Kajabi vs. Kartra: Platforms for Online Businesses

Overview of Kajabi

One of the most popular online course platforms is Kajabi. If you’re looking into course creation, then it’s always highly recommended.

Kajabi users can not only design online courses, but also sell them as well. It doesn’t matter if you’re a first-time creator or an expert because the interface is easy to use.

Upon verifying your account, you can begin creating your course. There are pre-made page templates that you can use.

Other features are quiz tools, analytics, and email marketing settings. These help you set up a fully-functioning online course.

You can also access affiliate marketing tools on Kajabi. They’re effective at reaching new audiences to promote your digital products to.

Students are also guaranteed a good experience of Kajabi. Since the course creation tools are effective, there already are plenty of course topics available.

And finally, Kajabi gives you a free 14-day trial. Once that expires, you can choose from 3 paid plans.

Standout Features of Kajabi

Course Creation Tools

Creating courses on Kajabi is simple. Not only is the platform’s interface easy to navigate, but it also gives you access to all the tools you need for making a complete course.

When you create a course, you can add different sections under it. You can do this to organize the content and quizzes that the students need access to.

The content you can add to your courses includes a variety of file types. The most commonly uploaded files by creators are PDFs, images, and videos since many students are visual learners.

Other creators also choose to conduct live streams and webinars for their students. Kajabi allows users to integrate their Zoom accounts to do this.

There’s also an option to upload your files from a place other than just your computer. With Kajabi, you can source your files from DropBox and Google Drive.

Kajabi even has built-in page templates called Product Blueprints that you can use to organize the information you’ll write about your digital products and online courses.

Once you’ve finalized the content, layout, and pricing of your online modules, you can already put them up for sale on Kajabi.

You can also choose to optimize them using SEO so that it’ll rank high on search engines.

Assessment and Content Options

Concerning content creation, Kajabi allows you to customize the assessments you give based on the courses. You can choose from different quiz types to add.

Your quiz type options are essay, multiple-choice, and identification types. There’s also a choice to make the required answer a specific file type. Students can just upload, for example, a Word file or PDF as their output.

Kajabi also lets course creators turn on the automatic grading option. With it, there’s no need to check your students’ submissions one by one.

You’ll be able to easily access their progress reports through the grading feature since Kajabi will compile and compute everything for you.

There’s also a feature called Drip Content that you can use on Kajabi. It lets you set the intervals between the release of new content to your students.

For example, you can set a specific number of days after a student first enrolls in your module that they can access their first lesson.

You can also only make a certain module accessible once the student has completed the previous one.

The Drip Content feature ensures that the pace of online learning is still reasonable and not overwhelming for the student.

Email Marketing

The marketing features you can access on Kajabi include email tools for sending out bulk messages.

Kajabi lets you send out updates on your newly released courses to your current students. That way, they’ll be encouraged to maybe subscribe to those as well.

Creators can also use this feature for delivering general updates and additional resources to their learners. They can also send out quiz results after a major assessment is checked.

In turn, the students can reply to the emails you send out. They can communicate their questions on their current lessons via email and then you can answer back again.

The email marketing features also work on users who are currently not enrolled in your Kajabi courses. You can send emails to entice new users to enroll.

Kajabi creators can send special coupons and discounts to potential users. They can also send out portions of their digital products as previews so that the users are enticed to eventually enroll.

What’s interesting about email marketing tools on Kajabi is that they can also determine which step of the registration process a new user is.

For example, if Kajabi sees that a user filled up the sign-up form but failed to submit it, it’ll give you the option to send an email telling them to submit.

It can also tell when a student hasn’t logged in for a while and then send an email telling them to check back in.

Affiliate Marketing

One more impressive feature of Kajabi is its affiliate marketing options. Running an affiliate program increases the chances of new users enrolling in our online course.

Kajabi will let you partner up with affiliate partners who will promote your online courses to their audience. With each student that they can influence to enroll, they’ll receive a standard commission rate.

Your affiliates will also have their dashboard that they can view on Kajabi. They’ll be able to access their total earnings, commissions, and conversions in real-time.

In turn, the creators will also see their affiliates’ progress on their dashboards.

Many creators have found that the affiliate program on Kajabi was greatly conducive to gaining plenty of new students.

Analytics

Being able to view your overall progress is crucial to managing a digital business. That’s why Kajabi has settings for monitoring your account analytics.

Kajabi instructors can easily view their enrolled students’ grades. They’ll be able to assess whether or not their courses are effective for the students’ learning.

Creators can also pinpoint which of their students need extra help. They can then send out extra resources or guides to aid their students to help them catch up.

And Kajabi also lets creators view the engagement rates of the content they upload. You can view the click rates, views, and conversion rates for the online courses you put up for enrollment on Kajabi.

Plus, as already mentioned, Kajabi users can view the progress of their partner affiliates in real-time.

Third-Party Integrations

Though the features of Kajabi are more than enough to properly manage a digital business, it still gives its users the option to integrate outside applications.

Third-party integrations will give you more advanced settings that Kajabi doesn’t cover. For example, if you want more email options, you can integrate email apps like MailChimp and Aweber.

And even though we mentioned that Kajabi has helpful analytics tools, you can still choose to integrate other analytics apps. Most creators like to use Google Analytics and ClickFunnels to access more advanced analytics features.

Third-party apps can also be used when uploading content to your courses. Creators can source their files from file-sharing platforms like DropBox and Google Drive.

If you’re planning to reward your students with certificates after they finish their courses, then you can also add the templates from Google Drive and similar file sites.

Online Discussions

Kajabi is one of the most interactive course platforms because of its online discussion board. Users can communicate with each other through it.

If ever students are having trouble with their courses, they can post a question on the discussion section and await a response. Other students or their instructor can reply to help them out.

And the posts don’t always necessarily have to be questions. Users can simply have healthy discussions about their lessons on the board.

Customer Support

As it goes for every platform, Kajabi offers round-the-clock customer support. Should you encounter an issue while using Kajabi, you can easily reach out to the team.

First, Kajabi has a 24/7 live chat support team. It’s best to hop onto a conversation with one of the agents for any urgent issues that need to be resolved.

Second, there’s also an email response team. If your query isn’t too urgent or you just have no time to have a chat, you can just send an email to the Kajabi team.

And third, there’s a Kajabi Assistant feature right on the site. It’s useful when you’re designing courses. You can ask for help from it and it will recommend what you should do.

Most of the time, the Assistant would link you to video tutorials that you can watch. These tutorials are usually guides on how to use the Kajabi page builder and how to navigate the platform in general.

Kajabi Pricing

As for pricing plans, Kajabi has three that you can choose from, depending on your needs and overall budget.

But before you can choose a paid plan, you’re automatically entitled to a free trial upon signing up for an account.

Kajabi offers a 14-day free trial to all new users wherein they can access all of its basic features for course creation. You can also already market your online course using it.

The trial usually can be extended to 28 days when you cancel within the 14-day trial period. You just have to respond to the email offer from Kajabi.

But you should note that since it’s a free trial, most of the other premium features will remain locked. You can only access them when you decide to avail yourself of one of the paid plans.

Also, there have been many reports of some users forgetting to cancel their free trial before the expiration date. Make sure to cancel before your trial expires or else you’ll get automatically billed for a paid plan.

This is since Kajabi requires its users to input their payment details before subscribing to the free trial. But even if you do forget to cancel and consequently get billed, the Kajabi support team is lenient.

You can reach out to customer service to give you a quick refund on any accidental subscriptions.

Kajabi Basic Plan

Kajabi Basic costs $149 per month. For those who get billed annually, it only costs $119 per month or $1,428 per year.

We highly recommend this Kajabi plan to first-time course creators and novice online business owners. Since it’s the most affordable plan, there’s less risk while still getting access to premium features.

Subscribers of this plan will get to create 3 digital products and 3 sales pipelines. They can also authorize 1 admin user, manage 1,000 active members, and add 10 000 contacts.

Kajabi Basic lets you create and keep 1 official website. You can upload as much content as you want to your courses and site since you get unlimited bandwidth.

Other unlimited perks that come with this plan are the creation of unlimited landing pages and marketing emails. You also won’t be asked to pay any extra transaction fees during payment, unlike other platforms do.

Kajabi Growth Plan

Kajabi Growth costs $199 per month. For those who get billed annually, it only costs $159 per month or $1,908 per year.

Since this is a middle-tier plan, it’s perfect for online business owners that are already more established. It’s priced reasonably and entails a little more advanced features than the Basic Plan.

That being said, you’ll still get access to all the same tools and options as you would with Kajabi Basic. But you’ll also be given more premium features.

Kajabi Growth lets you create 15 digital products and 15 sales pipelines. You can also authorize 10 admin users, manage 10,000 active users, and add 25,000 contacts.

Creators can promote their courses via the built-in email and affiliate marketing tools that come with this plan.

Kajabi Pro Plan

Kajabi Pro costs $399 per month. For those who get billed annually, it only costs $319 per month or $3,828 per year.

Since this is the Kajabi plan with the highest price, it entails its subscribers the same features from the Basic and Growth plans but with large-scale options.

Creators can design 100 digital products and 100 sales pipelines. They can also authorize 25 admin users, manage 20,000 active members, and add 100,000 contacts.

The number of websites you can create and manage is 3. Plus, you can send out 2,000,000 marketing emails to potential users and current students.

You can also run an affiliate marketing program for your digital products with this plan.

As for websites, you can own a maximum of 3. You can have up to 25 total admin users for them too.

Overview of Kartra

The thing about Kartra is that it isn’t an online course platform. Kartra is a sales funnel builder that helps you launch your digital business.

There are built-in templates, as well as premium layouts that you can purchase on the Kartra marketplace to use for your business pages and sales funnels.

Aside from being a sales funnel builder, it also allows its users to enhance the overall branding for their official websites. Kartra lets its subscribers design sales pages to look more enticing.

You can also do video-hosting to enrich the contents of your business site. Plus, you can conduct split-testing on this platform to improve and analyze your conversion rates.

One can opt for a trial on Kartra by paying $1 for 14 days. Once that expires, you can choose from 4 paid plans.

Standout Features of Kartra

Simple Interface

Upon signing up to Kartra, users will immediately notice its simple and easy-to-use interface. Even novice online entrepreneurs can learn how to navigate it.

Once you get to your dashboard, you’ll have the option to go through a video tutorial of the platform first. You’ll get to learn how to use the tools, builder, and other settings.

All the tools you need to create your membership site are labeled accordingly on Kartra. If that’s still not enough though, Kartra will also give you a step-by-step introduction to all the parts of the platform.

Just make sure that you go through it because it is quite helpful and eases you into learning the entire process of product creation on Kartra.

There’s also something called Kartraverse on the platform. It’s a video database that you can access for extra guidance on how to use the site.

Another additional helpful feature is the Kartranaut Training that teaches users an in-depth breakdown of how Kartra works. It will also recommend a few tips and tricks for a faster creation process.

Page Builder

Once you’re already done creating your membership site and digital products, you can design how your sales page will look to the viewers.

Your sales page must look visually pleasing as it greatly affects conversion rates. A good-looking sales page encourages more users to subscribe to your membership site and purchase your products.

Kartra has a drag-and-drop page editor for designing your sales and landing pages. With it, you can easily select what elements you want to add to your page.

You can add different buttons, headers, and icons to personalize the overall look of the sales page. You can even upload your logos and images to enhance your branding.

In addition to the usual elements, you can also put pop-ups and call-outs on your sales pages. You can choose to highlight a specific product, coupon, or button using the pop-ups. They can help increase conversion rates as well.

First-time page designers can also choose from up to 500 page templates for their site for a speedier outcome. The sales page’s fonts, color scheme, and custom domain can also be altered.

But if the built-in themes and layouts on Kartra don’t seem to suit your preferences, you can also opt to just edit the CSS, HTML, and JavaScript codes of your page.

Your landing and sales pages are automatically optimized for viewing on all devices. That way, whether you or the users access them using a smartphone, computer, or tablet, the quality of the content won’t get altered.

Marketing Features

Sales Funnel Building

Sales funnel building is what made Kartra the popular platform that it is today. Every digital business can benefit from sales funnels because they make overall management much easier.

With a sales funnel, you can create a step-by-step path that you want your users to go through when they access your page. You can personalize the paths based on what the users click on and view first on your site.

For example, if a visitor goes to your site and views a particular membership site embedded on the landing page, then they can automatically be added to the email list of others who viewed that as well.

You can then send them emails with coupons and bundles related to the membership site that they viewed.

There are many different combinations that you can create for your sales funnels and that’s the beauty of Kartra. You’ll be able to personalize the site experience based on the visitor’s behavior.

To make a sales funnel, all you have to do is use the drag-and-drop Kartra page builder. You simply have to select the specific elements that you want for the sales page.

You can then create a sales funnel sequence by using the arrows on the builder to connect one element to another. The arrows are meant to signify a redirection to the next step on the funnel.

Karta lets you specify “If/Then” conditions for your sales funnels so that you can anticipate what the visitors might do on your site. Once you’ve finalized these conditions, you can save them and then automate them for future visitors.

But if sales funnel building still isn’t your forte, you can opt to just purchase templates from the Kartra marketplace. There are templates there that you can use for a smoother setup.

Email Marketing

Kartra offers something called Kartra Mail which consists of email marketing tools to help promote your digital products.

Instead of having to integrate third-party email applications, you can use the Kartra on-platform email tools. You can easily create automated emails based on your users’ behavior.

Features like split testing, user segmentation, and SMS blasts are readily available for Kartra subscribers. You can group particular users together and then deliver emails to them based on their common traits.

Once you’ve sent out your emails, Kartra will let you view real-time analytics based on the recipients’ behavior as well. You’ll be able to see the click rates, total views, and conversion rates for every email you send out for your marketing campaigns.

You can even view your total earnings and revenue, based on the email marketing campaigns on your Kartra dashboard. That way, you can discern whether or not a particular email strategy was effective or not.

If you notice that a particular email strategy works well, you can also decide to market the method. You can put up the email strategy for sale on the Kartra marketplace to earn extra revenue.

And just to add, the messages you send out aren’t limited to just emails. You can also opt to send out SMS messages to particular users and groups.

Affiliate Management

Another marketing tactic you can use on Kartra is affiliate marketing. Kartra lets you run an affiliate program to better promote your membership sites.

Kartra subscribers can partner up with their preferred affiliates. These affiliates will then advertise the Kartra products on their blogs, websites, and social media accounts.

Since affiliates will be able to help you reach wider audiences that you wouldn’t be able to alone, you can expect more revenue and earnings.

For every new user that the affiliates convince to join Kartra and subscribe to their partner’s membership site, they will receive a fixed commission fee.

The commission rates for your affiliates can be set to be different for each product you sell. You can also create various commission tiers for each of your partners, depending on their performance and conversion rates.

Being an affiliate partner for a Kartra subscriber entitles you to your own dashboard on the site. You’ll get to access the specific links you need for promoting the membership sites.

The Kartra creators can even design customized landing and home pages for their partner affiliates for a smoother experience. There are pre-made templates that they can access on Kartra as well if they want something easy to apply.

The real-time progress of your affiliates can also be viewed on the Kartra dashboard. The creators can monitor how many new subscribers they’re gaining through their affiliates.

Overall commissions, conversions, and click rates can also be accessed. It’ll be easy to find out which one of your affiliates is doing well with promoting your digital product.

Other things you can do with the affiliate program is create a registration form for your potential partners, group the affiliates into groups, and set different payment methods.

Integrations

In case you still feel that features on Kartra are lacking in some aspects or you just need more advanced settings, you have the option to integrate third-party applications.

Kartra creators can use outside software like PayPal and Stripe to be used as payment methods for their subscribers and affiliates. They can also sync email applications for more advanced email marketing settings.

What’s interesting is that you can also actually integrate Kajabi to your Kartra account. This is since the two platforms aren’t exactly rivals anyway. One is an online course platform while the other is a sales funnel building application.

Other popular applications that creators sync to their Kartra accounts are Zapier, aMember, and Twilio. You can also integrate applications like Plivo, Optimize Press, and Wishlist.

Creators can use third-party software as payment, email, and SMS gateways on Kartra. They can also use them for calendar and scheduling requirements.

Customer Support

Finally, Kartra has a competent customer support team that you can turn to for any questions or issues. There is a Kartra Help Desk that you can access right on the platform.

If you encounter a problem that must be solved urgently, you can reach out to the Kartra live chat support team. Just look for the pop-up window on the site and begin a conversation.

Kartra live chat agents are competent and efficient. You can expect your query to be answered or the issue to be resolved in just a few moments of beginning the chat.

If you don’t have time to hop on a live chat with an agent or if your problem isn’t too urgent, then you can choose to just place a ticket instead.

The Kartra ticket system is efficient at providing solutions to users’ problems. If your issue requires cooperation between two departments to be resolved, the ticketing system on Kartra will ensure a smooth turnover process.

Kartra Pricing

Kartra offers a trial for new users for $1 for 14 days or two weeks. With it, you can access all of the essential features needed for sales funnel building and online marketing.

Once your trial finally expires though, you will have to pay for one of the Kartra pricing plans to keep getting access to the platform.

There are 4 paid Kartra pricing plans that you can choose from.

Kartra Starter Plan

The Kartra Starter Plan costs $99 per month. For those who get billed annually, it only costs $79 per month or $948 per year.

With the Kartra Starter Plan, you can get up to 2,500 leads, create 1 custom domain, and build 2 membership sites. You can also send out 15 000 emails per month that you’re subscribed to.

You can also upload a hefty amount of content with this Kartra pricing plan because you’ll receive a 50GB bandwidth limit. You can also host 100 pages, as well as do video-hosting for 50 videos.

Other things you can do with this Kartra plan are add 1 more additional member to your official team, as well as connect to 1 Kartra Helpdesk.

As for sales features, you can sell a maximum of 20 digital products with this Kartra plan.

We recommend this Kartra plan if you’re new to creating membership sites and online marketing. This is since it’s the most affordable out of all the other plans.

It will give you all the sales funnel and business tools you need at a reasonable price.

Kartra Silver Plan

The Kartra Silver Plan costs $199 per month. For those who get billed annually, it only costs $149 per month or $1,788 per year.

With the Kartra Silver Plan, you can get up to 12,500 leads, create 3 custom domains, and build an unlimited number of membership sites. You can also send out more than 15 000 emails. Kartra lets you send unlimited emails for every month that you’re subscribed to!

You’ll get unlimited bandwidth as well. That means you can upload as many files as you want to enrich your membership sites.

You can add unlimited videos, products, and pages, as well as create unlimited membership sites. You can even have unlimited team members and connect to unlimited Kartra Helpdesks.

Kartra Gold Plan

The Kartra Gold costs $299 per month. For those who get billed annually, it only costs $229 every month or $1,548 per year.

With Kartra Gold, you can get up to 25,000 leads, create 5 custom domains, and build an unlimited number of membership sites. You can also send out unlimited emails for every month that you’re subscribed to.

And you get to send unlimited emails and upload unlimited content because of unlimited bandwidth. You can also create unlimited pages and products.

Like Kartra Silver, you can also add unlimited team members and then connect to unlimited Kartra Helpdesks as well.

Kartra Platinum Plan

Kartra Platinum costs $499 each month. For those who get billed annually, it only costs $379 every month or $4,548 per year.

With the Kartra Platinum Plan, you can get up to 50,000 leads, create 10 custom domains, and build an unlimited number of membership sites. You can also send out unlimited emails for every month that you’re subscribed.

You’ll also get to enjoy all the same features as the Kartra Silver and Kartra Gold plans. You can send unlimited emails, upload unlimited content, and create unlimited products.

You can design unlimited pages, add unlimited team members, and connect to unlimited Kartra Helpdesks.

Kajabi vs. Kartra

Similarities

The similarities between Kartra and Kajabi lie in their marketing abilities. You can access tools like bulk email sending, message automation, and affiliate marketing.

Like Kajabi, Kartra offers the option to send an email based on what part of the sales funnel a user is.

Both Kartra and Kajabi also let you partner with affiliates to promote your products. You can set commission rates and then view their progress right on the dashboard of each marketing platform. They have great affiliate management tools.

Plus, both Kartra and Kajabi have simple interfaces that even novice business owners can navigate. There are also pre-made templates that they can access to help them set up their pages.

Kartra and Kajabi even have tools like video hosting and uploading to enhance the content of each digital product offered.

There are also a variety of plans that you can choose from on Kartra and Kajabi depending on your overall budget, needs, and level of expertise.

As for customer support, both Kartra and Kajabi offer live chat support and email ticketing responses. And just like Kajabi, Kartra has a quick resolution rate for the issues that users send them.

And when we compare Kajabi vs. Kartra, we find that each platform has an effective page builder for setting up official sites. The page builder on Kartra is simple enough to use and create a fully-working site. The same goes for Kajabi.

Both of them are competent online business platforms that help you with marketing through pre-made pages and templates that you can access through each page builder.

Also when we think about Kartra vs. Kajabi in terms of the free trial, they both last for 14 days.

Differences

As for differences when putting Kartra vs. Kajabi, we noticed one blatant difference. Kajabi is designed to be an all-in-one platform for course creation and marketing.

Meanwhile, Kartra is geared more for creators of a membership site that need a marketing platform to help them gain subscribers.

Therefore, when you look at Kartra vs. Kajabi in terms of course creation, Kajabi stands out. It’s one of the best and most popular online course platforms after all.

But in the same way that Kajabi excels so much with course creation, Kartra excels with sales funnel customization and marketing. It’s a great tool if you have an online business.

On Kartra, we particularly love the affiliate management tools because unlike Kajabi, you can personalize the dashboard of your affiliates.

Kajabi has competent affiliate management as well but it isn’t quite as advanced as that of Kartra if we’re being honest.

Also, in terms of pricing packages, Kajabi pricing is more expensive. The cheapest Kajabi pricing package is the Basic Plan and it costs $149/month while Kartra Starter is only $99/month.

But the thing about Kartra is that the trial isn’t free. This is unlike Kajabi which is very well-known for offering a free trial to all of its first-time users.

Kartra will ask you to pay $1 for a 14-day trial of all of its essential features. And even though $1 isn’t too steep of a price point, you’ll probably still lean more towards Kajabi because however way you put it, it’s completely free.

Conclusion – Kartra vs. Kajabi?

Now that we’ve reached the end of our Kartra vs. Kajabi review, we hope that we’ve helped you realize which one between the two is better suited for your needs.

If you’re deciding which one between Kartra vs. Kajabi you should use for course creation, then the obvious answer is Kajabi.

It’s an all-in-one course creation and marketing platform. You can do video-hosting, as well as enrich your courses with various content. You can even send out 10 000 emails for marketing.

If you’re looking more for something that can aid you in promoting your business and improve your sales pages, then between Kartra vs. Kajabi, Kartra is the answer.

It allows you to customize landing pages, checkout pages, and sales pages for your business. You can also add 10 000 contacts to your account for bulk emailing and advertising.

Our final verdict for this Kartra vs. Kajabi review is that both Kajabi and Kartra win. We can’t choose a specific winner because the platforms have different capabilities.

Both platforms are also great tools for managing an online business because of their marketing features. In fact, you can even integrate Kajabi into Kartra!

You just have to figure out what specific need you’re trying to fulfill. This is since Kartra and Kajabi are geared to fulfill very different needs.

If you enjoyed this Kartra vs. Kajabi review, check out our other articles:

• Kajabi vs. Teachable
• Kajabi vs. Thinkific