You have something to sell — a template pack, an ebook, a course. What you need is a page that takes card payments and delivers the file. That is a small job, and the tools built for it are not cheap.
SamCart is the one most people find first. Its Core plan is $79 a month. That is the entry price, before you have sold anything, and there is no free plan — only a 7-day trial. Before you start that clock, it is worth knowing what a free systeme.io account already does.
Does SamCart include email marketing?
No. This is the thing most people discover after they have paid.
Core gets you the checkout, a page builder, unlimited products, a courses area and cart abandonment. What it does not get you is email marketing. SamCart sends receipts and abandoned-cart notices, but there is no email builder, no automation, and no way to send a broadcast to your list.
For that you connect ConvertKit, Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign — another account, another monthly bill. So the real cost of the $79 plan is $79 plus whatever your email tool charges, and it grows as your list does.
What SamCart Core leaves out
The tools most sellers reach for second — one-click upsells, order bumps, A/B testing — are not on Core either. They sit on Pro at $199 a month. SamCart restructured its plans in 2026, and that middle tier went up from $159.
That is the pattern across this whole category rather than a quirk of SamCart. Across six platforms, the feature you actually came for usually sits one tier above the advertised price — Stan puts email on the $99 plan, Kartra's cheapest tier takes 5% of every sale.
Prices checked 3 September 2026 against SamCart's own pricing page. Check it yourself before you decide — this page is meant to outlive today.
Is there a free alternative to SamCart?
systeme.io's free plan is permanent. No card, no trial clock. It includes:
- A checkout that takes real card payments
- Email marketing — unlimited sends to 2,000 contacts, with automation
- 3 sales funnels, with pages you build and publish
- 1 online course, hosted and delivered
- 1 blog
- 1 custom domain
- An affiliate program for your own products
That list is the point. The checkout is not the product here — it is one part of a platform that also does the job you would otherwise be paying an email tool for.
Do these platforms take a percentage of your sales?
Neither of these two does. Systeme.io charges 0% transaction fees on every plan including the free one, and SamCart takes nothing on SamPay. What you pay in both cases is your payment processor — roughly 2.9% plus 30¢ through Stripe. Anyone telling you systeme.io wins on transaction fees is selling you something.
The difference is the monthly fee. $79 before your first sale, or nothing.
Where SamCart is genuinely better
SamCart has spent years on one thing: the checkout itself. Its templates are tested for conversion at a level a general-purpose builder does not match, and if upsells and order bumps are central to how you sell, Pro is built around them in a way systeme.io is not.
If you are already selling at volume and a percentage point of checkout conversion is worth more than $79 a month to you, that is a reasonable trade. The problem is specific to someone paying $79 before the first sale, to reach a plan that still cannot email their buyers.
Why the email tool matters more than the checkout
A checkout earns you one sale. An email address earns you every launch after it — you tell people directly instead of hoping they come back.
That is why a checkout without email attached is a smaller purchase than it appears: you have bought the part that captures the money and not the part that compounds it. If you have not built a list yet, this covers starting one with zero followers.
Where the free plan runs out
Three funnels and one course. Selling one product, you will not touch that. Running several launches at once, you will — and the Startup plan is $17 a month, still a fraction of Core.
The links below are affiliate links. If you open a systeme.io account through one, I may earn a commission at no cost to you.
Create your free systeme.io account
No credit card required — free forever plan
If you want to see how systeme.io stacks up against SamCart feature by feature, their SamCart comparison page lays it out. Worth reading with the dashboard already open.
And if you would rather have the whole setup written down first, the Systeme.io Beginner's Quickstart Guide is free — 30 pages, 41 screenshots, from account creation to first sale.
Common questions
How much does SamCart cost?
Core is $79 a month and Pro is $199, checked 3 September 2026. There is no free plan — a 7-day trial, then billing starts whether you have sold anything or not.
Does SamCart have email marketing built in?
No. It sends transactional email such as receipts and abandoned-cart notices, but there is no email builder, no automation and no broadcast sending. You connect a separate email platform and pay for that too.
What is the cheapest way to sell digital products online?
Free, if the platform includes a checkout on its free tier. You will still pay card processing of roughly 2.9% plus 30¢ per sale, which applies on every platform anywhere.
Are order bumps and upsells worth paying for?
They reliably lift average order value, so at volume they pay for themselves. Before you have proven that anyone wants the product at all, they are optimising a thing that is not yet working.
Can you take card payments without a website?
Yes. A checkout lives on a page with its own URL, and that page does not need a website around it. A domain and a homepage can wait until you want them.
Related reading: the cheapest all-in-one plan takes 5% of every sale · what you actually need to run an online business