ThriveCart vs Kartra: Read This Before Making A Decision

When building an online business there are many decisions to make.

One of which is the software that you are going to use to build your funnels & checkouts.

As this is a business, you’ll want to find the best shopping cart platform possible to ensure everything runs smoothly and you don’t have any major problems!

Today, we’re going to be comparing Kartra against ThriveCart, two popular pieces of software for building funnels & checkout pages. 

Kartra vs ThriveCart: Key Differences

The main difference between Kartra and ThriveCart is pricing. While Kartra costs anywhere from $99 per month to $499 per month, ThriveCart has two pricing plans both being a one-time lifetime fee, $495, and $695.

Kartra does come with more added features such as:

• Autoresponder
• Helpdesk
• Calendar
• Membership Sites
• Video hosting

However, ThriveCart has the better checkout features which we’ll cover soon!

Kartra vs ThriveCart: Overview

	Kartra	ThriveCart
Website	kartra.com	thrivecart.com
Founded In	2013	2015
Pricing	Starting at $99 per month	Starting at $495 ThriveCart for the lifetime deal
Trial?	Yes, $1 For 14 Days	No
Money-Back Guarantee?	30 Days	30 Days
Overall Rating	8/10	9.5/10

What is Kartra?

Kartra is a product by Genesis digital which launched in 2018. 

Genesis digital was founded in 2013 and has also been the company behind Everwebinar and WebinarJam.

Kartra itself aims to be an all-in-one solution for online businesses with the gigantic list of features it has.

Here are the core features: 

• Email automation
• Page/Funnel Building
• Checkouts
• Membership Sites
• Video hosting
• Calendar
• Affiliate Management
• Helpdesks

However, it’s worth noting that most of the features are not as powerful as when you purchase a separate tool for that purpose.

For example, Zendesk is much better than Kartra’s helpdesk or Kajabi has better membership sites than Kartra. 

Nonetheless, Kartra can be a fantastic all-in-one solution for many businesses. 

What Is ThriveCart?

ThriveCart is a shopping cart tool for online businesses founded by Josh Bartlett in 2016. 

Since then, it has already become one of the best shopping cart tools on the market, despite not officially launching yet.

Here are the features ThriveCart has to offer: 

•  Order bumps
• 1 Click upsells
• Embeddable Cart
• Funnel builder
• A/B Testing
• Affiliate Center
• Auto-follow up
• Autoresponder Integrations
• Coupons
• Detailed Analytics
• Discount URL
• Dunning/Auto-retry 
• 2-factor authentication
• 2 Step-cart

As you can see, Thrivecart gives you everything you need to convert your visitor into a sale. 

Checkout Features Compared

Let’s take a look at the checkout features behind both of these pieces of software. 

Kartra performs quite well here considering it’s an all-in-one platform, but lacks in the powerful shopping cart features…

ThriveCart and Kartra both come with:

• Order bumps
• 1 Click upsells (and downsells)
• Affiliate center 
• Funnel builder
• Detailed Analytics
• Auto-follow ups
• Coupons
• A/B Testing
• Integrations

However, there are some shopping cart features only to be found in ThriveCart:

• Advanced Customization
• Embeddable Checkouts
• Discount URL 
• 2 Step Cart
• Advanced Affiliate Center

Advanced Affiliate Center

ThriveCart comes with much better tools inside of the affiliate center. 

You have the ability to split profits after fees if you would like to and you can also let your affiliates upload bonuses.

These bonuses will then be offered automatically when the visitor comes through your affiliates’ URL to boost your conversions. 

That’s not all…

You can also connect coupon codes to affiliates which they can share to help you reach more sales. 

None of these features are inside of Kartra. 

Advanced Customization

Kartra’s cart seems somewhat stiff compared to the customization in ThriveCart.

Many of Kartra’s carts look extremely similar to each other.

While you get a lot of templates in Kartra, the checkouts seem more like version 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 of one another. 

ThriveCart simply has more cart-flexibility and you can even embed the cart into other pages outside of ThriveCart.

This means, you can quickly grab your fully-customized cart and bring it into your ecosystem, while with Kartra you have to somewhat bring your pages to their ecosystem. 

ThriveCart Pricing

As I have mentioned earlier, ThriveCart is in pre-launch which means they are offering special prices on their lifetime membership. 

Here are the two pricing plans available right now: 

• Thrive Cart (Standard) Lifetime membership $495

Here you get access to all features ThriveCart has to offer apart from: 

• Automatic sales tax deduction
• Powerful affiliate center
• Subscription Saver Functionality (Dunning)
• Intelligent Business Projections
• JV Contracts
• Advanced User Management
• Client Usage Rights
• Custom domain name functionality

The second pricing plan is the Pro Plan and as you would expect you get access to all features.

• ThriveCart Pro Lifetime $695 

If you go for ThriveCart, I do think that the additional $200 upgrade is worth it.

Purchasing these functions separately would cost you much more than $200 and probably in monthly subscriptions. 

Kartra Pricing

Kartra has four main pricing plans to choose from!

While you get access to all features across all plans, they do heavily limit you on resources.

• Kartra Starter ($99 Per Month) 

Here the limits are:

• 2,500 leads
• 15,000 emails.
•  2 membership site portals
• 100 landing pages
• 20 products 
• 50 GB Bandwidth

You get access to all features apart from Kartra Agency (a feature to manage your clients accounts).

Note that the 50GB Bandwidth and 15,000 emails are not a lot, meaning you will quickly have to upgrade to the next $199 per month plan. 

• Kartra Silver ($199 Per Month) 

This plan costs $199 per month and it gives you access to Kartra Agency and all other features inside of Kartra.

Here the limits are:

• 3 Custom Domains
• 12,500 Leads

Other than that, all other resources don’t have a limit. 

• Kartra Gold ($299 Per Month)

The third plan is Kartra Gold.

Again, unlimited everything, the only limits being:

• 5 Custom Domains
• 25,000 leads

Other resources are unlimited, as you would expect. 

• Kartra Platinum ($499 Per Month) 

The only limits in this plan are: 

• 50,000 Leads
• 15 Custom Domains

Why You May Want To Choose ThriveCart Over Kartra

Choose ThriveCart if you:

• are looking for a long-term solution to save you thousands in monthly fees
• need the advanced cart features ThriveCart has to offer
• want to bring your checkouts into your own Ecosystem and not necessarily build your business around someone else’s.
• are planning to utilize affiliate marketing heavily (as ThriveCart has advanced features)

Why You May Want To Choose Kartra Over ThriveCart

Choose Kartra if you:

• need almost all of the features Kartra has to offer
• don’t mind paying pretty big monthly subscriptions
• want an all-in-one platform which contains most of your marketing tools

Final Thoughts

Keep in mind, that if you are just looking to sell products and only use a couple of Kartra’s features, you may quickly end-up overpaying.

Don’t get me wrong, Kartra is a fantastic piece of software which can save you a lot of money too if you are looking to use all the features. 

But, you will probably need to upgrade to the Kartra Silver Plan which costs $2388 per year due to Bandwidth & email limits on the starter plan.

ThriveCart costs $495 for lifetime access, which is ridiculously cheap in comparison. 

The Kartra pricing is based on all the features, so make sure to take that into account. 

For example, if you’re just looking to sell your products and build an email list, you could compare Kartra vs ThriveCart + an autoresponder. 

Often, you will find that you can save a lot of money in the long term. 

Anyways, I hope this article has been helpful in making an informed decision!