Best For | Businesses needing robust CRM and automation with deep customization options. | Course creators seeking an all-in-one, user-friendly marketing solution. |
Price | Starts from $29/month | Starts from $52/mo (Billed Annual) |
Features | Automates marketing campaigns | Creates all-in-one funnels |
Pros | Offers great support always | Saves time with ease |
Cons | Costs rise pretty fast | Lacks deep CRM tools |
Ontraport vs Kartra: In 2025, running an online business means managing a dizzying array of tools. One for your website, another for email, a third for selling courses, and a fourth for customer data.
It’s a constant juggle that drains time, creates data silos, and lets opportunities slip through the cracks. This is precisely the problem that all-in-one platforms like Ontraport and Kartra were built to solve.
Both promise to be the central command center for your entire business, combining marketing automation, CRM, e-commerce, and membership sites into a single, unified system. But while their goal is the same, their approach, features, and ideal user could not be more different.
Choosing the right platform is a foundational decision for your business. To help you make the right call, we’ve put both platforms through a rigorous, side-by-side comparison.
This definitive guide will explore every angle—from features and pricing to user experience—to help you decide which of these marketing powerhouses is the right choice for you.
Overview Ontraport vs Kartra 2025
Overview of Ontraport
It’s built around a powerful, flexible database where every piece of information—a contact, a product, a task, a support ticket—is an interconnected “object.”
This allows for deep customization and sophisticated tracking. It’s designed for businesses that want to build complex, data-driven systems and scale their operations with precision. It gives you the raw materials to build anything, but you have to be the architect.
Overview of Kartra
It’s built for creators and marketers who want to get from idea to launch as quickly as possible. Kartra’s magic lies in how seamlessly all its components work together.
The page builder, email system, video hosting, membership portal, and checkout are all pre-integrated. It’s less about building a system from scratch and more about using a powerful, pre-built engine to run your marketing.
Key Features Comparison: Ontraport vs Kartra
1. CRM and Contact Management
Ontraport:
This is where Ontraport truly shines. Its CRM is not just a list of contacts; it’s a dynamic database. You can create custom fields and, more importantly, custom objects.
For example, a real estate agent could create an object for “Properties” and link it to their contacts. This level of customization is unmatched and perfect for businesses with unique data tracking needs.
Kartra:
Kartra’s CRM is more straightforward. It offers robust tagging, list segmentation, and lead scoring. You can easily see a contact’s history, including email opens, page visits, and purchases.
While powerful for marketing, it lacks the deep database customization of Ontraport.
Verdict: For pure CRM power and data flexibility, Ontraport is in a league of its own.
2. Email Marketing & Automation
Ontraport:
Offers a highly capable visual campaign builder. You can create complex automation sequences with various triggers, goals, and actions. It supports both beautiful, templated emails and simple, text-based emails, giving you flexibility in your communication style.
Kartra:
Features a very intuitive behavior-based automation system. You can easily set up rules like “If a contact watches 50% of this video, add them to this sequence.”
Its visual sequence builder is clean and easy to use. It also includes powerful split-testing features that can automatically switch to the winning email in a sequence.
Verdict: It’s a close call, but Kartra slightly edges out Ontraport for its user-friendly interface and clever behavior-based triggers that are perfect for marketers.
3. Membership Sites
Ontraport:
Includes a native membership site feature that integrates with its page builder. You can also use its robust integration with WordPress to create a members-only area on your existing site. This offers incredible flexibility and allows you to create highly customized member experiences.
Kartra:
This is one of Kartra’s standout features. It offers a fantastic, easy-to-use membership portal builder. You can create multiple access tiers, structure your lessons with drag-and-drop simplicity, host your videos directly in Kartra, and drip content out to members over time.
Verdict: For ease of use and a seamless “all-in-one” experience, Kartra is the winner for building membership sites quickly and efficiently.
4. Page Builder & Landing Pages
Ontraport:
Its page builder, Ontraport Pages, is a powerful and modern tool. It gives you a high degree of control over the design and layout of your pages, allowing for sophisticated and professional-looking results.
Kartra:
Kartra Pages is designed for speed and simplicity. It comes with hundreds of professionally designed templates for every type of page in a funnel (lead capture, sales, checkout, thank you, etc.). This makes it incredibly fast to build out an entire, cohesive marketing funnel.
Verdict: For design flexibility, Ontraport is excellent. But for speed and building complete funnels with pre-designed templates, Kartra has the advantage.
5. Affiliate Management
Ontraport: Provides a powerful and customizable partner program. You can set up custom commission rules, tiered payouts, and provide your affiliates with a portal to track their stats and get promotional materials.
Kartra: Its affiliate system is exceptionally well-designed and feature-rich. World-class affiliate marketers built it, and it shows. It includes features like flexible commissions, automatic payments via PayPal, custom landing pages for affiliates, and detailed analytics.
Verdict: Kartra’s affiliate management system is more feature-rich and user-friendly out of the box.
Quick Verdict Table
| Category | Winner | Why? |
| CRM & Customization | Ontraport | Its object-oriented database offers unparalleled flexibility for data tracking. |
| Ease of Use | Kartra | Its interface is more intuitive, and its “done-for-you” nature makes it faster to get results. |
| Membership Sites | Kartra | The built-in membership portal is incredibly easy to use and feature-rich. |
| All-in-One Value | Kartra | It includes more high-value features like video hosting and helpdesks on its base plans. |
| Scalability & Power | Ontraport | It’s built to handle more complex business systems and larger, data-rich operations. |
Comparison of pricing Ontraport vs Kartra
Ontraport Pricing
Ontraport offers four pricing tiers designed to grow your business. Whether you’re just starting out or managing a large team, there’s a plan that fits.
1. Basic Plan – Starting at $24/month
Perfect for small businesses just getting started.
Includes:
- Email & SMS automation
- Web forms and landing pages
- Scalable platform that grows with you
2. Plus Plan – Starting at $83/month
Ideal for growing businesses ready to take things up a notch.
Includes everything in Basic, plus:
- Online payments
- Membership site capabilities
- Personalized websites
- Advanced CRM tools
3. Pro Plan – Starting at $124/month
Best for businesses needing advanced features and flexibility.
Includes everything in Plus, plus:
- Deeper customization options
- Marketing tracking & A/B testing
- Partner/affiliate programs
- User roles and permission controls
4. Enterprise Plan – Starting at $249/month
Built for larger teams and companies that need unlimited everything.
Includes everything in Pro, plus:
- Enterprise-grade security
- Advanced scaling capabilities
- Unlimited users, features, and support
Free Trial: All plans come with a 14-day free trial, so you can explore the platform before committing.
Kartra Pricing
Kartra offers three main pricing plans, each with both monthly and annual billing options:
1. Essentials Plan
- Monthly: $59/mo
- Annually: $52/mo
- Features: 500 contacts, 10,000 emails/month, 5% transaction fees, 1 custom domain, 5 pages, 1 product, 1 membership/course, Kartra AI with 30 uses, form builder, funnel mapper, advanced analytics, 100 pre-built campaigns.
2. Starter Plan (Best Value)
- Monthly: $119/mo
- Annually: $99/mo
- Features: 2,500 contacts, unlimited email & SMS, 0% transaction fees, 1 custom domain, everything from Essentials plus unlimited pages, products, memberships, Kartra AI with 100 uses, video hosting, 5 team members, calendars.
3. Growth Plan
- Monthly: $229/mo
- Annually: $189/mo
- Features: 12,500 contacts, unlimited email & SMS, 0% transaction fees, 3 custom domains, everything from Starter plus funnel simulation, webinars (1,000 attendees), advanced automations, affiliate management, surveys & quizzes, 10 team members, helpdesk support.
Each plan scales in features and tools to accommodate growing business needs.
Ontraport vs Kartra: Pros & Cons
Ontraport
Pros
- Its powerful CRM tracks your business’s unique data perfectly.
- The platform scales easily to handle complex business system growth.
- Its flexible page builder offers you deep design control.
- It gives amazing customer support with free onboarding help.
- It integrates very well with WordPress for memberships and forms.
Cons
- The platform has a much steeper learning curve for beginners.
- It requires more initial setup to connect all the pieces.
Kartra
Pros
- It is a true all-in-one system with everything built-in.
- It’s incredibly user-friendly and very easy to get started with.
- You can build amazing membership sites with incredible ease.
- The starter plan offers you amazing value for your money.
- Automations are triggered by your user’s specific online behavior.
Cons
- Its CRM lacks the deep customization that Ontraport has.
- It offers fewer direct integrations with other third-party software.
FAQs About Ontraport vs Kartra
1. What is the biggest difference between Ontraport and Kartra?
The biggest difference is their core philosophy. Ontraport is a highly customizable database (CRM) with marketing tools built around it. Kartra is a fully integrated marketing toolkit (pages, video, email) with a CRM built into it.
2. I'm not very technical. Which one is easier to learn?
Kartra is significantly easier for non-technical users to learn. Its focus on templates and a streamlined interface means you can build and launch funnels much faster without a steep learning curve.
3. Can I run my entire business on one of these platforms?
Yes, for many online businesses, either platform can serve as your complete business hub, replacing the need for separate tools for email, landing pages, shopping carts, and membership sites.
4. If I choose Kartra, will I outgrow it?
While Kartra is incredibly capable, businesses with extremely complex data needs or those that require deep CRM customization may eventually find Ontraport to be a more scalable long-term solution. However, for most creators and marketers, Kartra has more than enough power for years of growth.
5. Does Ontraport have a good page builder?
Yes, Ontraport Pages is a very powerful and modern page builder that offers a high degree of design flexibility, rivaling many standalone page-building tools.
Quick Links:
- Ontraport Vs ClickFunnels
- Ontraport vs Hubspot
- Ontraport VS Salesforce
- SamCart vs Kartra
- Ontraport vs Infusionsoft
Conclusion: Ontraport vs Kartra Comparison 2025
While both platforms are leaders in the all-in-one marketing space, they are built for fundamentally different users. Ontraport is an incredibly powerful and scalable business system, but it requires you to be the architect.
For the vast majority of online entrepreneurs, course creators, and digital marketers, Kartra is the better choice and our top pick for 2025.
Its magic lies in its seamless integration and ease of use. The ability to build a beautiful membership site, create a high-converting sales funnel, and set up a complete email marketing sequence—all from one intuitive dashboard and without needing to integrate a single third-party tool—is a game-changer.
It lowers the technical barrier to entry and allows you to focus on what truly matters: creating content and serving your customers.
While Ontraport may offer more raw power under the hood for data-heavy businesses, Kartra delivers the more complete, user-friendly, and value-packed solution for the modern creator economy.
