Are you stuck choosing a solution for your online business between Kartra vs MailChimp?
This detailed Kartra Vs MailChimp comparison will help you get to see the BEST and the right one for your online business.
Just give me 1 minute to guide you in deciding.
We’ll take an in-depth look into their distinctive features, similarities, differences, price points and finally, we’ll do a roundup and recommend the BETTER option.
Let’s dive in quickly, putting an end to the Kartra Vs MailChimp debate.
A quick summary:
Let’s get into the full details of both. Overview. Pricing. Pros. And cons.
With Kartra you have all the tools you need ready-to-go at your fingertips, which makes it ridiculously easy to build and scale your online business fast… with tons of extra features at a more affordable price.
What is Kartra?
Kartra is a complete, all-in-one software with various marketing solutions to ultimately help you build, launch and sell both physical and digital products in one place.

The platform provides a bunch of marketing solution tools for course creators, marketers, and online business owners like:
- The complete sales funnel builder
- Marketing automation platform
- Course Builder
- Affiliate center
- Booking app/calendar tool
- Video hosting
- Helpdesk
- Checkout tool
- And a customer relationship management tool
You don’t need to be frustrated and get down with techy headaches just to set up your online business.
All the individual sections of Kartra come with interwoven solutions so they are interconnected to each other and you don’t need to configure any integration whatsoever.
Kartra was founded in 2018 by Andy Jenkins and Mike and has since then, succeeded in building the platform in a goal-oriented manner.
What is MailChimp?
MailChimp is an email marketing platform that helps you build am email list audience and send your message to your audience.

The platform was started in 2001 and they have grown to be one of the largest email service providers out there. With an easy-to-use interface and a forever-free plan, MailChimp boasts of more than 17 million customers.
Also, they give you a chance to create beautiful newsletters and manage your email list properly.
Kartra Vs MailChimp – Features
The differences in every marketing software’s out there start with features. What is that special thing in Kartra and NOT in Mailchimp or vice versa?
Let’s start!
Kartra Features
#: Membership Portal
Kartra gives you a membership portal to build, host, and sell your online courses.
They have a well-designed, drag-and-drop membership portal builder to do this for you, making it pretty easy to deliver your course content or training material to your audience.
Another thing is you can brand your membership site with your brand identity and also add different membership levels.
Also, you are able to create a unique help desk for support to your members. Here’s a demo showing exactly how the Kartra membership portal works.
#2: Funnels and Campaigns
Kartra has a Funnels and campaigns feature which contains campaigns that are done for you and you can install, customize, and launch under the click of a few buttons to run your business.
Pretty slick!
Some of the various campaigns you’ll get to run for free on Kartra includes:
- Agency campaign
- Simple list builder
- Book funnel campaign
- Quick launch campaign
- Four-day cash machine
- Tripwire campaign
- Squeeze page campaign
- Video Sales Letter (VSL) campaign
- Digital Daily Deal
- 3-Step Application Campaign
- And more all for free!
Find out more about Kartra Campaigns and Funnels: https://home.kartra.com/feature-campaigns
#3: Landing Pages, Forms, and Checkouts
Kartra greatly shines in the landing page templates department with hundreds of landing page templates.
You can find almost any type of landing page template on Kartra like:
- Squeeze page templates
- Blog home & post templates
- Webinar page templates
- Legal pages
- Upsell pages
- 404 pages
- Product launch pages
- Thank you page templates
- And many more
Kartra also allows you to build lead capture forms to collect leads for your business. In these forms, you can create your own custom fields with powerful tagging and automation rules.
Find out more about Kartra Forms: https://home.kartra.com/feature-forms
Also, you have an inbuilt shopping cart and checkout system available for you to sell through a secure checkout form. This system allows you to process payments from credit cards and PayPal via this checkout page.
#4: Emails Automation

Kartra has an email automation feature that allows you to personalize your marketing messages based on your visitors’ entire journey.
This feature lets you create live or automated email/SMS marketing campaigns to communicate and engage with your audience.
You can set automation based on triggers such as:
- Tags
- List subscribes/unsubscribes
- Cart Abandonment
- Email opens/clicks
- Page visits
- Purchases
- Form submits
- Video views/clicks
- Membership status
#5: Videos
Kartra has a video hosting feature so you don’t need to purchase a third-party hosting solution like Wistia, Vimeo, or YouTube to host your video files.
It’s called Kartra video.
You can host your marketing videos inside Kartra with a customizable player to present it.
The player comes with an advanced in-video action that enables more conversions in your business.
Other video functionalities include tagging viewers based on watch behaviors, and adding CTAs and opt-in forms at any point while playing a video.
Calendar/Scheduling/Booking App
Kartra has a built-in calendar scheduling app that allows your clients to self-book and schedules an appointment with you.
This scheduling app works based on your availability and it sends automated reminders and integrates with other parts of your business and sales funnel.
You can also connect your favorite third-party scheduling software with Kartra if you want to.
Support & Helpdesk
Kartra doesn’t want their platform to be overwhelming for newbies so they have a robust helpdesk to assist you every step of the way.
This help desk allows your clients to contact you via LiveChat, support tickets, phone, and Skype calls.
Also, you can set up multiple help desks and you can add a product wiki to your helpdesk for your customers to browse through to search for answers on their own.
Affiliate Management Center
Kartra gives you an affiliate management center so you can easily recruit affiliates for your business.
Here, you can recruit, assign links, manage, and pay your affiliates with ease. You can also set commissions, payment milestones, currency, due dates, and more.
Kartra has a marketplace section where you can become an affiliate for the products of other Kartra users from the marketplace section.
With Kartra you have all the tools you need ready-to-go at your fingertips, which makes it ridiculously easy to build and scale your online business fast… with tons of extra features at a more affordable price.
MailChimp Features
MailChimp has essential email service providers tools you need to collect leads, create emails, and send them out.
#1: Forms
You can build signup email forms using MailChimp’s form editor. When you’ve built it, it’ll provide you with some code that you can embed in your website like in your sidebar or below a post.
You can add your own fields and also integrate with your website with the Subscriber popup option to create a popup-style opt-in form.
Although, the default MailChimp form builder is pretty average and the interface a little clunky, there are several other alternatives.
Instead of using the MailChimp form builder, you can use something more specific to collecting emails like Thrive Leads.
#2: Lists
In MailChimp, you use Lists to group a set of subscribers.
Mailchimp provides great segmentation methods, that allow you to combine up to five positive or negative conditional relationships (e.g. what email client they use, whether they’ve opened a particular campaign) to build your email list.
#3: Integrations
MailChimp allows you to integrate with several other third-party apps.
With almost over 800 integrations available with MailChimp, there are almost no limitations to what you can achieve using the email service provider.
Also, MailChimp connects with third-party integrators like Zapier which can be used to connect with apps that don’t or no longer offer a direct integration.
#4: Drag and Drop Email Editor
MailChimp has a fast and simple drag & drop interface to use an email editor which you can use to create email
The editor allows you to drag various email components like text blocks, images, buttons, and videos into your emails.
And you can arrange and format them as you please to achieve the email design you want.
#5: Email Templates
MailChimp comes with .modern, responsive email templates you can use for your emails. You can pick from one of MailChimp’s email templates if you don’t have the inspiration to create yours.
Also, you can customize the outlook of the template and change fonts, background colors, borders, and other style elements to make your emails look stunning.
#6: Reporting
You can access individual reports of email campaigns in MailChimp with pretty much every stat you should know.
Also, you can also integrate with Google Analytics, which allows for conversion tracking as well as clients, geo-tracking, and social media.
#7: Automation
MailChimp has very simple automation capabilities with about 15 pre-made automation workflows to pick from. They also don’t allow you to build your own.
You can send follow-up emails with rules based on certain conditions, such as clicks, opens, etc.
An example of email automation in MailChimp is the Welcome new subscriber automation.
With this, you can select whether you want to send a single welcome message, a new user onboarding series or an education series to new subscribers.
This is hands down, one of the weakest parts of MailChimp.
#8: Support
MailChimp has a thorough, and easy-to-search, knowledge base where you can find answers to questions that hits you when using the email service provider.
The live chat option is the second form of support and it’s only available on upgrade.
Similarities Of Both Kartra and Mailchimp
Now lets take a look at the junction they meet each other.
#1: Drag & Drop Builder
Both Kartra and MailChimp have a fast, simple well designed, drag-and-drop builder interface that you can use to create email designs, membership sites, and funnels.
#2: Forms
With Kartra and MailChimp, you are able to build signup lead capture forms to collect leads for your business.
In these forms, you can also add multiple fields and integrate them with your website.
#3: Emails Marketing & Automation
MailChimp is essentially an email marketing tool with features for managing email marketing campaigns and automation.
Also, Kartra also has an email automation feature that allows you to personalize your marketing messages based on your visitors’ entire journey.
#4: Support
Kartra and MailChimp provide support to their users to assist you every step of the way.
Kartra has a help desk that allows your clients to contact you via LiveChat, support tickets, phone, and Skype calls.
MailChimp also provides a live chat option along with a thorough, and easy-to-search, knowledge base where you can find answers to questions that hits you when using the email service provider.
Kartra Vs Mailchimp – Differences
#1: Calendar Scheduling App
Kartra has a built-in calendar scheduling app that allows your clients to self-book and schedules an appointment with you. This feature is missing in MailChimp.
#2: Funnels
Kartra allows you to build and use funnels and campaigns which are done for you and you can install, customize, and launch under the click of a few buttons to run your business. You can’t get this on an email marketing tool like MailChimp.
Kartra Pricing

Kartra has four pricing packages for you to choose from.
Plus, to get started with the platform, they offer you a 14-day trial period which goes for $1 to test the software.
Here are the four pricing plans:
Starter plan
This plan goes for $99/mo and you’ll get all the major features of Kartra.
Also, you’ll get 15,000 emails per month, 2,500 contacts, 2 membership portals, 100 landing pages, and up to 20 products on this starter plan.
Silver Plan
This plan costs $199/mo with all the features of Kartra and you’ll get access to 12,500 leads, 125,000 emails monthly, unlimited membership portals, and more.
Gold Plan
It goes for $299 per month and you’ll get larger access to emails monthly, contacts, and a bunch of other Kartra features.
Platinum Plan
This is the last plan for $499/mo and it gives you all of its features for use.
Click to learn more about Kartra Pricing…
MailChimp Pricing
MailChimp has various different pricing options starting with a Forever Free plan which gives you up to 2,000 subscribers and allows you to send up to 12,000 emails a month.

This free plan is suitable for newbies to test out the email marketing platform.
Next, Mailchimp offers a monthly subscription where you pay based on the number of your email subscribers in your account.
For instance, you are required to pay $10 per month for 0 and 500 subscribers.
For up to 10,000 subscribers, you’d pay $75 a month. Also, you can pay as you go which is a payment option that allows you to purchase credits and pay per email you send out.
For instance, if you wanted to buy 1,000 credits it would cost you $30 ($0.03/per email). The more credits you buy at a time, the less you end up paying per email.
Finally, there’s an add-on option called MailChimp Pro which is an additional $199 a month.
MailChimp Pro gives you advanced features such as Advanced Segmentation, Comparative Reports, Multivariate Testing Campaigns, Priority Support, and more.
Final Thoughts On Kartra Vs MailChimp
MailChimp by itself is a solid email service provider and comes with all the fundamental features you need to manage email marketing campaigns for your business. WHILE Kartra serves numerous marketing and page-building purposes.
If you’re new to the email marketing game, you should check out their Forever Free plan.
On the other hand:
Kartra is a complete, all-in-one software with various marketing solutions to ULTIMATELY help you build, launch, and sell both physical and digital products in one place.
With Kartra you have all the tools you need ready-to-go at your fingertips, which makes it ridiculously easy to build and scale your online business fast… with tons of extra features at a more affordable price.
The platform provides a bunch of marketing solution tools for course creators, marketers, and online business owners like a Sales funnel builder, email marketing automation platform, course builder, affiliate center, booking app, video hosting, and MORE!
With these numerous functionalities, Kartra prides itself as an all-in-one marketing solution for online business owners and is clearly a WINNER in the Kartra Vs MailChimp debate.
Ask your questions in the comments below.
And also share which of the above tools you’re starting with between Kartra and MailChimp.
Check Out My other Kartra Comparison Posts:
Hi Khris, I just read your article on Kartra vs. Mailchimp and I have a question. If I have my new website built using Kartra, do I need to pay a separate party to host my website? Or, is website hosting included in the $99 per month Kartra membership? Thank you, Khris.
No, you don’t. The pages and funnels you build using Kartra are all hosted on Kartra. And that’s part of your monthly subscription. You don’t need to pay for hosting etc