What Is Kartra?
Kartra is an all-inclusive online business platform founded in 2018 by Genesis Digital (the same team behind WebinarJam).
It includes everything from hosting, email marketing, video, webinars, split-testing, cart checkouts and a slew of other critical tools — each designed to integrate seamlessly with the last.
Now, we’ve all seen tools like this before and I even reviewed one of them (BuilderAll) last year, but Kartra brings something a little more unique to the table.
Not only can you leverage the suite of tools provided by Kartra to build your online business, but they also give you proven, done-for-you funnels backed by marketing legends such as Frank Kern.
Taking the headache out of tech setup is one thing, but having pre-made, battle-tested funnels at your fingertips is a whole another USP to get excited about.
Kartra isn’t just about building a complete online business, it’s about growing it too.
Kartra Features & Benefits
One of the unique and the best features of Kartra is its built-in campaign and funnels, which are essential for your marketing campaigns. Thanks to this funnel, you can easily spoon-feed your marketing system (designed by industry leaders).
To run your campaign, you only need to enter your product name, as well as the preferred pricing.
To do all these, Kartra makes use of a drag-and-drop editor/ sequence builder which enhances the automation of email sequences, as well as the addition of new customers to your subscription list to enhance conversion rates.
The sequence builder also gives you more control over your sales funnel’s content.
Page Building
Let’s talk about the heart of Kartra, the page builder. You can’t run an online business without a website, can you? That’s why Kartra’s page builder is so important.
Kartra offers a pretty much ‘what you see is what you get’ editor. For those without much tech experience, Kartra provides over a hundred pre-made templates for almost any type of page you can imagine.
These include classic home pages, blogs, sales pages, and thank you pages to name a few. Import them easily with just a single click of a button!
The templates look pretty good too, ranging from old-school to modern layouts. If you have a browse, you should be able to find some favorites under each page type you explore.
Templates
One of the biggest selling points for Kartra has to be the huge variety of templates on the site. There are templates for just about everything you need to run your online campaigns from squeeze pages, sales pages, checkout, and coming templates, among others soon.
Besides the variety, you might also like the ease with which you can add or delete the elements of the templates. The other editing functions include the highly intuitive form editor from which you can build/ design unique and diverse forms such as embeddable HTML forms, email opt-ins, click pops and in-line forms.
Copy Samples
The other impressive feature, something we consider a big win for Kartra is the pre-written copy samples. This is a very impressive feature thanks to the fact that not everyone around us gets to curate high-converting copy out of the blue. So, whether you are pressed for time or just need a little help with content creation, the pre-written samples of copies will be there to rescue you.
You might have noticed that most of the templates availed by other page builders are either generic Latin texts or even unoptimized texts. Kartra is, therefore, different in the sense that you will access well-written copies which you can use as-is, only making few changes to ensure that the copy matches your specific business needs.
A/B Split Testing
There’s a lot that goes into the running of a successful online marketing campaign. For starters, you need to make sure that you use a high-converting landing page, especially if you need a successful sales funnel.
Kartra makes this possible with its split testing feature, which allows you to give your audience a taste of different page designs. You can use the split testing function to test headlines, pages’ design, colors, font, copy, or anything else that might require a little tweaking.
Thanks to these tests, Kartra tells you what works and what doesn’t thanks to the real-time and 360-degree analytics from the split tests.
So, if you have two landing pages but are unsure about which one will be loved the most by your audience (higher conversions), Kartra will run a split test of the two pages allowing you to choose the best performing page and to use that page for your campaigns.
Automation
Kartra also features an automation workflow builder which is called a sequence builder.
If you’ve used other email marketing services like ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit, you’ll soon see that it’s like the automation builders featured there.
However, Kartra’s automation feature could use some improvement when compared to other dedicated email marketing solutions.
The feature is quite tedious to use, as adding any elements or shifting items around leads the editor to freeze up. As you can imagine, this can get quite frustrating.
However, if you can deal with the lagging, Kartra offers a useful email marketing system that includes many of the features used by other email marketing products.
It will never beat the dedicated top-name email marketing solutions such as the ones listed previously, but for an integrated marketing system, it works well enough.
If you already use an email marketing tool, think of the money you can save once you cancel it after joining Kartra. After all, even basic plans of email marketing servicers cost a fair amount.
Email marketing
Email marketing is a critical part of your online campaigns, and Kartra wins big when it comes to the email marketing thanks to its full email functionality. The email platform by Kartra works in the same way as any other email marketing platform; allowing you to create email lists, send broadcasts, import contacts, or to create professional-quality email templates.
The best part about Kartra’s email marketing platform is that it manages emails quite well, ensuring that emails don’t end up in Promotions or spam folders. The only other tool that offers this level of email support is ClickFunnels’ Actionetics under the premium Etison plan. And even with the similarities, Kartra still wins since the email marketing function is in the basic/ startup plan.
Marketing campaigns
The creation of marketing campaigns is another key feature of Kartra. The software helps users create successful marketing campaigns, based on the work of well-known marketers such as Frank Kern.
With Kartra, you have a choice of creating campaigns from scratch if you have the technical skills, or you can opt for one of Kartra’s handy premade campaign templates.
If you’re designing a campaign from scratch, the setup will require all the media you’ve created within the platform. If you’re using a premade campaign, however, Kartra will sort this all out.
Right now there are five campaigns ready to choose from, each focusing on a different marketing pain point.
For example, the simple list builder campaign focuses on growing your email list to help you build leads. The 4 day cash machine campaign, on the other hand, helps you close sales with an existing mailing list.
To learn more about each campaign, simply click on the campaign and you’ll be offered a walkthrough video of that campaign and its goals.
If you choose to import a campaign, it will be implemented to your Kartra account complete with email sequences, product sales funnels, advanced automation, and other related components.
Once you’ve deployed the campaign, you can have a look through your account to discover the relevant assets and edit as necessary. They should be easy to spot – keep an eye out for the campaign name.
Video Hosting
The future of content marketing and content marketing strategies, in general, is video. With YouTube and Instagram (Stories) being at the forefront of video usage, you need to ensure that you make the most out of video in your next marketing campaigns.
Kartra makes this possible with its in-built marketing-oriented platform for video hosting. With this inbuilt system, you won’t have to upload new videos on Vimeo, Wistia, or YouTube then have to embed videos.
The video-hosting system allows you to directly embed videos on to your Kartra pages from where you can easily add CTAs as the video plays. You could also organize your videos into easy-to-access folders, collect analytics from people who watch those videos, and also see who watched your videos.
The only problem you might have with the video hosting function is the limitation in storage.
Memberships and Courses
If you are planning to run online courses that require membership from your Audience, you will be impressed by Kartra’s built-in membership ad course platform. In this platform, you get to host all your courses while giving your users limited access to the course’s contents.
So, besides the robust email marketing platform, a feature shared with ClickFunnels, Kartra also offers an impressive platform for courses and memberships. According to some users, the membership builder by Kartra is much better than the one offered by ClickFunnels.
On this platform, you will enjoy the easy configuration and management of digital products. The best part is that this platform is easy to use, and it offered everything you need to provide consultations, or market ebooks, coaching, courses, etc.
Besides access to a platform that allows you to sell your digital products and services with ease, Kartra will make it easy for you to track the performance of your courses of any other products you sell on the platform.
The tracking of performance is made possible by the powerful progress bars which show the progress of your members. Completion badges are shown for users who’ve completed the course. ClickFunnels lacks a tracking system for courses and membership platforms.
Affiliate System
On top of customization and the management of courses/ membership platforms, Kartra also makes it possible for you to run and manage your affiliate marketing system thanks to its affiliate marketing system that will not only grow leads for your business but also grow your business’ sales further, without breaking the bank.
Some of the capabilities of the Kartra Affiliate marketing system include the approval of affiliates, Creation of an affiliate sign-up pages, Affiliate questionnaires, landing pages for your affiliates, the addition of new sign up to special lists, as well as the setup of new payment options.
Integrations
Like any other marketing automation tool, you need to make sure that the software platform you choose has the integrations you need for ultimate automation. Kartra has numerous integrations geared towards making sure that your online businesses run flawlessly.
There are payment gateway integrations like PayPal, Stripe, Braintree, and Authorize.net; email marketing integrations like Mailgun and Sendgrid; Membership integration such as Kajabi and OptimizePress; SMS integrations like Plivo and Twilo; as well as integrations with Zapier.
Calendar
This section is only relevant to business models that include appointments or bookings, so you may want to skip ahead if that does not apply to you. However, if you run a restaurant, beauty salon, or any other business that offers pre-scheduled direct services to clients, then you might want to read my review of the Kartra Calendar.
Organizing a streamlined appointment system is a real pain in the neck, especially if you are doing it manually. Scheduling, rescheduling, avoiding double bookings, last-minute cancellations, sending out reminders… There’s a reason why everyone used to have a personal secretary in the pre-digital age.
Lucky for all of us, in this day and age, we have online calendars at our disposal. When you sign up for Kartra, your subscription includes access to a multifunctional calendar tool that can do wonders for your booking system.
It allows your customers to see at a glance your availability and free time slots. They can easily book, reschedule, or cancel their appointments, sparing both you and them a lot of trouble.
What’s more, the Kartra calendar tool is optimized for both desktop and mobile devices and allows you to embed your own branding.
You also have the option to approve and decline appointments, as well as to block out time slots or entire days. The tool also allows you to send automatic reminders, charge customers when they make the booking, and choose between different calendar models.
Other features
Products/ Cart (Product pricing, cart abandonment rules, cart offer, cart templates and styles, payment gateways, as well as checkout/ thank you pages).
Kartra Pros
- NO coding skills needed
- Support is available 24 hours, seven days a week
- Easy to learn
Kartra Cons
- Tiny Kartra logo appears at the bottom of emails.
- New features added often-can get confusing
- Not a lot of Integration selection
Kartra Pricing
You can try Kartra for 14 days for $1, after that there are a few different plans you can choose from.
Starter – $99 per month or $89 per month (yearly). This plan provides you with 20 different e-commerce products, the ability to create 100 pages, 15,000 emails, and up to 2,500 contacts, and more.
Silver – $199 per month or $149 per month (yearly). This plan comes with the ability to sell an unlimited number of products, create unlimited pages, 125,000 emails, up to 12,500 contacts and more.
Gold – $299 per month or $249 per month (yearly). This plan provides you with the ability to sell unlimited different products, create unlimited pages, 255,000 emails, and up to 25,000 contacts, and more.
Platinum – $499 per month or $379 per month (yearly). This plan provides you with the ability to sell unlimited different products, create unlimited pages, 500,000 emails, and up to 50,000 contacts, and more.
Diamond – $699 per month or $519 per month (yearly). This plan gives you the ability to sell unlimited different products, create unlimited pages, 1,000,000 emails, and up to 100,000 contacts, and more.
Conclusion
Kartra is an all-in-one online marketing tool that takes center stage in the online marketing world. The most impressive feature is that Kartra will replace your email hosting service provider, domain host, your current email marketing platforms, membership platforms, and analytics tools.
So as long as you don’t need something fancy, then Karta will take care of your needs well. Karta is also quite reliable since it runs on some of the best storage and delivery systems like SendGrid and Amazon. It’s also quite easy to use.
