Move from Kartra to Whop: Contacts, Courses and Members

Why Kartra creators are looking at Whop

Kartra's price depends mostly on how many contacts you hold. Essentials costs $59 a month for 500 contacts and adds a 5% fee on every sale and rebill, billed separately each month. Starter costs $119 for 2,500 contacts, Growth $229 for 12,500 and Professional $549 for 25,000, all with no Kartra transaction fee. Paying yearly brings those to $52, $99, $189 and $429 a month.

The contact caps matter most. Kartra's pricing page says that if your lead count passes your plan's limit, you're moved up to the next tier automatically and charged a mid-cycle reconciliation fee. Essentials itself is new. Archived copies of the pricing page show it at $49 in July 2025 and at $59 by mid-August.

An April 2026 thread on r/SaaSy asked whether Kartra is still worth its price, and one reply called it not bad at anything but no longer best in class. If your Kartra account mostly sells memberships and courses, Whop's pay-per-sale pricing is the comparison to run. If you're weighing several Kartra alternatives at once, skip to the comparison section near the end.

What moves from Kartra to Whop

Kartra gives you one export, and everything else is guided or rebuilt. The table on this page lists the route for each part of the account, and the sections below explain them.

Contacts: the only file Kartra exports

In Kartra, open Contacts, then All contacts, tick the box next to Name to select everyone, and click the download icon to export a CSV. Kartra's help center says the file includes every default profile field, your custom fields, lists, tags and GDPR acceptance status. It leaves out anything from a contact's other tabs, which means memberships, transactions and purchase history.

That gap matters, because the wizard needs to know who bought what. If your Kartra checkouts tag buyers or add them to a list, use Advanced filters to export one CSV per product or membership. Feed all of them into our member CSV converter, which merges the files in your browser, removes duplicate emails and sorts people into subscribers, one-time buyers and free members.

We work only from files you export. Kartra's terms of service (section 15(vi)) bar using an API, integration or third-party software to pull data out of Kartra for commercial purposes, unless that third party holds a written license from Kartra. MoveToWhop has no such license, so we never touch Kartra's API.

Products and price points

Kartra has no product export, so you confirm each product in the wizard: one-time, recurring, installments or a free trial, at the same price and billing cycle. We then create the Whop products and plans through Whop's official API.

Memberships and course content

We found no export for membership or page content in Kartra's help center. Paste each membership's outline (levels, sections, lessons and lesson text) into the wizard and it becomes a Whop course with chapters and lessons.

Videos come out one by one. In Media center, then Videos, open a video's three-dot menu and choose Get video. Turn on Allow downloads and use the Download button on the hosted page, or copy the Source file URL, which ends in .mp4. Upload the files to Whop Courses, or host them unlisted on YouTube or Loom and embed them.

Kartra doesn't list a community product, so there's nothing to transfer there. If you want discussion space, Whop's Chat and Forums apps can sit on the same product as the course.

Payments: why every subscriber re-subscribes

Kartra connects to processors you own, such as Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Square and Authorize.net, but Kartra runs the schedule. It rebills each subscription on the same calendar date as the original payment, and if a charge fails it retries every three days for up to nine days, then cancels the subscription automatically. Your Stripe account sees the charges, but there are no Stripe subscription records for Whop Migrations to move.

Kartra's own help center rules out the other route too: it says a PCI-compliant platform can't share or receive payment profiles with any third-party platform. So every paying member signs up again on Whop, through a private link to a hidden plan with a trial that lasts until Kartra would next bill them. Our guide to re-subscribing members onto Whop walks through the whole campaign.

How the switch works, step by step

Keep Kartra live while you set up Whop and bring members across; freeze or close it only at the end.

1. Export the full contacts CSV, then one filtered CSV per product tag or list.
2. In Sales, then Payments, then Subscriptions, note each active subscriber's price point and billing cycle. Kartra rebills on the same day of the month they first paid.
3. Download your videos and copy membership lesson text into documents.
4. Run the CSVs through the converter, then connect your Whop account to the free migration wizard using Whop's own sign-in. We don't need your Kartra password or API keys.
5. Confirm each product and price point, rebuild memberships as Whop Courses, and add Chat or Forums if you want them.
6. Send re-subscribe links with trials to subscribers, and free claim links to anyone who paid once.
7. As each member lands on Whop, cancel their Kartra subscription before its next rebill, then replace Kartra checkout links on your pages, emails and ads.
8. Once every export is saved and no subscriptions remain, freeze or cancel Kartra.

How to keep members and avoid double billing

Kartra's cancel menu has two settings, and the delayed one does exactly what a migration needs. Open the subscription from Sales, then Payments, then Subscriptions, and under Subscription actions choose to cancel future payments on the next rebill date. Kartra stops billing but keeps the member's access open until the paid period ends. The instant option revokes access straight away.

Here is the timing for one member. Someone paying $79 a month who joined on March 27 is rebilled on the 27th. Send their Whop link on the 18th, with a trial through the 27th. Once they've joined, schedule their Kartra cancellation for the next rebill date. Kartra charges at about the same time of day as the original purchase, so don't leave it to the morning of the 27th. Whop takes the $79 on the 27th instead of Kartra.

Members already in Kartra's nine-day retry cycle after a failed card are worth contacting first, since their old subscription is about to lapse anyway. For longer announcement sequences, see our member email templates for a platform move. A short version for Kartra members:

Subject: We're moving [membership name] to Whop

Hi [first name], [membership name] is moving to Whop on [date]. Your lessons, your price and your billing date all come with you. Join here with the email you use for the membership: [link].

You'll pay $[price] on [next billing date], the same day Kartra would have charged you. Enter your card on Whop now; the trial means nothing is charged before then. We'll cancel your Kartra billing on our side, so you won't see a second charge.

If the link gives you any trouble, reply and we'll help.

Kartra vs Whop fees at your revenue

At $1,000 and $10,000 a month, every Kartra plan costs more than Whop. At $50,000, Kartra Starter is cheaper, if your list fits its 2,500-contact cap. The example uses a $49 monthly membership, US cards and Kartra billed monthly with Stripe as the processor, and leaves out add-ons, payouts and currency conversion, which vary by account.

Prices as of October 2026. Sources at the end of this page.

Whop's column uses its published fees: 2.7% for card processing plus 0.5% for subscription billing when enabled, which we count on every charge, so 3.2% of revenue plus 30¢ for each charge. Kartra's columns are the plan price plus Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 per charge, plus Kartra's own 5% on Essentials. Because Kartra runs the billing, Stripe's subscription billing fee doesn't apply. Against Starter, Whop saves $1,392 a year at $1,000 and $1,068 at $10,000, and costs $372 more at $50,000. Against Growth it saves $2,712, $2,388 and $948.

Two adjustments change the picture for some readers. A list bigger than 2,500 contacts pushes Starter users onto Growth, and yearly billing lowers each Kartra plan by $84 to $1,440 a year. Try your own numbers in the Kartra and Whop fee calculator, and see how each Whop fee works. Whop's $0.07 Radar charge per transaction isn't in the table.

What you'll rebuild by hand

Kartra's marketing tools stay with Kartra. List what you actually use before you set a moving date.

Whop Websites, launched in August 2026, hosts a site free at a whop.site address with Whop checkout and its tracking pixel built in. You can start from a blueprint, describe the site to Whop's AI, write code, or paste a public page's URL and have Whop's AI rebuild it (announced October 2, 2026; we haven't tested it on Kartra pages). Editing is by AI chat or code, with no drag-and-drop editor or built-in blog, custom domains currently need Whop's API, and search settings stop at a site title and description.

Whop's checkout handles trials, installments, multi-item carts and promo codes, but native one-click upsells and downsells aren't documented (third-party App Store apps add them), and there's no documented checkout A/B testing. Whop's 2025 blog described add-ons sold before checkout (an order bump) or after it, on a thank-you page, but they sell only a locked app at a one-time price, not any product you choose. Its current help docs and dashboard settings don't show them, so confirm in your dashboard before counting on one.

Email is the other gap. Whop has no built-in email marketing (no broadcasts, sequences or segments) as of October 3, 2026. It sends welcome and goodbye messages as a DM with an optional email copy, forum posts by email and transactional emails. Newsletters and sequences need an email app from Whop's App Store or your own email tool.

Comparing other Kartra alternatives

Whop isn't the only way out of Kartra, and the right pick depends on which Kartra tools you rely on. The same platforms that replace ClickFunnels replace most of Kartra: Systeme.io for a low-cost funnel, email and course bundle, ClickFunnels itself for funnels, and Kajabi for courses with email. SamCart and ThriveCart cover checkout-first selling.

Our ClickFunnels alternatives ranked by yearly cost prices most of these at three revenue levels, and the Kajabi alternatives list covers course-first platforms. If you already run Kartra alongside a checkout tool, the SamCart to Whop plan and ClickFunnels to Whop plan explain those exports.

Should you switch from Kartra to Whop?

Switch if Kartra mostly sells and delivers memberships for you and its plan fee or contact caps have become the main cost. Stay if a full re-subscribe campaign would cost more than you'd save.

Switching makes sense when:

• you're on Essentials and its 5% fee now costs more than a higher plan, or you're about to cross a contact cap;
• your revenue comes from memberships, courses or community access, under about $40,000 a month;
• your member list is small enough, or engaged enough, that a re-subscribe campaign won't lose many people.

Stay on Kartra when:

• you have hundreds of active subscribers who'd all need to re-enter a card, and losing even a tenth of them outweighs the savings;
• your sales depend on Kartra's email sequences and one-click upsells, which Whop doesn't build in, and you'd rather not add separate tools for them;
• you rely on the HIPAA compliance Kartra's pricing page says is included at no extra cost, and haven't confirmed how a new platform handles that data;
• your subscription revenue is above about $40,000 a month and fits Starter's 2,500-contact cap, where Kartra's $119 plus Stripe's 2.9% comes in under Whop's 2.7% plus 0.5% billing (if billing is enabled on your account);
• you want to keep payments in processors you own, such as Braintree, Square or Authorize.net.

After the move: launch checklist

Walk through the member experience yourself before you announce the move, and keep Kartra running until the list is done.

• Pay for a product through a Whop checkout link with your own card, and refund the charge afterwards.
• Claim access from a second account and open every course and app it should include.
• Check a few re-subscribe trials against each member's Kartra rebill date.
• Complete payouts and ID verification on Whop, and request checkout links above $2,500 if any offer costs more.
• Whop may hold part of a new account's balance in reserve for a while, so plan cash flow around that possibility.
• Confirm in Kartra that no active subscriptions remain before you freeze or cancel, since Kartra says freezing doesn't stop customer billing right away.