Which platform is better, cheaper, and easier to use Kartra vs WordPress?
Let your search END right in this post – as we are going to look into the features, costs, and differences in both platforms.
Or maybe you’re on the fence about whether you should integrate both into your marketing campaign.
We shall address that as well, and guide you through the process on how to properly integrate your Kartra system into WordPress.
In a non-techy manner.
It’s no doubt that WordPress and Kartra are two separate platforms that help business owners to create impact, serve their audience, and of course make money in return.
WordPress and Kartra can be used for building professionally-looking websites. But there is something that is unique about each of these platforms I’d like to bring to your awareness.
That’s what we are going to look at next, in the overview of both.
Let’s do it!
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.
Kartra vs WordPress – Complete overview
What Is Kartra?
Kartra is a funnel builder (a popular one at that). Basically, a funnel is a process of acquiring leads for your business (through a traffic medium), and eventually nurturing and converting those leads into paying customers, then into money in the bank. 😊
Even though there are missing dots and technicalities involved in the above definition – that’s just what a funnel is in a nutshell.
But that’s NOT why we are here, anyway.
Kartra is a platform that helps you put all these funnel pieces and processes together in a way that you don’t have to worry about the technical aspects of lead generation, nurturing, follow-ups, conversion, customer support, and a bunch of other things.
It eases the pain of having all the solutions separately and having to connect them into one another.
Kartra is a platform that houses close to a dozen marketing tools into one place, allowing you to operate your online business from one end.
The core benefit of Kartra is that it saves you an enormous time.
Focusing more to help serve your clients and customers.
If you’re like me – you’d be asking what tools and solution can I really get inside of Kartra. No worries.
Because in the next section you’ll see all the marketing software Kartra replaces, what they all do and how you can use them in your online business.
What Is WordPress?
WordPress (WordPress.org) on the other hand is a free, open-source content management system (CMS) that allows you to build any type of webpage after you might have acquired your domain and get it hosted on a web hosting service.
This is more like an operating system (OS) where your sites and web pages are built on.
A platform that supports over 60 million websites on the internet and it’s reported to be the simplest platform for creating sites and powers close to 40% of all sites in the world.
Please note: WordPress.org is different from WordPress.com. We are referring to that of (.org) here. So, don’t confuse it.
WordPress.com comes with drastic limitations and is NOT a self-hosted platform.
With WordPress.org you own and host your site with any hosting company of your choice. Here you download and install WordPress on your own web server.
Having full and complete control over your website and web pages.
After getting your domain and hosting from a solution like Bluehost.com for your WordPress to be installed – you’ll need a WordPress theme and set of plugins for your site and pages to look exactly the way you want.
Without a theme and set of plugins your WordPress-built site and pages won’t appeal to visitors.
(More on that pretty soon).
For now, let’s go through the complete features of Kartra and WordPress before delving into the differences and how you can use both together.
Shall we?
Kartra vs WordPress – Full Features
Going over the complete features of WordPress and Kartra – we are starting with:
Features of Kartra Funnel Building Platform
#1: Prebuilt Templates Inside of Kartra
When you log into your Kartra platform – you’ll see that there are over a hundred numbers of templates for landing pages, forms, and funnels for you to customize using the drag-and-drop builder.
Then use it in your online business the way you like.
The thing is:
There’s no need for you to try to figure out what design to use or scouting the internet for inspiration for what your page should look like or what perfect design to model.
Starting with Kartra pages
You get tons of page templates for every aspect of your sales funnel or site design ranging from:
- Squeeze page templates
- Thank you pages
- 404 error page templates
- Video sales letter page templates
- Product launch landing pages
- Webinar page templates and lots more…
Then for Kartra forms
Kartra forms let you build very simple capture forms in seconds, requiring no coding experience. There are dozens of converting form designs and templates for you to choose from.
Kartra Funnels and Campaigns
The Kartra funnels and campaigns feature is where I think the whole beauty of Kartra comes into play.
This is a plug-and-play feature where all you have to do is click a button and you get an automated sales-driven and converting funnel ready to be customized and launched.
These funnels and campaign templates were built by world-class marketers.
Here you leverage the POWER of:
- Kartra Pages
- The sequence builder
- Kartra email marketing and automation tool
- Membership site etc.
#2: Kartra Inbuilt Checkout Tool
Kartra comes with a full-featured product cart that is optimized for more conversions and sales. Using means that you no longer special cart services like ThriveCart, SamCart, and Paykickstart.
Using those would cost you separately on a monthly basis.
With it’s inbuilt shopping cart and checkout tool you can carry out the following:
- Set multiple price points for your products or services
- Customize your checkout page
- Automatically tag your buyers into your email marketing system
- Offer down sells, upsells, and order bumps
- Set and configure payment type and subscription model
And a lot more…
#3: Kartra helpdesk for customer support
Kartra helpdesk allows you to render great and quality customer support to your customers using the plethora of functionalities inside the platform.
Start with the:
- Customer ticketing system
- Multi-agent collaboration
- The Wiki center
- The live chat feature
- Integrated billing
And lots more.
#4: Kartra Video Hosting
You can safely host your marketing videos inside of the Kartra platform and not worry about a third-party video hosting solution.
It is called Kartra videos.
One of the great advantages here is the marketing-oriented function that comes with it. You can add CTAs, add tags, and tags based on the action your customers take on your marketing videos.
Pretty nice, if you ask me.
#5: Kartra Calendars
This makes scheduling easier with your clients than ever before. You can book appointments and your clients will see when and when not you’re available.
The better news here is that the Kartra Calendar feature seamlessly integrates with other assets in the Kartra system. Like leads, forms, pages, sales funnels, automation, checkouts, etc.
#6: Kartra inbuilt affiliate center
Maybe you’re not aware that Kartra has a super-cool affiliate management system, that lets you cancel a special platform for recruiting, managing, and paying your affiliate marketers.
Even though I get confused myself with their affiliate center – but the reporting is solid.
#7: Kartra membership site
Kartra lets you build courses and memberships as well as sell physical and digital products.
With Kartra’s all-in-one flexibility, you can build your memberships and give special access to your students or clients with no hidden costs, add-ons or tricky integrations.
Creating, building, hosting, and marketing your online course and digital products just got easier.
You can see the Kartra membership site demo here.
Some other Kartra features on inside Kartra:
- Integrates with other marketing tools and the ability to program your own add-ons (aka API)
- Affiliate marketplace for displaying your product to affiliates and applying for others’
- Kartra email marketing makes it simple for you to construct automated marketing campaigns
Features of WordPress.org Content Management System
#1: WordPress requires domain and hosting
Before you get your website and pages running on the internet – you’ll have to purchase a domain name to host your site on a server. You’ll require a service like Bluehost for this.
Then install WordPress on it before you start building your site using page builders and some plugins.
#2: WordPress Is a Publishing machine
One great difference between WordPress vs Kartra when it comes to content is the way you can publish faster on WordPress. You can’t do that on Kartra.
WordPress makes it super-easy for you to manage your content, create drafts, schedule publications, and optimize them for Google rankings. Doing this on Kartra is almost near to impossible.
#3: Flexibility and Ease of use
WordPress combines simplicity for web designers and content publishers and makes it flexible while being so easy to use. Having been a WordPress user myself for years now – all I can is that it’s the most straightforward platform I have been on.
For simple sites and blogs especially.
I mean any type of website or blog; government website, online community site, fashion, music or lifestyle websites. You name it.
#4 Built on WordPress Themes
Before you could ever create any type of website or blog – you’ll need to install a WordPress theme (also called template).
On WordPress, you can make your website beautiful with your chosen themes. There are both free and paid ones to choose from to get going.
#5: User management & media management
Another great feature of WordPress is the ability to give access levels to people to publish, post or do what they want them to do on your site.
Like:
- Administrators: Manage your site
- Editors: Work with contents
- Authors and Contributors: Writes the content
- Subscribers: Have just a profile
And it’s also more than easy for users of WordPress to be able to quickly upload images and media using the upload feature or by simply dragging and dropping.
#6: Extends with Plugin
WordPress comes packed with a lot of features for every user. But these features can’t do justice to the type of landing pages and sites you desire. Just as you need a WordPress theme – you need different plugins to make your site complete.
Depending on the type of site and the things you need.
There’s a plugin directory with thousands of plugins to fine-tune your WordPress site.
WordPress further provides opportunities for programmers and developers so they can come up with WordPress-based apps.
This is possible with WordPress APIs.
The extensibility for developers to create plugins and themes for WordPress is something worth being grateful for, right?
Kartra vs WordPress – Pricing & Cost
When it comes to the pricing of Kartra vs WordPress – it’s another ball-game entirely. They differ a lot.
Let’s take a look:
How much does Kartra cost?
Kartra offers a free 30-day trial period, then you can settle for the below-paid plans:
- Kartra Starter plan costs $99 per month
- Kartra Silver plan costs $199 per month
- Kartra Gold plan costs $299 per month
- Kartra Platinum plan costs $499 per month
All of Kartra pricing plans gives you access to all of its inbuilt tools to build your sales funnels, websites, landing pages, checkouts, manage affiliates and more.
There’s also a discount for new users available right here to grab.
How much does WordPress Cost?
When it comes to setting up a WordPress-based site – I would say the price varies depending on the complexity of your site.
Let’s take for instance – setting a basic blog that won’t require anything extra other than a few plugins and a blogging theme.
But for an educational or government site – you’ll require more plugins and a WordPress page builder (Elementor or Divi) to design the layout and all that.
Got the point?
However, the basic thing you’d have to spend on is a domain (usually costs $14/year) and hosting ($7/mo). Although when you buy from Bluehost the price slashes a bit.
There are tons of free plugins that can serve, but as I said – it all depends on what your needs are.
In total, I would say the total yearly budget for setting up a complete WordPress site should range from $200-$2,000.
FAQs on Kartra vs WordPress
Can I Integrate or Host My Kartra Pages on WordPress?
The short answer is yes. It is very possible to integrate Kartra into WordPress so that you would be able to use your Kartra pages and forms on Your WordPress site. This is possible using the Kartra pages or Blank slate plugin.
Install and activate a plugin called “Blank Slate”.
What this plugin does is that it allows you to create blank page templates in WordPress to house your Kartra pages.
Can you use Kartra with WordPress?
Yes, you can use Kartra with WordPress by first, building your pages in Kartra and displaying them in WordPress just by copying and pasting a line of auto-generated code.
All of the landing pages you created with your Kartra page builder (sales pages, squeeze pages, video sales pages, coming soon pages, thank you pages, and more) can be displayed through your WordPress site.
How do I connect my WordPress to Kartra?
You can connect your WordPress to your Kartra pages using a WordPress plugin called “Blank Slate.”
This will enable you to create blank page templates in WordPress to house the landing pages you built on Kartra.
Can you host a blog on Kartra?
First off, if you plan to blog on Kartra for organic traffic, then I won’t advise that. WordPress is the best for this. WordPress comes with the most sophisticated tools for blogging and content publishing.
However, if you just want a blog where you’d like to educate your audience and publish some content once in a while, then do that on Kartra.
You can freely use the blog templates provided by Kartra for this.
How much is Kartra monthly?
Kartra pricing plan starts from $99 per month. But there’s a discount if you opt for the annual plan.
Is Kartra good for SEO?
Your Kartra pages, funnels, and checkouts can rank well on Google when you optimize your pages properly for SEO and also when you’ve built a brand people search for on Google.
However, when it comes to organic ranking and competing for organic keywords, then Kartra isn’t the best option to create your landing pages. Use WordPress instead.
One of the reasons is that WordPress is the leader in website customization.
Can you create a website on Kartra?
Of course, you can create your full-fledged business, product or service website on Kartra with the help of the powerful and easy-to-use Kartra Page Builder.
Can I use my own domain on Kartra?
Yes you can. Connecting your own custom domain with Kartra takes a few minutes to do. Kartra offers you the option point your domain to your Kartra-hosted sales funnels or sites.
All these can be done inside the cPanel of your hosting provider.
Pros & Cons – Kartra vs WordPress
Not everything is roses on both platforms, quite frankly. WordPress is great for what it does while Kartra happens to also be a genius in the land of ‘funnels’.
Kartra Pros
Kartra literally has everything you need to build and host your online business:
- Full-fledged sales funnels (with built-in domain and hosting)
- Shopping cart/Checkout tool
- Helpdesk
- Video player and hosting
- Membership site
- Pre-built sales funnels, form and landing page templates
- Affiliate management solution
- Calendar and scheduling app
- Training tutorials
- Great support and community
Kartra Cons
- It’s quite expensive
- Not SEO friendly
- Not a publishing platform
- Any problem or glitch on Kartra server affects your online business
- You’re confined into one platform
- Steep learning curve
WordPress Pros
- User-friendly for beginners
- Cheap to setup
- Themes to beautify your site
- SEO friendly
- Unlimited plugins to extend your site functionality
- WordPress is open-source. Hence flexible.
WordPress Cons
No inbuilt solutions on WordPress like:
- Affiliate center
- Helpdesk
- Membership site
- Hosting video
- Checkout tool etc…
As you’ll require a bunch of WordPress plugins to do all these and too many plugins can slow down your site and also make it vulnerable to attacks.
Connecting all these tools together on WordPress takes time and requires the intervention of a techy person or an expert.
Final Thoughts – Kartra or WordPress?
This comparison between Kartra vs WordPress post happens to end up way longer than I expected, to be honest. In that sense, let me quickly come to the conclusion right now.
If you’re wondering which to use for building your sales funnels, making sales, automation, following up and nurturing your customers:
I would recommend you go with the Kartra sales funnel builder.
If you’re after a publishing platform for SEO rankings, traditional blogging, and full control of your site:
Get a domain and hosting from Bluehost (or any hosting provider) and install WordPress with one 1-click.
Or maybe you plan to keep the two – then integrating them together would be the best option. Have your ranking content on WordPress and link your Kartra pages.
Does that make a little sense?
But if you still feel like choosing ONE – you can test out Kartra for 14 days.
Here at https://home.kartra.com/trial
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.
Let me know which of the two you’re getting started with in this WordPress vs Kartra guide.
Check Out My other Kartra Comparison Posts: