Kartra vs. Kajabi In-Depth Comparison & Review (2020)
Looking for an objective review and comparison of Kartra vs Kajabi?
You’ve come to the right place.
This is the most epic, up-to-date review on the internet for these two amazing pieces of software.
But before we get too far along, there’s something I have to share with you: I’ve used both Kartra and Kajabi to grow my online business and have taken online courses on both platforms.
If you are reading this, then you are most likely trying to lay the foundations of a fledgling online business.
Or perhaps you already have one but are looking for ways to optimize it and cut down on the sky-high monthly bills for all those overpriced marketing tools like ClickFunnels you have subscribed to over the years.
Either way, you seem to have narrowed down your options to two platforms: Kartra and Kajabi.
Kartra Vs Kajabi – It’s An Easy Choice
I have good news for you — this choice is an easy one. Let me spare you a lot of unnecessary research and what could be endless hours of pondering and just tell you right off the bat: there is one clear winner on all accounts.
It is the ultimate all-in-one service for online businesses currently on the market.
Whether you are offering online yoga classes, language courses, or knitting and embroidery tutorials, this platform has everything you need and more.
Want to know who the winner is?
Read the full review of the Kartra and Kajabi service packages to find out.
If you make it to the end, you will also learn how to sign up for my favorite software. I even have some special bonuses and show you how to get a 50 percent discount by using my affiliate link!
What Is Kartra?
Kartra is an all-in-one ecommerce and marketing platform. It gives you all the tools you need to create and run a business online, from website hosting, email, and video marketing to tracking and analytics, affiliate management, ready-to-use sales campaigns, and more. For more information, check out my Kartra Review.
What Is Kajabi?
Kajabi is a similar all-in-one platform with various features that allow you to design a website, build pages, run marketing campaigns, create online courses, manage customers, and more.
Kartra vs. Kajabi: Three Key Aspects
I will compare and contrast the individual features of Kartra vs Kajabi in just a moment. However, before we get into the nitty-gritty, I thought a more general overview could help you get the gist of things.
I mentioned above that Kajabi is great for building a membership website — but not for much else. You may find that somewhat surprising. After all, Kajabi does advertise itself as an all-in-one tool. But is it really?
Features and Functionality
Let’s take the helpdesk, a key feature and a must for any online business that wants to get somewhere, as an example. How does Kajabi fare? Well, it just doesn’t. Kajabi does not have any helpdesk features whatsoever.
Okay, what about scheduling tools? Perhaps you offer appointments or reservations to your clients. Maybe you host live events. Either way, you want your customers to be able to book, cancel, and pay for services through an integrated, user-friendly calendar tool. The problem is, Kajabi does not have one.
So, if you are a Kajabi user and want a helpdesk or a calendar tool, you would have to subscribe to additional services — and spend even more money just to ensure the basic functionality of your online business.
In contrast, Kartra offers both helpdesk and calendar features — and a lot more — as part of its very affordable basic package.
Value for Money
Here is another problem. Even where Kajabi does offer certain tools, you may still have to pay extra to get them. Kajabi’s basic plan does not give you access to the platform’s full functionality. It excludes really useful features such as automation, affiliate tools, and a theme editor.
If you want any of these tools, you would need to either upgrade your Kajabi plan or subscribe to other service providers to fill in the gaps. Either way, your expenses will quickly add up — and for no good reason whatsoever.
What’s more, using different providers for different aspects of your marketing and advertising strategy can seriously mess up your analytics. What you want is an integrated and straightforward overview of how your business is performing. Instead, you will end up with all sorts of disparate reports that do not tie up to give you the full picture.
Kartra, on the other hand, offers a comprehensive and budget-friendly starter package that includes all the essential tools and features your business needs to hit the ground running. More importantly, all these features work together and complement each other seamlessly. That means you can get detailed reports and analytics on every single aspect of your online presence, allowing you to closely track your performance across the board.
Quality of Analytics
Having ready access to high-quality reporting on demand is absolutely crucial for the success of your business. It is estimated that data-driven marketing can make companies six times more likely to be profitable year over year.
Data is key — and yet, Kajabi does not come with split testing. That means you can’t know which campaigns work and which do not. As Kajabi does not offer tracking links either, you also won’t be able to know where your traffic is coming from or what your visitors are doing once they get to your page. To do all that, you would have to get a separate split testing tool from another provider.
To ensure that your analytics are up to standard, in addition to split testing, you would also need to factor in all the other tools that do not come with Kajabi or with your personal subscription plan — and get your reporting on their performance elsewhere.
As a result of all this, you will not only end up with subpar analytics but also risk serious data transfer errors that could mislead you as to where your business is going.
You will not have such issues with Kartra. Kartra offers the full set of essential online business tools, coupled with detailed and well-integrated analytics in real-time.
With Kartra, you can see at a glance if people are watching your videos and if your forms are making conversions. You will know how many visitors and sales you have, each complete with a lead history report detailing all the interactions every lead has ever had with you — and a lot more.
Kartra vs. Kajabi: In-Depth Comparison Feature by Feature
The previous section was meant to give you a general idea of the three major areas in which Kajabi lags behind Kartra. In this section, I will go over each of Kartra’s twelve built-in functionalities in detail and compare them to those of Kajabi.
1. Page Building
Any online business needs a website, and any website needs to have pages. And you want to have all sorts of pages. A home page, landing pages, product launch and coming-soon pages, long sale pages, upsell and donwsell pages, check out and thank you pages… The list is practically endless.
So unless you do coding for a living and are really good at it, you definitely want a tool that does your page building for you. Both Kartra and Kajabi offer page builders as part of their basic packages. However, they do not provide the exact same services — and the devil is, as always, in the details.
The good news is that both platforms will get you:
- A built-in landing page builder
- A built-in web form builder
- Landing page personalization
So far, so good. Compared to Kartra, however, Kajabi only offers limited custom “Thank You” pages. You also don’t get a landing page template marketplace as you do with Kartra.
Both Kartra and Kajabi come with an intuitive drag-and-drop editor that allows you to easily create all sorts of pages. With Kartra, however, you get a lot more templates and customization options. There are dozens of templates of calls to action, countdown timers, and other features to choose from.
More importantly, though, Kartra has built-in A/B split-testing features. These allow you to compare and contrast the performance of up to four page variations. You also have the option to split set percentages of the visitor traffic between the different variations.
2. Email Marketing
The importance of email marketing to doing business online simply cannot be overstated. Studies show that email brings nearly 40 times more new customers than social media outlets such as Twitter or Facebook combined. It is, therefore, absolutely essential that you incorporate emails into your marketing strategy.
Both Kartra and Kajabi offer the following features:
- A built-in email editor
- Automated follow-up and re-engagement
- Automated sequences
- Broadcasts
- Email personalization options
- Lead importation
- Message open tracking
- Native email automation
- Segmentation
Unlike Kartra, however, Kajabi only offers limited click-through tracking. On the other hand, Kajabi allows you to send unlimited emails per month. That is something that you do not get with Kartra.
The following features you only get with Kartra:
- Lead scoring
- List cleaning
- Email split testing
- Email templates
- Expiring tags
- SMS sequences
Having a wide range of gorgeous email templates to choose from is vital for building a successful email marketing strategy. Kartra gives you all that plus endless ways to customize your emails so that they fit your brand. You can add add-ons such as countdown timers, content blocks, thumbnails, customer testimonials, and more.
And then there is email split testing. As I mentioned before, Kajabi’s plans do not offer split testing. In contrast, Kartra comes with automated advanced split testing, which allows you to split-test both your email subject lines and the content of your messages. This way, you can optimize every single one of your emails and set your email marketing campaign up for success.
What’s more, Kartra’s email lead scoring tool automatically scores your leads based on their history, behavior, and interactions with you. That can greatly improve your analytics and help you make better and data-driven decisions for your business moving forward.
3. Tracking and Analytics
Kartra’s in-depth tracking and analytics do not just stop at email marketing. They are incorporated across the board and cover every single feature of the platform.
Granted, some of Kartra’s analytics tools come with Kajabi too. These include:
- Broadcast analytics
- Detailed sales and transaction analytics
- Funnel conversion reports
- Membership site analytics
- Page analytics
- Page tracking
- Sequence analytics
- Video analytics
Other tools, such as:
- Custom date range reporting filters
- Detailed form analytics
- Lifetime value reports
- Visual performance reporting
… you also get with both platforms, but Kajabi supports limited functionality only.
And then there are the analytics tools that only come with Kartra:
- Analytics for affiliate sales for other brands
- Detailed helpdesk analytics
- Goal conversion rate reports
- Goal conversion time reports
- List analytics
- Split testing
- Tracked links
I’ve already touched on Kajabi’s lack of split testing and helpdesk tool. The other tools mentioned above, however, are no less critical when it comes to getting accurate, comprehensive, and actionable reporting on the performance of your business.
Take goal conversion rate and time reports, for example. These allow you to track your users’ behavior in real-time. Whether you want to see when they closed a sale, submitted a form, or clicked on a particular link or button — Kartra allows you to do all that and more.
High-quality analytics and a data-driven approach are a must for any online business. They are key to getting ahead of the competition and staying afloat in today’s market. Kartra’s comprehensive portfolio of reporting tools is the obvious choice for any entrepreneur.
4. Campaign Building
You simply cannot have a marketing strategy without well-thought-out and integrated marketing campaigns. Unless you are a seasoned marketing professional, you might want to have someone do your campaigns for you. Hiring an expert, however, can be expensive and time-consuming.
Fortunately for all us online entrepreneurs, the good news is that modern marketing platforms have excellent ready-to-use campaigns that we can customize to suit our brands. Kartra and Kajabi are no different. They both offer great campaign-building tools such as:
- A drag & drop page builder
- A pre-built campaign marketplace
- Campaign triggers
- Conditional filtering
- Custom domains
- Done-for-you campaigns
- Goal-based automation
- Page analytics
- Responsive design
- Web page templates
Unlike Kartra, however, Kajabi only allows for limited functionality when it comes to adding custom HTMLs. What’s more, Kajabi does not offer custom wait steps and marketing campaign split testing — both of which you can get with Kartra.