ClickFunnels and Kartra are both popular digital marketing platforms that can each potentially form the cornerstone of a company’s social media marketing campaign. Both take a significant financial commitment from a small business from month to month, but which is better?
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Kartra is better than ClickFunnels because–while it doesn’t allow for third party integration as ClickFunnels does, it features many more features than ClickFunnels and has a robust email marketing system built-in with its basic subscription. Read our in-depth Kartra review with videos here.
ClickFunnels is cheaper and has third party integration but requires an upgrade to its platform for email marketing capability, meaning the same capability for $297/month through ClickFunnels is offered for only $99/month through Kartra.
On their face, both Kartra and ClickFunnels offer many different capabilities as marketing platforms, but Kartra offers more features at a cheaper monthly price. Read on to find out the differences between Kartra and ClickFunnels to find out why Kartra is the superior choice.
What Is ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels is a digital marketing platform that allows users to:
• customize landing pages for business websites
• persuade site visitors to purchase goods and services directly from a search engine
• data mine contact information to populate email list for marketing campaigns
• observe user analytics to make their website stronger
ClickFunnels allows users to construct sales funnels, a direct marketing strategy that is concentrated on drawing a customer through a digital path that ultimately leads to an online purchase of goods or services. By using sales funnels, a business owner can:
• Create awareness in the consumer of a product’s existence
• Generate positive buzz about products in the mind of the consumer
• Make potential consumers desire a product above other products
• Convince the consumer to make a digital purchase on the spot with intuitive user interfaces and easy checkout systems with drawback options
As a platform, ClickFunnels specializes in landing pages, a type of webpage that make up the first pages linked to from a search engine. These are the building blocks of all successful web design aimed at consumers, making them an important part of a digital marketing strategy.
Landing pages are the first page a potential customer will see when they pull up a company website from a search engine, and they are the pages that are most likely to land an online sale, so the copy on these web pages must be perfect and persuasive.
ClickFunnels has impressive page-building capability and is considered one of the best marketing platforms in the social media marketing industry.
It contains dozens of custom premade templates that gives business owners a good jumping-off point for web page construction that is aesthetically pleasing and encourages buyers but also lets the business owner customize the page to the specific needs of the company’s mission.
ClickFunnels’ prime functionality is as a landing page builder, but it also incorporates other features that help fill out a business owner’s social media marketing campaign. Here are some of the other ClickFunnels features:
• Subscription and membership systems
• Customized checkout options such as downsell/upsell and abandoned cart follow-ups
• Payment integration with major online processors such as PayPal and Stripe
• Capability to build webinars
• Split-testing page analytics that allow the user to test the conversion rates of different landing pages against each other
• User analytics tools that help you create a detailed dossier of your customer base and develop subsequent marketing strategies for fostering repeat business and brand loyalty
One of ClickFunnels’ best advantages is its customization. With its integrated templates, it’s possible to create different kinds of landing pages that display a business exactly how the owner wants it to be displayed, while simultaneously generating online sales.
With this kind of built-in customization, ClickFunnels reduces the need to bring in third party web developers or a creative agency to design a company website, since it gives business owners who are digital laymen a way to do this in an intuitive, easy-to-learn way.
Here are some examples of other sales documentation that ClickFunnels can create other than
landing pages:
• Sales letters. These are emails used to create potential sales leads and intrigue customers in an attempt to direct them to a company website. If sales letters are not catchy and persuasive, they will be deleted as spam.
• Video sales letters. Video media is being used more and more often in company websites to incorporate multimedia and increase interactivity on a page. Video sales letters are particularly effective for demonstrating products or providing testimonials.
• List building pages. List building pages are used to create new sales leads by collecting contact data on potential buyers who visit a company website. These contact lists are set up via opt-in subscriptions for business newsletters and promotions.
• Safe and secure checkout pages. It is important to have credible purchasing checkout options on your website that are orchestrated through reputable, legitimate payment processing systems such as PayPal or Stripe.
• Upsell pages. Upsell pages are used to offer a potential customer upgrades or additions to their original purchase once the customer has already decided to buy something. This can increase the net revenue generated in a digital sale.
• Downsell pages. As opposed to upsells, downsell pages offer a potential customer a way to buy a discounted item or item of lesser value when the customer visits a product listing on a landing page, but then clicks away and doesn’t complete the sale.
• Webinar funnels. Webinars are a digital service that allows a business to expand from just offering products to also offering online subscriptions for content, generating a steady stream of passive income. Many businesses have webinar potential.
• Thank you/download pages. While they don’t involve a major sales function on a website, thank you and download pages are a way to refine the overall presentation of a company website and leave a positive lasting impression with the customer.
• Gated subscription areas. Like webinars, gated subscription areas on landing pages are a way to generate passive income from a company website by giving access to special content for people who pay an ongoing fee.
What Are the Biggest Advantages of ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels has been used for several years now, and as such it has had time to integrate user feedback and unroll new features. Because of its seniority, ClickFunnels has a finished, streamlined feel, and using it yields several advantages over Kartra.
The biggest advantages of ClickFunnels are the following:
• ClickFunnels is easy to use. ClickFunnels has been around long enough that there are many tutorials available to help teach users how to use the various aspects of the software and optimize everything.
• ClickFunnels has tons of people recommending it. ClickFunnels has a lot of web buzz in the digital marketing industry, and part of this is due to its aggressive affiliate and referral strategies. That being said, it has built a reputation on quality.
• ClickFunnels keeps digital marketing from being a chore. Some digital marketing tools are so badly designed that they make business owners hate the digital advertising aspect of their business and consider hiring it out. ClickFunnels makes it fun and easy.
• ClickFunnels integrates with other third-party platforms. If a user wants to use multiple platforms merged into a super-platform for the greatest ability to cherry-pick features from whichever platforms they like, ClickFunnels can probably accept them.
• Trying ClickFunnels out is completely free. Unlike Kartra, users pay absolutely nothing to give ClickFunnels a shot for two weeks, which gives ample time for someone to play around with the platform and decide if they like its dashboard and interface or not.
What Are the Biggest Disadvantages of ClickFunnels?
While there are some advantages to using ClickFunnels as a digital marketing platform, there are also several distinct disadvantages to using it over Kartra. Here are some of the disadvantages of using ClickFunnels:
• ClickFunnels has a learning curve for its more advanced options. ClickFunnels’ basic functionalities are easy to learn right away, but to get a handle on its more advanced features like integration and automaton, you’ll have to do some tweaking.
• The page template options are limited. While ClickFunnels has plenty of options for building landing pages, they can start to look repetitive. The templates will feel constrictive to people who want to use more creative flair in building their pages.
• Many of ClickFunnels third party integrations require a porting platform, such as Zapier. This means that in order to use ClickFunnels’ integration functionalities, business owners will need to pay for yet another monthly subscription for their marketing.
• ClickFunnels’ affiliate and referral programs make it difficult to believe some of the hype. While ClickFunnels has a strong online reputation, it is also marketed aggressively, with affiliates being paid well to promote its use, diminishing their credibility.
What Is Kartra?
Unlike ClickFunnels, which was designed from its inception to be used by business owners and entrepreneurs, Kartra started its life as a tool for eCommerce marketers and creatives in digital advertising. It was primarily focused on shopping cart functionality.
Now in 2018 Kartra has relaunched as an all-in-one SAAS platform with the following digital marketing capabilities:
• Customizable landing pages. Like ClickFunnels, Kartra gives you the option to build layered, multi-step web pages that can do everything from collect contacts via opt-in to showcase products for purchase.
• Email marketing software. ClickFunnels has email marketing software as part of its Actionetics program; however, this software is locked behind its upgraded Etison Suite, which is a whopping $297/month. Kartra gives you this capability right out of the door.
• Membership sites/subscription systems. Like ClickFunnels, Kartra gives you subscription functions that allow you to gate off special content for paying customers, keeping them engaged with your website for more repeat business.
• Robust shopping cart options. Kartra has the downsell/upsell capabilities of ClickFunnels, but also integrates lump sum vs. installment payments, coupons, and much more to completely customize the customer’s purchase experience.
• Sales generating automated marketing campaigns. Kartra gives a business owner the ability to set up email marketing campaigns designed to draw customers in straight from their own inboxes and keep them coming back for more.
• Affiliate management. Kartra makes it easy for business owners to keep track of their affiliate programs so that other people can help drive traffic to their landing pages, generating more business.
• 360-degree analytics. Kartra offers a level of analytics that is only available in ClickFunnels’ upgraded version with its basic package, making it easy for business owners to keep track of how their web pages are performing.
• Intelligent split testing. Like ClickFunnels, Kartra has page split testing so that business owners can test the effectiveness of various landing pages against each other to see which versions draw in more web traffic.
What Are the Biggest Advantages of Kartra?
Kartra has some distinct advantages over ClickFunnels when it comes to certain aspects of its platform functionality. Here are some of the biggest advantages of using Kartra over ClickFunnels:
• You get email marketing capabilities from the get-go. ClickFunnels locks its email marketing software, Actionetics, behind an expensive upgraded edition of its platform, removing a huge part of its functionality from the basic platform. Kartra doesn’t do that.
• Kartra is an all-in-one system. Kartra doesn’t put strong emphasis on third party integration because it doesn’t need third party integration. Kartra is capable of handling everything a user needs to manage digital business from product pages to analytics.
• Kartra has greater creative control. For entrepreneurs who want to tweak every aspect of every page, Kartra gives that level of flexibility in web design, with lots of options to create hundreds of different kinds of web pages and sales funnels.
• Kartra has more refined options for upgrades. While ClickFunnels only has two versions–Basic and the Etison Suite–Kartra has five different upgrade packages available, so that users can customize their level of marketing to their needs.
What Are the Biggest Disadvantages of Kartra?
• Kartra doesn’t have third party integration. This means that if you want to use Kartra synced up with another specific kind of marketing platform for, say, email marketing, you’re out of luck. Kartra is designed to be used in-platform across the board.
• Kartra can be confusing if you don’t understand web design. Rather than hold the user’s hand through web design, Kartra depends on the user to know some fundamentals of how web pages should be put together and can intimidate novices.
• Kartra has no street cred. ClickFunnels has been around for a lot of years at this point and has been the topic of many conversations in the digital marketing world. Kartra’s all-in-one platform is pretty new, so any entrepreneur who uses it is taking a bit of a risk.
ClickFunnels vs. Kartra: User Friendliness
ClickFunnels: User Friendliness
There’s no denying that both ClickFunnels and Kartra are very effective digital marketing platforms, and ClickFunnels does have a few advantages over Kartra when it comes to user friendless and interface.
For one thing, it was designed with the layman in mind, which means that ClickFunnels is a lot more inclined to hand-hold the user and is a good choice for entrepreneurs who are intimidated by managing and creating web design. If you know nothing about designing a website, ClickFunnels will help.
As a task-oriented platform, ClickFunnels takes you through the process of creating a page step by step, making it easy to build an entire web presence from the ground up even with no prior experience setting up a marketing campaign.
Kartra: User Friendliness
Because Kartra was initially designed for digital marketers rather than layman entrepreneurs, it can be a little overwhelming at first.
Rather than taking a user through the process of building a web page first and then their subpages, Kartra starts users at the end goal–the purchase pages–and has them work backwards towards building the main landing page.
This can seem confusing, but by using this methodology, Kartra only grows your options for customization and digital brand refinement as you go along, whereas ClickFunnels limits them the further in you get.
Kartra doesn’t hold the user’s hand through the process of setting up their website, but on the flip side of that, it also doesn’t limit the user. This means that the customized page can be as simple or sophisticated as the limits of the user’s imagination.
ClickFunnels Vs. Kartra: Functionality
ClickFunnels and Kartra have similar capabilities when it comes to page creation, automation, analytics, and other digital media marketing strategies.
However, one large disadvantage that ClickFunnels has versus Kartra when it comes to functionality is that it locks its email marketing functions behind an upgraded version, while Kartra includes them in its basic version.
This means that if you want email marketing capabilities with ClickFunnels, you’re going to have to pay literally three times as much money monthly to have access to them compared to Kartra.
For small business owners, an extra $200 a month makes a huge difference in what they can reasonably afford to pay for advertising and digital presence, so the fact that ClickFunnels doesn’t integrate this functionality into its basic package is a big fault of the platform.
ClickFunnels vs. Kartra: Upgrade Systems
Both ClickFunnels and Kartra are available in multiple versions available for purchase so that users can tailor the package they buy to their needs. Here is how ClickFunnels and Kartra break down their upgrade systems.
ClickFunnels: Basic and Etison Packages
ClickFunnels is available in two packages: Basic and Etison.
The Basic version of ClickFunnels is $99/month, and includes the following features:
• 20 sales funnels
• 100 pages
• 20,000 visitors per month
• Unlimited contacts
• 3 custom domains
The Basic version of ClickFunnels does not include email marketing software or affiliate tracking software (Kartra’s basic version offers both).
The Etison Suite version of ClickFunnels is $297/month, and includes the following features:
• Unlimited sales funnels
• Unlimited pages
• Unlimited visitors per month
• Unlimited contacts
• Unlimited custom domains
• ClickFunnels’ email marketing software Actionetics
• ClickFunnels’ affiliate tracking software Backpack
As you can see, there is a significant jump in functionality between ClickFunnels’ basic version and its upgraded version, but with this jump in functionality comes a significant jump in monthly price as well, tripling the overall cost of the program. This is a prohibitive price for many users.
Kartra: Starter, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond Packages
Unlike ClickFunnels, which only has two version options, Kartra is broken down into five different packages with varying levels of functionality. It should be noted that there is a significant discount per month if Kartra is paid for in a lump annual sum versus monthly.
Kartra includes both email marketing capability and affiliate tracking in its most basic version along with a landing page builder, contact lists, and more. Each upgrade of Kartra is mostly designed to increase the number of contacts, emails, pages, and visitors per month.
Each version of Kartra can be used on a 14-day trial basis for $1.
The Starter version of Kartra is $99/month ($79/month annual) and includes the following features:
• 2,500 contacts
• 15,000 emails
• 100 pages
• 20 products
• 2 helpdesk portals
• 1 custom domain
• 20 dynamic follow-ups
• 50GB bandwidth per month
• Unlimited page visits
• 100 automatons
• 2 membership sites
The Silver version of Kartra is $199/month ($149/month annual) and includes the following features:
• 12,000 contacts
• 125,000 emails
• Unlimited pages
• Unlimited products
• Unlimited helpdesk portals
• 3 custom domains
• Unlimited dynamic follow-ups
• 125GB bandwidth
• Unlimited page visits
• Unlimited automatons
• Unlimited membership sites
The Gold version of Kartra is $299/month ($249/month annual) and includes the following features:
• 25,000 contacts
• 250,000 emails
• Unlimited pages
• Unlimited products
• 5 custom domains
• Unlimited dynamic follow-ups
• 200GB bandwidth
• Unlimited page visits
• Unlimited automatons
• Unlimited membership sites
The Platinum version of Kartra is $499/month ($349/month annual) and includes the following features:
• 50,000 contacts
• 500,000 emails
• 100 pages
• Unlimited products
• Unlimited helpdesk portals
• 10 custom domains
• Unlimited dynamic follow-ups
• 500GB bandwidth
• Unlimited page visits
• Unlimited automatons
• Unlimited membership sites
The Diamond version of Kartra is $699/month ($549/month annual) and includes the following features:
• 100,000 contacts
• 1,000,000 emails
• Unlimited pages
• Unlimited products
• Unlimited helpdesk portals
• 10 custom domains
• Unlimited dynamic follow-ups
• 600GB bandwidth
• Unlimited page visits
• Unlimited automatons
• Unlimited membership sites
Because Kartra is broken down into several different packages, it is easy for a business owner to grow their Kartra subscription gradually as their online presence grows and their need for more bandwidth, pages, emails, and contacts increases.
Why Is Kartra Better Than ClickFunnels
Kartra and ClickFunnels are both designed as all-in-one digital marketing platforms and serve the same basic functions in creating an online presence for a business and driving digital marketing campaigns through web pages and email.
However, when it comes to deciding which platform to use, Kartra is the better choice because it gives you a lot more functionality at a much lower cost point than ClickFunnels. If ClickFunnels offered Actionetics in its basic version, the two platforms would be more comparable.
As it stands, however, you get a lot more bang for your buck through Kartra than you do ClickFunnels. Kartra also has a more sophisticated pay structure than ClickFunnels, allowing small business owners to upgrade their digital marketing more gradually as budget permits.
Why Is Email Marketing So Important?
If the decision over which is the better platform comes down to email marketing accessibility, why is it so important? The fact of the matter is that the landing pages of a business website are ineffective at generating repeat business and fostering customer relationships on their own.
Email marketing strategies allow the business to reach out to potential customers where they live. Once a customer has left a business website, there are millions of other things (and companies) vying for that customer’s attention.
Email campaigns allow businesses to touch base and remind the customer that they exist, possibly highlighting a need or want in the customer to purchase further services or products.
Email marketing not only provides an opportunity for a business to bond with the customer through brand identification but also provides the customer with discounts and other incentives that will keep them coming back to spend more. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.
ClickFunnels vs. Kartra: Final Verdict
Start-ups and small business owners typically don’t have a lot of money to throw around on advertising to begin with, so every dollar counts. Business owners looking to invest in a SAAS platform need to weigh the pros and cons of each system carefully.
While Kartra is an objectively better value due to its email marketing capabilities provided at a third of the cost of ClickFunnels’ Actionetics, there are a few reasons someone might still choose to go with ClickFunnels instead.
ClickFunnels is a good choice for novice marketers who know very little about web design or setting up web pages. It has plenty of premade templates that make jumping into online marketing easier for entrepreneurs with no digital experience.
However, for people who are driven to put more goal-based thought and creativity into their landing pages, and who want a robust email marketing functionality at a very economical price, Kartra is the obvious way to go.