Kartra vs Kajabi 2024: Best Platform for Online Course Creators

Reading Time: 11 minutes

Kartra vs Kajabi are two world-class online marketing platforms.

Though lifestyle entrepreneurs and solopreneurs can use both platforms for building and selling online courses, their features vary significantly.

Kartra will allow you to build and sell online courses, but focuses more on marketing automation with advanced marketing features.

For instance, it will allow you to work with complex DFY (done-for-you) sales funnels while Kajabi’s sales funnels are simple.

Kajabi, on the other hand, focuses on online course creation and sales and has less advanced marketing automation features than Kartra.

For example, Kajabi offers powerful course creation features complete with quizzes, assignments, and surveys. Kartra doesn’t offer those features.

So, which platform is best for solopreneurs and digital nomads? Let’s find out in this Kartra vs Kajabi review.

Kartra vs Kajabi: TL;DR

Pros of Kartra

• Efficient all-in-one marketing platform and offers everything to build and run an e-commerce business such as website, sales funnels, landing pages, helpdesk, etc.
• Offers entire email marketing workflows with A/B testing. It allows A/B split testing of landing pages, too.
• Kartra offers a complete help desk solution that can replace tools like FreshDesk, ZenDesk, etc.
• Offers native video hosting with integrated marketing features like CTAs, tags, etc. directly inside the videos.
• Offers DFY sales funnels that you can replicate in your account. This is quite similar to what ClickFunnels offers.
• Kartra has highly advanced marketing features like Dynamic OTOs (one-time offers) for upsells, order bumps, and downsells.

Pros of Kajabi

• Offers a highly-advanced course-building experience with features like quizzes, surveys, and assessments.
• Student-teacher engagement features such as in-course comments and a separate community (that replaces Facebook Groups) are available with Kajabi.
• Supports advanced email marketing campaigns and automation features for individual lectures.
• Provides a blogging feature with various templates and SEO features that you can use to drive organic traffic.
• Offers unlimited video storage through Wistia across all its pricing plans.
• Provides funnels called ‘Pipelines’ that focus on selling online courses.

Kartra vs Kajabi: Detailed Comparison

Kajabi vs Kartra comparison breakdown by features:

• Online courses and membership sites
• Page builder
• Marketing & automations
• Affiliate marketing features
• Analytics
• Pricing

Kartra vs Kajabi: Online Courses and Membership Sites

Both Kartra and Kajabi allow to create courses and membership sites but who wins?

Kartra

With Kartra, you can sell both physical and digital products. Thus, you can build online courses and create a course website. However, the course builder is not very intuitive. It is a bit clunky. Still, you get 15 elements that offer some flexibility in the course creation process.

There are pre-designed and mobile-optimized course templates that you can use. The drip content feature is also available, and you can even run automation that allows easy management.

Unfortunately, Kartra doesn’t offer advanced course builders like quizzes, assessments, surveys, etc.

Kartra will allow you to build membership sites and access levels with features like a drag-and-drop builder, custom-branded membership portals, membership tiers, file & video uploads, video embeds, etc.

The membership creation dashboard has a logical arrangement. The platform offers a feature called ‘Access Levels,’ which you can use to restrict content for various membership levels you create.

Kajabi

Kajabi is an online course platform that offers more advanced features for the course creation process.

Kajabi will also allow adding images, videos, PDFs, etc., directly from inside the platform. This online course platform will also allow you to categorize, classify, and segment the courses.

You can also add posts and sub-categories within the higher-level categories. This allows the creation of a better course structure.

Kajabi offers student engagement features like quizzes and assessments, but you can also build your own community. If you need, you can enable in-course comments, too. Drip and content lock features are also available.

There are pre-designed course templates that you can utilize for creating online courses and even run lecture-specific automation that Kartra lacks.

With Kajabi, you can create entire membership sites or standalone membership pages. You can set different membership tiers, too, and even run special offers.

Additionally, for every membership site you create, you can build a blog for supportive content marketing.

Winner: Kajabi because it offers more advanced features for your online course website along with community features that Kartra lacks.

Kajabi vs Kartra: Page Builder

Both Kartra and Kajabi offer a powerful page builder and editor, but they have different approaches.

Kartra

Kartra offers a powerful page builder. But unlike other platforms, Kartra’s visual page builder will not give you themes to start with. You must build your website using various page templates like homepage, landing page, etc.

There are 200+ page templates along with templates for different elements like countdown times, call to action, etc. The websites you build with Kartra are mobile responsive, too.

Moreover, the page builder also comes with a feature called ‘show columns,’ which provides clarity on the page structure and helps to fasten the building process for online course creators.

Kartra even allows A/B split testing for landing pages. You can test up to four different page variants and split the traffic between them to understand which design works best for your online business.

Unfortunately, with Kartra you cannot build a supporting blog for your membership site. You will need a separate blogging platform for that.

Kajabi

Kajabi also provides a powerful landing page builder and a website builder for online course creators. There are beautiful themes to start with that you can edit using the editor. Each pre-designed theme comes with multiple templates that you can use to build responsive websites.

If the provided themes and templates don’t suit your online business, you can always import a custom theme.

Additionally, Kajabi has a drag-and-drop builder perfect for building different web pages such as landing pages, sales pages, and thank you pages without coding knowledge.

Additional customization features include elements like videos, opt-in forms, accordion, countdown timers, etc. that you can add to the landing pages that you are building.

If you need a separate blog along with a membership site, Kajabi offers a decent blogging capability with various features like a text editor, tag-based blog post organization, customizable sidebar, opt-in form, SEO settings, and more.

Unfortunately, Kajabi does not provide you with the A/B split testing feature for its landing or sales pages.

Winner: Kartra because it provides A/B testing features and more customization options compared to Kajabi.

Kartra vs Kajabi: Marketing & Automation

Whether it is an online course or a physical product that you want to sell, you must run successful marketing campaigns to reach your target audience. Both platforms offer marketing features, but who wins?

Kartra

Kartra offers powerful funnel-building and marketing tools. It also has excellent email marketing and advanced automation features.

Kartra will allow you to automate complete email marketing workflows. The platform offers a visual sequence builder. You can attach an external SMTP server to send emails or use KartraMail. The dedicated automation features will allow you to send “if & then” rules.

They also have features like dynamic OTOs and Behavioral Adaptive Marketing (BAM). BAM allows behavior-based changes in buttons, marketing messages, colors, etc.

The dynamic OTO feature allows offering different one-time offers such as order bumps, upsells, and downsells based on previous purchases, user behavior, and tags.

There are 26 DFY sales funnels that you can use with a single click. Kartra calls these funnels ‘Campaigns.’ You can even create complex funnels from scratch using automation, triggers, and tags.

Kajabi

Kajabi has robust email marketing and upselling options. In fact, the platform offers full control over your email marketing campaigns. You can create automated email sequences and email broadcasts.

Kajabi has a visual automation builder but it lacks flexibility. Sadly, Kajabi will not allow downsells and allows only one upsell. Order bumps are possible on the checkout page. BAM is missing from Kajabi’s marketing features, which can reduce marketing effectiveness compared to Kartra.

This online business platform also offers DFY sale funnels. But there are only six funnels and they are generic. Kajabi calls these funnels ‘pipelines.’ Unfortunately, these funnels lack DFY nurture and follow-up sequences.

Winner: Kartra because it offers more advanced email marketing features along with other marketing tools like BAM and advanced sales funnels.

Kartra vs Kajabi: Affiliate Marketing Features

Online course platforms often offer affiliate marketing tools to help sellers maximize their revenue. Both Kartra and Kajabi offer this feature but which one is better?

Kartra

Kartra has a powerful affiliate program feature that is available across all its plans. You can set up a questionnaire to select the right affiliates. Affiliate progress tracking is possible with the platform and you get details such as affiliate performance, sales, conversions, and total resells.

You can even set up multiple affiliate tiers with different commission structures, enable instant PayPal payments, set commission rates, collect tax forms, and pay using multiple channels like PayPal, check, or bank wire.

Kajabi

Kajabi also offers a similar feature, but that is available only for the Growth and Pro plan users. With Kajabi, you can approve and manage your affiliate partners, set up affiliate links, and track their progress, sales, and conversions.

This online course platform will also allow you to set commission rates, and you can compare total sales and affiliate sales.

Winner: Kartra wins because the affiliate program is available for all Kartra users irrespective of the plan.

Kartra vs Kajabi: Analytics

Whether you are selling an online course, a service, or a physical product, you must track your business performance. Both Kartra and Kajabi offer analytics features, but which one is better?

Kartra

Kartra’s analytics feature will give you data on the success of your email marketing operations. You can clearly understand which forms are converting and which aren’t.

It will also give you details of complete lead history, video view data, number of visitors, etc. The platform also provides data on tracked links and split testing along with goal conversion rate/time reports.

You will receive all data in real-time, which will help with informed decision-making.

Kajabi

Kajabi also offers a powerful analytics tool that will allow you to measure visual performance and lifetime value. You will also receive broadcast and sequence analytics, page and form analytics, and membership site analytics.

Kajabi will display data from various touchpoints and help you track and measure metrics such as opt-ins, offers sold, net revenue, subscription rates, page views, etc.

You can even monitor student progress and subscription churn rate and identify areas that require improvements.

Winner: Kartra because it offers data on tracked links, goal conversion rates, and split testing, which Kajabi doesn’t have.

Kartra vs Kajabi: Pricing

You must select the best online course platform to run your entire business efficiently. But pricing is important, too!

Kartra

Kartra offers four pricing plans, all of which support custom domains. From the Silver plan onwards, Kartra offers unlimited landing pages and membership sites, unlimited products, videos & bandwidth, unlimited emails, and unlimited team members & helpdesks. Also, the Silver plan and above will give you agency features.

Starter Plan: $99 a month

• 2,500 leads
• 1 custom domain
• 15,000 emails per month
• 50 videos & 50GB bandwidth
• 2 membership sites, 100 pages, 20 products, 1 helpdesk

Silver Plan: $199 a month

• 12,500 leads
• 3 custom domains
• Everything else unlimited

Gold Plan: $299 a month

• 25,000 leads
• 3 custom domains
• Everything else unlimited

Platinum Plan: $499 a month

• 50,000 leads
• 10 custom domains
• Everything else unlimited

Kajabi

Kajabi offers three pricing plans in which the Basic plan doesn’t have an affiliate program, but the rest have. The Basic plan gives only basic automation. You will not get unlimited landing pages with

Basic Plan: $149 a month

• 3 products and 3 pipelines
• 10,000 contacts
• 1 website
• Webinars & Events
• Limited automation

Growth Plan: $199 a month

• 15 products and 15 pipelines
• 25,000 contacts
• 1 website
• Webinars & Events
• Advanced automation

Pro Plan: $399 a month

• 100 products and 100 pipelines
• 100,000 contacts
• 3 websites
• Webinars & Events
• Advanced automation

Winner: Kartra because of low entry-level pricing.

Kartra vs Kajabi: Summary

Kartra is an all-in-one platform to run your e-commerce business where you can sell both digital and physical products, including courses. Kajabi, on the other hand, is primarily an online course platform. You cannot sell physical goods and services from this platform.

Because Kartra doesn’t focus only on online courses, it lacks some powerful course-building features like blogging, quizzes, assessment, etc., that you will find with Kajabi.

However, it makes up for that loss with powerful marketing capabilities including sophisticated email marketing capabilities that only standalone email platforms like AWeber, ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, etc. can match.

Kajabi also offers email marketing capabilities to send professional-looking marketing communications, but lacks advanced features like A/B testing, behavioral adaptive marketing, dynamic OTOs, advanced sales and marketing funnels, etc., that Kartra offers.

Both are powerful platforms in their own rights, but the one you select will depend entirely on your business goals.

Kartra vs Kajabi: FAQ

Is Kajabi better than Kartra?

Both Kartra and Kajabi will allow you to run your entire digital products business through their platforms and offer a few similar features such as building an entire website, creating courses and funnels, etc. Both platforms offer marketing capabilities, too.

However, Kajabi is primarily for online courses, and hence, offers various advanced student engagement features that Kartra lacks. If you are looking only for the best online course platforms with advanced online course creation features, Kajabi is better than Kartra.

Is Kartra better than WordPress?

Kartra is an all-in-one marketing platform with powerful email marketing capabilities and support for a custom domain. It enables course, service, and product selling. Kartra offers various marketing tools and funnels, integrated analytics, video hosting, and much more.

WordPress on the other hand is primarily a free blogging platform. You can build an e-commerce store to sell physical products, services, and online courses using the WooCommerce plugin and different other plugins that will cost you a fortune.

For funnel building, email marketing, and automation features, you will need third-party integrations that Kartra offers out of the box. WordPress is not an all-in-one platform. This makes Kartra better than WordPress.

Since Karta doesn’t offer blogging features, you can use WordPress to build your blog just like many other Kartra users do.

Do Kartra and Kajabi have a free plan?

Kartra and Kajabi are premium products and none of them offer a free plan. Kartra will allow testing their platform for 14 days for $1. Kajabi offers a 14-day free trial but you must attach your credit card. Once the 14-day period is over, you must buy a premium plan.

Can you sell courses on Kartra?

Absolutely! Kartra is designed to facilitate the process of creating and selling online courses. With its advanced features for course creation, sales funnels, and membership sites, Kartra provides a comprehensive platform for selling both digital and physical products. The platform allows you to showcase your courses effectively, implement successful marketing campaigns, and manage memberships seamlessly.

Is Kartra the same as ClickFunnels?

While both Kartra and ClickFunnels share similarities as all-in-one platforms for online business, they differ in their emphasis. Kartra offers advanced features for creating online courses, membership sites, and email marketing campaigns. On the other hand, ClickFunnels is more focused on sales funnels. Kartra stands out with its behavioral adaptive marketing, diverse membership site features, and comprehensive tools for successful marketing campaigns.

Is Kartra worth it?

Yes, Kartra is considered a valuable investment for online businesses. It provides a wide range of features, including unlimited landing pages, custom domains, video hosting, and automation features. With Kartra, you can efficiently manage your online course platform, implement successful marketing campaigns, and engage students with advanced student engagement features. The platform’s versatility makes it worth considering for those aiming to build and grow their online business.