce without WooCommerce
• You want to sell memberships, digital products, and physical products from one plugin
• Multiple payment gateways matter (Mollie, Paystack, Razorpay beyond Stripe and PayPal)
• You manage multiple stores and want a single SaaS-connected plugin
• You don’t need a fully hosted solution and are comfortable with self-hosted WordPress

SureCart starts at $179/yr on the Pro plan. It’s a strong fit for WordPress users who want a modern, lightweight checkout without WooCommerce’s complexity. The trade-off: your subscription data lives on SureCart’s servers.

Choose CartMango if:

• Zero platform fees and zero monthly cost matter to you right now
• Keeping your recurring payments is non-negotiable
• You want real human support when something goes wrong
• You’re a solo creator who wants to run your business online without WordPress or self-hosting
• You’re looking to improve your selling setup without upfront cost
• You don’t need an LMS or affiliate program today

CartMango is free until 2027 with all features included. Free migration if you’re switching from another platform.

When you’re choosing an ecommerce platform for your digital products, the SamCart vs SureCart comparison is only part of the picture. If neither fits, there are other options worth considering. ThriveCart and ThriveCart Pro offer a lifetime pricing model. Gumroad and ClickFunnels each take a different approach. Easy Digital Downloads is a WordPress plugin for digital product sellers. The right ecommerce solution depends on your needs.

What matters more than any feature checklist is this: who controls your recurring revenue, what do you actually pay, and how much flexibility do you have when your needs change?

If you want to sell digital products and keep full control of your customer payments, CartMango is one of the best ecommerce platforms for that right now. If the features you need go beyond what CartMango offers today, SamCart and SureCart each fill different gaps.

Pick the platform that fits where your business is now, not where a pricing page says it should be.

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