Reviews

Kartra Review: Is This the Best All In One Marketing Platform?

Published on March 9, 2020

Kartra Review: If you want to sell a product or service online, there’s a lot of techs that you have to hook up to get it to work.

You’ll need reliable web hosting for your site.

You’ll need a way to build your sales funnel to collect leads, create checkout pages, and add upsells and downsells.

And you’ll need a good email service that lets you follow up with your leads and help you segment them.

All this will end up costing you a pretty penny if you purchase them separately. And you’ll need to learn how to integrate all of them together.

Kartra solves this problem by adding all these functionalities and more into a single, integrated platform.

And in this Kartra review, we’re going to take a look at what this marketing platform offers, and whether it’s worth using to sell your next product or service.

Here’s what I’m going to be covering:

What is Kartra?
Who is Kartra Targeted to?
A Look Inside Kartra
Kartra Pricing
Final Thoughts

Ready to purchase Kartra right now? Skip to the bottom of this review and grab my $16,675 Kartra Bonus Package.

What Is Kartra?

Kartra is an all-inclusive online business platform founded in 2018 by Genesis Digital (the same team behind WebinarJam).

It includes everything from hosting, email marketing, video, webinars, split-testing, cart checkouts, and a slew of other critical tools — each designed to integrate seamlessly with the last.

Now, we’ve all seen tools like this before and I even reviewed one of them (BuilderAll) last year, but Kartra brings something a little more unique to the table.

Not only can you leverage the suite of tools provided by Kartra to build your online business, but they also give you proven, done-for-you funnels backed by marketing legends such as Frank Kern. (Yep, like ClickFunnels.)

Taking the headache out of tech setup is one thing, but having pre-made, battle-tested funnels at your fingertips is a whole another USP to get excited about.

Kartra isn’t just about building a completely online business, it’s about growing it too.

Who Is Kartra Targeted Too?

Despite being an all-in-one, Kartra isn’t for everyone.

In fact, if you’re happy with your toolkit, and you have a reliable system in place that’s working well for you, Kartra could be more of a burden than a solution.

Instead, it’s for people who are tired of having to duct tape their online business with tools that aren’t compatible with each other.

It’s for people who don’t want to have to hire teams of developers and system integrators to reach the next level of their business.

And ultimately, it’s for people who want to spend less time bridging software gaps and more time on what actually matters…

Acquiring more customers and making more sales.

If that sounds like you, you better keep reading because this might just be what you’re looking for.

[Note: There are far too many individual tools to cover as part of the Kartra suite, so I’ll only be reviewing some of them today.]

AFFILIATE BOOTCAMP SUMMIT

A Look Inside Kartra

Onboarding Process

Kartra does a good job at letting you know where you are in the process and what to expect next.

Right after signup, I was told that I’ll receive 4 emails as part of the onboarding process.

The crucial email was a link to the login page, including my login details.

When first signing into my account, I was greeted with a welcome video that explained some of features of Kartra as well as the initial steps I should take.

The video was actually very well done, and it gave me enough to chew on without being overwhelming.

The most notable takeaway was probably the sidebar checklist. Again, this is nothing new, but it’s something I’ve come to appreciate with tools that are more involved — like this one.

You don’t have to follow this checklist, but they encourage you to do so. At least until you become more familiar with the platform.

Overall I couldn’t really fault the onboarding stage. It was clear, concise, and left me confident about what to do next.

Page Building

You can hardly have an online business without a website to boot. That’s where Karta’s page builder comes in.

But this isn’t your usual blank canvas builder.

Kartra provides pre-made templates for virtually any use-case you can imagine, from a traditional home page or blog feed, to long-form sales pages to classic squeeze pages.

The templates are also surprisingly good across the board, including both old-school (but not ugly) and modern layouts.

I was able to find a few personal favorites under any page type I clicked into, and I’m pretty picky when it comes to design.

So how does template editing work?

While you can start from scratch, I selected a squeeze page template at random and loaded it into the page builder.

As someone who’s tested almost every page builder under the sun, I’ve become critical of the types of page builders that are produced by all-in-one solutions.

The good news is, making direct changes to a template is a simple point-and-click process. This applies to editing text, swapping out images, and changing styles.

You can also add new elements into the mix using the provided blocks.

The bad news? Well… it’s just a bit rigid.

Even something as simple as adjusting the column is far too involved than it needs to be.

For example, you have to first switch to column mode, then click to edit the column widths, then manually adjust them. For me, it should just be a case of clicking and dragging…

And no, this wasn’t an isolated example.

Don’t get me wrong, it does the basics well, and it’s perfectly adequate for people who don’t want to break the mould. But if you’re looking for a flexible page builder that stands toe to toe with the best, this aint it.

Where you do get value, however, is in the integration department. Remember, this is an all-in-one platform.

For example, if you need to drop a video on the page, you can quickly and easily select from your library of existing videos or upload a new one. No external hosting required.

Or maybe you want to add a popup to your page?

Instead of having to go out and find a compatible popup addon, you can rely on the popup functionality inside of Kartra.

I mean, it’s literally a flip of a switch…

It’s this plug-and-play aspect that gives the builder an edge, and unfortunately not so much in terms of flexible design capabilities.

Overall, Kartra’s page builder does feel more polished than what I’ve seen from other all-in-one solutions, but once again, it’s never going to live up to a dedicated page builder.

Products & Carts

You can have the best sales page in the world but it won’t last long without a product to back it up.

Fortunately, Kartra has you covered with their built-in shopping cart and it makes some bold promises about what it can do.

Adding a product gives you 2 options; create the main product or an upsell/down-sell product.

The product will display depending on which of these options you choose, with an upsell/ down-sell only displaying after the main product purchase.

Next, Kartra will take you through the usual setup process when adding a product, and if you’ve used a shopping cart before, this will feel very familiar.

In fact, the interface makes the whole process even easier than some dedicated shopping carts. Not bad at all.

These steps will have you set up everything from:

Payment gateways (PayPal or Credit Card)
Product pricing (one-time, recurring, fixed amount, etc.)
Trial structures (such as $1 for the first 7 days)
Product, checkout, and thank you page design
Cart abandonment rules
Cart bump offers (add X for $5)
Cart templates & style (hosted, overly, embed)
And a whole lot more…

Many of these features are also stackable, meaning you can create pretty complex offers without feeling held back by the tech.

And for anyone who sells digital courses (like me), you’ll be able to seamlessly integrate with Kartra membership module — so the whole thing runs like clockwork.

So far this shopping cart has been nothing short of impressive, especially when you consider that it’s part of a much larger whole.

But it gets even better when you throw in the affiliate portal.

For each product you create, you can enable this portal to give your customers a chance at becoming your best promoters.

Affiliates are then given custom share URL’s with their tracking code embedded, allowing you to offer either a percentage or fixed-rate of the sale.

You’ll even be able to see information on your affiliates, the number of referrals, and payout history right from your dashboard.

If you weren’t already sold (they got me a while back), you also get access to product sales analytics.

This gives you an overview of everything from visits, sales, refunds, cancellations, revenue and customer value. Oh, and you can do the same for affiliate referrals too.

Overall, despite past experiences leaving me with little patience for subpar shopping carts, there’s actually very little this cart is missing in the way of useful features

Aside from some very advanced features, you’ll have everything you need to sell products via Kartra’s shopping cart solution. Yep, I love it.

Email Marketing

Email marketing comes under the ‘Communications’ tab and includes broadcasts, automation, tagging, sequences, and more.

This module aims to replace the likes of MailChimp, ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit. No small feat by any standard.

You’ll find much of the same features emulated here, including creating a simple list for your subscribers:

You can add leads manually or import a list of leads from a CSV — useful for those moving over from other email marketing platforms.

Of course, you can also create forms to collect new leads directly through Kartra.

The form builder uses the same builder interface as the rest of the software which makes it easy to navigate for the first time.

(For the record, this consistency between modules is something I really like about Kartra. In fact, this was one of my biggest gripes with BuilderAll.)

The forms have various options, including single/double opt-in, custom success URL, welcome message, tagging and automations, form behaviours and dozens of templates.

The form template editor feels more limited than the page builder and only really meant for basic changes to templates.

As for tagging, this is an important part of any email marketing platform as it allows you to segment your leads accordingly.

Kartra gives you some examples of how to use tagging functionality, but it’s just as simple to use as any other.

You just give your tag a name, and that same tag will become available in your automations later. You can also assign it to forms.

Of course, none of that matters without a way to send emails.

Kartra’s broadcast tool lets do you exactly that, and it even includes SMS for those who prefer to be a little more aggressive.

But let’s face it, the real attraction of any email marketing tool is the automation capabilities.

The good news is, Kartra has an automation workflow builder (called a ‘Sequence Builder’) and it’s just like the ones you’ve seen with ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit.

The screenshot, however, looks a lot more polished than the actual product.

And after testing the Sequence Builder, it feels rough around the edges compared to dedicated email marketing products.

For example, adding any elements or moving things around causes the editor to freeze and load every time. It gets real old, real quick.

Once you get past the quirks, it’s still a very usable system that mimics many of the features you’ve come to expect.

t’s never going to top the established email marketing companies, but it’s good enough.

Marketing Campaigns

Campaigns are where all the hype seems to be with this product.

These are end-to-end marketing campaigns based on the work of marketers like Frank Kern, and they leverage everything Kartra has to offer.

Campaigns can be created from scratch (and shared with Kartra users), or you can use one of Kartra’s “done for you” campaign templates.

If building a campaign from scratch, you’ll be reminded that this process will require all assets from your Kartra account, which is really just a fancy word for any related media you’ve created within the platform.

If you’re using a done for you campaigns, however, this will all be handled for you by the software.

At the time of writing there are 5 campaigns you can choose from and each solves a different marketing pain point.

For example, the ‘Simple List Builder’ leverages the freebie list-building model for growing your email list.

On the other hand, the ‘4 Day Cash Machine’ allows you to make quick sales to an existing subscriber list.

Clicking on any campaign trigger a video walkthrough of that campaign:

Importing a campaign will deploy it into your account with complete email sequences, product sale funnels, advanced automations, and any other necessary components.

You can actually view the assets in each campaign to see what components make it up, and you can expect to happen when deploying it.

After deploying the campaign, you’ll have to dig through your account to find the relevant assets and make changes.

These are pretty easy to spot as they’re marked by the same campaign name:

In this case, these pages are used in the Simple List Builder campaign and can be edited as usual to fit your specific business and offer.

The concept is smart and the execution works.

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, you can share your own campaigns with other Kartra users and vice versa.

This brings me to the Kartra campaign marketplace, a place to uncover some new and interesting angles — at a small price.

I have mixed feelings about in-app purchases like this, but if it drives the community to create more done-for-you campaigns then it can’t be all bad.

After all, this plug-and-play approach saves you a LOT of time and money in the long run.

We’re Just Scratching The Surface…

Anyone who has used Kartra will know just how many moving parts there are to it. Far too many to cover in a single review.

That being said, I believe what we’ve covered here paints a pretty accurate picture of what to expect from this platform.

Kartra gives you everything I’ve mentioned so far, but it also offers things like a CRM, membership and course portal, a helpdesk, and a bunch of other small but useful additions.

Is it everything you could possibly need to build your business? Not quite. But it’s close.

Kartra Pricing

Kartra has 2 main pricing plans for smaller businesses. There’s the Starter plan which is $99 per month and the Silver plan which is $199 per month.

Both plans have various limits on them.

So for the Starter plan, you’re limited to 2,500 contacts, 15,000 emails per month, 100 pages, 20 products and 100 automations.

Silver plan members can have up to 12,500 contacts, 125,000 emails per month, and unlimited pages, products and automations.

If you want some significant Kartra discounts, you can also decide to prepay annually. This will bring the cost of the Starter plan to $69/mo and the Silver plan to $139/mo. There are also 2-year discounts available.

For bigger businesses with even larger email lists, there is also the Gold ($299/mo) and Diamond plans ($699/mo).

All Kartra pricing plans let you try the service out for $1 for 14 days.

Final Thoughts

I really like what I’ve seen with Kartra so far. It’s a really powerful platform that pretty much comes with everything you need to sell your products and services.

While the monthly fee might seem like a lot for some, it will probably save you money in the long run because you don’t need to purchase web hosting, and email service, help desk, membership, and a lot more.

So for those of you looking for an all-in-one platform, definitely give Kartra a look.

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