Comparison Overview
In this guide, we’ll overview some of the most popular eCommerce platforms you can use with ActiveCampaign.
If you’re trying to figure out which order form solution, checkout page platform or shopping cart software you should use with ActiveCampaign, this article will help explain the pros and cons of each of the main ones you can choose from.
We’ll also explore which ones are better at automation and give each their own “automation score”.
Here’s a side by side comparison of all the platforms and their main features compared side by side:
If you want to sell an online course, membership site or digital product with ActiveCampaign, you’ll need a separate eCommerce add-on since that’s not handled by ActiveCampaign.
If you’re using Memberium for ActiveCampaign, you’ll have to pair it with an eCommerce solution like MemberiumPay, Spiffy, WooCommerce, ThriveCart, SamCart, etc.
These aren’t the only supported eCommerce options. Any platform that can create a contact and apply a tag in ActiveCampaign after a purchase can technically be used as an eCommerce add-on with Memberium for ActiveCampaign.
Here we’ll cover the main ones to choose from, let’s dive in!
MemberiumPay
MemberiumPay is a feature that is included in Memberium for ActiveCampaign. It will enable you to sell digital products through your membership site without purchasing any additional addons.
All order forms are hosted on your website and domain name. Payments are processed through Stripe and PayPal (no payment data is stored on your site/server for security).
Full MemberiumPay Announcement
Features
MemberiumPay was designed to be simple out of the box. We purposely are not trying to build a full-featured, bells & whistles eCommerce system. Instead, we wanted a way to let people sell their courses, downloads, templates, etc. without having to purchase additional plugins or eCommerce systems.
With MemberiumPay, you can sell one-time payment products. If you have a Memberium Pro license, you can sell subscription products.
Customers will purchase through orderforms hosted on your site. They are mobile responsive, too!
Customers/Members can also manage their own accounts, update billing details, view and cancel subscriptions, and more. Creating this account page takes less than 30 seconds as we’ve done most of the work for you.
Automation/Syncing
MemberiumPay will automatically apply ActiveCampaign tags when a successful order is placed. You’ll also be able to trigger actions for other events such as if a subscription is cancelled:
MemberiumPay doesn’t sync order data back to ActiveCampaign as some platforms do.
Pricing
MemberiumPay is included for free with Memberium for ActiveCampaign.
If you need to sell subscription products, you’ll need a Memberium Pro license.
Spiffy
Spiffy (www.spiffy.co) is an all-in-one eCommerce solution for ActiveCampaign users who want to sell one-off digital products, subscription-based products like membership sites, or a combination of both.
Spiffy allows you to create great looking order forms and do other
cool things like include order bumps on forms, add one-click upsells, allow your members to self manage their subscriptions through an online billing portal and much more.
Features
One of the best parts about Spiffy is its simplicity. The team at Spiffy has redesigned the whole experience of creating order forms and selling digital products from the ground up. Feature-wise, Spiffy provides all the features that you’d want as an ActiveCampaign user.
Spiffy has support for subscriptions, one-time products, digital and physical products, free trials, paid trials, and the ability to add upsell offers at the checkout.
The main feature missing from Spiffy is an affiliate center built-in. However, they have confirmed you can use an affiliate tracking tool like LeadDyno or Post Affiliate Pro if you need to add affiliate tracking to your forms.
One feature you’ll find interesting is the way customers can log in to the client area to update their account details. When a user wants to manage their account info they click a link from their Spiffy account area and that sends an email to customers with a link that when clicked, will log them into the client area where they can update their details securely.
This also means you’ll spend less time assisting customers with password resets and it’s one less password for them to remember.
Automation/Syncing
Spiffy offers the most comprehensive amount of automation options out of all the platforms we looked at.
You get a huge variety of automation triggers that you can setup such as when a member adds a new card, when a payment fails, subscription is cancelled, card expires, etc.
After you select a trigger, you can define what actions in ActiveCampaign that you want to have triggered when that event happens. The list of potential actions isn’t as long, but you can trigger all the main types of automations that ActiveCampaign allows you to, based on any of those events happening.
Not only does Spiffy offer those automation features, but they also integrate directly with ActiveCampaign to sync the order data directly into ActiveCampaign through their direct “Deep Data” integration. This allows you to see any order data in your contact’s record like this in ActiveCampaign:
Spiffy also gives you advanced analytics about your checkout
performance, conversion stats, subscription performance, and upsell performance stats.
We could go on about the seemingly limitless automation options that Spiffy gives you. The other key feature Spiffy supports is auto charging failed invoices when a member updates a new credit card. Spiffy can save you time by automatically charging past, failed invoices after the new card has been added.
You won’t need to go back and manually process these past failed payments after a new card has been added if you’re using Spiffy. This can be a huge pain if you’re eCommerce platform doesn’t do this and you have hundreds of paying members.
Pricing
At the time of writing this, Spiffy is currently offering deeply discounted “founders pricing”. This pricing will likely change in the future, as you can see below it’s a great deal:
Right now at about $50/m for all their features, you’re getting a great value for the cost compared to some of the other monthly/annual solutions available.
Even at their listed, non-discounted price of $97/m or $1200/yr, you’re still getting access to all the features they create which sets them apart from SamCart or Shopify who charge for different feature sets.
Final Thoughts
If we were stranded on a desert island and had to pick one eCommercse solution to use with ActiveCampaign, it would be Spiffy. Spiffy gets our recommendation if you’re using Memberium for ActiveCampaign and you want a hosted order form solution that’s separate from WordPress. They currently have a great deal on their founding members pricing that you’ll want to check out if your shopping for an eCommerce platform to use with ActiveCampaign.
The functionality, design, support and team behind Spiffy are top notch. To find out more about Spiffy and see how it works you can check out their site here…
Our guide on using Spiffy with Memberium for ActiveCampaign
WooCommerce for ActiveCampaign
WooCommerce, a WordPress plugin, offers you nearly limitless options if you’re willing to fork up some cash for different addons. Integrated directly into your WordPress site, WooCommerce allows you to sell just about anything, for any price, all supported by a plethora of payment processors.
Features
Out of the box, WooCommerce comes with basic features to sell one-time payment digital and physical products. There is a decent looking checkout page, support for different payment processors, coupon system, customer portal for updating payment details, etc. The key feature that’s missing is the ability to sell subscription-based products.
To sell subscriptions, you’ll need an addon that enables this. WooCommerce Subscriptions is currently $199 which gets you support and updates for one year. You’ll have to factor that cost in when comparing WooCommerce to the other platforms. WooCommerce Subscriptions is fully featured and integrates with WooCommerce and your site just as you’d expect.
Customers can (with the same login they use to access Memberium protected content) view their current subscriptions, buy new ones, cancel them, update their payment details, and more.
We won’t be able to cover all the features WooCommerce offers, but it’s important to note that a lot of functionality will need to be purchased through add-ons. An example is upselling during checkout. To offer an upsell, you’ll need a $29 addon that adds the functionality to your site.
When it comes to functionality though, there are so many people using WooCommerce that a lot of the features you may desire have already been developed by WooCommerce themselves or by third-party developers. The downside is you may have to pay for many of them.
Automation/Syncing
Memberium for ActiveCampaign provides some automation functionality for WooCommerce. We enable you to apply tags when a purchase is made, a payment fails, and when a subscription is suspended or cancelled.
ActiveCampaign also offers their “Deep Data” integration which will pull in the order data right into ActiveCampaign the same way Spiffy does. You also have some ability to automate in ActiveCampaign using automations.
Ultimately, WooCommerce doesn’t offer as many automation options out of the box. There are plugins such as ActiveWoo that enable more automation to be set up, but that’s a paid, third-party addon.
One key automation feature that’s missing is the ability for a past invoice to be collected when a new card is added. Unlike Spiffy and some of the other platforms, you’ll have to manually go in and charge the old invoice with the new card. There may be an addon that solves this problem, but we were not able to find one in our quick search.
Pricing
WooCommerce itself is a free plugin available within WordPress right now.
The catch is that a lot of the functionality you’ll need (such as selling subscriptions) will require you pay quite a bit up front. Before you decide to fully go in with WooCommerce, you’d be smart to look through the addons you’ll need and add up the cost.
WooCommerce may still be the cheaper option, but if you’re selling subscriptions and require a lot of other addons, you might find the other solutions listed here to be more economical.
Final Thoughts
Overall, WooCommerce is a good choice if you want absolute control over everything at the cost of simplicity. You can extend WooCommerce using addons/plugins or even hire a developer to make something custom to your needs.
The drawback is that it’s more complicated than the other platforms and depending on how many plugins you need to add to it – it might not be the cheapest.
Memberium for ActiveCampaign has many of its customers using WooCommerce, but we typically find even more customers using Spiffy or ThriveCart.
Our guide on using WooCommerce with Memberium for ActiveCampaign
ThriveCart
ThriveCart is very similar to Spiffy in that it’s separate from your website, offers deep integration with ActiveCampaign, and provides you with all the features you’ll need to spin-up just about any offer you want.
Features
ThriveCart offers all the features you’re going to want. You can sell both physical and digital products, subscription and one-off payment products, you can offer free trials, paid trials, and more. All the main features are there.
ThriveCart differs from Spiffy in that it offers a built-in affiliate system. I won’t cover everything you can do with it, but you can check out that linked doc for more details. This may be a key factor if you’re planning to use affiliates to market your offering.
Just like Spiffy, ThriveCart includes a link at the bottom of its emails that lets your customers log in to their customer portal where they can update their payment details, address info, and cancel subscriptions if you allow it.
Automation/Syncing
ThriveCart offers the same level of automation that Spiffy does. On the automation score, we’ve ranked them the same although there are minor differences between the two. ThriveCart gives you plenty of triggers with the ability to apply tags, add/remove from lists, and start automations.
When it comes to automation, it’s great. However, there is not currently any order syncing happening between ThriveCart and ActiveCampaign. If you need your order data in ActiveCampaign, ThriveCart won’t be the option for you.
Pricing
Right now, ThriveCart is offering a one-time, lifetime payment of $690 for access to the entire platform. They’ve stated they’ll be moving to a monthly/annual model at some point, but as of now, this offer has been going for over a year and a half.
If ThriveCart meets your feature requirements, it may be the cheapest option in the long run.
Final Thoughts
ThriveCart is almost the same as Spiffy except that it adds affiliate features and loses order syncing. There are other differences, but ultimately they’re very similar solutions.
When customers ask our recommendations, we typically give out one of these two platforms to check first. Memberium also integrates with ThriveCart to provide autologin functionality (take customers straight to their content after they purchase).
Our guide on using ThriveCart with Memberium for ActiveCampaign
Shopify
Features
Shopify doesn’t offer most of the features you’ll need out the box. In our experience, we’ve found Shopify is geared more toward people that are selling physical goods versus digital and the feature set reflects that.
You won’t be able to sell subscriptions without a potentially paid addon. The same goes for upsells at checkout. You can also expect to pay for an affiliate system if you need that, too.
Shopify does have a lot of different features, but most of them will not benefit membership site owners.
Automation/Syncing
Shopify does integrate with ActiveCampaign through ActiveCampaign’s “Deep Data” integration. This means all orders from Shopify will sync and be pulled into ActiveCampaign.
You can also apply a tag based on a purchase through ActiveCampaign.
Since Shopify doesn’t have subscription support natively, we didn’t see any way to apply a tag if a subscription is cancelled or the payment fails meaning you’d have no automated way to revoke a member’s access after they cancel or their card declines.
Shopify is the most limited platform of the ones overviewed when it comes to automation functionality.
Pricing
Shopify pricing starts at $29/m, but that doesn’t include any of the addons you’ll potentially need to sell your subscriptions. Make sure to factor in addons you’ll need if you choose to use Shopify.
Final Thoughts
We think Shopify is a good platform for people selling physical products, but when it comes to selling membership sites, we can’t recommend it.
Shopify lacks the basic features needed to sell subscriptions, automate revoking membership access, and other automation features.
The main reason we included it on this list is due to its deep integration with ActiveCampaign. Unless you have a specific need that only Shopify can fulfill, we’d strongly suggest using one of the other solutions here for selling access to your membership site or online course.
Our guide on using Shopify with Memberium for ActiveCampaign
SamCart
SamCart falls into the same category as Spiffy and ThriveCart – fully hosted solutions that you don’t have to worry about maintaining (unlike WooCommerce).
Features
SamCart provides nearly all of the features you’ll need to sell an online course or membership site access. You can sell digital and physical products, offer free and paid trials, subscription offers, one-time payment offers, upsells at checkout and more.
The major drawback that makes SamCart less desirable is its lack of a customer portal. There isn’t any way for customers to update their credit card details without involving you first. As of now, you have to manually go to their record and press a button that sends them an email where they can update their payment details. Depending on what you’re selling, this will lead to increased customer support costs.
SamCart does feature an affiliate system you can use to have affiliates market and sell your products. You can learn more about that here.
Automation/Syncing
SamCart has automation capabilities that are somewhere between WooCommerce and ThriveCart/Spiffy. Copying from SamCart’s documentation, here are the automation triggers you can use:
- Product Purchased
- Product Refunded
- Subscription Canceled
- Subscription Delinquent
- Subscription Recovered
- Subscription Recovered
- Subscription Restarted
- Subscription Charged
- Subscription Charge Failed
- Order Completed
- Upsell Purchased
This is not as many as ThriveCart or Spiffy, but it covers almost everything you’ll need on a day to day basis. If you want to remind customers of their expiring credit cards or more advanced triggers then you’ll need to use another platform such as Spiffy or ThriveCart.
Order data in SamCart does not sync to ActiveCampaign.
Pricing
The pricing for SamCart is in line with the other options. Starting at $49/m, you’ll want to visit their pricing page to see an overview of the different features you get with each plan:
Final Thoughts
SamCart isn’t a bad choice by any means but for the same price, you can get ThriveCart which has the customer portal, so you don’t have to get involved each time a customer needs to update their payment details.
Although SamCart isn’t a bad option, we don’t think it’s the best. The exception is if you’re already on SamCart and are wanting to use Memberium for ActiveCampaign. It’s likely not worth switching to another platform unless you need the features of said platform.
Closing Words
I hope this article helps you in determining what billing platform you can use with Memberium for ActiveCampaign in your business.
I understand each site owner has different needs when it comes to features, options, etc. If you’d like to discuss this over the phone, please join me on Office Hours by clicking the link and registering for one of our twice-weekly calls.
If you need immediate assistance, reach out to our support team.
