Kartra vs Kajabi: A Complete guide for 2024

If you're a marketer or solopreneur on the fence between Kartra vs Kajabi, you’re not alone. While both platforms are similar in some regards, they're also wildly different in others, which can make the decision pretty daunting.

Kartra is a jack of all trades—it does a little of everything: creating sales funnels, building websites, running email marketing campaigns, and even sending SMS messages. 

Kajabi has plenty of advanced marketing features too, but it is first and foremost an online course creation platform, then a marketing one. 

Here’s a detailed rundown on both platforms to help you figure out the better option for yourself.

Let's take a look at the main features of each of these platforms and how they can benefit your online businesses.

Being so similar, both tools share some of the same primary offerings, but we’ll help you figure out the nuances and where one shines over the other.

Kartra offers a complete marketing toolkit to help you run your entire online business through one platform. This includes the ability to set up email marketing campaigns, membership sites, sales funnels, sell online courses and more.

This means you don't need to deal with multiple subscriptions or juggle your work across different platforms. 

It has tons of other use cases as well, among which is a pretty solid learning management system, which is what makes the platform such a strong contender against Kajabi.

Kartra's landing page builder is one of its strongest suits. It's easy to use, even for beginners, and packs in plenty of features you'd find in dedicated page builders to help set up a course website.

They provide a free Kartra domain, but you can also set up custom domains if you wish. To get started, you can choose from hundreds of pre-designed page templates for various end goals.

So if you need an already optimized squeeze page designed to yield the best results, you only have to filter for them and pick one that catches your eye. 

The page editor works much the same way. You can spruce up your page by adding blank or pre-built sections, or simply drag and drop individual components like images, text, and headlines from the Components section on the left sidebar.

You can also adjust the other general site look such as the primary colors and font from the ‘Styles’ tab. 

You’ll find SEO settings, pop-ups, redirects, and other technicalities in the ‘Settings’ tab.

Plus, your site is automatically optimized for all screen sizes - but if you want the peace of mind to give it a once-over yourself, you can do that as well by choosing either the tablet or mobile mode.

Kartra's membership sites feature lets you create different tiered subscription plans for your audience. 

If you’re a course creator, this can come in handy since you will likely want to offer additional perks like 1-1 coaching or ebooks at an extra price.

Creating your membership site works on the same drag-and-drop model that you get when building landing pages. 

Kartra simplifies things by dividing your site into sections, leaving you to just fill in the blanks. Want to introduce yourself? Just drag the ‘Host’ widget to the sidebar.

You can divide your site into categories and subcategories. So if your course has three modules, each with its own lessons, you can set up the modules as categories and add the lessons as subcategories within each module.

These will be displayed at the top bar of your site, so viewers can easily find and access their desired lesson.

You can add multiple types of posts to your categories, including YouTube embeds, written text, and images. Plus, a lesson can be as diverse as you want, with multiple videos, text, or even a mix of both.

Besides the essentials, you can also add tier levels and control access to specific categories based on subscription plans. Plus, with advanced features like content dripping, you can dish out content gradually to viewers after they've signed up, keeping them engaged over time.

You can use Kartra to keep track of your leads, segment them, and also to run email marketing campaigns. 

Lead generation is quite straightforward, all of your contacts you manage to get through either forms or orders will automatically be compiled and available to access in the ‘Communications’ tab.

This is also where you will be able to import any existing leads you may have to Kartra. 

You can sort them into different lists—like one for free subscribers, another for paid—or assign individual tags to help you keep tabs on them. For instance, you could tag repeat customers or identify newsletter subscribers.

These can come in handy when you move on to email marketing. 

You can send one-off broadcast emails to particular lead lists and assigned tags. You can also filter contacts based on their purchase status, whether or not they have opened your last email, and more.

Alternatively, you can set up sequences—pre-written emails that are automatically sent based on user interactions.

These can be as complex as you want, set up the individual triggers, corresponding tags you want to assign to users who activate a particular trigger, and the different sets of emails you want to send. 

A major plus is that it also allows you to split-test email variants, giving you insights into which one performs better.

The funnel mapper is essentially a sales funnel builder you can use to visually design and organize your entire sales funnel. 

It comes with the same drag-and-drop interface we’ve seen with their other tools, users can create complex sequences of interconnected pages, emails, and automations to guide prospects through the customer journey. 

You can define entry and exit points and set triggers for automated actions.

Once your funnel is set up, you can even run a simulation to get an estimate of the number of conversions you can expect. 

It's useful for brainstorming and strategizing different approaches. You can experiment with various strategies to pinpoint what might deliver the best results.

Tailored for entrepreneurs, coaches, educators, and creators, Kajabi offers tools for website building, course creation, email marketing, sales funnels, and more.

However, it really shines as an online course platform, as that is its primary focus. 

You get tools to keep learners engaged, keep your content organized, and easily keep your audience up to date with an email marketing feature. 

But that doesn't mean it lags in its other features, here’s an overview of their main features.

Online courses on Kajabi are divided into modules, sub-modules, and lessons—you can keep all the different parts neatly organized from the “Courses” tab.

Your lessons can contain text files, video, audio, assessments, or a combination of videos, text, and downloadable files. 

Kajabi also offers a drip content feature, allowing you to decide when users can access specific modules or sub-modules after signing up. Similar to Kartra, this feature is handy for keeping your members engaged and interested. 

Another similar feature is content locking, which allows you to guide learners through a linear path in your courses. They'll only be able to access a specific module or sub-module of your online training program after completing all previous lessons.

You can put the content locking feature to use a little differently as well: unless a student achieves a certain grade on an assessment, they won't be able to access the next lessons.

Assessments can either be text-based essay-style questions which you’ll have to go through manually, or automatically graded multiple-choice quizzes.

Kajabi comes with a native community platform that you can use to build relationships with your audience.

The community feature comprises Access Groups and Circles. Groups consist of members from your course, and you can create multiple groups with different members. Circles, on the other hand, can be viewed as chat rooms dedicated to specific topics of discussion. 

To break it down: 

1. Access Groups –  These allow you to group members based on their subscription level, membership type, or any other criteria you define.
2. Circles – Chat Rooms within access groups, usually set around a certain topic, like Q&A, general discussion, or other. 

You have the flexibility to make an access group either free or offer it as a paid incentive. If you go with the latter, you can opt for a one-time fee model or a subscription plan, 

Your community can also have a combination of free and paid access groups. 

For example, if you run a marketing course, access groups with general circles can be open to all, while others where you regularly offer tips and review your audience's marketing campaigns can cost an added fee.

Kajabi has also recently introduced Challenges to Communities. Using these you can give members various activities to keep them engaged. 

Continuing with our marketing example, you could give your audience the task to run social media campaigns on an unorthodox marketing model and get back to you with their results. This is just one example, you can be very creative with how you keep members engaged.

Selling your digital product entails having a website to list it on. Kajabi provides a beginner-friendly, easy-to-use page builder that allows you to do just that.

To get started, you can choose from one of their 11 customizable templates, these include landing pages, sales pages, and more. Use them as they are, or take them as creative inspiration to get a feel for what works best for you.

The page builder itself is similar to Kartra’s, the toolbar to the left of your screen consists of all the essentials.

Pages on Kajabi are made up of sections and blocks, the toolbar is where you can add new sections to your page or just additional blocks (images, text, forms, etc.) to existing sections.

In the settings tab, you can fine-tune the theme colors, fonts, and text size to match your style. You can also toggle on grids and show guides to ensure each section of your page is perfectly aligned and spaced.

You can shift between different pages from the toolbar to design each, including your blog page. But to actually create the blog posts, you will have to head over to the relevant tab under the ‘Website’ section on your Kajabi dashboard. 

Here you can add the text, audio, or images for your post, alter the cover image, and tinker with the SEO settings to ensure maximum search engine visibility.

Like with Kartra, you can use Kajabi’s email marketing tool to send one-time broadcast emails or set up automated sequences. 

You can choose from a range of already designed templates so your emails are stunning to look at right off the bat. Or if you'd prefer designing your own emails from scratch, you can do that as well.

When setting up sequences, you don't get the flow view as you would with Kartra, but a list of emails in the order they’re to be sent.

For automation features, you can choose from a range of triggers that activate the sequence or adjust the number of days after a trigger has been activated for the email sequence to start.

You can also keep an eye on the key analytics for each email in the sequence.

There's no definitive answer on which of the two formats is "better" - it all boils down to personal preference.

But when it comes to split testing, Kartra is the clear winner. In Kajabi, unfortunately, you can't test variations of emails.

Kartra offers three different pricing plans and a 30-day free trial to let you test out the platform.

On the other hand, Kajabi offers a 14-day free trial. Once you’re through, you can go with one of the three pricing plans.

Here are all the major differences between Kartra and Kajabi you’ll want to know about before making a decision:

As is often the case with comparisons between two tools, the answer isn't something you'd like to hear: it depends.

There isn't one definitive answer on which of the two is better, it boils down to your individual needs. 

Both have great marketing automation tools that can help you easily make your product visible to your audience

Kajabi is great if your focus is on creating courses, but Kartra comes with a better email marketing interface. Similarly, Kartra doesn't provide a community feature while Kajabi does. 

You will have to analyze what your specific requirements are in a platform and which of the two matches them best. 

But if you’re open to a third option, you should consider OptimizePress.

Looking to supercharge your online marketing efforts? OptimizePress is your ultimate solution. This powerful platform empowers you to create high-converting landing pages, sales pages, online courses, and membership sites with ease.

OptimizePress includes a wide range of features including:

• Drag-and-Drop Builder: Craft stunning pages without any coding skills.
• Conversion-Optimized Templates: Choose from a variety of professionally designed templates proven to boost conversions.
• Seamless Integrations: Connect effortlessly with your favorite email marketing and CRM tools.
• Advanced Analytics: Track your success and optimize your campaigns with detailed analytics.
• Membership Portals: Build secure, high-quality membership sites to engage and retain your audience.

Get started today and experience the OptimizePress difference.