Which community and membership stack is best for you? I break them all down and show you what their sales pages won't say out loud!
An all-in-one marketing suite whose "community" is a membership site with comments under each post. Essentials is $59 a month for 500 contacts and takes 5% of sales; Starter at $119 drops the fee to 0% and unlocks unlimited memberships, courses and webinars. Five payment processors, strong email and automation, CSV export. The CSV import goes through a human review with a questionnaire.
Kartra is a marketing suite: pages, funnels, email and SMS, automations, checkouts, affiliates, calendars, surveys, help desks, webinars, and memberships. It's been around since 2018, claims 250,000+ customers, and it's on this site because its Membership Sites feature is marketed with the line "Give customers a community."
Here's what that community is: a membership area with a category-and-post structure, like a course or a blog, where you can switch on comments under each post and choose whether to moderate them. There's no feed, no groups, no channels, no direct messages, no member directory. The help centre's own description is "similar to a blog." If you want a Skool-style community, Kartra isn't one. If you want a course-and-content membership with comments, driven by the best automation engine in this category, keep reading.
Four plans, 14-day free trial, 30-day money-back guarantee. Annual billing saves up to 22%.
Watch the Essentials fine print: one membership or course, one product, five pages, and a 5% cut. It's a trial plan with a price tag. The real entry point for anything on this site is Starter at $119.
A contradiction worth knowing: the help centre's payment-processor article says "Kartra doesn't add any transaction fees." The pricing page says Essentials charges 5%. The pricing page is newer (Essentials is labelled "New") and is the one that bills you.
5% on Essentials, 0% on Starter and above. Recorded as 5% because the field measures the cheapest paid plan. Rated 5%.
Your own accounts with Stripe (including Apple Pay, Google Pay and Klarna on the new checkouts), PayPal Business (with limits on some recurring schedules and coupons), Braintree, Square and Authorize.Net. Rated "Built in, multiple processors."
The membership builder gives you categories and subcategories, posts inside them, access levels (so one membership can hold several tiers), drip schedules on fixed or relative dates, progress and completion indicators, a custom login page, and a "portal" that acts as a catalogue of memberships.
Comments are enabled per post, not per access level, and you choose auto-approve or hold for admin review. A global Memberships → Comments dashboard shows pending comments across every membership. That's the extent of member-to-member interaction. Rated "Categories only" for spaces.
Gamification: none. Quizzes can issue completion certificates, which is the closest thing. Rated "None."
Events: Kartra has native webinars (live, scheduled, and "always on" evergreen) on Starter and above, with replays, analytics and a request-to-speak feature, plus appointment calendars synced to Google. Rated "Yes" on the strength of the webinars, noting they're a sales tool more than a member event.
Yes, through memberships: modules as categories, lessons as posts, drip, progress tracking, quizzes with scoring and automations off the score, and certificates. One membership on Essentials, unlimited from Starter. Rated "Yes."
Does it send members a digest? No. Members get an automatic email when a scheduled post unlocks (if you turn on "Membership: new post unlocked"), and you can broadcast a link manually. No summary of activity or comments. Rated "Basic notifications."
Can you email your members from inside it? Yes, and this is the strongest part of the product. Broadcast emails and SMS, sequences, basic automations on every plan and advanced IF/AND/THEN automations with expiring tags on Growth and above. Unlimited sends from Starter; 10,000 a month on Essentials. Rated "Sequences and automation."
Can you get your list out? Yes. Contacts → All contacts → select (or filter and select all) → download icon → Export to CSV. The file includes all profile and custom fields, lists, tags and GDPR acceptance statuses. Kartra is the email tool, so there's no separate sync; rated "Native ESP integration" on the same basis as Systeme, GoHighLevel, Simplero and ClickFunnels.
Members in: there's a CSV importer, and then there's a gate. Contacts → Imports → upload a CSV (under 20,000 contacts, under 55 columns), map fields, assign tags, lists and sequences. Then you fill in a questionnaire: where the contacts came from, which URLs collected them, a working email on that domain, when you last emailed them, and whether they're GDPR/CCPA compliant. Kartra staff review the import "in two business days or less," strip undeliverable addresses and spam traps, and can deny it. The help centre tells you to run the list through a verification service first. Rated "Yes," because the upload is self-serve, with the review as the known limitation.
Members out: the contacts CSV. Membership comments: no export we could find. Rated "Members CSV only."
Courses in: rebuild in the membership builder. The migration article is about contacts and subscriptions, not content. Rated "Manual rebuild only."
None. Memberships are web pages under your domain. Rated "None."
Kartra runs an affiliate program (kartra.com has a "Become an Affiliate" page). Terms to be confirmed; link to be added.
The "community" is a membership site with per-post comments; no feed, groups, DMs, directory or gamification. Essentials charges a 5% transaction fee and allows one membership, one product and five pages. CSV imports are reviewed by Kartra staff (up to two business days) after a questionnaire about where the list came from. No mobile app, no digest.
Checked 26 Oct 2026 against the Kartra Plans and Pricing page and these help centre articles: Intro to Memberships; Membership comments; Notify members of new content; Exporting contacts; Importing contacts in bulk; Contact import approval; What is a payment processor and why do I need one?
The free plan that's actually free: 2,000 contacts, unlimited emails, one course, a community, 0% fees on your own Stripe or PayPal. The funnels and email are the point. The course builder and the community are the compromise. We use it, so this one's first person.
An agency CRM with a Skool clone inside it, down to the exact points table. $97/mo, 0% platform fee on your own Stripe, unlimited contacts, groups and channels, levels that unlock courses, a Skool importer, and a white-label app for $497/mo on top. Built for agencies, not creators.
A 2009-vintage all-in-one for coaches: courses, email, CRM, funnels, payments and a community with forums, groups, badges and a points leaderboard. 0% transaction fees on every plan, your own Stripe or PayPal, and the cheapest plan is $70 a month for 500 contacts. No free plan, 14-day trial with everything unlocked.