If you are looking for an all-in-one selling platform, you may have already heard about Podia and Kartra.

Both of these softwares are all-in-one digital selling platforms, but there are some major differences.

Let me know present you my views having used both the platforms hands-on.

Overview of Podia and Kartra

Podia was founded in 2014 by Spencer Fry as an alternative video platform to YouTube for hosting training courses.

Initially, it served as a simple platform for accepting payments and maintaining a customer list.

Over time, Podia raised additional funds and introduced various features such as online courses, one-to-one coaching sessions, digital downloads, community forums, and email automation.

It also integrates with popular scheduling platforms like Calendly, Acuity, YouCanBookMe, and SavvyCal, allowing users to seamlessly book coaching sessions.

On the other hand, Kartra is an all-in-one marketing platform released in 2018 by the team behind WebinarJam.

It offers automated email marketing, sales funnel creation, landing page design, helpdesk, and more.

While Kartra can handle video uploads and gated access, it is primarily a funnel-centric platform and lacks course creation functionalities.

Notable features of Kartra:

• Behavioral adaptive marketing: Sections on landing pages can be shown or hidden based on audience behaviors or conditions.
• Dynamic OTO (One-Time Offer) functionality: Allows for dynamic upsell or downsell offers based on user site behaviors.

These features may prove extremely beneficial if you are running an e-commerce store as Kartra also comes with the ability to sell physical products.

However, for most users, these advanced features may not provide significant value compared to focusing on value delivery and stick to basics.

Quick decision

What I like about Podia over Kartra? 👍

• Good UI/UX: Podia has a neat, minimal, and beginner-friendly interface, with easy access to all features. In contrast, Kartra has a learning curve, slow interface, and less accessible features.
• Support for multiple product types: Podia is an all-in-one platform that supports digital downloads, courses, webinars, and coaching sessions. Kartra can host course videos but lacks drip content, course certificates, and assessment features.
• Specialist course features: Podia offers course creation features that include certifications, quizzes, and drip content. On the other hand, while Kartra technically allows you to host course videos, you need to use its video functionalities and access content through its subscription functionality.
• Community feature: Podia has a built-in community feature. You can grant either free access or paid access to it. Kartra doesn’t come with communities.
• Coaching feature: Podia has a coaching feature where people can book coaching calls with you. It integrates with almost all popular calendar platforms
• Frequent feature updates: Podia regularly introduces new features like the community feature and emails 2.0 with automation capabilities. Kartra focuses mainly on bug fixes and enhancements without many new features in the last 2-3 years!

What I like about Kartra over Podia? 👍

• Funnel-focused platform: Kartra provides a unified platform to market and sell both digital and physical products. This includes tools for creating landing pages, membership sites, and sales funnels. With a range of professional templates for various pages like checkouts and upsell pages, Kartra simplifies the process of setting up an online business.
• Interactive video features: Unlike platforms like Podia, Kartra enhances user engagement through interactive video capabilities. Features such as splash images, logo watermarks, closed captions, and control over playback options, including speed, contribute to a more dynamic video experience.
• Behavioral adaptive marketing (BAM): Kartra’s BAM feature allows for personalized marketing strategies based on user behavior and interaction history on the site, offering a targeted approach to customer engagement.
• Automation and customization: Kartra’s automation builder is robust, featuring IF-THEN/TRUE-FALSE logic, multiple trigger rules, A/B split testing, and complex automation capabilities, aligning with offerings from platforms like ClickFunnels.
• Monetization and upselling: Tools for adding upsells, downsells, order bumps, and support for 1-click transactions help in maximizing revenue. The platform’s built-in survey builder, with varied question types, aids in collecting customer feedback directly.
• Powerful affiliate program: Kartra surpasses competitors like Podia in affiliate management, providing extensive control over affiliate opt-ins, specific commissions, and automation, coupled with detailed reporting and task automation for effective program administration.
• Kartra agency: A key feature for agency owners and businesses managing multiple client projects. This facility allows for centralized management of client websites, reporting, and white labeling options.

Upfront Bottomline ✨

Podia is a course-centric platform that offers various features like coaching, communities, and the ability to sell digital products for course creators.

On the other hand, Kartra is more of a funnel platform. Although you can host courses or membership sites with Kartra, but it’s far from ideal. You need to make use of their videos feature, coupled with subscription payment plans, to accomplish this functionality.

But when it comes to building sales funnels, Kartra has a powerful page builder. You don’t need to use WordPress or any other dedicated page builders to design your funnels or campaigns.

On the other hand, Podia’s website builder is very limited and it’s more of a storefront builder, not a complete page builder.

If you are an independent course creator, Podia may be the right choice for you.

However, if you are looking for advanced marketing features and the ability to sell physical products, as well as options for agency-related features such as white label, help desk, and back office, you may prefer Kartra.

User interface and ease of use

Podia’s interface is very neat, minimal, and straightforward.

You can access all its features within three clicks. It doesn’t have any learning curve. Beginners can easily get started with Podia.

Whereas, Kartra is not easy to use. It has some learning curve. Its features are not accessible straight away. You end up going through multiple steps for configuring a product/setting up the memberships, etc. Also, Kartra’s interface is very slow. Personally for me, it’s a big deal.

For example – While creating a product you need to go through seven steps to complete the configuration. If you just want to edit any of the features, you need to go through each step again.

Winner: Podia. It has a modern interface and all the features are accessible within three to four clicks. It loads faster, and it doesn’t have any learning curve. On the other hand, Kartra has a slower interface and has some learning curve. Beginners find it quite difficult to get started.

Online courses 📚

Podia has a dedicated course builder. You can create and sell the courses easily. On the other hand, Kartra is not suitable for courses. Will discuss Kartra later in this section.

Podia‘s course curriculum consists of sections (like modules) and lessons inside it.

Podia supports very few lesson types, like text, embed links, quizzes, coachings, and files (video, audio, PDFs, text files, etc.) Unlike Thinkific or LearnWorlds, it lacks Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline & HTML5.

With Podia, you don’t need to get Vimeo or Wistia because Podia supports unlimited bandwidth for hosting your video files.

Note: Podia doesn’t support HTML/embeddable codes. If you are hosting course files on other platforms, you need to include the direct links. You can add links to YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Google Form, Spotify, Google Slides, etc. Click here to know all the platforms that Podia supports.

Podia has a built-in comments and certificates feature. You can make the comments visible, hidden, or locked.

You can customize the course title, subtitle and display the certificate date. You can also automatically send an email notification with a link to download the certificate when students complete all lessons.

Next comes setting up the price. Podia supports free, one-time payments and monthly payments. Also, to increase the revenue, you can offer multiple upsells with discount offers.

Note that Podia also allows you to pre-launch the courses to collect the email address of potential buyers, make the course open/close, make it visible/hidden, and set the start to let the courses begin.

With Podia, you can view your course as a customer/visitor, invite the customers to register for your course, view course sales, embed the course, etc.

Let’s discuss about Kartra.

Things are quite different in Kartra.

As I said before, Kartra doesn’t have a dedicated courses feature.

It just has a video feature called Kartra Videos, with which you can sell single videos or video playlists with multiple videos, say, training video series.

The best thing with Kartra Videos is that it gives plenty of features (interactive video elements) to make videos engaging. You can add splash images, logo watermarks, close captions, show/hide controls, social sharing, playback speed, etc.

For more conversions, you can add call to actions like opt-ins, image banners, captions, caption+button, etc. for videos. Podia lacks these features.

The best thing with Kartra Videos is that you can even tag the leads based on video watch duration. For example – If you start pitching your offer at X secs in the video, you could apply the tag “Has seen offer” to every lead beyond this point. This feature would be really helpful to know how the users are engaging with the videos.

With Kartra Videos you can just market and sell your videos or playlists.

Except these, there are no other features in Kartra.

Winner: Podia. Podia has a dedicated course builder, LMS features, and a built-in community for students to engage and interact with. It supports quizzes, certificates, drip scheduling, comments, pre-launch of the courses, and much more. On the other hand, Kartra is not a course creation platform. But if you just want to create mini-review videos and product launches, Kartra Videos will get the job done.

Memberships and community

Podia doesn’t have a membership feature, but you can use its community as a membership.

On the other hand, Kartra has a dedicated memberships feature and it comes with a membership site builder.

First, will discuss on Kartra memberships in detail.

In the sidebar, you will get all the blocks to design your membership site. You can display the progress bar, add host, featured posts, banners, etc.

To start adding the posts to the membership site, you need to first create categories, as you see in the above screenshot. You can add opt-ins, checkout forms, calendars, surveys, audio playlists, and custom code for creating the post content.

With Kartra you also have features like drip schedule, send email notifications when a new post is available, also add tags (for effective members management), and much more.

Furthermore, similar to Kajabi, you can automate the membership tasks as well, when:

• Lead is granted access to membership.
• Access is revoked.
• Lead completes the access levels.
• Etc.

Communities

Podia comes with a built-in community feature. You can use the community as a membership site feature, as I told you previously. This feature is available on all Podia plans.

You can create free/paid plans for members to subscribe. You can choose the products which you want to provide access for community members and set visibility and access options.

Community supports content like images and files from Google Drive, Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, TypeForm, etc.

You can create topics and add new posts for members to engage. Members can set their profiles and interact with each other through posts, comments, and likes. As a creator, you have all the access to control posting or commenting permissions.

Kartra doesn’t have a community feature.

Winner: Podia wins in communities while Kartra wins in memberships. When it comes to memberships Kartra has a dedicated membership site builder and membership portal, and it supports tagging and automating the membership tasks giving more flexibility. Podia’s community feature helps in increasing student engagement.

Digital product selling 🛒

With Podia, you can create and sell digital downloads, webinars, bundles, and coaching along with courses. With bundles, you can add as many products as you wish; even you can add upsells for bundles to increase sales.

On the other hand, with Kartra, you can sell digital and physical products. You can sell digital downloads, eBooks, files, or any other products with Kartra. If you are selling physical products, you can add shipping costs and sales taxes.

Let’s discuss these products one by one:

Coachings

Podia’s coaching feature is pretty basic, unlike Teachable. In Teachable you can create milestones for each meeting so that you and the client both are aware of the things you had discussed. This is lacking in Podia.

For offering coaching, you need to integrate Podia with tools like Calendly, SavvyCal, Acuity, or YouCanBookMe. You can also embed a custom calendar link.

On the other hand, Kartra comes with built-in calendars where you need to integrate with Google calendars for booking and scheduling appointments. But it doesn’t have a coaching feature.

One of the best ways to increase sales with Podia is offering coaching sessions as upsells when selling courses.

Product bundling

Bundles help you sell more products at a lower price. You can even add upsells with bundles, similar to other products. Kartra doesn’t support this.

Webinars

Podia also supports webinars. You need to integrate it with Zoom or YouTube Live to get started.

You can add instructions for attendees, choose when to send the webinar reminders, like email the customers – :

• 10 minutes before the event begins.
• When the event begins.
• When the event ends.

You can also set the pricing, add upsells, and control the access & visibility settings similar to other products as you saw before.

What about webinars in Kartra?

Kartra lacks this feature. You need to integrate with external tools like WebinarJam to avail this feature.

Winner: Kartra. Kartra allows you to sell both digital and physical products. You can also sell coaching by using its calendars feature. While Podia is only for digital products, you can’t use it to sell physical products.

Design and customization 🎨

Themes

Both Podia and Kartra don’t offer any themes to design your site, unlike tools like Kajabi.

You need to design your site from scratch using the page builder and custom coding. Note that Podia doesn’t support custom coding as of now, so you will have limited design freedom.

Winner: Kartra. Though both tools don’t offer site or product themes, you can use its feature-rich page builder (with over 25+ blocks) to design from scratch along with custom coding. On the other hand, Podia’s page builder just offers 10+ blocks.

Page builder

Podia comes with a basic page builder, but it is not as powerful and feature-rich as Kartra.

Kartra has a dedicated and powerful landing page builder. It offers plenty of templates to design your squeeze pages, opt-ins, thank you pages, upsells, checkout pages, membership sites, etc. The templates look highly professional, and you can customize them as needed.

Its page builder gives block templates to design various sections like hero block, features, pricing, FAQs, portfolios, etc, unlike Podia.

Podia’s builder offers a few sections to design the course pages, store, and your site. These include banners, bio, FAQs, testimonials, grids, etc. There are options available to customize the fonts, colors, buttons, etc. You can create custom pages for your website/store.

It doesn’t offer any themes/page templates to design the pages/site, and it lacks popups. Also unlike Kartra, you can’t create your sections or pages using custom code. So, Podia is not so flexible when it comes to customization.

Kartra also supports popups. You can add popups on the Kartra pages for lead generation. For scarcity marketing, you have alert bars, countdown timers, etc.

The best part is that you can design your sections using custom code. Furthermore, you can embed tracking codes in your pages to track visitors to your sales page and conversions.

Winner: Kartra. It has a dedicated landing page builder and membership site builder. It gives plenty of professional-looking templates to design your pages and sections. The customization options are excellent and it also supports custom code. Podia, on the other hand, has just a basic builder with very few modules and limited customization options.

Website level options

Both Kartra and Podia support custom domains and sub-domains. In Kartra, while designing each of your pages, you need to select your own custom domain, as you can see in the above screenshot.

When it comes to white-labeling, with both you can remove the Kartra/Podia branding and put your own branding.

Winner: Kartra. Kartra has more freedom in running your business under your own domain. Even you can white-label your agency (Kartra Agency) and run the business under your own domain. In Kartra, you can also white-label the emails you send to clients.

Sales and Marketing 💰

Basic marketing features

Podia offers marketing features like coupons, discounts, and pre-launches. While Kartra provides coupons and discounts.

Coupons and discounts:

In both tools, you can add the expiry date for coupons. Podia allows you to limit coupon usage. With both, you can’t create bulk coupon codes, unlike with tools like Kajabi.

Pre-launch:

With Podia, you can pre-launch the products (especially courses) to create a marketing buzz and collect the emails of potential buyers. This helps you in validating your product idea. This feature is lacking in Kartra.

Behavioral Adaptive Marketing (BAM) in Kartra:

The powerful and unique marketing feature 🔥 of Kartra is – Behavioral Adaptive Marketing (BAM). This feature allows you to display the content dynamically for each visitor based on their previous journey. You can display the section of your pages based on the lists the customers have subscribed to, based on the tags added, based on their previous purchases, etc.

For example – If you’re in the health & fitness niche, showing the content relevant to the gender would probably increase your conversions. You can display two different sections, one for men and another for women.

Winner: Kartra. Kartra excels over Podia when it comes to marketing. Its Behavioral Adaptive Marketing (BAM), is a game-changer and is its main selling proposition. On the hand, Podia just has coupons and upselling features as a part of marketing.

Payment processing

Podia and Kartra don’t have their own native payment gateway. But there are integrations available.

Podia provides native integrations with only Stripe and PayPal. Whereas Kartra supports Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, and Authorize.net. Both accept Credit Card payments at the checkout.

If you need more integrations other than these, you need to integrate using Zapier.

When it comes to Payouts, Kartra pays instantaneously whereas with Podia it will be delayed by 2 to 3 days depending on your locality.

Winner: Kartra. Kartra has more integrations available and it gives immediate payouts as well. In Kartra, you have the option to reschedule the payment dates if the customer needs a few more days to pay for memberships and freeze the subscriptions until further notice if the customer didn’t make the purchase. These features are lacking in Podia.

Checkout, OTOs (like upsells, bump offer, and downsells)

Podia doesn’t have built-in checkout, unlike Kartra.

All it offers is the ability to sell a course through embedding on your site or add the links to your products through CTAs ( like Buy now, Get access to this course) or with product cards.

On the other hand, Kartra has a built-in checkout feature available. There are both single and multiple checkouts and you will get various templates for these.

OTOs:

Podia only supports upsells, while Kartra supports upsells, order bumps, and downsells.

You can add multiple upsells on both tools. You can also offer upsells to increase sales.

In Podia, you can directly add the upsell while creating the product. But in the case of Kartra, you need to build a funnel for adding the upsell or downsell. Bump offers can be directly added while creating the offers.

Note:

Kartra has some limitations for adding order bumps. These include –

• If you are using PayPal, you will not be able to add bump offers.
• You should integrate the same payment gateway for both the main offer and the bump offer.

Winner: Kartra, obviously.

Email marketing and automation

Kartra and Podia have built-in email marketing features. Both support broadcasts and campaigns.

Here, I have created an email campaign for students enrolled in my BloggingX Automation System course.

Kartra has a built-in email marketing tool called Kartra Mail, and its campaigns are called sequences.

It has a built-in split testing feature which allows you to test up to 4 variations. KartraMail provides dynamic variables like {first_name}, {email_address}, {phone}, {affiliate_link}, and much more to personalize your emails for more conversions. Podia lacks split testing and dynamic variables.

You can take your email marketing to the next level by combining its automation. For example – If users open your emails, you can assign them a tag, add them to a list, assign scores, grant access to membership, etc. These kinds of automation are not possible with Podia.

Kartra’s automation builder is very powerful. Thanks to its IF and THEN automation system. It allows you to automate email sends, follow-ups, opt-ins, sales, follow-ups after-sales, subscriptions, tagging, etc.

You can build complex automation by triggering multiple rules. The triggering rules include – opt-ins, leads, tags, orders, page visits, etc.

Winner: Kartra. Kartra has a visual automation builder with IF-THEN logic. You can trigger multiple rules and build complex automations. You can automate everything with Kartra. Kartra’s email marketing tool supports dynamic variables, split testing, pre-made templates, etc. Podia just comes with basic email marketing features, and it lacks automation features.

Affiliate marketing

Podia has a built-in affiliate program, and this feature is available only on Shaker and Earthquaker plans. You can keep your affiliate program closed/open/invite-only. You can also set specific commissions for each of your products.

But unlike Kartra, it lacks multiple commission tiers, affiliate-specific commissions, affiliate tagging, and questionnaire features.

Podia gives you various affiliate metrics like sales, revenue, paid, unpaid, clicks, and conversions to analyze the performance of your affiliates.

Kartra’s affiliate program is very powerful and feature-rich. It replaces the need for tools like PostAfiiliatePro. You can add affiliate opt-ins, add questionnaires to access affiliates’ quality, add a mandatory terms & conditions prompt, and much more.

Also, Kartra allows you to create custom affiliate portals & landing pages for your affiliates, automatically subscribe and tag your affiliates, incentivize the affiliate campaigns, etc. You won’t get these kind of features in Podia.

Kartra affiliate’s analytics is more detailed than Podia. You can analyze the affiliate’s data by adding filters. It will show you metrics for each affiliate, such as the number of products they are affiliates for, the amount earned, the amount due, the amount paid, and the amount due for each affiliate.

Winner: Kartra. Podia’s affiliate program is just basic and you can’t offer affiliate specific commissions. Whereas Kartra allows you to do this, even it supports multiple commission tiers.

Sales funnels/campaigns

Podia doesn’t have an explicit sales funnels feature, unlike Kartra. For this reason, users use ClickFunnels or WordPress alongside Podia.

Kartra calls its funnels as campaigns. The campaigns are created by combining all Kartra tools, like products, pages, sequences, tags, lists, calendars, etc., giving rise to campaign assets.

Kartra also provides Done For You campaigns which are plug-and-play funnels you can duplicate and use. It also has a marketplace where you will find hundreds of campaigns built by funnel experts. You can also sell your own campaigns in the marketplace to earn a decent income.

Here I have created a campaign for my BloggingX Automation System course. It consists of the landing page, thank you page, and an upsell page.

Winner: Kartra. Thanks to its marketing features, Kartra blows Podia out of the water. Its behavioral adaptive marketing, order bumps, upsells, downsells, heat maps, 1-click transactions, cart abandonment, tagging, and campaigns help you take your marketing to the next level. Podia, on the other hand, offers basic marketing features such as coupons, affiliates, and upsells. That’s it!

Integrations

Podia provides native integrations with various:

• Email service providers (like ActiveCampaign, Drip, MailChimp, ConvertKit, etc.)
• Payment gateways – Stripe & PayPal.
• Analytics tools – Google Analytics and HotJar.
• Webinars and live streams – Zoom & YouTube Live.
• Zapier and Much more.

On the other hand, Kartra integrates with:

• Stripe, Authorize.net, PayPal, Braintree (payment gateways)
• SendGrid, MailGun, Elastic Mail and Postmark (Email gateways),
• Wilio, Plivo, and Nexmo (SMS gateways)
• Kajabi, aMember, Digital Access Pass, Optimize Press, S2 Member, and Wishlist(Membership platforms).
• Google Analytics, Facebook Pixels.
• Zapier, API, IPN, custom app integrations.

Click here to see all the supported integrations of Podia and Kartra.

Winner: Kartra. Kartra has more native integrations than Podia. It also supports Zapier, API, IPN, and custom app integrations.

Analytics and reporting 📈

Kartra has an edge over Podia with its in-depth reports. You will get various metrics to analyze your business performance.

You have a dedicated analytics tab for products, videos, memberships, affiliates, forms, sequences, etc. Kartra provides metrics like visitors, sales, rebills, refunds, revenue, net profit, and much more. For videos, it gives visitors, plays, completes, call to action, and average watch time.

Kartra displays analytics in the form of graphs for easier analysis. You can download the CSV file for manual analysis.

With Podia, there is not much data available. It just gives basic metrics. In the dashboard, you can see all the community, audience, and sales stats.

You can view the sales metrics of each product individually. For this go to your product, Edit>View course sales. It gives sales, MRR, and revenue metrics.

For email broadcasts and campaigns, it gives sent, open, click, sales, bounce, and unsubscribe metrics.

Winner: Kartra. Kartra gives in-depth analytics, and it displays the data in graphs for easier analysis. You will get a dedicated analytics tab for each of its tools. With Podia, you will get very few metrics.

Pricing and support

Pricing 💲

Podia pricing starts at $33/mo, but it lacks unlimited coaching and affiliates. To avail these features you need to go with the Shaker plan at $75/mo. If you need priority support and onboarding calls, go with the Earthquaker plan at $166/mo.

The Shaker plan would be ideal for most of the users.

Kartra’s lowest plan starts at $99/mo, but it is limited to just 20 products, 50 videos, 2 membership sites, etc. If you need unlimited everything and the agency feature to manage all your client’s websites, the Silver plan would be ideal for you.

If you want to try hands-on the tool before purchasing, you can try their trials by clicking on the links below.

If you want to save money, I recommend you go with their annual subscriptions. Podia’s annual billing gives you a 17% discount, while Kartra gives you a 25% discount.

Winner: Podia. Podia is a very affordable platform compared to Kartra. To begin with, Podia even offers a free plan and a free trial. Though Podia is cheaper compared to Kartra, you will get powerful features with Kartra for the price. Its agency feature is a game-changer if you are an agency owner. Kartra costs high, but it is worth the price.

Support 👋

When it comes to support, Podia excels over Kartra. Podia offers weekly demos, weekly Q&As, YouTube videos, in-depth knowledgebase articles, and live chat support to assist you.

On the other side, Kartra comes with Youtube videos, demos, knowledgebase articles, and Kartranaut training programs that help you effectively learn to use Kartra.

Winner: Tie.

FAQs on Kartra vs. Podia ❓

Podia vs Kartra:Conclusion 🏆

Both Podia and Kartra are two of the best product-selling platforms. The final choice depends on your use cases.

Choose Podia if:

• You are a course creator and you are mainly into course business.
• You need an easy-to-use and straightforward tool.
• You need built-in webinars feature.
• The basic marketing features are enough for you.
• You need a community feature.

Choose Kartra if:

• You sell both physical and digital products.
• You need marketing features like Behavioral Adaptive Marketing, order bumps, 1-click transactions, checkout features, etc.
• You need a membership feature.
• You need advanced marketing automation to take your business to the next level.
• You are an agency owner.

Even though Kartra has a lot of features, it’s not a pleasure to use. UI/UX sucks! It also lacks LMS and community features.

I would rather go with Podia for its advanced course and community features. If I want more marketing features, I would consider coupling it with WordPress (with CartFlows), ThriveCart (comes with a lifetime deal), or even ClickFunnels.

But again it’s a personal choice.