Dornubari Vizor February 23, 2022
Thinkific vs Kajabi – A Comprehensive Review
There are a few big players in the space when it comes to online course platforms – you certainly heard of Thinkific and Kajabi. And, whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been selling courses for a while, it can be tough to decide which platform is right for you.
This article will compare Thinkific and Kajabi – platforms that are the top choices for many bloggers, trainers, and other content creators. We’ll take a look at each platform’s features, pricing, and ease of use so that you can make an informed decision about which one is right for you.
Before we go into a detailed comparison of the two platforms, let’s look at what each one offers.
Greg and Matt Smith founded Thinkific in 2012 as a software platform for creating, marketing and delivering and selling online courses.
This online course platform is the first choice for over 50,000-course creators and over 100 million visitors who have viewed over 100 million courses.
Thinkific employs approximately 270 people and operates in more than 15 countries.
Thinkific has succeeded to change the public’s perception of online education throughout the years.
The platform’s ease of use, all the features, freedom of course creation, and members’ data security are some of the features that set Thinkific apart from the other course platforms.
Kajabi is an all-in-one online platform that offers educators excellent marketing tools to advertise their courses and other items through professional websites.
The platform comes with all the features to assist you in starting and managing your online business.
Kajabi’s primary goal is to enable creators to create and administer a completely online course utilizing only one platform with the help of advanced features.
You won’t have to use a variety of plugins and services this way. Everything is accessible from a single location.
The Kajabi team will provide further customer support by handling technical issues like maintenance, security, and platform updates.
As a result, you’ll be able to concentrate on creating outstanding content instead of worrying about technical details.
What is more, you have complete control over pricing, policy, and student information.
In the infographic below, you can see the core features that Thinkific offers. This all in one platform consists of, among others: Thinkific course builder, customer support, secure cloud hosting, digital marketing tools.
Online School and Student Engagement
Online Course Builder and Digital Marketing
Online Course Content Management
Community and Customer Support
Automation and Data Safety
Also, Kajabi is a membership site that presents a wide range of advanced features such as Kajabi course builder, landing pages builder, email marketing tools and many more.
Website building
Reaching the audience
Marketing tools
Course creation business and student engagement
Email marketing features
Both Thinkific and Kajabi are course creation platforms that can help you create online courses and an online school.
However, they have distinct similarities and differences that may help you decide which one is the best for your online business.
As Kajabi is an all-in-one platform, your website will be fully integrated with other tools such as email marketing, analytics, and content purchases, preventing information from becoming lost between multiple tools.
The website includes a library of professionally designed themes that you can use and even customize.
The integrated website builder, combined with themes, enables you to create a professional-looking website in a matter of hours without learning how to code.
Your course can be divided into three categories: Lessons, Modules and Subheadings.
That way, the content is organized and learning-friendly.
When you decide to begin promoting your products and services on Kajabi, you must first create landing pages.
With Kajabi and its landing pages builder, it is an easy job.
You just have to select a template, customize it to your liking and send it to the world.
With Thinkific creating a course is the same level of difficulty. The ease of use and templates will make your job much more straightforward.
Thinkific also provides you with tools to optimize the content structure, however, on only two levels: Lessons and Modules.
Unlike Kajabi, it does not come with Subheadings for additional optimization.
Thinkfic’s drag-and-drop course builder and visual editor allows you to create online courses from scratch or from pre-made templates.
Membership tiers can be used to create different membership levels, customize course appearance, and optimize content.
This membership site supports various content types that you can include in your courses, such as PDFs, quizzes, videos, surveys, etc.
It can be added to your course by simply dragging and dropping the file
A great feature is Video Library, which allows you to upload a video to your platform once and use it multiple times in different courses.
Thinkific comes with a variety of customizations regarding course descriptions, different color themes, fonts, a course player logo, and lesson labels.
Kajabi also includes a drag-and-drop course builder.
The simple builder allows you to customize pre-designed templates provided by Kajabi, enabling you to create courses without the need for coding.
It allows you to embed various types of content, such as PDFs, images, and videos, into your website and courses.
You can upload files from your computer or from any third-party app.
The online disadvantage is that it does not allow you to combine different types of content on a single page.
You only need to choose a theme or template and customize it with your own content and graphics, regardless of what you’re building.
Kajabi has themes and templates for every page, campaign, pipeline, course, and product.
It provides three types of course templates:
Each one has specific characteristics and makes creating a course much easier and faster.
The Kajabi website builder also comes with multiple other features. It allows you to:
Both Kajabi and Thinkific have fully working essential parts and design features.
But what really makes a platform stand out are its customization aspects.
They are responsible for setting your content apart from the competition and making it unique and exciting.
Many online course-creation systems include numerous customization options, aspects, tools, and features to keep both creators and students in a current and engaging environment.
Many of these choices, particularly those related to course building, make e-learning intriguing and worthwhile to consider.
Customizing landing pages and sales pages is simple on all platforms, allowing you to stand out from the crowd.
Visitors and potential clients that visit your page will get their initial impression of you right there.
Both Thinkific and Kajabi have an easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder and basic course templates for even more simplified course building.
Every online business owner wants their page to stand out from the crowd, and diverse styles can help them do that.
Kajabi is superior to Thinkific in this regard because it allows you to choose from a variety of unique designs for your page, all of which can be tweaked.
In Kajabi’s offer, there are twelve themes to choose from, while Thinkific provides four times fewer options.
Kajabi gives you a lot of freedom when it comes to personalizing various components in the course player without knowing how to code.
For example, you may choose to hide or show things like the course progress bar or teacher bio in the sidebar, show custom elements for cross-selling, and even remove the sidebar entirely if you want to.
In Thinkific’s case, one of its flaws used to be the course player.
It would display students a transition screen every time they finished a course, and the design wasn’t particularly appealing.
However, Thinkific has improved the design of their course player to make it more visually appealing and user-friendly than before.
Both of these platforms cover the fundamentals of page creation and design, but Thinkific provides more options in general.
Thinkific also allows you to edit codes to achieve your customization goals if you have any back-end developer skills.
You can create numerous sales pages for the same course on Teachable.
Additionally, both systems allow you to develop and publish sites and courses with little to no effort, difficulties, or coding skills.
As previously stated, the elements and features that you can add to courses are also incredibly customizable and supreme.
However, we must emphasize that Kajabi is a leader in this field.
Both platforms allow you to establish pages managed by numerous teachers, so you’re not the only one in charge.
That makes managing a platform much easier when you have people to share your responsibilities with.
Additionally, Kajabi and Thinkific both allow using their drag-and-drop page builders to create visually appealing pages and branded free subdomains or custom domains.
You can also use your own branding instead of Thinkific or Kajabi’s and secure your websites with free SSL certificates.
Both platforms’ hosting is provided for free, and you can update and maintain it.
Even though both platforms are customizable, Kajabi turns out to be a winner. It allows you a great deal of customization.
You can start from scratch and, with the help of themes, give your webpage an exact look and feel you want, without any graphic designing skills.
In-depth control and supervision over your students’ work and progress are one of the most critical tasks when it comes to leading an online course platform. Analyzing your content, process, and customer reactions is essential to improve and grow your online business.
This is why you should choose an online course-creation platform that includes powerful analytic tools and business insights that you can track in real-time.
Thinkfic offers advanced reporting tools to track metrics such as revenue, orders, enrollments, and student engagement.
Available with a Pro and Growth plan, your reports can be further filtered by product name, payment provider, or affiliate source.
What is more, a detailed student progress report is also available in the “Support Your Students > Progress” section.
You can also export this data as a CSV by selecting the Export CSV button.
Furthermore, additional reports and analysis are possible via third-party integrations, like Facebook or Google AdWords.
Group and cohort reporting, detailed segmentation, data exports, and other analytics and reporting features are also available.
Kajabi tracks your subscription rate and even displays data from all touchpoints.
It also tracks and measures metrics such as your revenue, offers sold, opt-ins, page views, subscription rate, and so on.
It also provides detailed reports and analytics on student progress, profitable areas, subscription churn rate, areas for improvement, and so on.
As well as Thinkific, this membership site integrates with Google Analytics for the best reporting results.
Thanks to the integration with Wistia, which offers unlimited video-hosting, Kajabi gives you an insight into the viewership of your videos.
When the students stop watching, it reports which parts were replayed the most and which were not so popular.
That way, you can deliver constant improvement and receive almost immediate feedback.
While Thinkific does not have built-in support for completion certificates, it does have a direct integration.
The platform is linked to Accredible, one of the most popular solutions for offering certificates.
Unfortunately, this integration is only available if you have the Thinkific Pro or Business Plan, but you will not have to pay separately for Accredible.
It’s included in your Thinkific subscription for free and will let you create and customize certificates chosen from seven built-in templates.
Accredible is a tool that allows you to automate the issuing process in addition to creating certificates. Your students can download the certificates in pdf format or share them on LinkedIn or other social sites, and you can set your certificates to expire at a later date.
Unlike Thinkific, Kajabi does not have a native-level integration with Accredible. However, you could use Zapier to generate Kajabi completion certificates with Accredible.
You’ll only have to pay for the Zap and Accredible integrations.
The community aspect is the crucial factor for the success of your online source.
The community makes students feel connected, supported and engages them more with your online webpage.
In this area, Kajabi is an ultimate leader due to Thinkific lacking of the community and mobile app sector.
If you want to build an engaged community around your product, Kajabi has a Community feature that allows you to create a standalone forum within your website.
You can include a Community as part of your online course or membership or sell it separately.
Students can easily access the community from their dashboard, where they can participate in an existing thread or start a new one.
They can also send messages to other members and you, the administrator.
From your Kajabi dashboard, you can organize the discussions into topics and choose whether to display the topics or the feed itself on the Community home page.
Unfortunately, the Thinkific Community feature is still in its early stages and lacks some critical functionality. You cannot create topics to organize discussions.
Another disadvantage is that Thinkific does not provide a mobile app and thus can not send push notifications to your students, making it extremely difficult to re-engage them in the community.
When it comes to pricing your online course, both Kajabi and Thinkific give you many options.
So, you can charge a one-time fee, a recurring fee, or even specify a payment plan for your digital product.
Subscription pricing, available on both platforms, allow you to charge your customers monthly, yearly, or anywhere in between.
You can also provide a free trial or charge a custom payment upfront.
One difference, in this case, is that Kajabi allows you to create a weekly subscription, which Thinkific does not currently allow.
Furthermore, you can create multiple pricing options for your courses and bundles.
The ability to select your currency is another important pricing feature.
Your course can be priced in any of the major currencies using Kajabi.
Moreover, you can price the one course in multiple currencies.
Thinkific, on the other hand, only allows you to select the currency at the site level.
As a result, you can’t price the same course in multiple currencies or different courses in different currencies, which can be a limitation if you have a large international audience.
Finally, Kajabi enables you to use Kajabi Automations to add a “Gift This Course” pricing option to your course.
Thinkific allows creators to accept payments through Stripe and PayPal. Thinkific can also be used to sell courses in your Shopify store.
Thinkific has direct integration with Quaderno that you can enable to automatically charge, track, and remit tax on each sale.
That is, if you use Stripe or PayPal as your Thinkific payment gateways, you can comply with your local VAT, GST, and sales tax laws.
Thinkific allows you to use Stunning if you process payments with Stripe. Stunning is an integration that helps creators recover overdue or failed payments from students.
You can, for example, use it to send out a time-sensitive discount as an incentive for paying within the specified time frame.
You can use three external payment gateways: Samcart, Infusionsoft, and PayPal. If you want more options, you’ll need to create a Zap integration.
All funds are transferred to your PayPal or Stripe account, which also applies to Kajabi users. You can then select your payout schedule or refund options.
Kajabi only allows course creators to use the Stripe and PayPal payment gateways.
However, if necessary, you can integrate a third-party payment gateway with Kajabi. It has more options than Thinkific in this category, including Magento, WooCommerce, Shopify, and SamCart.
However, integrating a third-party checkout platform with either can be a technical challenge. Zapier integrations and Webhook URLs will be used.
Both platforms offer the most basic and completely secure payment methods available anywhere online when it comes to payment providers. Still, Thinkific provides more third-party apps that you can use to run your business smoothly.
Thinkific allows you to access all its marketing functions and tools from the “Market and Sell” panel.
It lets you sell memberships and subscriptions, run discount promotions, give away free trials, and more. You can also embed customized sales widgets on any third-party website or blog, allowing students to purchase your course from wherever they are.
You may also set up an affiliate marketing program to encourage students to spread the word about your course to others who would benefit from it.
Thinkfic also has over 1000 business tool connectors, including Facebook, Google Adwords, and more. You can easily connect it with email marketing apps like MailChimp, ConvertKit, and others to generate targeted email campaigns.
On the other hand, Kajabi consists of a much more complex variety of marketing and sales tools and features to assist you in selling your courses or website. It also includes pre-built templates for lead generation, webinars or product launches and more. It offers, among others:
Each pipeline blueprint or template includes a complete framework and a pre-written copy. It assists you in nudging your students and audiences in the right direction and in the correct order.
Kajabi also has an email marketing feature that sets it apart from other course platforms. Thanks to the visual editor and built-in email templates, it’s simple to customize and preview email campaigns.
This membership site also monitors customer activity and sends out one-time email blasts or automates multi-touch sequences in response.
Countdown timers, automatic subject line validation, videos, and other elements can be used to customize your campaigns further.
There’s also a built-in CRM (customer relationship management) feature. It lets you send emails, special offers, coupons, and product access to your customers. You only need to specify a few rules once, and Kajabi’s CRM will take care of the rest.
With the CRM tool, you can also track your customers’ behaviour, import contacts through CSV, add custom data fields, segment customers, and more.
What is more, Kajabi comes with a built-in blogging feature. It lets you optimize and configure SEO content as well as implement opt-in forms and organize your blogs by tags.
The text and blog sidebar can be easily edited. The blog feature is a great way to attract new customers directly to your page using keywords and popular phrases.
Once again, Kajabi beats its competitor in the marketing sector. While Thinkific delivers only basic functions and for more features, you need to use the help of third-party apps, Kajabi is a full package. You have an entire marketing suite provided by one platform.
Both platforms support analytics and tracking script integration. Google Analytics, Segment, and Facebook Pixel are just a few of the top choices.
You can also use Zapier to integrate them with your existing CRMs and email tools of choice. This will allow you to use them in conjunction with thousands of other apps available on the market.
Both Kajabi and Thinkific have APIs and Webhooks that you can use. Then you can tailor your user experience to your preferences.
However, as we mentioned before, the main goal of Kajabi is to become a platform that does not need the help of third-party apps.
On the other hand, a platform like Thinkific lets you accumulate only needed features via integrations. It allows you to start small and sell courses without spending too much money.
Another essential consideration when comparing Thinkific and Kajabi is customer support. If you have a problem or are stuck with something, both customer care teams go above and beyond to assist you.
However, Thinkific has one crucial flaw: it does not offer any type of chat help. Kajabi, on the other hand, provides live chat assistance 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Thinkific’s only support option is email, which is available Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST. As a result, if you require assistance on the weekend or in a different time zone, there may be a substantial wait in receiving assistance.
For individuals who prefer to figure things out on their own, both platforms include a robust knowledge base with plenty of how-to information covering every feature of their respective platforms.
Kajabi also devotes a significant amount of resources to customer training through its Hero University, where customers can enroll in courses and training to learn about various course production and marketing areas on the platform.
Kajabi occasionally broadcasts webinars and other live events, which are free to attend.
Facebook Groups are great for connecting with other course creators, asking questions, and getting feedback or advice on anything related to online course creation or using these platforms.
Last but not least, Kajabi offers a rewards program known as Kajabi Hero. The Kajabi Hero program is intended to encourage course creators along their path. As a result, they gain access to freebies, gifts and exclusive perks when they meet specific revenue targets on the platform.
To conclude, Kajabi’s customer support is extraordinary and always available. It offers:
Even though Thinkific does not offer live chat, its customer support has fantastic reviews. This membership site provides:
It is evident that with its instant 24/7 chat support, Kajabi can be helpful. However, Thinkific has legendary customer support that will not leave you without help.
It’s a given that you’ll choose a platform with a reasonable pricing plan that meets your company’s size, budget, and needs.
This is why we must evaluate the pricing plans of both Thinkific and Kajabi to see which one provides the best value for the money.
Given that both of these websites are continually improving their services, their costs are likely to vary as well.
However, when it comes to the features and rates offered, Thinkific appears to be more affordable.
Unlike Kajabi, Thinkific offers a free plan for people who don’t want to commit or only want to try out the core features. Still, users can also choose from different paid options, ranging from basic plans with only key features to premium ones, offering, for example, unlimited courses, unlimited students, email marketing, live chat support or a landing page builder.
The most significant difference between free trials on both Kajabi and Thinkific is that free plans on Thinkific are entirely free. However, Kajabi offers only a 14-days free trial for every pricing plan.
Regarding pricing plans, both Kajabi and Thinkific offer reductions if you pay for a year in advance.
Thinkific has a Basic plan that is less expensive than Kajabi and is much more affordable in general. However, Thinkific’s most exclusive plan costs hundred dollars more than the Kajabi’s and you may find yourself paying even more for third party integrations due to Thinkific’s limited marketing capabilities.
Overall, both services have different rates and are suitable for various needs of beginner and experienced course makers, especially when considering all of the valuable features you can use for your courses.
Thinkific’s free plan gives you access to all of the main features, as well as unlimited students, surveys, quizzes, content hosting, course builder and the ability to create up to three courses.
What is more, Thinkific now offers a free plan without transaction fees.
At $49/month, you can create unlimited courses and valuable features like drip content, email marketing and integrations, affiliate program, custom domains, and manual student enrollments and exports.
For $99/month, you get all of the features of the Basic plan, including unlimited courses, plus five more course instructors, two site administrators, memberships and bundles, advanced customization options, private and hidden courses, completion certificates, and priority customer support.
A growth package can be added to this plan for free up to 100 students and then $0.01 for every active enrollment.
For $399/month, you get all of the Pro plan’s features plus 50-course teachers, five admins, an onboarding package, one sign-in option, and the ability to use Thinkific’s growth package.
Kajabi has top features; however, it’s somewhat expensive compared to its competitors and does not offer a free plan.
However, you have three pricing alternatives to select from, depending on your needs and financial capabilities.
$149 per month, or $119 if you pay annually. You’ll get support for three products and three pipelines, as well as limitless email marketing and landing pages, with the Basic plan.
The bundle includes 1000 active members, a website, 10,000 email addresses, and an online community.
It is by far the most popular, and it costs $199 per month or $159 if paid annually. It comes with 15 pipelines and 15 products, as well as 10,000 active users, ten administrators, 25,000 contacts, and a single website.
You’ll also get infinite landing pages, affiliate programs, and tracking, as well as unlimited email marketing and the ability to remove the Kajabi branding. And if you have any questions, live chat support is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
It costs $399 per month or $319 per year if paid annually. This option includes 100 pipelines and 100 items, as well as 20,000 active members, 25 admin users, and three websites.
You’ll also get infinite landing pages and email marketing tools, as well as an affiliate program and tracking.
The Pro plan also includes a code editor, which is not included in the other two options.
Additionally, all three solutions have a website builder, drip content, no transaction fees and a 14-day free trial.
Both Kajabi and Thinkific come with many advantages and a few drawbacks. Let’s take a closer look at both sides of those platforms.
Kajabi and Thinkific are two excellent platforms offering extraordinary subscription-based selling models and tools to boost your course sales.
However, both of these platforms have serious drawbacks that may discourage them from using. That is why, if you are looking for the highest quality course delivery, unique community tools and the best platform to sell courses, you should take a closer look into our alternative.
Choosing the right online course creation platform is critical to your teaching success. You’ll need an intuitive layout, unique templates, a glimpse of your student’s successes and progress or worksheets, and a solution for face-to-face engagement. In other words, sign up for GroupApp!
We understand that developing a successful and entertaining online course may be challenging, which is why we’ve created an easy-to-use online course builder to assist you.
All tools you’ll need to build a high-quality online course are included in GroupApp.
It has all the features you’ll need to connect with and impress your target audience.
You may use GroupApp to design and distribute online courses right within your online community. For improved community support and a better learning experience, you can combine your online community with your online class.
You can also administer your community from an admin dashboard, which allows you to manage members, control course content, and track engagement and subscription stats.
It functions as an LMS (Learning Management System), tracking, automating, reporting, and documenting the delivery of your online courses.
Accessibility is one of GroupApp’s benefits. GroupApp is mobile-friendly on all platforms, allowing you and your students to interact with the community from anywhere.
It’s compatible with all devices and platforms, and it’s available on both iOS and Android. You can also link with other media using GroupApp, which will help you optimize and automate your workflow.
You also get a bunch of additional features such as:
We provide you with three pricing plans, starting from as low as 29$ a month. You can choose between:
It is designed mainly for personal projects & hobbies for $29/month. You can create a community of up to even 1000 members and manage ten community channels.
Pro plan is ideal for growing businesses & creators. The price is $59/month. You can foster 10000 members on 30 different community channels using this package.
Premium plan is ideal for brands and large organizations, and it costs 189$/month. You can engage a much larger audience – even 100,000 people on 100 community channels, and enjoy all perks of a premium plan.
Hopefully, this in-depth comparison will assist you in selecting an appropriate online course platform, whether it’s Thinkific or Kajabi.
While Thinkific offers more design options and customizations, we believe Kajabi is a better choice if you’re looking for more marketing and sales tools.
To be completely honest, we believe that GroupApp is even a better solution. It’s a membership-based course platform that allows you to develop courses and a community around your students and followers.
You can easily design, publish, and sell courses while managing your community using GroupApp. Sign up for GroupApp and start building a thriving online business today!
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