Both Kartra and Teachable are powerful marketing solutions designed to help you build and grow your online business.
The two platforms offer a lot of the same key features, such as course creation tools as well as sales and marketing features that will help you get more customers.
However, there are also a few distinct differences between them that you should be aware of.
For example, while Teachable is mostly focused on building online courses, Kartra offers a lot more key marketing and sales features overall.
In this Kartra vs. Teachable comparison, we’re going to compare these two leading-edge platforms to give you an idea of how well either one would serve you. My team and I have spent over 7 hours reviewing, rating, and comparing these two platforms to give you a better idea of how they stack up against each other.
1. Course Creation
We’ll begin the side-by-side Kartra vs. Teachable comparison by looking at the course creation features on each platform.
Kartra:
Kartra is an all-in-one platform designed for creating and selling courses. It’s perfect for solo entrepreneurs, digital product owners, and course creators who want to minimize the clutter and run their online business from one convenient place.
Although it has a steeper price point (particularly if you are a newcomer to the online business industry), you will ultimately save tons of money because you won’t have to integrate a lot of other tools for email marketing, memberships, CRMs, and many others.
You can complete all your course creation, marketing, and sales tasks using one platform with no need to duct tape different tools together. While it has many alternatives on the market, it’s one of the leaders as an all-in-one platform.
Take a look at this short video below to get an idea of what the course creation process looks like.
How to Create a Course on Kartra:
Teachable:
Like Kartra, Teachable also offers a wide range of tools for building and selling your online course.
This simple but powerful platform has a user-friendly interface, a powerful course builder, built-in marketing tools, and commerce functionality that lets you accept global payments easily.
Teachable focuses on helping you provide an exceptional learning experience for your students. You can offer an omnichannel user experience on every device, and the best part about this platform is that it has a free version of the software which allows you to get started without investing any money upfront.
How to Create a Course on Teachable:
Winner: Teachable
Both platforms make it extremely easy to create online courses. However, Teachable is more focused on course creation and its design features have a shorter learning curve compared to Kartra. This makes it the perfect option for beginners who have very little web design knowledge.
2. Pricing
The next area we’ll focus on regarding the Kartra vs. Teachable comparison is pricing.
There are a lot of factors to consider when choosing the best online course tools for edupreneurs.
Although price should never be the main determining factor for the platform you go with, it’s still very important to choose one that is affordable and offers growth-focused plans so you can scale your knowledge business.
Let’s see how Kartra and Teachable compare in this regard.
Kartra:
Kartra allows you to pay monthly or yearly, and you can switch plans or cancel at any time. When you pay annually, you get a whopping 25% discount.
There are four premium plans to choose from:
- Starter Plan ($99/month): This plan gives you up to 2,500 leads, one custom domain, and 15,000 emails each month. You can host 100 pages and 50 videos, sell 20 products and build two membership websites. Additionally, you get 50 GB of bandwidth and you can have one additional team member and connect one helpdesk.
- Silver Plan ($199/month): With this plan, you get up to 12,500 leads, 3 custom domains, and unlimited emails, bandwidth, pages, videos, and products. You can also build as many membership sites as you want and you can have unlimited team members and unlimited helpdesks. This plan also comes with Kartra Agency, a feature that allows you to access the entire agency portfolio from a centralized master console.
- Gold Plan ($299/month): This plan has 25,000 leads and 5 custom domains. You get unlimited everything else, including emails, pages, bandwidth, videos, products, team members, helpdesks, and membership sites. Like the Silver plan, the Gold plan also comes with Kartra Agency. You’ll be able to save up to $840 by paying annually.
- Platinum Plan ($499/month): This plan has all the unlimited features you’ll find on the Gold plan, as well as 50,000 leads, 10 custom domains, and a huge saving of $1,440 if you opt for the annual subscription.
All plans and Kartra include the following features:
- Kartra Checkouts
- Kartra Pages
- Kartra Leads
- Kartra Forms
- Kartra Mail
- Kartra Funnels and Campaigns
- Kartra Memberships
- Kartra Marketplace
- Kartra Affiliate Management
- Kartra Surveys and Quizzes
- Kartra Videos
- Kartra Calendars
- Kartra Helpdesks
Teachable:
Like Kartra, Teachable also has a range of pricing plans that are perfect for scaling your business.
All plans on the platform come with unlimited products and students. When you pay on the annual subscription, you save 20% each month.
- Free Plan ($0/month): This plan comes with unlimited students, courses, and coaching services. You get basic quizzes, product support, product bundles, and course design templates. You also get instant payouts if you set up Teachable Payments if you’re in the monthly payment gateway, then you’ll receive PayPal deposits once a month with a 30-day delay.
There’s a fee of $1 +10% on each transaction and you can add one additional admin-level user and third-party integrations.
- Basic Plan ($29/month): This plan is perfect for anyone who wants to grow their business and graduate from the free plan with more advanced features. It has everything in the free plan, as well as a 5% fee that’s charged per transaction. You can create a private student community and members-only community and have two admin-level users. These include the primary owner, owners, and authors.
This plan also comes with course creator training that you can access through Teachable: U. Other features include product support, custom domain support, coupon codes, and a drip content feature. There’s also integrated email marketing and a wide range of third-party integrations for Facebook, Google Analytics, MailChimp, and various other tools.
- Pro Plan ($99/month): This plan comes with advanced features to help you boost student engagement. It has everything in the Basic plan plus no transaction fees, 5 admin-level users, priority product support, and graded quizzes. You also get advanced reports, an unbranded website, and course completion certificates. Furthermore, there are course compliance features, integrated affiliate marketing, and group coaching calls.
- Business Plan ($249/month): This plan contains everything in the Pro plan plus a few additional features, such as 20 admin-level users, manual student imports, bulk student enrollments, custom user roles, and advanced theme customization.
All Teachable plans include unlimited video, hosting, and courses.
They also come with student management features, lecture comments, and payment processing.
There are no fees for free courses, and you can create basic quizzes even on the free plan.
Best of all, value-added tax (VAT) for the EU is automatically calculated so you don’t have to do it yourself.
Winner: Teachable
Teachable offers a free plan where you can share what you know using the platform’s core set of features. You get third-party integrations, course design templates, unlimited courses, and basic quizzes among other features.
You can get started for free and upgrade to the paid plans as your business grows, which makes this platform perfect for beginners and course creators on a budget.
3. School and Course Marketing
Kartra and Teachable both have a lot to offer in terms of school and course marketing functionality. Your choice of the best platform for you will depend on your specific needs.
Let’s take a closer look at the marketing features on each platform.
Kartra:
When it comes to marketing, Kartra has a lot to offer. For example, you get complete sales funnels where you can design and build out marketing pages to suit your business.
Host webinars, create checkout pages, and connect payment processes – all from one convenient dashboard. You can even automate your sales by integrating different third-party tools.
In short, you can run your entire online business using Kartra.
And the platform doesn’t just work for digital products such as online courses, it’s also ideal for physical products, as well.
Teachable:
Unlike Kartra, Teachable does not serve as a funnel-building tool. It’s more focused on course creation, but it does have a few built-in marketing tools that will help you grow your knowledge business.
For example, you can run profitable email marketing campaigns and create promotional offers, such as discounts and coupons as a way to incentivize sign-ups for your course.
There’s also a feature for affiliate management that you can use to get others to promote your online course and pay them a commission for each sale generated.
On Teachable, you can also offer customized pricing plans for your course, including one-time fees, bundled course offerings, subscription payment plans, etc. This is perfect for increasing conversions so you can maximize your revenue from each course sale.
Winner: Teachable
Although both platforms offer effective marketing features, Kartra clearly has more marketing tools than Teachable.
In particular, the complete sales funnels are ideal for helping you make more sales and increase revenue from your eLearning business.
4. Instructor Support
As an online course creator, you need to choose a platform that has responsive customer support so you can get the help you need anytime you need it.
Here’s what Kartra and Teachable offer in terms of instructor support.
Kartra:
Kartra provides a help desk portal together with support ticketing and live chat. You can check out the platform’s resources on the website and they include the following:
- Technical Documentation: If you have any questions on the advanced components of the software, this is where you can get them answered.
- Platform Training: Here you can get step-by-step training to help you get the most from every one of Kartra’s features so you can become an expert at your own pace.
- Request a Feature: If you have an idea for an awesome feature to include on the platform, you can share it with Kartra’s development team and it will be added to the queue.
Teachable:
Like its competitor, Teachable offers support through multiple channels. In addition to a wealth of how-to guides and tutorials on the platform’s vast knowledge base, you also get support through a ticketing system.
Response time is 24 hours or more, but there is also an active community on Facebook where you can get your questions answered even quicker.
Winner: Kartra
Although Teachable has a vast knowledge base and a robust and responsive support team that you can reach via the ticketing system, Kartra wins this one.
In addition to the platform’s support ticketing, helpdesk portal, and live chat, Kartra also has a ton of other support and resources to help course creators find their way around the software, including technical documentation, platform training, and even a handy “Request a Feature” feature.
All in all, Kartra offers better support compared to Teachable.
5. School and Course Customization
These days, there are so many online courses being created that you need to work hard to stand out if you want to be noticed by your target audience.
One way to do that is by customizing your course to make it unique, which is why the course platform you choose should come with the tools for customizing your content to not only match your brand and teaching style, but also attract your ideal audience.
Fortunately, both platforms have a range of tools to help you create a unique course or school website where you can provide an immersive and intuitive learning experience.
Kartra:
On Kartra, you can create a unique and intuitive online learning environment that will keep your students engaged.
There are tools such as single sign-on (SSO) credentials, fully customizable welcome emails, multiple membership tiers, and various others that you can use to make your Kartra courses stand out.
Also, you can structure your lessons by using categories and subcategories, as well as individual articles to ensure quick and intuitive navigation.
The platform lets you drip your content to your students over time as opposed to making your content available ordered at once (although this is an option, as well).
You can upload videos, audio, and other types of files, allowing you to deliver course content in any format that is convenient for you and your students.
All in all, Kartra provides you with all the tools you need to customize your online school or course so you can build and market a successful learning experience.
Teachable:
Teachable’s course customization features rival Kartra’s by far. As previously mentioned, this platform’s main focus is on course creation, which is why it has an impressive set of customization tools.
For example, you can easily build intuitive course pages with minimal configurations. This means that anyone can create and customize school or course websites, even with zero technical knowledge.
In addition to being able to customize your online course or school website to look exactly the way you want it, you can also create intuitive quizzes and facilitate engaging discussions easily.
Furthermore, Teachable lets you build a community around your course with handy email marketing and comment features.
Winner: Teachable
On Teachable, you can customize every aspect of your page. This means you can create truly unique course lessons and websites.
You have the option to use your existing website or create new pages on the platform. You can add content in a wide range of media formats, including videos, text, audios, images, PDFs, etc., as well as import content directly from Google Drive, One Drive, and Dropbox.
6. Student Experience and Retention Tools
Your success as a course creator will depend greatly on your ability to provide an exceptional student experience.
You must provide tools to help your students retain more of your course information so they can more easily achieve the desired goal.
This way, satisfied students will come back to sign up for your future courses and refer others to you.
Let’s see what these two platforms offer in terms of student experience and retention tools.
Kartra:
Kartra lets you create an exceptional learning experience through the use of features such as:
- Surveys and Quizzes
- Membership Portals
- Embedded Videos
- Email Integrations
- Calendars and Forms
- APIs, etc.
With these features, you can build the exact type of learning environment you want for your students to give them the best experience possible and ensure maximum retention of your course content.
Teachable:
Teachable student experience functionality is a bit more limited compared to Kartra’s. For instance, the platform does not offer course welcome or course completion emails.
You don’t get a customizable course completion page. There’s no custom dashboard or white-labeled URLs.
However, the platform is mobile responsive and offers an iOS app. You can also translate your course website into various other languages if you are catering to an international audience.
Winner: Kartra
The clear winner here is Kartra. The platform provides an unparalleled learning experience designed to help you keep your students engaged and help them retain as much of your course content as possible.
7. Data Analytics
The next characteristic of Kartra vs. Teachable that we’ll analyze is data analytics.
If you want to outpace your competition and scale your eLearning business, you need to be able to gather and analyze data pertaining to your online course or school website.
This way, you’ll gain actionable insights on what works and what doesn’t so you can optimize your efforts and maximize your results.
Let’s see what each of these platforms has to offer in terms of data analytics.
Kartra:
Kartra takes all the hard work out of running your online business. One way the platform does this is by providing you with robust data analytics so you can identify the best ways to market your online course for optimum conversions.
In addition to getting reports on your content, student performance, payment information, etc., you also get lead segmentation features that allow you to provide each of your subscribers with relevant content.
You get lifetime revenue analytics to measure every aspect of your online course revenue, including all the purchases in each customer’s lifetime.
Teachable:
Teachable also has excellent data analytics tools to give you actionable business insights. You can track your students’ progress to help you find ways to keep them motivated.
Teachable also has a comprehensive dashboard that lets you track student sign-ups within a specific period.
You can sort courses according to student account types and define the average completion rate of your course.
Export all your course revenue data and student information to discover helpful insights that will propel your business forward.
Winner: Teachable
Teachable wins this one because it has a powerful set of data analytics tools that will help you track your customer journey and find actionable business insights to improve your overall results.
Teachable also has first and last-touch attribution so you can get a clear picture of which campaign was responsible for your conversions.
8. Advanced Tools and Developer Features
If you are a power user, then you likely need to have full control for building your online course or school website.
Some course creation platforms give you access to the HTML or CSS editing environment so you can unleash your creativity.
Let’s see what Kartra and Teachable offer in this regard.
Kartra:
Kartra prides itself on its ability to help non-tech savvy users design and create professional-looking websites.
However, the platform also offers powerful advanced tools and developer features for those with tech knowledge and experience.
You can use the platform’s API, IPN, and custom app tools to code your own custom integrations.
This makes Kartra a perfect choice for developers who want full control over their online course or school website creation.
Teachable:
Teachable only offers basic access to existing CSS or HTML. The platform does not offer you the ability to import or export code. There’s no support for themes and you can’t upload assets, create new files, etc.
The platform has no API access, SSO themes, or offline site editing options which is why developers and other users with advanced technical knowledge may find Teachable severely lacking in this area.
Winner: Kartra
Compared to Teachable, Kartra offers a lot more for developers. It’s the clear choice if you want a platform that will give you full access to CSS/HTML editing environments so you can create a truly unique online learning platform.
9. Security
These days, security is one of the main considerations when building an online course. Cybersecurity threats are on the rise, and it’s up to you to choose a course-building platform that will allow you to protect your student data and payment information.
Let’s take a quick look at what Kartra and Teachable offer in terms of security.
Kartra:
Kartra provides robust security measures to ensure the safety of your payment information and student data.
The company is PCI-compliant, which means that they follow the Payment Card Industry’s stringent standards for data security when handling and processing credit cards. This way, you can be sure that all financial transactions are kept secure at all times.
Furthermore, the platform issues SSL certificates for all course websites and gives you full control and ownership over your data. You also get regular automatic security upgrades, which is one less thing for you to worry about.
Teachable:
Teachable takes its security just as seriously as Kartra does. The platform integrates with PCI Level-I compliant payment providers like PayPal and Stripe to ensure the total security of your online financial transactions.
Like Kartra, Teachable also gives you full ownership of your data and there’s 24/7 monitoring of the platform to ensure that any breaches or potential security breaches are taken care of instantly.
Winner: Teachable
Both platforms excel when it comes to data and payment security. But Teachable wins this one because it provides significantly more security measures for the protection of your data, including round-the-clock outage monitoring, instant upgrades, 2048-bit SSL certificates, and much more.
Final Thoughts
As this Kartra vs. Teachable comparison has shown, Kartra and Teachable both have a lot to offer course creators.
However, many of their features differ which means you’ll find one platform better suited to your needs than the other.
Here’s a quick recap of what we discussed to help you make the right choice for you.
Choose Kartra if: You want an intuitive platform with advanced data analytics, developer features, email marketing tools, and full website, funnel, and membership systems. This all-in-one system replaces a ton of other expensive tools making it ideal for growing businesses. There’s even an agency portal (Kartra Agency) designed to facilitate client work.
Choose Teachable if: You are looking for a free way to get started building and selling courses online. The freemium version has all the tools you need and you can upgrade to one of the paid plans as your business grows. This is a perfect option for beginners and instructors on a tight budget.