Kartra vs Thinkific

You already know the product is a course. What you are buying is either the place students watch the lessons, or the tools that sell those lessons.

Kartra's own comparison calls Thinkific a course host. On that page, Kartra lists funnels, email, checkouts, memberships, a helpdesk and affiliates as its own features. That framing is Kartra's. Thinkific's App Store is where email, CRM, analytics, Zoom and Shopify get added. The Zapier listing says triggers and actions need the Grow plan or higher.

Kartra memberships drip lessons on a schedule. They also include discussion forums, access levels and progress tracking, in the same account as checkout and email. The membership page says a member who joins months later still sees the lessons in the same sequence.

On r/smallbusiness, people running hosted training call Thinkific a good fit for a mid-sized team, and they mention security for the course files. The same thread says Kartra is a full marketing machine when all you need is a place to host lessons. On r/onlinecourses, creators recommend Thinkific to beginners because the course builder is easy to follow.

Two threads on r/EcommerceWebsite talk about the first weeks with Kartra. One writer says the setup takes time to learn, and that it is worth the time once the setup is familiar. Another says the interface felt clunky and small bugs kept appearing. The first link is the learning-curve thread. The second is the thread about bugs. Read them here: learning curve and small bugs.

Thinkific's developer site says more than 50,000 course creators have used the platform, and that those creators have earned more than $650 million. That scale figure is Thinkific's.

If the curriculum is finished and the list already lives in Kit or HubSpot, you are buying a place for students. Pages, an email sequence, checkout and an affiliate program are launch work, and Kartra is the account built for that. Ads on Meta, Google or TikTok are covered in the paid-traffic section further down.

Pick the Kartra plan you will still need once the launch is over. The cheapest plan is a weak comparison if you send email and host more than one course.

Essentials limits how much you can publish, and it keeps a percentage of each sale. Starter removes that fee. Pages, courses, email and SMS are included. Growth adds automations, affiliate management and a helpdesk, plus funnel simulation, surveys and quizzes. Each higher plan allows more contacts. On all three plans, paying for the year costs less than paying every month.

Thinkific's paid plans are built around delivering the course. When you also need email and a CRM, you add apps such as Kit or HubSpot. Connecting those apps through Zapier requires the higher plan named on the Zapier listing.

Between these two, Thinkific is the default when the student area is the job and marketing can live in apps. Choose Kartra instead when the launch needs pages, email sequences, checkout and an affiliate program in one account. Those tools are included on Kartra Growth.

My take. Name the bottleneck before you name the software. If students cannot get through the lessons, start with Thinkific. If the email list, the pages or the affiliate program is slowing you down, start with the Kartra plan that includes automations and affiliates. Still unsure which job you have? The six-question funnel tool picker helps you decide before you pay for the larger bundle.