Kartra vs Circle vs LearnWorlds: Best Course Platform in 2026

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These three platforms all sell courses, but they are not three versions of the same product. Choose the wrong kind and you will spend a year working around it.

Looking for the best course platform for a small business? The honest answer depends on what you are really building. Kartra is an all-in-one marketing suite that includes courses. Circle is a community-first platform that includes courses. LearnWorlds is a course-first LMS (learning management system) that includes marketing and community tools.

This comparison is based on each vendor’s own pricing pages, feature pages and help docs, plus Circle’s public product updates and comparison pages. Where a vendor’s pages are silent or disagree with each other, we say so. Pricing as of November 2026, in US dollars, before tax.

Three different kinds of product

Most comparison tables make these tools look interchangeable, because all three have a row for “courses”. The useful question is what each one was built around, since that shapes everything else.

• Kartra: all-in-one marketing suite. Its navigation groups features under Create, Market and Scale. Courses sit beside landing pages, funnels, email, checkouts, calendars, affiliates and a help desk.
• Circle: community-first platform. Its homepage headline is “The complete community platform”. Discussions, chat, events and live streams are the core, with courses, payments and email around them.
• LearnWorlds: course-first LMS. Its homepage calls it an AI-powered LMS “built for learning businesses”. That is the vendor’s wording, but the feature list backs up the focus: assessments, certificates, SCORM and interactive video.

A simple test: picture your customer on a good day. Are they finishing lessons and earning a certificate? Are they talking with other members? Or are they moving through your sales sequence toward the next offer? Those three answers point to three different products.

Best course platform comparison: the full table

This table covers what the official pages state. “None described” means we could not find it on the vendor pages we read, which is not the same as proof that it does not exist.

Category	Kartra	Circle	LearnWorlds
Product type	All-in-one marketing suite	Community-first platform	Course-first LMS
Lowest price (billed annually)	$52/mo Essentials	$89/mo Professional	$44/mo Starter
Highest listed price (billed annually)	$429/mo Professional	$419/mo Scale; Circle Plus is custom	$249/mo Learning Center; Corporate is custom
Platform fee on sales	5% on Essentials; 0% on Starter and above	2% Professional; 1% Business and Scale; 0.5% Circle Plus	$5 per enrollment on Starter; none above
Free trial	14 days, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee	14 days, no credit card required	30 days, per the pricing FAQ
Course features	Tiered memberships and courses, drip by date or member age, unlimited video hosting	Drip, video player, cohorts, native live sessions, included on all plans	Unlimited paid courses, SCORM, interactive video, learning paths, live sessions
Community	Comment section forums with moderation, not a full community space	Core product: discussions, chat, events, live streams, gamification, unlimited members	Built-in spaces, collections, posts and polls on all plans
Marketing and funnels	Strongest: funnels, order bumps, upsells, email, calendars, affiliates	Website builder on all plans; Email Hub is a paid add-on; automations from Business	Page funnels from Pro Trainer (15), mass email credits, affiliates, automations on Learning Center
Assessments	Surveys and quizzes listed from Growth, scored quizzes, can be placed in course posts	Quizzes with passing grades, on web and apps	16 question types, graded exams, question banks, server-side timing
Certificates	Mentioned on the quiz feature page only; not on the pricing page	None built in; Circle’s own comparison page concedes this to Teachable	Included from Pro Trainer
Native apps	None described; pages mention mobile-optimized pages	Circle app on iOS and Android on all plans; custom branded apps on Circle Plus only	Branded iOS and Android add-on, $149/mo per its feature page; none on Starter

Pricing and fees, plan by plan

All figures below come from the vendor pricing pages. Stripe or PayPal processing fees are separate on all three. LearnWorlds cites 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction as typical for those gateways.

Kartra plans

Plan	Monthly	Annual (per month)	Contacts	Key limits and fee
Essentials	$59	$52	500	1 product, 1 course or membership, 5 pages, 10,000 emails, 5% fee
Starter	$119	$99	2,500	Unlimited courses and pages, 5 team members, 0% fee
Growth	$229	$189	12,500	Surveys and quizzes, affiliates, 3 domains, 10 team members, 0% fee
Professional	$549	$429	25,000	All Growth features, real-time funnel analytics, help desk live chat, 5 domains

Two things to read carefully. The FAQ calls Kartra a flat-rate price with “never any extra fees”, but Essentials carries a 5% sales fee, and reaching your contact cap triggers an automatic upgrade with a mid-cycle reconciliation fee. The amount of that fee is not published.

The comparison tables also disagree with each other in places. Starter’s emails appear as unlimited in one table and 1,000 in another, for example. Confirm any limit you depend on before you pay.

Circle plans

Plan	Annual (per month)	Fee on sales	Admins / moderators	Spaces	Automations
Professional	$89	2%	3 / 10	20	Not included
Business	$199	1%	5 / 15	30	20 per month
Scale	$419	1%	10 / 100	100	Unlimited
Circle Plus	Custom	0.5%	Unlimited	Flexible	Unlimited

Members are unlimited on every plan, which is a real difference from contact-capped Kartra. Add-ons include extra admins at $10/month each and extra moderators or spaces at $20/month per 10.

The pricing page shows annual-billing prices only and has no monthly toggle, so confirm the month-to-month price with Circle or at checkout. Email Hub is charged on top of your plan. The pricing page lists $99/month for 10,000 contacts, and the Email Hub page says it is free under 100 contacts.

LearnWorlds plans

Plan	Monthly	Annual (per month)	Active learners/mo	Admins	Enrollment fee	Page funnels
Starter	$49	$44	1,000	1	$5 each	None
Pro Trainer	$99	$79	2,000	5	None	15
Learning Center	$299	$249	2,000	25	None	Unlimited
Corporate	Custom	Custom	Custom	Custom	None	Unlimited

Starter is more limited than its price suggests. It has no free courses, certificates, learning paths, bundles, subscriptions, mass email or affiliate tools. The free trial page also lists a 3-page website limit.

One page conflict to note: the pricing page calls the mobile app add-on “multiple price options” while the mobile app feature page says $149 a month. The pricing page also does not explain what happens if you pass your active learner count, so ask before you scale.

What the fees mean on real numbers

Here is an illustrative month: $3,000 in sales from 30 enrollments at $100 each, billed annually, before payment processing. This is plain arithmetic from the published prices, not a customer result.

Plan	Plan cost	Platform fee	Monthly total	Watch out for
LearnWorlds Pro Trainer	$79	$0	$79	Learner count, 15 funnels
Kartra Starter	$99	$0	$99	2,500 contact cap
Circle Professional	$89	$60	$149	No automations; email is extra
LearnWorlds Starter	$44	$150	$194	No certificates or free courses
Kartra Essentials	$52	$150	$202	1 course, 500 contacts
Circle Business	$199	$30	$229	Email is extra

The lesson is that the cheapest sticker price is often not the cheapest plan. The break-even points are low:

• LearnWorlds Starter to Pro Trainer: on annual billing the gap is $35/month, or 7 enrollments at $5 each.
• Kartra Essentials to Starter: on annual billing the gap is $47/month, which equals the 5% fee on $940 in monthly sales.
• Circle Professional to Business: the gap is $110/month and the fee drops by one point, so the fee saving alone pays for it at $11,000 in monthly sales. Most buyers would upgrade for automations instead.

Kartra: the marketing suite with courses inside

Kartra makes the most sense when your course is one product inside a larger sales machine. Its sales funnel page describes landing pages, lead forms, automated follow-up emails, checkouts with order bumps, upsells and downsells, memberships, calendars, affiliates and analytics in one account.

Course and member experience

Courses are built on its membership system. The feature pages describe tiered levels with different prices and content, drip release by member age or a specific date, the option to require posts in order, and video hosting with no additional fees.

Quizzes work through the survey tool. Kartra’s help doc says you create the quiz under Contacts, then drag a Survey object into a membership post. The quiz feature page adds scoring, automatic tagging by score, and certificates when students reach certain scores. Certificates are not mentioned on the pricing or course pages, so confirm exactly how they work if they matter.

Limitations

• Surveys and quizzes are marked as unavailable below Growth ($189/month annual), which makes assessment-heavy courses expensive here.
• Community means comment section forums with moderation. The “Kartra Community” page refers to Facebook groups for Kartra users, not a space for your students.
• No native student app is described on the pages we read.
• Contact caps can move you up a plan automatically.

Who should not buy Kartra: anyone who already has a funnel builder and email tool they like, since you would pay for overlap. Also instructors who care most about learning depth. Read our full Kartra review for more on the suite itself, or see the current Kartra plans before you commit.

Circle: the community that also sells courses

Circle fits when members pay to belong, not just to watch lessons. Discussions, chat, events, live streams, a member directory and gamification are the core. Members are unlimited on all plans, so community size does not raise your plan price. Email Hub is the exception, since it is priced by contacts.

Course and member experience

Courses are included from Professional. Circle’s pages describe drip schedules, a video player, cohort programs and native live sessions, so you do not need Zoom for live classes. Its June 2024 product update adds quizzes with single or multiple correct answers, plus an optional passing grade that blocks the next lesson until it is met.

Selling runs through paywalls powered by Stripe, with one-time purchases, subscriptions, trials, installments and discount codes. The website builder is on all plans for landing and sales pages.

Limitations

• No built-in certificates. Circle’s comparison page with Teachable says to evaluate both if certificates are critical. Certifier, a third-party tool, publishes a guide to issuing them through Zapier.
• Automations are not included on Professional, and full AI agents and workflows start at Scale.
• Email marketing is a separate paid add-on on every plan below Circle Plus.
• Custom branded apps are limited to Circle Plus at custom pricing. Lower plans use the Circle app.
• You pay a platform fee on every plan, even the top one.

Who should not buy Circle: anyone selling self-paced courses with little member interaction, or training that needs certificates or SCORM. An empty community is also a poor sales asset, so ask whether you can keep one active. See our Circle review for the detail, or start a Circle trial without a credit card.

LearnWorlds: the course platform built for learning

LearnWorlds is the only one of the three where learning design is the center of the product. It suits course creators who want students to finish, training providers, and businesses that need to prove someone completed something.

Course and member experience

The assessment builder lists 16 question types, graded exams, non-graded self-assessments, reusable question banks, server-side timing and exportable results. It does not list proctoring. Branded certificates are included from Pro Trainer.

Interactive video is the other standout. The feature page describes in-video questions, pop-ups, clickable buttons, a table of contents, searchable AI transcripts and analytics on rewatches and drop-offs. The pricing page marks it basic on Pro Trainer and advanced on Learning Center.

Community is more capable than you might assume. LearnWorlds describes unlimited public or private spaces, collections to group them, member posts and polls, and community manager roles. It is a solid add-on to a course, though Circle is still the fuller product for a community-led business.

Limitations

• There is a big jump between Pro Trainer ($79 annual) and Learning Center ($249 annual), and that is where automations and unlimited funnels and SCORM live.
• Pro Trainer and Learning Center both list 2,000 active learners, so a larger plan does not by itself buy more learners.
• Marketing is capable but lighter than Kartra. Pro Trainer has 2,000 mass email credits a month, so you may still want a separate email tool.
• The branded app adds a significant monthly cost, and app stores take a share of in-app sales.
• With this many learning options, setup takes more planning than a simple video course needs.

Who should not buy LearnWorlds: marketers whose main need is funnels and sequences, or communities where the course is a small extra. Our LearnWorlds review covers the learning curve, and you can start the LearnWorlds trial to judge it yourself.

Pick this if: a decision guide

Pick Kartra if

• You sell through funnels, with upsells, order bumps and follow-up sequences.
• You want to cancel separate page, email, checkout and scheduling tools.
• Your course is one offer among coaching, products or services.
• You can budget for Starter at least, and Growth if you need quizzes.

Start with Kartra if that sounds like your business.

Pick Circle if

• Members pay for access to people, events and conversation.
• You run cohorts or live programs with lots of discussion.
• Your membership may grow large and you do not want contact-based pricing.
• You do not need certificates, or are happy to add them through another tool.

Compare Circle plans if community is the product.

Pick LearnWorlds if

• Completion and proof of learning matter to your customers.
• You need exams, certificates, SCORM or interactive video.
• You train clients or staff, not only the general public.
• You want a branded app and can afford the add-on.

Explore LearnWorlds if learning outcomes are what you sell.

Pick none of them if

• You have one small course and little revenue so far. A monthly platform may be more than you need yet.
• You have not validated demand. Pre-sell a live version first and move it onto a platform once people have paid.

How to decide in one trial period

All three offer free trials, so run the same small test on your shortlist. Keep it to one or two platforms.

1. Write down the one thing your customer must experience, such as passing an exam or joining a live call.
2. List your must-haves: certificates, automations, a branded app, or a contact count for next year.
3. Check each must-have against the plan you can really afford, not the top plan.
4. Build one module with one video, one quiz and one drip rule.
5. Create one paid offer and run a test purchase as a student, on a phone and on a laptop.
6. Work out your yearly cost using your expected sales, including platform fees and add-ons.
7. Check how you would export your content and customer data if you ever leave.

Plan the course before you pick the platform

Whichever tool you choose, the curriculum, video production and launch work happen outside it. Keeping that planning in one separate workspace means you do not lose it if you change platforms later.

Our Online Course Creation Notion Template tracks curriculum, video production, design assets, revenue and launch posts in Notion. It is a planning tool, not a place to host or deliver lessons, so you would still need a platform from this list.

FAQ

What is the best course platform for beginners?

For most beginners selling a structured course, LearnWorlds Pro Trainer is the best-value starting point of these three, with certificates and no enrollment fee at $79/month billed annually. Expect some learning curve. If you mainly want an active group, start with Circle instead.

Which platform has no transaction fees?

Kartra charges no sales fee from Starter upward, and LearnWorlds charges none from Pro Trainer upward. Circle charges a fee on every plan, from 2% down to 0.5%. Stripe or PayPal processing is still charged separately in all cases.

Does Circle offer course certificates?

Not as a built-in feature, based on the pages we read. Circle’s own Teachable comparison credits Teachable for completion certificates. A third-party tool such as Certifier connected through Zapier is a documented workaround.

Does Kartra have a native mobile app for students?

Kartra’s pages describe mobile-optimized pages and do not mention a native student app. If an app in the App Store or Google Play matters, look at Circle or LearnWorlds, and confirm any Kartra update with its team.

Can I use Kartra for funnels and LearnWorlds for courses?

You can pair separate tools, but you would pay for two platforms and overlap. It tends to make sense only when you already rely on a funnel stack, and you should confirm the specific integration in each vendor’s docs first.

Which is cheapest overall?

On sticker price, LearnWorlds Starter at $44/month billed annually. Once you add $5 per enrollment, it stops being cheapest quickly. In our $3,000 example above, LearnWorlds Pro Trainer came out lowest at $79, but your own sales volume and contact count will change that.

How long are the free trials?

Kartra’s pricing page says 14 days, Circle says 14 days with no credit card required, and LearnWorlds’ pricing FAQ says 30 days. Check the signup screen for current terms, since these can change.