A platform versus a layer
Kartra and ActiveCampaign are both used by coaches, consultants and course creators, but they occupy different places in a business.
Kartra is the whole storefront. You build pages and funnels, add products to a checkout, host courses and videos, manage affiliates and answer support requests, and your email list sits in the same database. A purchase, a course lesson completed or a page visit can trigger an email without any integration.
ActiveCampaign is the layer that connects everything else. Your course might live on Teachable or Kajabi, your checkout on Stripe or ThriveCart, your site on WordPress. ActiveCampaign pulls events from those tools through integrations and runs detailed email automations and sales follow-up around them.
Plans side by side
| Kartra plan | Monthly (annual) | Contacts | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | $59 ($52) | 500 | 10,000/mo |
| Starter | $119 ($99) | 2,500 | Unlimited |
| Growth | $229 ($189) | 12,500 | Unlimited |
| Professional | $549 ($429) | 25,000 | Unlimited |
Essentials is limited to 5 pages, 1 product and 1 course, with 5% transaction fees. Starter removes those limits, adds video hosting and 5 team members, and drops fees to 0%. Growth adds affiliate management, surveys and quizzes, helpdesk and 10 team members.
ActiveCampaign at 10,000 contacts with annual billing is $149 on Starter, $189 on Plus and $375 on Pro. That price covers email, automation and CRM only.
To compare fairly, add up what you would pay alongside ActiveCampaign: a course platform, a checkout, a page builder and video hosting. For some creators that stack costs more than Kartra; for others who already own those tools, it costs nothing extra.
Pricing reality for a growing creator
Consider a coach with 12,000 contacts who sells a course and a coaching program, billed annually.
| Setup | Monthly | Year one |
|---|---|---|
| Kartra Growth (up to 12,500 contacts) | $189 | $2,268 |
| ActiveCampaign Plus above 10,000 contacts | More than $189 (next contact band) | More than $2,268 |
| Plus course platform, checkout, page builder and video host | Varies by tools | Added to ActiveCampaign |
ActiveCampaign Plus costs $189/mo at exactly 10,000 contacts, the same as Kartra Growth on annual billing, and more once you pass 10,000. Kartra's figure also includes the selling tools. The question becomes whether your separate course, checkout and page tools cost more than zero and whether you prefer them. Now add 1,000 contacts from a successful lead magnet: Kartra jumps to Professional at $429/mo annual, while ActiveCampaign moves to its next contact band.
Where the money goes when you sell
Kartra processes sales through its own checkout connected to your payment processor. On Essentials it adds a 5% transaction fee; from Starter up, Kartra's fee is 0%. On a $20,000 launch, that is $1,000 on Essentials, which by itself exceeds the price difference between Essentials and Starter for many months.
With ActiveCampaign, checkout fees are whatever your chosen checkout tool charges. Some creator checkouts charge their own platform fees, so include them when you total the stack.
A launch in each tool
Picture a coach launching a paid workshop.
On Kartra, the coach builds an opt-in page and a sales page, creates the workshop as a product with a checkout, and sets up the workshop content as a membership. Sequences send the lead magnet, pitch the workshop and deliver access after purchase. Affiliates promote with tracked links. Everything reports in one place.
On ActiveCampaign, the pages and checkout live elsewhere. An integration tells ActiveCampaign who bought. From there, the coach can build a more detailed automation: segment buyers by how many emails they opened before buying, score leads who watched the replay but did not buy, and create a deal for a one-to-one coaching offer when the score is high. That follow-up is where ActiveCampaign shines.
Contact caps and list growth
Kartra's caps are hard limits per plan. A free lead magnet that adds 3,000 contacts can push you from Growth to Professional, more than doubling the monthly price. Regular list cleaning matters on Kartra: export and remove leads who never engaged with the lead-magnet follow-up, so you keep a copy for later re-engagement without paying for them every month.
ActiveCampaign also charges by contacts, but through smaller bands, so growth raises the bill in smaller steps.
Team seats
Seats are another hidden difference. Kartra includes 5 team members on Starter and 10 on Growth, which covers an assistant, a support person and a contractor. ActiveCampaign includes 1 user on Starter and Plus, 3 on Pro and 5 on Enterprise. A small team that needs several logins may find Kartra's plans more generous, while a solo operator will not notice.
Use-case matchups
| Need | Better fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Launch a first course with no existing tools | Kartra | Pages, checkout and hosting in one account |
| Run an affiliate program for a digital product | Kartra | Affiliate management on Growth |
| Score leads for high-ticket sales calls | ActiveCampaign | Lead scoring and deal pipelines |
| Keep Kajabi or Teachable and improve follow-up | ActiveCampaign | Integrations and deeper automation |
| Subscription membership billed through Stripe | Sequenzy | Billing-triggered sequences, unlimited contacts |
Questions to answer before you choose
- What do you already pay for? List your current page builder, checkout, course host and video tool with their monthly costs. If the total is close to Kartra's plan price, consolidation is attractive. If you already own lifetime licenses or like your tools, ActiveCampaign adds less disruption.
- How complex is your follow-up? If a purchase triggers a simple onboarding sequence, Kartra is enough. If you score leads, book sales calls and run different offers by engagement, ActiveCampaign is worth the setup.
- How fast is your list growing? Map your growth against Kartra's caps at 2,500, 12,500 and 25,000 contacts before committing.
- How attached are you to your pages? Kartra pages are hard to move. If your site needs to outlive your email vendor, keep it outside the email tool.
Switching costs
Leaving Kartra is a bigger project than leaving an email tool, because your pages, checkout, courses and videos go with it. Plan the order: move course content and give members access on the new platform first, then move checkout, then pages, and finally email. Export leads with tags and custom fields, and import unsubscribes before contacts in the new tool.
Leaving ActiveCampaign is limited to email: export contacts, tags, fields and deals, rebuild automations, and reconnect your checkout and course platform to the new tool.
Migration checklist
| Step | Kartra to ActiveCampaign | ActiveCampaign to Kartra |
|---|---|---|
| Order of work | Courses and member access first, then checkout, pages, email | Choose a plan that fits contacts, then build pages and products |
| Contacts | Export leads, tags and fields; import unsubscribes first | Export contacts, tags and fields; import unsubscribes first |
| Selling tools | Replace checkout, course host, video and pages | Recreate products, courses and funnels in Kartra |
| Automations | Rebuild sequences; add scoring where useful | Simplify complex automations into Kartra sequences |
| Sales data | Create pipelines for coaching offers | Keep deals and scores in a CRM |
| Cutover | Keep Kartra live until members have new access | Redirect old pages to Kartra pages |
Decision checklist
- No existing selling tools, want one login: Kartra.
- Already happy with your course platform and checkout: ActiveCampaign.
- High-ticket offers with sales calls: ActiveCampaign.
- List near a Kartra cap: price the next plan before committing.
- Subscriptions through Stripe, Paddle or Polar and a large free list: Sequenzy.
Where Sequenzy fits
Sequenzy is an email layer, like ActiveCampaign, not a course platform. It fits creators who sell subscriptions or memberships through Stripe, Paddle or Polar and want sequences triggered by purchases, failed payments and cancellations directly from billing data. It includes hosted landing pages, popups and embedded forms for lead magnets, and sends transactional and marketing email from one account. Pricing is by emails sent with unlimited contacts: $49/month for 60k emails (unlimited subscribers).
It does not host courses, videos or a checkout, so it does not replace Kartra. It has no CRM or lead scoring, so it does not replace ActiveCampaign for sales-call follow-up.
For more on the email side, see the ActiveCampaign comparison and ActiveCampaign alternatives.
