Kartra Review and Pricing: In-Depth and Brutally Honest

Another benefit of Kartra is that the platform is completely cloud-based.

That means you don’t need to fret about losing precious company information — it’s always safe in the cloud!

Once you’ve downloaded Kartra, that’s it — you won’t need to download anything else, and you’ll always have the most up-to-date version of the platform.

What's more is that Kartra offers pre-made, high-converting sales funnels to save you time, money, and effort.

So far, Kartra sounds pretty good huh?

Let’s go through some of Kartra’s main features to learn more about what it has to offer its users.

Despite being easy to use, Kartra isn't suitable for everyone.

If you already have a reliable setup in place that’s working well for your business, then introducing Kartra to your sales process may be more of a burden than an improvement.

You know what they say — if it’s not broken, don’t fix it!

Kartra is for entrepreneurs who don’t have the budget or time to hire teams of developers to create a thriving online business.

It’s for people who want to spend less time fixing software issues, and more time on what matters — closing sales.

Kartra is also for people who are searching for an alternative from other big-name marketing platforms such as Clickfunnels and Leadpages.

After all, while Leadpages is the leading landing page builder on the market, it’s pricey for what it’s worth.

Let’s take a closer look at Kartra’s many features.

There are far too many features to cover in a single review.

We’ll discuss the most prominent features to give you a better understanding of the platform.

Does Kartra offer everything you need to run an online business?

Not quite, but it comes pretty close. Let’s get started.

Let’s talk about the heart of Kartra — the page builder. Kartra offers a what you see is what you get, kind of editor.

For those without much tech experience, Kartra provides over 100 pre-made templates for almost any type of page.

These include classic home pages, blogs, sales pages, and thank you pages to name a few — import them easily with just a single click of a button!

The templates look good and come in a number of styles, ranging from old-school to modern.

To edit a template simply select your chosen option and load it into the page builder.

Making direct changes to a template is straightforward — this includes editing text, changing images, and changing the overall styling of the template.

You also have the option of incorporating new elements using the provided blocks.

Yet despite the ease of using the tool, it’s pretty rigid and long-winded. Even simple actions can end up taking longer than they should.

For example, to adjust the size of a column you must first switch to column mode, then click to adjust the column widths, then manually edit them.

Ideally, it should just be a case of clicking and dragging.

If you want to include a picture on the page, you can select from your current library of photos, or you can upload a new image.

Kartra also offers a useful sales copy sample on all pages when building your landing pages.

Instead of offering icons and basic Lorem Ipsum text, Kartra provides in-depth sample sales pages written by Frank Kern himself.

Not only does this copy show what Frank has used in the past, but he also lets us know why he wrote what he did to help you become a better copywriter.

If you want to add a popup to your page, you can opt for the popup functionality hosted by Kartra instead of searching for an add-on popup tool.

The integrated functionality is what gives the editor an edge, but unfortunately, it’s let down by the inflexible design capabilities.

While Kartra’s page builder stands out compared to many other options on the market, some features could be added to improve the functionality.

For example, when browsing on a mobile device sometimes pages created by Kartra appear a little off, and the alignment can look a bit strange.

While the editor does the basics well and would work for marketing newbies, it doesn’t compare with smoother, more flexible page builders.

It could also do with being streamlined, too.

Split testing landing pages is the rage right now and Kartra offers a powerful split testing feature, giving you flexibility in how you test.

The feature allows you to create two variations of a page and both are randomly shown to browsers.

The page that is the most successful wins, and is the page used after that.

Want to edit the copy of a page?

Sure.

Remove a video?

Go for it.

Want to completely scrap a whole page design and test two completely different pages?

Why not?

This flexibility is invaluable compared to many other landing page builders that only allow users to split test small features at a time.

The whole point of investing in Kartra is so the software will help you sell a product, right?

So, let’s get on to another very important part of the tool — the products and carts feature.

To help you sell your products or services efficiently, Kartra has a built-in shopping cart feature.

When you add a product to the platform, you’ll be given two options.

One is to create the main product, two is to upsell or downsell a product.

The product will be showcased depending on which of these options you choose.

The simple interface makes the process seem easier than even dedicated shopping carts.

The steps will allow you to set up everything including payment gateways by PayPal or credit card, product pricing, trial structures, checkout, thank you pages, cart abandonment rules, and a whole lot more.

You can stack many of these features too, allowing you to craft in-depth, complex offers if you so wish.

If it’s an online course you’re selling, you can also integrate your product with the Kartra membership feature, making the process run smoothly for your customers.

Considering that Kartra’s shopping cart feature is part of a larger system, the feature is very impressive.

When you include the affiliate portal, it gets even better!

For each product you design, you can integrate the affiliate portal to allow your customers to become your promoters.

Potential affiliates can be screened and chosen using tailored questionnaires and mandatory terms and conditions.

Affiliates are provided with custom URLs — this gives you the chance to offer a percentage or fixed rate off of the sale when the code is used.

You can even analyze your affiliate's data such as the number of referrals they gain, and the payout history.

You'll also get access to data that provides you with an overview of everything from visits, sales, refunds, cancellations, revenue, and customer value.

While many shopping carts can be tedious to use, there’s not much for Kartra’s version to improve on when it comes to ease of use and features.

Apart from the very advanced features that some dedicated shopping carts offer, you have everything you need to sell products and services with Kartra’s shopping cart feature.

To gain those leads, a strong email marketing strategy is recommended.

That’s where Kartra comes in to help with their email broadcasts, automation, tagging, sequences, and more.

This module of the platform aims to replace big-name email marketing services including MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, and ConvertKit.

And as you can imagine, that’s no small feat.

So, how does Kartra’s email marketing module work?

To start with, you can create an email list by adding leads manually or by importing leads from a CSV file.

This is useful if you’re moving from another email marketing platform such as one of the above listed.

Kartra also features an automation workflow builder which is called a sequence builder.

If you’ve used other email marketing services like ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign, you’ll see that it’s like the automation builders featured on these platforms.

However, Kartra’s automation feature could use some improvement when compared to other dedicated email marketing solutions.

The feature is quite tedious to use, as adding any elements or shifting items around tends to cause the editor to freeze up.

As you can imagine, this can get quite frustrating.

However, if you can deal with the lagging, Kartra offers a useful email marketing system that includes many of the features used by other email marketing products.

It'll never beat the dedicated top-name email marketing solutions such as the ones listed previously, but for an integrated marketing system, it works well enough.

Another key feature of Kartra is the creation of successful marketing campaigns.

You have a choice of creating campaigns from scratch if you have the technical skills, or you can opt for one of Kartra’s handy premade campaign templates.

If you’re designing a campaign from scratch, the setup will require all the media you’ve created within the platform.

If you’re using a premade campaign, however, Kartra will sort this all out for you.

Right now there are 5 campaigns to choose from, each focusing on a different marketing pain point.

For example, the simple list builder campaign focuses on growing your email list to help you build leads.

The 4-day cash machine campaign, on the other hand, helps you close sales with an existing mailing list.

To learn more about each campaign, simply click on the campaign and you’ll be offered a walkthrough video of that campaign and its goals.

If you choose to import a campaign, it'll be implemented to your Kartra account complete with email sequences, product sales funnels, advanced automation, and other related components.

Once you’ve deployed the campaign, you can look through your account to discover the relevant assets and edit as necessary.

For example, you can edit the pages used in a campaign to fit your business and offerings.

Finally, you can share campaigns that you’ve created with other Kartra users and vice versa in the Kartra marketplace.

Here you can discover unique campaigns that may suit your business well – but expect to pay a fee.

It can be a great way to discover new and different angles for your company to move in.

If you master the art of creating marketing campaigns, it’s also a fantastic way to gain extra profit.

To sell a marketing campaign, first, you need to design a campaign and add all the assets relevant to it.

For example, you could charge around $250 for sharing your campaign assets with other users (the pages, the list, the automation) so that they can implement them and save time on creating their own.

You can even offer extra services, such as re-adapting the campaign-style for users or managing their Kartra software for them in exchange for a monthly fee.

You can also design forms to collect fresh new leads directly through Kartra if you’re completely new to email marketing or don’t yet have any leads.

The form builder uses the same interface as the rest of the platform, making it simple to use and navigate.

Like the rest of the software, Kartra makes things easy for new marketers by providing templates to customize for each of their forms.

Once you’ve selected and edited your templates, you can start capturing leads.

There are various ways to customize your forms including single or double opt-in options, a welcome message, tagging and automation, form behaviors, and lots of different templates.

Unlike the page builder, however, the form editor only allows simple changes to templates.

Let’s go through the different types of opt-in forms you can use, as the functionality and features of the forms differ greatly.

Unique video content helps drive sales. It has the power of selling and engaging with browsers more than any other type of content.

Major social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram favor video content in comparison to images and written text.

When we think of video hosting services, brands like YouTube and Vimeo usually spring to mind.

But did you know that Kartra also offers a video hosting platform?

With Kartra, you can upload your marketing footage and product content videos straight to Kartra and embed them into various pages.

These include WordPress blogs, membership portals, and other landing pages.

Kartra’s video hosting platform offers some unique features, including their call to action (CTA) pop-ups while a video is playing.

You can create opt-in videos, sales page videos, and offer videos.

However, Kartra’s video hosting isn’t too impressive and when you can use other hosting services like YouTube and Vimeo, it can seem a bit pointless.

Uploading videos can also be a bit of a hassle, to avoid video buffering issues you need to compress your footage.

Kartra also offers a memberships feature that works well for business owners selling courses, publishing premium content, or offering group coaching.

This makes customers feel exclusive and it makes the learning process more exciting.

Unfortunately, some engagement features are missing that other products offer in their memberships scheme.

For example, with Kartra memberships you can’t see how far your students have progressed in the course.

Kartra only gives you an eye icon that indicates when a student has seen the lesson.

There are several themes available for membership sites, and each one follows a similar structure, and customization of the layout is quite limiting.

However, Kartra does offer a lot of what you need to run successful memberships for your business.

The more successful your business is, the more difficult it is to manage your questions and requests via your email inbox.

That’s where Kartra helpdesk comes in to save the day.

Kartra helpdesk allows users to create a trackable ticket scheme whenever customers or browsers have questions about your products or your business.

This email management system makes answering questions easier.

Your customers are given various options of contact (ticket, live chat, Skype, or phone call) and tickets are tracked depending on their statuses (opened, waiting, or resolved).

Customers can also rate their assistance experience so you and your customer service team will know if you’re doing a good job or not!

With Kartra analytics, you can also measure how long (on average) it takes to deal with a customer question or request.

And when you receive a helpdesk ticket, you can automatically add that individual to your mailing list and add specific tags so you can see that they were added via your helpdesk system.

You may also notice a pattern of common questions.

This is great to inspire blog content or a FAQ page so you can help reduce your email load.

When it comes to live chat support, there’s no current mobile app to use it on — Which means you must have the computer open to help customers.

Kartra has, however, said that they’re working on this issue.

But for a feature in an all-in-one marketing platform, it does get the thumbs up from us.

When it comes to onboarding support, Kartra helps let you know exactly where you are in the process of understanding the software and what to expect next.

Once you sign up, you’re informed that you’ll receive several emails as part of your introduction.

You’ll receive an email that includes a link to the login page with your login details, and when you first log into your account, you’ll be encouraged to watch a welcome video.

This footage will explain some of the predominant features of Kartra along with the next steps you should take in your journey.

The video should give you enough information without proving too overwhelming.

You’ll be told about a sidebar checklist to help you become familiar with Kartra.

Overall the onboarding process is pretty strong and straightforward, it should leave you feeling assured in taking the next steps.

There’s also a private Kartra Facebook group that you can join straight away, even during the $1 14-day trial period.

Joining the Facebook group gives you the chance to connect and speak with other Kartra users and marketing professionals, and the engagement is great.

The group is well monitored too, so you won’t have to deal with frustrating spam or unwanted promotions.

At this point, you may be wondering how much Kartra costs.

Kartra offers a variety of monthly subscription packages — Each package offers the same access to Kartra’s variety of tools, features, and benefits.

The package most suitable for you will depend on the size of your company and how many leads and custom domains you need.

If you want to test-drive the platform, you can trial Kartra for $1 for 14 days, so you can see if the software works for you before going through with one of their plans.

Here are the different packages, their prices, and what they include.

It’s inevitable that if you’re building an online business, you need a platform to launch and grow it.

While there are many platforms like WordPress that can be used for online business, they aren’t created to contain everything necessary for a company.

While many business owners use a whole host of tools and solutions, hoping to get them to work and integrate, this can end up being time-consuming and tedious.

Kartra is great because it removes that issue of attempting to get everything to work together seamlessly.

However, as mentioned at the beginning of this Kartra review, the software isn’t for everyone.

For example, if you have email lists of over 50,000 people, Kartra isn’t for you as these are the maximum figures on Kartra's Platinum package.

Kartra is also only suitable for business owners selling digital products online, such as eBooks or webinars.

If you’re selling physical products, it’s a no-go for Kartra.

For a more affordable alternative to Kartra, you may want to consider our all-in-one marketing platform — systeme.io.

Our software is designed for small business owners and entrepreneurs who are seeking a simple way to manage their businesses and sell their products online.

With systeme.io, it isn’t necessary to invest in other tools or solutions — everything you need to help you run a business is offered built-in.

You can create entire sales funnels, launch a blog, create membership sites, automate your email marketing, manage your own affiliate program, and more!

Plus, you get unlimited file storage space and you can send unlimited emails on all of our plans, including our Freemium plan.

One of the biggest advantages of using systeme.io is that it's suitable for everyone, even if you have zero design or technical knowledge.

Apart from how simple our software is to use, the success of systeme.io also lies in how affordable our plans are.

While our packages work just as well for running a successful online business, the prices are also lower than that of Kartra.

That means you can gain access to an all-inclusive marketing platform to help you build your business at an incredibly affordable price.

We want to see our customers succeed, which is why we offer 24/7 support regardless of your plan.

Here are our available plans.