When it comes to building a course, there are a lot of platform options to choose from. With more people than ever building and buying online courses, many of the options take different approaches to course creation, delivery, monetization, and more.

Kartra and Kajabi are two online course platforms that have much more in common than just their first letter. Each has a very similar approach to course-building, and backs up a course-based business with a comprehensive set of marketing features. In fact, they’re so similar in terms of what they offer that it can be tricky to figure out which is right for you.

So if you’re trying to decide which of these two is the right place to host your course, this article will talk you through how to compare Kartra vs. Kajabi and what each one gives you.

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Kartra is course/membership software that calls itself "all-in-one marketing software". It has:

• A membership and marketing platform that lets you build and sell a course.

• Marketing features like campaigns, automated email sequences, and affiliate programs.

• Checkouts, landing pages, sales funnels, and more of the elements you need to run an online course-based business.

Kajabi has many of the same features that Kartra has, and is probably better known in the course space.

Kajabi has:

• An asynchronous course engine that's well-rated.

• Landing pages and marketing funnels pre-built for a bunch of use cases.

• Automations like email campaigns, welcome sequences, and drag-and-drop landing pages.

• A community feature for forums and chat.

While it can be tough to tell the difference between Kartra vs Kajabi and what they offer, here’s what we’ll consider in this side-by-side:

• Features: We’ll compare the features that both Kartra and Kajabi give you for creating, marketing, and selling your course. We’ll walk you through the tools each one gives you for doing this successfully, as well as the limits of each.

• Price: We’ll compare the prices of Kartra vs Kajabi, and show you what you get for your money.

• Apps & access: Finally, we’ll compare the options for mobile apps and how you and your students can access your courses.

It’s tricky to compare Kartra and Kajabi on features because they are actually quite similar.

Kartra starts with a leads-focused approach that helps you design your sales funnel and tweak it with relevant data. They then focus on creating a product: a membership, course, booking calendar for coaching, etc. The result is that the sales process Kartra offers is quite strong. It has a lot of complexity and customization options for different use cases.

The membership site builder is probably the best feature, as a drag-and-drop website creator. It makes it relatively easy to get a decent landing page for your product. But some of the other product features are quite basic. You can host simple discussions with a forum feature, and the course function is essentially a gated post feature rather than a proper LMS.

Kartra is continuously adding new features like email marketing, form builders, and a new AI brand content builder.

Kajabi is obviously a much better-known course builder than Kartra, and the product creation platform is much stronger. In particular, Kajabi gives you a better course function than Kartra, with a dedicated LMS. You can create fairly comprehensive courses, including polls and quizzes, and it gives you different options for course delivery: dripping content, full asynchronous, etc.

Like Kartra, Kajabi has a set of marketing features built in. So, you can also build custom landing pages and websites, with a drag and drop builder and lots of templates to work from. Kajabi integrates your email too, and you can create complex funnels with sales triggers and tripwires, plus a bunch of other marketing tactics.

Both Kartra and Kajabi are comparable in features, but Kajabi has a better design. However, Kartra is cheaper (which we’ll talk about next).

There is one challenge that both Kartra and Kajabi have. Neither of them has very strong community and membership features. Both platforms offer extremely basic member interaction – Kajabi’s is so limited that people who build courses there frequently go to Facebook groups to get a viable community.

When it comes to price, both Kartra and Kajabi are expensive: probably among the highest of the online course platforms. While we said above that Kartra has a less extensive feature base and LMS system, it does cost slightly less. Its cheapest plan starts from $59/mo on monthly billing.

On the other hand, Kajabi’s platform costs even more, from $179/mo if billed monthly.

While both of these options come with extensive marketing options, it’s important to evaluate whether these are worth the cost – especially up front before you’ve even landed your first course member, and especially since the membership and community features are so limited. You’re basically paying for the marketing features.

For the final consideration, let’s talk about how your course members can access your products. Kajabi has a good mobile app that works for all devices. Although you can’t build with it, you can deliver courses to your members.

Kajabi's communities require a second, separate app - Kajabi Community 2.0.

By contrast, Kartra doesn’t actually have an app, so there’s not much to say here. If your members need to access your course or membership site, they’ll need a computer.

Kartra and Kajabi come with great marketing and website infrastructure. And Kajabi handles an online course. But NEITHER builds engagement well. Both optimize for funnels and not for people.

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