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Mailchimp has evolved a lot over the years, it's still primarily an email marketing platform, while Kartra is an all-in-one marketing platform with multiple integrated tools for running an online business.

Kartra and Mailchimp are amazing marketing platforms that give you the tools to build landing pages, run automated email campaigns, and engage your audience.

With Mailchimp, you get to create landing pages, send emails, and create email automation campaigns. Kartra, on the other hand, is an all-in-one online marketing solution. It is primarily a sales funnel builder that gives you several other tools you need to grow your online business.

I understand you might be a little confused as to which platform is right for you to use in running your online business. Should you invest in a premium business-building platform like Kartra, or start with a low-cost email solution like Mailchimp?

And that is exactly why I created this Kartra vs Mailchimp comparison guide. In this side-by-side review, you’ll be able to compare features, pricing, pros and cons, and much more of both tools so you can pick the best platform for your online business.

Let's dive in and see which product will meet your needs.

Kartra Vs Mailchimp - Summary

Kartra is a complete, all-in-one marketing solution with various built-in tools you need to grow your entire online business from one central place.


Mailchimp is a popular, low-cost, and easy to use email marketing platform with a beautiful interface that lets you build landing pages, collect leads, and run automated email campaigns.

Both of these companies have created amazing products, but they serve different types of businesses with different online marketing needs.

Take a look below at the Google Trends graph of these two products on Google: 

kartra vs mailchimp google trends graph

Kartra Vs Mailchimp - Search Popularity Over 1 Year

Kartra Vs Mailchimp - Side By Side Review

Both tools have been reviewed and compared based on their respective features, pricing, ratings, and much more.

To help you have a smooth viewing experience choosing your preferred platform from these two heavyweight solutions, the comparison was done using a side-by-side horizontal layout.

NOTE: the side-by-side horizontal layout in this section is best viewed on a desktop

MAILCHIMP™

Mailchimp is an easy and affordable email marketing tool.

How we rated Mailchimp

Overall Rating

Ease of Use

Value for Money

Pricing

Customer Support

What is Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is a fully-fledged, easy to use email marketing solution that empowers you to build landing pages, collect leads, manage mailing lists, send newsletters, and run automated email campaigns. It comes with an intuitive drag-and-drop email builder, email templates, and basic automation abilities.

Who is Mailchimp for?

MailChimp is an email marketing software created for anyone that wants to build landing pages, collect leads, and run automated email marketing campaigns. The platform is used by a wide range of entrepreneurs and online business owners ranging from internet marketers, influencers, authors, e-commerce sellers, and much more. Millions of individuals and businesses use Mailchimp to send over a billion emails every day.

Notable feature: an all-in-one email marketing solution with tools to build landing pages and run automated email campaigns.

Mailchimp Pros and Cons

Pros
  • Generous freemium plan available
  • Affordable premium plans
  • 100s of integrations available
  • Great email editor interface
  • Best for begginers
Cons
  • Overwhelming user interface
  • No webinar tool integrations
  • Disappointing automation capabilities
  • Confusing feature set
Mailchimp

Mailchimp Pricing - How much does Mailchimp cost?

Mailchimp pricing starts from $0 - $9.99 per month - $299 per month.

Essential Plan - $9.99 per month - must-have features to send emails, do A/B testing, and 24/7 support.

Standard Plan - $14.99 per month - custom templates, retargeting ads, automation series, and advanced audience insights for large businesses.

Premium Plan - $299 per month - advanced segmentation, multivariate testing, and a lot more customization for email marketing pros.

Mailchimp Annual Discount: They offer a 15% discount to verified nonprofits and there's a free plan with basic features to run your business.

Mailchimp Pricing Information

Free 14 Day Trial Available

$1 Trial For 14 Days

No Credit Card to Start

Freemium Account

Monthly Subscription

Annual Discount

Cancel Anytime

30 Day Money Back Guarantee

Mailchimp Features

Landing page builder

Visual editor

Landing page templates

Sales funnel templates

Complete page hosting

Mobile responsive pages

A/B Split Testing

Funnel builder

Share funnels

Custom webhooks

Email Auto-responders

Affiliate tracking software

Membership Sites

Behavioral Adaptive Marketing

Included subdomain

Use your own domain

Checkout forms, shopping cart

Full website builder

Video marketing tool

Customer Helpdesk

Calendar scheduling tool

Agency Portal

Mailchimp Integrations

Mailchimp connects with your favorite third-party apps and tools in a wide range of categories including payments, social media, e-commerce, productivity, analytics, and more. See a full list of integrations here.

Email Marketing Integrations

Actionetics

ActiveCampaign

ConvertKit

Aweber

MailChimp

HTML forms

+ many more

Other Integrations

Zapier + Webhooks

Membership software

Checkout software

Analytics

Webinar software

SMS / Texting software

Bot software

Calendar tools

Custom integrations / API

+ many more

Mailchimp Affiliate Program

Yes. You can earn a $30 credit towards your monthly bill if someone signs up through your link. Learn more about the referral program here.

Company Information

Owner / Founder: Mark Armstrong, Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius

Location: Atlanta

Customer Support: -

Founded: 2001

Website: https://mailchimp.com/

What we love about Mailchimp

We love that MailChimp makes getting started easy and free for beginners. Like most email tools, you get a built-in drag-and-drop builder (and customizable templates) to create beautiful forms, emails, and landing pages. A major downside is that Mailchimp has basic, unimpressive segmentation and automation capabilities. On the bright side, there’s a FREE forever (limited) plan which is a good starting point for anyone looking to test the waters.

Mailchimp Alternatives

Mailchimp Alternatives

Sendinblue, Constant Contact, ConvertKit, AWeber, Drip, GetResponse & MailerLite.

kartra logo

KARTRA™

Kartra is an advanced all-in-one online business and marketing tool.

How we rated Kartra

Overall Rating

Ease of Use

Value for Money

Pricing

Customer Support

What is Kartra?

Kartra is a complete online marketing platform built for entrepreneurs and online business owners with various tools to build sales funnels, run email campaigns, and automate your entire online business with ease from one central place. The platform is owned by Genesis Digital.

Who is Kartra for?

Kartra is really designed for solo-entrepreneurs, authors, digital product owners, and course creators who want an all-in-one system to minimize tool "clutter." While it's a steep price point for most newcomers to online business, you should theoretically be able to save money by using Kartra if you're using other tools like CRMs, email marketing systems, membership sites, etc. Kartra let's you ditch all that and focus on one platform. 

Notable feature: Kartra membership sites combined with their marketing automation features are worth the money alone.

Kartra Pros and Cons

Pros
  • $1 14-day full trial
  • Full website, funnel, membership site system
  • All-in-one system replaces other expensive tools
  • Native email marketing system
  • Agency portal facilitates client work
Cons
  • No email marketing integrations (only SMTPs)
  • Less integrations than other platforms
  • Steep learning curve compared to the competition
  • Can be overwhelming at first
kartra alternatives

Kartra Pricing - How much does Kartra cost?

Kartra pricing options start at $99/month - $499/month

Starter Plan - $99/mo - the "Kartra Starter Plan" gives you all features except Kartra Agency, but limits traffic, leads, domains, and features.

Silver, Gold, and Platinum Plans - $199/mo - $499/mo. With the upper tier Kartra plans, you get Kartra agency, unlimited pages, products, membership sites, and funnels. Each plan gives you more leads, domains, emails / mo. 

Kartra Annual Discount - When you pay annually with Kartra you immediately save 25% on any Kartra plan.

Kartra Pricing Information

Free 14 Day Trial Available

$1 Trial for 14 Days

No Credit Card to Start

Freemium Account

Monthly Subscription

Annual Discount

Cancel Anytime

30 Day Money Back Guarantee

Kartra Features

Landing page builder

Visual editor

Landing page templates

Sales funnel templates

Complete page hosting

Mobile responsive pages

A/B Split Testing

Funnel builder

Share funnels

Custom webhooks

Email Auto-responders

Affiliate tracking software

Membership Sites

Behavioral Adaptive Marketing

Included subdomain

Use your own domain

Checkout forms, shopping cart

Full website builder

Video marketing tool

Customer Helpdesk

Calendar scheduling tool

Agency portal

Kartra Integrations

Kartra is designed to replace your email marketing platform, so lack of email system integrations makes sense. Instead they integrate with SMTPs and Zapier so using your autoresponder shouldn't be a problem.

Email Marketing Integrations

Actionetics

ActiveCampaign

ConvertKit

Aweber

MailChimp

HTML forms

+ many more

Other Integrations

Zapier + Webhooks

Membership software

Checkout software

Analytics

Webinar software

SMS / Texting software

Bot software

Calendar tools

Custom integrations / API

+ many more

Kartra Affiliate Program

Yes. Once approved, you can promote any of the Kartra products, as well as a marketplace of other products. Affiliate payouts vary per product.

Company Information

Owner / Founder: Andy Jenkins, Mike Filsaime

Location: USA

Customer Support: Email

Founded: 2017

Website: Visit Website

What we love about Kartra

When it comes to "All-In-One" business building platforms, Kartra really stands out as top of its class. You can easily build your entire solo-preneur business on top of this platform, and ditch other expensive tools like membership site builders, email autoresponders, funnel tools, landing page tools, and more. If one of your goals is to reduce marketing tool overwhelm and you want to be able to "see" your entire business from one vantage pont and system, than Kartra might be right for you. We absolutely love how easy it is to keep in front of your leads with Kartra.  

Kartra Alternatives

Need to compare Kartra with more alternatives before you make a decision? We've written comparison articles on all major Kartra competitors.

What Stands Out For Us When Reviewing Kartra Vs Mailchimp?

If you want to send emails and manage your mailing list, both marketing solutions come with tools to help you do that.

While Mailchimp is a full-fledged email marketing solution, Kartra is an all-in-one marketing platform with a ton of tools to build and scale your online business easily.

One interesting thing about the platform is that you get a ton of tools bundled together to grow your business from one central place.

Not only are you able to run automated email campaigns but you can also build sales funnels, run webinars, upload your videos, manage affiliates and so much more.

Features & User Experience - Which Is Better?


Mailchimp has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to build awesome emails (and landing pages) and this is where it really shines. You can create signup forms and landing pages to generate leads and sell your products on the platform.

When it comes to segmentation and automation abilities, Mailchimp is far behind most conventional email tools today. You can’t do advanced segmentation and build custom automation maps.

Kartra, on the other hand, offers much more powerful email marketing automation. You get key email marketing features such as automated re-engagement, lead scoring, list cleaning, and even SMS sequences that are missing in Mailchimp.

Which Tool Is The Best Value For Your Money? 

Starting at $99 per month on the base plan, I see Kartra as a worthy investment considering the plethora of tools you’re getting.

Kartra Pricing

kartra pricing

 Although MailChimp has a free (limited) forever plan which has worked in luring in most new customers, you don’t get as many useful features on it.

MailChimp Pricing

MailChimp pricing

It’s great for getting started but if email marketing is an integral part of running your business, the free plan probably won’t cut it for you and you’ll be forced to upgrade.

Kartra gives you a full suite of critical business tools to move your online business forward. With everything you get, you can potentially save about $500-$600 extra each month from duct-taping other tools to run your business.

If you’d love to make money promoting your favorite tools, Mailchimp’s referral program isn’t as rewarding as that of Kartra. You earn a lot more in affiliate commissions when you successfully bring in new customers as a Kartra affiliate.

Final Thoughts - Which Is Better Kartra or Mailchimp?

 If you’re looking for a low-cost email marketing platform to get started... go with Mailchimp.

If you’re looking for a serious marketing platform that will help you grow your business, and are less concerned with budget, go with Kartra.

Both platforms are widely used in growing an online business.

Kartra provides various tools to help you save time and money growing your online business. Most of these tools will cost a lot as standalone tools.

If you need a platform to send emails, manage your list, and do basic automation, Mailchimp is suitable for you. They have a free plan so you can test the waters before spending a dime. But if Mailchimp doesn't cut it for you, Kartra is your best bet. You get more advanced email automation features and get a variety of other tools for running your business without hassles.

Some of the added features Kartra gives you include the ability to use battle-tested campaigns, build sales funnels, host your marketing videos, run webinars, recruit and manage affiliates, and much more... all in one place.

If you want to save money, time, and avoid the headaches that come with duct taping multiple tools to grow your online business, I can't recommend Kartra enough. At $99 per month on the starter plan, Kartra is really worth it for all you’re getting.

My Most Trusted Resources

I've negotiated special discounts and trials using my links to the right. Every tool or app recommended has my full trust and has been personally tested by me. I consider these three resources to be FOUNDATIONAL to any online business. 

bluehost review

Bluehost

#1 for Hosting Websites & Blogs. Get a free domain and discount here.

Go High Level Logo

HighLevel

#1 for Landing Pages & Sales Funnels. Get a 2 week free trial here.

ActiveCampaign

#1 for Email Marketing and automated email follow-ups. Free Trial here.

About the author 

Sam Rexford

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