Kartra vs Shopify: Which one Best Fits Your Needs? (2021)

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

[featured-image]

Kartra and Shopify are seemingly different from what they do, and we aim to put forward the key differences as well as similarities between them.

We shall proceed to learn the features and services offered by each of these platforms, a comparative study, as well as the pros and cons of the two platforms.

What is Kartra?

Planning to set up an online business? Kartra could be what you’re looking for. Kartra is a paid all in one platform that takes care of all your business needs. This sales funnel software reduces your workload when setting up an online startup/business. Instead of paying for various software for different purposes, Kartra offers it all in one place, making your job easier and getting everything together at one place.

Featured in the Top 20 eCommerce Software in 2019, Kartra, a marketing tool is a great initiative brought by Mike Filsalme and Andy Jenkins, under the flagship of Genesis Digital Co, a San Diego based company that is also behind WebinarJam and EverWebinar. Kartra combined all the necessary features such as website hosting, email management and marketing, as well as a shopping cart. 

Another attractive option that Kartra offers is training modules by Frank Kern, who will bring you marketing strategies and direct responsive advertising through thorough classes.

What are the Features Offered by Kartra?

1. Email Marketing and Automation

One of the main features of Kartra is the ease with which we can operate their emailing functions. It provides a built-in email marketing platform, the most exciting feature being that the email will never end up in spam! They offer high deliverability, and the email does not go into the spam folder or promotional/social tabs.

The automation feature helps you provide tailored responses to customers.

2. Kartra Helpdesk

This is an excellent feature by which customers can contact you with their issues, and you can clear up those queries. What makes Kartra unique is that apart from hosting your website, it also brings in these features such as helpdesk, so that you do not have to rely on another helpdesk host, thus integrating all your work at a single platform. 

Apart from this, Kartra also supports live chats and skype support.

3. Sales Funnels and Marketing Campaigns

Kartra offers marketing campaigns that can be customized according to your need and quickly launched as per your requirement. Some of these done-for-you campaigns are:

• List- Builder Campaign:- This helps you build up your email list
• 4 Day Cash Machine:- This campaign aims at aiding you to earn money from your business in 4 days.
• Quick Launch Campaign:- With this campaign, you may now launch a new product and have faster sales.

These are a few of the campaigns offered.

4.  Membership Platform

Kartra makes it easier to host members in membership programs. This platform is more often suggested for e-learning services and tools, and the membership feature provides many benefits such as a progress tracker for the users/members. You may also restrict and control the access to contents offered. Apart from this, they also have an option to automate the responses based on user behaviour. 

However, they are not highly recommended for products, although there are people who have had success in selling products. Kartra mainly supports digital entrepreneurs, and it is a great tool for hosting an educational/ online learning platform.

5. Video Hosting

Kartra offers a great video hosting platform, unlike some other pages that would require you to upload the video on some other platform first and then embed the link. They also provide a few bonus features, such as being able to categorize your videos into folders, observe the videos that each of your customers have viewed, and learning the interactions of customers with your video. 

The only constraint with the video hosting in Kartra is the storage limit imposed for hosting videos.

6. Templates and Editors

This is a great feature that Kartra offers and makes a lot of our work easy as we do not have to build and design an entire webpage from scratch. They provide optimizable templates that you may work on for any sort of page (such as checkout, shopping carts, squeeze page, sales page, coming soon, etc.)

These templates are easy to edit and make changes, and they also come with sales copies that you may use as a reference before making one of your own.

7. Calendars

This is another notable feature of Kartra that enables you to schedule appointments and events, as well as establish contact with your customers.

Apart from these features, Kartra provides customizable call to actions, ROI tracking, and a record of visitors to the website.

Cost and Available Plans

The free trial of Kartra is available for 14 days for $1. Recently, Kartra is also providing an extension on the trial period, offering a 30-day trial period at just $1. The pricing plans are follows-

Starter Plan

The starter plan is priced at $99/month, and offers 1 custom domain, 15,000 emails per month, and 2500 contacts. It lets you host 100 pages, build 2 membership sites and sell 10 products for 50GB bandwidth.

Silver Plan

The silver plan is priced at $199, and offers 3 customer domains, 125,000 emails per month, and 12,500 contacts. There is no limit on the number of pages you can host, the number of membership sites you can have, and the number of products you can sell, along with a supported bandwidth of 125GB.

Gold Plan

This plan is priced at $299, and offers 5 customer domains, 250,000 emails per month, and 25,000 contacts. With an unlimited number of pages to host, membership sites and products to sell, this plan supports a 250GB bandwidth.

Platinum Plan

The platinum plan is priced at $499, offering 10 customer domains, 500,000 emails per month, and 50,000 contacts. With an unlimited number of pages to host, membership sites and products to sell, this plan supports a 400GB bandwidth.

Moving on, we shall explore the pros and cons of Kartra.

Pros and Cons of Kartra

Pros

• Lets you start a new business from scratch, providing you with all the necessary tools required at a single place. 
• Membership Portal
• Video hosting
• Marketing Campaigns and Sales Funnels
• Helpdesk features live chat sessions and easy contact with customers
• Calendar for scheduling and booking appointments
• Email marketing and automation with great features
• Supports webinars

Cons

• Seemingly expensive, at $99 per month
• It is difficult/mot possible to build a store that offers multiple products
• Increasing bandwidth offered at higher rates
• Might be challenging to get used to the platform
• Updating pages may be slow

Since we have a general overview of Kartra and the features they provide, let’s look into what Shopify is, and the features they offer, before moving on to a detailed comparison.

What is Shopify?

Where Kartra was a suite of marketing tools, Shopify is an e-commerce platform where sellers can set up their store, and sell the products they have to offer. You have the option to showcase multiple products and their variations, which is not provided in Kartra.

With Shopify, all you need to decide is what you’re going to sell and how to strategize the marketing. The main similarity between Kartra and Shopify is that they combine the necessary software into a single platform that you can easily avail on purchase.

What are the Features Offered by Shopify?

1. Payment Gateways

Being an e-commerce website creator, it has presented versatility by supporting 100s of payment gateways, thus ensuring accessibility to customers at any part of the world. In this matter, Kartra falls back, as it supports only a limited number of payment gateways, nearly a dozen.

2. Comprehensive Reports

When starting a business, finance is a significant area to be considered of. With the advanced Shopify plan, you will be able to access a range of reports focusing on different sectors of your business. These include financial statements (such as sales and tax reports) and marketing reports. It also tracks your customer activity and presents the information in the form of detailed reports which give you information about the data your customers search for, their demographics, and reports about abandoned carts.

3. Templates and Themes

Shopify offers templates and themes that could either be free or paid. These themes are customizable and are compatible to be viewed from any device by the customer. The customization is an easy drag and drop editing, making it easy for you to pick up on how it is done.

4. Dropshipping

Shopify offers a variety of dropshipping apps so that you can sell the suppliers’ products at greater ease than before. Shopify has also partnered with couriers such as DHL and UPS, availing lower shipping rates and taking care of your delivery needs.

5. Content marketing and Blogging

The website also offers a blogging tool, using which you may create content and use that to market your product. Marketing your product through content writing and blogging is an excellent way to increase the traffic directed to your store.

6. Mobile App

Shopify offers two mobile apps that may be used for managing your business. The Shopify App focuses on viewing reports, fulfilling orders and adding/editing the products offered. The Shopify Point of Sale App tracks your inventory, lets you accept card payments, and provide the customer with receipts.

7. The Shopify App Store

The App Store offers free and paid applications and plugins that can help modify your store and make them more attractive, user-friendly, and functional.

Moving on, next comes one of the most important deciding factors, how much does it cost? Before investing in anything, it is necessary to know how much it costs and if it’s worth the investment. After looking at the available plans for Kartra and Shopify, we shall proceed into the features that are exclusive to each of them, and their respective pros and cons.

Cost and Available Plans

The free trial of Shopify is available for 14 days for free, without providing credit card information. All the Shopify plans feature the ecommerce website and blog, unlimited products, 24/7 support, availability of sales channels, discount codes and abandoned cart recovery. The difference is in the number of staff accounts that can be supported.

Basic Shopify Plan

This is priced at $29 per month, this supports 2 staff accounts.

The Shopify Plan

This is a next tier plan that is priced at $79 per month and supports 5 staff accounts.

The Advanced Shopify Plan

The advanced plan is priced at $299 per month and supports 15 staff accounts.

Now, a few of the pros and cons of Shopify.

Pros and Cons of Shopify

Pros

•         Allows you to sell multiple products or their variations
•         Offers many themes
•         Easy setup of Shopify store
•         Makes dropshipping simple
•         Gives a wide variety of options regarding payment gateways

Cons

•         Limited customization
•         Absence of membership option
•         The option to build sales funnels is absent
•         Absence of affiliate management tool
•         Does not feature helpdesk or calendar

Next, we shall look into features that Kartra and Shopify offer, exclusive of each other.

Exclusive Features of Kartra

•         Membership platform that allows you to host courses
•         Allows video hosting
•         Email automation and marketing feature in-built.
•         Heatmap tool – Gives you data about what engages your customers and what’s popular among them.
•         Helpdesk features live chat support
•         Calendars help you schedule and book appointments/meetings
•         Marketing campaigns and funnels that that are pre-built to aid you in your business.
•         Easy to use drag and drop function for designing pages.
•         Offers BAM (Behavioral Adaptive Marketing) technology that provides a personalized experience
•         Features and affiliate centre that helps you manage existing affiliates and recruit new ones.

Exclusive Features of Shopify

•         Offers dropshipping
•         Wide variety of themes and templates available
•         You may sell unlimited products.
•         Shopify Mobile Apps
•         Allows content marketing through blogging.
•         Analyses fraud activities automatically.
•         Create product order manually
•         Offers Facebook sale feature
•         Multiple languages available, various payment gateways supported
•         Allows you to create customized gift cards

Integrating – Double the Benefits!

When it comes to the question of which one of these two is better, Kartra or Shopify, Kartra might take the lead, although it still depends on what you’re looking for. The best idea would be to integrate Shopify and Kartra, enabling the benefits of both these platforms.

Kartra and Shopify have their own pros and cons. These can be integrated to be used together, using funnels to link the two together. You may use funnels to get customers to shop via Shopify, and then redirect them to Kartra for the email automation part.