Kartra Review
Kartra Review 2021
If you’re reading this Kartra review, it’s obvious that you want to know more about the Kartra all-in-one marketing platform and if it’s right for you. Our Kartra review team took advantage of Kartra’s $1.00 14-Day 30-Day Trial to check out the features and functions of Kartra so that we can provide you with the up-to-date information you need to decide whether or not you want to give Kartra a try.
Some Background on Kartra.
Kartra was created in 2018 by Genesis Digital Inc. which was founded by Andy Jenkins and Mike Filsaime. There were some creative differences between the two; and they have since parted ways, but if you’re familiar with Mike Filsaime, you know his marketing products have a history of being sound. In the opinion of our Kartra review team, Kartra is no exception. It’s certainly a sound product.
What Kartra Is?
Kartra is a software suite designed to give you all the tools you need to build and manage your professional online presence in one place. By offering a number of apps that you would otherwise pay for individually and integrate together, the object of Kartra is to save you time and money so that you can get the most out of your available resources.
What Kartra Is Not.
Kartra is not just another shopping cart of funnel building software. It goes beyond that. Later in this Kartra review we will look more into Kartra’s various features and give you a more indepth feel for how different Kartra truly is from other ecommerce and marketing softwares.
Kartra Stand-Alone, or Integrated.
While it’s true that Kartra works as a stand-alone software suite, Kartra can also integrate with many other business and marketing softwares. What this means for you is that you don’t have to leave behind a service you already have in place if it’s working well for you. Rather, you can take advantage of Kartra’s other features while integrating that product you don’t want to leave behind.
Kartra At a Glance.
Kartra is a fairly extensive all-in-one business marketing software. Like other softwares of this sort, it offers a number of useful features that you can use to start or build your business. Glancing over the Kartra platform, you’ll see that they have something to help you achieve practically any goal you set for your online business. Later in this Kartra review we’ll explore these features more in depth, but for now, let’s just take a quick look at the key features Kartra has to offer.
- Marketing campaigns are a big part of Kartra. With Kartra, you can create a custom marketing campaign, or you can choose from a selection of high-quality premade templates that are already tried and tested. One of the most well-recognised might be the 4-Day Cash Machine campaign that can help you jumpstart your sales right from your current customers.
- Checkout pages are a big deal in ecommerce, and Kartra provides a dedicated shopping cart for your website with tools to create a customized, branded checkout page for your business. Add products, set price points, upsell, downsell, order bump, collect payments, and set up a cart abandonment sequence to reconnect your customers with the products they’re interested in.
- Lead generation and management are both easily handled within Kartra. Whether you are looking to generate new leads or market to your existing leads, Kartra has options.
- Create a website with zero tech knowledge directly in the Kartra platform. Setting up your site is made simple with drag and drop functionality. You can design your own templates or choose from a variety of premade templates that you can tweak and customize to taste.
- Membership is loyalty, and with Kartra you can set up membership programs with enticing benefits for your customers. Memberships can work for virtually any business model, and they help get your customers invested in your products. With Kartra, you can create and manage memberships directly on the Kartra platform.
- Kartra’s built-in calendar system allows your customers to book predetermined time slots without having to play tag. Further, Kartra calendar can automate pre screening so that you aren’t setting appointments with time-wasters or dead-end leads.
- Kartra has a built-in video player that allows you to see who’s watching, who finishes, and how far drop-outs get before they quit watching. Kartra video also has the benefit of being free from the distractions that are commonly found on sites such as YouTube or Vimeo.
- Kartra has onboard affiliate marketing and management, so you can create affiliate programs for your products. You can also become a Kartra affiliate, so if you have no product in mind just yet, that’s a good place to start.
- Kartra has onboard analytics to help you track your pages, funnels, and sales so that you can see what’s working and what’s not.
- Training. Our Kartra review team agreed that the Kartra Academy, or Kartranaut Academy, as they call it, was fairly simple to use and fully comprehensive. This in-depth training program is a definite plus. There’s an entire start-to-finish tutorial available through the Kartranaut Academy, but there are also help pages, infographics, and instructional videos, and step-by-step guides to help you get set up and running.
Try Kartra. Not Free, But Close.
Kartra offers a 14-Day 30 Trial for $1.00. This trial can be cancelled to avoid recurring charges, but because it’s not free, it’s a little different from other multifunctional marketing software trials. There’s a reason for this.
Like any legit business, Kartra doesn’t want to deal with time-wasters. This is why they don’t offer a free trial. They want the people that start a trial to be serious about trying their product. When you think about it, the logic is sound: if a person isn’t willing to invest a dollar to try the product, they aren’t as likely to take the trial seriously.
By charging a single dollar, they eliminate dead-ends, and significantly reduce time-wasters. Fewer inactive or cancelled accounts preserves resources, and the dollars they collect from serious leads help cover the overhead of those who eventually drop out. Unfortunately, this will require you to enter credit card information, but most free trials require that, too.
Why Should I Try Kartra?
If you’re considering a multifunctional software, it makes sense to try it out before committing to a purchase. The trial gives you enough time to check out the features of the software and compare them with other softwares you’ve tried. You’re not jumping in with both feet; you’re getting your feet wet first.
What Do I Get For My Dollar?
Kartra allows you to try any of their membership packages, so you can try a higher tiered package, and if it’s too much or too little for your needs, you can adjust your membership accordingly. You don’t get a stripped-down version of Kartra, you get the full version of whichever membership plan you choose for 14 days 30 days, and it’s only $1.00.
How Do I Cancel My Trial?
So you’ve tried Kartra and it’s not for you. Now what? Cancellation is easily done through your user profile settings. It isn’t difficult or mysterious. However, you’ll definitely want to cancel as soon as you know you will not continue using Kartra. Their cancelation policy requires cancelation within 10-days of your recurring bill date. This can be confusing because when you sign up for the trial they say cancel at any time. There have been some concerns about erroneous billing from some users, but no one on our Kartra review team has had any issue with cancellation or billing.
Is Kartra For You?
Kartra has a lot to offer for online business, and brick-and-mortar businesses alike. The question of whether Kartra is a good fit for your business, however, largely depends on what you are looking to achieve by using Kartra.
Kartra Is For You…
If you’re looking to start up an online business and you are interested in using a software that will reduce overhead and streamline backend processes, you will likely find that Kartra is an excellent tool to use, especially for digital product sales. If you’re starting up, Kartra can help you get up and running fast without tech knowledge, that is, no coding or integrating numerous costly softwares.
Kartra Is Also For You…
If you’re already an established business, Kartra can help you combine existing processes and eliminate costly integrations. In fact, Kartra is ideal for online business owners who have a functional website, but who just can’t seem to generate and convert enough traffic into the sales they need to make their business profitable.
Kartra For Solutions.
If yours is like many other businesses, there are obstacles and challenges to overcome in order to optimize your potential. Kartra offers solutions to many common business pitfalls. So, what are some problems you can solve with Kartra? Our Kartra review team has put together a few examples of solutions we found during our Kartra review process.
Tech Hassles.
One problem many businesses encounter when trying to build and maintain a profitable online presence is running and integrating multiple softwares. No matter how well your systems are integrated, over the course of a year you run into problems. Whether it’s because of updates or glitches, integrated softwares breakdown, and anything that can go wrong eventually will.
We want our systems to run smoothly because any time spent troubleshooting and reintegrating is time lost. And let’s be real, worst-case-scenarios happen. Who doesn’t dread the thought of having to ditch one software for another? Configuring and integrating new software from scratch is time lost and money lost. It’s a technical nightmare. Unfortunately is not just a dream scenario; it really happens.
Kartra offers an alternative to multi-software integration by offering everything you need on one platform. No more time-consuming, glitchy, or problematic integrations are needed. With Kartra everything is onboard. Disaster averted; problem solved.
Low Conversion Rates.
With a standard website, you can generate a lot of traffic and still have problems with sales conversions. Kartra offers a simple to set up sales funnel builder to help you keep traffic moving in the right direction without a lot of bouncing around.
While distraction is a big problem, another problem Kartra helps solve is invisibility. If your website is invisible, you won’t have traffic to convert. Kartra has built-in analytics and SEO tools to help you see where your page is ranking and what you can do to rank even higher.
Time Waste.
Time management is a huge part of building and managing a successful business. Unfortunately, there are many time intensive processes involved in running a business, and it’s easy to get into the habit of juggling time.
Everyone on our Kartra review team has dealt with time juggling, and we all agree that more often than not it leads to dropping the ball. In my opinion, Azy had the best example of the kind of problems time juggling can cause. She wrote a blog and ran a shop under the pseudonym of her cat. This was back in the early Naughties, so Kartra wasn’t even a thing yet.
As she tells it, she had a weekly advice column where people wrote in asking advice from her cat, and she would answer their questions as her cat and direct them to a product in her shop or another monetized blog post where she hoped to gain click-through revenue. For this to work well, she had to get her email opened and read, select a question, send a thank you email to the person whose question she selected, get the post formatted and links set, and publish the blog. However, all of this took time, and because she was actively working full time, getting everything ready for her weekly advice column became increasingly difficult and time juggling became a regular habit
Pretty soon the balls began dropping. Working in haste to read and vet (no pun intended) emails meant that she was hemorrhaging time that could have been better spent writing daily posts, posting new products, working, or really anything other than sifting through a lot of email that was mostly people pretending to be dogs trolling her cat. She couldn’t keep up with it all, and she eventually stopped writing the advice column, and that resulted in a huge decline in her readership. You can guess what happened after that.
Now, I agree this sounds totally ridiculous, mainly because it is. We live in a ridiculous world, and people love ridiculous things. However, she swears she could have turned that blog into a fantastic drop-shipping pet supply business if she’d had an email tool like Kartra Mail to help sort and segment her email communications automatically, and everyone in our Kartra review team believes she’s right. In fact, as our Kartra review team went through all the problems Kartra can solve, time management, especially through email automation and contact management came up time and again.
Kartra Review of Features.
Kartra offers a number of apps that are specifically designed to help you set up and manage your business. Our Kartra review team utilized the $1 14-Day 30-Day Trial offer to gain access to Kartra Silver. Kartra Silver has access to every feature, including Kartra Agency, so we were able to check all of it out and see what each feature does, how well it does it, and how easy it is to use.
Kartra Checkout.
Kartra Checkout is exactly what it sounds like. It’s how your customers checkout when making purchases from your store. Kartra Checkout offers four options for customizing your checkout experience.
- Kartra-hosted checkout pages, complete with pre-made checkout templates. Easily editable, basic layouts, each with a clean, appealing appearance.
- Overlay Kartra Checkout pop ups onto your custom website. This option allows you to pop up a payment form right on your personal website without redirecting your client to a Kartra Checkout page. While it doesn’t redirect, it does have the drawback of possibly being blocked by pop up-blocking software, so it’s probably wise to let the customer know that they will have to allow pop ups from your site before completing checkout.
- Embedding Kartra Checkout forms into your custom checkout pages allows you to create your own custom checkout pages on your own personal website without having to redirect customers to a Kartra Checkout page for payment. This is nice, because the form looks natural on the page, and there are less opportunities for hang-ups and snags.
- Create your own custom checkout page with customized payment options from a naked html form. This option is obviously for the tech-savvy teams who want to use a highly personalized layout. You will start with absolutely nothing here. This is great for agencies and individuals who are willing and able to put in the time and effort to design and code their own checkout page.
Kartra Leads.
Kartra Leads is a built-in lead generation and management system that you can use to find leads, sort them, and interact with them according to their interests and behaviors (behavioral adaptive marketing). Kartra Leads is not simply an email list builder. Kartra Leads works better than most stand-alone lead generation systems because Kartra Leads automates lead scoring and tracking. This allows you to develop your leads into paying customers by tailoring your marketing efforts to their tastes rather than simply fishing from a standard mailing list.
Kartra Pages.
Kartra Pages is an app designed to make setting up your web presence quick while keeping it clean and professional. It’s functionality is a little more complex than some of the competitive softwares our Kartra review team has looked at in the past, but that’s because Kartra Pages isn’t simply a landing page builder. Because it’s integrated with all of Kartra, you can create an entire website, optimized with high-converting landing pages, forms and checkout pages.
In spite of the learning curve, Kartra Pages wasn’t too much of a head-scratcher. We all agreed that once you got the hang of it (Kartranaut tutorials are extremely helpful here), the result was a super clean, fully-functional, and professional looking web presence suitable for new products, existing products, and even product launches.
Apart from giving you the tools to create a complete website, Kartra Pages provides you the ability to see how your site will appear to visitors across platforms. Not everyone is researching on laptop or desktop computers these days. Mobile technology is a major player in the real world, so you definitely want to know how your website is going to look on mobile platforms. Kartra Pages has layout view functionality so that you can get a look at how your site looks on different devices.
Again, it can’t be overstated that every app within Kartra is compatible with all the other Kartra apps, so you don’t need to go outside of Kartra for anything else. This is a huge plus because it allows Kartra to do what Kartra is designed to do: provide you with an all-in-one marketing solution rather than a Frankenstien’s Monster of pieced together programs.
Kartra Mail.
One of the most important aspects of your business is communication. Email still plays a large part in how a business owner, especially an online business owner, interacts with their leads and customers. This is why any email automation tool you use must be effective and efficient.
Our Kartra review team looked specifically at how well Kartra Mail delivered as an email marketing platform when compared with other email marketing softwares. Of the following, we found Kartra Mail handled them all equally well.
- Email Broadcast.
- Email marketing campaigns.
- Newsletters for email subscribers.
- Dedicated email.
- Lead-Nurturing Email.
- Transactional Email.
- Re-engagement Email.
- Brand Building Email.
- Email sequences, including cart abandonment.
- Calls to action.
One of the most important things you need to know about the Kartra email builder, is that this email marketing tool doesn’t provide you with a dedicated inbox like that you might get with a stand-alone email marketing platform. This probably isn’t going to be a huge issue if you’re using a custom domain with an attached inbox, but if you’re using Kartra for everything, you will still need to acquire verifiable email addresses through a paid email service for any inboxes you want to set up on Kartra. Free mail services, such as Google or Hotmail, will not work for setting up Kartra Mail as an email platform.
Once you have an inbox set up for sending and receiving email, Kartra’s email builder offers a comprehensive mail suite designed to create and automate business communications. The system Kartra uses is equipped with a number of type-specific templates, all of which can be dragged and dropped into an intuitive, word-processor-like interface. If you’d rather not use any of their pre-made templates, Kartra also offers you a blank canvas option with a complete set of drag-and-drop modules to create your own personalized design.
Kartra’s email builder interface is fairly straightforward. You have a left-side tool box that gives you access to everything you need to create your emails, and Kartra Mail offers a number of customizations to help automate your email processes. Single and double opt-in forms, email confirmations, and success emails are all automated through Kartra Mail, so when new leads opt-in, they can be automatically added to a relevant lead list.
Our Kartra review team especially appreciated automated double opt-ins because leads are required to confirm their email address before being added to a mailing list. This is a good way to avoid losing genuine leads to email errors. Furthermore, it helps weed out fabricated emails from dead-end leads.
Because Kartra Mail is a true email automation tool, it also makes building multiple lists, segmenting and managing contacts, and creating dedicated emails easy.
With Kartra Mail, easily set up forms to add new contacts directly to a dedicated email list based on your email subscribers’ interests. For instance, if you have a website that offers pet supplies, you can easily segment your clients based on which pets they have. If they are dog lovers, you can send emails dedicated to dog lovers. If they are cat lovers, you can send emails dedicated to cat lovers. If they have both, you can send email for both. Whatever that customer is interested in, Kartra Mail will help you effectively market your products directly to them, and you can even use individual client names. Effective and fully automated marketing.
Kartra Funnels & Campaigns.
Marketing automation is extremely important for an online business, and Kartra Funnels & Campaigns is Kartra’s built-in marketing automation platform. Building a Kartra marketing funnel is a great way to get your products noticed and increase sales. Further, because it’s fully onboard with all other Kartra apps, you won’t need to integrate it like you would a stand-alone marketing automation tool.
Without getting into the who Kartra vs Clickfunnels debate, I will say that Kartra works a little differently from other funnel builders I’ve personally used. While I found it somewhat counterintuitive at first, once I got a feel for the way Kartra’s online marketing tools worked, I had no trouble creating and executing clean, professional sales funnels for both digital products and physical products.
That having been said, I did find that funnel building was more difficult for physical products because, of course, other processes are involved outside of the funnel, such as shipping and handling, etc. Nevertheless, the outcome was still excellent.
In Kartra, your funnel is part of the greater campaign. However, because Kartra Funnels is fully integrated with all of the other Kartra apps, you won’t need additional email marketing automation software or funnel marketing automation. Everything can be done right in Kartra, and it can be highly customized including call-to-action buttons, slide bars, and drop down menus. No code required.
There are options for creating your own custom campaigns, or you can go the Done-For-You route, which everyone in our Kartra review team found pretty impressive. There are a number of ready-made funnel templates and campaigns that you can tweak and personalize in countless ways, and the entire process from product creation to email sequencing is all laid out for you. You just have to add your personal touches, which Kartra makes fairly easy to do with drag and drop modules, point and click editing, and a royalty-free image gallery (an extra feature that I find highly useful).
Kartra has options for those who are just starting up, such as the List Builder campaign, to those who have an operational business and want to enliven their current leads. The Four Day Cash Machine campaign is really stellar for lead regeneration.
With Kartra, you can create an entire sales funnel campaign, complete with landing page, opt-in page, forms, and follow up sequences in around 30 minutes. That’s not to say the first one you make is going to be super quick and easy. You are going to need some guidance, especially for the more advanced features. That having been said, you’ll find all you need in the Kartranaut training course. I can’t stress this enough: If you want to build a profitable business with Kartra, you need training. If you don’t want to labout the software, you’re going to end up confused and frustrated. Learn all you can, and the Kartra sales funnel builder and marketing campaigns will work for you.
Kartra Membership Builder.
One of the best parts of Kartra is that it has an onboard membership platform. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Membership is loyalty, and I believe that any business can benefit from a membership program.
As an example, I frequent a coffee shop that has a coffee club. If I purchase 10 coffees I get one free. Since I drink a lot of coffee, this is something I’m interested in. This membership is an in-shop offer only. It’s a small shop with practically no web presence. Imagine what would happen if the owner of my favorite coffee shop set up a new site with Kartra Pages, redirected current traffic to his Kartra site, and created a specific campaign advertising his coffee club membership. Offering current members a discount for active referrals through the Four Day Cash Machine email campaign would certainly boost his business.
While the owner of my coffee shop is content with his small shop operation, you as an online business owner likely want a more profitable business. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be reading this Kartra review. Well, this is something you can do with Kartra to boost your business and you don’t have to pay for another program to make it happen.
Our Kartra review team found that building a membership portal in the Kartra Membership builder was fairly simple. It is mainly a matter of adding details, selecting specific membership requirements, such as whether or not to password protect, and then building and managing content for your members. Kartra’s content builder isn’t difficult to operate, and any questions you may have about the process are easily answered in the training materials Kartra offers.
One of the things our entire Kartra review team appreciated about Kartra’s Membership feature is the ability to track your members’ progress. This feature helps you see which members are more active, and which members need a little more motivation. This helps you know how to better target your marketing efforts.
Kartra Videos.
One of the most effective forms of marketing is video, and Kartra Video didn’t leave anything out. Kartra Video offers detailed analytics on what people are watching, what they aren’t watching, and where they are dropping out, but what truly make Kartra Video an effective video hosting tool is its ability to automate CTAs and implement behavioral adaptive marketing strategies (behavior-based automation) directly within your video space. Not only does Kartra Video limit external distractions, it increases the effectiveness of video marketing by giving you the option to add your own banners, opt-ins, captions, action buttons, and social media sharing buttons.
This may sound complicated. I’ll admit that it was somewhat overwhelming at first, But our Kartra review team agrees that Kartra’s video hosting tool is worth the effort. Once you get a feel for the way things work, you will definitely find Kartra Video useful for effectively informing, promoting, and selling both digital product and physical products. And remember, the Kartranaut training is going to help you learn everything you need to know.
Kartra Helpdesks.
Kartra Helpdesk is an excellent tool for managing your business’s customer service needs and thus increasing your customer satisfaction. Kartra obviously put a lot of thought into this feature because this tool functions well for single or multi agent customer service setups. It doesn’t matter if you do it yourself or if you have a team, Kartra Helpdesk can help get you organized and running smoothly. Here are some things you can expect from Kartra Helpdesk.
- Multiagent organization.
- Automated ticketing.
- Team tiering for help desk ticket escalation.
- Fully integrated access to customer history.
- Multiple support channels that are directly accessible from your website.
Kartra Calendars.
I personally love Kartra Calendars. It goes beyond simply offering online appointment setting. Kartra Calendars allows you to set up a schedule that your clients can then book into without playing phone tag or email volleyball. You can open up and blockout specific dates directly within the calendar, and clients can then choose their times from what you make available.
While that’s all pretty basic, some aspects of Kartra Calendars really stand out. First thing, it’s fully integrated with Kartra Checkout, so if you’re a paid consultant, a course instructor, or you want to lower cancellations by taking a payment or deposit upfront, Kartra Calendar can book that slot and take that payment without leaving the booking page. Also, Kartra Calendars is fully integrated with Kartra Mail, so automating confirmation emails and reminders is no problem.
Kartra Forms.
If you’ve ever gone to a store website, you definitely have an idea of how forms work. You need information, and forms gather that information for you. Kartra Forms is a form builder that offers a number of style and function options to grab your visitors’ attention and to make entering their information simple. Whether you are interested in creating form pages, pop ups, or peeks, Kartra forms has a way to create it.
Kartra Forms has the added benefit of being fully integrated across the Kartra platform. This eliminates the need for outside software integrations, so that once your visitors fill out the forms, Kartra uses the information they enter to create and add a potential customer to your contacts.
Kartra Affiliates.
Affiliate programs are a great way to motivate others to promote your product. Kartra Affiliate is a flexible suite of affiliate marketing tools designed to help you quickly set up your affiliate program and affiliate portal. You may wonder if affiliate marketing would work for your business model, or you may not even know what affiliate marketing is. So let’s address these questions first.
Affiliate marketing is essentially online commission sales. You have individuals with their own established websites and contacts who promote your products through these channels, and you only pay them when someone purchases through their unique user link. Affiliates are typically individuals who are interested in your products because they already have an audience that will respond favorably, but this isn’t always so. Sometimes someone is just good at marketing, and they know they can move a product. Either way, you aren’t paying anything upfront for affiliate marketing, so it’s probably worth your time to at least give it some serious thought.
Affiliate marketing may seem scary if you’ve never done it before, and if you’ve tried it before without a solid system in place, it probably sounds even scarier. However, our Kartra review team found that setting up a highly customized affiliate portal through Kartra was far simpler than any of us thought it would be. We were able to create both global and individual affiliate settings right within the Kartra platform, and we were able to create affiliate tiers with customized per-product settings.
I personally used the Kartra training video to figure out how it worked, and the video was so precise that I had no trouble following it. I was pleased with Kartra’s affiliate management tool. Kartra allowed me to set a commission for individual products as well as a higher commission for higher volume sales affiliates right within my affiliate portal. I particularly like this feature because it motivates affiliates to really work the products they promote. If they have the option to move up to a higher commission for greater sales volume, my products are going to be their priority.
Not to go on about it, but the other thing I like about the customized commission system is that if I have someone who is interested in my product because it mutually promotes their business model, think fitness trainer/protein shakes, I can set a specific tier level just for that individual. The customization options per affiliate and per product are really what have me loving Kartra Affiliates.
Kartra Integrations & API.
If you’re just starting up, you likely won’t need to integrate anything to Kartra other than your essential payment platforms, such as PayPal or Stripe. As your business grows, however, you may find that you need some wiggle room to prevent bandwidth and email overages (Starter Plan). This is why Kartra makes it easy to integrate with offboard systems. This makes sense for both you and Kartra, because Kartra knows that your business will grow with their product, and they want to make sure your business doesn’t outgrow their product.
Using integrations can increase your messaging capability if you are a high-volume email marketer who only needs one custom domain. It can also help you accept payments from all over the world by integrating international payment gateway softwares such as Authorize.net. In summary, integrations may not be necessary if you’re starting up, and they may never be necessary if your business is still fully manageable within your Kartra tier. However, you have options if you need them, and with outside integrations attached to Kartra as your hub, you’re going to keep your overhead low while meeting your business needs.
Kartra Analytics.
Getting to know your customers is essential if you want to effectively market to them, and Kartra knows this. That’s why Kartra Analytics was developed and added to the Kartra platform. This is a convenient feature, as it eliminates the need for analytics integration. Further, Kartra Analytics collects data directly from every Kartra app. This means that you know the data you get is going to be accurate and up-to-date when you get it, and you’re going to get a complete picture of your business across the board.
I personally love this feature. I’ve worked with Google analytics in the past, and while I did get the information I needed, it felt like the setup was never ending. Once I got my site analytics set up, then I had to add analytics to my blog and campaigns separately. Because I didn’t have everything in one place, I had to set it all up individually. Kartra eliminated that problem. Once Kartra was up and running, so was Kartra Analytics.
There is another reason having onboard analytics sets Kartra apart, and that’s upgrading. If I’ve gone through the hassle of integrating my analytics across multiple platforms, upgrades to any given software can pose a significant setback. This is especially true if the changes are on my analytics software. And this is going to happen because tech is constantly evolving. Having everything onboard just takes away the hassle of keeping up with the updates.
Kartra Agency.
Kartra Agency was added to the Kartra platform in 2019. It’s designed for people who have a knowledge of Kartra and want to run agencies for specialized services using the Kartra platform. (Think web design or digital marketing.) With Kartra Agency you can create, sublease, and control multiple Kartra accounts from a centralized dashboard.
Kartra account owner agencies give you the ability to purchase and sublease Kartra accounts while keeping full access to those accounts on behalf of your clients. If you’re running an agency where you’re essentially doing everything for your clients, this is a good model for you. Kartra offers a 40% discount on buy-in-bulk Kartra accounts for your agency, and you aren’t limited to selling them for the Kartra price. You choose your markup. You buy your Kartra accounts and charge more or less depending on what best works for you.
Service provider agencies are set up by connecting your Kartra account with other Kartra member accounts. By doing this you can provide services to them through Kartra and operate as a contractor for their business.
Kartra Marketplace.
Kartra Marketplace is a pretty cool feature. I’ve worked with a number of multifunctional softwares, and only the elite few offer a marketplace feature, and most are not as impressive as Kartra Marketplace.
So, to give you an idea of how Kartra Marketplace works, let’s imagine that you’ve read this review, Kartra sounds perfect for you, and you access the software, play around with it, and decide you are definitely going to stick with it. But (there’s always a but lurking around under there) you don’t really want to spend the time designing everything from scratch, and you don’t have the budget to risk hiring someone on the outside who may not even be familiar with Kartra and how it works.
Enter Kartra Marketplace.
Kartra Marketplace is just what it says it is: it’s a specific place where experienced Kartra users can market their pre-made templates as well as professional Kartra-specific services. This makes it easy for business owners to find the best content and most productive services without risking valuable resources on templates or services that simply don’t pan out.
Kartra Pricing.
Kartra offers several pricing options. Each is a per month pricing plan, billed as recurring subscriptions. Kartra offers a significant discount if you are willing to pay for the entire year upfront. The plan you choose will depend on the individual needs of your business, and whether or not you plan on using Kartra for multiple businesses or as an agency. Let’s take a look at the plans Kartra offers.
Starter Plan.
Kartra’s basic plan, or Starter Plan as it’s called, offers everything you need to get up and running your small business. What it doesn’t give you is access to Kartra Agency. The cost is US$99.00 per month if billed monthly, or US$79.00 if billed annually.
What’s included?
- 2,500 leads.
- 1 custom domain.
- 15,000 emails per month.
- 50 GB bandwidth per month.
- 100 hosted pages.
- 50 hosted videos.
- 20 products.
- 2 membership sites.
- 1 additional team member.
- 1 helpdesk.
Silver Plan.
Kartra’s Silver Plan is one of the most popular Kartra plans, because it’s great for established small businesses who are looking to use Kartra to grow. The cost is US$199.00 when billed monthly, or US$149.00 per month when billed annually. (That’s a US$600 savings when billed annually.)
What’s included?
- 12,500 leads.
- 3 custom domains.
- Unlimited emails per month.
- Unlimited bandwidth per month.
- Unlimited pages.
- Unlimited videos.
- Unlimited products.
- Unlimited membership sites.
- Unlimited team members.
- Unlimited help desk per month.
- Kartra Agency access.
Gold Plan.
Kartra’s Gold Plan is ideal for transitioning to Kartra businesses with an established base, that are actively growing, and that have a higher volume lead pool, or for upgrading growing Kartra-based businesses. The cost is US$299.00 monthly when billed per month, or US$249.00 monthly when billed annually. (That’s an US$840.00 savings when billed annually.)
What’s included?
- 25,000 leads.
- 5 custom domains.
- Unlimited emails per month.
- Unlimited bandwidth per month.
- Unlimited pages.
- Unlimited videos.
- Unlimited products.
- Unlimited membership sites.
- Unlimited team members.
- Unlimited help desk per month.
- Access to Kartra Agency.
Platinum Plan.
Kartra’s Platinum Plan is perfect for any established business with a high-volume lead pool and the need for room to grow. It’s great for transitioning an already established business to Kartra or for upgrading a growing Kartra based business. The cost is US$499.00 monthly when billed per month, or US$379.00 when billed annually. (That’s a US$1440.00 savings when billed annually.)
What’s included?
- 50,000 Leads.
- 10 custom domains.
- Unlimited emails per month.
- Unlimited bandwidth per month.
- Unlimited pages.
- Unlimited videos.
- Unlimited products.
- Unlimited membership sites.
- Unlimited team members.
- Unlimited help desk per month.
- Access to Kartra Agency.
Kartra Pros & Cons.
Every product has its pluses and minuses, and Kartra is no different. Our Kartra review team put together a list of things we loved, and things we didn’t.
Kartra Pros.
- Great checkout options with a variety of checkout templates.
- Up-sells, down-sells, and squeeze pages.
- Coupons and discounts.
- Automated lead scoring and tracking.
- Layout viewing for mobile optimization.
- Automated double opt-ins.
- Automated email segmentation.
- Checkout and Calendar are integrated making up-front payments easy.
- Multiple form functions and styles.
- Membership setup and marketing.
- Onboard, fully integrated analytics tools.
- Highly customizable affiliate and Joint Venture options.
- Pre-made templates for marketing funnels and email marketing campaigns. (Kartra really is a high quality sales funnel software.)
- Onboard royalty-free image library (a convenient extra feature).
- Marketplace.
- Agency capability.
- Training, taining, training! The Kartra Academy, or Kartraverse as they call it, is truly an excellent, fully comprehensive training tool.
- No monthly email caps beyond the Starter Plan.
- No monthly bandwidth caps beyond the Starter Plan.
Kartra Cons.
-
- No webinar feature.
- No native inbox, and free inboxes, such as gmail, will not work.
- No free trial.
- Not as intuitive for selling physical products as for selling digital products.
- Learning curve on some features.
- Lead caps on every plan, even the Platinum Plan, which can result in potential overages or outgrowth.
- Leads that are created in Kartra stay in Kartra. There is no autobackup to your hard drive, so it’s wise to regularly export and backup your leads outside of Kartra. That way, should you need to cancel, you aren’t rushing to back everything up.
Things We’d Like To See In Kartra’s Future.
Everything can improve, and here are some improvements our Kartra review team would like to see in Kartra’s future.
- Webinar feature.
- A free 14-Day Trial.
- A fully unlimited Enterprise plan.
- Native inboxes for Kartra Mail.
Kartra Review Summary.
Kartra is an all-in-one platform designed to give your business an all-in-one solution to cross platform integrations. It offers 14 separate apps in one unified dashboard, and also has an agency feature with access beginning at the second pricing tier.
Kartra has four price plans, each tailored to different sized businesses. Each plan has a cap on leads, but most features are not capped beyond the Starter Plan. Upgrading you Kartra plan over time is easy to do, and doesn’t require any extra work on the user end.
Kartra offers solutions to many common business issues, such as technical limitations, low conversion rates, and time waste. Kartra requires no tech knowledge to use, offers professional, vetted content on the marketplace, and it provides pre-made templates for marketing funnels and email marketing.
Kartra offers in-depth training for anyone, even non-members. If you ever need assistance figuring out how to handle a feature, Kartra lessens the learning curve by offering instructional videos and walk-throughs on every Kartra feature.
Conclusion.
Overall, our Kartra review team agreed that Kartra as a whole is a much more polished product than most Kartra alternatives. The training options were clean and easy to navigate without a lot of out-dated information clogging the system. The features were fairly comprehensive, and the interface certainly has a smooth, professional appearance.
Throughout the review process, any questions we had were easily answered without ever having to open a support ticket. Furthermore, cancelling the Kartra tial was not difficult, though the cancellation policy was a little confusing at first. I suggest you read the cancellation policy carefully just so you know what they require when you sign up for a plan, just in case you should wish to cancel in the future.
If you’re interested in trying an all-in-one marketing suite, Kartra may be the only one you try. It certainly is a great place to start. The price options are competitive, and the product is solid. So, go ahead and give it a shot. The trial is well worth the dollar.