Kartra vs Kajabi: Which is Better For First-Time Course Creators?

Kyle Leavitt

When it comes to building a successful online business, choosing the right platform can either speed up your growth or slow you down. Kartra and Kajabi are among the most talked-about solutions for creators, coaches, and entrepreneurs.

But many find themselves stuck between wanting both tools and being able to use them without getting bogged down by tech or spending hours learning the system.

So, how do you decide which is right for your business?

In this breakdown of Kartra and Kajabi, we’ll discover what each platform offers beyond the feature lists while also exploring an alternative that’s gaining attention for its simplicity and speed.

If you’re looking for a platform that supports your growth without slowing you down, this guide will help you find it.

What is Kartra?

Kartra is an all-in-one marketing platform that includes landing pages, email marketing, sales funnels, memberships, and even affiliate management. It’s designed to let you consolidate many marketing tools into one.

Kartra
Image Source: kartra.com

Users often praise Kartra’s advanced features and automation, but note that this comes with a steeper learning curve. The Kartra user interface is powerful, but can feel outdated and overwhelming to new users.

Still, for those seeking an advanced funnel builder, Kartra can be a great fit if you're ready to invest time to master it. This platform can be ideal if you need sophisticated marketing funnels and don’t mind investing time to master them.

What is Kajabi?

Kajabi is a leading online course platform built for creators, coaches, and entrepreneurs. It’s known for its clean user interface, strong community features, and emphasis on managing online courses. 

Kajabi includes tools for website building, email, funnels, and a mobile app for your learners.

Kajabi
Image Source: kajabi.com

However, its real strength is providing a polished environment for delivering online courses and digital products. Kajabi is generally regarded as more user-friendly than Kartra, with straightforward design tools and templates.

But, it’s not without limitations: some users complain about limited customization options and high pricing on Kajabi. Still, for many course creators, Kajabi’s focus on content delivery and its smoother frontend student experience make it a top choice.

What is CustomerHub?

CustomerHub is a plug-and-play platform designed for coaches, consultants, and online course creators who want to turn their knowledge into scalable online businesses.

If you're launching memberships, digital courses, or other products, CustomerHub removes the technical roadblocks so you can focus on sharing your expertise and growing your revenue. 

It helps you manage content, engage your community, and monetize with ease without needing a tech team.

CustomerHub

CustomerHub helps you upload videos, PDFs, and course modules into a simplified content library and build out your offerings with guided member onboarding, progress tracking, and custom product pages.

What makes CustomerHub even more powerful is its seamless integration with over 7,000 tools, including email platforms like Mailchimp and CRMs like ActiveCampaign. This lets you automate follow-ups, manage leads, and connect your entire marketing funnel without tech headaches.

It also features a private customer feed to share updates and boost engagement, plus responsive customer support and optional Done-for-You services to help you launch fast. With everything in one place, CustomerHub is your command center for scaling a modern online business.

Start your free 14-day trial today, or book a demo and see how CustomerHub works!

Kartra vs. Kajabi Feature Comparison

Both Kajabi and Kartra offer a wide range of tools to help you run your online business platform, but they serve slightly different goals.

Below, we break down how each handles the essential tools of a thriving online course platform and where a simpler option might be the smarter choice.

Course Creation and Content Delivery

One of the primary reasons you’re likely considering these platforms is to create online courses or membership content. Both Kartra and Kajabi support this, but with different approaches and depth.

Kartra

Kartra's approach creates online courses through its Memberships feature. Instead of a “course” object per se, you create membership sites that can contain protected content for your users. This works for delivering courses, though it’s arguably a bit less specialized than Kajabi’s approach.

Kartra’s membership builder gets the job done for basic courses or membership libraries, but it’s not as comprehensive as Kajabi’s course builder. Users also have mixed feelings about the platform's membership UX, noting that the interface is a bit dated or confusing for students and admins alike.

You can upload videos, audio, PDFs, etc., on the membership site builder, so content delivery itself is fine. But the learning experience in Kartra is more barebones, essentially a content list with comments.

Kajabi

When it comes to pure course creation, Kajabi is built with online course platform needs in mind, and it provides a full-featured course builder that is out of the box.

You can organize your content into multi-level categories and lessons, upload videos, PDFs, and other multimedia, and create quizzes and assessments to engage students. It also supports issuing completion certificates and has recently added features for coaching products and podcasts.

The platform also offers a refined student experience. Your course content is delivered through a branded member portal that’s easy for learners to navigate. There’s a mobile app (the Kajabi app on iOS/Android) that allows your customers to access their courses on the go.

However, some Kajabi users have noted that while it covers the essentials, customization for course layouts and design beyond the provided templates can be limited.

You might not be able to tweak the course player or dashboard without custom code (and full code access is only on Kajabi’s highest growth plan).

CustomerHub Makes Course Delivery Effortless

If Kartra feels overwhelming and Kajabi locks key features behind higher tiers, CustomerHub offers a refreshing alternative with a simplified, user-friendly approach to online course and membership delivery.

Built specifically for digital product creators, CustomerHub focuses on helping you structure and launch your content without technical headaches or complex configurations. It’s everything you need to get started and grow with none of the clutter.

  • Unlimited courses and members: One flat price with no caps or hidden upgrades
  • Fast, guided setup: Launch your course in as little as 30 minutes, and no coding is needed
  • Clean member portal: Members access everything in one place, with a built-in feed for updates and interaction
  • Flexible content delivery: Host videos, PDFs, and downloads, with drip schedules and progress tracking included

If your goal is to deliver quality content fast without struggling with tech, CustomerHub is built for you. Start your free 14-day trial today!

Marketing, Sales, and Automation Features

A major reason entrepreneurs consider all the tools platforms is to handle marketing and automation tasks alongside course delivery. This includes things like building landing pages, creating email marketing campaigns, setting up sales funnels, and managing affiliate marketing tools.

Here’s how Kartra and Kajabi compare on the marketing front if you prefer using third-party tools.

Kartra

Kartra Pages lets you build landing pages, opt-in pages, sales pages, and even full websites. It comes with 500+ templates that are mobile-optimized. You can design pretty much any page needed for their funnel.

Kartra also supports split-testing pages natively to optimize conversion rates, a feature that not all competitors offer by default. It has its own built-in email marketing campaign system, complete with automation workflows.

You can create if/then automation rules, tag subscribers based on their behavior, and set up complex email sequences that respond to user actions. It provides a visual campaign builder for mapping out your funnels.

Kartra has checkout pages for one-time or recurring payments, free trials, order bumps, and upsells/downsells. It includes an affiliate marketing tools center (available on its mid-tier plan and up) that allows you to run your own affiliate program.

Kajabi

Kajabi offers pre-designed Funnel Templates (formerly known as Pipelines) that are essentially pre-configured marketing templates. These are great for beginners as Kajabi will auto-generate the pages and email marketing campaigns.

However, the customization of these pipelines is more constrained than that of Kartra’s free-form campaign builder. Kajabi is aiming for ease of use over flexibility here.

Kajabi includes an email system that allows broadcasts and sequences called “Email Campaigns” or just Automations for single if-then steps. You can design emails using templates and personalization.

Selling online courses or products through Kajabi is also built in. You create Offers that attach a price to your Products, such as courses, memberships, or selling digital products. Kajabi’s checkout pages support one-time payments, payment plans, and subscriptions.

CustomerHub Doesn’t Replace Your Marketing Tools

CustomerHub offers native integrations with tools like Keap (Infusionsoft), ActiveCampaign, and more. Plus, it connects to over 7,000 apps through Zapier. If you already love using platforms, you can keep them in your stack and integrate them with CustomerHub to manage contacts and automate them.

CustomerHub also includes built-in sales pages and a checkout system that integrates with Stripe, so you can sell your memberships or courses without needing a separate shopping cart.

Just plug your content into their clean, conversion-friendly templates, and you’re ready to start getting paid with minimal setup or hassle!

Membership Site & Community Features

Beyond just delivering course videos, many creators want to build a community or membership experience for their customers. Engaged members tend to stick around longer, consume more content, and provide recurring revenue.

Let’s compare how Kartra and Kajabi facilitate membership engagement and community.

Kartra

Within Kartra’s membership sites, you can enable comments under posts/lessons. This allows a basic level of interaction, similar to Kajabi’s lesson comments.

However, Kartra doesn’t have a separate “community” section or forum-like area out of the box. The commenting is the only way members can interact, and it’s tied to specific content pieces.

There is also no equivalent to Kajabi’s Community product in Kartra. If having a forum or group is important, you’d have to integrate an external solution. Some Kartra users might use private Facebook groups or Discord for community discussions since Kartra doesn’t try to fill that need.

On the plus side, because Kartra can integrate via third-party tools, you could sync Kartra members with an outside community platform. But that requires extra setup and potentially extra cost for the external service.

Kajabi

Kajabi introduced a Community feature, which is similar to a private forum or Facebook group alternative that allows you to host discussions, posts, and interactions on their Kajabi site.

You can create community spaces called “Groups” or “Circles” where members can post updates, ask questions, and engage with each other. Outside the dedicated community area, Kajabi allows comments on your course lessons, so students can ask questions under each video, and you can answer.

Kajabi gives you decent control over member management as you can import/export members and segment them by the offers purchased. However, the Active Members limit on each plan is something to keep in mind if you have a large community, as hitting those caps might require a plan upgrade.

CustomerHub Keeps Members Engaged

CustomerHub, being focused on simplicity, does offer some features to engage members. It includes a private member feed. This feed works somewhat like a simplified newsfeed where you can post updates, share announcements, and where members can comment or ask questions.

CustomerHub also provides built-in progress tracking for members. They can see their progress through a course or set of content, which encourages completion. While this is not exactly a social feature, it does increase engagement by motivating users to finish and perhaps compete with themselves.

A neat feature of CustomerHub is its emphasis on onboarding. It allows you to set up a structured welcome sequence for new members, guiding them through the platform and content step by step. This hand-holding can make members feel supported from day one.

Ease of Use and Learning Curve

Even the most powerful marketing features won’t do you much good if the platform is too difficult or time-consuming to use. Let’s talk about the user-friendliness of Kajabi and Kartra.

Kartra

Kartra itself acknowledges that its platform is robust. For beginners, this can mean a lot of training is required to take full advantage.

Kartra’s UI is utilitarian. Everything is in there, but sometimes, finding which section to configure, such as linking an email sequence to a form to a page, requires jumping between modules. New users can easily get lost.

Multiple reviewers specifically mention Kartra’s complexity, stating “their system was backwards and clunky” said one user, who found funnels difficult to set up. If you’re not somewhat tech-savvy or willing to invest time, Kartra might frustrate you initially.

To Kartra’s credit, they do offer tutorials and an active Facebook user community. Some users have had positive experiences, stating the platform has great customer service and a library of help articles with walk-through videos.

Kajabi

Kajabi is famous for its intuitive onboarding. When you first sign up, Kajabi provides a series of short training videos and even a checklist that guides you through creating your first product, offer, and campaign.

The course and page builders also favor pre-made sections and settings that are easy to understand. Because Kajabi doesn’t attempt to do everything Kartra does in terms of complexity, it has fewer confusing options for a user to configure. This can actually be a good thing if you’re not a seasoned marketer.

The main ease-of-use complaints Kajabi gets are usually about when you want to do something outside the norm. For example, if you don’t like how a certain section of a page looks, you might not be able to change it unless you upgrade to the Pro plan for custom code.

Or if you have a very unique funnel idea, Kajabi’s pipeline templates might not support it perfectly. These are edge cases, but it’s where an otherwise easy platform can make a power user feel “boxed in.”

CustomerHub is Built for Non-Techies

CustomerHub is purpose-built for creators who want to launch without learning a new tech language. The platform is clean, simple, focused, and, most importantly, doesn’t need you to learn an entire suite of tools.

You can upload your content, customize your site, and start selling in as little as 30 minutes. Everything from hosting to updates is handled for you, and the platform integrates with the tools you already use.

Start your 14-day free trial today!

Customer Support and Resources

No software is perfect, and you will likely need help at some point, whether it’s troubleshooting an issue or just learning how to do something. Let’s compare the customer support quality and options for Kartra and Kajabi.

Kartra

Kartra primarily offers support via an email/ticket system. They have a live chat on the online business platform site, but that’s more for pre-sales. As of now, Kartra does not provide phone support or 24/7 live chat (it works only during limited business hours) for technical issues. The support team usually operates during business hours.

The platform has a knowledge base and the aforementioned user community. It also has a Helpdesk feature that you can use to support your customers.

Kartra’s own community forum or Facebook group also reveals users frequently voicing support delays. It’s possible Kartra’s support team is smaller relative to their user base or not as well organized.

Kajabi

Kajabi offers 24/7 email support for all plans. For higher-tier customers (Growth Plan and Pro Plan), they offer live chat support during certain hours, and at one point, they even had daily Q&A webinars or 1:1 check-ins.

However, phone support is no longer available, and some users wish Kajabi would bring back phone support for urgent issues.

Many users report relatively quick and helpful responses via chat or email. There are also complaints of slower responses during peak times. This suggests that as Kajabi’s customer base grew, the wait times increased.

Kajabi University, which is the platform's knowledge base, is quite extensive. They have documentation and how-to videos for most features. This self-serve aspect is strong, and it reduces the need to contact support for common questions.

CustomerHub Offers Personalized, Friendly Support

At CustomerHub, support isn’t just a feature but also part of the experience. With a boutique-sized team, you'll interact with knowledgeable support staff or the founding team. That means faster, more personal responses than you’d expect from larger platforms.

You can reach out via email or live chat, and CustomerHub also offers personal demo calls to help you get started confidently. 

Their focus on fast & friendly support shows up in customer feedback, with users regularly praising how easy it was to launch and how supported they felt during setup.

Pricing and Value for Money

Now, let’s tackle the all-important question of pricing. What will Kartra or Kajabi cost you? What do you get at each price point?

Kartra

Kartra’s pricing is tiered based on features and usage limits. As of 2025, Kartra offers three main plans:

  • Starter ($99/month): This is Kartra’s entry plan and allows up to 2,500 contacts in your account, one custom domain, and unlimited emails. Notably, the Starter plan does not include Kartra’s affiliate management feature or the agency feature.
  • Growth ($229/month): It raises the limits to 12,500 contacts, allowing three custom domains, unlimited emails, and more bandwidth. Crucially, affiliate management is included in this tier.
  • Professional ($549/month): This is a high-tier plan for advanced users, supporting 25,000 contacts, five custom domains, and additional perks. Features like Helpdesk Live Chat come in here.

Value for money: Kartra’s pitch is that even at $99 or $229, it might replace $500+ worth of other subscriptions. However, if you’re only using Kartra for a couple of functions and still paying for others, then you might be paying a lot of money for overlapping capabilities.

Kajabi

Kajabi’s pricing has changed a bit with the introduction of a lower-tier plan:

  • Kickstarter ($89/month): It’s quite limited: 1+1 Community, unlimited landing pages, 7,500 marketing emails, and 250 contacts. It’s aimed at beginners to try Kajabi.
  • Basic ($149/month): It includes three products, unlimited landing pages, 10,000 contacts, unlimited marketing emails, 1 website, and 1 admin user. This plan does not include the affiliate feature and only provides the basic support (email).
  • Growth ($199/month): This raises limits to 15 products, unlimited marketing emails, 25,000 contacts, 1 website, 10 admin users, and adds important features: affiliate program access, advanced automations, and the ability to remove Kajabi branding.
  • Pro ($399/month): This is the top tier aside from enterprise deals. It allows 100 products, unlimited pipelines, 100,000 contacts, and 25 admins. It is also the only plan that gives access to the code editor.

Value for money: Kajabi is often labeled as expensive, and indeed, $89 or $199 a month is no small fee. You must also consider that it includes your website hosting, video hosting, and email with limits like the number of contacts and emails per month, which are usually sufficient within the contact limit.

If you went with separate solutions like WordPress + Teachable + MailChimp + a community platform, you might be paying a similar amount after a certain scale.

CustomerHub Offers Better Pricing!

CustomerHub keeps pricing extremely simple with one plan. There are no tiers, no upsells for more features, and you get everything for a single price:

  • Unlimited products (courses/memberships)
  • Unlimited users/members
  • Unlimited content (videos, etc.)
  • All features included (full access to third-party integrations, templates, feed, etc.) from day one.

This flat pricing is a breath of fresh air compared to the multi-tiered schemes of all-in-one platforms. If you're a small business, you can plan expenses confidently, and as you grow your member count or content library, your costs don’t automatically shoot up.

Customerhub Pricing

Even better, CustomerHub charges zero transaction fees. At just $79/month, it's nearly half the price of Kajabi’s Basic plan and significantly less than Kartra’s Starter plan.

If you don’t need all the bells and whistles those platforms push, why overpay? With CustomerHub, you can reinvest the savings into advanced tools or just enjoy better margins.

Considerations

Finally, you need to consider the scalability of pricing: If you scale in growth and end up with tens of thousands of users, how do costs compare?

  • Kartra at 25k leads is $229, but ultimately, Pro at 50k is $549. Beyond that, they likely negotiate.
  • Kajabi at 20k members (which presumably aligns with Growth or Pro depending on contact count) you’re at $399 max for 100k contacts. If you exceed that, you might need enterprise.
  • CustomerHub at 20k or 200k members is still $79! Of course, if you had 300,000 members on a platform, you might be making enough money to afford any platform, but the fact that CustomerHub didn’t break under that load and didn’t charge extra is notable.

In summary, CustomerHub is the most affordable flat-rate option with no surprise bumps – ideal for cost-conscious creators or those just starting.

Kartra sits in the middle at entry level but can get pricey as you scale, though it potentially replaces many other costs.

Kajabi is the premium-priced option that many say is worth it if you fully utilize it, but it can be a financial stretch if you’re not yet monetizing strongly.

Kartra vs Kajabi: Which Should You Choose?

Both Kartra and Kajabi are good platforms, but they cater to slightly different priorities.

In this detailed comparison, there’s no one-size-fits-all winner. It all depends on your business stage and priorities. If we summarize:

Choose Kartra if you are an experienced marketer or a business that needs advanced marketing automation and funnel tools under one roof. It's suitable for creating sophisticated sales performance funnels, managing campaigns with conditional logic, and consolidating many marketing operations.

It’s best suited for those who are comfortable working with Kartra templates, funnel logic, and data-driven insights like those provided by Google Analytics.

Choose Kajabi if you value ease of use, a polished customer experience, and your focus is on content (courses, coaching, memberships). Kajabi is the better choice for most course creators, experts, and coaches who want to quickly create a professional-looking online school or membership without needing to customize every detail.

It offers a clean drag-and-drop builder, a user-friendly basic plan, and even behavioral adaptive marketing features to personalize the user journey.

However, CustomerHub is best for those who value simplicity, low cost, and flexibility to integrate, who want to launch quickly, or who prefer using specialized tools alongside a lean platform.

With CustomerHub, you won’t be paying for features you never use, and you won’t spend weeks in training mode. It’s a platform where you can log in and start building your course within minutes. You'll know what you’re paying monthly, no matter how much you grow.

Why Choose CustomerHub?

As we’ve explored the ins and outs of Kartra and Kajabi, one thing becomes clear: CustomerHub offers a fresh take for creators who want less tech stress and more business momentum.

Instead of chasing feature overload, CustomerHub focuses on doing the essentials incredibly well. Here’s why it stands out as the most agile and cost-effective solution in this lineup:

Built for Speed

If spending weeks figuring out Kartra’s logic or configuring Kajabi’s pipelines sounds exhausting, CustomerHub's plug-and-play setup means you can go from idea to launch in a matter of hours.

That speed to market is a competitive advantage. Whether you're a coach, consultant, or course creator, you’ll spend more time building content and attracting customers and zero time untangling tech.

Seamless Integration

CustomerHub doesn’t try to replace your tech stack but rather fits into it beautifully. With integrations to over 7,000+ apps via Zapier and native connections to CRMs, email marketing tools, and payment processors, it plays well with the systems you already love.

Customerhub Integration

You can keep using ActiveCampaign for automation, Stripe for payments, or Mailchimp for newsletters. CustomerHub simply becomes your home base for content delivery without compromises and a learning curve.

Engaging Member Experience

CustomerHub offers a clean member portal where users can access all of their content in one place.

CustomerHub mobile feed

It includes a private member feed, which is a simple timeline where you can share updates, post announcements, or answer questions. It’s a built-in engagement tool that eliminates the need for Facebook Groups or external forums.

Built to Deliver Content That Sticks

You can upload videos (with built-in streaming), PDFs, and downloadable resources. Features like drip scheduling and progress tracking ensure content is delivered in a structured way to keep members accountable and on track.

While CustomerHub may not yet include advanced features like quiz builders or a mobile app, it helps you deliver value, engage members, and scale with confidence without tech headaches or financial strain.

Transparent Pricing

At just $79/month, you get unlimited everything, no surprise fees, and no limits on members, content, or products. If you have one member or 100,000, your cost stays the same. That kind of pricing predictability makes scaling exciting.

You can confidently grow your business without second-guessing your budget or worrying about hitting a cap.

Unlike other platforms that reserve essential capabilities for higher plans, CustomerHub includes membership site capabilities, automation, and advanced features right from the start.

Upgrade Workflow Without Upgrading Your Costs—Choose CustomerHub!

If Kartra feels overwhelming and Kajabi seems out of reach, CustomerHub offers a simpler, more affordable path forward.

You don’t need a complicated platform or high monthly fees to launch a successful online business. CustomerHub focuses on giving you the tools to deliver your content, engage your members, and grow with confidence.

It's fast to set up, easy to use, and flexible enough to connect with the tools you already rely on.

Customerhub Integrations

Start your free 14-day trial today and experience how simple it can be to share your expertise and build lasting customer relationships!

FAQs About Kajabi vs Kartra

Which is better, Kajabi or Kartra?

Kajabi is better suited for course creators, coaches, and membership-based businesses that value a clean user experience, intuitive design, and built-in tools for content delivery.

Kartra is suitable for marketers and entrepreneurs who prioritize advanced automation, funnel building, and campaign management.

If you’re focused on ease of use and content delivery, Kajabi is the better fit. If your focus is marketing performance and complex funnels, Kartra may be more powerful.

Is Kartra better than ClickFunnels?

Kartra offers more built-in features than ClickFunnels, including email marketing, video hosting, membership sites, and customer relationship management tools. It's more of an entire digital products business solution, while ClickFunnels focuses almost entirely on funnel building.

If you want to run your entire online business from a single dashboard, Kartra has more built-in value. However, ClickFunnels may be easier for quick funnel deployment if that’s your primary goal.

What is Kartra good for?

Kartra is good for creating marketing funnels, building custom landing pages, automating email sequences, and managing customer relationship management workflows.

It's effective for entrepreneurs who want a centralized system to manage leads, sales, affiliates, and customer journeys without relying on too many third-party services.

How much does Kajabi cost per month?

Kajabi’s pricing starts at $89/month for the Kickstarter plan, while higher-tier plans like Growth ($199/month) and Pro ($399/month) offer interactive video features and more flexibility.

If you want a flat monthly rate with unlimited access to your core features, including video hosting, community tools, and checkout pages, CustomerHub is just $79/month with no upgrade pressure as you grow.

Whether you're looking to create multiple membership tiers or streamline your workflow with easy-to-use email marketing tools, CustomerHub makes the choice simpler, smarter, and more sustainable.

Launch your membership in days, not weeks.

Turn your knowledge into scalable income.

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