GetResponse versus Kartra. Similarities and differences.

Kartra and GetResponse are very similar software for digital marketing and email automation. However, they have a few important differences. Let’s compare these platforms side-by-side and try to find out which one works best for your needs.

Frankly speaking, it isn’t easy to distinguish GetResponse and Kartra today. This hasn’t always been like that, though.

Before 2020, GetResponse was an all-in-one email marketing and email automation platform. This tool was not useful for anything but email automation.

Things changed drastically after they’ve delivered a new Conversion funnel feature.

Kartra had all chances of becoming out of competition as a universal digital marketing solution that surpasses Clickfunnels. However, GetResponse has almost caught up with Kartra. When I say – almost – I mean they still have a lot of points to improve.

I wish there was a simple answer on when you should use GetResponse instead of Kartra and vice versa, but, life is not that simple. Since both software offers certain exclusive advantages, we must carefully review each of them to make a smart decision.

With this in mind, let’s start our comparison by briefly reviewing what Kartra can offer, followed by what is available with GetResponse.

An overview of Kartra

Kartra is a modern digital marketing software that was launched in April 2018 and is a rapidly growing platform and community.

This software was meant to become a better alternative to the famous ClickFunnels and it managed to do so!

You can now use Kartra as your one-and-only all-in-one solution for launching and selling products, growing a list of emails, generating leads, building a membership.

Kartra outperforms its competitors when it comes to creating Landing Pages that convert. Your landing pages are now easy to build without having to hire a designer or a developer. One specific area where Kartra shines – is pages with videos. It makes it a breeze to provide an intro or a demo to your upcoming product or online course. The landing pages can be connected into sequences, and can also trigger an email based on certain actions taken by your prospect.

Kartra is designed in correspondence with the current and future needs of online businesses. You don’t need to spend hours trying to integrate a payment gateway before your products will start to generate profit. It’s fairly easy to create a Checkout Popup or a Checkout Page and include it in one of your landing pages.

Another nice thing about Kartra – is Affiliate Management. You don’t need to integrate a third-party service in case you want affiliates to promote your product. It’s all included in Kartra.

When launching your next digital marketing campaign, you will most certainly need to have some sort of Email Autoresponders and Email Automation. It’s all here when using Kartra. Every marketing campaign can include one or more email newsletters that get triggered when needed.

Funnels & Campaigns – is the most crucial feature in Kartra. In fact, it is the main reason for this software to exist. Funnel building can be fun or annoying, depending on what tools you use. Since Kartra is a very new product, you are getting the best user experience with their drag & drop visual funnel editor. Years of trial and error are available here in this modern tool.

Kartra provides a flexible Memberships feature. You can decide what tier will give access to which content or what online lessons to include for your audience. It is fairly easy to create an e-learning platform within Kartra.

Overall impression of Kartra

Growing a successful and profitable online business requires a proper tool that removes all the hassle of having to integrate multiple software into one system. Kartra does literally all that you need for promoting, launching, and selling a product. If you were looking for something similar to Clickfunnels – you’ve found it. In fact, Kartra is even better. With all these useful features included in a single platform, it is hard to find a better alternative for your business.

One area, where Kartra lags behind GetResponse, it’s email automation. Kartra wasn’t really designed to replace your favorite email marketing software. It does include basic email autoresponders and simple automation, but, it’s far behind what a specialized tool is able to achieve.

So, overall, Kartra works best as a platform for building funnels, landing pages, and product checkout pages. I’ll make sure to provide some more recommendations on when you should use Kartra and when you should opt for something like GetResponse.

Pricing plans

Kartra starts with $99 per month, with a 14-day free trial for $1. The most expensive plan will cost you $499 per month.

Try Kartra for 14 days for $1

A summary of GetResponse

GetResponse is in the market for email automation since 1998. It is loved for its simplicity, fair pricing policy, and decent deliverability.

Prior to 2020, GetResponse was meant just for email marketing and automation. Now, they also offer basic funnel automation and landing page builder as well(landing pages were available before 2020). They are now targeting new audiences of online entrepreneurs and showing signs of new features being added rapidly.

The main area of expertise for GetResponse is of course very sophisticated and flexible email automation. With 20+ years of experience and a huge number of customers that keeps growing, you can be sure these guys know something about email marketing.

Unlike some less innovative email newsletter platforms, GetResponse provides you with a visual drag-n-drop email campaign builder, as well as a decent drag-n-drop email editor. I must say, they could improve the latter a bit so it will look more up-to-date, but, overall it is easy to use and provides all you need to create a stunning email.

Along with sending emails, GetResponse provides detailed email analytics and flexible A/B split testing. You are also getting convenient list management, autoresponders, and follow-up emails.

GetResponse does offer a nice landing page editor. You don’t have to integrate a third-party service if you want to build your email list using the squeeze page. There’s a bunch of modern and less-modern templates that you can use and customize as you wish. You can also create a landing page from scratch, or even hire a developer to create a custom HTML page that you can use within GetResponse.

When it comes to marketing features, GetResponse does actually include some exclusive tools that will help you boost your profits. It is always a good idea to host a webinar explaining the benefits of your product or launch an ads campaign. You will find a Webinars and Paid Ads features included in GetResponse.

In case you wish to start with just some email marketing and maybe one or two landing pages, but then, you want to create a complete marketing automation sequence – Auto Funnels, or simply, Conversion funnel, is a very valuable feature from GetResponse that was added in 2020. Of course, you may not be satisfied with these funnels if you’re looking for something similar to ClickFunnels. In that case – you better of choosing Kartra. However, if you need an email automation platform in the first place, but also looking for some extra features – a Conversion funnel will probably work for you.

GetResponse may offer a lot of tools and will satisfy even the most demanding digital businessmen. However, there may be still something that you need but is missing. In that case – you are able to integrate more than 150 third-party services. In most scenarios, you will be able to find the right integration as most of the popular tools are available and can work together with GetResponse.

Overall impression of GetResponse

GetResponse is really hard to beat in regards to email marketing and automation campaigns. With so much flexibility and some extra features, GetResponse is probably the best email automation software you can get. It provides a decent deliverability ratio as well.

A very important area where GetResponse could and must improve, however, is the landing pages and sales funnels. It is still far behind a specialized funnel building software like Kartra.

Pricing plans

GetResponse offers plans that start from $15 per month with discounts when choosing a 1 or 2 year billing periods. Most expensive plans depend on the tier and number of contacts in your email list and will cost you $500+ per month with the possibility to get a discount.

Try GetResponse for 30 days for free

GetResponse vs Kartra – Comparing side-by-side

Now, after having a brief overview of both Kartra and GetResponse, let’s get a closer look at the main differences.

I am going to use the information that I’ve provided already as well as some additional properties and features to compare both tools.

On the left, you can look at what GetResponse has to offer, while on the right – is the feature set of Kartra.

To make it easier to understand the strong and weak points of them, I am going to mark a severe drawback with red text. A huge advantage is marked with green text. In case both GetResponse and Kartra offer a decent quality of a specific feature and it is present in both software, I am going to mark it with an orange text.

 

Which one to use and when?

Alright. Now, as we’ve learned a lot of stuff about GetResponse and Kartra and how they compare against each other, let’s try to summarize this article by providing some recommendations. It’s time to decide which software you need to start using.

Use GetResponse if…

Your primary objective is Email Automation & Marketing. GetResponse was created and has established its reputation as an ultimate all-in-one Email Automation platform with some extra features. Indeed, if you want to be sending a lot of emails, and is not going to rely that much on Sales Funnels or Landing Pages included in GetResponse – this software is the right choice.

Having said that, you can also use GetResponse if you want to take advantage of its extra features to boost your Email Marketing Campaigns. The best way is to give it a try for 30-days for absolutely free. Along, with trying Kartra.

Use Kartra if…

Kartra is an amazing tool for building highly-convertible Landing Pages backed with Sales Funnels and basic Email Automation. It allows you to create a set of Landing Pages along with Video Pages and set-up automation based on how long your user watched a video, have the user watched it at all, or have the user opened your email or not.

If you are going to launch a new product or increase your business presence by promoting one of your products (or many) – Kartra will help you achieve this goal with ease. It was designed as a replacement for famous ClickFunnels, so if you were looking for something like that – Kartra is definitely something you would want to go with. As usual, I suggest trying Kartra for $1 for 2 weeks, along with giving GetResponse a try for 30-days for free.

Overall

It’s not always easy to decide which software to use for your business. The best way to get an impression of what you can achieve with one or another tool – is to compare them in action. So feel free to try Kartra and GetResponse before you decide to upgrade to a paid plan and dive deep into either of those.