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Kartra vs HubSpot

Kartra bundles checkout, courses and email for coaches. HubSpot is the CRM to choose when a sales team drives revenue. See which pricing model matches the work you do.

By Marta Ovalle, reviewed by Funnel Critic Editorial. Published 16 October 2026. We update this page every 90 days.

Quick answer

Pick Kartra if you are a coach or creator selling courses, memberships or coaching through funnels and want checkout, email, memberships and affiliates under one login; pick HubSpot if your company sells through a sales team and you need a mature CRM, reporting and per-seat pricing you can grow into.

These are different products. Kartra is built for coaches, consultants and service providers who want to automate and sell a digital business from one platform. HubSpot puts marketing, sales and service on the same customer data, so those teams share one view of the buyer.

People weighing the pair on r/CRMSoftware split the same way. Kartra is the one they name for funnels and automation. HubSpot is the one they name for CRM and email marketing.

See Kartra's plan tiers, including the plan where the fee on each sale drops to zero.

Side by side

The two tools you are choosing between, plus one more worth knowing if you run paid ads.

ToolFree trialBest for
Kartra 14 days Established coaches and creators who want pages, email, checkout and memberships in one account
HubSpot Free CRM, 2 users, no card Sales teams that run one company's revenue
ElasticFunnels 14 days, no card Teams running paid traffic

What you are really choosing between

You want email, pages, a record of who bought, and a way to take the payment. The shortlist has collapsed to a creator bundle and a CRM that revenue teams already know.

Kartra is the creator bundle. Pages, checkout, courses, memberships and email sit in one subscription, and the plan is sized by how many contacts you keep. A coach on Kartra works from a sales page, a checkout and a membership that holds the course. The buyer's details and the emails live on a single contact record. Affiliate management, automations and helpdesk support arrive on Growth. Webinars and video hosting arrive on Starter, which is also where Kartra stops taking a percentage of each sale.

HubSpot is the revenue-team platform. Marketing, sales and service sit on one customer record, and you add a seat when another person needs to log in. The free Smart CRM covers two users and stays free. A week on HubSpot looks like reps working that shared record, with marketing campaigns and service history on the same buyer.

The two meet on email and on storing a contact. They separate when one side needs a cart and a member area and the other needs pipeline reporting. On a separate r/CRMSoftware thread, Kartra is described as marketing-first. They point to HubSpot when the work is pipeline stages and a revenue forecast. Tags, broadcasts and launch automations live comfortably in Kartra. Building a forecast from pipeline stages is the job that thread gives to HubSpot.

Where each one wins and loses

Kartra

What works

  • One platform genuinely replaces the stack. You get pages and funnels, email and SMS, checkout, memberships, courses, a calendar, a helpdesk and an affiliate program under a single login. They share one database, so a sale and its follow-up email stay on the same customer record. Reviewers single out the detailed analytics and how convenient built-in affiliate management and payments are once everything sits in one place.
  • Checkout and memberships are strong for selling knowledge. The checkout supports upsells, coupons and several payment processors, and the membership and course tools host your content and drip it out. For a coach selling a course or a membership, that is the core job done without plugins.
  • No transaction fees on the main plans. Starter and the higher tiers charge 0% on sales. Essentials charges 5% on sales.
  • The drag-and-drop builders, more than 100 ready-made campaigns, and Kartra AI let a creator publish a funnel, emails and a checkout in a few hours, without hiring a developer.
  • You can try it before a long commitment. Kartra has a 14-day trial page and a 30-day trial page. A subscription payment can be refunded within 30 days. A card is required to create the account, and billing support says the trial fee is non-refundable.

What to watch

  • Bugs across the builders are the top complaint. Long-term reviewers describe a page builder that malfunctions, with frequent logouts and glitches in the email, page and membership tools. It is usable, but expect rough edges, and some reviewers feel updates polish the surface while core problems linger.
  • Getting a reply from a person is the slow part. Kartra's contact page offers an assistant at any hour, and you can be transferred to a person in that chat. The page lists no phone number. Trustpilot reviews through 2025 still describe chats that never start and tickets that take a day or longer.
  • It is overkill for beginners. Kartra bundles eight to twelve tools. If you only need one or two, you still pay for the whole set and still have to learn your way around it. Reviewers repeatedly say beginners find it overwhelming. They point those readers toward simpler, cheaper tools. It pays off for established businesses that use most of the bundle.
  • The entry plan offers very little and carries a fee. Essentials looks cheap, but it caps you at 500 contacts and 5 pages while charging a 5% transaction fee. Unlimited pages, zero transaction fees and video hosting start on Starter. Automations and affiliates start on Growth.
  • Kartra hosts your pages, and those pages cannot be exported. Everything lives on Kartra's servers. If you leave, set aside time to rebuild the pages. Your contacts export as a CSV file, and your pages stay behind.

HubSpot

What works

  • The free Smart CRM stays available. It covers up to two users, asks for no card, and HubSpot offers it in place of a trial that runs out.
  • Marketing, sales and service share one customer record, so a company adds teams to the same data instead of wiring separate tools together.
  • People comparing it with Kartra call HubSpot the stronger CRM and email side when the work is a pipeline and campaigns.
  • Starter is sold per seat, so a small team pays for the people who log in, at a published list rate with a lower promo for new customers.

What to watch

  • Marketing is where former users say the bill climbs, once those features are turned on.
  • On marketing plans, passing the contact tier you bought moves the account up, and that higher tier is billed until renewal.
  • HubSpot's hubs cover marketing, sales and service on shared customer data. Courses, a membership checkout and commissions for promoters are what Kartra packages together.

What they cost

The bills run in opposite directions. Kartra sells one plan, and that plan grows with the contact allowance you choose. HubSpot can cost nothing for two people, then charges a seat for each person, and marketing plans add a contact tier that can move up on its own.

The coach's real choice on Kartra's plans page is Essentials against Starter. Essentials is the cheapest plan: a handful of pages, a single product, one membership or course, and a percentage taken on every sale. A second product, or a sixth page, is already past that plan. Starter is the plan to compare if you sell more than one offer. Pages, products and courses are unlimited on it, the fee on sales is zero, and webinars and video hosting are included. Growth is the step after that. Automations, affiliate management and helpdesk support join, and the contact allowance jumps again. Each of those plans has a monthly rate and a lower rate on an annual bill. Paid plans list 14 days free, and the page advertises a 30-day money-back guarantee.

HubSpot's floor is the free CRM. The Starter page offers those free tools in place of a trial that expires, for up to two users, with no card. A team that needs more than two people buys seats. Starter has a list rate per seat and a lower promo for new customers, on an annual commitment or month to month. Professional and Enterprise, on the unified pricing page, are priced per seat. That page can geo-price.

The surprise on the HubSpot side is marketing contacts. HubSpot's billing article says that passing the contact tier you bought moves you to the higher tier, and you are billed at that higher tier until the subscription renews. On r/CRM, people who left HubSpot say the bill climbed once they needed the marketing features. Kartra's contact allowance is the one inside the plan you picked.

If you also want a flat monthly price and separate accounts for clients, read GoHighLevel vs HubSpot.

 KartraHubSpot
Way in14 days free on paid plans, and a 30-day money-back guaranteeFree Smart CRM, up to 2 users, no card, does not expire
Entry paidEssentials $59/mo ($52 annual): 500 contacts, 5 pages, 1 product, 5% on salesStarter seats, $20/seat list. New customers: $7/seat annual or $10/seat monthly
Main planStarter $119/mo ($99 annual): 2,500 contacts, unlimited pages, products and courses, 0% on salesProfessional $90/mo per seat on the unified pricing page, which can geo-price
Higher planGrowth $229/mo ($189 annual): 12,500 contacts, automations, affiliate management, helpdeskEnterprise $175/mo per seat on the same unified page
Billed byOne plan, sized by the contact allowanceSeats, then marketing-contact tiers that move up until renewal
Built forCoaches and creators selling a digital offerOne company, with marketing, sales and service together

A third option, if you run paid ads

Both of these assume the buyer already found you, through a list, a page or a rep. A team buying cold traffic on Meta, Google or TikTok has a different problem. The ad click, the order, the rebill and the refund have to sit on one timeline, or nobody can tell which angle made the money.

ElasticFunnels is a funnel platform for teams running paid traffic: affiliates, product vendors, agencies and ecommerce brands. Same-URL split testing is why it belongs beside this choice. Variants rotate on the server under one campaign link, so Meta, Google and TikTok keep the learning already on that link. An AI builder can generate a page from a prompt or clone one from a URL. The checkout is on the same data, with order bumps, one-click upsells and subscriptions. Sessions, orders, rebills and refunds share the timeline, and the CRM, automations and call center read it too.

Every feature is on every plan. The plans differ by page views, brands, domains, team seats and automation runs. Starter is $97 a month, Growth $197, Scale $497. Paid yearly, those are $937, $1,891 and $4,771. Crossing a limit bills the overage rather than forcing a higher plan. Revenue processed on ElasticFunnels' own checkout carries a 0.5% fee. The gateways on that checkout are Stripe, NMI, PayPal, Klarna and Authorize.net. Sales you send to an outside checkout or a network are not charged that fee. Routing across several merchant accounts is NMI only: a weighted split of each first sale, with the upsell and the rebill staying on the account that took the sale. Stripe, PayPal, Klarna and Authorize.net each connect as a single account.

The trial runs 14 days and asks for no card. You can set up pages, funnels and a custom domain during the trial.

ElasticFunnels is newer than the platforms it competes with, and there is very little independent third-party review coverage to check its claims against. Until you run real volume through it you are largely taking the vendor's word for it. You would expect that from a platform that has only been on the market since 2023. With so few independent reviews, you confirm the split-testing and attribution claims by running your own traffic. The pages, the checkout and the CRM stay available while you test those claims.

For someone packaging expertise online, Kartra is the default between these two. The thing being sold is a course, a membership or a coaching offer, and the pages, the cart and the emails should share a login. Choose HubSpot when the bottleneck is pipeline management for a B2B sales team. In that case the CRM and the reporting are what you are buying.

My take. Write the next job post before you pick the software. A closer belongs on HubSpot. The person who films the modules and writes the launch emails belongs on Kartra.

Kartra's limit here is CRM depth. The r/CRMSoftware thread calls it marketing-first, and the Kartra review already records slow human replies and builder bugs. Use the trial window and the money-back guarantee on the plans page before a live offer moves across.

Our default pick

Kartra

Kartra is the pick if you are an established coach, consultant or creator who wants pages, email, checkout, memberships and affiliates under one login. It is not for you if you are just starting out, want the cheapest option, or need a flawless page builder. The bugs and slow support are the complaints that come up most, so use the trial and the 30-day money-back guarantee before you commit.

3.9

Frequently asked questions

Can Kartra replace HubSpot's CRM?
Tags, email and the automations around a launch are enough for many coaches to stay in Kartra. A team that forecasts from deal stages will still want HubSpot's pipeline. That is the gap behind the marketing-first description.
Is HubSpot cheaper than Kartra?
Two people can run the free CRM and pay nothing. Kartra's way in is a trial on a paid plan. Once marketing hubs and larger contact tiers are on the HubSpot bill, people who left call that cost the pain. Kartra charges the contact allowance inside the plan you selected.
Which one is stronger for funnels?
Kartra includes the selling path: pages, a checkout, and a membership or a course. HubSpot's pages sit beside campaigns and a shared history of the buyer. A cart with a member area is the Kartra-shaped offer.
Which of them fits paid advertising?
Tying an ad click through to a rebill is a third job. ElasticFunnels is the fit for a team that buys traffic and needs the click, the order and the refund on one timeline.
Can I move from one to the other?
Kartra contacts come out as a CSV. Pages and courses get rebuilt wherever you land. HubSpot is organized as separate hubs on shared CRM data. Kartra is one subscription that already holds the cart and the membership.

What we read about Kartra

From Kartra

Other sources

7 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context.

  1. [r-eco-vs-tc] Kartra vs ThriveCart on Reddit Reddit,
  2. [k-vs-tc-upsell] Kartra upsell notes on Reddit Reddit,
  3. [k-pricing-page] Kartra Plans and Pricing Blog
  4. [tp-chat-2025-04] Kartra reviews on Trustpilot Trustpilot,
  5. [tp-hours-2025-01] Kartra reviews on Trustpilot, Canada Trustpilot,
  6. [tp-ticket-2025-01] Kartra reviews on Trustpilot, Canada Trustpilot,
  7. [capterra-support] Kartra vs Builderall on Capterra Capterra

What we read about HubSpot

From HubSpot

Other sources

7 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context.

  1. [h1] HubSpot homepage: marketing, sales and service on shared customer data Blog
  2. [h2] HubSpot Starter and free Smart CRM Blog
  3. [h3] HubSpot unified pricing Blog
  4. [h4] HubSpot knowledge base: marketing contacts billing Blog
  5. [h5] r/CRMSoftware: Kartra vs HubSpot Reddit
  6. [h6] r/CRMSoftware: does Kartra work as a CRM Reddit
  7. [h7] r/CRM: leaving HubSpot over marketing cost Reddit

Of the tools here, ElasticFunnels is the one you can sign up for and try today, and its trial asks for no card.

Try ElasticFunnels free (opens in a new tab)

Related reading

The Kartra review covers the bundle in full, and the Kartra pricing guide puts every tier on one page. If the other name on your list is a course platform, an agency CRM, a funnel builder or an email tool, read Kartra vs Kajabi, Kartra vs GoHighLevel, Kartra vs ClickFunnels or Kartra vs ConvertKit (Kit). To compare HubSpot with a flat monthly CRM, read GoHighLevel vs HubSpot. For a paid-traffic team weighing Kartra, read ElasticFunnels vs Kartra. More pairings are on the comparison hub. The ranked shortlist covers the best funnel tools for startups.

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