# Systeme.io vs Kartra (2026) · Funnel Critic > Source: https://funnelcritic.com/compare/systeme-io-vs-kartra Head-to-head ## Systeme.io vs Kartra Pick Systeme.io for a free or cheap stack. Pick Kartra when a course launch needs video hosting and Growth-tier tools. By [Marta Ovalle](/authors/marta-ovalle), reviewed by [Funnel Critic Editorial](/authors/funnel-desk-editorial). Published 18 October 2026\. We update this page every 90 days. **Disclosure:**We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings. ### Quick answer Pick Systeme.io if you need a permanent free plan or a sub-$100 stack with funnels, email, courses and affiliates and can accept a basic editor; pick Kartra if you are launching courses or memberships with checkout, video hosting and partner recruiting and will pay from Starter up (automations and affiliates from Growth). You are choosing between two platforms that both cover pages, an email list and a course. One can stay free. The other charges from the first month. If you want that permanent free option or the lower paid plans, open the [Systeme.io pricing guide](/reviews/systeme-io/pricing). ### Side by side The two tools you are choosing between, plus one more worth knowing if you run paid ads. | Tool | Free trial | Best for | | ----------------------------------------- | ------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | [Systeme.io](/reviews/systeme-io) | Free plan, no card | Solo founders and creators on a budget | | [Kartra](/reviews/kartra) | 14 days | Established coaches and creators who want pages, email, checkout and memberships in one account | | [ElasticFunnels](/reviews/elasticfunnels) | 14 days, no card | Teams running paid traffic | ### What you are really choosing between Kartra vs Systeme.io is the same decision with the names flipped. You are weighing a cheap stack you can set up today against a larger platform that pays off when you use most of its features. Systeme.io is the cheaper option. The [pricing page](https://systeme.io/pricing) offers a free account with no expiration and no card, and Unlimited still costs less than Kartra Starter. [Systeme.io's Kartra alternative page](https://systeme.io/kartra-alternative) lists a blog, a booking calendar, physical products and communities, and it claims Kartra has no blog. The prices on that page are outdated. The cost table further down follows Kartra's own plans page. For a course, the deciding factor is which other jobs share that account. Systeme.io includes one course on the free tier and more courses on the paid plans, with the basic editor from the quick answer. Kartra includes membership tools in the same account as checkout and email, and Starter includes video. Affiliate tools are the other difference. Kartra includes them on Growth, and Systeme.io's pricing FAQ lists an affiliate program on every plan. People who have used both call Systeme.io the cheaper, simpler start. The same [comparison thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/CRMSoftware/comments/1j5axa9/kartra%5Fvs%5Fsystemeio%5Fwhich%5Fone%5Fis%5Fbetter/) says Kartra felt smoother once the funnels and the email sequences got complicated. Kartra is the better fit when the list belongs to a course or a membership and you will use most of the bundle. The [plans page](https://kartra.com/plans-and-pricing/) puts video hosting on Starter, and automations, funnel simulation and surveys on Growth, along with helpdesk support. [Kartra's comparison](https://kartra.com/resources/compare/kartra-vs-systemeio/) also claims native video hosting, funnel mapping and an integrated help desk, and it calls Systeme.io easier for a first funnel, with less of the advanced tooling. On that page Kartra says Systeme.io has no integrated CRM and that you would add outside software. That CRM claim is Kartra's own wording. Weigh that claim against the workflow you run. A buyer on a [funnel-builder thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/EcommerceWebsite/comments/1lff26b/best%5Ffunnel%5Fbuilder%5Fsoftware/) said Kartra's interface felt clunky and that small bugs kept showing up. That thread is the only bug report this page uses, and it is about the builder. Checkout, the membership area and email are separate questions, and the notes come from vendor pages plus long-term user reports. ### Where each one wins and loses #### Systeme.io ##### What works * The free plan is genuinely free and permanent: 2,000 contacts, three sales funnels, a course, a blog and unlimited email sends, with no card and no time limit. Most tools this broad charge from day one. * One login covers what a small business actually does: funnels, an email tool, a course, a simple website, a blog, a booking calendar and your own affiliate program, so you stop paying for and wiring together four separate tools. * Systeme.io charges no fee on your sales on any plan, including the free one. Stripe and PayPal still charge their own fees, and Systeme.io adds no further fee, which is rare among funnel platforms. * It is built to be simple. Reviewers consistently call the editor easy to learn, and a first funnel can go live in an hour from a template with no code or hosting to set up. * The paid tiers are cheap. Even the top self-serve plan costs less than the entry price of several single-purpose competitors. ##### What to watch * The page editor and templates are the trade-off. Reviewers call the templates functional but forgettable. The builder gives you less control than a dedicated page tool. * Split testing is basic. There are simple A/B tests on funnel pages, but nothing like the server-side or multivariate testing a serious paid-traffic team leans on. * Support is an email form. Reviewers report both same-day responses and wait times that stretch into weeks. * Systeme.io hosts the pages, the funnels and the course on its servers. The blog and the SEO tools are basic, so it is a weak fit for a content site or a store with a complicated inventory. * Email runs on shared IP infrastructure, which is fine for most senders but can become a ceiling at high monthly volumes. #### 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. ### What they cost Check the plan that matches your list size, then see whether affiliate tools are included there or on the next plan up. The free Systeme.io plan does not expire. Kartra's paid plans list a trial, and the plans page also advertises a 30-day money-back guarantee. | | Systeme.io | Kartra | | ---------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Free plan | Free, no card. 2,000 contacts, 3 funnels, 1 course, 1 blog. | No free plan. 14-day trial on paid plans. | | First paid plan | Startup, $17/mo. 5,000 contacts, 10 funnels, 5 courses. | Essentials, $59/mo ($52 yearly). 500 contacts, 5 pages, 1 product, 10,000 emails a month. | | At 2,500 contacts | Startup still covers this list. The cap is 5,000 contacts. | Starter, $119/mo ($99 yearly). 2,500 contacts, unlimited pages, email and SMS, video, 5 seats. | | At 10,000 contacts | Webinar, $47/mo. 10,000 contacts, 50 funnels, 20 courses, evergreen webinars. | Growth, $229/mo ($189 yearly). 12,500 contacts, plus automations, funnel simulation and surveys. | | Top plan | Unlimited, $97/mo. No cap on contacts, funnels, courses or rules. Two months free when billed yearly. | Professional, $549/mo ($429 yearly). 25,000 contacts, live analytics, API, live chat. | | Fee on sales | None on any plan | 5% on Essentials. None from Starter up. | | Your affiliate program | Every plan, per the pricing FAQ | Growth only, plus a help desk | | Blog | Yes. One blog on the free plan. | None, on Systeme.io's comparison page | Skip Kartra's cheapest plan if you are launching a product. It caps contacts and pages, and it keeps a percentage of each sale. Starter drops that percentage. Growth includes automations and affiliates, so budget for that plan if you use them every week. Systeme.io's Kartra alternative page still claims the trial costs $1, and that Starter has a 15,000 email limit and a five percent sales fee. The table uses Kartra's plans page. The $1 charge appears on Systeme.io's page only. ### A third option, if you run paid ads Paid traffic is a different job from launching a course on a tight budget. A team buying clicks needs the ad click, the order, the rebill and the refund on one timeline. When the course and the email live in separate tools, someone still joins the exports to see which ad made the sale. ElasticFunnels is a funnel platform for teams that run paid traffic: affiliates, product vendors, agencies and ecommerce brands. Pages, checkout, a CRM and attribution sit on one data layer. Same-URL split testing is what those teams look at first. Variants rotate on the server under one campaign link, so Meta, Google and TikTok keep what they have learned on that link. The test does not send the ad back through review. An AI builder can generate a page from a prompt or clone one from a URL. The checkout includes order bumps, one-click upsells and subscriptions. Every feature is on every plan. Starter is $97 a month for 50,000 page views, Growth is $197 a month for 250,000, and Scale is $497 a month for 500,000\. Paid yearly, those totals are $937, $1,891 and $4,771\. The plans differ by page views, brands, domains, team seats and automation runs. Extra page views are billed, and the account stays on its plan. Bot, datacenter and test traffic is left off the bill. Revenue through ElasticFunnels' own checkout carries a 0.5% fee. That checkout charges through Stripe, NMI, PayPal, Klarna or Authorize.net. Sales sent to an outside checkout or a network skip that fee. A split across merchant accounts applies to NMI only. The first sale can be weighted across the merchant's NMI accounts, with rules for card brand, product and amount, and a daily cap on each account. The upsell and the rebill stay on the account that took the sale. Stripe, PayPal, Klarna and Authorize.net each connect as one account. The trial runs 14 days and asks for no card. Pages, funnels and a custom domain can be set up 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. Outside write-ups are still thin, which fits a product that only dates back to 2023\. Those write-ups are too thin to confirm the split-test and attribution claims. You can still use the pages, the checkout and the CRM, and judge those claims on your own traffic. Stay with Systeme.io if you want its free account, or with Kartra if the course bundle is what you are buying. This block is for the team already buying ads. Systeme.io is the default pick when keeping the monthly cost down matters most. Choose Kartra if you want Starter's video tools and help desk, or Growth for automations and affiliates. **My take.** If you are still proving the offer, start on Systeme.io and spend the money on traffic or on the course while the account is free. Move to Kartra Growth when you recruit affiliates and run automations each week. If the visitors are coming from ads, use the paid-traffic block above. Still unsure which tool fits? The [six-question funnel tool picker](/best/which-funnel-tool-fits-you-a-6-question-picker) helps you decide before you pay for the larger platform. Our default pick ### Systeme.io Systeme.io is the pick if you are a solo founder or creator who wants sales funnels, email and an online course in one place, free or cheap, and can live with plain templates and a basic page editor. It is not the tool for a team that needs fine control over page design, heavy A/B testing, or large-scale ecommerce. 4.4 ### Frequently asked questions Is Systeme.io really free compared with Kartra? The zero-dollar account has no end date and asks for no card. Kartra starts on a short trial and then a paid row. That free Systeme.io row is capped, and the caps are in the cost table. Does Kartra charge a fee on sales? Only the cheapest Kartra row keeps a cut of each sale. From the next row up, Kartra's own plans page shows no platform fee. Systeme.io's pricing page shows none on any row. Which one is stronger for courses and memberships? Kartra fits a launch that will use video, a help desk and membership tools in the same login. Systeme.io includes a course on the free row, with the plain editor its users accept. Weighing Kajabi as well is a separate pairing. Can I move from Kartra to Systeme.io? Both companies host the pages, so the funnels get rebuilt in the new account. On Kartra the contact list can leave as a file. The page designs stay where they were built. Plan that rebuild before you cancel. Do Kartra affiliates require Growth? Affiliates sit on Growth, beside automations. The row under it drops the sales cut and includes video. Affiliates are not on that lower row. What if the visitors come from ads? Then this pair is the wrong shortlist. Read the paid-traffic block above, then the ElasticFunnels matchups against each of these two. ### What we read about Systeme.io #### From Systeme.io * * Sales funnel builder * Free plan and pricing tiers * API requests per minute * Customer support by plan * Zoom and email connectors #### Other sources 9 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context. 1. \[g2-ease\] [https://www.g2.com/products/systeme-io/reviews ](https://www.g2.com/products/systeme-io/reviews) G2 2. \[g2-value\] [https://www.g2.com/products/systeme-io/reviews ](https://www.g2.com/products/systeme-io/reviews) G2 3. \[cap-free\] [https://www.capterra.com/p/198994/Systeme/reviews/ ](https://www.capterra.com/p/198994/Systeme/reviews/) Capterra 4. \[sb-templates\] [https://systemebuilder.com/systeme-io-review/ ](https://systemebuilder.com/systeme-io-review/) Blog 5. \[br-builder\] [https://blogrecode.com/systeme-io-review-the-budget-all-in-one-that-works/ ](https://blogrecode.com/systeme-io-review-the-budget-all-in-one-that-works/) Blog 6. \[ff-verdict\] [https://findfocus.net/systeme-review/ ](https://findfocus.net/systeme-review/) Blog 7. \[tp-weeks\] [https://ca.trustpilot.com/review/systeme.io ](https://ca.trustpilot.com/review/systeme.io) Trustpilot 8. \[tp-day\] [https://ca.trustpilot.com/review/systeme.io ](https://ca.trustpilot.com/review/systeme.io) Trustpilot 9. \[reddit-slow\] [https://www.reddit.com/r/systeme\_io/comments/1gcpbtu/is\_getting\_help\_with\_systemeio\_always\_tough/ ](https://www.reddit.com/r/systeme%5Fio/comments/1gcpbtu/is%5Fgetting%5Fhelp%5Fwith%5Fsystemeio%5Falways%5Ftough/) Reddit ### What we read about Kartra #### From Kartra * * Funnel mapper and simulator * Checkouts and shopping cart * Plans and pricing * Native integrations #### 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 ](https://www.reddit.com/r/EcommerceWebsite/comments/1j5nemr/kartra%5Fvs%5Fthrivecartwhich%5Fone%5Fshould%5Fi%5Fgo%5Ffor/) Reddit, 7 Mar 2025 2. \[k-vs-tc-upsell\] [Kartra upsell notes on Reddit ](https://www.reddit.com/r/EcommerceWebsite/comments/1lwhdt2/thoughts%5Fon%5Fkartra%5Fneed%5Freddit%5Freviews/) Reddit, 1 Aug 2025 3. \[k-pricing-page\] [Kartra Plans and Pricing ](https://kartra.com/plans-and-pricing/) Blog 4. \[tp-chat-2025-04\] [Kartra reviews on Trustpilot ](https://www.trustpilot.com/review/kartra.com) Trustpilot, 15 Apr 2025 5. \[tp-hours-2025-01\] [Kartra reviews on Trustpilot, Canada ](https://ca.trustpilot.com/review/kartra.com) Trustpilot, 25 Jan 2025 6. \[tp-ticket-2025-01\] [Kartra reviews on Trustpilot, Canada ](https://ca.trustpilot.com/review/kartra.com) Trustpilot, 25 Jan 2025 7. \[capterra-support\] [Kartra vs Builderall on Capterra ](https://www.capterra.com/compare/184946-202345/Kartra-vs-Builderall) Capterra If you are buying ads, start the ElasticFunnels trial. [Try ElasticFunnels free (opens in a new tab) ](https://elasticfunnels.io/?utm%5Fsource=funnelcritic&utm%5Fmedium=affiliate&utm%5Fcampaign=review) ### Related reading The [Systeme.io review](/reviews/systeme-io) and the [Kartra review](/reviews/kartra) cover each product on its own. Plan details sit in the [Systeme.io pricing guide](/reviews/systeme-io/pricing) and the [Kartra pricing breakdown](/reviews/kartra/pricing). Nearby pairings: [Systeme.io vs ClickFunnels](/compare/systeme-io-vs-clickfunnels), [Systeme.io vs Kajabi](/compare/systeme-io-vs-kajabi), and [Kartra vs Kajabi](/compare/kartra-vs-kajabi). For the paid-traffic case, read [ElasticFunnels vs Systeme.io](/compare/elasticfunnels-vs-systeme-io) and [ElasticFunnels vs Kartra](/compare/elasticfunnels-vs-kartra). If you have ruled Systeme.io out, the [Systeme.io alternatives](/alternatives/systeme-io) page lists the next options. Every pairing is on the [comparison hub](/compare). --- [Funnel Critic](/) Independent reviews and comparisons of funnel, page and checkout tools for startups running paid traffic. Ranked from real user reports and verified pricing. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings. © 2026 Funnel Critic. Independent and reader-supported.