Kartra vs Thinkific: What’s Best for Course? (Helpful Comparison)

Have you been having a hard time picking a solution for your online business between Kartra and Thinkific?

Well, I have used both platforms extensively, over and over again over the past 4 years and I’m here to break them down and show your which is better, why, and for what specifically.

If you’re an impatient person like myself, check the comparison table below to see what they have to offer and what not:

Kartra vs Thinkifc Comparison Table:

Features	Kartra	Thinkific
Cost:	$99 per month	$0 per month (free account)
Free trial:	30-days for $1	$0 for life
Platform Type:	All-in-one marketing platform that includes course creation, email marketing, sales funnels, and more	Standalone online course platform
Course Creation:	Yes, with options for video, audio, text, and quizzes	Yes, with options for video, audio, text, quizzes, surveys, and more
Website Builder:	Yes, includes a drag-and-drop website builder with customizable templates	No
Sales Funnel:	Yes, built-in sales funnels to create and manage sales processes	No
Email Marketing:	Yes, includes email marketing features such as automation, tagging, and segmentation	No
Membership Sites:	Yes, includes membership site functionality	Yes, includes membership site functionality and more
Affiliate Management:	Yes, includes built-in affiliate management features for managing affiliates and tracking sales	Yes, includes built-in affiliate management features
Payment Processing:	Yes, integrated payment processing for accepting payments from customers	Yes, integrated payment processing for accepting payments from customers
Customizable Branding:	Yes, allows custom branding and white-labeling of the platform and course content	Yes, allows custom branding and white-labeling of the platform and course content
Integrations:	Hardly integrates. Everything almost inbuilt	Yes, integrates with various third-party tools and services for marketing, analytics, CRM, and more
Support:	Offers customer support via email, live chat, and community forums	Offers customer support via email and live chat
Ease of Use:	Considered user-friendly with a relatively steep learning curve	Considered user-friendly with a relatively short learning curve
Customization:	Highly customizable with options for creating unique landing pages, funnels, and membership sites	Limited customization options with predefined templates
Overall Ratings:	Rated 4.3 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot based on customer reviews	Rated 4.2 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot based on customer reviews
Ready to try?	Kartra here >>	Thinkific here >>

Kartra vs Thinkific – Overview

What is Kartra?

Kartra is a complete, all-in-one software with various marketing solutions with a goal to ULTIMATELY help you build, launch and sell both physical and digital products in one place, eliminating duct-taping for online entrepreneurs.

It comes with mobile-optimized pages and campaigns.

The platform provides a bunch of marketing solution tools for course creators, marketers, and online business owners like:

• Sales funnel builder
• Marketing automation platform
• Course Builder
• Affiliate center
• Booking app
• Inbuilt Video hosting
• Helpdesk
• Checkout tool
• And a customer relationship management tool

Kartra was founded in 2018 by Andy Jenkins and since then, have succeeded in building the platform in a goal-oriented manner.

One thing I personally love about Kartra is how it offers a wide range of features that cater to the needs of online entrepreneurs. The all-in-one nature of Kartra means that users can access various marketing solutions within a single platform, eliminating the need to use multiple tools and “duct-tape” them together.

This makes it a convenient option for course creators, marketers, agencies, and online business owners who want to streamline their processes and optimize their sales funnels.

Let’s take a look at the second option, Thinkific.

What is Thinkific?

Thinkific is an all-in-one learning management system that gives you a platform and the ability to create, market, and sell your own online courses with ease.

Their platform boasts over 36,000 course creators and essential course creation and hosting features such as:

• Unlimited Students (Unlimited Courses for all paid plans)
• Upload and Host Online Course In Various Formats
• Build and customize your Sales Pages from available templates
• Integration with various payment processors (Stripe and PayPal)
• Integration with Email Marketing service providers
• Give Quizzes, Assignments, and Badges/Certificates to students
• Community/Discussion forums or students

As you can see, it is obvious that in this Thinkific vs Kartra evaluation, Thinkific was entirely built solely for online course creators and membership sites.

The features in Thinkific are designed to help you get your course up and running so you can:

• Build your brand and grow your audience
• Start selling immediately
• Create compelling content
• Scale your business

Another aspect Thinkific excels in most is the ability to create engaging and interactive learning experiences for students.

With features like quizzes, assignments, and badges/certificates, Thinkific allows course creators to create a dynamic and immersive learning environment for their students. The platform also includes community/discussion forums for students, fostering interaction and collaboration among learners, which can enhance the overall learning experience.

Kartra Benefits

#1: Membership Sites

Kartra offers you a membership portal so you can configure, build, host, and sell your online courses on the Platform.

On this portal, you’ll find it pretty easy to deliver your content, course, or training material as a course or content creator.

They have a well-designed, drag-and-drop membership site builder that’s built to do this for you.

Another fantastic thing is you can brand your membership site with your brand identity and also add different membership levels, content, products, and files for each.

You can also create a unique helpdesk for support to your members, automate your members based on behavior, and communicate through comments.

Want to see exactly how the Kartra membership portal works?

Check out the demo over here.

#2: Funnels and Campaigns

Kartra has a Funnels and campaign feature.

Which is one of the beauties and awesome parts of the marketing tool.

These campaigns are done-for-you automated campaigns that you can install, customize, and launch under the click of a few buttons and your business is live.

Here are some of the various campaigns you’ll get to run for free on the platform:

• 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.

These campaigns and sales funnels were built by experts and are proven to convert.

So, if you have no idea what campaign to run to get more leads and sales then you can plug and play any of the campaigns and be on your way to building a more profitable business.

View Kartra funnels and campaign demo here

#3: Landing Pages, Forms, and Checkouts

At the landing page templates department, Kartra GREATLY shines. They boast hundreds of page templates on the platform.

You will find literally any type of page template on Kartra ranging from:

• Squeeze templates
• Sales pages
• Blog home & post templates
• Webinar templates
• Legal landing pages
• Upsell pages
• 404 landing pages
• Product launch pages
• Thank you for landing templates

And many more.

You can check here for more on Kartra pages

Kartra also lets you build stunning-looking lead capture forms to collect leads and automate your business. You can create your own custom fields with powerful tagging and automation rules inside Kartra.

And you have an inbuilt shopping cart and checkout system available for you to sell your products, services, and courses through a secure checkout form.

You can process payments from credit cards and PayPal via your built checkout pages.

#4: Kartra Emails and Marketing Automation

Businesses that use marketing automation makes way more money than those that don’t. In fact, 79% of companies currently use automation within marketing funnels and campaigns.

And this is where Kartra’s inbuilt marketing email sequence and automation come in.

Kartra comes with automation tools to help personalize your marketing messages based on your visitors’ journey with a feature called (BAM).

Also, you can create live or automated email/SMS marketing campaigns to communicate and engage with your user base and 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 users don’t need a third-party hosting solution like Wistia, Vimeo, or YouTube to host their video files.

You can easily host your marketing videos inside Kartra with a customizable player to present them using its inbuilt video hosting.

The Kartra video player also comes with an advanced in-video action that brings about 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.

#6: Calendar/Scheduling/Booking App

Kartra comes with a built-in calendar scheduling app that allows your clients to self-book and schedule an appointment with you based on your availability.

This app also sends automated reminders when necessary and integrates with other parts of your business and marketing sales funnels.

#7: Support & Helpdesk

Kartra understands that their platform MIGHT be overwhelming for beginners and newbies so they have a robust help desk to assist you at 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.

Want to see more of how the Kartra helpdesk works in action?

You can watch the live demo here

Affiliate Management Center

Kartra provides an affiliate management center that allows you to easily recruit affiliates for your online business.

In this center, you can recruit, assign links, manage, and pay your affiliates easily.

Also, you are able to set commissions, payment milestones, currency, due dates, and more.

Kartra also comes with a marketplace section where you can become an affiliate for the products of other Kartra users from the marketplace section.

Thinkific Benefits

#1: Drag and Drop Course Builder

Thinkific has a drag-and-drop course editor which could be one of the most outstanding features on the platform. You don’t need to know about coding to build your courses.

The builder is simple, super smooth, and intuitive and allows you to arrange your course sections, elements, and content freely.

Also, the platform lets you add your course content which includes text and videos, audio files, PDFs, quizzes, type forms, surveys, Google Docs, Download options, and more.

Your students will have access to all these resources you upload via Thinkific.

Every file you upload is hosted by Thinkific, meaning you don’t have to worry over storage and file compression plus you can create an unlimited number of courses with their corresponding resources.

#2: Site Builder

Thinkific is a great and flexible solution to building and hosting your site.

For instance:

You can build your site by using Thinkific’s site builder tools.

And proceed to use the free Thinkific subdomain with a URL like yourwebsite.thinkific.com which is recommended for beginners.

If you have the budget, you could purchase a custom domain name instead of relying on Thinkific’s subdomain.

Also, you can set up your domain and website on a third-party hosting platform like WordPress and then use Thinkific for its online learning management. Just simply integrate your existing site with Thinkific and boom!

You’re good.

#3: Site Themes

Thinkific comes with a collection of predesigned e-learning-based web themes to save you the stress of having to design your site from scratch.

The section on the themes includes

• online course review
• course curriculum
• key-learning
• course instructor

And more.

You also have a chance to customize the theme if you don’t like the design. For instance, you can add, delete, and rearrange the sections with a click.

You can also change page elements such as layout, colors, text, media, and more.

And if you’re a coding geek, Thinkific gives you access to its HTML and CSS for extensive website customization.

#4: Course Payment Structure

Thinkific offers a range of payment models for creators to get paid for courses.

You can either choose to offer your courses at a one-time payment system or a subscription-based model.

Also, you could even choose to give your courses out for free on the platform.

Regarding transaction processing, Thinkific provides several payment gateway integrations like Stripe, PayPal, and more.

#5: Marketing Your Courses

Thinkific gives you tools to market and sells your courses EASILY.

With the site editor, you can customize your courses and build systematic sales funnels.

It’s also a good idea to arrange your courses in a way that will entice your prospects and should either display each course individually or place them in categories to sell.

You can also use coupon campaigns to promote your online courses on other third-party platforms.

Thinkific’s affiliate management system is another means of promoting your courses.

You only need to bring in your affiliates to the course and register them and Thinkific will handle the tracking process for you.

But this part of the Thinkific feature can’t be matched with that Kartra. Obviously, Kartra has more marketing-oriented features hands-down!

#6: Tracking and Analytics

Thinkific has a good centralized tracking and analytics system. You can monitor your students and course analytics from the main admin panel

It would show you each student’s data such as last sign-in date, course activation date, course starting date, course completion date, email, name, percentage of course completed, and more.

And it would present all this data in a pretty report to monitor the subsequent business growth.

Similarities – Kartra vs Thinkific

#1: Site Builder

Both Kartra and Thinkific offer you a drag-and-drop builder with the ability to create your site, brand your site, deliver your content, and sell your courses. They both offer intuitive interfaces for uploading and organizing my course content, such as videos, documents, and quizzes, ensuring a seamless learning experience for my students.

#2: Templates

You’ll get a collection of ready-made, proven-to-convert templates when using either Thinkific or Kartra to build your site and host your courses. Although Kartra has more range of templates overall.

#3: Videos

As a Kartra or Thinkific user, you can easily host your marketing videos locally inside each platform and don’t need a third-party hosting solution to host your videos.

#4: Payment Processing

Accepting payments for your courses is hassle-free with Kartra and Thinkific. They seamlessly integrate with popular payment processors like Stripe and PayPal, eliminating the need for me to handle payments manually.

#5: Customization and Branding

I love that Kartra and Thinkific allow me to customize my courses and sales pages to reflect my brand. With templates and design tools, I can create visually appealing content that represents my brand image in a fun and easy way.

#6: Scalability

As my business grows, I need a platform that can keep up with me. Fortunately, Kartra and Thinkific are scalable, with plans and pricing options that cater to businesses of all sizes, from small startups to big enterprises.

Differences – Kartra vs Thinkific

#1: Emails Automation

This is one of the differentiating features between both platforms as only Kartra has an inbuilt email marketing automation system to manage email marketing. And Thinkific has none.

#2: Student Management & Engagement

Thinkific has more student management and engagement features than Kartra. Features like quizzes, surveys, and assignments. All are inbuilt on Thinkific.

#3: Calendar App

Kartra has a built-in calendar scheduling app that allows your clients to self-book and schedules an appointment with you based on your availability and this isn’t the mission in Thinkific.

#4: Forever Free Plan

Thinkific has a forever plan for you to test-drive Thinkific’s core feature set for free. While Kartra offers you a $1 14-day trial.

Kartra vs Thinkific Pricing Plans

Kartra Pricing

There are four pricing packages for you to choose from in Kartra.

Also, they offer you a 14-day trial period which goes for $1 for you to test the software and see if it’s a good fit before committing to a monthly or annual subscription.

Here are the four 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 sites, 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 unlimited leads, unlimited landing pages, emails monthly, unlimited membership sites, 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 unlimited Kartra features.

• Platinum Plan

This is the last plan which goes for $499/mo and gives you all features made available.

Thinkific Pricing

They have a four-tiered pricing structure and no or zero transaction fees for any of their plans:

• Free Plan: Thinkific offers a Free Plan that allows users to get started with basic course creation and access essential features. This plan includes unlimited students, the ability to upload and host online courses in various formats, and basic course customization options.
• Basic Plan: The Basic Plan is priced at $49 per month and offers additional features on top of the Free Plan. It includes all the features of the Free Plan, as well as the ability to host unlimited courses, 5 spaces per community, unlimited students, and a custom domain
• Start Plan: Priced at $99 per month, the Pro Plan provides even more advanced features. In addition to all the features of the Basic Plan, it includes advanced course customization options, the ability to give quizzes, assignments, and badges/certificates to students, and community/discussion forums for students to interact and collaborate.
• Grow Plan: The Grow Plan is Thinkific’s most comprehensive plan and is priced at $199 per month. It includes all the features of the Start Plan, along with additional benefits such as priority support, advanced integrations

Thinkific vs Kartra – Which Should You Use?

If you ask me, I’d go with Kartra over Thinkific. Anytime. Anyday!

Kartra is more than just creating an online course. It also offers you features such as calendar booking, video hosting, and helpdesk tools, which are critical to your course and product success. While Thinkific focuses solely on courses.

Let me delve in further:

Of course, Thinkific is an all-in-one learning management system that is ideal for course creators and membership site owners who are focused on creating and selling online courses.

It offers a wide range of essential course creation and hosting features, including unlimited students, customizable sales pages, integration with payment processors, email marketing providers, and community-building features like discussion forums for students.

Thinkific’s pricing plans are suitable for businesses of all sizes, with options ranging from a free plan with basic features to more advanced plans with additional customization and marketing tools.

On the other hand, Kartra is a comprehensive all-in-one marketing platform that includes course creation and hosting features, along with a robust suite of marketing tools for building and managing sales funnels, processing payments, email marketing, and more.

You know, Kartra is well-suited for businesses that require a broader range of marketing functionalities beyond just course creation, such as businesses that sell multiple types of products or services. Kartra’s pricing plans are higher compared to Thinkific, which may be more suitable for established businesses with larger budgets.

In summary, if your primary focus is solely on creating and selling online courses, Thinkific may be the better choice.

On the other hand, if you require a broader range of marketing tools along with course creation features, and are willing to invest in a higher-priced platform, Kartra may be a better fit.

I hope you enjoyed our Kartra vs Thinkific comparison. Let me which you’d try first in the comments.