Kartra vs MailChimp: Looking for the Better Marketing Platform? (2021)

Find out whether Kartra is better than MailChimp or not Below!

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What is Kartra?

Kartra is a sales funnel building software and a marketing tool suite that comes with pre-built marketing campaigns. It is an all-in-one solution if you’re looking to start a new online venture. Kartra has easy to use features that make it popular among course creators and marketing individuals, with its excellent email marketing, automation, customer support, and page hosting features, which we will look into later. 

It is founded by Mike Filsaime and Andy Jenkins and comes under Genesis Digital Co. They are also the creators of WebinarJam and EverWebinar. Along with a subscription to Kartra, you can access modules of training in marketing offered by Frank Kern, a marketing legend and expert in direct, responsive advertising.

Features Offered by Kartra

1. Hundreds of Customizable Webpage Templates

When creating a webpage, we face difficulty in making a page that is attractive to the customer’s eyes yet simple to use. This is taken care of by Kartra with its hundreds of pre-designed templates for almost any kind of page we might need. The templates are also easily customizable, using a drag and drop option. Examples of webpage templates available are product launch pages, 404 pages, thank you pages, and upsell pages.

Another striking factor about these templates is that they come with excellent sales copies, and these can be referenced before making your write-up.

2. Done For You Campaigns and Pre-Built Sales Funnels

The next step in your new venture would be to set up products and funnels. Funnels help you gain customers from a simple click. With Kartra, you now have in-built funnel systems, eliminating the need for building funnels.

Apart from funnels, Kartra offers various campaigns backed by ideas from Frank Kern. These “done-for-you” campaigns are aimed at increasing sales and profits. A few examples are:

•         Four – Day Cash Machine – With the four-day cash machine, you will find an increase in sales and profits within 4 days, as per claims. 
•         Quick Launch Campaign – As the name suggests, you can launch a new product quickly and easily, and get the benefit of higher sales under this campaign.
•         List – Builder Campaign – This simple campaign aims to increase the members of your email list, thus promoting email marketing.

Other than these, they also offer a squeeze page campaign, book funnel campaign, and tripwire campaign.

3. Kartra Forms and Checkout Area

This feature helps you collect contacts and turn them into customers. You can create forms with custom set questions, tags, and automation. This enables you to gain customers quickly while also adding them to your highly efficient email automation system.

Kartra also offers a shopping cart and checkout area. Therefore, when setting up an online business, you do not have to search for a third-party cart software as Kartra has got it all covered. What makes Kartra unique is that after the purchase, the customer becomes a part of your email list and is updated continuously about the store. 

They also take note of abandoned carts and contact the customers accordingly.

4. Automated Emailing System

Kartra has automated emails sent to clients and customers to keep up with them and stay in contact. This ensures that you do not lose customers and that you stay fresh in their minds. In case of abandoned orders or orders that did not pull through, Kartra makes sure that the respective customer is not ignored, and is added to the mailing list. The main pull for the automated emailing system is that the emails do not end up in the spam folder, or under the social and promotional tabs, thus not going ignored by the client. 

5. Kartra Calendars

With the Kartra calendar, you can now schedule events and book appointments with great ease. Customers/clients can book an appointment with you using this feature, and your availability will be visible to them. Thus, you can stay in contact with customers and be there to answer the concerns raised.

6. Kartra Helpdesk

While building your website, you will have to rely on numerous third-party software for many essential features such as a helpdesk, customer support, shopping cart, and video hosting. With Kartra, everything is in one place; all rolled into Kartra.

The Kartra helpdesk is a great feature using which customers can contact you for their queries via a ticketing system, and the queries are answered within 24 hours. They also have a very active and responsive community on Facebook, where no question goes unanswered. 

7. Membership Program

With the Kartra membership portal, you can now have members to your course/service, and have content that is only accessible to your members. It lets you host or sell your e-learning courses or services. The members have progress bars to track their progress in the course. Kartra’s automation system also looks into members’ behavior and preferences and makes automated responses for them. 

With the Kartra membership program, you can also observe how your members interact with your content, which ones are more popular, and the ones that did not quite make it. You can also track their progress. 

8. Affiliate Management Center (AMC)

The affiliate management system is useful for recruiting, managing, and instantly paying your affiliates through payment gateways such as PayPal. In the Kartra marketplace, you can also affiliate products and services other than your own.

9. Video Hosting

With its video platform, Kartra eliminates the need for you to embed video links from a third party platform such as YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia. You can add tags and CTAs (call-to-action) to your video.

However, there is a storage limit imposed for hosting videos and a restriction on bandwidth, which can be increased using higher subscription packages.

Prices and Plans

Kartra provides a trial plan of 14 days for $1. An extended 30-day trial is also available. The main plans are as follows:

Starter Plan

At $99 per month, the starter plan provides you with 1 custom domain, 15,000 emails per month, and 2500 contacts. With this plan, you can host 100 pages, build 2 membership sites, and sell 10 products at a supported 50GB bandwidth for hosting your videos.

Silver Plan

The silver plan is priced at $199 per month and offers 3 customer domains, 125,000 emails per month, and 12,500 contacts. The supported bandwidth for hosting your videos is 125GB.

Gold Plan

This plan is priced at $299 and offers 5 customer domains, 250,000 emails per month, and 25,000 contacts. The supported bandwidth for hosting your videos is 250GB.

Platinum Plan

The platinum plan is priced at $499, offering 10 customer domains, 500,000 emails per month, and 50,000 contacts. The supported bandwidth for hosting your videos is 400GB.

The Silver, Gold, and Platinum plans offer an unlimited number of membership sites to set up, no restriction on the products you may sell, and an unlimited number of pages you can host.

What is MailChimp?

MailChimp started as an email marketing solution and has developed into a fully-fledged marketing platform. Today, it supports website design, domain name search, automation, and customer services. MailChimp also has integrations with social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. They offer easy to use tools that are user-friendly and utilizing artificial intelligence for a better experience. MailChimp also has excellent Customer Relationship Management (CRM) that is beneficial for its marketing system. 

MailChimp was featured in the list of “Top 20 Email Marketing Software (2020)”, “Top 20 Social Media Marketing Software (2020)”, and “Top 20 Marketing Automation Software (2020)”.

Features Offered by MailChimp

1.Supports Integrations

Integrations are essential to make a platform more versatile. The more integrations that are supported, the easier it becomes for you to run the platform and reach out.

MailChimp started as an email marketing platform, but with its over 800 possible integrations, the possibilities are diverse. Apart from direct integrations, MailChimp also has connections with a third-party integrator Zapier, that you can use to integrate with apps that do not support direct integrations.

2. Templates

MailChimp, primarily being an email marketing platform, has all the tools you need to make an attractive email that is sure to catch the attention and bring you, customers. They offer email templates that you can customize for your comfort and ideas. The result is a striking email that has a flair for getting you, clients.

3. Seamless editing for Your Emails

This is another feature that you can use to make your email eye-catching. Your emails can be edited effortlessly using a simple drag and drop editor. You can move the different elements (texts, images, etc.) using this tool to customize as per your requirement.

4. Emailing Lists

This feature can be used to set up customers/subscribers to your email list so that they receive the email effortlessly without any hassle. The selection of people to be included in the list will depend on their activities and interactions and is automated.

5. Automation System

The MailChimp automation system gives you 15 pre-designed workflows, but it does not allow you to build one, which is considered one of its weak spots. There are many types of automation provided, such as sending follow-up emails based on the customer’s clicks, an automated email message for a new subscriber with text or even tutorial videos attached. 

6.  Customer Support

It is quite common for us to encounter doubts and queries while using new software. All of your doubts can be cleared from the extensive knowledge base system that is available. Upon upgrading your subscription plan, you will also have the option to have your queries cleared via live chat.

7.  Forms and Form Editor

You can create forms and place these forms on your website so that visitors can sign up for your emailing service by just entering their email ID.

8. Reporting

With this feature, you can now get detailed reports and statistical data about the email campaigns that you launched. Also, you can get more accurate data regarding demographics and social media by integration with Google analytics.

Pricing and Plans

MailChimp offers three plans, along with a free subscription. The free plan is sufficient if you have a small audience, although it does not provide many features.

Free Plan

With this plan, you can have up to 2000 contacts and 10,000 emails per month. A/B testing feature is not available in the free plan; it is offered only in the essentials, standard, and premium plans. Also, chat and email support are available only for the first 30 days.

Essentials Plan

This plan starts at $9.99 for 500 contacts (i.e., 2500 contacts in total) and 500,000 emails per month. All email templates are available, compared to the free plan where only basic templates are available.

Standard Plan

The standard plan starts at $14.99 per month and offers advanced automation, scheduling of posts, delivery based on time zones, and predicts the demography of your customers. The monthly email limit is 1.2 million, and you need a minimum of 5000 contacts.

Premium Plan

This plan starts at $299 per month and gives you access to all features. You can have at least 3 million emails per month and at least 10,000 contacts (starting from 10,000 and going higher with increasing prices).

The rates for each plan change as the number of contacts increases within the plan.

So, Which one Should You Choose, Kartra or MailChimp?

MailChimp is a great email marketing software that is sure to fit your needs and provide you with a great service. It is expanding the services offered, but the initial email marketing system remains the best to date as the other services are still developing and have a long way to come.  If all you need is a party to manage your marketing via email and have that service automated, this is the perfect fit for you.

Kartra offers much more. It is a great funnel building software, offers pre-built campaigns, web templates, and a membership platform. It is an all-in-one software that is a one-stop-shop for all your web hosting needs.

Therefore, your choice depends on your needs, but if we must choose between the two, it would be Kartra due to its versatile nature and the features offered.