I’m Kayla Sox. I build funnels for my small studio in Portland, and I’ve used both Kartra and ClickFunnels for real launches, real clients, and my own little side projects. I’ve broken stuff, fixed stuff, and hit publish with shaky hands. You know what? Both tools can work. But they feel very different.
If you’d like to see how Kartra itself stacks up the two platforms, you can skim the official Kartra vs ClickFunnels comparison they publish.
Here’s what I saw. (If you want the long-form narrative—numbers, screenshots, the good and the goofy—you can peek at my ClickFunnels vs Kartra deep dive.)
Quick take: who each one fits
- Kartra felt like a tidy home. Pages, email, memberships, help desk, calendar—under one roof.
- ClickFunnels felt like a race car. Fast to build, quick to test, easy to sell.
If you want one system for most things, Kartra made my life calm. If you want to move fast, test fast, and stack funnels, ClickFunnels made me grin.
Real project 1: a 5-day yoga challenge (ClickFunnels 2.0)
I ran a 5-day yoga challenge for a local teacher, Jess. We used ClickFunnels for the whole flow.
- Traffic: 1,830 visitors from Instagram and two Reels
- Lead capture rate: 34% on the sign-up page
- Tripwire: $27 “Beginner Flow Pack” right after sign-up
- Upsell: $97 “30-Day Plan” on a one-click page
- Stripe handled payments. We also added PayPal, because folks asked.
What worked:
- The page builder was fast. I made three versions of the headline and ran a simple A/B test. The shorter one won by a mile.
- One-click upsells felt smooth. No typing again for buyers. That helped conversions.
- The team feature helped. Jess wrote copy right inside the page, and I fixed spacing after.
What bugged me:
- The email tool was fine, but I missed a few small rules I like (simple lead tags tied to link clicks). I had to set a few extra steps.
- The membership area looked okay, not pretty. It worked, but I did some CSS to make it feel like her brand.
Results after 10 days:
- 622 sign-ups
- 58 tripwire sales
- 31 upsells
- Gross: $7,421
- Ad spend: $1,210
- Net, before fees: $6,211
I built the whole thing in two days, then tweaked for the next week. Speed matters when you’re living on cold brew.
Real project 2: a watercolor mini-course (Kartra)
This was mine. A cozy, beginner course called “Loose Flowers 101.” I wanted a tidy back end, fewer apps, and easy support.
- Lead magnet: a free brush guide (PDF) on a Kartra page
- Nurture emails: 6 emails over 9 days
- Course delivery: Kartra memberships with drip lessons
- Support: Kartra help desk with a simple ticket form
- Calendar: 20-minute student calls booked right inside Kartra
Numbers from the first 30 days:
- 3,940 page visits
- 1,210 sign-ups (31% on the sign-up page)
- 236 sales at $49
- Gross: $11,564
- Refunds: 7 (handled fast in Kartra)
- Email open rate average: 41%
- Click rate average: 7%
What I liked:
- All parts talk to each other. If someone watched Lesson 1 and not Lesson 2, I tagged them and sent a short nudge the next morning. Simple.
- The help desk saved me time. No “where’s my password?” black hole in my inbox.
- The membership setup looked neat right away. I added my brand colors and a cover image, and it felt “finished.”
What made me sigh:
- The page editor sometimes lagged. I’d move a block; it would stick for a second. Not a deal breaker, just… a pause.
- Mobile spacing took extra care. I had to tweak text sizes for small screens.
- VAT rules took me a minute. The tax settings work, but it’s not plug-and-play.
Build time:
- Two and a half days for the pages, emails, and course shell
- A few hours for the help desk and calendar
Page builders: speed vs. neatness
- ClickFunnels felt snappy. I could test ideas fast, and that helped reach a clean headline without fuss.
- Kartra pages looked tidy out of the box. It took me longer to move blocks exactly where I wanted.
If you like quick sprints, ClickFunnels is your friend. If you want calm, matching parts, Kartra wins.
Email and automation
- Kartra email felt strong. Easy tags, easy rules, clean stats. My deliverability stayed solid for my tiny list.
- ClickFunnels email worked, but I needed more steps to make edge cases happen (like “clicked but didn’t buy, send coupon in 24 hours”).
Small note: I still keep a MailerLite account for bulk newsletters. Old habits, you know?
Checkouts and upsells
- ClickFunnels: One-click upsells were smooth and fast to edit. Coupons were very easy.
- Kartra: Checkout pages looked more “brand safe,” and taxes were built in. Upsells worked, but I clicked through more screens while setting it up.
Courses and memberships
- Kartra: This is where it shines. Drip, progress, comments, and a clean lesson list. My students said it felt simple. I even lined it up against GoHighLevel in a separate side-by-side test and the course tools still came out ahead.
- ClickFunnels: It has courses, but I kept tweaking styles to make it match the sales page vibe.
Integrations and tools I used
- Stripe and PayPal on both
- Zapier to ping a Slack channel when high-ticket buyers came in
- Google Sheets for a quick sales log
- Loom videos embedded in both systems
If you’re curious how the same funnel best-practices show up in entirely different niches, take a peek at a French casual-dating landing flow over at PlanCul that leans on a single compelling CTA and ultra-fast mobile load times; a quick browse shows how they keep sign-ups friction-free, which is a helpful reference when you’re trimming the fat on your own pages.
Closer to home, you can watch the same lean-page principle in action on a U.S. classified-dating site; the Backpage Greenbelt listings on OneNightAffair show a geo-targeted landing flow that relies on minimal form fields and bold call-outs, and it’s a quick real-world reference if you want to study how location-based copy can lift sign-ups without adding design clutter.
Kartra needed fewer outside tools day to day. ClickFunnels played nice with outside tools and felt lighter. If you're shopping beyond these two, I also documented the alternatives that actually worked for me so you can skip the duds.
Support and community
- ClickFunnels chat replied fast during U.S. hours. Their big Facebook groups are lively, which can be noisy, but I find answers.
- Kartra support tickets were steady and clear. Fewer memes, more “here’s the fix.” I like both, for different moods.
Cost (what I paid, your plan may vary)
- My Kartra plan ran around $100/month in 2024 for my small list and 1 domain.
- My ClickFunnels 2.0 plan was about $150/month for the basic setup.
Plans change. Check current pages, but that’s what hit my card. You can see the raw signup costs, refunds, and revenue pulls broken out in my Kartra vs ClickFunnels spreadsheet story.
If you’d like a deeper side-by-side specs chart, I’ve posted one on Website Builder Tools that covers feature limits and hidden costs.
ClickFunnels has also weighed in with their perspective—worth a read if you want their take on feature gaps and updates in 2.0—here's the ClickFunnels blog breakdown.
Little annoyances I noted
- ClickFunnels: The editor autosave hiccuped once. I lost five minutes of tweaks. I learned to hit save like it’s a reflex.
- Kartra: Domain mapping took longer than I wanted. Once set, it was stable.
- Both: Mobile spacing. Always test on your phone. Then test again.
Two quick stories from launch week
- Black Friday warm-up: I pushed a 48-hour sale for the watercolor course with Kartra. I set a countdown that synced across the emails and the page. Clean. 82 sales, no weird clock bugs.
- Live stream promo: With ClickFunnels, I built a same-day page for a live yoga