Sam Poyan

GrooveFunnels vs Kartra is a hot discussion in the funnel-building community because of the similarities between both platforms.

They both aim to be the all-in-one solution that lets their customers build their entire business. In this article, we are going to compare them to see which one is best for you.

Something that also caught my eye about GrooveFunnels, is that it offers a free plan. That’s something that isn’t too common for software of this kind.

But, we’ll talk more about that later on.

GrooveFunnels vs Kartra: Overview

What Is GrooveFunnels?

GrooveFunnels is a piece of software that lets its customers build sales funnels, send emails, and do various other tasks.

GrooveDigital, the company behind GrooveFunnels, was not founded until 2018.

The product GrooveFunnels has also only just officially launched on October 6th 2020, meaning it’s still in early stages.

Because of this, some of the features are not fully developed yet, but the most important ones are.

We’ll talk more about the features later on, but GrooveFunnels does offer a big selection which is what makes it special.

The founding members of GrooveFunnels are:

• Mike Filsaime
• John Cornetta
• Matt Serralta
• Matt Naus

Interestingly, Mike Filsaime was also actually the founder of Kartra. He decided to take a buyout and leave the Kartra project due to creative differences with his business partner.

As a result of this move, he started GrooveFunnels with the other founding members mentioned above.

Something to note though is that when someone like Mike Filsaime leaves a company, there are also often entire teams (for example, developers) that will leave with him as well.

For this reason, there are probably some additional similarities between GrooveFunnels and Kartra.

During the launch of GrooveFunnels, Mike has stated that getting a second run at creating an all-in-one business tool of this nature means that he can build it bigger and better than Kartra, with more modern technology.

That’s a big claim considering that Kartra is such a successful business SaaS solution.

However, these words are also coming from a guy with a tremendous amount of experience and respect in both the software and the online marketing industry.

In this article I am to find out which platform is best, and share all the details with you.

This platform comes with a ton of useful tools you can use to grow your business. If you want to find out exactly what GrooveFunnels has to offer with nothing left out, then you can take a look at my detailed Groove review here.

What Is Kartra?

Kartra is also an all-in-one business software solution that also helps you build and scale your online business.

The company behind Kartra is Genesis digital which was founded in 2013.

Genesis Digital was also behind many other successful SaaS tools for online businesses including EverWebinar and WebinarJam.

Mike Filsaime, who we spoke about earlier on, was also involved in both these projects.

Kartra is Genesis Digital’s most recent project which didn’t launch until 2018, so it’s not too old either. However, unlike GrooveFunnels, all of the features are fully developed.

The current head team members of Genesis Digital include:

• Andy Jenkins (Co-founder)
• Hector Yague (Hector Yague)
• A.J. Robers (Chief Revenue Officer)

GrooveFunnels vs Kartra: Similarities

Other than Mike Filsaime being involved heavily in both of these projects, they also have several other similarities.

In fact, GrooveFunnels has or will have every Kartra feature, and is also promising to add more software tools that Kartra does not have.

Will Kartra respond and then begin to add more features to their platform also?

Time will tell.

However, GrooveDigital have an edge here as they have intimate insider knowledge of the blueprint behind Kartra. Because of this, they know exactly how to replicate it with modification and additional features.

In this section, I’m going to run you through the parts of these platforms that are similar, so that you know exactly what to expect if you decide to purchase either of them.

Page Builder

Both of these platforms have a brilliant page builder that lets you create several different types of websites, landing pages and funnels.

With both Kartra and GrooveFunnels, you can build squeeze pages, sales funnels, full-navigation websites, and pretty much anything else you can think of.

The main difference between their page builder is that GrooveFunnels uses more up-to-date software which also helps the pages load faster.

However, that’s not to bash Kartra in any way, as their page builder is outstanding too, and probably uses software that beats a lot of other products on the market.

Plus, GrooveFunnels will also naturally have a few more bugs than Kartra, at least in the early stages, as it’s only just launched and will naturally have a few wrinkles to iron out. But, the GrooveDigital team is working on them continuously, and they are becoming less common.

In short, they both have a great page builder, but GrooveFunnels might just have the edge due to the superior load speed, which will help any pages built by Groove to rank better in the search results.

Large Selection of Templates

Both GrooveFunnels and Kartra have a large selection of templates.

The templates aren’t just for one type of page or funnel, they have something for pretty much anything you can think of.

I haven’t counted all of them, but it looks as if Kartra currently has a few more. Although, this is to be expected, as the software has been around longer.

GrooveFunnels, on the other hand, have said that they will continuously add more templates to their library every Friday on an ongoing basis.

Regardless, both platforms have nice templates that can easily be edited with their page builder.

Email Marketing Feature

Kartra has KartraMail, while GrooveFunnels has GrooveMail.

The email marketing feature inside of GrooveFunnels is one that is still actively getting a lot of development put into it, as it’s not quite as advanced yet.

You can send broadcasts, and also build basic automation sequences, but that’s about it as of right now.

The Groove team is putting a lot of resources into developing GrooveMail as they want it to be, in time, one of the most advanced email marketing solutions with powerful automation capabilities, like ActiveCampaign.

Kartra Mail on the other hand is fully developed and is supposed to be already quite similar to ActiveCampaign, which is pretty sweet.

KartraMail has a huge number of automation triggers including popular ones like:

• “If customer has been refunded”
• “If recipient is an active affiliate”
• “If recipient has visited X page”

GrooveMail will eventually also have these automation triggers, but as of right now they are only available in Kartra.

Membership Site Feature

The next similarity between Kartra and GrooveFunnels is the membership site feature.

Both platforms have a feature like this that lets you build and manage your membership sites.

They both have all the usual features that you would expect such as:

• Drip-feed content
• Multiple Access Levels
• Progress Tracking
• Advanced Analytics
• Ont-time or subscription payment options
• Member access via password

As Kartra and GrooveFunnels have these features, you won’t need any type of external membership software like Thinkific or Kajabi.

Checkout & Sales Feature

Kartra and GrooveFunnels also have great checkout and sales features.

The checkouts are fully customizable on both platforms, meaning you aren’t locked into one style.

They also both have great upsell features including:

• One-click Order bumps
• One-click Upsells
• One-click Downsells

Powerful features like these can help you to increase your revenue considerably, so it’s great to see that both GrooveFunnels and Kartra have them.

Share Funnels

Another similarity between the two platforms is the ability to create share funnels and campaigns.

With both Kartra and GrooveFunnels, you can share your funnels and entire campaigns with other people who are using the same platform. This can also include your email sequences.

This can be especially useful if you are operating an affiliate marketing model and you want to offer a done-for-you landing page, funnel and email sequence as a bonus, or even as a paid product upsell of your own.

Network marketers would also find this feature very useful as they can give ready made funnels to members of their downline to help them build their business.

When it comes to the share funnel feature, I believe ClickFunnels started it. However, with Kartra and GrooveFunnels, it has now been taken a step further as you can share other assets, such as email autoresponder sequences, not just the funnels.

I haven’t tested it out yet, but I recently heard that helpdesks are also shareable on both these platforms.

Video Hosting Feature

When Kartra first chased out, one of the main features that really caught my eye was that it also comes with video hosting.

Now to see the newcomer, Groove, also having video hosting is really exciting!

In my opinion, the lack of video hosting in ClickFunnels is one of its biggest let downs. It’s a great platform, but without video hosting you’re soon gonna run up extra costs on other 3rd party services.

Video hosting will be really useful for those of you with membership sites, sales pages that use a video sales letter (VSL), or any other place where you would need to host your own videos.

Having a feature like this built-in will save you at least $50 per month as you won’t need to go for a platform like Vimeo or Wistia.

The video hosting feature inside of GrooveFunnels and Kartra is also extremely advanced. For example, you can tag a lead based on how much of your video they watched, and then send them emails based on the point where they switched off. That’s pretty powerful!

Now, some people might think, “I don’t need video hosting, I can just host them on YouTube privately and then embed them into my landing pages and members areas.”

Well, yes, you can do that. However, there are two problems with this.

Firstly, if you are hosting your VSL on YouTube with the intention to use it to sell a product and then the viewer clicks on your video, they’ll be taken away from your landing page and straight to YouTube.

Secondly, if you’re hosting your videos on YouTube and then embedding them into a paid members area, you’ll have to set them to public in order for them to be viewable in your members area. But that then means that everyone else on YouTube will also be able to see your videos.

So, basically you’d need to host them privately.

And why not take advantage of the free video hosting feature inside GrooveFunnels or Kartra?

Helpdesk Feature

Both platforms also have a help desk feature that you can connect to your websites, pages, or membership sites.

They allow your customers to easily contact you, meaning you will be able to provide better customer service.

Again, it’s nice to see that both platforms have this feature, as it saves you from having to get an external tool for this.

Calendar Feature

Another feature that both of Kartra and GrooveFunnels have is the calendar feature.

This feature allows you to book appointments with your clients and manage your time better.

It’s a rather small feature compared to some of the other ones, but it could prove to be useful if you own a service-based business, especially for something like consulting.

Affiliate Management and Tracking Suite

If you want to recruit affiliates to promote your own products and services then both GrooveFunnels and Kartra offer this feature.

Recruiting affiliates to promote for you is an extremely effective way to grow your business quickly.

Both of these all-in-one business solutions offer an easy to use affiliate management tool with powerful tracking and reporting capabilities.

Using either Kartra’s affiliate management suite or Groove’s solutions known as GrooveAffiliate, you can do the following:

• Offer flexible commissions
• Review affiliate applications
• Approve affiliates
• Create custom landing pages for affiliates
• Offer payouts via PayPal
• Set payment milestones
• Tag your affiliates
• Offer layered commission tiers
• Set up your program as either transaction or subscription-based
• Provide your affiliates with promo tools

Affiliate Program

The next similarity between GrooveFunnels and Kartra is that they both have a pretty good affiliate program.

Kartra pays out 40% recurring commissions to all its affiliates, while GrooveFunnels pays 20% to free members and 40% to paid members.

The GrooveFunnels affiliate program has also gone one step further than Kartra by offering a tier-2 level commission on top of the 20 or 40% commission, depending on your membership level.

So, if you’re on the 20% commission rate for direct sign-ups, you will then also get an additional 5% commission on anyone who signs up through someone who you have signed up.

And if you’re on the 40% commission structure, then your tier-2 commission increases from 5% to 10%.

Both affiliate programs have a ton of material for affiliates to use, including:

• Banners
• Email swipes
• Ad Swipes
• etc.

If you’re an affiliate with a funnel-building audience, promoting either of these platforms could be pretty lucrative for you. Plus, you would be promoting two of the best pieces of software on the market, so you can feel good about it too.

Both of these programs are good for beginner affiliate marketers and experienced veterans alike.

GrooveFunnels vs Kartra: Differences

As you have seen above, there are quite a lot of similarities between Kartra and GrooveFunnels.

Below, we’ll be taking a look at the key differences between both of these platforms.

What GrooveFunnels Has That Kartra Doesn’t Have

Here are the main features only available in GrooveFunnels.

Once it’s fully developed, there may also be some parts of the individual features that are only available in GrooveFunnels. But, we’ll have to wait and see for that.

Webinar Feature

The first feature that is available in GrooveFunnels but not Kartra is the webinar feature.

GrooveFunnels lets you host both pre-recorded (evergreen) webinars and live webinars.

This is not available inside of Kartra, so if you’re using that platform then you’ll need to integrate with something like Everwebinar and WebinarJam.

This means, if you are looking to use webinars, it would make sense to go for GrooveFunnels.

GrooveKart

GrooveKart is the E-commerce platform by GrooveDigital. If you sign up for GrooveFunnels premium or get the lifetime deal (check here if it’s still available), you will get access to it.

It’s similar to Shopify in the sense of what it does, but the cool thing about it is that all the apps are built-in for free. With Shopify, you gotta pay extra for them.

GrooveKart also has some great educational material on things like traffic and copyrighting to help you grow your business.

Faster Page Loading Times & Better Page Builder

Mike Filsaime left the Kartra project to start GrooveFunnels with his partners. 

GrooveFunnels uses more up-to-date software on the page builder. For this reason, it’s easier and more intuitive to edit the pages.

All the landing pages and funnels built with Groove are done so by using HTML. This means that your landing pages and websites will load much faster for your visitors, which will mean there’s less chance of them getting frustrated waiting for your page to load and then leave, which is what can happen with slower page builders.

If your pages are loading quickly then you’ll also get an additional SEO benefit as Google now awards higher rankins to pages that load faster, especially for mobile.

If you’re looking to use SEO to generate organic traffic, this (and the next feature) would be a big reason for you to pick GrooveFunnels.

GrooveBlog

GrooveBlog is the blogging platform that will be quite similar to WordPress. It will also have an open-source plugin store, meaning 3rd party developers can upload their own plugins. 

The blog pages will be easy to edit and also be SEO-friendly. To have something like this inside of your funnel-builder is awesome. 

• GrooveQuiz and GrooveSurvey

Kartra also doesn’t have any features for Quizzes and Surveys.

You can build basic ones by connecting the buttons, but it’s nothing like the features designed for these purposes inside of GrooveFunnels. 

What Kartra Has That GrooveFunnels Doesn’t Have

Kartra also has some features that aren’t available in GrooveFunnels.

Although, I could also imagine that later on GrooveFunnels will eventually add all of these features, as they’re clearly looking to do one better than Kartra.

• It’s a finished Product

This first point isn’t a feature, but it’s the fact that Kartra is a finished product.

With GrooveFunnels, you’ll still be waiting on certain features. Every single feature inside of Kartra is available and fully developed. 

If you want all the features right now for whatever reason, going for Kartra may be the right option. However, you could also look for software that integrates with GrooveFunnels, if you don’t want to miss out on the future of Groove. 

• BAM – Behavioral-Adaptive-Marketing

BAM or Behavioral-Adaptive-Marketing is a feature that lets you match what your visitors and leads see, based on their behavior.

With this feature, the pages, emails, copy, and offers that you create will adapt to the behavior of your visitors and leads.

This is a killer feature that can help lift your conversions, and as of right now, it’s only available in Kartra. GrooveFunnels may add this later on, but they have not mentioned anything about it yet.

• Kartra Agency Feature

The Agency feature is only available in Kartra.

As the name suggests, this feature is extremely useful for agencies. It allows you to sell Kartra accounts and manage them as well. You get them for a 40% discount but can sell them for any price you wish.

For example, you can build an entire funnel for a client with emails, helpdesks, etc.  and charge $2,000 for the setup, plus a $500 per month retainer for managing it.

Your monthly cost would only be 40% less of what a Kartra account usually costs, and if the client stops paying you, you can revoke access.

• Better Automation sequences (As of right now) 

As of right now Kartra also has better automation sequences.

GrooveFunnels will eventually catch up with Kartra, but right now it only has the basics. That being said, you can easily integrate GrooveFunnels with an autoresponder of your choice, if you do need advanced automation sequences.

Kartra Drawbacks

Compared to GrooveFunnels, Kartra has various drawbacks. In this section, we are going to take a look and see what these limitations are.

No free plan

Firstly, it does not have a free plan.

The starting price for Kartra is $97 per month, while GrooveFunnels has a completely free plan.

Slow pages

The pages inside of Kartra are not the fastest, as it uses the older technology if you are comparing it to GrooveFunnels.

From my experience, Kartra pages can take anywhere from 3 to 7 seconds to load, depending on the size.

This could cost you conversions in some cases, and is also a problem if you’re looking to use SEO to generate organic traffic.

Fewer features

As you may have noticed throughout this article, GrooveFunnels has more features.

To give you a direct overview, here’s a quick recap of features only inside of GrooveFunnels:

• Webinars (Pre-recorded & live)
• Blogging feature
• GrooveKart (E-commerce platform)
• Survey feature
• Quiz feature

While at first glance these features may not seem like that big of an impact, they are. For all of those features, you would need entirely separate pieces of software that could easily cost you a couple of hundred bucks per month combined.

For example, GrooveKart would be comparable to Shopify. But, with all the paid apps you would need for Shopify, that would cost you at least $70-$90 per month. 

Smaller community

Despite Kartra being older, it has a smaller community.

This isn’t anything to be ashamed of, as GrooveFunnels has seen some exponential growth this year. However, fewer people using the platform also means you’ll find it a little harder to network or get “community help”.

That being said, you may be someone who prefers a smaller community.

Kartra’s Facebook group has 21,000 members compared to GrooveFunnels’ 100,000.

21,000 for an online business group is still quite big in all fairness to Kartra.

GrooveFunnels Drawbacks

GrooveFunnels doesn’t have as many drawbacks, but the main one of course being that it’s still in early stages. Other than that, there isn’t much at all that you could complain about.

Still in Early Stages

GrooveFunnels is still in very early stages.

This is the biggest drawback with the software, as it means:

• Some features are not available at all
• Some features are still being developed & improved
• There are a few bugs (although they are becoming less frequent)

Because of the list of features that this platform has, it still is a great offer, even if it would stay the way it is.

Still, this is a drawback and it’s the biggest one with this platform. Other than that, there are only minor limitations.

Features On Lower Plans

With Kartra, even on the lowest plans, you get access to all features, apart from Kartra agency.

This isn’t the case with GrooveFunnels, as you need to have the premium plan to get access to all features.

Of course, the other plans still have great value, but this could be seen as a drawback if you were looking at one of the lower plans.

In the lifetime deal, you also get access to all features, so it’s an incredible deal, but we’ll talk more about that later on.

Kartra: Pros & Cons

Kartra is a solid all-in-one platform that could help you build an online business. To give you a clear overview, I’ve laid out all the pros and cons below.

Kartra Pros:

• Fully-developed
• Powerful Automation
• All-in-one platform
• Nice templates
• BAM (Behavioral Adaptive Marketing)
• Good list of features

Kartra Cons:

• No free plan
• Older page builder
• Slow pages
• Fewer features compared to GrooveFunnels

GrooveFunnels Pros & Cons

GrooveFunnels is still in beta, but is evolving quickly and has seen some exponential growth over the past couple of months. Take a look at the recap of the pros and cons below.

GrooveFunnels Pros:

• Free plan available
• Big Community
• Extremely large list of features
• Fast pages
• Great page builder
• GrooveKart platform included
• Lifetime deal available (As of October) 
• All-in-one platform
• Nice templates

GrooveFunnels Cons:

• Still in early stages (few bugs, not finished features)
• No BAM or Agency Feature

GrooveFunnels vs Kartra: Pricing

Now that we have taken a look at what features both platforms have to offer, let’s see at what cost they both come.

Kartra Cost

Kartra has four main plans, with the lowest one starting at $99 per month.

Something that I do like about Kartra’s pricing is that you get access to all features, even on the starter plan (apart from Kartra agency.)

What I don’t like as much about Kartra’s pricing is the resources available such as the custom domains or bandwidth if you’re on the starter plan.

50gb bandwidth isn’t a lot, so if you are hosting videos, you’ll probably use that up with a couple of thousand visitors.

Overall though, I would say Kartra’s pricing plans are fair. If you were to buy all the features separately, they would cost you a lot more as well. 

GrooveFunnels: Cost

As mentioned a couple of times throughout this review, there may still be a lifetime option available. Before we jump into that though, let’s take a look at the regular plans.

In the image below, you can see the features and costs of each plan. Of course, there is a completely free plan which lets you build pages, sell your products, and also gives you access to the GrooveAffiliate platform.

If you were to add up the costs of all the tools you would need to get the features available in any of the plans below, you’ll realize what an incredible deal GrooveFunnels is offering.

GrooveFunnels Lifetime Deal

GrooveFunnels’ cost is already extremely low compared to if you were to buy separate tools for every feature.

However, there may still be an even better deal available.

As of October 2020, you can still get access to everything inside of GrooveFunnels for a one-time payment of $1397.

This deal is only available for a limited time, and a certain number of people, after which it will be discontinued.

To check whether it’s available follow the instructions below:

• Step 1: Join GrooveFunnels for free here (No credit card required) <<<<<< Insert aff link
• Step 2: In your dashboard, hit “upgrade”
• Step 3: Scroll through the page to see any available deals

If this deal is available, it’s worth considering, to say the least.

To put this into perspective, you would be paying around the cost of 4 months’ worth of GrooveFunnels premium, and then you’ve got it free forever.

GrooveFunnels premium is already an incredible deal, purchasing separate tools for all the features could easily cost you thousands of dollars per year.

GrooveFunnels vs Kartra: Which Is Best?

Throughout this GrooveFunnels vs Kartra comparison, we’ve seen a close battle.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that there’s a winner, as they both have tremendous value for marketers and business owners.

Kartra could work exceptionally well if you own some type of agency, thanks to the agency feature. Or, it could also be the right choice for you, if you’re an experienced marketer looking to utilize the BAM feature, as well as the advanced automation sequences.

GrooveFunnels on the other hand could work incredibly well for you if you are willing to wait for all the features. Once, the software is fully developed, it will have everything you need to build a business, and you probably will rarely ever need another SaaS tool again.

GrooveFunnels could also be a good option if you are starting and want to use the free plan.

Either way, both of these platforms have some powerful features for a great price. You can use the links below to check them out for yourself.

Want More GrooveFunnels Comparison Articles?

Did this GrooveFunnels vs Kartra review help you out? If so, let me know in the comments below.

If you’d like to see more GrooveFunnels comparisons, then you may want to check out my GrooveFunnels versus ClickFunnels article next.

Disclaimer: Please be aware that I may receive commissions when you click some of the links in this article and then decide to make a purchase. If you do follow one of my links and purchase a product, thanks! It means a lot to me, and any commissions I do make from this blog enables me to continue to provide you with all this awesome, free content. However, any commissions I do receive does not affect my reviews and comparisons. If I think a product is sub-standard I will either say so in the article or I will not feature it on my blog. I try my best to keep things fair and balanced, in order to help you make the best choice for you.

Sam Poyan

Sam Poyan is a writer, blogger, and social media coordinator, with a passion for online commerce. He specialises in researching and writing about digital products online. When he is not writing he enjoys watching football and going on walks with friends.