Kartra vs Thinkific for Coaches: 2026 Pricing and Features

Kartra vs Thinkific comes down to what you sell first. Kartra is a marketing suite: pages, funnels, email, SMS, memberships and calendars under one login, priced by how many contacts you have. Thinkific is a course platform: unlimited courses, communities, live cohorts and certificates, priced by admins, communities and video bandwidth. If your coaching business runs on launches and email, Kartra fits better. If it runs on a course you sell to many students, Thinkific fits better. If it runs on clients you coach week by week, neither was built for that, and a third option is worth a look.

We make Coachful, a coaching platform, so we have a stake in this comparison. We have kept the Kartra and Thinkific sections factual, drawn from what each vendor lists on its pricing pages in October 2026 and what public reviewers report. We have not run either tool for a client practice ourselves, and we say so where it matters.

What is the short answer by use case?

Pick Kartra if you grow through funnels and email; pick Thinkific if you grow through courses and student communities. Here is the quick version by the kind of coach you are.

• You sell a signature course to hundreds of students: Thinkific. Unlimited courses on every plan, quizzes, certificates, live cohorts with Zoom and up to 10,000 current students on Start.
• You run launches, webinars and email sequences: Kartra. Funnels, email and SMS, checkouts and automation are the core of the product.
• You book 1:1 sessions every week: Kartra has calendars from its Starter plan. Thinkific lists coaching products but relies on external booking links for 1:1 scheduling, according to our earlier profile.
• Your clients need daily tasks, habits and check-ins between sessions: neither. Both vendors document no client habits, daily check-ins or per-client coaching plans.
• You want everything, including client delivery, in one login: look at the third option further down.

How do Kartra and Thinkific compare side by side?

Kartra is broader on marketing; Thinkific is deeper on courses. Neither manages coaching clients between sessions. We rank on the things a working coach pays for every month: one login for the whole client journey, delivery between sessions, total stack cost, and how much setup you have to do yourself (Coachful includes a free white-glove build).

The gap that matters most for coaches is the last two columns. Both tools are good at getting someone to buy. What happens after the purchase, in weeks two through twelve of a coaching engagement, is where coaches end up adding other tools.

How much do Kartra and Thinkific cost?

Kartra starts lower, at $59 a month, but its entry plan caps you at 500 contacts and charges a 5% transaction fee. Thinkific starts at $109 a month with no Thinkific transaction fee when you use Thinkific Payments. Both list these prices in October 2026.

A few pricing details change the real cost more than the headline numbers do.

• Kartra's contact cap upgrades you automatically. Kartra's pricing page says that if you exceed your lead limit, you are moved to the next plan with a mid-cycle reconciliation fee, and there are no add-ons to buy extra capacity. A coach with 600 email subscribers on Essentials would land on Starter.
• Kartra's 5% fee on Essentials adds up. As an example, $3,000 a month in sales on Essentials means $150 a month to Kartra on top of processor fees. At that point Starter, with 0%, costs less overall.
• Thinkific's gateway fee. Thinkific charges no transaction fee with Thinkific Payments, which it describes as "in line with other processors at 2.9%". If you connect your own Stripe or PayPal instead, Thinkific adds a per-plan gateway fee that its pricing page does not list.
• Thinkific's branded mobile app costs $199 a month extra unless you are on a Plus contract that includes it.
• Thinkific raised prices on August 13, 2026. Start went from $99 to $109 and Grow from $199 to $219. The cheaper Basic plan is no longer shown publicly.
• Trials: Thinkific offers a 30-day free trial on every self-serve plan. Kartra offers a 14-day free trial plus a 30-day money-back guarantee. Neither page states whether a card is required.

Thinkific's pricing page showed euros when we captured it (Start at 107 euros monthly). The USD figures above come from Thinkific's own information page, confirmed October 2026. For more detail on each, see our Kartra pricing breakdown and Thinkific pricing breakdown.

What does a full coaching stack cost on each?

For a coach running 1:1 clients plus a course, the plan price is only part of the bill, because neither tool covers the whole client journey. Here is an illustrative example for a coach with 15 active clients, around 1,500 email subscribers and one self-paced course.

We have not priced the extra tools because they vary so much. The point is the count: on Kartra you add two or three things, on Thinkific three or four, and each one is another login for you and for your clients.

How do the features compare, section by section?

Kartra wins on marketing tools and Thinkific wins on course tools. Below is what each vendor documents, area by area.

Funnels, pages and websites

Kartra is built around funnels. Every plan includes a funnel mapper, forms, checkouts, analytics and 100 pre-built campaigns. Growth adds funnel simulation and Professional adds real-time funnel analytics. Essentials limits you to 5 pages and 1 domain; Starter removes the page limit. Our earlier profile notes that Kartra funnels and pages export only as Kartra elements, so they do not move to other platforms.

Thinkific gives you a custom domain and course landing pages on Start, with bundles, upsells and payment plans for selling. It is not a funnel builder in the Kartra sense. If you run webinar funnels or multi-step launches, you would usually pair Thinkific with something else.

Courses and memberships

Thinkific is the stronger course tool. Every plan includes unlimited courses, digital downloads, quizzes, certificates, memberships and live cohorts with Zoom. Grow adds exams and question banks. Plus adds SCORM, learning paths and an AI teaching assistant. Start allows up to 10,000 current students.

Kartra includes memberships, which is how it delivers courses. Essentials allows one membership or course and one product; Starter makes both unlimited and adds video hosting. Our earlier profile notes that Kartra memberships must be rebuilt if you leave.

Email, SMS and automation

Kartra is the clear winner here. Essentials includes 10,000 emails a month; Starter and above include unlimited email and SMS. Growth adds automations, affiliates and surveys and quizzes. Thinkific's plan list does not feature email marketing tools, so plan on a separate email tool if sequences matter to you. Grow adds an API and webhooks for that kind of connection.

Booking and calendars

Kartra includes calendars from Starter. Thinkific sells coaching and webinar products, but our earlier profile found that 1:1 scheduling relies on external booking links rather than a built-in calendar. If weekly sessions are most of your revenue, this matters.

Communities and live events

Thinkific includes communities on every plan: one community with 10 spaces and 5 live community events on Start, three communities on Grow and ten on Expand. Group size caps at 50 on Start and 100 on Grow. Kartra's plan list does not name a community feed; it offers membership areas, and Growth adds a helpdesk, Professional adds helpdesk live chat.

AI features

Kartra lists Kartra AI with a monthly allowance of uses: 30 on Essentials, 100 on Starter and 250 on Growth (its plan table also shows 200 in one place). Thinkific's AI teaching assistant is on the custom-priced Plus plan.

Teams and admins

Kartra allows 5 team members on Starter and 10 on Growth. Thinkific allows 2 admins on Start, 6 on Grow and 15 on Expand. Both suit a solo coach or a small team; Thinkific's Plus plan adds custom roles, SSO and HubSpot or Salesforce connections for larger organizations.

Data export

According to our earlier profiles, Kartra exports contacts to CSV with fields, lists and tags, and Thinkific exports students and email lists to CSV, with course content downloaded manually. In both cases, plan on rebuilding courses and pages if you move. Our guide to migrating from Thinkific walks through the steps.

What is the client experience like on each?

On Kartra, clients mostly see your pages, emails and membership area in a browser. On Thinkific, they see a course player and community, with a branded app if you pay for it. Neither gives the client a place to log habits, answer check-ins or see a plan built for them.

This is where coaches feel the difference. A course student watches lessons at their own pace. A coaching client is working on something specific: a goal, a routine, a decision. Between calls, they need to know what to do today and their coach needs to see whether they did it. Kartra and Thinkific both document no client habits, daily check-ins or per-client coaching plans, so that layer usually lives in a spreadsheet, a messaging app or a separate tool.

A few other client-side details:

• Mobile: our earlier profile found no Kartra mobile app for students or admins. Thinkific's branded app is $199 a month as an add-on.
• Logins: a Thinkific coach using an outside booking tool gives clients at least two places to go. A Kartra coach using an outside habit tool does the same.
• Public reviews: on Trustpilot in October 2026, Kartra scores 3.2 from 129 reviews and Thinkific scores 1.8 from 868 reviews. Read a sample of the reviews themselves rather than relying on the score alone. Our Kartra review and Thinkific review summarize what reviewers report.

Which should you pick for which kind of coach?

Match the tool to where your revenue comes from. Here is how we would decide.

• Course-first coach with a large student base and a small amount of live coaching: Thinkific. Its course tools, certificates and student cap are its strengths.
• Launch-driven coach who sells through webinars, email sequences and sales pages: Kartra Starter or Growth. Skip Essentials if you have more than 500 contacts or meaningful sales, because of the cap and the 5% fee.
• 1:1 or small-group coach with weekly sessions and clients working on habits and goals: neither is a natural fit. Kartra gets you closer because of its calendars, but you still need a client delivery tool.
• Coach with a team and corporate clients: Thinkific Grow or Plus for B2B sales and invoicing, or Kartra Growth for team members and helpdesk.
• Coach who wants one bill: read the next section.

Comparing other pairs too? See Kajabi vs Kartra, Kajabi vs Thinkific and the full list of Kartra alternatives and Thinkific alternatives for coaches.

Is there a third option that beats both for coaches?

For coaches who deliver programs to clients, yes: Coachful. It combines the booking Kartra offers, the courses and community Thinkific offers, and the client delivery layer neither has, in one subscription with one login for you and one branded app for your clients.

What Coachful is and who it is for

Coachful is a coaching platform from a company based in Tallinn, Estonia. One subscription covers booking, payments, contracts, program delivery with habits and check-ins, courses, a community, a website with funnels and email, and an AI assistant. It is built for coaches who deliver programs, not just sessions; for solo coaches growing into a small team; and for coaches replacing four to six tools. On Trustpilot it scores 4.5 from 21 reviews.

This short walkthrough shows how a multi-week program is built and delivered:

Where Coachful beats both

• Between-session delivery. Multi-week programs with weekly goals, daily tasks, habits, morning and evening check-ins, goals with progress bars and streaks. This is the layer Kartra and Thinkific both lack.
• Booking that Thinkific lacks. Booking pages with availability rules, buffers, minimum notice and time-zone detection; two-way Google, Apple/iCloud and Outlook sync; built-in video or auto-created Zoom, Meet and Teams links; email reminders, plus SMS and WhatsApp reminders once messaging is enabled; paid sessions, session credits and intake questions.
• Courses and community in the same place. Courses with modules, lessons, drip and completion tracking; a community feed, group chat, direct messages and video events; cohort groups created automatically when someone enrolls in a program.
• Marketing that covers what most coaches use from Kartra. A section-based website builder with blog and custom domain, 30 designed homepage templates, booking, application, lead-magnet and checkout funnels with pixels and UTM tracking, and email lists, broadcasts and multi-step sequences with triggers, delays, branching and A/B splits.
• No platform fee on sales. Payments run through your own Stripe Connect or Razorpay account, with one-time payments, subscriptions, payment plans, order bumps, coupons, Apple Pay and Google Pay. Coachful takes 0% (since August 2026); you pay only processing.
• Contracts and client records. Coaching agreements with e-signature, sent before the first call. Each client record holds goals, check-ins, habits, notes, intake answers, payments and sessions, with a status of thriving, active, quiet or at risk.
• Michelle, the AI assistant, works from your live practice data: it builds programs, drafts emails, summarizes recorded sessions and briefs you before each call. Questions and planning are included in your Coachful membership; confirmed builds use AI credits.
• ICF credential tracking counts coaching hours and distinct clients against ACC, PCC and MCC thresholds and exports a client coaching log.

Where Kartra or Thinkific still beats Coachful

Coachful is not the right pick for everyone. Be honest with yourself about these.

• Pick Thinkific over Coachful if you sell courses at scale to thousands of students, need SCORM, certificates and exam banks, or sell training to companies through B2B invoicing. Coachful is not a course marketplace and is built around coaching clients rather than large student cohorts.
• Pick Kartra over Coachful if your business is mostly email and SMS marketing to a large list, you need a helpdesk with live chat, or you rely on a fully featured affiliate program. Coachful's affiliate tracking records links, clicks, conversions and revenue, but payouts are recorded manually rather than sent for you.
• You need PayPal. Coachful does not support PayPal. Both Kartra and Thinkific connect to it.
• You need your own App Store listing. Coachful's client app carries your branding inside the Coachful app, not under your own developer account.
• You run a large sales team with a multi-stage deal board or need HubSpot or Salesforce. Coachful has neither; Thinkific Plus connects to both.
• You handle clinical records. Coachful is not HIPAA-certified and does not sign a BAA.

How much Coachful costs

Coachful uses flat monthly plans. Lower plans cap the number of clients, Pro is unlimited, and team plans add coach seats with per-coach availability and staff permissions. Monthly plans cancel in one click, and there is a free trial. Current plans: Lite: $29/month for up to 5 clients; Solo: $49/month for up to 20 clients; Pro: $99/month with unlimited clients; Studio: $199/month with unlimited clients.

Why Coachful stands out: a free white-glove service. Moving off Kartra or Thinkific is usually the hard part, so Coachful builds it for you. From Create > We'll build it for you, you describe what you want: a website, funnel, sales page, program, course outline and written material, email sequence, form or link in bio. You can attach up to 8 reference links and up to 10 files such as logos, brand guides and copy. The Coachful team builds it inside your own account, usually within about 24 hours, and nothing is invented: no fake credentials, testimonials or prices. One coach leaving Kajabi had their homepage and About page rebuilt with the contact form connected; a business mentor for beauty professionals got a 12-week mentorship sales page, a free start-up-guide funnel and rewritten follow-up emails. It does not include recording videos, logo design, ad management or ongoing marketing. Your clients, programs and content are imported for you during onboarding. Read more about the free white-glove service.

How to start

1. Start a free trial and connect your Stripe or Razorpay account.
2. Request the white-glove build for your website, first funnel or program.
3. Export your contacts from Kartra or your students from Thinkific to CSV and have them imported during onboarding.
4. Set up your booking page and calendar sync, then send your first coaching agreement.

If Thinkific is the tool you are leaving, our Thinkific alternative page lays out the switch, and running coaching programs without Kartra covers the client journey side.

What should you check before you switch either way?

Check your contact count, your monthly sales and how your clients book, because those three numbers decide the real price.

• Count your contacts. Kartra prices by contacts and upgrades you automatically past the limit. Thinkific prices by admins, communities and bandwidth.
• Estimate fees. Multiply your monthly sales by 5% if you are considering Kartra Essentials. On Thinkific, ask what the gateway fee is if you plan to use your own Stripe or PayPal.
• Map the client journey. Write down every step from first booking to the last session and mark which tool handles each step. Every gap is another subscription.
• Plan the exit. Funnels, pages and memberships on Kartra and courses on Thinkific need rebuilding if you leave later. Keep your source files.
• Use the trial with a real client flow. Thinkific gives you 30 days and Kartra 14. Build one real offer end to end before you commit.

For a wider view, our comparison hub and the coaching software overview put more tools side by side, and the scheduling and online course pages show how Coachful handles each area.

Kartra vs Thinkific: frequently asked questions

Is Kartra or Thinkific cheaper for a new coach?

Kartra Essentials is cheaper at $59 a month versus $109 for Thinkific Start, as listed in October 2026. But Essentials caps you at 500 contacts, one product and one membership, and takes a 5% transaction fee. Once you pass 500 contacts, Kartra moves you to Starter at $119 automatically.

Does Thinkific have built-in scheduling for coaching calls?

Thinkific lists coaching and webinar products and live cohorts with Zoom. Our earlier profile found that 1:1 scheduling relies on external booking links rather than a built-in calendar, so most coaches pair it with a separate booking tool.

Does Kartra charge transaction fees?

Only on Essentials, which takes 5%. Starter and Growth charge 0%. Kartra's page does not state the fee for Professional; our earlier profile listed 0%. Payment processor fees apply on every plan.

Can I track client habits or check-ins in Kartra or Thinkific?

No. Neither vendor documents client habits, daily check-ins or per-client coaching plans. Coaches who need that layer usually add a separate tool or use a coaching platform that includes it.

Does either have a mobile app for clients?

Thinkific offers a branded mobile app as a $199 monthly add-on, included on select Plus plans. Our earlier profile found no Kartra mobile app for students or admins.

Which has better public reviews?

On Trustpilot in October 2026, Kartra scores 3.2 from 129 reviews and Thinkific 1.8 from 868 reviews. A score says little about whether a tool fits a coaching practice, so read a sample of recent reviews before deciding.

Can I move my courses from Thinkific or Kartra to another platform?

You can export contacts or students to CSV from both. According to our earlier profiles, Thinkific course content is downloaded manually and Kartra memberships and funnels have to be rebuilt elsewhere. Coachful imports clients, programs and content for you during onboarding.

What is Coachful's free white-glove service?

It is a done-for-you build included on every Coachful plan. You describe a website, funnel, program, course outline, email sequence or similar, attach references and files, and the Coachful team builds it inside your account, usually within about 24 hours. It does not include video recording, logo design or ad management.

Is Coachful a good fit if I mainly sell one big course?

Probably not. Coachful includes courses, but it is built for coaches who deliver programs and sessions to clients. If your business is a course sold to thousands of students with certificates and SCORM, Thinkific is the better match.

Does Coachful support PayPal like Kartra and Thinkific?

No. Coachful takes payments through your own Stripe Connect or Razorpay account, including Apple Pay and Google Pay. If PayPal is essential for your clients, that is a reason to stay with Kartra or Thinkific.