In ThriveCart vs PayKickstart, ThriveCart fits sellers who want 1 flat plan price: Standard costs $37 a month billed yearly at any sales level. PayKickstart fits subscription and affiliate-heavy businesses, with every feature on every plan and a price that tracks revenue, from $63.17 a month billed yearly to $175.17 at $10,000 in monthly sales.
The catch on each side shows when you leave. ThriveCart creates subscriptions in your payment processor, so they keep billing. PayKickstart’s help center says cancelling its plan stops future rebills. CartMango (free right now, from $10 a year once paid plans start in November, 0% per sale) suits checkout-only sellers and keeps subscriptions billing too. Prices come from each vendor’s own pages.
Most of page 1 for this search describes pricing that no longer exists. A ranking guide prices PayKickstart at $99 a month and sells ThriveCart as a $595 one-time deal “while it’s still in beta”. Another, titled for 2026, lists PayKickstart plans that are gone.
Both companies changed how they charge. ThriveCart now leads with monthly and yearly subscriptions. PayKickstart folded its old tiers into 1 plan, and its $79 price now stops at $3,000 a month in sales.
So this goes job by job. The last job is the one the guides I read skip: what happens to your subscribers when you leave.
Key Takeaways
- Flat plan versus metered plan. ThriveCart Standard’s plan price is $37 a month billed yearly at any volume. PayKickstart runs $63.17 to $462.50 from $3,000 to $50,000 in sales.
- PayKickstart bundles subscription tools. Every plan includes affiliates, dunning and tax profiles. ThriveCart puts affiliates and dunning on Pro+, $67 a month billed yearly.
- ThriveCart’s 0% has footnotes. A basic Stripe Connect+ sale costs nothing extra, but older Stripe connections and tax collection each carry 0.5%.
- ThriveCart subscriptions survive leaving. They keep billing from your processor. Cancel PayKickstart and rebills stop unless a developer moves them first.
- CartMango, which I run, is a lower-priced third route. Its $30-a-year plan includes affiliates and subscriptions that survive leaving, but no dunning or tax tools.
What ThriveCart and PayKickstart cost as your sales grow
ThriveCart now sells 2 main subscription plans. Standard is $47 a month or $444 a year, and Pro+ is $87 a month or $804 a year, both with a 30-day free trial. Each one bundles a ThriveCart Academy plan for courses and communities, and Standard’s Starter version covers unlimited courses and up to 2,000 community members. The $495 lifetime license is still on sale, behind a single “Ready to commit for life?” line under the plan cards, and Enterprise is a custom quote.
A new cart will not fix a pricing or offer mistake that already costs you sales. The Online Selling Mistakes Challenge walks through 5 common ones, 1 email a day for 5 days.
PayKickstart runs 1 plan with every feature switched on, priced by your monthly revenue. It starts at $79 a month for up to $3,000 in sales and climbs in 11 steps to $1,999 at $500,000, with a custom quote past $1 million.
Yearly billing takes 20% off, which makes the first tier $758 a year, or $63.17 a month. The free trial runs 14 days.
On yearly billing, ThriveCart Standard costs $37 a month whether you sell $3,000 or $50,000, while PayKickstart rises from $63.17 to $462.50 a month across that range.
| Monthly sales | ThriveCart Standard | ThriveCart Pro+ | PayKickstart | CartMango Platinum |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Up to $3,000 | $37 | $67 | $63.17 | about $2.50 |
| $5,000 | $37 | $67 | $103.17 | about $2.50 |
| $10,000 | $37 | $67 | $175.17 | about $2.50 |
| $20,000 | $37 | $67 | $255.17 | about $2.50 |
| $50,000 | $37 | $67 | $462.50 | about $2.50 |
Every figure is per month on yearly billing. Card processing fees come on top for all 3, and so do ThriveCart’s add-on fees, covered below. The CartMango column is the checkout I run: $30 a year for the plan with affiliates, with no dunning or tax tools, and nothing to pay until paid plans start in November.
ThriveCart’s bundled Academy has no CartMango match yet. Course hosting and community are planned for October 2026, on the $30 plan.
PayKickstart’s revenue caps come with an overage fee. On the $79 plan, every dollar past $3,000 in a month is charged 5.27%. So a $4,000 month on that plan costs $131.70, against $109 on the $4,000 plan. Its pricing FAQ says it will “automatically upgrade you to the next plan” once you keep approaching or passing your limit.
There is also a Launch plan with no subscription, at 6% of revenue. Below about $1,317 a month in sales, 6% costs less than the $79 month-to-month plan.
Page 1 has not caught up. Ecommerce Paradise’s guide, titled for 2026, lists PayKickstart tiers of “$99 to $299/mo” and never mentions ThriveCart’s monthly plans. Hustle & Flowchart prices PayKickstart at $99 a month. The Digital Merchant’s 2022 guide, last updated in 2023, gives the $79 plan a $10,000 cap and a 0.9% overage, more than 3 times today’s cap. Above them all, Google’s AI summary frames ThriveCart as a one-time purchase.
Taking the payment and the tax
ThriveCart and PayKickstart both charge cards through a payment processor you connect. ThriveCart works with Stripe, PayPal and Authorize.net. Its fee page lists Stripe at 2.9% + $0.30 for a domestic US card, ACH at 0.8% capped at $5, and its own installment option at a 15% merchant fee.
On the sale itself, ThriveCart’s fee page says “0% to ThriveCart”, and that holds on its newer Stripe Connect+ setup. Its help center says older Stripe connections now carry a 0.5% fee, including on subscriptions still billing through them.
PayKickstart works with PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, Braintree, Easy Pay Direct or its own Connect service. Connect’s fee disclosure starts at 2.80% + $0.25 a transaction up to $5,000 a month in revenue. It falls to 2.30% + $0.15 between $500,000 and $1 million, and the Launch plan pays 2.9% + $0.30.
The pricing page headline reads “No Platform Fees”, and inside your revenue cap that holds. Beyond the overage fee and the Launch plan’s 6%, PayKickstart’s other charges are those Connect rates and usage fees on SMS and voicemail.
So does ThriveCart take a percentage of sales? On a basic one-time sale through Stripe Connect+, no. The cuts come from older Stripe connections and add-ons like tax.
Tax works differently on each. ThriveCart calculates and collects VAT, GST and sales tax for 0.5% per eligible transaction on Standard and 0.35% on Pro+, so $10,000 of taxed sales a month costs $50 on Standard.
PayKickstart includes tax profiles for US sales tax, EU VAT and GST on every plan, with no separate fee listed, and connects to Taxamo for harder cases. Collecting the tax still leaves the filing to you. ThriveCart pitches its Pro+ tax reports as the export you use when “preparing for tax season”.
CartMango connects to Stripe and PayPal, pays out to those accounts directly and charges no per-transaction fee on any plan. Its pricing table lists no tax calculation, so on CartMango you would work out tax yourself or with a separate tool.
Getting more from each order
ThriveCart and PayKickstart both include order bumps and 1-click upsells. ThriveCart Standard has 1 bump offer plus 1-click upsells and downsells, and multiple bumps need Pro+. PayKickstart includes 1-click upsells, order bumps, coupons, exit-intent offers and social-proof popups on every plan.
The small print is on subscription bumps, where a buyer adds a recurring item at checkout. ThriveCart’s fee page charges 0.10% on those on the Standard subscription, 0.25% on lifetime accounts and nothing on Pro+. PayKickstart lists no per-feature commission.
Baymard Institute puts the average documented cart abandonment rate at 70.22% across the studies on its abandonment list. ThriveCart lists abandon cart recovery on Standard. PayKickstart’s “Cart Recovery” line describes something else, intercepting a subscriber who is cancelling, so check its abandoned-checkout follow-up with your email tool before you rely on it.
On CartMango, order bumps come on every plan, while upsells, downsells and cart abandonment start on the $20-a-year Gold plan. Our guides to the order bump and the upsell page cover when each one earns its place.
Keeping subscriptions paid
PayKickstart puts its whole subscription toolkit on every plan. That includes dunning by email, SMS, ringless voicemail or in-app notice, smart retries, and a cancellation saver that shows offers before a subscriber leaves. It also covers a self-serve billing portal, pausing, proration and usage-based billing.
ThriveCart hands most of this to your processor. Its help center says ThriveCart “will not initiate those recurring payments”, because the subscription lives in your payment gateway. So Stripe or PayPal does the retrying. Stripe’s Smart Retries setting recommends “8 tries within 2 weeks” by default, PayPal retries every 5 days up to 3 times, and Authorize.net needs you to retry by hand.
ThriveCart’s fee page also lists “Stripe Subscription Billing” among its Stripe charges, at 0.7% per transaction.
ThriveCart’s own subscription tools are spread across plans. Retention offers come with Standard and cost 5% of the first payment they save, or 8% on lifetime accounts. Subscription dunning and 1-click subscription upgrades need Pro+, which pays 0% on retention offers.
User reports pull both ways. In an r/digital_marketing thread about ThriveCart, a seller who says they used it for 18+ months wrote that it has “subscription features that literally cancel paying customers automatically” and that it cost them money, time and customer trust. Another in the same thread says they generated over $120K through it in 12 months, though that post also offers an affiliate link. Both comments predate ThriveCart’s 2026 switch to subscription pricing.
CartMango includes subscription selling on every plan, but its pricing table shows no dunning tool, so it is the weakest of the 3 here.
Paying your affiliates
PayKickstart is built around affiliates as much as checkout. Every plan carries its affiliate center, with 1st and 2nd tier commissions, instant or delayed payouts and cookieless tracking as a fallback. Its marketplace says it can put your offer in front of “100,000+ affiliates”, and a newer Wallet feature lets PayKickstart manage affiliate payouts for you.
ThriveCart puts its Affiliate Center, automated payouts and joint-venture contracts on Pro+, so affiliates cost $87 a month or $804 a year there. Its fee page lists no affiliate processing fee on top.
If you run a program with hundreds of affiliates, PayKickstart lists more of the tools for it: second-tier commissions, a marketplace and managed payouts. For a handful of partners promoting 1 offer, ThriveCart Pro+ covers it, and so does CartMango’s affiliate system on its $30-a-year Platinum plan, with room for 250 affiliates.
Leaving with your subscribers, the job page 1 skips
ThriveCart and CartMango subscriptions keep billing from your own processor after you leave, while PayKickstart’s stop when you cancel its plan. None of the 3 head-to-head guides I read on page 1 checks this.
ThriveCart’s help center explains why. Subscriptions are created directly in your payment processor, and “if you ever stop using ThriveCart for any reason, you’ll still continue to receive recurring payments directly from your payment processor”. On Stripe Connect+, the same article adds, those payments may sit in a Connect+ sub-account rather than your main Stripe account.
PayKickstart manages subscriptions in its own system instead, and its billing help article spells out what that means.
There is a way out, and PayKickstart documents it gateway by gateway. Its Stripe guide says “Each payment profile and secure token is stored within your Stripe account”, so the cards are not lost. It also says “you will need a developer to map the subscription information from PayKickstart to Stripe using their API”. The PayPal guide asks for a developer too, and adds that PayPal “currently does not offer the option to import subscriptions”.
The guides’ own order is to map the subscriptions first and cancel inside PayKickstart last. I’d also check that every rebill date carried over before that last step. PayKickstart’s migration team moves subscriptions in for free on every plan. Moving them out, by its own guides, takes your developer.
CartMango works the way ThriveCart does here. If you leave, existing subscriptions keep billing to your Stripe or PayPal account, and switching in from ThriveCart is a free, done-for-you migration. Our shopping cart software guide names the other carts that let you keep subscriptions when you go.
ThriveCart vs PayKickstart: which tool covers which job
ThriveCart Pro+ covers all 5 jobs below, PayKickstart covers 4 and loses on the exit, and CartMango covers 3 without dunning or tax tools.
| Tool | Bumps and upsells | Failed payments | Affiliates | Sales tax | If you leave |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ThriveCart Standard | 1 bump, upsells | Processor retries, retention offers | No | 0.5% of taxed sales | Keeps billing |
| ThriveCart Pro+ | Multiple bumps | Dunning included | Included | 0.35% of taxed sales | Keeps billing |
| PayKickstart | Included | Dunning by email, SMS, voicemail | Included, 2 tiers | Tax profiles included | Rebills stop unless moved first |
| CartMango Platinum | Bumps, upsells | No dunning tool | 250 affiliates | Not included | Keeps billing |
Pick ThriveCart Standard when you mostly sell one-time products and want a flat $444 a year. When you need affiliates and dunning, choose between Pro+ and PayKickstart by volume. Up to $3,000 a month in sales, PayKickstart’s $63.17 a month billed yearly undercuts Pro+ at $67, but from $4,000 up Pro+ costs less on plan price alone. PayKickstart still carries the deeper toolkit: SMS and voicemail dunning, 2-tier affiliates and a marketplace.
Whichever you pick, read the exit terms before your first subscriber signs up, while there is nothing to move.
FAQ
Does ThriveCart take a percentage of sales?
Not on a basic sale through Stripe Connect+. ThriveCart’s fee page says “0% to ThriveCart”, so you pay only your processor’s fee. Some things do carry a cut: 0.5% on older Stripe connections, 0.5% for tax collection on Standard (0.35% on Pro+), 5% of the first payment a retention offer saves on Standard, and 0.10% on subscription bumps.
How much does ThriveCart cost?
ThriveCart Standard is $47 a month or $444 a year, and Pro+ is $87 a month or $804 a year, each with a 30-day free trial. Its checkout still sells a Standard lifetime license for $495 once, and a Pro+ lifetime account for $790 up front plus $295 a year. Enterprise is priced by quote.
How much does PayKickstart cost?
PayKickstart costs $79 a month for up to $3,000 in monthly sales and rises with revenue, to $219 at $10,000 and $1,999 at $500,000. Yearly billing takes 20% off, from $758 a year. A Launch plan skips the subscription and takes 6% of revenue instead.
What happens to my subscriptions if I cancel PayKickstart?
PayKickstart’s help center says that once you cancel your plan, you can no longer process future transactions or rebills for earlier subscriptions. The cards stay in your gateway account, and its transfer guides tell you to have a developer rebuild the subscriptions there before you cancel.
Is there a free trial of ThriveCart or PayKickstart?
Yes, both. ThriveCart offers 30 days free on Standard and Pro+, and PayKickstart offers 14 days on its plans. PayKickstart’s Launch plan also has no monthly fee, charging 6% of revenue instead.
When a flat price matters less than the exit
If neither bill fits after this ThriveCart vs PayKickstart comparison, ask what you need on day 1. Plenty of sellers need a checkout with bumps, subscriptions that keep billing from their own Stripe account if they leave, and a handful of affiliates, rather than a full billing engine.
CartMango covers that smaller job. CartMango is free right now and starts at $10 a year once paid plans start in November, with affiliates on the $30 plan. It takes no cut of your sales, and its subscriptions stay in your own Stripe or PayPal account whichever tool comes next.
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.
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