# Kartra vs Systeme.io · CheckoutScale > Source: https://checkoutscale.com/compare/kartra-vs-systeme-io ## Kartra vs Systeme.io Head-to-head [All head-to-heads →](/compare) Pick Kartra if you are an established coach or creator who needs memberships, deeper checkout control and campaign automation on one login and can absorb its price; pick Systeme.io if you want the same core funnel, email and course tools with a genuinely free plan, 0% sales fees and a faster start. By [Marcus Reyes](/authors/marcus-reyes), Editor. Updated 27 September 2026. **Disclosure:**We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings. Quick answer **Systeme.io** is our top pick for most people. Systeme.io is the pick if you are starting lean and want a genuinely free way to run funnels, email and courses on one login. It is not built for paid-traffic direct response, where same-URL split testing and payment routing matter more. * **Kartra.** Best for coaches and course creators who want one login instead of a stack of tools. From $59/mo. * **Systeme.io.** Best for beginners and solo creators who want a truly free way to run funnels, email and courses in one place. Has a free tier. ### Side by side | | Kartra | Systeme.io | | --------------------- | ------- | ---------- | | From | $59/mo | $0/mo | | Same-URL split test | No | No | | Multi-MID routing | No | No | | Order bumps & upsells | Yes | Yes | | Free trial | 14 days | — | Kartra and Systeme.io both promise the same thing: one login that replaces a stack of separate tools. Pages, a checkout with order bumps and upsells, email, courses and a membership area, all wired together so you are not paying for and connecting five subscriptions. Line the feature lists up and they overlap almost completely. Put them side by side and the real difference is not what they do, it is who they were built for and what they cost. If you are genuinely down to these two, the decision comes down to depth against price, and this site's answer leans on one fact about its readers: they run paid traffic, and neither of these was built for that reader first. #### What each one actually is Kartra has been around since 2018 and the vendor says more than 60,000 businesses run on it. It was built as a marketing suite for coaches, consultants and course creators, and the funnel builder is one part of a larger platform rather than the whole point. That shows in the depth. The checkout is genuinely capable, with order bumps, one-click upsells, coupons, subscription billing and fine control over discount-code rules and pricing options, and the membership and course tools are mature. The consistent long-term complaint is the builder itself: users report it as slow and laggy, with simple edits taking longer than they should, and support that can take days to answer. It runs a single payment processor you connect yourself, and it has no same-URL split testing. Systeme.io comes at the same job from the opposite end of the market. One login covers sales funnels and landing pages, email marketing, online courses, a website and blog, an affiliate program, basic automation and a checkout. The thing that pulls most people in is a free plan that is not a trial in disguise: 2,000 contacts, three funnels, unlimited email sends, one custom domain, no card, and it never expires. The vendor says more than 500,000 people run something on it, and its public review scores are high (Trustpilot 4.9 across more than 8,000 ratings). The checkout ships the two levers that raise revenue per sale, order bumps and one-click upsells, plus built-in A/B testing even on the cheap tiers, and it takes 0% on your sales on every plan. What it trades away is polish and depth: the builder is quick to learn but limited, and its automation has no conditional branching. #### Where each one wins Kartra wins when the depth earns its price. If you are an established coach or creator running a real course-and-membership business, Kartra's checkout control, its mature membership area, its affiliate center and its campaign automation are worth paying for, and the higher tiers give you contacts, funnel simulation and analytics that Systeme.io does not match. The reader who regrets Kartra is the one who bought all of that to sell a single offer they had not proven yet. The reader who is glad they bought it is running an established operation where the platform's depth removes work every day. Systeme.io wins when you are starting lean or your needs are simple, and for the mirror-image reason: it fits the stage. You can build a funnel, wire up email, sell a course and take a payment end to end before spending a cent, and paying Kartra's fee to launch an offer you have not validated is paying for a problem you do not have. It also wins on the money flow at every size, because it takes 0% on your sales on every plan while Kartra's cheapest tier takes 5%. Where Systeme.io runs out of road is the same place its price advantage comes from. The design flexibility is basic, so a premium brand look is hard, and the automation has no if/then logic, so the moment you need conditional email sequences or lead scoring you are past what it does and looking at a dedicated email tool. #### Checkout and payments Both checkouts cover the revenue-per-sale basics: order bumps, one-click upsells, coupons and subscription billing. Kartra gives you more control over the details, from discount-code rules to pricing options, which matters if you run complex offers. Neither routes payments across more than one merchant account, so both run a single processor you connect yourself. For a solo seller or a small business doing steady numbers through one Stripe or PayPal account, that is not a limit you will feel. Where they part is testing. Both can split-test: Kartra has split testing in its funnel tools and Systeme.io has A/B testing even on its cheap plans. But both split visitors across separate URLs. For an email list or organic traffic that is fine. For a cold audience you are paying to reach, splitting traffic across two URLs is the exact thing that can reset an ad platform's optimisation and, on some setups, send a new variant back through ad review. That is the point where a media buyer starts wanting something neither of these two offers. #### If you run paid traffic: a third name to weigh There is a gap both of these leave open, and for one kind of buyer it is the whole decision. Neither Kartra nor Systeme.io does same-URL split testing, and neither routes payments across more than one merchant account. If you buy media at volume, those two absences matter more than a membership area or a free tier, and they are what ElasticFunnels is built around. ElasticFunnels is a funnel platform for teams that live on paid traffic. Its lead feature is same-URL split testing: variants rotate server-side under a single campaign link, so Meta, Google and TikTok keep the optimisation they have already paid to build and a new test never sends the ad back through review. It builds the pages too, with an AI builder that generates one from a prompt or clones an existing page from a URL. Its checkout runs order bumps, one-click upsells and subscriptions, and it can route payments across several processors, with the click, the order, the rebill and the refund all landing on one timeline alongside a CRM and attribution reading the same data. Every feature is on every plan, and the plans differ by traffic: $97 a month on Starter, $197 on Growth and $497 on Scale, with a 14-day trial and no card. EF-hosted checkouts carry a 0.5% fee on the revenue you route through them, and sales you run on outside platforms and networks are not charged. The honest catch is age. ElasticFunnels is newer than both Kartra and Systeme.io, and there is very little independent third-party review coverage to check its claims against, so until you push real volume through it you are largely taking the vendor's word for it. That is what you would expect of a platform this recent, and the no-card trial exists precisely so you can prove the split testing and the checkout on your own traffic before you move any spend. The thin outside coverage limits how much you can lean on other people's reviews today; it does not change what the pages, the routing and the split testing do once your own numbers run through them. Our [ElasticFunnels review](/reviews/elasticfunnels) has the full picture, and [ElasticFunnels vs Kartra](/compare/elasticfunnels-vs-kartra) and [ElasticFunnels vs Systeme.io](/compare/elasticfunnels-vs-systeme-io) take each pair on directly. #### Pricing, tier by tier The two do not price the same way, so comparing stickers misleads. Systeme.io is a flat, low subscription with no revenue share: Free is $0 and never expires, Startup is $17 a month, Webinar $47 and Unlimited $97, priced mainly by contact, funnel and automation limits, all with unlimited email sends and 0% transaction fees, and annual billing gives two months free. You still pay your own payment processor; the platform takes nothing on top. Kartra starts at $59 a month on Essentials, then $119 on Starter, $229 on Growth and $549 on Professional, with a 14-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Read the Essentials tier closely before you pick it: it charges a 5% fee on your sales and caps you at one product, five pages and 500 contacts, so for most sellers the real entry point is Starter at $119, which drops the sales fee to 0% and lifts the caps. So the honest comparison is Systeme.io free-to-$97 against Kartra $119-plus (once you clear the capped entry tier), and the gap is widest exactly where a lean seller lives. At the bottom of the market Systeme.io is free with 0% fees and Kartra's usable tier is $119, which is the whole argument for starting on Systeme.io. Once your business is established enough that Kartra's depth removes work every day, its price is easier to justify. Price it against your stage, not against the other tool's sticker. #### The short version The two-way answer is clean, because they are not fighting for the same buyer. Pick Kartra if you are an established coach or creator who needs memberships, deeper checkout control and campaign automation on one login and can absorb its price. Pick Systeme.io if you want the same core funnel, email and course tools with a genuinely free plan, 0% sales fees and a faster start. And if your decision is really being driven by paid-traffic mechanics, same-URL split testing and payment routing, that is the signal to put a third name on the shortlist before you sign anything. Both, and the rest of the field, are in [the full ranking](/best). ### Kartra: strengths and trade-offs ##### What works * One login for pages, email, checkout, courses and a membership site, which for a solo coach replaces five separate subscriptions and the work of wiring them together. * The checkout is genuinely capable: order bumps, one-click upsells, coupons and subscription billing, with no platform fee on your sales from the Starter plan up. * Deep control over the details, like discount-code rules and pricing options, plus a large library of templates and done-for-you campaigns so you are not starting from a blank page. ##### What to watch * The page builder is the top long-term complaint: users report it as slow and laggy, with simple edits taking longer than they should. * Support can be slow. Long-term customers report responses that take days and some issues left open for weeks. * It is built for coaches and creators, not paid-traffic direct response: there is no same-URL split testing and the checkout runs a single processor, so it will not rotate whole checkouts under one URL or route volume across merchant accounts. ### Systeme.io: strengths and trade-offs ##### What works * A free plan that is not a trial in disguise: 2,000 contacts, three sales funnels, unlimited email sends and no credit card, and it never expires. You can validate an offer end to end before paying a cent. * One login replaces a stack. Funnels, email, courses, an affiliate program and a checkout come already connected, which for a solo founder cuts both the monthly bill and the wiring work. * It takes 0% on your sales on every plan, including the free one, so beyond your payment processor's own fees the platform adds nothing per transaction. * The checkout ships the two levers that raise revenue per sale, order bumps and one-click upsells, plus built-in A/B testing, even on the cheap tiers. ##### What to watch * It is not built for cold paid traffic. There is no same-URL split testing, so its A/B test splits visitors across separate URLs and can reset an ad platform's optimisation, and the checkout runs a single processor with no routing across several merchant accounts. * Design flexibility is basic. The builder is quick to learn but limited, so a premium brand look or a complex layout is where long-term users say it breaks down. * Automation has no conditional branching. Simple trigger-action rules and tags are fine, but buyers who need if/then email logic or lead scoring tend to outgrow it and move their email to a dedicated tool. * Email sends run through shared sender pools, so new accounts and cold or imported lists need domain authentication and warm-up, and users report sends being delayed or held when copy trips the spam checks. Our pick ### Systeme.io Systeme.io is the pick if you are starting lean and want a genuinely free way to run funnels, email and courses on one login. It is not built for paid-traffic direct response, where same-URL split testing and payment routing matter more. 3.9 ### Frequently asked questions Is Kartra or Systeme.io better for paid traffic? Pick Kartra if you are an established coach or creator who needs memberships, deeper checkout control and campaign automation on one login and can absorb its price; pick Systeme.io if you want the same core funnel, email and course tools with a genuinely free plan, 0% sales fees and a faster start. Which is cheaper, Kartra or Systeme.io? Compare the "From" row in the table above. The cheaper sticker is not always cheaper at volume, once processing fees, add-ons and annual upgrades are counted. ### Related reading * [Kartra review](/reviews/kartra) * [Systeme.io review](/reviews/systeme-io) * [The full ranking](/best) --- We rank the platforms that build the pages and host the checkout for teams running paid traffic: order bumps, one-click upsells, split-testing whole checkouts, different checkouts per traffic source, and payment routing for high-risk verticals. CheckoutScale [Top ↑](#main) We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. 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