in this video I'm going to compare two of the most popular online course platforms kartra and kajabi now I'm a fan of both of these tools I love the fact that they are all in one platforms because ultimately this is going to save you a lot of time and Tech headaches personally I use kartra and have been for many years now and it's really helped me grow my online business but no tool is perfect the good news is that both of these tools are rapidly improving so I'm filming this right now in September 2023 but things are changing on a month-to-month basis new features are coming out new developments are happening so what I'm going to do is I'm going to leave a link in the description below to my website where I'm going to keep a more updated list of the features and everything that is going on in the cartridge versus kajabi debate it's my hope that through this video I can help you choose the right platform for your business and again I like both of these tools I teach both of them and I have 30 day free free trials for both in the description below so make sure that you check those out so in this video I'm going to go through the core features and give you a side-by-side comparison of both and if you get to the end of this video and you're still not sure which one you should use don't worry you can use those free trials log in and see which one you like using most all right let's dive in let's start with pricing so kartra up first the starter plan is 119 per month and actually I do have a link that will get you three months of kartra for just 99 which is fantastic because you can set up your course and all your marketing and everything that you need in three months for just 99 so check the description for that that can be a really great way to start all right but let's look at the regular pricing so 119 dollars per month that's going to give you 2500 contacts so you can have 2 500 people on your email list you can sell 20 products to membership sites you get most features it's except for these three and honestly you can do everything you need as a beginner without these okay then here's kajabi's plans so their basic is 149 per month and as you can see you can only sell three products here but you can have 10 000 contacts on this plan you are missing out on a few features so here are the features that you're missing out on so the affiliate program which I like that you can do that in the kartra starter plan here custom code editor in order to get that you need to be on the 399 per month plan okay so mid-level in kartra is 229 dollars per month this is going to give you 12 500 contacts and mostly everything is unlimited so unlimited products you can sell unlimited membership sites and you get all of the features with this one okay and then the only difference to the then higher level is that you can go up to 50 000 contacts and you get more custom domains with Karcher though you can add at a low rate you can add additional domains if you need to as well as emails and bandwidth so that's cool now when we're doing this comparison you have to think about where you're at right now in business and what you really need so sometimes these pricing tables are just distracting you with features that you don't even need at this point in your business so just keep that in mind okay now for kajabi we have growth 199 dollars per month okay this gives you 15 products twenty five thousand contacts okay those extras so that's good the ability to remove kajabi branding okay and then for 399 dollars per month this is what we get okay so up to a hundred thousand contacts there and and our custom code editor okay so for pricing I would say kartra is a bit better because it's thirty dollars per month cheaper and you are able to have an affiliate program on the starter plan so that means you can turn any of your students or any of your peers into Affiliates of your course now let's look at the course or membership area now with both of these platforms you can sell online courses memberships coaching programs and digital products okay so you have the option in both so now let's go into the course area of kartra so this is what their course area looks like and I do love it because it is super customizable so as you can see on the left here you can really add any type of content that you want and because it's drag and drop you can drag it all around and determine what each individual lesson looks like so let's make some quick changes I'm going to change my header color great all right so let's pretend this is the lesson here so if I wanted to add in a headline I'm just going to pick that up and drag it in here same with if I wanted to add in an image I'm going to do that okay and I'm just going to use this palm tree image here for all of my examples all right I'm going to choose the width of my image the alignment and hit save all right cool then I could go ahead and add a button and and I can use this highlight box here I use this a lot to display action steps okay so I think that looks awesome I also use it at the top here often to add in my lesson overview okay great and because it's drag and drop I can pick up each of these elements and I can just move them around however I want okay so that's what I mean with the flexibility here okay now let's build it out a little bit more I can also add my little teacher section okay something like that I can also add a progress bar I can add any image I want along the side here which I do a lot you can add things like an announcement bar okay you can add an image here as well to the Top If you want and that would look something like that right the point is you have a lot of options as to how this actually looks so now you're going to go up here and you're going to click on preview now we have three different designs for the course area so I'm going to click save and preview I'm going to delete the announcement bar I don't like it alright so this is number one this is number two okay and all your modules will show up here and this is number three in case you want that side where it collapses out with all of the lessons so that would look something like this where you click on the plus sign and then the lessons display and within this you can choose if you want your sidebar on the right if you want one on both sides or not so I feel like that's quite a lot of flexibility overall and with kartra you can do cool things like selling other products inside of your course area so that makes it easier to make even more sales you can do things like add surveys add opt-in forms pretty easy and flexible course area all right now let's go into kajabi so we're going to add a new product we're going to choose course get started okay now it's cool because kajabi has started integrating AI so that's what you're seeing there um yeah that's not something that Karcher is doing yet but I can imagine that they would soon okay cool so let's go into an individual lesson to edit that and see what we can do okay so we have our area for our title what module it's in and then we do have this section here where okay let's pretend I want to add in an image I'm going to click upload here great okay so we're able to add in an image and then to resize I just go like that okay and then let's say I have a download I'm going to click add files and I have my sample download here okay great now for media let's say I have a video I'm going to click video and I'm going to upload my lesson so I just have a little demo file here okay so now I'm going to upload a lesson thumbnail save okay great so now I'm going to hit preview and you can see what our lesson looks like here okay and clearly it didn't like that image there um okay but this is one of the reasons why I had initially chosen kartra because really there's only one place that you can have the video there's only one place you can have the downloads over here to the right and I just felt like that was a little limiting okay so then this is what the main course page looks like and again I just felt like I didn't have much flexibility with the overall appearance okay so this is what your course looks like so there are other ways though for you to customize the look so let's go over to customize and then customize and so now I have options for what I can change I can change the overall appearance here like background and background image okay okay so I can change the color like that I can change the typography pretty easily there that is one thing you might find frustrating about kartra a lot of times you're going into the individual block and then choosing the font that is if you don't use the default so in general I just use the default I know there is a workaround for that though if you wanted something different so don't worry about that okay so now for example if I wanted to change this hero image I'm going to click on that and then I'm going to hit select image and upload that but do you see how it's like a little bit different I find this a little clunkier and I'm sort of limited here like what if I want to add another section you know I can't really I can't really do that I guess I could add content here but that's to that one section so for me this just feels a little clunky like I wish it was just a little bit more flexible you know what I mean okay but this is just one theme and there are other themes so another way to do it is Click install template so then you have options of different templates okay for example this one here so I'm going to preview that and it shows me what it will look like so I like this design I like that we can see how much is completed right up top here I think that's cool okay and then it switches around like we have a big video here we have our downloads and then our course area and then our lesson but yeah in kajabi you can't decide that you want to display your downloads anywhere else unless you wanted to use code which then you need to be upgraded on the higher plan so overall I would say I like the kartra Builder more because of the flexibility I tend to get the lesson looking exactly how I want like this right and then I will just go into the lesson and then I will clone it so that I don't have to rebuild everything and it just has my exact format that I okay another thing I wanted to mention in kartra if you scroll down to the bottom of your course area you'll see that it says powered by kartra so at this time you can't remove that and in kajabi if you upgrade to their second plan you can remove their branding so that's just one thing to make note of next let's talk about email marketing so when it comes to this most important is that you want to be able to set up sales funnels and you want to be able to send out broadcasts or newsletter style emails both of these platforms allow you to do both of those okay and honestly they feel quite similar to me in terms of functionality of email so let me show you what the email builder in Karcher looks like again it's making use of the drag and drop so you would click here on Headline drag that into your email and build it out this way okay and they both will have features like being able to split test different things being able to set up automated sequences so that you can welcome all of your students but also so that you can set up automated sales funnels okay and in kajabi they have email templates so does kartra let's click on this one get started and then this is what the email editor looks like so you can see that there's similarities as to how the editors work across all the different assets so for email rather than me like clicking and dragging elements in I need to go to the section I want to edit click edit and then I can go over here and I can make my edits right okay so that's fine and then if I want to add something else I click add section over here say I'm adding text and then I can customize it here okay so again pretty similar now one thing that is different about funnels that ultimately had me going with kartra is that I wanted the ability within my funnel to be able to display a countdown timer like this up here on the top of my page right to show how much time is left to get the limited time discount or bonus now in both of these platforms you can add countdown timers to pages in real time but kartra has more of an evergreen capability and so that means that within my funnel I can lead to a page that has a countdown timer set up based on when someone joins my funnel if you want to do that in kajabi then you need to add deadline funnel but it's not perfect in kartra so what I teach my students is that you can have countdown timers within your funnel but only use it on pages don't use the countdown timer in emails because as we've had some issues with it syncing up with what is on the page right so if you are going to use this functionality in your funnels just have it display on the page and don't use the in email Evergreen countdown timers so yeah it's all a bit complicated and if you do want email countdown timers then you're going to need to use deadline funnel for either platform so I think these two are pretty much tied when it comes to email marketing you're going to be able to do everything that you want to Market your business and you don't need an additional email marketing tool right that's one of the benefits of the all-in-one so even though it does have a higher price point you need an email marketing tool right there's no way around it for your online business you absolutely need to be using email so it's built into both now let's look at the page builder so both of them are going to have tons of different templates that you can choose from and use as a starting point okay but let's go into one and just check out the function quality so this is what the page builder looks like in kartra so again super flexible and functions just like the other assets that I've shown you so you will go over here to the left side you'll click on components for example let's say you want to add an image you're going to click on that and you're going to drag it over here okay and that's added an image block you also have the option to add in individual pre-built sections right for example something like this we're going to pick that up we're going to drag it over and that's going to add a section with a lot of different elements okay and then you just have to hover over each one click on the pencil icon and then you're going to be able to customize the look of each element okay so as you can see here right this is just an example with this simple button I can choose all these different things I can choose the size the shadow whether it's Hollow or not whether it has rounded Corners right what the colors are when you hover over so I do like that it gives you a lot of flexibility this can feel like there's quite a learning curve to start with because it's a little different with how it does like columns and then we actually add in components so that can be a little bit tricky at first but when you are used to it you tend to appreciate how customizable it is and just like with everything else make sure once you have added in your branding and you've created pages that you love just clone them and use them again for different events and things that you may need okay I'm always cloning so as you can see tons of different assets you can add in here and I've really been able to achieve the look that I want with my kartra pages right for example this one here was built in kartra okay now let's look at the page builder in kajabi so I'm going to start with this one here so again there will be tons of templates with kajabi as well and just like the other sections it's very similar so they're more so working with sections like this and then you come over you hover over it click edit and then you have of your options for customizing it right so for example if I want to change the button I need to go to call to action and then I can change it here right and then I do have options I like that I see the changes right away so that's cool I like that so it's flexible just in a different way right it's just constructed differently right so even to add in that section that was a bit bit funny to me honestly but you know it works so I think you can you can get there and one thing that people do say about kajabi is it naturally does look more modern I think that is true to a point especially the back end does feel a bit more modern to me but I think with both of them they are very flexible so you can achieve the look that you want in either okay but yeah I personally prefer the way the flexibility is provided in kartra but yeah again you can go in you can test both of them and see which one you like working with best now I know that it sounds like I've just been loving kartra so far so now you're going to be very interested in the next few features because kajabi totally wins with those all right the next question is can you use kartra and kajabi for your core website and the answer is yes you can it is a simplified version of a website I would say so it's not personally what I would recommend still at this time I would recommend having another platform like Squarespace for your core website that's also beneficial if Karcher or kajabi ever temporarily go down you can still have your website up so I like that level of security but yeah you can use it for both and it will look good if you are going to use one of these for your core website kajabi is better because it has the blogging functionality built in now it's not super robust right so if we look at it this is what it looks like and this is all we really have for SEO so I do still think Squarespace would be better for this purpose but you could use this kartra at this time allows you to create your website pages and you know connect your domain and everything like that but it doesn't have the blogging functionality all right next let's talk about community so for Community kajabi also wins kartra doesn't really have a community function at this time so for example for my courses I have accompanying Facebook groups and that's where all of my students join and then they can get support there I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing though because I have found even when I tried to use other softwares like Circle and mighty networks in order to build community and get people into a more branded platform I found it more difficult to actually get people over and to get people engaging in Facebook people are already there and so we do tend to get more people actually using and engaging with our courses okay so that's a little side note but with kajabi they actually have a community function built in so let's take a look at that I'm going to click new community okay so I do think this is really cool and I know a lot of people don't want to be using Facebook groups so this is an alternative I think it looks really great this is where your students can come in chat with one another support one another ask questions I know you can host challenges right here within kajabi for your students so I think that is super cool right so people can join and complete challenges I love this I think it's really cool and I do hope that kartra adds some Community elements soon so if community space is important to you then you may want to go with kajabi I also like that you can host meetups and you can actually go into a live room with your other students so yeah that's really really cool and this is what I mean by things are changing so rapidly it wasn't always like this right so things are changing with the software so make sure that you click the link in the description below if you are watching this in the future just in case some elements have changed I'm going to keep an updated table of all the different features so kajabi is clearly coming in strong for the second half of this video the next place where you may love kajabi is for mobile at this time students in kartra can just access your course on mobile right they can just open it up and view the lessons absolutely on mobile that's no problem but kartra does not have an app so if you use kajabi you can instruct your students to download the kajabi app and then view your course that way so that's cool and for some people they hear that and then instantly want to use kajabi okay so when students do this though it is going to be the kajabi app it's not like a custom branded app however they did just launch this in beta where you could have a branded app where it's literally your own branding okay but you're going to need to add this on to your current plan for an additional 199 dollars per month though if you have a larger business and Community I can see that being an absolute no-brainer and you're like yes I want my own custom app and community so I think that is really cool and I'm very excited for that to come out of beta all right next let's talk about webinars so kartra just added webinar functionality into its platform which is awesome that's what I'm in right now it does have quite a few limitations though at this time so I'm hoping they will change that for example it's only on the silver plan and you're limited to an hour only on that plan or else you'd have to upgrade and I just feel like a lot of webinars go over an hour so I feel like they will change that but this is very cool that it is built in now kajabi had me totally confused from what I can tell now there is not a webinar functionality built in however we know that they have this live room happening within the community right so that's cool so I can imagine they will add in webinar functionality soon so guys as you can see it is very competitive and it's not as simple as which one is better they both have strengths and weaknesses and I'm very excited to see how these platforms develop over the next year another thing I do like in kajabi is the coaching product so you can set it up where people can schedule in a session with you and then it has a live room built into it and then as you can see they can add what they'd like to cover with you over here if we click on notes you can have shared notes and what your notes are I feel like that's cool and resources can be added here so yeah I think that's worth exploring as well you can definitely do something similar in kartra a scheduler is also built into kartra but this shared notes thing I don't think they have a functionality like that all right there you have it that is my review of kartra versus kajabi I am so curious to see which one you are going to choose so let me know in the comments down below and of course if you have any questions at all just let me know and I will help you out thank you so much for watching if you like this video let me know by giving it a thumbs up don't forget to hit subscribe and I'll see you real soon 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