What is it about Kartra vs Clickfunnels that has people talking? That’s likely because these two are the most sought-after of today’s all-in-one platforms for online businesses.
Clickfunnels has been in the game longer than Kartra, but the latter has quickly caught up and established itself as a solid frontrunner alongside its counterpart.
Each marketing platform has its strengths and weaknesses, which we’ll cover in detail in this comprehensive, step-by-step comparison. We’ll also go over the key features of each to help you decide which one is best suited to your needs.
Kantra vs Clickfunnels: A Quick Comparison Chart
| Platform | What Is It? | Best For | What It Does Better Than the Other |
| Kartra | Cost-effective all-in-one platform for businesses that offers video hosting, CRM, analytics, shopping, cart, marketing, web pages, and more | BeginnersDigital product or service business that want a simple and affordable all-in-one solution to their online marketing needs | Runs your business for a lower price Customer service and efficiency analytics |
| Clickfunnels | Leading marketing automation tool and sales funnel builder for e-commerce businesses | E-commerce businesses, advanced marketers, and companies that want to build high-converting sales funnels | Conversions Webinars Selling |
Let’s begin the comparison, shall we?
An Overview of Kartra vs Clickfunnels
Before we dive into our comprehensive comparison of these two marketing platforms, let’s get to know a little bit more about them.
What Is Kartra?
Kartra is an all-in-one online marketing platform and sales funnel builder created by Mike Filsaime. It comes with all the features you’d expect an all-in-one solution of its caliber to have: video hosting, list building, email marketing, web hosting, and many others.
Using Kartra, you can create membership sites, sales funnels, landing pages, helpdesk systems, lead capture forms, and campaigns.
Kartra’s Features:
- Simple drag-and-drop builder and dashboard that’s extremely easy to use. Everything is listed on the left-hand panel, and you get an initial tour of the software to help you get the hang of things.
- Pre-designed checkouts let you offer card and Paypal payment options.
- Page builder with drag-and-drop features and hundreds of pre-designed templates brings your site’s flexibility to another level. In particular, this feature is what allows you to create a mobile-optimal site.
- Incomparable lead generation allows you to build prospects, leads, and a client database and organize them in groups via custom tags and lists.
- Allows you to set up a multi-page sales funnel to help with conversions, as in converting visitors to leads, leads to buyers, and buyers to recurrent customers.
- Email marketing lets you set up live or automated SMS or email marketing campaigns to reach out to those interested in your products and services.
- Has a membership site builder with a drag-and-drop feature to help you distribute content, training, or course material.
- Allows for pop-ups to appear midway through videos
- Web form creator inserts lead capture forms, multi-video playlists, and more.
- Gives customers the option to submit tickets through the helpdesk portal. The portal integrates fully with checkouts to offer top-notch billing support.
- Comes with built-in calendars for easy registering and organizing of individual sessions with customers under one integrated dashboard
- Lead capture form templates let you custom your own fields with automation rules and tagging.
- Comes with an affiliate program that allows you to obtain, manage, and monitor affiliates to promote services and products
- Using one centralized console, manage online client accounts effortlessly
- Opens doors to solutions outside of landing pages, marketing funnels, and the like. The platform offers tons of expert advice and resources not limited to the basic ones.
- Integrates with numerous business apps and has a comprehensive API for coding and programming your own customized add-ons
Now let’s go on over to Clickfunnels.
What Is Clickfunnels?
Like Kartra, Clickfunnels has no shortage of sales and marketing tools for building sites and high converting sales funnels.
This all-in-one online marketing tool is Russel Brunson’s magnum opus. It lets you market, sell, and distribute products and services online.
Furthermore, it offers solutions such as Facebook automation, email marketing, drag-and-drop editing, one-click upsells, and more.
ClickFunnels’ Features:
- Drag-and-drop builder that lets you construct a sales funnel without requirements for coding. Thus, you can build a sales funnel from nothing or use any existing high converting sales funnel templates to do so.
- Create funnels that capture visitor contact information to use for lead generation.
- Create unique and attractive pages and funnels to guide traffic through the entire sales process and convert them
- Add a click upsell to the shopping cart and boost revenue per client.
- Etison Editor is a straightforward drag-and-drop feature for setting up a landing page and a sales page. Using this feature, you can also build webinar event pages, membership sites, sales pages, order forms, and opt-in pages.
- Using the drag-and-drop visual editor, you can easily build a sales funnel from scratch or by editing pre-configured sales funnel templates.
- The Actionetics email autoresponder is a standout feature that lets you automate email and Facebook marketing. Similarly, Zapier integration can be used to send info automatically between Clickfunnels and Facebook pages.
- Follow up funnels allow connecting and reconnecting with your target audience anytime, anywhere. You can use it to send carefully structured messages via text, email, social media, and desktop notifications to your clients.
- Get affiliate commissions when you share funnels with friends and get them to sign up successfully.
Both Clickfunnels and Kartra feature a full suite of sales and marketing tools for helping online businesses build their sites and market their products. But while Clickfunnels focuses primarily on creating sales funnels and teaching your audience about your company, Kartra can run your entire business independently.
Clickfunnels vs Kartra: Advantages and Disadvantages
Congrats on your first online business! Before you decide between these two online marketing platforms, it’s critical to look at their strengths and weaknesses and how they align with your needs.
With each marketing platform housing so many features and services, it is vital to pick apart each carefully to know exactly how it will factor into your online business processes.
Kartra Pros and Cons
Where does Kartra shine, and where does it fall short? Let’s take a look.
Pros:
- SMS integration
- Feature-rich email marketing
- Subject line and email body split testing
- Schedule meetings effortlessly with a built-in calendar
- Comes with marketing material that’s ready to use, including copy, emails, and design
- In-depth reporting and analytics
- Video hosting that features behavioral tagging
- One-of-a-kind marketing templates
Con:
- Unless integrated with a third-party app, it does not come with a specific webinar feature
Clickfunnels Pros and Cons
What does Clickfunnels bring to the table? Where does it fall short?
Pros:
- User-friendly, even for beginners
- Great mobile adaptability
- Integrates with nearly all marketing tools
- Email autoresponder
- Set up Zaps, Webhooks, and custom code
- No code requirement for drag-and-drop builder
Cons:
- Slow response for email support (no other type of support available)
- Unable to host videos
- A little bit on the expensive side
Kartra vs Clickfunnels: A Comprehensive Comparison
Time to get into detail about how Kartra and Clickfunnels fare against each other in the following aspects of running an online business:
Sign-ups
Getting started with Kartra begins with selecting a pricing plan and providing pertinent details such as your business’s name, email address, and other similar bits of information. There’s a 14-day free trial, which costs one buck and offers access to everything Kartra offers.
Then, you will need to fill out the billing details.
For Clickfunnels, signing up is even easier and shouldn’t take more than a minute.
And before we forget to mention, their two-week free trial is actually free and includes their sales funnel builder feature to boot!
You’ll need to initially type in your email and create a password. Once that’s done, provide your address and credit card details for billing.
Victor: Clickfunnels
Both online marketing platforms offer pretty straightforward sign-up processes, but Clickfunnels wins this hands down for its 14-day free trial where you don’t have to pay for anything—not even one dollar.
Customization and Ease of Use
The perfect marketing tool should come with a dashboard that’s easy to use and a host of customizable templates.
How does Kartra fare in this department?
Its dashboard is straightforward and systematic and offers an initial software tour to help you get the ball rolling.
The left-hand panel lists all the services you need, including campaigns, sales funnel builders, page builders, calendars, and more.
Click the “My Pages” option to build a landing page or any other page for your site. Click the “My Products” option and start building a site or a funnel. You can also host forms and videos using the “My Pages” option.
Other standout functions:
- My Videos: Video hosting optimized for mobile use
- My Helpdesks: Lets you set up helpdesks
- My Campaigns: Upload and setup email lists, campaigns, and tags
- My Forms: Create forms for lead generation
- My Memberships: Build membership sites with different payment options
All it takes is a single click to access each feature. And regardless of the service chosen, you must launch the builder.
Fortunately, the initial tour should have that part covered, too.
Kantra lets you create products, campaigns, pages, and more from complete scratch or a pre-existing template.
There are templates designed especially for specific pages, forms, products, product launches, squeeze pages, and sales pages, so there’s no need to worry about not finding the right one.
These are also custom templates that you can alter in color, font, and text. However, size is another story, as you won’t be able to change it in most of the predefined elements such as images, logos, and timers.
The builder is straightforward, flexible, and has great drop-and-drag functionality.
Now, for Clickfunnels. It also has a pretty simple dashboard. One that comes with a simple drag-and-drop builder for building landing pages and sales funnels.
Click on “Click Funnels” to begin creating your first page. Then, click on the “Build Funnel” option at the topmost part of the navigation bar to get things going.
You should see the following menu options:
- Build Funnel
- Funnels
- Contacts
- Funnel Marketplace
- Sales Transactions
You will also spot a section with quick links to:
- Build funnels
- Build follow-up funnels
- Send broadcasts
The platform also comes with pre-designed templates that you may apply to each page to boost conversions. There are also pre-designed funnels that correspond to specific landing pages you may choose based on the objective of your campaign or the nature of your business.
Choose a template, add content, and personalize content to align with your brand. The drag-and-drop feature lets you add content by adding more sections.
Page elements can be customized, but you won’t be able to move them around. Regardless, this doesn’t stop you from adding as many relevant images, videos, timers, and buttons as you desire.
Clickfunnels also lets you embed video links from Wistia, YouTube, and Vimeo and design personalized call-to-action buttons and subscription forms.
Victors: Kartra and Clickfunnels
Both Kartra and Clickfunnels have simple and easy-to-use dashboards and close to the same level of customizability for their web page builder.
Campaigns and Funnels
Kartra offers marketing campaigns done “especially for you” and funnels made exclusively by Andy Jenkins and Frank Kern, famous online marketing consultants.
Depending on your objectives, you can choose from an entire library of templates. The funnels are done-for-you and contain numerous elements like sales pages, thank-you pages, and opt-in forms.
Everything is ready to go, from the required lists and tags to the coding work and automation sequences for marketing.
The funnels are inclusive of:
- Four-day cash machine, which, as its name suggests, is a customized funnel that lets you make money in four days.
- Quick-launch funnel launches your product in a breeze
- Plug-and-play campaigns
- Email sequences
- List builder for building your email list through giveaway campaigns
- If-then automation: campaigns triggered by your audience’s actions
You will find all the important elements in these campaigns, including landing pages, thank-you pages, checkouts, emails, and copy.
Automated sequences, required lists, and essential tags can also be found. These monitor client behavior until the closing of sales.
All you need to do is add your name, images, and product pricing before launching the campaigns.
Where do Clickfunnels stand as far as funnels and campaigns? Using this tool, you can customize funnel templates to suit your business goals.
It lets you take advantage of follow-up funnels that can be used to follow up on previous or existing clients or a funnel template for lead generation to acquire leads. Specific funnels for selling services and authored content, and running webinars are also present.
You may even take a quiz to determine which funnel can best meet your objectives.
A funnel provides your audience thorough guidance and follows up with them even after you’re no longer connected, so it’s important to choose them well.
It only takes 10 minutes or less to launch a funnel using Clickfunnels.
You just have to follow these steps:
- Select the sales funnel you need
- Customize the funnel by adding or removing pages
- Use the built-in editor to edit your pages further if necessary
- Acquire leads
- Add digital and physical products
- Conduct split tests to ensure optimal conversion
- Launch the funnel and monitor the numbers using a visual chart
- One-click upsells may be added to the funner to boost revenue
Victor: Kartra
Kartra and Clickfunnels are almost neck and neck regarding sales funnel templates, but Kartra has that little bit extra in terms of trigger campaigns, web page templates, and objective-based automation.
Web Page Building Tools
As far as web page builders, both platforms allow you to build and personalize pages according to your needs and preferences. Both contain standard features like the template marketplace, personalized thank-you pages, landing page creator, and pre-filled fields.
Kartra’s web page builder is found on its very straightforward dashboard. You just have to select “My Pages” and click “New Page” to get started.
There’ll be a ton of templates to choose from, depending on the page you’re looking to create. You may also select the “Blank canvas” option to build your page from scratch.
Using Kantra’s web page builder, you can easily create all kinds of pages. From membership pages, sales pages, and upsell pages to down-sell pages, landing pages, and opt-in forms, there’s always a template for the page you need.
And speaking of templates, here are some of your options:
- Webinar registration pages
- Product launch
- Coming soon
- Product review
- Squeeze pages
- Video sales pages
- Thank you pages
- Long sales pages
There’s almost nothing to the process, and the mini-tutorial should have you covered in case some parts get confusing.
The “preview” option gives you an idea of what these templates are about before you use them. Then, you can select, edit, and customize the template to suit your specifications.
Upon selecting a page, you must choose between two modes: column and component. The column mode lets you customize the sections and column parts of the page layout.
On the other hand, the component model allows you to edit these parts in detail. Thus, you may focus on editing the links, videos, or forms of these specific portions of the layout.
Other options that come with the page builder include:
- Settings: For adding tags, tracking codes, and SEO parameters that contribute to a higher search engine ranking.
- Styles: Set the page’s width, fonts, and background colors.
- Pop Window: Select from all kinds of pop-up templates to add pop-ups to a page.
- Sections: A total of 16 drop-downs will be at your disposal to fill with sections and create unique pages. You can add elements like empty blocks, navigation bars, sections for testimonials, and more.
- Components: Includes drop-downs that contain individual blocks that can be edited CTA buttons, headlines, and more.
Also present are ready-to-use elements like pricing tables and testimonials for enhancing your page’s look.
Etison Editor, Clickfunnels’ web page builder, lets you create web pages based on your products and your method for capturing leads. Pick the template that suits your needs and customize it using the drag-and-drop and basic and advanced editing features.
The page builder’s four color-coded blocks are customizable to make editing a breeze.
The color-coded blocks are composed of:
- Rows and columns: They’re colored blue and found inside the different sections of your website. They make it easier to create section layouts.
- Sections: These are colored green and are considered the base of the whole page.
- Elements: These are orange in color and are found inside columns and rows as individual sales elements. They may be either in video, button or heading form.
This kind of color classification helps you turn individual sections and elements into high-converting features.
There’s no limit to the elements you can add using Clickfunnels to create a more engaging web page. These include pricing tables, bullet lists, video popups, video, audio players, two-step forms, survey forms, and more.
The platform even allows padding, color adjustments, and custom CSS. However, the highlight is the “Checklist” option, which lets you check off everything you need.
Need to add a shopping cart to your page? Clickfunnels’ web page building tool lets you do that without extra tools or steps.
Just use the drag-and-drop feature on your products and add their descriptions, pricing plans, and other relevant information.
You can also build mobile-optimized web pages by setting desirable text sizes for mobile use and previewing them.
Victors: Kartra and Clickfunnels
Both platforms win with their intuitive and feature-rich web page builders.
Membership Websites
Both marketing platforms let you create different tiers of subscription-based membership, where clients must pay for restricted-content access.
Standard features are membership templates, locked posts, automated membership management, and multiple levels.
Kartra boasts an intuitive framework that lets you create high-converting membership quickly and easily. You can also upload content and monitor the performance of these sites using the tool.
Members can access the features included in their membership tier and the tiers below it. A bar for progress monitoring helps your members gauge their progress in the membership journey.
It works instantly and even provides step-by-step guidance to higher tiers.
You can set it up so that members receive a congratulatory message once they achieve a higher tier.
Some unique features of Kartra’s membership sites include:
- Single sign-on credentials
- Automatic emailing of login credentials to members
- Schedule content for publishing
- Upload and host content across all formats, such as audio, video, text, or a combination of the three
- Classify and subclassify lessons
- Automated email notifications
- Centralized dashboard for easy organization of multiple sites
- Multiple membership bundling
- Built-in comments forum for engaging with members
“Membership Analytics” is a standout feature that lets you acquire member data like membership tier, the start date of membership, access level, and more.
Other metrics included are rates of subscription and unsubscription, average retention, the average time to completion, and average content progression. It also keeps track of your active members.
Then, there’s Clickfunnels, which provides a host of easy membership templates for building membership sites. All you need to do is select the template and place your content.
Some basic elements you can add are user log-ins, member area search, membership navigation, and more.
That all sounds great; except that Clickfunnels does not provide integrated audio and video hosting like its counterpart. That allows Kartra to move ahead of it in this department.
Victor: Kartra
Kartra wins this battle, hands down. The tool has membership sites with exceptional analytics, progress tracking, comment moderation, and integrated audio and video hosting—all the features Clickfunnels either lacks or falls short in terms of performance.
Options for Email Marketing Automation
The built-in email editor in both platforms allows for quick and easy email campaigning. Both are unlikely to disappoint with features like native email automation, templates, tracking, segmentation, lead scoring, and automated follow-ups.
But which is unlikely to disappoint less? Let’s find out.
Kartra Mail is intuitive and customizable, so you can structure your campaigns specifically around your needs using stellar customization features and user-based automation.
You can find what you need in the “My Communications” tab located in the dashboard. There, you’ll find the email campaign builder to use at your disposal.
From actions-based automation to setting specific parameters for automation, there are several means for implementing the ideal follow-up system for your customers.
You can even monitor campaigns by maintaining a record of every time clients click and open your mails. There’s also the option to split test your email’s content and subject lines to determine what combination delivers higher conversions.
Let’s not forget the if-then automation, which follows up on your clients based on how they behave.
You can pre-define rules, and the system follows up based on what clients do after opening your emails.
Will they make a specific purchase? Will they subscribe to a specific list? Your email system will follow up on them based on your rules regarding these decisions.
Other notable features include:
- Personalized messages using custom tags
- SMS communications
- List cleaning
- Multiple trigger rules
- Subscribe and unsubscribe
- Move leads to another list
- Measure open-rate, revenue ratios, click-rate, spam complaints, unsubscriptions, and more
- Send email and follow-ups
- Manage subscriptions
- Insightful analytics
- Run communications on autopilot through Kartra Sequences
An automation tool called Actionetics takes the spotlight in Clickfunnels. It integrates with a platform called Twilio.
Head over to the automation tab to add the email sequences and follow up messages to customers.
Choose a template, then enter your name, the subject line, SMTP config, and time-of-delay for sending the email. Follow up funnels can also be created for better audience interaction.
Clickfunnels also lets you create smart lists for collecting specific data on main subscribers.
You can then use this data to find out the following:
- Customers who’ve made a purchase and more than a thousand followers on Facebook
- Customers who abandoned their cart
- Customers who buy a lot
- Customers who consume content but don’t buy anything
You can track email statistics once the messages are delivered. You’ll be able to know things like the products purchased, services used, money generated per main, open rate, and more.
Using Actionetics, you can:
- Tap into social media to access relevant client data
- Find out what your target audience is into
- Import existing contacts
- Create new tags
- Rate and rank clients based on the quality of interaction
- Find out who your most valuable customers are
Victor: Kartra
Clickfunnels is impressive, but Kartra definitely edges ahead in this one. Unique features like comprehensive automation options, list cleaning, and subject line testing secured the win for the tool in particular.
Checkout Page
Both tools allow you to build optimized checkout pages that integrate with multiple payment gateways for easy monetization of web pages.
But which of them does it better?
Using Kartra, users can customize their checkout page fully, using templates for managing carts, sales, promotions, coupons, and more.
A tagging option for cart abandonment is also available. It allows you to tag clients who leave their carts unattended to follow up with them after some time.
You can create all sorts of checkout forms based on the needs of your online business using Kartra.
Do you need a vertical one (single-step form) or a horizontal one (multi-step form)? Kartra lets you do both.
Furthermore, the checkout tool helps manage existing clients, adjust pricing and coupons, freeze subscriptions, and reschedule a payment, among other things.
You get detailed insight on sales and revenue in the dashboard thanks to the tracking analytics.
Everything is monitored closely, from sales, refunds, and rebills to active subscriptions, customer lifetime value, average retention, and cancellations.
You can customize the checkout experience even further by integrating different custom fields and variations of SKU.
Kartra’s checkout page lets you do the following:
- Set different price points
- Sell unlimited services and products
- One-click transactions
- Automatic calculation of VAT or sales tax
- Geo-location tracking
- Order bumps, upsells, and down-sells
- Translates to 12 different languages
- Accepts 40 different currencies
- One-time sales, multiple installments, and recurring payment subscriptions
- Initial payments, discount coupons, special promos, and one-time sales
- GDPR, PCI, and SCA compliance
- Secure credit card payments thanks to 256-bit encrypted protocol
However, there are limitations to Kartra’s payment gateways since they only allow customers to make payments through Paypal or credit cards. That said, the tool can be integrated with third-party payment gateways like Stripe, Braintree, and Authorize.net.
Clickfunnels has checkout page templates that you can customize easily to stay on brand. It has a checkout page editor that’s similar to the website editor tool, which means it’s quite impressive.
Using the software, you can add and manage subscriptions, payment plans, and coupons and recover abandoned carts instantly. It also allows you to monitor sales from the checkout page and align them with your promotions.
Options for adding elements include:
- Apple or Android Pay
- Credit card element
- Product summary
- Order bump
- Product with a variation selector
The platform also supports multiple third-party payment gateways like Stripe, Paypal, Citibank, and Easy Pay Direct. It also lets clients choose between numerous product variants.
Victor: Kartra
This is another area where Kartra is the clear winner. Third-party integrations may be Clickfunnels’ strong suit, but Kartra’s incredible customization options push it ahead to perform better in this aspect.
Reporting and Analytics
The Kartra analytics heatmap is a standout feature that lets you determine how best to engage with your customers. It tracks when visitors have made their way to your page, fill out a form, or subscribe to a newsletter.
The feature lets you monitor the entire sales process, from the creation of the heatmap and tracking of clicks on emails to viewing videos and downloading files.
You can collect all the data you need, such as:
- Page visitors
- Number of new leads
- Daily, weekly, and monthly sales and revenues
- Conversion rate of forms
- Video watchability
Kartra has everything you need to gather essential customer data, so there’ll be no need for third-party analytics platforms.
Clickfunnels offers critical metrics and detailed insights on campaigns. Unlike Kartra, it will need integration with third-party analytics tools for acquiring specific customer information, such as the things that attract visitors to your site.
One such tool is Google Analytics, which requires you to have an active Google account.
Victor: Kartra
It couldn’t be more obvious who wins here, right? Kartra is leaps and bounds ahead of Clickfunnels in this department; we’re not even going to pretend it was a close fight.
Which Is It Going to Be? Kartra or Clickfunnels?
We hope our in-depth comparison of these effective online marketing tools helps you make the best possible decision.
Both are great overall, but one is likely to be better than the other, depending on what your business needs.
You’ll want to pick Clickfunnels if your focus is primarily on e-commerce. On the other hand, Kartra would be an excellent pick for consulting, marketing, information-selling, and gym businesses.
Both offer straightforward tools and email marketing features, though the Clickfunnels plan is considerably more expensive.
As far as checkout pages, there are more payment gateways in Clickfunnels. Kartra provides better membership sites, with features like video hosting, integrated audio, and progress tracking that are missing from Clickfunnels.
Think about each platform’s features, strengths, and weaknesses and how these tie into the needs of your business. That should ensure you go home with the right software.
Kartra vs Clickfunnels FAQs
1. Does Kartra integrate with Clickfunnels and vice versa?
With no coding necessary, you can send info between the two platforms automatically using Zapier. This feature is triggered when you create a contact activity record.
2. What is a similar platform to Clickfunnels that I can use?
OptimizePress is another excellent online marketing platform that works similarly to Clickfunnels. It’s not necessarily better, but it is cheaper.
The downside to using it is that it’s only compatible with WordPress.
3. Is Kartra a funnel?
You can use Kartra to import fully-built funnels in one click.
4. Can Clickfunnels be a substitute for your website?
Yes, it can. In fact, you can use it to create a more modern website instead of the traditional one, with its bevy of features that allow you to collect pertinent user information, provide thorough guidance on the sales process, and create high-converting pages.
5. Who is Kartra best for?
Kartra’s features cater especially to the needs of small businesses and individuals who need an affordable all-in-one platform.
