Kartra vs Shopify Honest Comparison Guide: Which is Better (2022)?

Shopify and Kartra are both powerful platforms designed to help you sell products online.

Kartra comes with a complete marketing suite for building high-converting sales funnels, running email campaigns and managing your entire business.

On the other hand, Shopify offers you an excellent online platform to help you build powerful eCommerce stores & sell products.

So which is better, Kartra or Shopify?

If you want to know the right tool that will fit your online business, you are in the right place.

In this Kartra vs Shopify Honest Comparison & Buying Guide post, I will go into detail to compare each tool regarding features, similarities, differences and many more so that you have a clear understanding of what you need to look at before selecting the right platform for your online business.

Kartra vs Shopify Comparison - Which Tool Is The Best Choice?

	Kartra	Shopify
Overall Rating	4.9	4.5
Price Range	$99/m - $499/m	$29/m - $299/m
Ease-of-Use	4.7	4.8
Value for Money	4.8	4.4
Functionality	4.7	4.7
Notable Feature	Kartra membership sites combined with powerful Marketing Automation & Sales Funnels tools	A platform to build eCommerce stores, launch your online products & sell products online
Key Features	Email marketing Page builder Membership sites Helpdesks Affiliate management Video hosting Kartra Heatmaps Kartra BAM (Behavior Adaptive Marketing) Calendars Lead Database Kartra Forms	eCommerce store platform App store Basic Email Marketing features
Money-Back Guarantee	Yes	N/A
Sign Up	Start Your 14 Days Trial For $1	Start Your 14 Days Free Trial

Kartra vs Shopify In-Depth Review

Kartra is an all-in-one marketing solution platform built by renowned marketing experts - Mike Filsaime and Andy Jenkins. This fantastic tool aims to help your online business leverage lead generation, sales funnels & powerful marketing automation.

On the other hand, Shopify is a platform that allows you to create your own online store. Shopify comes with a wide range of excellent and beautiful themes that you can easily & quickly customize to match your brand.

With Shopify, you can sell any type of product, both physical and digital products.

Kartra Tools & Features

Membership site builder: This feature helps you create membership sites where you can organize your members and handle secure transactions.
Built-in product builder: This tool enables you to create and add new products. It also includes upsell & downsell features.
Checkout page: This built-in secured tool helps you with your sales pages. It also comes with a wide range of options to make your checkout page look more beautiful & professional.
Funnel builder: This helps you to create high-converting funnels that turn your site visitors into recurring clients.
Split Testing: This tool helps you make better decisions by testing variations of your pages, funnel, colors, headlines and many more.
Kartra Email Marketing: These features include email broadcasting, tagging, sequences & automation to help you build a strong email marketing strategy.
Email Broadcasting: This feature helps you in sending out emails to all the leads. You can also send SMS if this is what suits your business.
Email Automation: Kartra comes with built-in automation features to help you create and send customized responses to your customers.
Built-in Shopping Cart: This tool enables you to create, launch and sell your products online.
Kartra Affiliate Marketing: This feature enables you to recruit your affiliates to promote your products at a commission.
Video Hosting: This tool helps you to embed your videos directly on your Kartra pages without the help of other 3rd party service providers.
Analytics: With these features, you can track and assemble essential data from your site as well as your online marketing campaigns.

Shopify Tools & Features

Storefront themes: Shopify also comes with beautiful & professional themes for your store.
“Express” theme: This tool helps you create an online store quickly and easily, especially if you are running a non-traditional business like restaurants.
Shop App: This feature helps your customers view their favorite Shopify stores, get product recommendations and track their orders as well.
Shopping cart: This feature is integrated with secure payment methods and flexible shipping rates to enable you to sell your products online and receive payments.
Store management: Here, your customers can create ‘customer profiles’ and many more to enhance your marketing.
Marketing & SEO: This feature helps potential customers find your store using search engines.
Web hosting: Shopify comes with unlimited bandwidth to help you host websites.
Analytics: This tool is essential as it gives you an in-depth insight into your data so that you can make the right decision.

Kartra vs Shopify Similarities

Simplicity of Usage

Both Kartra and Shopify offer excellent and comfortable platforms for you, especially if you are a less tech-savvy person. So with or without coding skills, you can use Kartra or Shopify hassle-free.

However, suppose you are looking for a platform with more functionality for your online store. In that case, I suggest you consider Kartra over Shopify because it's a self-hosted tool that is more flexible, and easy to customize themes and you can even use it in managing larger stores.

Winner: Kartra

eCommerce Features

Providing a robust app store is one of the strongest aspects of Shopify.

Shopify comes with lots of different apps that help you automate your entire tasks. The kind of technology that Shopify offers generally aims to scale your store without facing any challenges.

So, with Shopify stores, you can sell digital products such as videos, images and documents.

A significant drawdown I find with Shopify is that you need to pay fees so that you can use their self-developed apps to automate your entire process, otherwise, you will need to manually insert your data into your own software, which takes time. Alternatively, you can hire somebody to help you doing it but this will come with extra cost.

On the other hand, Kartra also includes an eCommerce feature that allows you to sell multiple products from a single page and provides email sequences that will enable you to follow up with visitors to your products and with customers.

The difference between Kartra and Shopify eCommerce is that when it comes to selling dropshipping products, Shopify shines all the way.

Winner: Shopify

Blogging Features

While both Shopify and Kartra allow you to create a blog, Kartra does not offer a fully blog management system like Shopify.

For instance, Shopify’s blogging features enable you to implement a reliable content marketing approach which help you to drive organic traffic through SEO ranking techniques into your store.

Kartra is more into page building than a blogging platform, but it enables you to export and embed many things such as forms, pages and videos to your external blog so that you create a high ranking blog to attract more audience.

Winner: Shopify

Email Marketing

Shopify comes with robust email marketing tools that help you to engage with your customer through effective communications. Here, you can send newsletter, offers and many more..

Kartra mail, on the other hand, offers you powerful autoresponder tools that you can use to send newsletter & broadcast emails, create automation workflows based on your audience behavior, lead tagging, split-testing and many more.

So, regarding this Shopify vs Kartra email marketing comparison, both tools offer great email marketing features but generally, Kartra provides a great deliverability rate compared to Shopify plus it has more advanced features which you will not get with Shopify.

Winner: Kartra

Templates & Themes

Kartra comes with beautiful templates. Its landing & sales pages offer you everything you need, from 100% mobile responsive to converting your visitors into sales.

All Kartra pages also include pre-written copy templates for every type of page you want to create.

Similarly, Shopify comes with lots of templates that are modern, professional and mobile responsive.

And in terms of template customization, Shopify plays it better. You can easily personalize store templates to be the way you want.

Unfortunately, Shopify does not offer lots of free templates like Kartra so you will need another budget for premium templates if you want a good store setup.

Winner: Both tools ties.

In a nutshell:

While Shopify offers a fantastic app store, Kartra comes with all the essential features you want for any kind of online business.

So all the features that Shopify has, you can probably get on Kartra.

However, Shopify doesn’t have all the apps that Kartra offers, but you can get the Shopify store’s apps at a price if you want.

So, if you are a professional who wants to improve your online marketing campaigns, sell digital products and leverage from creating free and premium membership sites, I would advise you to go with Kartra.

Kartra vs Shopify Differences: Where Kartra Work Better

Kartra comes with an amazing drag and drop builder tool to help you design and build attractive & professional pages.
Kartra also includes a Helpdesks where you can take care of your customer’s issues.
Kartra’s Calendars is also essential for booking meetings & appointments with your customersKart
ra also includes a membership site builder to help you host and sell your online courses.
Kartra offers you an affiliate center and marketplace for recruiting & managing affiliates as well as marketing your products or learning from other Kartra users.
Kartra provides Behavioral Adaptive Marketing (BAM) technology for a personalized experience.
Kartra comes with tons of pre-built marketing funnels to help you launch your marketing easily and quickly without needing any coding skills.
Kartra includes a Heatmap tool which helps you uncover what’s engaging your visitors.
Kartra comes with robust video hosting functionalities.
Kartra also includes inbuilt powerful email automation & dynamic sequences.
Kartra enables you to sell and share your campaigns with other Kartra users.

Kartra vs Shopify Differences: Where Shopify Work Better

Shopify comes with unique eCommerce store themes.
Shopify enables you to add unlimited products to your store.
Shopify offers robust features for dropshipping.
Spotify comes with customized gift cards.
Shopify allows you to create your product manually.
Shopify offers robust blogging functionalities.
Shopify also allows you to sell products on multiple channels, including Facebook, Instagram & Pinterest.

Kartra vs Shopify Pricing

Kartra Pricing

Kartra Starter Plan at $99/m: Here, you get all features except Kartra Agency, but limits to2,500 leads, 15,000 email/m, 20 products, 2 membership sites and 1 custom domain.
The Kartra Silver, Gold, and Platinum Plans go at $199/m (12,500 leads), $299/m (25,000 leads) and $499/m (50,000 leads), respectively with unlimited all features except the number of contacts.

With the upper-tier Kartra plans, you get unlimited pages & products, funnels, Kartra agency, membership sites and many more without limitations. Each plan comes with more emails, leads & domains. Here is a full Kartra Pricing Plan & Cost guideline you can learn.

And when you choose to pay for your Kartra account with annual options, you get a 25% discount on any plan.

Shopify Pricing

Basic Shopify Plan at $29 per month: This plan allows you to sell unlimited products with 2 staff accounts, 4 locations and up to 64% shipping discount.
Shopify Plan at $79 per month: Here, you get everything in the Basic Shopify plan plus 5 staff accounts, 5 locations and up to 72% shipping discount.
Advanced Shopify Plan at $299 per month: This plan comes with advanced features to scale your business along with unlimited products with 15 staff accounts, 8 locations and up to 74% shipping discount.

Find here the Detailed Shopify Pricing Review.

Kartra vs Shopify Pros & Cons

Kartra Pros:

Kartra enables you to create a full website, high-converting sales funnels, membership site, calendars and many more.
Kartra is an all-in-one system that replaces all other expensive tools, and you can use it to manage any kind of online business.

Kartra Cons:

Fewer integrations than other platforms (since it comes with almost everything you need).
Steep learning curve compared to Shopify.
It might not be a great tool if you only want to focus on dropshipping.

Shopiyfy Pros:

Best platform for eCommerce stores.
Shopify's app store gives you added store functionality.
Affordable prices compared to Kartra.

Shopify Cons:

You need to integrate other 3rd party apps for added functionality (which is expensive).
It's only for eCommerce and does not come with other features

Kartra vs Shopify: Which Tool Is Right For Your Business?

When it comes to truly all-in-one online business building platforms, Kartra is outstanding in the market.

With Kartra, you can improve your business and replace all other expensive tools like membership site builders, email autoresponders, online courses platforms, funnel building tools, landing page builders and many more…

Therefore, if your core goal is to reduce marketing tools overwhelm and work from centralized, powerful platforms and better conversion tools, then Kartra is your perfect choice.

On the other hand, Shopify is one of the best solutions when it comes to building and launching your eCommerce business.

Shopify offers you lots of beautiful and mobile-responsive store themes (both free and paid) that you can use to create a stunning eCommerce store.

What Is My Recommendation?

Kartra comes out to be an overall winner of the Shopify vs Kartra battle.

These are the reasons;

It's a complete marketing platform that can help you launch your business, whether small or large.
Kartra offers a done for you marketing campaigns and high-converting funnels and landing pages to enhance your marketing and improve sales.
Kartra includes lots of handy in-built features such as a Membership portal, Behavioral tagging, an Affiliate center with advanced tracking, a Helpdesk and many more to help you manage your online business code-free and without depending on any other third-party tool.
Kartra also includes interactive video hosting functionalities.
Kartra offers deep analytics on every page to help you make the right business decision.

Start Kartra Trial Now!

Top Features To Consider When Selecting The Best Tool for Your Business

All-in-one platform: For instance, imagine purchasing all the tools provided with Kartra as an individual. Would it cost you much, right? So you need to choose a platform that comes with all the tools you need for your business.
In-Built Video Hosting: Choosing a platform that comes with video hosting features will help you host your video marketing without depending on 3rd party providers like YouTube.
Calendars: Be sure to select a tool that will help you manage meetings and appointments with your clients.
Flexible Shopping Carts: A platform with this tool will help you launch and sell your physical products online.
Split Testing: You don’t want to end up with poor performing pages, so be sure to select an online tool with A/B Testing to help you test and choose pages and funnels that will work better.
Affiliate Program Management: If you want to recruit people to market your products or services, you need a platform that integrates with affiliate management systems.

Kartra vs Shopify FAQs

Q. Can I integrate the Kartra platform with Shopify?

Yes, This is possible with the help of a plugin called AppTrends.

Alternatively, if you are a Kartra user, you can simply build your funnel and send the customer to your Shopify store within the funnel.

Then you integrate Shopify and Kartra using Zapier seamless transfer of your customer’s data.

Q. Which platform is best for dropshipping, Kartra or Shopify?

If you want the best tool for dropshipping, I would highly recommend Shopify.

Shopify comes with order fulfillment tools, which you won’t get in Kartra.

But if you want an inclusive platform with better conversion tools, then go with Kartra.

Q. Which platform is best for drop servicing between Shopify and Kartra?

If you want a good platform for drop servicing, then go for Katra.

Kartra offers much better tools and functionalities to help you lunch and sell your services effectively and retain your customers.

Q. Is Kartra Worth It?

Absolutely Yes, if you are going to choose Kartra, then be sure that you won’t get disappointed. Kartra includes all the essential features you need to launch and run a successful online business.

However, if you just want a platform with the most basic features to sell your products and don't have other tools for any type of online business, then Shopify might be worth it for you but not Kartra.

Q. Is Kartra better than Shopify?

This will now depend on your business needs.

So, if you want to sell services online or courses on any digital product, Kartra is undoubtedly better than Shopify.

But, if you plan to start a dropshipping store, Shopify will be a better option because it offers complete tools for that plus it’s more focused on dropshipping than Kartra.

Q. Does Shopify charge a set-up fee?

No. Shopify does not charge any setup fee on its plans.

Q. Does Shopify offer a Free package?

No, but Shopify does come with a 14 days free trial as like Kartra $1 free trial for 14 days where you can test its features and functionalities.

Kartra vs Shopify Final Verdict

Shopify is a great tool, especially if you need to launch and sell physical items through an eCommerce store.

It is primarily built for eCommerce and comes with all the essential tools you need for your eCommerce business, get customers, make sales and grow your online business as well.

With Shopify, you can create stunning stores and it is much more affordable with attractive entry prices, especially if you are a beginner. Get started with Shopify 14 Days Free Trial. On the other hand, are you looking to run a business besides just an eCommerce store?

Then go for Kartra.

Kartra offers you the best sales funnel tools, helps you run powerful email marketing automation, build membership sites, manage affiliates for your products and many more things. Get started with Kartra 14-Day Trial at $1.

Kartra vs Shopify Honest Comparison Guide: Which is Better?