# Kartra vs CartFlows · Lander Report > Source: https://landerreport.com/compare/kartra-vs-cartflows Compare ## Kartra vs CartFlows By Marcus Reeve, reviewed by the Lander Report editors. Updated 2026-09-29\. [How we research](/methodology) **Disclosure:**We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings. ### The short answer Pick Kartra if you want your pages, email, checkout, courses and an affiliate program in one hosted login and you do not want to run your own website; pick CartFlows if you already run a WordPress and WooCommerce store and want an optimized checkout with order bumps and one-click upsells for a flat annual fee instead of a monthly subscription. Neither tests landers under one URL without risking a Meta or Google campaign's ad learning, so if you buy cold paid traffic look at ElasticFunnels. ### Side by side | | Kartra | CartFlows | | ------------- | ------------------------ | ----------------------------- | | Starts at | $52/mo | Free, or $99/yr | | Split testing | Page-level, not same-URL | Funnel-step A/B, not same-URL | | Checkout | Yes | Yes, WooCommerce | | Free trial | 14-day, card | Free version, no trial | ### Where each one wins #### Kartra ##### What works * It really is one system, and reviewers say the consolidation is the point. Pages, email and SMS, native checkouts, courses, memberships, a helpdesk and your own affiliate program run under one login, and users describe cancelling separate CRM, email and cart subscriptions after moving in. * From the Starter plan up it takes no cut of your sales (0% transaction fees) and includes unlimited pages, products and courses plus webinars. For a creator selling their own offer, that is a lot of platform for $99/mo on the annual plan. * It is established and low-risk to trust. Kartra has run since 2018, reports more than 60,000 customers, and is a known quantity rather than a product that might disappear next year. ##### What to watch * It is built to sell your own courses and coaching, not to run cold paid traffic. There is no same-URL, server-side split testing, so a page test can reset the ad learning Meta and Google rely on, and there are no affiliate-network postbacks for buying traffic. * Support is the most repeated complaint. Reviewers report multi-day waits and generic 'clear your cache' replies, and even satisfied users call the team slow to respond. * The entry Essentials plan is thin and takes a 5% cut of your sales (5 pages, 1 product), so the realistic starting plan is Starter at $99/mo, and new users find the editor dated and slow to learn. #### CartFlows ##### What works * It turns WooCommerce's plain checkout into a real funnel: optimized checkout layouts, order bumps, one-click post-purchase upsells and downsells, funnel-step A/B testing and analytics, all self-hosted with no cut taken from your sales. * It is cheap and established next to hosted funnel SaaS. A free version lives on WordPress.org (4.8/5 from around 486 reviews, 200,000+ active installs), paid starts at $99/year, and it is built by Brainstorm Force, the team behind the Astra theme, so it is not a fly-by-night plugin. * It works with the page builders you already use, Elementor, Bricks, Divi, Beaver Builder and Gutenberg, and with standard WooCommerce gateways like Stripe, PayPal and Square. ##### What to watch * The loudest complaints are support and billing, not the software: Trustpilot and Capterra reviewers report slow responses, friction cancelling or getting a refund, and issues left unresolved. The 4.8 WordPress.org rating is far kinder because it captures installs, not billing disputes. * It is only a checkout and funnel layer. There is no built-in email or CRM, so recovering carts or following up means bolting on more plugins, and living inside WordPress means setup can be fiddly and can conflict with other plugins. * Its A/B testing is funnel-step level inside your own site, not the same-URL, server-side rotation that keeps Meta and Google ad learning intact, and the intro prices renew higher: $99 renews at $149, $199 at $299. ### What each one is, and why the choice comes down to how you sell Kartra and CartFlows both build funnels and both take payment, but they are not the same kind of product, and that difference decides almost everything else. Kartra is a hosted platform: you sign up and it hosts your pages, your email, your checkout, your courses and even your own affiliate program under one login, with nothing to install and nothing to maintain. CartFlows is a self-hosted WordPress plugin: you install it on your own WordPress and WooCommerce store, and it replaces the plain WooCommerce checkout with a funnel that has order bumps, one-click upsells and downsells. So the first question is not which has the longer feature list. It is whether you want a whole business hosted for you, or a cheaper checkout layer bolted onto a website you already run. Kartra has run since 2018 and reports more than 60,000 customers. It leans into the machinery that moves a lead to a sale: native checkouts with bumps and upsells, deeper email and SMS automation, a built-in helpdesk, memberships and courses, and its own affiliate program to recruit partners who sell for you. Because it all sits on one data layer, a purchase can trigger a sequence and grant course access with no connector. Its cost of entry is a monthly subscription and a learning curve, not a website you have to build and keep patched. CartFlows is narrower on purpose, and much cheaper. It is built by Brainstorm Force, the team behind the Astra theme, it has a genuine free version on WordPress.org with 200,000-plus active installs, and paid plans start at a flat annual fee. What it gives you is the checkout and the funnel: an optimized checkout layout, order bumps, one-click post-purchase upsells and downsells, funnel-step A/B testing and revenue analytics, all self-hosted with no cut taken from your sales. What it does not give you is email, a CRM or course hosting, so following up with a buyer means adding more plugins or a separate email tool. ### Pricing compared These two do not price the same way, and comparing the sticker numbers hides the real cost. Kartra charges monthly across four plans. On the annual rate Essentials is $52/mo, but it is a trap worth naming: it caps you at 5 pages and one product and takes a 5% cut of your sales, so the realistic starting plan is Starter at $99/mo, which drops the fee to 0% and adds unlimited pages, products and courses plus webinars. Growth is $189/mo with automations and affiliate management, and Professional is $429/mo with real-time funnel analytics and API access. Paid monthly the plans run $59, $119, $229 and $549\. There is a 14-day trial that asks for a card, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee. CartFlows charges a flat annual fee and takes no cut of your sales, but the licence is not the whole bill. The free version is real and worth trying. Paid starts at $99/year and renews at $149, with a $199 tier that renews at $299 for more sites. On top of that you pay for your own WordPress hosting, and you need a working WooCommerce store for any of it to run. There is no free trial, but the free plugin covers the same ground for trying it out. Read together, CartFlows is far cheaper in software if you already run WordPress: a hundred dollars a year against Kartra's $99/mo realistic entry. What Kartra's subscription buys is everything CartFlows leaves you to assemble, hosting, email, a CRM, courses and an affiliate program, hosted and maintained for you. If you already have the WordPress stack and only need a better checkout, CartFlows wins the price line outright. If you would otherwise be paying for hosting, an email tool and a cart plugin separately, Kartra's one bill can come out even or ahead. ### Hosted platform versus WordPress checkout layer This is where the two stop being interchangeable. Kartra's strength is that it is one system you do not run. Pages, email, checkout, courses and affiliates share one login and one data layer, so there is nothing to host, patch or reconcile, and a sale can fire an email sequence and unlock a course with no plumbing. For a creator who wants to sell their own offer and not become a webmaster, that is the value. CartFlows' edge is control and cost, at the price of doing more yourself. Because it lives inside your WordPress site, it works with the page builders you already use, Elementor, Bricks, Divi, Beaver Builder and Gutenberg, and with standard WooCommerce gateways like Stripe, PayPal and Square. You own the stack and pay no revenue share. The trade is that you own the stack: setup can be fiddly, plugins can conflict, and there is no built-in email or CRM, so cart recovery and follow-up mean bolting on more tools. If you already live in WordPress, that is a feature. If you do not, it is a project. Both take payment natively, which separates them from a landing-page tool like [Unbounce](/reviews/unbounce) that hands the sale to a third party. ### The split-testing gap that matters for paid traffic Here is the line that decides it if any of your traffic is bought. Neither tool runs same-URL, server-side split testing. Kartra's A/B testing is page-level and picks a winner for you; CartFlows tests at the funnel-step level inside your own site. For organic, email or affiliate-referred traffic, both are fine. For paid traffic it is a tax. When a test changes the destination URL, Meta and Google can drop the campaign back into the learning phase and reset the optimisation you paid to build, and a changed page can send the ad back through review. A paid-traffic buyer tests constantly, so that cost lands on every experiment. Neither Kartra nor CartFlows is built to protect ad learning, and that is the standing reason a cold-traffic affiliate looks past both. ### What long-term users report We do not run these tools on live campaigns. We read what long-term users report, alongside each vendor's own docs and pricing pages, and we verify prices with the vendor. Kartra draws praise for the consolidation, with users describing cancelling separate CRM, email and cart subscriptions after moving in. The steady complaint is support: multi-day waits and generic replies, with even satisfied users calling the team slow, and new users find the editor dated and slow to learn. CartFlows rates well where installs are counted, 4.8 out of 5 from around 486 reviews on WordPress.org, but Trustpilot and Capterra are harsher, and the pattern there is billing and support: slow responses, friction cancelling or getting a refund, and issues left unresolved. The kinder WordPress.org score captures installs, not billing disputes. Both are real, established products; the risk with each is fit and support, not whether the software works. ### Which one should you pick? #### Kartra, for a whole business in one hosted login Choose Kartra if you sell your own offer and want the pages, email, checkout, courses and an affiliate program hosted in one place, with nothing to install or maintain. From Starter up it takes no cut of your sales and gives you native checkout bumps and upsells, deeper email and SMS automation and a helpdesk, and it has run since 2018 so it is a known quantity. Start on Starter at $99/mo rather than the thin Essentials tier with its 5% fee, plan around slower support and a dated editor, and know its page-level split testing is not made for the constant testing a paid-traffic buyer does. #### CartFlows, for a cheaper checkout on WordPress you already run Choose CartFlows if you already run a WordPress and WooCommerce store and want an optimized checkout with order bumps and one-click upsells for a flat annual fee instead of a monthly subscription. There is a free version to start, paid begins at $99/year, and no cut is taken from your sales. Budget for your own hosting on top, expect to add an email tool for follow-up, watch for the intro price renewing higher ($99 renews at $149), and know its A/B testing is funnel-step level, not the same-URL kind that protects a paid campaign's ad learning. #### ElasticFunnels, if you buy cold paid traffic If your margin is conversion rate minus click cost, the honest answer is that neither of these was built for you, and a third platform fits the job better. ElasticFunnels is a funnel platform for teams that buy traffic: it keeps the pages, the split testing, the checkout, the CRM and the attribution on one data layer. Its same-URL split testing rotates variants server-side under one campaign link, so Meta and Google keep their learning and a test never sends the ad back through review, which is the exact gap that decides against Kartra and CartFlows above. An AI builder generates a lander from a prompt or clones one from a URL, the checkout carries order bumps and one-click upsells and can route payments across more than one merchant account, and because the click, the order and the rebill sit on one record you can see which ad actually paid. That multi-account routing matters most to sellers pushing real card volume across several merchant accounts; a seller taking a handful of orders a week will not lean on it, and still gets the same checkout, upsells and one-record reporting. Starter is $97/mo, every feature is on every plan, the 14-day trial needs no card, and EF-hosted checkouts carry a 0.5% fee. The catch is age: ElasticFunnels is newer than either product here, and there is very little independent review coverage to check its claims against yet, so until you run real volume through it you are largely taking the vendor's word, which is what you would expect of a platform this new. That limits your outside proof, not the checkout or the testing themselves, so prove it on one test campaign before you move a business onto it. Still weighing more than these two? Start from [the full ranking](/best), or read the [Kartra review](/reviews/kartra), the [CartFlows review](/reviews/cartflows) and the [ElasticFunnels review](/reviews/elasticfunnels) in full. Our pick ### Kartra Kartra is real. It has run since 2018, more than 60,000 businesses use it, and it genuinely folds pages, email, checkout, courses and an affiliate program into one login. You would likely regret it as an affiliate buying cold traffic: it is built to sell your own courses and coaching, its split testing is page-level rather than the same-URL kind that protects ad learning, and support draws steady complaints. Buy it if you sell your own offer and want one system instead of a stack, from $52/mo on the annual plan. Skip it if you just need a fast lander and an ad-safe A/B test. ### Frequently asked questions Which is better, Kartra or CartFlows? Pick Kartra if you want your pages, email, checkout, courses and an affiliate program in one hosted login and you do not want to run your own website; pick CartFlows if you already run a WordPress and WooCommerce store and want an optimized checkout with order bumps and one-click upsells for a flat annual fee instead of a monthly subscription. Neither tests landers under one URL without risking a Meta or Google campaign's ad learning, so if you buy cold paid traffic look at ElasticFunnels. Do Kartra and CartFlows both support A/B testing? Kartra: Page-level, not same-URL. CartFlows: Funnel-step A/B, not same-URL. ### What we read #### From Kartra * * Native checkouts with order bumps and upsells * Built-in email marketing and automation #### Other sources 13 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context. 1. \[tp-cache\] [https://www.trustpilot.com/review/kartra.com ](https://www.trustpilot.com/review/kartra.com) Trustpilot 2. \[tp-price\] [https://www.trustpilot.com/review/kartra.com?page=2 ](https://www.trustpilot.com/review/kartra.com?page=2) Trustpilot 3. \[tp-mixed\] [https://www.trustpilot.com/review/kartra.com?page=4 ](https://www.trustpilot.com/review/kartra.com?page=4) Trustpilot 4. \[cap-save\] [https://www.capterra.com/p/184946/Kartra/reviews/ ](https://www.capterra.com/p/184946/Kartra/reviews/) Capterra 5. \[cap-infusion\] [https://www.capterra.com/p/184946/Kartra/reviews/?page=3 ](https://www.capterra.com/p/184946/Kartra/reviews/?page=3) Capterra 6. \[sa-ui\] [https://www.softwareadvice.com/marketing/kartra-profile/reviews/ ](https://www.softwareadvice.com/marketing/kartra-profile/reviews/) Blog 7. \[g2-checkout\] [CartFlows Reviews ](https://www.g2.com/products/cartflows/reviews) G2 8. \[bx-orderbump\] [Cartflows Review 2026 - Is It Just a Hyped-Up Product? ](https://bloggingx.com/cartflows-review/) Blog 9. \[wpc-paid\] [CartFlows Review (September 2026) - Worth It? ](https://www.wpcrafter.com/review/cartflows/) Blog 10. \[tp-service\] [CartFlows Reviews | Trustpilot ](https://www.trustpilot.com/review/cartflows.com) Trustpilot 11. \[tp-format\] [CartFlows Reviews | Trustpilot ](https://www.trustpilot.com/review/cartflows.com) Trustpilot 12. \[cap-learn\] [CartFlows Reviews 2026 | Capterra ](https://www.capterra.com/p/240727/CartFlows/reviews/) Capterra 13. \[cap-conflict\] [CartFlows Reviews 2026 | Capterra ](https://www.capterra.com/p/240727/CartFlows/reviews/) Capterra ### Keep reading * [Kartra review](/reviews/kartra) * [CartFlows review](/reviews/cartflows) * [The full ranking](/best) --- Landing page builders, judged for affiliates [Best of](/best) © 2026 Lander Report. 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