Head-to-head
Kartra vs Kajabi
Two one-login platforms for creators that overlap on almost everything. One is the cheaper, broader bundle; the other the premium course platform.
Quick answer
Pick Kartra if you want a broad marketing bundle, pages, email, checkout, memberships and affiliates on one login, for a lower price; pick Kajabi if you sell courses, memberships or coaching and want the most polished platform for it, and will pay more.
These two get compared constantly because they overlap so much. Both put your pages, email, checkout, courses and memberships on a single login, so you are not really choosing a feature list, you are choosing a personality. Kartra is the value bundle that does a lot for less. Kajabi is the premium course platform that does the knowledge-selling part better than anyone, and charges for it.
Side by side
The two tools you are choosing between, plus one more worth knowing if you run paid ads.
| Tool | Starts at | Free trial | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kartra | $59/mo | 14 days | Established coaches and creators who want pages, email, checkout and memberships on one login |
| Kajabi | $143/mo | 14 days | Established coaches and creators selling courses, memberships and coaching |
| ElasticFunnels | $97/mo | 14 days, no card | Teams running paid traffic |
What you are really choosing between
On paper the feature lists look almost identical. Both build landing pages and funnels, send email, host a checkout with upsells and order bumps, run memberships and courses, and include an affiliate program. If you only read the columns, you would flip a coin.
The real split is where each one puts its effort. Kajabi is a course platform first. Its lesson and module structure, drip scheduling, assessments, certificates and cohorts are the most polished in the category, and the whole product is designed to make a knowledge business feel premium to the buyer. Independent reviews are consistent on this: for selling courses and coaching, Kajabi is the smoother experience.
Kartra is a marketing bundle first. It leans into the funnel, the email and SMS automation, the helpdesk and the affiliate system, and it packs more separate tools into one subscription. Its course delivery works, but reviewers describe it as rougher than Kajabi's, and the platform as a whole draws more complaints about bugs and slow support. What you get for that is breadth and a lower price.
So the question is not which has more features. It is whether you are buying a course platform that also markets, or a marketing platform that also hosts courses. That, and how much the price gap matters to you.
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 on one login, and because they share one database the data joins up. 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 takes 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. From Starter up, Kartra charges 0% on your sales, so the platform is not skimming a cut of every order the way some checkout tools do. Only the entry Essentials plan carries a 5% fee.
- It is genuinely no-code, with templates and AI. The drag-and-drop builders, more than 100 done-for-you campaigns and Kartra AI mean a non-technical creator can get a funnel, emails and a checkout live in a few hours rather than wiring separate tools together.
- Real safety nets to try it. There is a 14-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can build a real funnel and see whether the platform holds up before you are locked in.
What to watch
- Bugs across the builders are the top complaint. Long-term reviewers describe a page builder that malfunctions, constant logouts and glitches across 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.
- Support is slow. The other recurring complaint is support: long waits on live chat, tickets left unanswered for days, and no phone or Zoom line. When something breaks mid-launch, a fast answer is hard to get.
- It is overkill for beginners. Kartra bundles eight to twelve tools, and if you only need one or two you still pay for and navigate all of them. Reviewers repeatedly say beginners find it overwhelming, and point them at simpler, cheaper tools. The value lands for established businesses that use most of the bundle.
- The entry plan is thin and carries a fee. The new $59 Essentials plan looks cheap, but it caps you at 500 contacts and 5 pages and charges a 5% transaction fee. To get unlimited pages, 0% fees and video hosting you are on Starter at $119, and automations and affiliates only arrive on Growth at $229.
- You are hosted on Kartra, and pages do not export. Everything lives on Kartra's servers, and pages built there do not move cleanly to another tool. If you leave, budget rebuild time. Your contacts export as a CSV file; your pages do not.
Kajabi
What works
- The course, membership and coaching tools are the best in the category. Structured lessons and modules, drip scheduling, assessments, certificates and cohorts are all built in, and reviewers consistently rate the delivery experience as the most polished of any platform here. If your product is knowledge, this is the core job done properly.
- It really is one platform. Courses, communities, email and automations, landing pages, funnels and a checkout share one login and one contact database, so your student list, your emails and your sales reporting all line up without plugins or a Zapier chain that breaks.
- Kajabi takes no revenue share. Whatever your customers pay, you keep, minus only the card processing fee. That matters at volume, because a platform that skims a percentage of every sale can cost far more than a flat subscription once you are selling steadily.
- The checkout handles the things that lift revenue: one-time payments, subscriptions and payment plans, plus upsells, downsells and order bumps, with automated tax calculation built in.
- Pro adds a branded mobile app in the app stores, which Kajabi lists at a $199 a month value, so an established creator can put their courses and community in a native app without hiring a developer.
What to watch
- Price is the number-one complaint. Kajabi starts at $143 a month billed annually, or $179 month to month, and climbs to $499 on Pro. The most detailed 2026 review found pricing escalation was the single most common thing users complained about.
- There is no free plan, and the entry Basic plan is capped at 2,500 contacts, 5 products and 2 admin users. Growth, at $199 a month billed annually, is where advanced automations, affiliate programs and branding removal arrive, so the real working plan often costs more than the entry sticker.
- Support draws consistent criticism. Independent reviews report slow or unresolved tickets, and one flags a poor BBB standing with unanswered complaints. When a launch breaks, a fast answer is not guaranteed.
- It is more than a beginner needs. If you only want to host and sell a single course, you are paying for communities, funnels, an email platform and an affiliate system you may not touch yet. Course-only tools cost a fraction of this.
- Third-party payment processors cost extra. Kajabi takes no revenue share, but if you use an outside processor other than PayPal instead of Kajabi Payments, it adds a fee of 2% on Basic, falling to 0.5% on Pro, on top of the processor's own charge.
What they cost
The price gap is wide and it is the first thing to weigh. Kartra starts at $59 a month on Essentials, though that entry tier is capped and charges a 5% transaction fee. Most Kartra businesses run on Starter at $119 for unlimited pages and 0% fees, or Growth at $229 once they need automations and affiliates.
Kajabi has no cheap entry. Basic is $143 a month billed annually, or $179 month to month, and the working plan for a growing business, Growth, is $199 a month annually. Kajabi takes no revenue share on any plan, so you pay only card processing, but the subscription itself is roughly double Kartra's at every comparable step.
| Kartra | Kajabi | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $59/mo (Essentials) | $143/mo (Basic, annual) |
| Typical working plan | $119 to $229/mo | $199/mo (Growth, annual) |
| Transaction fee | 5% on Essentials, 0% above | None; card processing only |
| Free trial | 14 days | 14 days |
| Best at | Breadth and price | Course and membership delivery |
So Kartra is the cheaper platform at every tier, and its 0% transaction fees from Starter up mean it does not skim your sales either. Kajabi costs more, and what the money buys is the more polished course and membership experience plus a cleaner, simpler platform. If the price gap decides it, Kartra wins on cost. If the quality of what your buyers see decides it, Kajabi earns the premium.
A third option, if you run paid ads
Both Kartra and Kajabi are built around a knowledge business: you make a course or a membership and market it to your own audience. If instead you are buying traffic from Meta, Google or TikTok to sell something, a different tool fits the job better. ElasticFunnels is a funnel platform for teams running paid traffic, and it keeps the pages, the checkout, the CRM and the attribution on one record, so a click, an order, a rebill and a refund line up without exporting reports from four places.
Its signature is same-URL split testing: variants rotate server-side under one campaign link, so the ad platform keeps its learning and a test never sends the ad back through review. On top of that it builds pages with an AI builder that can write one from a prompt or clone one from a URL, and hosts a direct-response checkout with order bumps, one-click upsells and subscriptions. Every feature is on every plan, which start at $97 a month, and the 14-day trial takes no card.
The honest catch: ElasticFunnels is new, released in 2026, with very little independent review coverage yet to check its claims against, so until you run real volume through it you are trusting the vendor more than a public track record. That is what you would expect of a platform this new, where Kartra and Kajabi have years of reviews behind them. It is also built for selling through a checkout on paid traffic, so if your product is a course or a coaching program that you sell to your own audience, Kartra and Kajabi's course tools are the closer fit for that side of the work. There is a 0.5% fee on revenue taken through an ElasticFunnels-hosted checkout, which sales you run through outside networks do not incur. See where it fits in our ElasticFunnels review.
Forced to pick one without knowing your exact product, here is the split. Choose Kajabi if selling courses, memberships or coaching is the main event: it is the more polished platform for delivering knowledge, and the experience your buyers get is worth the higher price. Choose Kartra if the budget is tight or you want more marketing tools in one subscription, and you can live with rougher course delivery and more support complaints for the saving. Most people comparing these two are selling knowledge, which is why Kajabi is our default here, but the price gap is real and Kartra is the value call.
Our default pick
Kajabi
Kajabi is the pick if you sell courses, memberships or coaching and want them to feel premium on a platform that also handles the pages, email and checkout. The catch is price: it starts at $143 a month and climbs fast, and it is more than a beginner with one product needs. Lean on the trial and the 30-day money-back guarantee before you commit.
Frequently asked questions
Is Kartra or Kajabi better for online courses?
Is Kartra cheaper than Kajabi?
Do Kartra and Kajabi charge transaction fees?
Which has better support, Kartra or Kajabi?
Can I switch from Kartra to Kajabi, or back?
Should I use Kartra or Kajabi for paid traffic?
What we read on Kartra
From Kartra
- https://kartra.com/
- https://kartra.com/feature/funnel-mapper-simulator/
- https://kartra.com/feature/shopping-cart-software/
- https://kartra.com/plans-and-pricing/
Other sources
7 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context.
- [capterra-buggy] Kartra Reviews | Capterra
- [capterra-support] Kartra Reviews | Capterra
- [capterra-500k] Kartra Reviews | Capterra
- [trustpilot-polish] Kartra Reviews | Trustpilot
- [trustpilot-support] Kartra Reviews | Trustpilot
- [g2-bugs] Kartra Reviews | G2
- [g2-positive] Kartra Reviews | G2
What we read on Kajabi
From Kajabi
Other sources
4 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context.
- [ruzuku-kajabi] Kajabi Review 2026: Quality, Support & the Real Value
- [ruzuku-kajabi-support] Kajabi Review 2026: Quality, Support & the Real Value
- [podia-kartra-kajabi] Kajabi vs. Kartra (2026): An honest comparison for creators
- [bloggingx-kartra-kajabi] Kartra vs. Kajabi: My Views as a Skeptic User (2026)
Of the tools here, the one you can sign up and try today is ElasticFunnels. Its trial takes no card.
Related reading
Go deeper in our Kartra review and Kajabi review. If you have ruled one out, see Kartra alternatives and Kajabi alternatives. For the pricing detail, the Kartra pricing guide and Kajabi pricing guide break down every tier. The ranked shortlist shows where both sit against the rest, and all our head-to-heads settle the other close calls. How we judge each tool is in our methodology.