AccessAlly vs. Kartra: a comparison

Our users tell us AccessAlly allows them to earn more from their online courses and membership sites. We think you’ll love AccessAlly’s powerful features, along with its sophisticated interface and built-in LMS plugin.

If you’re curious to see how AccessAlly really stacks up to Kartra, read on! We’re comparing membership management features, LMS functionality, course design flexibility, integrations, and e-commerce functionality.

We will not be focusing on Kartra’s CRM and marketing automation features outside of those specific to their membership functionality.

Kartra and AccessAlly have different software philosophies. AccessAlly chooses to do “fewer things, better,” whereas Kartra has the admirable goal of handling your entire digital business.

Simply put, Kartra tries to do too much: build and publish your website pages, process payments, host memberships, build your sales and marketing automation pipelines, send marketing emails, and design landing pages. AccessAlly focuses on just 3 core things: helping you sell, teach, and engage your students.

And AccessAlly does it well because it offers deep integration with a number of popular marketing automation platforms. Because AccessAlly is a WordPress plugin, you can add any other pieces you might need for landing page design to your WordPress setup.

If you’re a current Kartra user, but want to use AccessAlly for your memberships, click here to find out more about our potential Kartra integration.

While AccessAlly started off as an “access management” tool for online courses, it quickly developed into a full-fledged learning management system and membership plugin for WordPress.

To help you create community amongst your members, you can create beautiful, searchable member directories. Members can opt-in or out of your member directory, and even purchase a premium listing if you want to offer this as an additional revenue stream..

You decide what you want to include in your member directory – like a biography, or even points earned, and course progress. Kartra doesn’t have a member directory option.

Plus, with AccessAlly’s profile editing functionality, a member can update their name, email, address, and password… or any other custom field inside of your marketing automation platform.

This type of functionality isn’t part of the Kartra platform, and it also lacks other community-building features such as forums.

Great software development and tech companies provide their users with a smooth onboarding experience and a strong customer support system to help ensure the success of their users with their products.

Kartra used to get low marks for customer support, but they have increased their options in recent years. Fortunately, the interface is rather intuitive, so you shouldn’t encounter too many roadblocks with your setup.

In comparison, here at AccessAlly, a real person will respond to all e-mail inquiries within 24 hours Monday-Thursday, and in most instances, you will receive a response the same day within the hour.

We have a dedicated knowledge base jam-packed with step-by-step tutorials, setup guides, and troubleshooting articles to help guide you in your setup process.

We also provide a complimentary jumpstart call to all new users. You can use it right away to kickstart your course build when you hit a roadblock, or right before you launch — we’ll review your setup and answer any lingering questions.

To take things one step further so you feel fully supported, we offer group Tune-Up calls scheduled throughout each month, so you can join us live to ask questions and receive live support from our team.

No question goes unanswered here at AccessAlly.

Kartra isn’t a true learning management system. You won’t be able to leverage features such assignments or homework, and certificates of completion to improve engagement and increase retention. They’ve recently added quizzes, but only at the Growth and Professional levels, and the quizzes are relatively basic. 

While you can issue a badge upon completion, there’s not much available in terms of learning reinforcements otherwise.

In comparison, AccessAlly features three quiz types — personality quizzes with multiple outcomes, scored quizzes, and pass/fail quizzes.

AccessAlly can also automatically apply a tag to a user who has completed your quizzes.

You can release new course content after the student has received a passing grade on a test or tag people based on their personality “type” to create personalized follow-up automations.

AccessAlly’s certificate builder has a drag-and-drop editor. Simply upload a certificate template (four versions are provided for free when you purchase the plugin or create your own!), and use the settings within our interface to determine the size and appearance of the fields you’d like to appear on the certificate.

AccessAlly takes student retention one step further with its private notes feature. In addition to using this feature for homework or assignment submissions, another important way for students to learn is through taking notes. With AccessAlly, you can create a few different variations of “Private Notes.”

You can add a note-taking area on any page or course module, that’s totally private and individual for each student.

You can also set up a “two-way communication” note, where you as the course administrator can reply to a student’s note. Think of this as a way to do private coaching or submit homework and get feedback on it.

There’s even a note type that requires admin approval before a corresponding “checklist” item can be completed, preventing students from starting the lesson before their comprehension of the previous one is reviewed and approved by the course creator.

The best part is that no other student will see the notes, since they’re linked to each individual student’s login!

If you are planning to offer a recurring membership, plan to display all of your courses in an easy to access dashboard, or would like to have this option in the future, you’ll need to use Kartra’s multi-site portal.

While it’s possible to create a single sign-on with this feature for all of your courses, you’re not going to get the same cross-selling experience you’ll have with a tool such as AccessAlly.

With AccessAlly you can easily create a member dashboard that shows members what they have access to and how they can purchase more, with 1-click. It’s also easy to navigate to and from within the site, whereas Kartra’s user experience isn’t as sleek or user-friendly.

You can even create a points or credit system using AccessAlly so members can earn points for completing quizzes or courses, or just for being a paid member in good standing each month. These earned points can be used to unlock additional content or courses that can also be purchased, to receive physical products, or unlock additional bonuses.

Kartra and AccessAlly are rather similar when it comes to their e-commerce features and functionality.

Both have beautiful order forms that allow you to offer one-time payments, subscriptions, and installments or payment plans.

You can offer 1-click upsells for other courses and memberships you sell. You even have the opportunity to add order bumps for add-on products.

AccessAlly and Kartra allow you to create cart abandonment campaigns for customers that initiate the checkout process but abandon their carts mid-checkout, allowing you to recapture a percentage of those potentially lost sales via a follow-up automation campaign.

The best part? Because AccessAlly has built-in payments and integrates directly with your CRM, you can easily manage and segment your sales and marketing funnels so your customers and prospects get the right communication. The same can be done within Kartra since it’s an all-in-one platform.

• You know the value of your time, and you want a tool that will handle set up for you based on your instructions
• You want everything to work seamlessly from one end to the other (payments, courses, and memberships) with as few plugins as possible
• You’re looking to create an amazing customer experience, that’s functional, profitable, and helps you stand out in the marketplace
• You like to geeky or you have advanced marketing needs and need lots of flexibility in your course platform

• You’re focused more on marketing initiatives 
• You don’t have, nor do you ever want a robust membership site and online programs 
• You want everything centralized in one location with as few integrations as possible 
• You’re okay with looking through hundred of templates to find the ones that fit your brand the best