Best Kartra alternatives in 2026

Kartra puts pages, email, SMS, courses, a helpdesk, calendars and an affiliate program behind one login. People start looking elsewhere for a handful of concrete reasons, and nearly all of them come back to the pricing page. The price climbs with your contact list, the entry plan takes a cut of every sale, and some of the tools a growing business reaches for are on the upper plans.

I spent nine years as CTO of a direct-response company, building the funnel system, the checkout and the attribution we sold through, and in 2023 I left to build ElasticFunnels. I built it so one account could run the whole business, from the ad to the rebill, without the limits a list-first all-in-one puts on the part that makes the money.

The best Kartra alternatives at a glance

Entry prices are monthly on monthly billing, from each vendor's pricing page on 29 September 2026. Most are cheaper billed yearly, and most cap contacts, products or seats per plan.

Why people look for a Kartra alternative

These come from Kartra's own pricing page and help center, checked on 29 September 2026. None of them makes Kartra a bad product. They make it a poor fit for particular businesses.

• The price follows the list. Essentials is $59 a month for 500 contacts, Starter $119 for 2,500, Growth $229 for 12,500 and Professional $549 for 25,000. Kartra's pricing FAQ says that going over the cap upgrades you automatically to the next tier, with a mid-cycle reconciliation fee, and that there are no add-ons to raise a single limit. A lead magnet that works can move you up a tier before those leads have bought anything.
• A fee on the entry plan. Essentials adds a 5% fee on each sale and rebill of products hosted in Kartra, invoiced monthly even on annual billing. Essentials is also limited to 5 pages, 1 product and 1 course. The higher plans have no fee.
• Plan-gated growth tools. Automations, the affiliate program and API access start on Growth, so the step from "selling" to "partners promote you" is also a step to $229 a month. Real-time funnel analytics are on Professional.
• Upsells rely on a cookie. Kartra's help center says one-click upsells keep the buyer's details in a browser cookie for 30 days. They work for card payments (not PayPal, Apple Pay or Google Pay), on the same browser and device, with the upsell on the same domain; otherwise the buyer sees the full checkout form again.
• Page tests are capped. Kartra compares up to four versions of a page. Whether the versions share one URL is not publicly stated.

Each of those five lines costs a growing business money every month. The fix isn't a cheaper copy of the same bundle on the same contact meter. It's a platform that keeps the bundle and removes the limits: priced on traffic, with every tool on the entry plan and no fee on sales beyond 0.5% on orders through its own checkout.

How we picked

We didn't give scores or stars, and we didn't pretend to have run a business on all eight tools. We compared what a Kartra user would need to replace, using each vendor's public pricing page, feature pages and help center, all read on 29 September 2026:

1. Coverage of the Kartra bundle. Pages and funnels, checkout, email, courses and memberships, affiliates. A tool that covers two of these is listed for the job it does well, not as a full replacement.
2. What it costs as you grow. The meter each vendor charges on (contacts, products, seats, visits or a fee on sales) and what the plan you would need at twice your current size costs.
3. The checkout. Order bumps, one-click upsells, subscriptions, and which payment processors it connects.
4. Testing and tracking. Whether you can split test pages, how the test is served, and whether a sale can be tied back to the ad that caused it.
5. Who it is built for. Coaches, course creators, agencies and media buyers want different things, and we say which one each tool fits.

Where a vendor doesn't say something publicly, we say "not publicly stated" instead of assuming they lack it.

The eight Kartra alternatives, one by one

We make ElasticFunnels, so it's listed first, and every competitor fact below comes from that vendor's own pages. If something here is out of date, email [email protected] and we will fix it.

1. ElasticFunnels: best Kartra alternative overall

ElasticFunnels is an all-in-one like Kartra, built around the sale instead of the list. Pages, funnels, the checkout, subscriptions, courses, affiliates, the CRM, the follow-up and the reporting live in one account, and every lead, order, rebill and call lands on one customer record. Where Kartra gates automations, affiliates and the API to Growth and meters everything on contacts, ElasticFunnels puts every feature on every plan and meters on page views.

Best for: coaches, course creators, info, ecom and nutra sellers, and anyone running Meta, Google or TikTok ads to a presell, VSL (video sales letter) or quiz funnel. Especially strong if you sell through several NMI merchant accounts (MIDs).

What replaces what:

• Kartra's pages and funnels. A visual builder, a code editor and an AI page builder that builds any page you describe; paste a live Kartra URL into the cloner and it comes back as an editable page. A visual funnel with upsell and downsell branches, a quiz funnel builder, exit popups, and pages on your own domains with automatic SSL.
• Kartra's page tests, without the cap on URLs. 2–5 variants of a page, a funnel branch or an order bump run behind the address your ad already uses, so a test never changes the ad and Meta never goes back into the learning phase. Each result comes with a significance test, and you mark the winner.
• Kartra's checkout, without the cookie. Custom checkout pages on Stripe, NMI, PayPal, Klarna and Authorize.net, with order bumps, coupons, Apple Pay and Google Pay on Stripe and NMI, and one-click upsells and downsells charged to the card on file on Stripe, NMI and PayPal. With several NMI MIDs, each order is split by weight across them, filtered by product, card brand and amount, and held to daily and monthly caps, with sales, revenue and refunds per MID in the load balancing report.
• Subscriptions that keep paying. Intro prices that step up, prepaid discounts, dunning for failed payments, save offers at cancellation, and MRR, churn and lifetime value reports.
• Kartra's memberships. Courses with modules and a passwordless members area: buyers log in with a magic link and are logged in automatically after checkout, and one portal shows their courses, orders, subscriptions and bonus downloads.
• Kartra's affiliate program, on every plan. Commission groups, a creatives library, an affiliate portal, payouts and a postback per affiliate.
• Kartra's CRM, email and SMS follow-up. A CRM with custom pipelines and fields, and visual automations that send email, send SMS through Twilio, tag contacts and call webhooks after a purchase, a refund, a form entry or a tag. Order, receipt, subscription and dunning emails go out from your own SMTP, and buyers sync to Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp or Kit for newsletters.
• Customer service and a call center. Agents see every order, subscription and note in one panel, refund or cancel from it, take phone orders, and work a recovery queue of abandoned checkouts and failed payments.
• Attribution per ad. Every order is tied to its ad, UTM and page variant, ad spend from Meta and Google sits next to revenue, and each sale is sent server-side to Meta, Google Ads, TikTok and Taboola.

Pricing: Starter $97, Growth $197 and Scale $497 a month, metered on page views and brands, not contacts. Every feature is on every plan. A 0.5% fee applies only to orders taken through the EF-hosted checkout, not to orders from BuyGoods, ClickBank or another external cart. 14-day free trial. See pricing.

• Pros: the Kartra bundle plus testing and checkout depth it doesn't reach; the price doesn't move when your list grows; automations, affiliates and the API on the entry plan.
• Cons: no built-in webinar room or booking calendar; you'd keep your webinar and scheduling tools.

The side-by-side is on Kartra vs ElasticFunnels.

2. Systeme.io: best on a budget

Systeme.io is the closest like-for-like replacement for Kartra at a fraction of the price: funnels, email, courses, a blog and an affiliate program in one account.

Best for: solo creators and coaches moving their first or second offer off Kartra.

• A free plan with 2,000 contacts and 3 funnels, with no card and no expiry.
• Unlimited email sends on every plan.
• An affiliate program, even on the free plan.
• No transaction fee on any plan.

Pricing: Free, then Startup $17, Webinar $47 and Unlimited $97 a month.

• Pros: the lowest cost of any full bundle here; like Kartra, one login for pages, email and courses.
• Cons: contacts and funnels are capped below Unlimited; A/B tests, order bumps and upsells are capped by plan.

Consider it if Kartra's bill is the problem and you are happy with its feature set. More in Systeme.io vs ElasticFunnels.

3. ClickFunnels: best funnel-first all-in-one

ClickFunnels bundles funnels, pages, email, courses, a community and a store. It is the closest to Kartra in shape, on a similar contact-capped model.

Best for: an online business built around one offer, sold through funnels and email.

• Funnel templates and a page builder built around steps.
• Email, courses and a community in the same account.
• Payments AI with its own gateway, plus Stripe, PayPal, NMI and others.

Pricing: Launch $97, Scale $197 and Optimize $297 a month, capped by contacts, team members and courses; Dominate is $5,997 a year. 14-day trial.

• Pros: a large ecosystem of templates and training; contact caps start far higher than Kartra's (10,000 on Launch); no percentage taken from sales.
• Cons: its help docs say each funnel step holds one variant page; the Affiliate Center is on Optimize and Dominate only.

Consider it if you want Kartra's model with a larger ecosystem. See ClickFunnels vs Kartra for the two side by side.

4. Kajabi: best for courses and communities

Kajabi is a course platform first. It hosts the course, the community and a branded mobile app, with funnels, email and a checkout around them.

Best for: creators whose business is the course and its community, not the funnel.

• Course delivery, communities and coaching in one product.
• Unlimited marketing emails on every plan.
• Unlimited funnels and landing pages on every plan.

Pricing: Basic $179, Growth $249 and Pro $499 a month, capped at 5, 50 and unlimited products and 2,500, 25,000 and 100,000 contacts. 14-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Affiliates start on Growth; the branded app and API are on Pro.

• Pros: course and community hosting with a branded app on Pro; larger contact caps from Growth.
• Cons: the highest entry price here; a third-party processor adds 2%, 1% or 0.5% by plan where Kajabi Payments is available; A/B tests cover landing pages, and checkout or sales-page tests are not publicly stated.

Consider it if you used Kartra mostly for memberships. More in Kajabi vs ElasticFunnels.

5. HighLevel: best for agencies

HighLevel (often called GoHighLevel) is an agency platform: a CRM with pipelines, SMS, calendars, reviews and funnels, sold per agency with sub-accounts for clients and a white-label app to resell.

Best for: agencies that build and run funnels and follow-up for local or service businesses.

• Sub-accounts per client and a white-label app.
• CRM, calendars, SMS and reputation tools in one place.
• SaaS Mode on Agency Pro, to resell the platform under your own brand.

Pricing: Starter $97 a month with 3 sub-accounts, Unlimited $297 and Agency Pro $497, with phone, SMS, email and premium AI billed on usage. 14-day trial.

• Pros: CRM, SMS and calendars packaged to resell to clients.
• Cons: usage charges on top of the plan; split tests send visitors from an entry URL to each variant's own URL.

Consider it if Kartra's helpdesk, calendars and SMS were the reason you bought it, and you run them for clients. More in GoHighLevel vs ElasticFunnels.

6. ThriveCart: best checkout without a monthly bill

ThriveCart is a checkout and cart with bumps, upsells, subscriptions and an affiliate center, plus a course and community product. It was known for a one-time lifetime licence and now sells monthly plans too, with the lifetime option still offered on Standard.

Best for: creators who want Kartra's checkout without Kartra's monthly bill, and host email elsewhere.

• Unlimited products and funnels, with one-click upsells and downsells on every plan.
• A/B split tests, cart abandonment and sales tax automation.
• An affiliate center with automated payouts and JV contracts, on Pro+.
• "0% fees on sales", only the processor's own fees.

Pricing: Standard $47 a month and Pro+ $87 a month, or Standard as a one-time $495 lifetime licence. 30-day free trial. Standard has one order bump per checkout; multiple bumps, dunning and custom domains are on Pro+.

• Pros: the lowest long-run cost for a checkout; no fee on sales.
• Cons: no built-in email marketing; affiliates and dunning are the upgrade to Pro+.

Consider it if the checkout was the part of Kartra you valued most. More in ThriveCart vs ElasticFunnels.

7. SamCart: best checkout-first tool

SamCart starts from the checkout: polished checkout pages for digital products, with courses and AI page tools added over time.

Best for: creators whose traffic arrives warm and whose funnel is mostly the checkout page.

• Checkout templates that are quick to set up.
• Courses included.
• Payment routing between processors, on Pro.

Pricing: Core $79 and Pro $199 a month. Order bumps, one-click upsells, A/B testing and the affiliate center are on Pro. 7-day trial.

• Pros: a clean checkout with little setup.
• Cons: the tools most funnels rely on are the upgrade to Pro; tests cover checkouts and upsell funnels, not the pages before them.

Consider it if you want a better checkout and nothing else. More in SamCart vs ElasticFunnels and SamCart vs ThriveCart.

8. Podia: best simple creator storefront

Podia is a simple storefront for creators: courses, digital downloads, coaching, a community and email, with a website builder around them. It does less than Kartra, on purpose.

Best for: course creators who want the easiest possible setup and don't run funnels.

• Courses, downloads, coaching and community products from one store.
• Email marketing built in.
• Its pricing page says "We never auto-upgrade you" when you pass a limit.

Pricing: Mover $49, Shaker $99 and Earthquaker $179 a month, with 100, 500 and 1,000 email subscribers included. Mover adds a 5% transaction fee; the others don't. Upsells and affiliate marketing start on Shaker. 14-day trial with no card; no free plan.

• Pros: very little to learn; no forced upgrades.
• Cons: small email allowances per plan; like Kartra's Essentials, the entry plan takes a fee on sales; funnel and page-testing tools are not publicly stated.

Consider it if Kartra felt like too much software and you mostly sell courses to people who already know you.

Kartra alternatives compared feature by feature

"Plan-gated" means the feature exists but not on the entry plan. "Not stated" means the vendor's public pages don't say. Checked on 29 September 2026.

Read the second column first: what the price grows with decides what the tool costs once the business works. Kartra and the other bundles grow with contacts, products, sub-accounts or usage; ElasticFunnels grows with page views. Then read across its row: no plan gates, one-click upsells that don't depend on a browser cookie, and tests that keep the ad's URL.

How to switch from Kartra

Moving off an all-in-one means moving four things: pages, the checkout, contacts, and the domain. Move one funnel first, prove it sells, then move the rest.

1. Export your contacts. In Kartra, Contacts, All contacts, select them and export to CSV. Kartra's help center says the file includes the default and custom profile fields, lists, tags and GDPR status, but not the data from a contact's other profile tabs.
2. Note what won't come with it. We found no Kartra feature that exports pages or funnels to another platform; its share codes import campaigns into another Kartra account. Transactions are viewable per product in sales analytics and through the API, and we found no CSV export for them. Screenshot or record anything you will need later.
3. Plan the subscriptions. Kartra's own help center says subscriptions from another system can't be imported into Kartra for PCI reasons. Expect the same going the other way: subscribers usually go through a new checkout once. Let existing rebills run out on Kartra, or ask your new tool's support how they handle it.
4. Rebuild the pages. Rebuild the funnel you run most first. In ElasticFunnels you can paste each live Kartra page URL into the AI cloner and get an editable page back, then tidy it up.
5. Rebuild the checkout. Recreate the products (in ElasticFunnels, products can also be imported from a CSV), connect your processor, and add the bumps and upsells. Place a real test order and refund it.
6. Import contacts where email lives. Load the CSV into your new email tool, keeping tags so sequences start in the right place.
7. Move the domain last. Point your domain's DNS at the new platform once the funnel works on a test domain, and send one ad set to it before moving the rest.

Plan for weeks, not a weekend, and keep Kartra until the new funnel has taken real orders. The step people skip is the test order, and it's the one that finds the broken receipt email or the tax setting nobody checked.

Which Kartra alternative is best?

ElasticFunnels, for almost every Kartra user. The other tools each replace one slice of Kartra, or copy the bundle on the same contact meter. ElasticFunnels replaces the whole bundle, removes the plan gates and the fee, and goes deeper on the tests, the checkout and the billing that make the money.

• You sell courses to your own audience: ElasticFunnels. Courses and a passwordless members area, with the checkout, one-click upsells, subscriptions and your own affiliate program in the same account, on every plan.
• You coach and sell one or two programs: ElasticFunnels. The price doesn't climb every time your list does, and the automations and affiliates Kartra keeps for Growth are on the entry plan.
• You buy traffic and scale offers: ElasticFunnels. Split tests under one URL, one-click upsells, MID routing across merchant accounts and revenue tied to each ad.
• A different job: if you're an agency reselling white-label software to local clients, that's what HighLevel is built for.

Kartra was built to put an online business behind one login. ElasticFunnels does the same for a business that wants to grow on traffic: the pages, the tests, the checkout, the courses, the affiliates and the follow-up, priced on page views and with nothing held back for a bigger plan. Move your best funnel first and compare.