Kartra vs Kajabi: Which is the best choice for creators?

Our view at Stack - Podia shines with its all-in-one platform for digital commerce, offering zero transaction fees, email marketing, affiliate marketing, and live chat support. It’s known for unlimited courses and products, embeddable checkouts, and a community feature to engage users. It now has blog functionality also.

Whether you’ve just started your online business or you’re looking to switch platforms, the question of “which platform is right for me?” will inevitably come up.

To get answers, you’re doing the sensible thing: checking ratings, reviews, and reading blog posts like this which may not have all of the answers but can hopefully point you in the right direction.

In this blog post, we’ll be evaluating two popular “all-in-one” business solutions — Kartra and Kajabi — so you can see what they’re all about, how they compare to one another, and which one will be the best fit for you and your business.

This article is informed by our knowledge of the industry (more on that in a moment) as well as the information we found on the Kajabi and Kartra websites, in public reviews on comparison sites like Capterra and G2, and even in other comparison articles like the one you’re reading now.

Before we dive in, we’d like to call attention to the fact that this article was written by the Podia team, another “all-in-one” solution for digital content creators that may also be on your radar (if we’re not on your radar, you’re in luck, as we’ll also be covering our platform as a third option for comparison).

While it may seem like it would be impossible to conduct an unbiased evaluation of our competitors and our own platform, we really did our best to assess each platform honestly and transparently, using public information vs our own perceptions and biases.

We also want to make it clear that this article is not about tearing any of our competitors down — if anything, it’s about highlighting the best parts of each (and yes, the downsides), so the right creators can get matched with the right platforms.

With that said, let’s get into our honest review of Kartra vs Kajabi, starting with Kajabi.

Kajabi: A quick overview

According to the Kajabi marketing site, Kajabi is an “all-in-one business platform to create and scale your knowledge business” with “a full suite of world-class online business tools working seamlessly together.”

In terms of history, Kajabi has been around for a little over a decade (they came on the scene in 2010) and according to their website, they serve about “40,000+ serious experts, entrepreneurs and influencers around the world.”

Throughout their marketing, Kajabi focuses on the “all-in-one” aspect of the platform, while also promoting key features including the “customizable templates” (which can be used to build “personalized websites, theme-based landing pages, and emails”), their robust analytics feature, and marketing automation features (which can help you gain insight into your customer base and provide more personalized customer experiences).

Based on their public reviews across sites like Capterra and G2, Kajabi’s customers seem to love the “all-in-one” aspect of the product, as it allows them to consolidate their toolsets while saving them money and making their day-to-day processes more efficient. As one reviewer from Capterra put it: “Kajabi has everything you need all in one place. No more piecing together various platforms to build your business.”

And while Kajabai tends to be known as one of the more “pricey” online course platforms out there, one reviewer says, “When you consider that you can run online programs, host your website and blog, have emails, and more, it’s really pretty reasonable.”

Reviewers also like the fact that Kajabi provides a helpful onboarding experience to new users, with one Capterra reviewer saying, “I also thought the onboarding process was pretty strong in that they sent you email trainings which helped with the setup” and “They have the ‘onboarding a new customer’ process down. From the training to the welcome video from the founder, they do make you feel like you have made a good choice right from the start.”

Reviewers also highlighted the fact that Kajabi is constantly improving their product (multiple people said things like, “They are always innovating to improve things.”), which is important, as according to one of their customers, “[Kajabi] does everything. But it’s not the best at anything.”

Kajabi is rated 4.3/5 stars on Capterra and 4.4/5 stars on G2.

Who is Kajabi best for?

When you compare Kajabi to all of the other online course platforms out there, it’s one of the more expensive options and is generally viewed as a more “premium” solution. For this reason, it tends to attract more advanced creators who’ve struggled with the “duct tape solution” and are in need of an “all-in-one” course platform complete with an in-depth CRM, analytics, advanced marketing features, and more.

But a more robust solution like Kajabi also comes more complexity, a heftier price tag, and limitations on products, customers, and more; for these reasons, we believe Kajabi is most ideal for advanced creators who:

• Have a small number of products

• Are not constrained by budget or price

• Are more focused on automation and analytics

• Are more technically savvy and comfortable with a learning curve

• Have an established online business and want to scale their success

Kajabi’s key features

From their beautiful templates and student engagement tools to their pipelines and automations, there’s a lot to love about Kajabi. Below we highlight their core features so you can get a clear comparison between Kartra vs Kajabi.

Products

Kajabi supports nearly every type of digital product you can think of including online courses, digital downloads, membership sites, subscriptions, coaching, and more.

There’s just one catch: With every Kajabi plan comes strict limits on the number of products you can offer within each of Kajabi’s plans. For example, the Basic plan ($149/month) has a limit of 3 products while the Pro plan ($399/month) allows for up to 100 products.

Websites / landing pages

With Kajabi, you can build your whole website (including a blog, about page, homepage, more) and create as many beautiful landing pages as your heart desires (there are no limits on landing pages and a good number of templates to choose from).

Templates

Speaking of templates, Kajabi includes a nice library of them within their Page Builder, so you don’t have to build your pages from scratch. Simply select your page type (like lead capture, sales policy, etc.) then easily customize it to fit your branding or desired aesthetic.

Payment processing

Like most all-in-one online course platforms, Kajabi offers a secure payment gateway that integrates with Stripe and PayPal to capture customer payments quickly, safely, and efficiently. Kajabi also offers instant payouts and does not take any additional transaction fees.

Email marketing tools

Send one-time or automated email sequences with Kajabi’s built-in email marketing tools. The system also includes email templates and a visual editor for quick customization, plus audience segmentation tools and analytics so you can track growth and engagement.

Pipelines

Similar to Kartra, Kajabi offers pre-made “pipelines” (or funnels) you can customize and use to automatically capture email addresses, nurture leads, make sales, re-engage customers who abandon during the checkout process, and more (great for building sales funnels).

Analytics

Track your performance at every step of your marketing funnel with Kajabi’s built-in analytics and reporting tools. Within your dashboard, you’ll be able to easily track revenue, churn, pageviews, subscriber rate, and more.

Customer management (CRM)

With Kajabi’s built-in CRM, you can keep track of all your subscribers/customers/students, organize them into segments, review purchasing history, progress, send notifications, and more.

Webinars/Events

Host webinars, live trainings, virtual summits, pre-recorded events, and more with Kajabi Events (perfect for coaches or anyone who is selling 1-on-1 or group services).

Quizzes and surveys

Engage your students, track progress, test student knowledge, gain insight into leads, and more with Kajabi “Assessments” which are easy-to-use quizzes and surveys.

Live chat support

Have questions or need help? Kajabi is available to answer your questions and provide helpful guidance on live chat and email 5 days a week (Monday-Friday, 6AM-5PM PST) on their Basic plan and 24/7 on their Growth and Pro plans.

Kajabi University training

Whether you’re just getting started or want to learn something specific, Kajabi University has tons of free bootcamps, in-depth guides, training videos, webinars, and more to help their customers succeed.

Kajabi pricing: A quick breakdown

With plans starting at $69/month and going all the way up to nearly $400/month, Kajabi is certainly one of the more expensive online course platforms out there, but it’s still cheaper than ClickFunnels (more on that later).

Below is a breakdown of Kajabi’s pricing across their 4 core plans and a high-level overview of what’s included in each so you can get a sense of which plan might be the right choice for you:

• Kickstarter ($69 per month): 50 landing pages, 1 product, 1 funnel, 250 contacts, 50 customers

• Basic ($149 per month): Unlimited landing pages, 3 products, 3 funnels, 10,000 contacts, 1,000 customers

• Growth ($199 per month): Unlimited landing pages, 15 products, 15 funnels, 25,000 contacts, 10,000 customers

• Pro ($399 per month): Unlimited landing pages, 100 products, 100 funnels, 100,000 contacts, 20,000 customers

Kartra: A quick overview

Like Kajabi, Kartra also markets themselves as an “all-in-one platform” that has “everything you need, all in one place!”

But unlike Kajabi, Kartra has only been around for a few years (Kartra was founded in 2018 while Kajabi was founded in 2010); it’s unclear exactly how many customers Kartra serves, but their Facebook group has over 20,000 members in it, which may give you a sense of their size.

On their website, Kartra emphasizes their robust feature set and alleviating the “duct tape problem” that so many creators struggle with when it comes to running a cohesive online business. They also emphasize their support, intuitiveness, and the fact that the “all-in-one” nature of the platform can save you lots of time and money.

On public reviews on sites like G2 and Capterra, customers echo these statements, particularly around the “all-in-one” aspect, with 2021 reviews saying things like, “It has everything in one, email, funnels, memberships, and so much more,” “It’s a one stop shop for all marketing and CRM and lead generation needs,” and referring to Kartra as “a comprehensive, all-in-one-business solution.”

Customers also noted the money and time-saving benefits that come along with an “all-in-one” solution like Kartra, saying things like, “I was able to deactivate other CRMs and apps that we were using. In fact, at the end of the day, I was able to save money,” and “I do not need any other software to host or market my online courses. Everything ties together. So much time and money saved!”

Outside of the “all-in-one” and time/money-saving benefits, some reviewers also highlighted Kartra’s ease-of-use saying things like, “Everything is easy to learn and straightforward to use” and “I love how easy it is to set up sales pages and start selling straight away. Before Kartra I would battle with my WordPress pages and setting up forms, but with Kartra I started to sell products and services almost instantly.”

Some reviewers were also impressed with the tagging/automations functionalities, saying things like, “The way the leads are classified and able to be tagged are definitely awesome!” and “It also manages my database with ease, and I can send follow up email sequences with ease. It’s made my marketing so easy and follow up sales are set on autopilot.”

While there was a lot of positive comments about the software, there were also a lot of negative comments about the lack of customer support and complexity of the platform with reviewers saying things like, “Extremely slow UI and terrible customer support,” “Support is just awful!” and “The customer support function has recently deteriorated very significantly.”

We’ll get into this more later in the article, but we thought it might be worth mentioning as Kartra’s overall ratings (see below) seemed to be brought down by these recurring negative comments and may be important to consider if reliable customer support is important to you.

Kartra is rated 3.9/5 stars on G2, 4.5/5 stars on Capterra, and 2.9/5 stars on Trustpilot.

Who is Kartra best for?

As an “all-in-one” solution with a robust feature set including advanced automations, funnels, tagging, and more, we believe Kartra may be best for more advanced business owners who have a solid grasp of the aforementioned and are looking for ways to consolidate their toolsets and make their processes more efficient (and to save time/money in the process).

However, with the robustness of the platform comes more complexity and a steep learning curve (we’ll get more into this later in the article), so be sure to take that into consideration when making your decision.

To recap, we believe Kartra is best for:

• Those looking to consolidate their toolsets

• Businesses that sell a variety of products: services and digital/physical products

• Beginners who can invest time and resources into learning a more complex system

• More advanced business owners who can handle a steeper learning curve

• More established businesses that have a need for advanced automations, funnels, etc.

• Business that would like to save money by consolidating tools (however, not everyone will save money by using Kartra, but it may be possible depending on your current toolset, business, etc.)

Kartra key features

With the high-level intro’s out of the way, let’s get into the meat of the Kartra platform. What’s under the hood? What makes it special and unique? Below we dive into their core features, starting with Checkouts.

Kartra Checkouts

In addition to being fast, easy, and secure, Kartra’s Checkout feature is highly customizable, allowing you to sell any type of product, accept a variety of payment methods, offer multiple payment options (i.e. – one-time, recurring, free trials, etc.), custom checkout fields, and more.

The Checkout feature also has free templates, the ability to serve up different offers based on on-site or purchasing behavior, cart abandonment tagging (for easy follow-ups), the ability to add upsells, downsells, cross-sells, add-ons, special promotions, and more.

Kartra Pages

Like Kajabi, Kartra also offers a drag and drop page builder/editor that comes with 500+ professionally designed, mobile-optimized page templates, as well as pop-up templates for capturing leads, promoting special offers, and more.

Along with being able to build beautiful landing pages, you can also build a full site through Karta (though it doesn’t offer robust blogging capabilities), conduct split tests, customize each page by device types, and track performance across all pages.

Kartra Leads

Kartra Leads is essentially their version of a CRM, which allows you to see detailed information on each of your contacts. You can organize, tag, and even score each contact based on their on-site or purchasing behavior and track their journeys with robust historical data (this gives you more visibility into the journeys of your customers, allowing you to more easily identify patterns, detect issues, adjust your approach based on data, and more).

Kartra Funnels & Campaigns

Build multi-page flows that span the whole customer journey, including capturing leads and converting them into customers, repeat business, brand advocacy, and more.

Funnels & Campaigns also sync with your CRM tagging system and email marketing tools (and have robust “if this” “then that” style automations), making it easy to build complex sequences designed to make you more sales. This feature also includes pre-made marketing campaigns you can use as is or customize according to your goals and needs.

Kartra Mail

Send one-off or automated email/SMS campaigns or build more complex, automated email sequences. It also includes built-in segmentation that syncs with their Funnels & Campaigns feature (for building more advanced automations funnels), split testing (for testing content and subject lines), and email analytics for tracking KPI’s including open rates, clicks, revenue, and more.

Kartra Memberships

Organize and share your content with your members using Kartra’s drag and drop membership portal builder. The builder includes membership site templates that, once set up, you can use to deliver your content, training material, courses, and more (you can also offer different membership tiers for different customer types). This feature includes progress tracking (for you and members), engagement tools, analytics, and a robust CRM for managing members.

Kartra Surveys & Quizzes

Learn more about your leads/customers/subscribers by sending a survey or test your students’ knowledge with a custom quiz. This feature includes a variety of question types and templates you can use to quickly and easily gather insight into your audience.

Kartra Videos

Unlike a traditional video player, Kartra’s video player allows you to add calls-to-action, pop-ups with special offers, and checkout buttons directly into the video experience. It also allows you to assign tags based on consumption so you can send more targeted messages, follow-ups, rewards for completion, and more.

Kartra Help Desks

Instead of paying for customer service software, Kartra includes a fully integrated Help desk portal with support ticketing and live chat so you can communicate directly with customers whenever there’s an issue that needs your attention.

Kartra Calendars

If you offer coaching services like one-on-one or group training sessions, Kartra’s Calendar feature is perfect for you, as it will allow leads/customers to book scheduled sessions with you when it’s convenient for them.

Kartra Forms

Kartra’s Forms include a variety of form templates for capturing leads and collecting specific information with custom fields. You can also tag leads and add automation rules for specific types of leads, ensuring each lead has a more personalized journey/experience.

Kartra Affiliates

Get your products in front of more people with Kartra’s Affiliate feature, which allows you to recruit, manage, and track your affiliates, all from one convenient dashboard. Use the affiliate management tools to offer flexible commission structures and tiers, use payment milestones, send instant commissions, and more. You can also vet your affiliates by sending out a questionnaire to interested parties and approving them manually.

Integrations & API

While Kartra markets themselves as an “all-in-one” solution, they also offer a variety of native and custom integrations with major payment gateways, email service providers, membership platforms, calendar apps, and more. You can also use their API to build custom integrations for whatever tools or systems you may need.

Kartra Analytics

Track your performance from one convenient dashboard with Kartra’s Analytics feature, which tracks everything from traffic and conversions to subscriptions, email performance, Help desk analytics, and more.

Kartra Agency

If you’re an agency or business that runs multiple Kartra accounts for clients, Kartra Agency consolidates all of your accounts into one “master” account, so there’s no need for multiple logins or confusion. From this one account, you can handle all billing, reports, analytics, credentials, and more, making it a simpler and more streamlined solution.

Kartra Marketplace

Whether you want to hire an expert to help you learn and/or manage your Kartra account or sell your services (like consulting, marketing, design services, and more), you can do it all from the Kartra Marketplace.

Kartra pricing: A quick breakdown

It doesn’t take much to see that both Kartra and Kajabi are more “pricey” and that alone could be a reason to pass for certain businesses, but if you’re able to pay at least $119/mo, either platform could be a good fit.

But rather than comparing on price alone, it may be more important to look at the limitations within each plan and to assess them within the context of what’s important to you and what you need for your business to succeed.

For example, if you’re just starting out and you are more budget conscious, Kartra’s starter pricing plan at $119/mo may be an attractive option for you, especially in the beginning when you’re trying to grow. However, you may feel limited by the bandwidth and video limitations (among other things), which could ultimately lead to you paying $229/mo in order to lift those restrictions.

Of course, Kajabi’s base plan at $149/mo also has restrictions around products, pipelines, contacts, and members, BUT, it doesn’t have restrictions around bandwidth, the number of emails you can send, or video, which depending on what you’re selling (i.e. – video-heavy online courses or training programs or email training courses), could be incredibly important to you.

Kartra vs Kajabi pros and cons

Now that you know the basic elements of Kartra vs Kajabi, let’s breakdown the pros and cons of each

By now, you should have a high-level sense of each platform, including their positioning, who they serve, what their customers say about them, and the core features they offer. Now let’s dive into the specific pros and cons of each platform so you can see which may be a better fit for you.

Kajabi Pros

You know what features Kajabi offers, but what are some of the reasons you may want to choose them over Kartra or another platform? Below we dive into Kajabi’s pros.

Designed specifically for those selling online courses and other digital products

Unlike Kartra which is designed for all types of businesses, Kajabi was designed specifically for those who sell specific types of products, including online courses, digital downloads, webinars, memberships, and more.

This means Kajabi is an ideal choice for digital product creators, as the product and features will be tailored specifically to the needs of your business. While Kartra can still be a good choice for creators, it’s not going to have the same features and functionality around certain things like building your online course, engaging with your students, conducting webinars, and more.

Similar CRM and tagging/segmentation/automation capabilities as Kartra

Like Kartra, Kajabi also has a robust CRM with detailed information on each user (including contact info, purchasing history, date of last activity, and so much more) as well as advanced segmentation and tagging capabilities that allow you to set up complex automations. Kartra’s version may be just slightly more advanced, but it’s a close call.

Native webinar feature

Speaking of conducting webinars, Kajabi has a built-in webinar feature which is perfect for creators who are using (or want to use) webinars as a marketing or educational tool. And because it’s built directly into the product, using it will feel seamless and integrated.

Kartra, on the other hand, does not have a webinar feature (that being said, they do have a built-in calendar feature which could be great for individual or group coaching sessions, but it’s not quite the same as a true webinar feature).

Unlimited landing/sales pages on every plan

While Kajabi does have strict limits on products, pipelines, contacts, members, websites, and admin users, it does allow you to create unlimited landing/sales pages, which is great if you’d like to create a full website with a variety of landing pages, a complex funnel with multiple sales pages, and more.

In comparison, you can only host up to 100 pages on Kartra’s Starter plan ($119/mo), though you can get unlimited pages if you upgrade to their $229/mo plan or above.

Unlimited emails on every plan

With Kajabi, you can send unlimited emails to your subscribers no matter which plan you’re on, which is a big pro if email marketing is a core component of your business (and let’s be honest, what successful business doesn’t use email marketing?).

In contrast, you can only have up to 2,500 leads and send up to 15,000 emails/month on Kartra’s Starter plan, which again, is not ideal if you have a bigger email list and want the freedom to contact those subscribers as often as you like.

Community tools to engage with students

As a true platform for digital content creators, Kajabi comes complete with community engagement tools including assessments, course comments, progress tracking, and community management tools that you simply won’t find on Kartra.

True “quiz” feature for assessing student knowledge

While Kartra does offer a “Surveys & Quizzes” feature, it’s really more of a survey tool you can use to conduct quizzes. In contrast, Kajabi offers “Assessments” with separate surveys and quizzes you can use to either gather insights or assess (and grade) your students’ knowledge.

More premium look-and-feel (more user-friendly, less clunky)

Kajabi is known for being a modern and premium solution in the industry not only on the outside, but on the inside, as well; this translates into a more intuitive and user-friendly interface and experience for customers and students.

For some, this may also be true of Kartra, but we also saw a few online reviews saying the opposite, particularly in reference to the page designer (more on that in the “Kartra Cons” section below).

Helpful, reliable support (5+ days/week) + access to Kajabi University

Kajabi is known for having great customer support, which is available 5 days a week on both email and live chat for their Basic plan and 7 days a week on their Growth and Pro plans. Kajabi also offers customers access to their library of free resources and trainings, which are no doubt helpful, as the platform has also been known for complexity and a bigger learning curve.

While Kartra advertises great customer support, public reviews tell a totally different story with more negative reviews about their customer service than positive (more on that in the “Kartra Cons” section below).

Has a free mobile app

With Kajabi’s free mobile app, you can easily manage your content, students, notifications, and more all from your phone. And students can quickly and easily get updates, consume content, engage with you or other community members, make purchases, and more. In contrast, Kartra does not offer a free mobile app.

True FREE trial (no money down)

Unlike Kartra which charges $1 for their trial, Kajabi offers a true 14-day free trial, which gives potential customers a full two weeks to try the product totally risk free (however, Kajabi does require a credit card to sign up).

Kajabi Cons

Now that you know what’s good about Kajabi, let’s cover some of the potential downsides so you can get a clear and accurate understanding of the platform.

Very expensive

With plans starting at $149/mo and going all the way up to $399/mo, Kajabi is definitely one of the more pricey options out there; for some creators that price point will be attainable, but for others it will be totally out of reach, regardless of how many flashy features or awesome benefits are included.

That’s not to say that Kartra is “cheap” or even more affordable (in fact, the pricing options across both platforms aren’t all that dissimilar), but Kartra has a $119/mo plan which could be more attainable and affordable for certain creators (again, there are a lot of limitations with that plan, so be sure to take that into consideration).

Limits on nearly everything across all plans

While you can send an unlimited number of marketing emails and create an unlimited number of landing pages, every Kajabi plan has strict limitations on products, pipelines, contacts, members, websites, and admin users.

If you’re just starting out, this may not seem like a huge deal, but as your business grows, so will your product offerings, customers, pipelines, and more, which means you’ll have to keep upgrading (and paying more) just to lift restrictions and get access to basic things your business needs.

Fewer templates

While Kajabi certainly has a nice library of beautifully designed page and email templates, it’s not as robust as the hundreds of templates you’ll find within Kartra (or within their marketplace if you want even more). And there are templates for pretty much everything: landing pages, membership sites, checkout forms, pop-ups, emails, and more.

No native calendar integration

Unlike Kartra which has a calendar feature built directly into the product (for coaching or training sessions), Kajabi does not offer a direct calendar integration. That being said, Kajabi does have their “Events” feature, which would allow you to create an event (like a webinar or training session), allow people to register for it, have it launch at a specific time, etc.

Does not natively/automatically handle VAT

While Kartra automatically calculates and adds the sales tax or VAT to your checkout process, Kajabi does not add sales tax natively into your pricing, which means you’d have to either do it manually or use a separate tool to help you do that. For some, this may not be a big deal, but if you’re based in the EU, this could be a dealbreaker.

No native A/B split testing

While Kartra has split testing built directly into the product (allowing you to test different versions of your pages and emails), Kajabi does not (though you can still run split tests by creating two versions of the page and then sending them out via email or linking to different social media campaigns, then comparing stats after a period of time).

May be difficult to learn and use for some creators

With any software, there’s always going to be a learning curve, but Kajabi is known to be a bit more complex and can be difficult to learn for certain creators (this is especially true with an “all-in-one” solution that has a large feature set and robust functionality).

Of course, according to public reviews, Kartra seems even more complex and difficult to learn (more on that in the “Cons” section for Kartra), so the learning curve could be an issue with either platform. The one upside to Kajabi is they offer great customer support via email and live chat and also have a robust library of training resources.

Kartra Pros

Now that we’ve covered Kajabi’s pros and cons, let’s do the same for Kartra so you can more easily compare and contrast the two options.

Sell unlimited products

No matter which Kartra plan you choose, you can sell an unlimited number of products — this is not true of Kajabi. Kajabi has strict product limitations across all three of their plans, which could be an issue depending on the number of products you are selling (or plan to sell).

Sell any type of product: services, digital, or physical

With Kartra you can sell any kind of product you like, including digital products (like online courses, digital downloads, memberships, and more), physical products (including items that have multiple SKU’s), and services (like training or coaching sessions). This is not true of Kajabi, which really only supports digital products and services.

Slightly more advanced email automation system

While both Kartra and Kajabi offer advanced email marketing tools, Kartra’s toolset is slightly more advanced with a visual builder for their email automations, as well as built-in split testing which would allow you to test different variations of your subject lines and email content (compare to Kajabi which has more of a “linear” email builder and no built-in split testing).

Native calendar feature

If you sell consultations or training sessions, you’ll love Kartra’s built-in calendar feature which will allow leads and customers to book time with you (and pay you for it!). In contrast, Kajabi does not offer a built-in calendar feature, but they do have an “Events” feature which would allow you to do something similar (like host a webinar or training session that requires registration and payment, etc.), but it’s not an exact one-to-one comparison.

Native Help desk system for live chat/tickets

Another cool feature Kartra has is their native Help desk feature which includes live chat and a ticketing system for you to communicate with your customers when they have questions or issues (this is particularly helpful for anyone who may be paying for customer support software and wants to consolidate their toolset).

Kajabi, on the other hand, does not offer a Help desk feature complete with live chat or a ticketing system (if you want that, you’d need to pay for separate software which could be expensive).

Built-in Behavioral Adaptive Marketing capabilities

With Kartra, you can market and sell products to specific groups or individuals based on specific criteria, including past purchasing behavior, on-site behavior, or by other ways that you’ve tagged your contacts within the Kartra CRM system. This allows you to market and sell more relevant products to your audience and hopefully, make more sales (while Kajabi has similar functionalities, the feature is not exactly the same).

Affiliate program available on all plans

Unlike Kajabi which only offers their affiliate program on their Growth plan ($199/mo) and above, Kartra offers their built-in affiliate program across all plans, regardless of price. This can be helpful if affiliates are central to your business or if you want to start an affiliate program without upgrading beyond the $119/mo plan.

Automatically handles VAT

If you live in the EU, you’ll be happy to know that Kartra automatically calculates and adds the sales tax or VAT to your checkout process, so you don’t have to use a workaround or pay for a separate tool. In contrast, Kajabi does not natively add sales tax to your offers, making it a bit more work for you (and potentially more expensive if you have to spend more time and money on a tool to help you do it).

Built-in A/B split testing for pages and emails

If you’re all about optimizing your marketing/sales experiences (like testing different landing pages, different page elements, subject lines, and email content), Kartra may be ideal for you as they offer built-in AB split testing for your landing pages and emails.

Kajabi, on the other hand, does not offer built-in AB split testing, though (as mentioned above) you can still run split tests by creating two versions of the page and then sending them out via email or linking to different social media campaigns, then comparing stats after a period of time.

Kartra Cons

Now that you know more about what makes Kartra special and unique, let’s cover some of the potential downsides so you can compare them to Kajabi or any other options you may be considering.

Significant limitations on Starter plan, particularly around bandwidth

Even though Kajabi also has limitations on each of their plans, so does Kartra, particularly on their Starter plan.

At just $119/mo, the Starter plan may seem attractive at first, but when you look at the limitations within the plan — including limits on leads, custom domain, number of emails per month, bandwidth, videos, pages, products, memberships, admin seats, and more — that $119/mo doesn’t actually get you all that much.

These kinds of limitations would be especially detrimental for any business with an email list of more than 2,500 or those who rely heavily on video within their marketing or products.

Not focused on online course creators specifically

While you can use Kartra to sell any kind of product, the product itself is not built specifically for digital products or digital content creators. This means that you won’t get the same features and functionalities that come standard in a platform like Kajabi that’s built specifically for those who sell digital products. For example, Kartra doesn’t support webinars, it doesn’t have an online course builder or robust student engagement tools. Again, this may not be an issue if you’re not selling courses, webinars, etc., but if you are, this may be an important factor to consider.

No built-in blogging platform

With Kartra, you can build a full website for your business, but there is no blogging feature (complete with SEO functionality) which means you’d need to either forgo a blog from your site (which could hurt your organic discoverability, ability to build trust and showcase authority, etc.) or you would need to use a separate tool, which could be more headache, cost, etc.

Becomes very expensive as your customer base grows

As noted above, the $119/mo Starter plan may seem attractive at first, but as your business grows, you’ll need to keep upgrading (and paying more) in order to lift basic restrictions around the number of leads you can have (and as Kartra notes on their website, leads are the “bloodstream of your business”). For example, once you go beyond 2,500 leads, your monthly premium almost doubles to $229/mo and once you surpass 12,500 leads, your monthly premium goes up to $339 (and so on and so forth).

No native webinar functionality

While Kajabi has a built-in webinar feature that’s included with all plans, Kartra does not. It’s true that you could use Kartra’s calendar feature to book training sessions, but you won’t be able to use that to run true “events” like conferences, summits, live or pre-recorded events, and more.

May be more clunky/less intuitive/less user-friendly

While some Kartra users find the platform simple and easy to learn/use, many public reviews say the opposite, complaining that the software can be buggy, clunky, and not as user-friendly or intuitive as other options out there. Here’s a quick snapshot of what people are saying (reviewers seemed to focus a lot on the page builder and the email system):

• “Building landing pages is sometimes tedious and loading times in the backend are relatively slow.” -Capterra 2021

• The builders within the software are not the greatest. I feel that they are slow and clunky.” – Capterra 2020

• “The Page builder at times is a little clunky.” – Capterra 2020

• “Their page designer is also a bit on the clunky side without a lot of flexibility, and that’s one place where they lost me. I don’t like being held to rigid flows, templates and outlines.” – G2 2019

• “Not intuitive for email … Trying to send emails, find customer lists, etc. is not intuitive.” -G2 2021

• “[The email] doesn’t flow as well as other platforms. When editing emails, it’s a little bit more cumbersome because it has a pop-up that you put your info in if you [are] copy and pasting, which I can’t stand.” – G2 2021

• “Their email editor needs some help.” – Capterra 2021

• “It desperately needs a way to search and find the emails that you have written in the autoresponder sequence. It’s utterly painful trying to find certain emails in the sequence to edit them and specific landing pages.” – Capterra 2020

Poor customer service (according to numerous public reviews)

While Kartra advertises great customer support on their website, public reviews tell a very different story with complaints ranging from unhelpful to totally unresponsive support. Here’s a quick snapshot of just some of the customer support-related reviews we saw on G2, Capterra, and other reputable review sites:

• “Support was useless.” – G2 2021

• “Buggy and poor support … extremely restrictive and poor customer service and support. Probably the worst decision we made was using Kartra for our membership … Extremely buggy, constant issues, slow loading pages.” – Capterra 2021

• “I’ve been trying for over a month and a half to get refunded with ZERO response. But plenty of marketing to get [you] to renew. NO phone support is a disaster. The product is only as good as the company. And the company, unfortunately, is a disaster.” – Capterra 2021

• “No problem with the software – but a very big problem with the customer support function which has recently deteriorated very significantly.” – Capterra 2020

• “Extremely slow UI and terrible customer support … Customer support was absolutely awful and incompetent, when I tried to get help from the Facebook community, they deleted my post and directed me to customer support who was useless. Found out later they know it’s an issue and were hiding it. Knowing what we know now, we would not have signed up for Kartra.” – G2 2020

• “THEIR CUSTOMER SUPPORT IS THE WORST. You have to wait up to 6 days for an answer from their unqualified team. All they do is send you links to their FAQ or Blog and don’t look at your issues.” – G2 2019

Very complex with a sharp learning curve (according to public reviews)

Like the reviews we saw regarding customer support, we saw similar reviews regarding the complexity of the product and time-consuming learning curve associated with getting set up and understanding how the system works. Here’s a quick snapshot of what reviewers are saying:

• “There’s a bit of a learning curve at the beginning.“ – Capterra 2021

• “Kartra is like a magic lamp. You cannot just pay for it, rub it for a while and expect that it will make you a fortune. You have to invest in yourself or hire someone to do it for you. I recommend you try and see for yourself what you think and how it could work for you and your business. I wish you the best of luck.” – Capterra 2021

• “Very hard to use and manage for my business to expand … Everything was hard to understand, it was time consuming, and they kept asking me to purchase additional stuff I couldn’t afford.” – Capterra 2021

• “It is certainly a learning curve. I eventually had to hire one of their experts in order to implement my course on the platform.” – Capterra 2021

• “At [the] initial stage it is quite complicated to learn the features.” – Capterra 2021

• “Very nice, but not as easy as portrayed.” – Capterra 2020

• “[There’s] A fairly steep learning curve to be effective in using everything Kartra has to offer.” – Capterra 2020

• “Kartra is not there yet. Many features, little mastery … I understand that Kartra is a very complex system, but it is far from ideal, and the requested upgrades are painfully slow. I’ve been using Kartra for 10 months now and I have two memberships built, numerous pages, and over 10 classes on two calendars. It’s been a frustrating system and difficult company to work with.” – G2 2020

• “The learning curve is not a curve, it’s more like a 90-degree wall. In spite of the videos and online Wiki, this is a very complicated system to configure. All of the power and flexibility (and there is a whole lot of both) has translated into a system that is not intuitive in the least.” – G2 2019

No true free trial (costs $1)

While Kajabi offers a true 14-day free trial (though there is a credit card required), Kartra charges potential customers $1 to test drive their product. This isn’t terrible, just something to keep in mind when comparing the two trial options.

A third online course platform for comparison: Podia

As mentioned upfront, the purpose of this article is to provide an honest and straightforward review of our top competitors, as well as our own platform (yes, even the downsides) to help you make an informed and confident decision.

Obviously we have more insight into our own product than we do for Kajabi or Kartra, but we’ll do our best to put our biases aside and just focus on the facts, as well as what our customers are saying on review sites and in independent reviews.

Podia: A quick overview

Like Kajabi, Podia is also an “all-in-one” online course platform that gives creators everything they need to sell courses, memberships, webinars, digital downloads, and coaching services.

Podia was founded in 2014 (about four years after Kajabi and about four years before Kartra) and the platform serves “50,000+ creators,” which is similar to Kajabi in terms of size (Kartra does not publicly list how many customers they have).

Similar to Kajabi and Kartra, Podia also emphasizes the “all-in-one” aspect of the platform while highlighting the fact that you can sell any kind of digital product on the platform (compare to Kartra which is not a true “all-in-one” online course platform and does not provide all of the same features and support needed for digital product creators).

Beyond digital products, the Podia site also focuses on the marketing tools included within the platform, including the site builder (which allows you to build beautiful, modern, mobile-friendly websites or landing pages), the email marketing tools (which allow you to send one-off emails or automated sequences), the live chat widget (a feature that’s totally unique to Podia), and the built-in affiliate marketing feature, among other things.

In public reviews, Podia customers often emphasize the simple, intuitive design with reviewers saying things like, “It delivers high value with its simple and intuitive interface” and “I absolutely love Podia’s user interface – it is extremely intuitive and easy to navigate as the creator.”

Reviewers also love the lack of limits on products, customers, and pages, saying things like, “I looove the fact that you get unlimited everything, so no more tiers to squeeze through” and “I like the fact that Podia gives its users unlimited hosting of video content through one of the premium video platforms. This means that you can upload all kinds of videos, as well as PDF and other types of learning materials, without having to worry about potentially ‘running out of storage.’”

In comparison, both Kajabi and Kartra have strict limits on things like products, customers, bandwidth, videos, and more. Reviewers also seem to like the accessible price tag (Podia is almost always rated 5/5 stars in the “value for money” category on Capterra) with reviewers saying things like, “The price [is] super affordable and simple. No complications like others.”

Finally, Podia customers seem to love Podia’s premium customer service, saying things like, “Best support I’ve ever come across in an online platform. I don’t feel like a number or a statistic – but a real person,” “Support is super helpful and responsive. 10 out of 10 in helpfulness,” and “The Podia support is particularly amazing. I’ve gotten personal help from the CMO, among others. Can’t speak highly enough of these folks.”

The free migration service is also a helpful bonus for those switching from other platforms and is mentioned throughout some of our public reviews (“The team were able to migrate me in less than 24 hours and the support is so personal and caring” and “The team made it easy for me to migrate over.”).

While very close, it’s also worth noting that Podia is rated 4.6/5 stars on Capterra, while Kajabi is rated 4.3/5 stars and Kartra is rated 4.5/5 stars (on Capterra).

Who is Podia best for?

After serving creators for close to a decade, we believe Podia is ideal for creators who are looking for a simple, intuitive, and affordable all-in-one platform that supports all types of digital products, including online courses, digital downloads, coaching services, webinars, and more.

It’s also ideal for creators who want the flexibility to grow their businesses without limitations and to get the helpful support they need when they need it. To recap, we believe Podia is best for creators who:

• Want a simple, intuitive, and affordable all-in-one course platform

• Sell (or plan to sell) online courses, webinars, coaching, and/or digital downloads

• Want to offer live chat on their own website and sales pages

• Want fast, helpful, and friendly customer support

• Don’t want to deal with product limits

Podia’s key features

While we encourage you to check out Podia for more information, below is a high-level recap of our core features and what’s great about each one.

Online courses

Building online courses is fast, easy, and even fun with Podia’s simple and intuitive course builder. Build beautiful and professional-looking courses, drip courses, bundled courses, email courses, and more. If you have an idea you want to test out, you can also pre-sell courses, allowing you to validate ideas and earn sales before doing any work.

Digital downloads

No matter what you’re selling — eBooks, PDF’s, templates, videos, audio files — you can host, market, and sell it on Podia (and you can be sure your products will be delivered to your students automatically and seamlessly). Sell digital downloads on their own, use them as lead magnets to capture emails, or bundle them together with other products to increase AOV. The sky’s the limit!

Webinars with live or pre-recorded videos

Hosting a virtual conference? A group training webinar? A one-on-one session? With Podia’s Webinar feature, you can host live or pre-recorded events with unlimited participants by connecting your YouTube Live or Zoom accounts, and your audience will be able to register – and pay – for access through your Podia site.

Affiliate programs for your customers

Turn your fans into your own little sales army by launching your own fully integrated affiliate program. Set custom commission terms, invite affiliates, and reward them for helping you grow your business.

Podia’s built-in affiliate program also includes affiliate management tools including the dashboard (where you can track sales), levels of availability (i.e. – invite-only, closed, open), custom links for your affiliates, and more. Affiliate resources are available on the Shaker plan.

Beautiful, easy-to-build custom websites/landing pages (no technical or design skills needed!)

With Podia’s intuitive site editor, you can quickly build a beautiful, professional-looking custom website for your online business, complete with custom landing/sales pages. No coding or design skills needed — just open up the editor and start customizing!

Built-in email marketing tools

Engage your subscribers with one-off emails or automated, complex sequences with Podia’s suite of built-in email marketing tools. Email capture, segmentation capabilities, and email analytics are included (and get this — Podia is one of the only online course platforms that gives you complete revenue metrics for every email you send so you can literally see which emails are paying off!).

On-page live chat messaging to interact with visitors and customers (Podia only!)

Live chat is one of the fastest and easiest ways to communicate with leads and customers and it’s now available to you through Podia. Simply enable the “live chat” widget on your website and sales pages and you can start engaging leads, answering questions, overcoming objections, and assisting current customers. This functionality is unique to Podia and is not available through Kajabi or Kartra.

Automatic VAT calculation for EU customers

No more worrying about tax! If you’re in the EU, Podia will calculate the amount of VAT due from each customer, add the VAT to the customer’s bill, collect that money to your Stripe or PayPal account, and store all the tax data you need to make an accurate VAT return.

Payment plan options

Sometimes customers prefer to pay in installments (vs one lump sum); with Podia, you can offer payment plan options, giving your customers more financial freedom and flexibility (and more ways to pay means more ways to earn!).

Coupons

Running a special discount or promotion? Create custom coupons for individual customers, a one-time purchase, or a limited-time sale, and more to entice customers and earn more money.

Pre-sell courses

If you have an idea for a course or product, but you want to validate it first, you can use Podia to promote it, capture email addresses, and even collect payments before putting in any work.

Bundles

Have a bunch of similar products you’d like to sell together? Use Podia’s Bundle feature to sell complementary or related products together at a discounted rate as a way to increase sales and average order value.

Upsells

Have a product that would be the perfect add-on to another related product? Offer it as an upsell at checkout to help increase sales and average order value.

Quizzes

Be sure your material is understood by your students with graded quizzes featuring fill-in-the-blank questions, true/false, multiple choice, and more.

Drip content

Want your content to be delivered within a specific timeframe? Podia’s drip content feature will automatically deliver specific content at specific times throughout the customer journey.

Student comments

Spark conversation, answer questions, or get feedback by allowing customers to comment directly within your course content.

Course completion certificates

When students complete your courses, give them a virtual “high five” with a course completion certificate that can be customized with your course information and student information.

Podia pricing: A quick breakdown

With plans starting at just $39/month or $33/month when you pay annually (and going up to just $89/month), Podia is considered much more affordable to creators at every level. This is why Podia tends to receive 5/5 stars in terms of value on review sites like Capterra. On price alone, Podia is clearly the least expensive option across the board (in fact, you could pay up to 3x more by going with Kartra or Kajabi.)

Now that you know a bit more about Podia, let’s dive further into the pros/cons, so you can compare them to the pros/cons of Kartra vs Kajabi

We’ve covered the pros and cons of Kajabi and Kartra, but what about Podia? What’s good about Podia? And what’s not so good? Let’s take a closer look together so you can make the right decision for you and your business.

Podia Pros

What’s so great about Podia? What makes it unique or different from Kajabi or Kartra? Let’s find out! Below we dive into the pros of Podia.

Focused on creators who are selling courses, webinars, & more

Like Kajabi, Podia is also designed specifically for those who sell digital products including online courses, webinars, digital downloads, etc. Within Podia, you’ll find plenty of features and functionalities that you need to build, market, and sell your products, including product builders, student engagement tools, sales pages, email marketing, affiliates, and so much more.

Simple, intuitive, and easy to learn/use (for you and your customers)

There’s a reason Podia is rated 4.6/5 stars for intuitiveness (compare to Kajabi which is rated 4.1/5 stars and Kartra which is rated 4.0/5 for intuitiveness on Capterra) — it’s simple, user-friendly, and easy to learn, not only for you, but for your customers, as well.

The secret is in the sleek and modern interface, simplified navigation, clear dashboards, helpful in-app copy, and more. Podia also has helpful and responsive chat and email support 7 days a week for all users, which makes it easy for customers to get answers to any questions they may have along the way.

Sleek and modern with a premium look-and-feel

Not only does Podia look good on the inside, it also looks sleek and modern on the outside, with beautiful landing pages, polished emails, cutting-edge checkouts, smooth lead capture, and more. When you use Podia, you’re guaranteed a clean and professional-looking business.

Affordable monthly plans (great value)

While Podia doesn’t have 100% of the same features as Kajabi and Kartra (more on that in the sections below), it does have a ton of overlap, which means in some cases, you can get over 90% of the same features for a fraction of the cost.

Create as much as you want

While Kajabi and Kartra place strict limitations on all of their plans, Podia does the opposite with unlimited products, courses, webpages, customers, and hosting on all Mover and Shaker plans.

Native course completion certificates

If you’re selling online courses, you may want to reward your customers with a course completion certificate, which can be done simply and seamlessly through Podia. In contrast, Kajabi and Kartra do not offer native course completion certificates (you’d have to use a third-party tool like Canva to create them then set up automated emails to deliver them upon course completion).

Free migrations

One thing that’s unique about Podia is the free migration service that’s included with all annual Mover and Shaker plans, which means if you’re switching from another platform (like Kajabi, Kartra, or somewhere else), the Podia team can migrate to Podia for free!

Kajabi and Kartra do not offer a migration service of any kind, which means if you’re moving from another platform, you’ll have to do all of that work yourself (which could cost you a lot of time and headache).

Podia Cons

Now that you know what’s to love about Podia, let’s cover some of the potential pitfalls so you can easily compare the three options and make a more informed and confident decision.

Affiliate program only available on Shaker plan

Unlike Kartra which includes their affiliate feature on their Starter plan ($119/mo), Podia only includes the affiliate feature on their Shaker plan ($89/mo); the same is true for Kajabi, which only includes their affiliate feature on their Growth plan ($199/mo) and above. That being said, Podia’s Shaker plan is $30 less than Kartra’s Starter plan, so you could pay less to get access to a built-in affiliate program, plus you’ll get access to a bunch of other features included in Podia’s Shaker plan.

Less advanced CRM

All of your customers, leads, and subscribers within your Podia account will have information attached to them — their names, contact info, when they signed up, purchasing history, and more. However, the CRM features are not as robust as what you’ll find within Kartra or Kajabi, which will provide you with more detailed information, as well as the ability to tag, segment, score, and even send them into specific funnels or automations (Podia has some segmentation and automation capabilities, but they are not as advanced as Kartra or Kajabi).

No built-in Behavioral Adaptive Marketing

With Kartra, you can market and sell products to specific groups or individuals based on things like their past purchasing behavior, on-site behavior, or by other ways that you’ve tagged them within the Kartra system. Podia does not currently offer a feature like this, but if it’s helpful to know, Podia is always evolving to include additional features, including more advanced marketing tools.

No way to natively add offers or CTAs to videos

Unlike Kartra which gives you the ability to add CTAs and special offers within the Kartra video player, Podia does not yet offer this type of functionality. That being said, Kartra does have very strict limitations around bandwidth and video on their Starter ($119/mo) plan, which you may want to take into consideration if you’re signing up for this specific feature or if video is a core component of your content or marketing.

No built-in AB split testing

While Kartra offers built-in AB split testing (so you can test different landing page variations, test out different page elements, subject lines, or email content), neither Podia nor Kajabi offer a way to do this natively.

No native calendar integration

While Podia does not offer a native calendar feature (like Kartra does), Podia does have a built-in webinar feature (which you can use for summits, conferences, trainings, marketing, etc.) and also offers integrations with calendar tools like Calendly, Acuity, YouCanBook.Me, and SavvyCal (Kajabi also has an “Events” feature which will allow you to host webinars as well and also offers calendar integrations).

How does Podia compare to Kartra vs Kajabi?

Now that we’ve covered the pros and cons of Kajabi, Kartra, and Podia, let’s compare them to each other so you can get a clear sense of which platform is the right choice for you.

Kajabi vs Podia

How does Podia compare to Kajabi and vice versa? Below we cover the main pros and cons of each platform.

Podia is simpler and easier to learn/use

Simplicity, intuitiveness, and ease of use can be a difficult metric to assess, but when looking at Capterra reviews, Podia is rated 4.8/5 stars for intuitiveness while Kajabi is rated 4.3. While that’s not a huge difference, Podia is clearly in the lead, likely due to our simple interface, easy-to-navigate product, clear dashboards, helpful in-app copy, and more.

In public reviews, Kajabi is often applauded for being easy to use, with reviewers saying things like, “This platform for online learning is very logical and easy to use” and “It’s easy to learn, setup, and manage,” but we also see a few recent reviews saying the opposite: “It can be more user friendly or demo should be there on the software itself so that person may know how to use features” and “clunky, cumbersome to use.”

Podia offers similar features as Kajabi, but for far less money

When you compare the features between Podia and Kajabi, you’ll find that Podia offers over 90% of the same features as Kajabi, but for a fraction of the price.

Of course, there are things you can get through Kajabi that you won’t find on Podia (like templates, advanced customization options, and pre-made funnels/pipelines/templates), but you have to ask yourself if those features alone are worth the massive price hike.

Kajabi offers more advanced customization options

With both Kajabi and Podia, you can create beautiful, custom sales websites, landing pages, and emails. But with Kajabi, you’ll get more templates for the aforementioned and also access to the code editor if you want more advanced customization options (keep in mind, you’ll still need to know how to code and/or hire someone who can make those changes for you vs Podia which offers beautiful, simple templates without any tech or design skills needed).

Kajabi offers pre-set pipelines/funnels — Podia does not

While you can use Podia to build sales funnels from scratch, Podia does not include any “pre-set” pipelines/funnels to help you get started (compare to Kajabi which does include pre-set pipeline templates you can use to create complex email sequences and automations). This may be an important differentiator for those looking to create more sophisticated marketing funnels while saving time in the process.

Kajabi offers more templates

Like Kartra, Kajabi also offers a library of pre-set templates for websites, landing pages, and emails, which can be helpful if you want a beautiful online business without hiring a tech team or designer to build it for you.

Podia does include email templates, and the Podia Editor has plenty of customization options available to help you build a clean, modern, and professional-looking online business without getting bogged down in design details (or hiring a team to build it for you).

Kajabi has slightly more advanced analytics

Kajabi and Podia offer almost exactly the same analytics, but Kajabi has two additional analytic options that Podia does not: Tracking pageviews and being able to segment the data by a specific timeframe (but you can get those metrics by integrating your Podia account with Google Analytics).

Kajabi’s analytics Dashboard is also a little clearer and easier to follow, but these are all things Podia is working to actively improve in 2021 and beyond.

Podia offers live chat on websites and sales pages — Kajabi does not

As a business owner, you know how important live chat can be when it comes to learning about your leads, answering questions, overcoming objections, and most important, closing the sale.

For this reason, Podia comes with a live chat feature that allows you to converse instantly with leads who visit your website or sales pages, as well as customers who are logged in to their Podia accounts. In contrast, Kajabi does not have a live chat feature of any kind; this means if you want live chat functionality, you’d need to pay for customer support software which can be expensive.

Podia offers course completion certificates — Kajabi does not

One way to reward your students after completing a course is to send them a course completion certificate, and with Podia, you can do this automatically. Kajabi, on the other hand, does not offer native course completion certificates, which means you’d need to use a workaround that can be time-consuming and add more complexity to your student management processes.

Podia offers nearly unlimited everything — Kajabi has limits on every plan

If you go with one of Podia’s Mover and Shaker plans, you can create unlimited products and courses and host all the content your heart desires.

Like Kartra and Kajabi, Podia also has limits on things like admin seats, but the core components of your business (what you’re selling, who you’re selling to, and how much you can sell) is unrestricted on Mover and Shaker plans.

Podia offers free migrations — Kajabi does not

If you’re moving from another platform (like Kajabi or Kartra) the Podia team will help you migrate to Podia absolutely free (with any annual Mover and Shaker plan). Compare to Kajabi which does not offer a migration service of any kind.

Kartra vs Podia

Now that you know how Podia and Kajabi compare, let’s compare Kartra vs Podia so you can get a sense of how the two platforms stack up against each other.

Podia is designed for course creators who are selling digital products — Kartra is not

Like Kajabi, Podia is designed specifically for those selling things like online courses, digital downloads, webinars, and more. For this reason, Podia has everything a digital content creator needs, including student management and engagement tools, assessments, course completion certificates, and more.

In contrast, Kartra is designed for any type of business selling any type of product, making it more of a “generalist” vs audience-specific solution. For this reason, Kartra may be missing key features you need for your business today and possibly the features/functionalities you need tomorrow as the industry grows and evolves.

Podia offers native online course and webinar features — Kartra does not

While Kartra does have a calendar feature for selling time, it doesn’t have a native online course or webinar feature, both of which are essential for most digital creators.

Podia, on the other hand, was built for digital creators and therefore has a robust online course feature to help you build, market, sell, and deliver your content seamlessly to your audience. It also has a built-in webinar feature for conducting training sessions, conferences, and summits which is not currently available through Kartra.

Podia is simple, intuitive and easy to learn/use — Kartra is very complex and has a steep learning curve

As we’ve covered throughout this article, Podia is known for being simple, intuitive, and easy to learn and use — both for creators and students.

In contrast, Kartra is known for being much more complex and more difficult to learn/use, which is what you’ll see reflected in public reviews and ratings. Kartra even has a marketplace where you can hire Kartra consultants to help you get set up because it can be so time consuming and difficult to learn.

Podia is affordable for creators at every level — Kartra is more expensive

While Kartra has a few features that Podia does not, Kartra is more expensive than Podia, making it inaccessible to some creators.

Podia, on the other hand, offers two affordable paid plans that are less expensive than both Kajabi and Kartra, despite offering many of the same features and even some that Kajabi and Kartra do not have.

Podia has built-in email marketing with Podia Email — Kartra does not

If you’d like to run your email in the same place as the rest of your business, you can sign up for Podia Email for unlimited message sends, automations, campaigns, tags, and segments. Your plan only increases as your list grows, so you’ll have all the features of an advanced email marketing platform no matter how many subscribers are on your list.

In comparison, Kartra’s Starter plan only allows you to send up to 15,000 emails per month to up to 2,500 leads, which is not ideal for businesses with larger email lists or those which rely deeply on email marketing (and what online or e-commerce business doesn’t?).

As you upgrade through Kartra, you’ll be able to send unlimited emails, but you’ll always have a limit on the number of leads you can have with each plan (Podia, on the other hand, allows you to have an unlimited number of subscribers no matter which plan you’re on).

Kartra offers pre-built funnels & automations — Podia does not (but you can build them from scratch)

One of the advantages of Kartra over Podia is the pre-built funnel feature, which allows you to quickly build complex sequences and automations without having to build them completely from scratch. Kartra also offers more robust and advanced segmentation, tagging, and automation options that make complex funnels possible.

Podia Email comes with pre-made email templates. While we do offer much of the same functionality required to build complex sequences and funnels, there aren’t pre-built templates for funnels just yet (you’ll have to build them from scratch, but we believe Podia is so easy to use, building anything from scratch will be a breeze) and you won’t have the exact “automation options” as you’ll find with Kartra or Kajabi.

Kartra has a more robust CRM with advanced tagging/segmentation capabilities

Similar to the above, Kartra has a more robust CRM feature which goes deep on each customer/lead/subscriber with robust tagging/segmentation/automation features that make building complex sequences and funnels (and utilizing their Behavioral Adaptive Marketing features) possible.

In comparison, Podia’s CRM is a bit more basic in that it will provide you similar information about your contacts, but you won’t be able to segment, tag, score, etc. in the same ways you can with Kartra or Kajabi (at least not yet).

Kartra offers native A/B split testing — Podia does not

If you’re all about testing and optimization, Kartra may be for you as they offer native A/B split testing capabilities that will allow you to test different page variations, different page elements, email subject lines, and email content — all while tracking performance. Like Kajabi, Podia does not currently offer native A/B split testing capabilities, but that will likely change over time.

Kartra can be used to sell physical products — Podia cannot

With Kartra, you can sell a variety of products including digital or physical products as well as services (like training sessions). In contrast, Podia only supports digital products (like online courses, digital downloads, memberships, webinars, etc.) and services (like training or coaching sessions).

Kartra offers advanced customization options — Podia does not

Along with 500+ templates for landing pages, emails, checkout forms, and pop-ups, Kartra also offers advanced customization options, allowing you to customize the code to your exact specifications.

Podia, on the other hand, does not have advanced customization options, but we believe that Podia’s simple design and easy-to-use editor more than makes up for this fact as you can get beautiful, professional-looking websites, landing pages, and emails without getting lost in design details or code.

Podia looks and feels clean/modern — Kartra can feel clunky and not user-friendly

While Kartra may have more features and functionalities, Podia is still rated higher in terms of intuitiveness and reviewers seem to drawn to the aesthetic saying things like, “The beautiful and modern layout is what attracted me to Podia!” and “Podia is easy to use, and it is BEAUTIFUL.”

In contrast, Kartra tends to get the opposite feedback on public review sites with reviewers saying things like, “Some things in general with the interface are not that straightforward” and “Lacks in the user-friendly department …” and “Not quite so user friendly as advertised.”

Podia offers free migrations — Kartra does not

If you’re moving from another platform (like Kartra or Kajabi), Podia offers a free migration service with all annual Mover and Shaker plans so you can stay focused on creating/selling (vs getting set up).

In comparison, Kartra does not offer a migration service of any kind, which means the burden of moving all of your content and contacts will fall on your shoulders (this may be even more difficult given the complexity of Kartra and steep learning curve).

TLDR: Why choose Podia over Kajabi and Kartra as your online course platform?

By now, we’ve covered the three platforms (Kajabi, Kartra, and Podia) from a high-level and detailed point of view. We’ve laid out the key features within each system, the pros, the cons, and everything in between. Now it’s time for you to decide which platform is right for you.

But before you do, we’d like to make one final case for why you should choose Podia over Kajabi, Kartra, or any of the other alternatives out there.

Built specifically for content creators who are selling digital products

As we’ve mentioned throughout this article, Podia is (and always has been) designed for content creators who are selling digital products including online courses, webinars, coaching services, and more.

This means you’ll not only have access to the features you need to run a successful online business, but you’ll also be using software that was developed specifically for your needs, including tools that are easy to learn and use (saving you time and headache), a system that’s user-friendly and intuitive (which means more productivity and less frustration), and a team that’s dedicated to helping creators succeed (and is committed to building a product that will do so, today, tomorrow, and into the future).

While Kajabi can claim something similar, the same is simply not true for Kartra, which is a solution for any business that sells any type of product. It’s like going with a generalist vs a specialist; the generalist can provide you with some things, but you’re not going to get the same expertise, knowledge, comfort, and care you can expect from the specialist.

Simple and easy to use, regardless of experience or skill

On Capterra, Podia is rated highest across all 3 platforms for “ease of use” with a 4.6/5 rating and is lauded in public reviews for being simple, intuitive, user friendly, and easy to use.

In comparison, Kartra is rated 4.0/5 and Kajabi is rated 4.0/5 for “ease of use” on Capterra and both (particularly Kartra) are known for being complex with a steep learning curve that can be so difficult, you may have to hire a consultant to help you get set up and moving on the platform.

In contrast, Podia requires no technical or design skills, and there’s no lengthy training or hundreds of hours worth of resources to get through before you can understand how to use the platform. And if you ever do have questions or need help, Podia’s friendly and helpful customer support team is standing by, plus we have a robust library of HelpDocs and free resources.

Just about everything is unlimited

As an online business owner, there’s no better feeling than to see your sales pouring in; but imagine if as that’s happening, you get an alert from your online business platform telling you that you need to pay them more because you’ve hit your limit on leads, products, members, or something else.

If you go with Kartra or Kajabi, this scenario is entirely plausible, as both platforms have strict limits on the core components of your business, including the number of leads, products, members, websites, funnels, bandwidth, and more.

Podia, on the other hand, gives you options with unlimited students, sales, products, webpages, video hosting, and more, without worrying about surprise overages. This means you can stay focused on growing your business without worrying about arbitrary limitations that are not always within your control.

More affordable and better value

It’s this simple: If you go with Kartra or Kajabi, you will likely pay more than what you’d pay if you were to go with Podia.

Now, if you need code-based customization options or access to more complex marketing automation tools, it may be worth it to pay more for Kartra or Kajabi, but if you don’t need those things (and not every business does), there’s no reason to pay so much more for the same or similar features. Plus, Podia has a few unique features that you won’t find with Kartra or Kajabi.

Live chat included on YOUR website and sales pages

Have you ever noticed that the most successful businesses all use some type of live chat software? Companies will pay exorbitant fees for live chat features because they work, not only in addressing questions from leads, but overcoming sales objections, gathering customer research insights, training staff, and so much more.

For this reason, we’ve built a simple and easy-to-use live chat feature directly into the Podia platform, which means you can seamlessly communicate with customers and leads (and make more sales!) without the high cost (or headache) of expensive live chat software.

This is a feature you will ONLY find on Podia — it’s not available through Kajabi or Kartra.

Free migration included on annual Mover and Shaker plans

If you’re moving from another platform (like Kajabi or Kartra) to Podia, the Podia team will help you migrate to the Podia platform absolutely free with all annual Mover and Shaker plans. There’s no headache, frustration, or wasted time and you can get “back to business” much faster.

In comparison, neither Kajabi or Kartra offers a migration service of any kind, which means you have to make the time-consuming and sometimes frustrating “move” on your own.

Always evolving to accommodate industry trends & customer requests

In an industry that’s constantly changing, it’s incredibly important to partner with a company that is dedicated to evolving with those changes and constantly making improvements based on technological advances, industry trends, and of course, customer feedback.

Podia always has (and always will be) a creator-first platform, which means we’re always making updates to the product and building innovative features based entirely on what our customers need today, while also thinking to the future for what they’ll need tomorrow.

Try Podia for free to see how it compares to Kajabi and Kartra

When it comes to finding the perfect platform for your online business, there’s no substitute for hands-on experience, which is why we recommend trying out all three platforms before making your final decision. You can sign up for a 14-day trial with Kajabi or Kartra, and with Podia, you can grab a free 30-day trial.

During your trials, be sure to ask yourself questions like…

• Is this platform easy for me to learn and understand?

• Can I quickly create and launch things that work (without bugs or technical assistance)?

• How reliable and accessible is the support?

• Am I enjoying the experience or feeling frustrated and overwhelmed?

• Will I earn enough money selling products to cover the monthly subscription?

• Will my customers find this platform easy to use? Will they enjoy the purchasing/learning experience?

Having answers to the questions above (coupled with hands-on experience) should give you everything you need to make an informed and confident decision.

While we hope you become a Podia customer, we also want you to select the online course platform that’s right for you, so no matter what you decide, we wish you the best of luck on your journey and hope you find success!

If Podia is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.