# ThriveCart vs Kartra (2026) · Funnel Critic > Source: https://funnelcritic.com/compare/thrivecart-vs-kartra Head-to-head ## ThriveCart vs Kartra Pick ThriveCart when email and pages already live elsewhere. Pick Kartra on Starter or Growth when checkout, email and memberships share one account. 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 ThriveCart if you already run email and marketing pages elsewhere and your bottleneck is checkout bumps, upsells and 0% ThriveCart fees on a focused cart; pick Kartra if you want pages, email, checkout, memberships and affiliates on one login and will pay for Starter or Growth, not the fee-heavy Essentials tier. You have already cut the list to these two. One is a checkout tool you use alongside the email service and the landing pages you already pay for. The other is the account that holds the pages, the list, the membership and the sale together. See [Kartra's pricing breakdown](/reviews/kartra/pricing) and match the tier to the tools you expect to use after launch. If your traffic comes from paid ads, the next section is the other option worth 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 | | ----------------------------------------- | ----------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | ThriveCart | 30-day free trial | Checkout when email and pages already exist | | [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 ThriveCart: when email already lives elsewhere People who type kartra vs thrivecart have already dropped every other name. The remaining question is whether the checkout is the missing piece, or whether the pages, the list, the membership and the sale are supposed to share one login. ThriveCart's [homepage](https://thrivecart.com/) leads with the order form. Standard includes unlimited products and funnels, one bump offer, post-purchase offers, and A/B split testing. The same plan includes ThrivePages and abandoned-cart emails. The bump is the extra offer attached to the order. Those later offers can be accepted with a single click. Split tests can sit on the checkout or on the funnel. Pro+ is where that homepage puts the affiliate center and automated payouts, along with more than one order bump, subscription dunning and custom domains. The [pricing post](https://thrivecart.com/blog/new-monthly-pricing-model/) includes a ThriveCart Academy Growth plan with Pro+. A second bump, or a partner program, means leaving Standard. A March 2025 thread on [r/EcommerceWebsite](https://www.reddit.com/r/EcommerceWebsite/comments/1j5nemr/kartra%5Fvs%5Fthrivecartwhich%5Fone%5Fshould%5Fi%5Fgo%5Ffor/) draws the practical line. ThriveCart fits when email and a CRM already live somewhere else. Kartra fits when those pieces should sit with the checkout. That comment still talks about ThriveCart as a one-time fee. The pricing post now offers monthly plans, with a trial. The lifetime deal described in that comment is an older offer. An older thread on [r/digital\_marketing](https://www.reddit.com/r/digital%5Fmarketing/comments/13n9fw0/do%5Fany%5Fof%5Fyou%5Freally%5Fuse%5Fthrivecart%5Fif%5Fso%5Fare%5Fyou/) describes ThriveCart's main role as the checkout. Broadcast email is outside the feature list on the homepage. Follow-up emails stay in the email platform you already use. Kartra's [pricing FAQ](https://kartra.com/plans-and-pricing/) lists what that one platform is meant to replace: email, page builders, course platforms, checkouts, scheduling, a helpdesk, video hosting and affiliate management. On a later [r/EcommerceWebsite](https://www.reddit.com/r/EcommerceWebsite/comments/1lwhdt2/thoughts%5Fon%5Fkartra%5Fneed%5Freddit%5Freviews/) thread, a Kartra user says checkout-first tools, ThriveCart included, limit how an upsell can be wired into a funnel. They describe Kartra's upsells as something you can stack. Standard includes one order bump, and the follow-up offers come after the main product. The limit people are naming is how freely that funnel can be wired, and where the follow-up email lives after the buyer leaves the cart. Partners follow the same split in the plan cards. ThriveCart keeps partner tracking on Pro+. Kartra lists affiliate management with the Growth additions. A seller who only needs the bump can stay on Standard. A seller who needs other people promoting the offer moves up on either side. Paid ads are a different decision from choosing between these two. The section below covers a funnel platform that keeps the test on one campaign URL. [ElasticFunnels vs Kartra](/compare/elasticfunnels-vs-kartra) stays on that question. ### Where each one wins and loses #### ThriveCart ##### What works * Standard includes unlimited products and funnels, one bump offer, one-click upsells and downsells, A/B split testing, ThrivePages and abandoned-cart recovery. * The homepage states there is no platform fee on sales, and it lists support as available every day of the year. * Pro+ adds partner tracking with automated payouts, multiple order bumps, subscription dunning, custom domains and a ThriveCart Academy Growth plan. ##### What to watch * Long-time users describe it as a checkout tool. Email and the CRM stay on the subscriptions you already pay for. * Affiliates, subscription dunning, custom domains and extra bumps sit on Pro+. Standard includes one bump. * Older write-ups still describe a one-time license. The current offer is a monthly plan with a 30-day trial. #### 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 Look at what you expect the bill to be six months from now. Essentials is a poor stand-in for ThriveCart. It still takes a cut of each sale, and it caps the account. The Kartra plan that matches that cart is Starter. Growth is the one to price if partners or automations are on the list. ThriveCart's pricing post replaced the lifetime license with monthly plans and a trial. Standard is the cart. Pro+ adds the affiliate center, dunning, more than one bump, custom domains and an Academy Growth plan. Paying for the year costs less each month than paying month to month. On Kartra, the allowances below come from the plan cards. Essentials is the card marketing often quotes. It carries the sales cut, and it caps contacts, pages, products and email. Starter is the first card that advertises no transaction fee, with unlimited pages, products and memberships, unlimited email and SMS, video hosting and calendars. Growth raises the contact allowance and adds automations, affiliate management, a helpdesk and funnel simulation. A second grid on that same pricing page prints different email and contact rows, so the cards are the ones in the table. | | ThriveCart | Kartra | | ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Paid monthly | Standard $47, Pro+ $87 | Essentials $59, Starter $119, Growth $229 | | Paid yearly | Standard $37, Pro+ $67 | Essentials $52, Starter $99, Growth $189 | | Sales cut | 0% on Standard and Pro+ | 5% on Essentials. 0% from Starter up. | | Bumps and partners | 1 bump on Standard. Multiple bumps, dunning and affiliates on Pro+ | Checkout in the bundle. Affiliates and automations on Growth | | List and pages | ThrivePages on Standard. Broadcast email stays in your other tool | Essentials: 500 contacts, 5 pages, 10,000 emails. Starter: 2,500 contacts, unlimited pages and email | | Try it | 30-day free trial | 14 days free, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee | Count email too if you keep ThriveCart. Standard looks cheaper until you add the email platform you already pay for. Kartra Starter already includes email marketing and pages. Growth is the step when you need affiliates or automations, which is also the step where ThriveCart moves you to Pro+. Kartra's pricing page offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can cancel anytime. That window refunds a subscription payment you have already made. ThriveCart's new plans include a 30-day free trial. One is time on the cart before you are committed. The other is a refund after you have subscribed. ### A third option, if you run paid ads Paid campaigns need the click, the order, the rebill and the refund on a single customer record. A checkout paired with a separate email service leaves that merge to you, and so does a bundle built for courses and broadcasts. ElasticFunnels is a funnel platform for teams that run paid traffic: affiliates, product vendors, agencies and ecommerce brands. Pages, same-URL split testing, checkout, a CRM and attribution sit on one data layer. Teams in this spot look at the split tests first. Variants rotate on the server under a single campaign link, so Meta, Google and TikTok keep the learning already on that link, and the ad stays out of a fresh review. An AI builder can generate a page from a prompt or clone one from a URL. The checkout can take an order bump, a one-click upsell and a subscription. Sessions, orders, rebills and refunds share a timeline. The CRM, the automations and the call center read that same record. Starter includes the same split testing, checkout and CRM as Scale. The plans differ by page views, brands, domains, team seats and automation runs. Starter is $97 a month, or $937 for the year, with 50,000 page views, 3 brands, 5 custom domains, 10 team members and 10,000 automation runs. Growth is $197 a month, or $1,891 for the year, with 250,000 page views, 10 brands, 15 domains, 20 team members and 50,000 runs. Scale is $497 a month, or $4,771 for the year, with 500,000 page views, unlimited brands, 50 domains, unlimited seats and 200,000 runs. Crossing a limit bills overage, and the account stays on its plan. Bot, datacenter and test traffic is left out of the page-view count. Extra page views are $1.20, $1.00 or $0.80 per 1,000, by plan. Revenue through ElasticFunnels' own checkout carries a 0.5% fee. That checkout charges through Stripe, NMI, PayPal, Klarna or Authorize.net. Sales through external checkouts and networks sit outside that fee, including ClickBank, BuyGoods, Digistore24, Shopify Checkout and Shop Pay. Splitting one sale across several merchant accounts is available only through NMI. Each first sale is 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 is 14 days, with no credit card required. You can set up pages, funnels and a custom domain during those 14 days. ElasticFunnels is newer than the platforms it competes with, and there is very little independent review coverage to verify its claims. Until you run real volume through it, you are largely taking the vendor's word on whether the split tests and the attribution hold up. Few independent reviews exist yet, which is what you would expect from a platform that has been around since 2023\. The pages, the checkout and the CRM are still there to use while you judge those claims on your own traffic. Between these two, Kartra is the default when you will use the bundle, on Starter or above so the sales cut is gone. Choose ThriveCart when you already pay for email and landing pages, and what you still need is the checkout: a bump, offers after the purchase, and a cart with no platform fee. **My take.** Decide which Kartra tier you expect to be using six months from now. Starter is the minimum when the sales cut has to be gone and the email has to live in that account. Growth is the tier when affiliates or automations are part of the work. Set that beside ThriveCart Standard plus the newsletter subscription you would keep. When each sale has to stay tied to the ad that caused it, use the ad-traffic section. The limit there is how little independent writing exists yet. 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 ThriveCart stand in for Kartra? It covers the order: a bump, offers after the purchase, and split tests on the cart. Pages for the campaign can come from ThrivePages. The broadcast list, the membership and the course stay in whatever you already use. When those have to move with the sale, Kartra is the account built to hold them. How do Kartra upsells compare with a ThriveCart bump? Kartra's plans page treats checkout as part of the bundle. A user on Reddit describes upsells that can be stacked, and describes the paths on checkout-first tools as fixed. ThriveCart lists a single bump on the lower plan and more bumps on Pro+, with follow-up offers in one click. Which plan costs less once the transaction fee is gone? ThriveCart Standard is the smaller subscription. Kartra Starter is the first Kartra card that drops the transaction fee, and email and pages are already in it. Put your current newsletter bill next to Standard before you call the cart cheaper. The monthly and yearly rows have the figures. Do I need Pro+ or Growth for affiliates? Partner tools show up on ThriveCart Pro+ and on Kartra Growth. The cheaper plan on each side leaves that center off the list. Move up when someone else will promote the offer and you want the payouts tracked in the same place as the sale. Where does ElasticFunnels fit if I am choosing kartra vs thrivecart? It is the option when traffic comes from paid ads. Split tests stay on one campaign URL, and the order sits on the same timeline as the click. Outside write-ups are still scarce, which fits a product built since 2023\. Trial length and the fee on its own checkout are in the ad-traffic section. ### What we read about ThriveCart #### From ThriveCart * #### Other sources 5 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context. 1. \[tc-home\] [ThriveCart homepage ](https://thrivecart.com/) Blog 2. \[tc-pricing\] [ThriveCart monthly pricing ](https://thrivecart.com/blog/new-monthly-pricing-model/) Blog 3. \[r-split\] [r/EcommerceWebsite: Kartra or ThriveCart ](https://www.reddit.com/r/EcommerceWebsite/comments/1j5nemr/kartra%5Fvs%5Fthrivecartwhich%5Fone%5Fshould%5Fi%5Fgo%5Ffor/) Reddit 4. \[r-scope\] [r/digital\_marketing: what ThriveCart is used for ](https://www.reddit.com/r/digital%5Fmarketing/comments/13n9fw0/do%5Fany%5Fof%5Fyou%5Freally%5Fuse%5Fthrivecart%5Fif%5Fso%5Fare%5Fyou/) Reddit 5. \[r-upsell\] [r/EcommerceWebsite: Kartra upsell setup ](https://www.reddit.com/r/EcommerceWebsite/comments/1lwhdt2/thoughts%5Fon%5Fkartra%5Fneed%5Freddit%5Freviews/) 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 your traffic comes from paid ads and you want the click and the order on one record, start the ElasticFunnels trial. You can set up a landing page and connect a custom domain before the trial ends. [Try ElasticFunnels free (opens in a new tab) ](https://elasticfunnels.io/?utm%5Fsource=funnelcritic&utm%5Fmedium=affiliate&utm%5Fcampaign=review) ### Related reading The [Kartra review](/reviews/kartra) goes through the whole product. The [pricing breakdown](/reviews/kartra/pricing) is the tier list to open before you subscribe. A course-platform matchup is [Kartra vs Kajabi](/compare/kartra-vs-kajabi). A funnel-builder matchup is [Kartra vs ClickFunnels](/compare/kartra-vs-clickfunnels). Ad traffic against this bundle is [ElasticFunnels vs Kartra](/compare/elasticfunnels-vs-kartra). If you have ruled Kartra out, see [Kartra alternatives](/alternatives/kartra). If the shortlist is still longer than two, try the [six-question picker](/best/which-funnel-tool-fits-you-a-6-question-picker). The wider field is the [ranked shortlist of funnel tools for startups](/best). Every matchup lives on the [head-to-head index](/compare). The [methodology](/methodology) explains how we rank the tools. --- [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.