Unlocking Success: An In-Depth Exploration of Kartra

If you’ve ever managed a business with an online product launch, you know how many moving parts there are to coordinate. This includes your emails, sales pages, webinars, and videos, all needing to be organized efficiently. The process becomes even more complex if you’re running a membership site or launching an online course — or juggling both simultaneously.

This is where Kartra steps in. Developed by Genesis Digital — the same company behind WebinarJam and EverWebinar — Kartra is a comprehensive online marketing platform designed to streamline your business processes. It consolidates essential tools like landing pages, product carts, membership portals, and customer support systems into one integrated suite.

In this review, we will explore these features thoroughly to determine if Kartra can truly help you reach your business goals. Let’s dive right in.

Kartra is a fully integrated marketing platform created by CEO Andy Jenkins of Genesis Digital. If you want to sell products effortlessly, with an automated system that includes a functioning website, membership areas, email campaigns, sales funnels, landing pages, shopping carts, and analytics, this is a tool to consider.

Everything in Kartra is designed to work seamlessly, handling all aspects of your business—from product sales and video hosting to email marketing, sales funnels, support, and beyond.

Built with entrepreneurs in mind, it simplifies technical challenges, allowing you to focus on growing your business. Additionally, Kartra now also offers a solution for agencies aiming to serve other businesses. You can create funnels using ready-made templates or design your own from scratch.

Key features of Kartra include:

These features will be examined more deeply as we proceed with the review.

Kartra’s drag-and-drop page builder, along with an extensive collection of ready-made, fully customizable templates, makes it easy to develop a variety of website pages such as memberships, sales funnels, launch pages, blogs, or landing pages.

Essentially, it provides all the tools needed to establish your small business’s online presence. You can even design entirely new templates from scratch using the builder, giving you maximum flexibility.

Common template categories cover a range of purposes, including:

The editor allows for detailed customization of every element on your page, from resizing images to adjusting the placement of objects. You can also utilize pre-designed blocks to quickly assemble your layout.

Here’s a selection of draggable elements you can add to your page:

The platform also manages necessary spacing, alignment, height, and width adjustments automatically. Incorporating your brand’s logo, fonts, and colors into your pages ensures consistent branding.

All pages created are fully mobile-responsive, ensuring a seamless experience across devices. You can preview your design on desktops, tablets, and smartphones before publishing, helping ensure your website looks great everywhere.

Advanced customization options include the ability to add custom HTML, JavaScript, and CSS code to significantly alter your templates and elements. To modify CSS, navigate to Styles > Custom Styles > and input any desired classes or styles. To embed HTML or JavaScript, simply drag a custom-code block into your page layout or insert a custom-code component where needed. However, note that Kartra does not support editing server-side programming languages like PHP.

An important consideration is that your work isn’t autosaved, so you must remember to save your progress manually. If you forget, any recent changes could be lost due to network issues.

Kartra’s “one-click publish” feature is convenient for owners with their own domains. If you don’t have a domain, the platform will help you set one up and host your pages there. For those with existing domains, the One-Click Push technology instantly publishes your pages to your preferred domain.

Kartra also includes a built-in behavioral adaptive marketing engine. This smart system automatically analyzes your contacts’ behaviors (or lack thereof) and delivers targeted messages via email, checkout pages, or other channels at the optimal moments. You don’t need to manually create tags, complex sequences, or rules; the platform handles this dynamically.

Other notable features include:

Kartra claims its page builder can replace leading landing page tools such as Leadpages, Kajabi, ClickFunnels, and Instapage.

Kartra provides all the essential tools needed to create a checkout page effortlessly. You can drag-and-drop the checkout element from the sidebar and customize your forms to collect leads and process sales. There are two main types of checkout forms you can build: the single-step, vertical layout that includes all fields like pricing and credit card info, and the multi-step, horizontal layout that guides users through the process in stages.Here are the different payment options you can offer: One-time payments, recurring subscription payments, installments, free trial offers (such as a 14-day free trial or a small fee for the first month), and initial payments. You can set a price description for each option, allowing users to choose their preferred method. Payments can be processed through credit cards or PayPal.

Additionally, you can incorporate coupons and special promotions during checkout to incentivize purchases. Kartra Checkout also enables you to add one-click upsells during the checkout process, allowing you to present valuable additional offers effortlessly. Cross-selling your similar-priced products from different categories is also possible.

If a customer decides not to complete a purchase, Kartra can suggest another entry-level product from your lineup. You can also offer order bumps—additional complementary products or services—right before the final order confirmation. Post-sale, Kartra encourages buyers to subscribe to your email list for future product recommendations and engagements.

A key feature is the ability to offer discounts to customers during the checkout process without affecting your standard pricing for other clients. Other notable checkout features include rescheduling payment dates, proactive notifications about card expiration, customizing checkout fields, supporting 12 languages and 40 currencies, enabling one-click transactions, automating geolocation, setting variable shipping costs based on country, automatically calculating sales tax or VAT, freezing subscriptions for future reactivation, and ensuring secure transactions with PCI, GDPR, and SCA compliance through 256-bit encryption.

Moving on, Kartra’s sales funnel builder helps create tailored customer journeys—from initial awareness to becoming a loyal customer or VIP member. You can craft funnels that direct leads through various stages such as brand introduction, trial sign-ups, paid memberships, or exclusive upgrades.

While you’re free to develop individual pages and funnels independently, Kartra’s pre-designed campaign templates and funnel tools simplify building complex marketing sequences. For example, if you want to run a multi-page opt-in funnel followed by a sales funnel for your product, doing this manually would require setting up multiple pages and managing the flow between each. With Kartra, you can easily build comprehensive funnels that include all necessary pages, email follow-ups, offers, and automation sequences, saving significant time and effort.

Creating a flow in Kartra is straightforward: you simply drag and drop various components onto the canvas and link them with arrows. This process is performed once—after setting up the sequence, Kartra automatically runs it repeatedly. You can design the sequence’s complexity by establishing different paths based on user responses, using YES and NO Boolean options. You also have the option to add conditional logic like IFs and THENs to trigger specific automation scenarios.

You can start with a pre-made template and import it into Kartra instantly, or explore the marketplace to find funnel campaign templates crafted by top marketers like Frank Kern and Andy Jenkins. Additionally, you can export and share your own templates and campaign setups with others through the Campaign Marketplace.

Other important features for sales funnels include real-time tracking of funnel performance, segmenting prospects into highly targeted groups with lead tagging, and ready-to-use campaigns that only need to be plugged in to start working.

The platform also features a Membership Site Builder that enables you to create protected areas where users can access paid or free memberships. For those unfamiliar, a membership site controls access to content through login pages, allowing you to restrict certain pages to specific members. Kartra offers numerous customizable templates that are fully responsive, ensuring they look great on desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Since the membership builder is integrated into Kartra’s all-in-one platform, you can seamlessly connect your membership site with email marketing, landing pages, shopping carts, and more.

You can set up multiple membership tiers to give varied levels of access based on subscription plans. The platform also includes comprehensive Member Management tools, allowing you to monitor member activity, see who is active or canceled, and manage access permissions manually. This makes it easy to oversee your community and control who can view what content at any given time.Kartra provides an all-in-one platform for managing your membership sites, allowing you to keep everything in a single portal—especially useful if you run multiple membership sites. This setup offers a great opportunity to cross-promote and upsell your content seamlessly.

With Kartra, you can automate the drip-feeding of content at regular intervals, which helps maintain member engagement and encourages repeat visits. Once you configure your membership site, Kartra automatically handles the content delivery based on your settings. Members are notified via email whenever new content is available, with direct links to access it.

Other important features include progress tracking, which enables you to monitor your members’ advancement, such as average progress rates and the time taken from registration to course completion. You can share these insights with your members to motivate them toward higher achievements.

Schedule your content releases and email communications ahead of time, ensuring members receive materials step-by-step as they progress. Additionally, you can engage with your members directly by responding to questions, deciding which comments are published immediately, and which require moderation.

In summary, Kartra equips you with everything needed to build a successful online membership business. Its tools include an intuitive drag-and-drop website builder, an email list builder with automation and tagging features, flexible pricing options—including one-time, recurring, and installment payments—capabilities to sell products and services, and a built-in affiliate management system to recruit and track sales partners.

Moving on to email marketing, Kartra offers comprehensive tools for creating and managing campaigns across desktop and mobile platforms. The email editor is user-friendly, utilizing drag-and-drop functionality and pre-designed templates featuring countdown timers, video previews, testimonials, and various content blocks that can be easily inserted into your emails.

Beyond just email creation, Kartra’s email features include behavior-based automation workflows and personalization options. The system automatically tags contacts based on their actions, such as making a purchase or clicking a link. This tagging capability allows you to set up automated, highly targeted email campaigns—delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time.

You can also design entire drip sequences with multiple emails that trigger sequentially, making your marketing more efficient. The platform supports sending regular emails, managing opt-ins, subscriptions, tagging contacts, tracking analytics, split-testing, and optimizing campaigns—all operating automatically.

Furthermore, you can plan and schedule your emails and SMS messages ahead of time, set complex conditional rules for different leads, control the timing between messages, and track lead behavior based on logical statements. Automated follow-ups based on specific user actions are straightforward to configure, ensuring your outreach remains timely and relevant. Using the intuitive IF and THEN automation rules, you can pre-define triggers that activate specific campaigns or follow-up sequences at just the right moment.Kartra automatically manages your contacts’ engagement by unsubscribing those who haven’t interacted with your emails in the past 30 days.

To make your emails more personal and engaging, you can insert custom tags like {first_name} or {join_date} to personalize messages for each recipient.

Kartra also provides many email components designed to boost your click-through and overall engagement rates.

You might, for example, add a countdown timer to create a sense of urgency, which can lead to higher conversion rates.

Furthermore, Kartra tracks essential email marketing KPIs, helping you analyze and optimize your campaigns effectively.

You will receive insights such as open rates, click-through rates, conversions, ROI, and other key metrics. Based on historical data, Kartra suggests the best times to send your emails to maximize results.

It also allows you to monitor unsubscriptions and spam complaints, enabling you to take corrective actions to improve your email deliverability. The platform evaluates your campaign’s success with revenue ratios, showing how well your email efforts translate into profits.

Additionally, Kartra includes split testing features that let you experiment with different email texts and subject lines. It tracks the performance of each version and automatically switches to the most successful one, ensuring your campaigns become increasingly effective.

Kartra claims that its email marketing tool, Kartra Mail, can replace other popular platforms like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, Shopify, and Constant Contact.

Moving on, Kartra offers comprehensive calendar and scheduling solutions to help you manage appointments seamlessly. You can use Kartra Calendars to facilitate booking, schedule events, and even accept payments for services. It allows you to specify your available times, choose the services you want to offer, and share your calendar with prospects.

Clients can view your real-time availability, book their own appointments, and reschedule with a simple click—saving the hassle of endless email exchanges. Once a meeting is booked, Kartra captures client details such as their name, email, and location, which you can then use for segmentation by adding tags, notes, or assessing customer value.

The calendar tool can be embedded into any webpage, membership site, or pop-up using a drag-and-drop webpage builder. This makes it easy to integrate into your existing online presence.

Plus, Kartra provides four ready-made calendar templates suited for different professional needs:
– The consultant model
– The recurring class model
– The gym subscription model
– The live event model

You can further customize the appearance of your booking pages to match your website’s style. Other useful features include automatic time zone conversions based on the user’s location, real-time appointment updates, and flexible scheduling options to streamline your booking process.

Kartra offers numerous tools designed to generate leads by capturing your audience’s attention, nurturing potential customers, and turning prospects into buyers. Its integrated automation for scoring and tracking leads ensures you deliver timely, relevant messages and never overlook high-quality prospects. All contact information—from opt-in forms to sales pages and membership sites—is unified in one centralized system, providing a complete view of customer interactions. Understanding the behavior patterns of your existing users—including how they arrive on your site, where they exit, what links they click, and their journey from sign-up to checkout—helps you tailor your marketing campaigns and optimize sales funnels. Moreover, Kartra’s automation features dynamically assign scores to leads based on their interactions with emails, portals, checkout pages, and more, removing the guesswork in identifying your most valuable customers. You can trigger workflows based on a lead reaching a certain score or acquiring a specific tag, enabling precise follow-up actions.

Kartra allows you to upload, host, and stream videos efficiently, with support for creating unlimited playlists. You enjoy complete control over the visual appearance, including branding, as well as the ability to restrict controls according to your needs. Watermarking videos with your branding helps reinforce your image. Beyond basic playback, Kartra offers options to enhance user experience through features like “timed actions”. For example, when offering a free giveaway, you can display an opt-in pop-up at specific moments during the video or present a call-to-action (CTA) button precisely when you want viewers to take action. Since Kartra tracks user interactions, you can personalize video engagement based on individual preferences. Comprehensive analytics provide insights such as viewer behavior, who is watching, how much of the video they consume, and which videos deliver the highest value, enabling continual optimization.

Kartra’s built-in analytics tools give you detailed insights into every aspect of your business—ranging from website traffic sources and conversion rates to individual lead behaviors. The sales reports offer real-time data on your revenue, refunds, cancellations, and other key metrics. By analyzing these reports, you can forecast future subscriptions by observing average subscription rates. The analytics also extend to traffic and conversion patterns, helping you understand how visitors engage with your web pages and videos, highlighting areas for optimization. Subscription and membership analytics provide data on subscriber counts, renewal rates, and engagement levels, empowering you to grow and maintain a healthy customer base effectively.channel is delivering you the highest number of conversions.

Additional analytical reports include:

Kartra’s Survey and Quiz feature helps you actively engage your audience and gain insights into their preferences. You can discover what interests them, their likes and dislikes, and gather valuable feedback on your products or services.

Kartra integrates surveys and quizzes with:

You can also automate email sequences, responses, and tags based on quiz and survey outcomes.

Kartra offers seamless integrations with a wide array of services.

It provides native integration features with major platforms such as:

Moreover, Zapier integration enables connecting Kartra with hundreds of additional applications, even those not directly supported.

It also provides outbound and inbound API options, allowing custom backend development.

Prices vary based on the number of active leads in your account.

There are four plans available:

All plans come equipped with core features such as checkout systems, sales funnels, email marketing, survey tools, video hosting, membership sites, affiliate management, marketplace access, helpdesk, and more.

Additional modifications, like extra domains, emails, bandwidth, third-party app integrations, and API access, are available for purchase.

You can also try Kartra risk-free for 14 days for just $1.

Here’s a quick overview of the strengths and weaknesses of Kartra:

Kartra is a comprehensive digital marketing platform tailored for individuals or small businesses wanting to build websites, sell digital products, customize sales pages, and manage email campaigns.

This automation software is particularly appealing to designers seeking to craft professional online presence without coding hassles.

Start your journey with Kartra.

Have you used Kartra before? What was your experience? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Explore more on StepThroughThePortal.com: If you’re still unsure whether Kartra fits your needs, check out my detailed comparison between Kartra and ClickFunnels.

For alternative options, see my reviews of Kajabi and ThriveCart.