Kartra and Clickfunnels are both designed for setting up online sales and marketing systems. 

Clickfunnels was developed by Russell Brunson with the idea that the online marketing system should mimic a sales funnel. A traditional sales funnel implies that you take a large number of Leads and expose them to information and marketing messages. A percentage of those leads will take the next step down the funnel and either buy something cheap or consume some of your content and become better qualified as leads. Then a percentage of those qualified leads then buy something inexpensive and are offered other, more expensive products as an "upsell". A smaller percentage take the upsell offer. Graphically represented, your number of leads is reduced at every subsequent step, so the object they look like might be a funnel.

This is also a highly tested framework for selling things online. Since the lead "journey" is single-file, they are only asked to make one decision at a time. This is the most effective way to expose a lead to a product line. Showing them everything at once is confusing, and a confused mind doesn't buy.

I myself have developed three different website construction and marketing SaaS platforms. In fact, they all predated both ClickFunnels and Kartra. So some of my developments may have influenced their development. This also gives me a unique insight into how well created these platforms are. I've also used both platforms since their beginnings.

I am going to be brutally honest about both platforms.

Clickfunnels can whip out an online sales funnel really quickly. If you're wanting to get up and selling as fast as possible, it's a great choice. You can start with a tested, tried and true funnel template and just customize it with your branding, products and information. 

Kartra is similarly speedy to implement. The difference here being that Kartra uses "campaigns" instead of funnel templates. There are many "done for you" campaigns available at no extra charge right in the campaigns area. 

Both Clickfunnels and Kartra also make available "premium" templates or campaigns that were created by successful users of the software. You can purchase them in their respective marketplaces.

Clickfunnels has a lot of additional features and modules, besides the funnel builder. It has an affiliate module and an email follow-up system. So you can do most of your marketing all in one place. The only drawback is that to use these things, you need to upgrade your Clickfunnels account and pay more. 

Kartra also has many other sections and features. It includes an affiliate module, email and SMS follow-up sequences, a help desk for your customers, a membership site system, video hosting, a calendar booking system, and a surveys and quizzes module. The difference here being that all these are included with every account. You only have to pay more as you grow and need to host more leads.

If you have an employee to run your marketing automation with you, I highly recommend Kartra. You can restrict their access to certain areas of the application, and easily learn to manage things right along with them. 

An important consideration when choosing a marketing platform is how you intend to run your business. If you are a solopreneur and plan to do everything yourself, then ease of use and logical function will be high on your list of priorities. If you have employees, and plan to have them take on these tasks, you can handle more complexity and specialization. 

In my assessment of Keap, one real danger of choosing that platform is the incredible complexity and the resulting education that is necessary for the operator. A very real danger when using that platform and having an employee run it is the possibility of that employee being poached by another company. Keap experts are incredibly expensive and difficult to find. This is not nearly as much of a danger with Clickfunnels and Kartra. 

Yes, there are top experts available for both Clickfunnels and Kartra. But they don't command near the fees or salary. "FunnelHackers" are available in great numbers and at fairly reasonable prices. Kartra experts are available in the "Experts for Hire" marketplace right in the Kartra interface, and are quite reasonable.

Both of these applications have page builders that are fairly cumbersome, when it comes to code. What that means to you is that the pages load slowly. This is not good for SEO. This shortcoming can be overcome by being careful with the size of the graphics you use on the page and the overall length of pages. 

The one big "leg up" Kartra has over Clickfunnels with the page builder is that you can download the full HTML of a page and upload it to your own hosting server, so you aren't tied to the platform forever. It also allows you some unique site configurations as a result. 

Both applications allow you to point a domain name to your account and assign pages to appear on that domain. They use a CNAME redirect at the registrar to accomplish this, so you can still use an outside email provider on the domain used.

Both Kartra and Clickfunnels are single-item shopping carts. This means that you cannot have a multi-item ecommerce experience. You can't shop through the site, adding items to your cart, and then checkout all with one transaction. Each item is a separate transaction.

Again, making one choice at a time is the most effective marketing strategy, so the lack of a multi-item shopping system isn't as big of a hindrance as you might think. But if you sell a large variety of different phsically shipped products, another choice such as Shopify or DragNDropWebsites would be better.

When it comes to weaknesses, there is one big difference between Kartra and Clickfunnels. That is the stability of the system and integrity of code. In the four years that Kartra has been in operation, I have only witnessed two service outages of a few hours or less. That is well above 99.99% uptime. In that same time, Clickfunnels experienced far, far more. I've also personally encountered many bugs in Clickfunnels; some with the consequence of having to completely rebuild a page. A bug in the code of Kartra is so rare that I have difficulty believing someone when they tell me they found one.

Overall, I very much prefer Kartra.

When you are getting started, it will be much more affordable.

It also includes a lot more features that are highly integrated together. It really is a one-stop shop. The only outside services you may need are a domain registrar to register a domain name, and if you run webinars, a webinar software. But most of my clients have been happy just to run a "MasterClass" in Kartra. This is a video presentation on a page that is behind a registration optin. 

But don't just take my word for it. You can sign up for a $1 trial of Kartra and experience it yourself at this link: Kartra. When you get to the "plans" page, move your mouse to the back button in your browser to activate the exit popup so you are offered a 30 day trial rather than 14 days. You're welcome. 

If you do choose Kartra, make sure to join the KartraGuru membership. It's free for a limited time, and includes support webinars and instructional videos.