All-in-one in name.
Frankenstack in practice.
Kartra sells itself as one platform that replaces fifteen tools. Open Trustpilot and you'll find the other story: broken automations, support tickets that go unanswered for months, and customers reporting their tickets were deleted from the support portal entirely. If your business depends on the platform actually working, that's a problem.
On every Simplero plan. Kartra charges 5% on Essentials, then 0% from Starter up.
Founded 2009. Profitable. Independent. Same team, same priorities.
Real businesses doing real revenue on the platform — not just signups.
Kartra customers report waits of days to months. We answer email — the founder included.
The hidden cost nobody warns you about.
Kartra's monthly price is the easy part. The expensive part is what happens when the platform stops working — and you can't get anyone to fix it.
Kartra Starter: $89/mo
Annual rate (or $119/mo monthly after the 3-month $99 promo expires). 2,500 contacts, unlimited email, 0% transaction fees. Reasonable on paper.
Broken automations.
One Trustpilot reviewer reports ~$100,000 lost because automations didn't fire on 1,000+ leads. The plan price is irrelevant when the platform doesn't deliver.
You can't really leave.
Trustpilot reviewers report that leaving Kartra means losing your work — pages, funnels, automations, courses. Migration is a project. Lock-in is the real cost.
Simplero: $59–$249/mo. Working automations. Real support response. Founder still answers email. Same all-in-one scope, without the lock-in or the lost revenue stories.
What Kartra customers actually report.
Three patterns repeat across years of Trustpilot reviews. None of them are about the price.
1 · Automations don't fire.
Reviewers report sending 1,000+ leads through automation sequences and seeing zero engagement on the back end. The platform looks fine; the work just isn't happening.
Trustpilot · Kartra reviews
2 · Support takes weeks.
Tickets unresolved for four-plus months. Live chat “never activated.” One reviewer reports their tickets were deleted from the support portal entirely, erasing the record of complaints.
Trustpilot · Kartra reviews
3 · Migration nightmare.
Long-time users report that leaving means losing months of work. “You are bound to the platform.” Lock-in is structural — and the cost shows up only when you try to walk away.
Trustpilot · Kartra reviews
In their own words.
Six verbatim reviews, all from Kartra's own Trustpilot page. We didn't write these. Their customers did.
“Automations do NOT work. I can have 1000 leads go through an automation with reasonable open rates and zero engagement... I've wasted 100s of hours and easily lost close to $100,000 in revenue. Thanks, Kartra.”
“Support can take up to a week to answer even simple questions... For $500/m, I want immediate support. With serious issues, you are left sitting as your business suffocates.”
“THEN, SHOCKINGLY, THEY DELETED ALL OF MY SUPPORT TICKETS IN THE SUPPORT PORTAL, ERASING ANY EVIDENCE OF MY COMPLAINTS AND THEIR RESPONSES.”
“After six years of using Kartra, I strongly advise against it. The technical support is extremely poor — responses take far too long, and the live chat can leave you waiting for days without ever being activated... I currently have unresolved issues that have been pending for over four months.”
“Initially I thought Kartra was promising at first to help grow my brand, but discovered quickly that you are bound to the platform and very costly in the long run. What happens after investing months of work building and using Kartra's features if you were to ever leave? The answer. You lose all your work and investments.”
“The user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are inconsistent, and it's very glitchy... DUMB DUMB DUMB!!!”
Side by side. Whole platform vs whole platform.
Numbers verified live from kartra.com/plans-and-pricing and simplero.com/pricing. No straw-manning, no fake X marks where Kartra is genuinely fine.
| Kartra Essentials | Kartra Starter | Kartra Growth | Simplero Scale | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $59/mo | $119/mo (post-promo) | $229/mo | $179/mo |
| Annual price | $52/mo · $624/yr | $89/mo · $1,068/yr | $189/mo · $2,268/yr | $149/mo · $1,788/yr |
| Contact tier | 500 contacts | 2,500 contacts | 12,500 contacts | 1,000 contacts (Skyrocket: 5,000) |
| Transaction fees | 5% on sales | 0% | 0% | 0% on every plan |
| Automations that actually fire | — (no automations) | — (no automations) | Reported broken by reviewers | Working automations · 17 yrs of refinement |
| Support response time | Reported: days to weeks. Live chat “never activated.” Tickets reported deleted. | Same-day email · founder still answers | ||
| Migration / data export | Reviewers report “you lose all your work” when leaving | Full export · we want you to be able to leave | ||
| Native LMS / courses | 1 course | Unlimited (basic) | Unlimited (basic) | Full LMS · drip, quizzes, certificates |
| Native community | — | — | — | ✓ Native · spaces, threads, members |
| Native email | 10K emails/mo | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited · with deliverability we own |
| CRM with tags + segments | Basic | Basic | Advanced | ✓ Full CRM, pipelines, deals |
| Affiliate program | — | — | ✓ | ✓ On every plan |
| Founder access | Helpdesk only · reviewers report tickets deleted | Calvin still answers email | ||
| Years in business | Founded 2014 · owned by Genesis Digital | Founded 2009 · 17 yrs | ||
| Funding model | Owned by Genesis Digital (parent company) | Bootstrapped · profitable · independent | ||
The difference that doesn't fit in a feature matrix.
Working systems beat marketing systems.
Kartra has every feature on the box. The Trustpilot reviews say the features don't always fire. Automations that actually run are worth more than feature lists. We've spent 17 years getting that part right.
0% transaction fees — on every plan.
Kartra Essentials charges 5% on your sales; you have to upgrade to Starter ($89–$119/mo) to escape that. Simplero is 0% from the cheapest plan up. Your processor still takes its standard cut. We don't.
Founder access. Not a chat-bot gate.
Kartra customers report tickets unanswered for months and, in one case, deleted from the support portal entirely. Calvin still answers email at Simplero. Reply to any of ours and you'll find that out.
Founded 2009 · Bootstrapped · 17 years · Proud of it.
What Simplero customers actually say.
“I did an in-depth analysis of several all-in-one course platforms. Kajabi, Podia, Zenler, Kartra... and Simplero won the analysis.”
“I've tried many of the big CRMs — Kajabi, GoHighLevel, Kartra — and Simplero goes above and beyond… it grows with your business.”
“I see so many of my peers switching platforms every couple years… staggering VA fees to get it all set up (only to ditch it later). With Simplero, it's all right there.”
“I made the switch to Simplero… consolidated everything into one system… saving me significant money and countless headaches.”
Simplero pricing.
500 contacts. Email, courses, community, CRM, automations, affiliates — all of it. 0% transaction fees.
Choose Starter1,000 contacts. Same full platform — for businesses with a real list, real launches, real funnels.
Choose Scale5,000 contacts. For established creators and coaches scaling past six figures. Overage above 10K: $15/mo per 2,500.
Choose SkyrocketAll plans include email delivery, video hosting, and zero transaction fees.
Working systems. Real support.
The marketing pages all promise the same things. The reviews tell you which ones deliver. Try Simplero for 14 days, talk to humans, see if your automations actually fire.
Founded 2009 · Bootstrapped · Proud of it.
