Thinkific vs Kajabi 2026: True Costs, Honest Features, One Clear Choice

We’ve helped over 1,100 coaching and training programs find the right platform for the past 8 years, so when people ask us about Thinkific vs Kajabi, we don’t have to guess or rely on blogger opinions.

Every other comparison article you’ve read was probably written by affiliates who earn a commission when you click their link. Read long enough, and you realize the “balanced” review was never balanced in the first place, but rather a funnel with footnotes.

This one’s different.

We are GroupApp, a group learning platform that has watched creators make the wrong platform choice and pay for it for months. That gives us no incentive to soften the truth.

Kajabi dominates some categories, while Thinkific dominates others. And in the category that matters most for group coaching and structured programs, both of them fall short.

Thinkific vs Kajabi: Quick Summary Table

Category	Thinkific	Kajabi
Starting price	$49/month	$179/month
Course creation tools	Rich: 12+ lesson types	Good: limited lesson types
Student assessment	Quizzes, exams, surveys, assignments	Quizzes and assessments only
Live sessions	Requires Zoom integration	Native live video up to 200 people
Community building	Basic forum tools	Challenges, gamification, group chats
Email marketing	Basic 3-email sequences only	Full email marketing suite
Sales funnels	2 rigid templates	5+ customizable funnel blueprints
Website builder	3 themes, limited customization	10+ themes, A/B testing, blogging
AI tools	AI quiz generator, AI captions	Creator Studio, AI Cofounder
Transaction fees	0% with Thinkific Payments	0% with Kajabi Payments
Mobile app	Add-on at $199/mo	Included on Growth plan
Third-party integrations	90+ app store integrations	12+ native, Zapier for rest
Group program delivery	Not built for this	Not built for this
Free trial	30-day free trial	14-day free trial

We kick off this comparison with pricing because that’s what most people care about first. Then we move through every feature that matters for building a real online course business, section by section.

By the end, you’ll know exactly which platform to choose, or whether you should skip both of them entirely.

Let’s get started.

1. Thinkific vs Kajabi: Pricing & Transaction Fees

Many Thinkific vs Kajabi pricing comparisons will only show you the monthly billing numbers and move on. That’s the least useful thing I can tell you.

The monthly subscription is just the starting point, because both platforms have fee structures, surcharges, and feature gates that can completely change the real cost depending on your revenue level, payment processing choice, and where you live.

This is the full picture, including the parts both platforms bury in their help centers.

What You See on the Thinkific Pricing Page 

Thinkific offers four monthly plans, with annual billing saving 25-27% depending on the plan.

Plan	Monthly billing	Annual billing
Basic	$49/month	$36/month
Start	$99/month	$74/month
Grow	$199/month	$149/month
Thinkific Plus	Custom pricing	Custom pricing

Every standard Thinkific plan is capped at 10,000 students, a detail buried under the “unlimited courses” headline on the marketing page, but one that matters a lot when you scale. If you exceed 10,000 students, you must upgrade to Thinkific Plus at custom enterprise pricing.

What the Thinkific Basic Plan Includes & Doesn’t

The basic plan at $49 per month looks reasonable for a first course, but it locks out a few essential features for course creators:

• No completion certificates
• No assignments
• No compliance tools
• No Zoom live sessions
• No payment plans for students
• No product bundles
• No paid memberships or subscriptions
• Only 5 digital downloads
• Only 5 coaching or webinar sessions
• Only 1 community with 5 community spaces

If you’re a creator trying to run an actual online course business (and I don’t mean uploading videos and hoping someone buys), the Start plan at $99 per month is the real entry point.

Thinkific’s Hidden Fee (The Third-Party Processor Surcharge)

This is the fee many Kajabi vs Thinkific reviews skip, and it’s the most important payment processing detail in this entire section.

Thinkific advertises zero transaction fees, which is true, but only if you use Thinkific Payments, their built-in processor.

The moment you use your own Stripe account instead, the platform charges an additional surcharge on every transaction.

Here’s the surcharge by plan when using third-party tools for payment:

Plan	Thinkific surcharge	Stripe standard fee	Your real total per transaction
Basic	5%	2.9% + $0.30	7.9% + $0.30
Start	2%	2.9% + $0.30	4.9% + $0.30
Grow	1%	2.9% + $0.30	3.9% + $0.30
Plus	0%	2.9% + $0.30	2.9% + $0.30

At $3,000 per month on Basic with your own Stripe, the surcharge costs $150 per month, bringing your real monthly cost to $186 before Stripe’s own per-transaction fee on top.

That’s a big difference from the advertised $36 per month.

This surcharge applies to course creators in the US, Canada, the UK, and the EU using their own Stripe account. It covers your first $1 million in annual sales, after which Thinkific waives it entirely

Creators in countries where Thinkific Payments is not available are exempt.

The fix is simple: use Thinkific Payments instead. You pay the standard 2.9% processing fee with no additional surcharge.

What Is Thinkific Payments (TCommerce)?

Thinkific Payments is Thinkific’s own payment processing system, powered by Stripe and integrated into its TCommerce commerce platform. When you use it, the third-party surcharge disappears.

TCommerce also unlocks features that only work with Thinkific Payments:

• Smart Credit Card Retries to automatically recover failed subscription payments and protect your recurring revenue
• Incomplete Purchase Reminders for abandoned cart email automation
• Buy Now, Pay Later options for students
• Automated sales tax solutions
• Consolidated payment, subscription, and reporting dashboard

The catch is that Thinkific Payments is only available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and select EU countries.

If you’re a creator in South America, Africa, Asia, or unsupported regions, you’ll need third-party tools like Stripe or PayPal directly. So you pay the additional surcharge on Basic and Start plans.

As of March 1, 2026, the Subscriptions and Payment Plans fee on Thinkific Payments was increased from 0.5% to 0.7%. This means subscription and payment plan transactions through Thinkific Payments now cost 3.6% total (2.9% base + 0.7% subscription fee), not the headline 2.9%.

PayPal on Thinkific (Another Gate)

PayPal is available as a payment option only on the Grow plan at $199 per month or higher.

If you’re on Basic or Start and your students want to pay with PayPal, they can’t.

That’s a conversion constraint for certain audiences, and it’s something most Kajabi vs Thinkific cost breakdowns never mention.

Thinkific’s Real Cost at Different Revenue Levels

Here’s what Thinkific actually costs per month at different revenue points, assuming you use Thinkific Payments on the Start plan:

Monthly revenue	Plan cost	Processing (2.9% + 0.7% subs)	Total monthly cost
$1,000	$99	$29 – $36	$128 – $135
$3,000	$99	$87 – $108	$186 – $207
$5,000	$99	$145 – $180	$244 – $279
$10,000	$199 (Grow)	$290 – $360	$489 – $559

The Grow plan becomes necessary once you need PayPal, enhanced analytics, group orders, API access, or want to remove Thinkific branding from your online course platform.

What You See on the Kajabi Pricing Page

Kajabi restructured its pricing in January 2026 (the first major Kajabi vs Thinkific pricing shift in nearly a decade)

The Kickstarter plan was removed from public pricing, and every remaining plan went up.

Plan	Monthly billing	Annual billing
Basic	$179/month	$143/month
Growth	$249/month	$199/month
Pro	$499/month	$399/month

The January 2026 restructure raised Growth from $159 to $199 per month billed annually (a 25% jump). Existing customers were transitioned to the new pricing, which generated a lot of pushback in creator communities.

The $ 89-per-month Kickstarter plan still exists, but it’s not publicly listed on the main pricing page.

It’s available through specific signup links with one product, 250 contacts, and one website. Creators use it only for testing, but outgrow it almost immediately.

The Product and Contact Limits That Force Upgrades Fast

The 5-product limit on the basic plan is the most common reason to upgrade on Kajabi.

What counts as a product on the Kajabi platform is:

• Online course
• Coaching program
• Community membership
• Digital download
• Paid newsletter
• Podcast episode

All count separately, though, so if you plan to offer multiple online courses, a membership, coaching packages, and digital downloads, you’ll hit the 5-product ceiling fast.

The 2,500-contact limit on Basic is even more constraining.

Contacts include your entire email marketing list (everyone who has opted in, purchased, or signed up for a lead magnet). A creator with an active email automation strategy can hit this limit within months.

Once you exceed either limit, you must upgrade to Growth at $249 per month.

So the effective entry price for most real Kajabi businesses is closer to $249 per month, and not $179.

Kajabi Payments (The Fees They Leave Out of the Pricing Page)

Kajabi advertises 0% transaction fees, which is technically accurate for platform transaction fees.

But it doesn’t tell you what you pay on every sale when you use the Kajabi platform for payment processing.

Kajabi Payments Base Rates

Plan	Per-transaction rate
Basic	2.9% + $0.30
Growth	2.8% + $0.30
Pro	2.7% + $0.30

That looks standard, right? But Kajabi’s own help center documents two additional surcharges that almost no Kajabi vs Thinkific comparison article mentions.

Surcharge 1: The Subscription and Payment Plan Fee

Kajabi’s own help center confirms an additional 0.7% on every subscription or payment plan transaction. For an online course business running on memberships and recurring revenue, the real effective rate on Basic is 3.6% + $0.30, not 2.9%.

If you sell a $ 97-per-month membership on Kajabi Basic, your actual processing cost per transaction is 3.6% + $0.30 = $3.79, not $2.82. On 100 active subscribers, that’s roughly $100 more in processing per month than the headline rate suggests.

Surcharge 2: The International Card Fee

• An additional 1.5% applies to international cards.
• International subscription sales hit 5.1% + $0.30 per transaction.
• Buy Now, Pay Later via Afterpay or Klarna runs 6% + $0.30.

For course creators with a global audience, this is a cost that disappears entirely on online course platforms with 0% transaction fees like GroupApp.

What Happens When You Use Your Own Stripe?

If you want to use your own Stripe account with Kajabi instead of Kajabi Payments, the platform charges an additional platform surcharge on top of what third-party tools already cost:

Plan	Kajabi surcharge	Stripe standard	Your real total
Basic	2%	2.9% + $0.30	4.9% + $0.30
Growth	1%	2.9% + $0.30	3.9% + $0.30
Pro	0.5%	2.9% + $0.30	3.4% + $0.30

At $3,000 per month in revenue on Basic, that 2% costs $60 per month, or $720 per year, solely due to the processor choice.

PayPal is exempt from the third-party surcharge.

Creators in countries where Kajabi Payments isn’t yet available are also exempt and pay only Stripe’s standard rates.

What Kajabi Payments Doesn’t Tell You About Leaving

This is one of the highest hidden costs in Kajabi’s payment model, and almost no Kajabi vs. Thinkific comparison 2026 article covers it.

If you use Kajabi Payments, your subscription relationships are tied to the platform. 

Multiple long-term users report on Trustpilot that leaving Kajabi means losing recurring subscription customers.

When you migrate to another platform and you manage paying members through Kajabi Payments, moving them to a new processor requires them to re-enter their payment details.

And we all know a big percentage of those subscribers won’t complete those steps.

That’s a real and measurable churn event that course creators only discover after they’ve already committed to Kajabi Payments.

If you use your own Stripe account with Kajabi instead, you retain ownership of the customer relationships. The trade-off is the 0.5% to 2% surcharge, but some creators feel it’s worth paying for the ownership flexibility.

The January 2026 Pricing Backlash: What Really Happened

Before January 2026, the Thinkific vs Kajabi cost gap looked very different.

Growth was $159 per month annually, and Pro was $319 per month.

The restructure raised those to $199 and $399, respectively, removed the Kickstarter plan from public pricing, adjusted contact limits, and introduced the third-party processor platform fee in markets where Kajabi Payments is available.

Legacy customers were not grandfathered at the old rates.

So any pricing data you find in older review articles is wrong. 

If you see Kajabi listed at $89, $149, or $199 as the starting price anywhere, that article was written before January 2026, and the numbers no longer apply.

Before we move on to the next comparison feature, use the revenue calculator below to see how much Kajabi vs Thinkific vs GroupApp would cost you to run your business. We’ve included the subscription fees, transaction fees, and everything in between.

2. Thinkific vs Kajabi: Course Creation 

Both platforms use a drag-and-drop course builder, let you add video, audio, text, and PDFs, and both support drip content, content locking, and completion certificates.

Thinkific Offers More Lesson Types and Better Content Flexibility

Thinkific supports more lesson types than Kajabi. 

You can add text, audio, video, PDFs, multimedia presentations, Zoom live sessions, quizzes, assignments, exams, surveys, and forms as individual lesson types inside your course.

This means you don’t have to put everything inside a text block and hope your students scroll to find it because each content type gets its own dedicated lesson format with the right display.

Thinkific also handles external video embedding better than Kajabi. 

If you have course videos hosted on Vimeo, Wistia, or Loom, you can embed them in Thinkific with a simple link. The video appears in the hero section of the course player exactly where students expect to find it.

Kajabi’s approach to external video is more painful. 

You paste an iframe code into the lesson body, and the video appears below the hero section. 

Students have to scroll down to find it, and the hero section stays empty unless you manually add a thumbnail. That’s not a good experience for them.

Kajabi Has a Better Course Player and Native Live Sessions

What Kajabi does better is the overall learning experience inside the course player. 

The interface is polished, the navigation is clean, and students know exactly where they are in the program without having to think about it.

Even more importantly, Kajabi has native live video sessions inside course modules. 

You can host live sessions for up to 200 participants, automatically record them, and upload the recordings as course lessons. 

Plus, students are notified via email before the session starts.

Thinkific doesn’t have this feature. 

If you want live sessions in your Thinkific course, you schedule a Zoom meeting and drop the link into a lesson. Students click the link, leave the Thinkific interface, attend the Zoom call, and then return to the Thinkific interface. 

That context-switching feels disconnected compared to Kajabi’s native experience.

Both Platforms Have AI Course Creation Tools, But Thinkific’s Are Better

Both platforms use AI to generate course outlines from a description you provide. 

Type in your topic, and the platform suggests a structure, which is useful for creators who know what they want to teach but freeze when it comes to organizing the content.

Kajabi goes further with Creator Studio, an AI tool that repurposes your course videos into social media posts, email newsletters, community announcements, and blog content. If you’re building content marketing alongside your course, Creator Studio can save you hours per week.

Thinkific has an AI quiz generator that creates quiz questions from your course content, PDFs, or text. 

It also has AI captioning that adds closed captions in the speaker’s language. For courses that require formal assessment, these tools are 10x better than social media repurposing.

3. Thinkific vs Kajabi: Student Assessment

Assessing students is how you prove your program works. 

Completion certificates, quiz scores, and assignment grades can turn a video library into a credentialed learning program.

Thinkific Offers Four Assessment Types and Real Grading Depth

Thinkific has four assessment options: quizzes, exams, assignments, and surveys.

This is more than most online course platforms offer, and the depth inside each one is impressive.

In quizzes, you can set multiple-choice questions, require a minimum passing grade, add answer explanations, and enforce that a student must pass before advancing. 

You can also randomize question order, import questions from Excel, and generate questions automatically from your course content using the AI quiz generator.

The exam feature integrates with Brillium, a professional exam platform, for even more advanced question types, anti-cheating tools, and formal certification requirements. 

This integration requires a paid Brillium account and is only available on higher plans.

Completion certificates in Thinkific require the Start plan at $99 per month or above. 

They are customizable and are issued automatically when a student finishes the course, allowing them to download and share.

Kajabi Has Quizzes and Basic Assessments Only

Kajabi keeps assessments simple with quizzes and a general assessment type. 

The quiz builder supports multiple-choice, checkbox, short-answer, and file-upload response types.

That said, Kajabi does let students upload files as quiz responses, which effectively serve as assignment submissions. And the platform supports auto-grading and manual grading with notifications when a student completes a quiz.

But there are no surveys, a formal exam infrastructure, or integration with professional assessment tools. 

For course creators who need documented evidence of student learning, Kajabi’s assessment system is thin.

4. Thinkific vs Kajabi: Community Building

Every platform claims to have community features in 2026, but can those features retain students, or are they just a check box on the pricing page?

Thinkific’s Chat Forum Isn’t That Inspiring

Thinkific gives you spaces inside your community that work like Slack channels. 

Students post text, images, and videos, comment on posts, and tag each other with the @ function.

You can organize spaces by topic, create private spaces for specific cohorts or groups, schedule events, and allow members to RSVP.

But Thinkific’s community lacks gamification. 

There are no leaderboards, challenges, group chats, or native livestreaming for community events. You schedule a Zoom link and hope people show up.

Kajabi Has Real Community 

Kajabi’s community features are in a different category from Thinkific’s. 

And it’s not that Kajabi is incrementally better; it’s just that it was built for engagement, while Thinkific’s community feels like an afterthought.

In Kajabi, your community has access groups, direct messaging between members, group chats that work like Slack, challenges with reward structures, and a gamification leaderboard where members earn points and badges for participation.

You can also host live events natively inside the community for up to 200 attendees without leaving the platform.

No Zoom link required. Members RSVP, receive reminder notifications, and join from inside Kajabi.

5. Thinkific vs Kajabi: Email Marketing

Email marketing is where the Thinkific vs. Kajabi comparison becomes almost comedic.

Because one platform has a full marketing suite, while the other has three email slots and a prayer.

Thinkific Gives You Three Emails and a Pat on the Back

Thinkific’s email automation supports two types of sequences: sales flow and abandoned cart emails. 

Each sequence can include up to 3 emails, but you can’t add more, change the timing between emails, or use triggers based on user behavior.

The email editor is text-only, so no images, videos, CTAs, countdown timers, or branded layouts. You have to type your email like it’s 2009.

Compared to dedicated email marketing tools, Thinkific’s built-in email features feel like a rough prototype that never got updated.

Kajabi Serves You a Full Email Marketing Buffet

Kajabi’s email marketing is a separate product entirely. 

You get broadcast emails and automated sequences with no limit on the number of emails in a sequence. 

You can set the timing between emails, define behavioral triggers, apply conditional filters, and segment your audience with tags.

The email editor is visual and template-driven, with ten email design templates, a drag-and-drop builder, support for images, videos, countdown timers, CTAs, and branded layouts. You can even save custom templates for reuse.

Kajabi also has A/B testing for email broadcasts. 

This feature lets you test different subject lines, preview text, or email content versions. The platform records results, you analyze which version performs better, and then send it to the remaining list.

6. Thinkific vs Kajabi: Sales Funnels and Marketing Tools

Building a great course is half the job, and selling it is the other half. 

In this section, Kajabi’s all-in-one model shows its biggest advantage over Thinkific.

Thinkific Has Two Funnel Templates and a Site Builder That Gets the Job Done

Thinkific has two funnel types: 

• A Free Lesson Funnel 
• A Sales Page Funnel. 

Both funnels are fixed in structure, meaning you get a set number of steps, but you can’t add more, modify the step sequence, or add email sequences inside the funnel.

The Sales Page Funnel gives you three steps: the sales page, checkout, and a thank-you page, and that’s it. 

If you want to build a webinar funnel, a launch funnel, or a product sequence funnel on Thinkific, you need ClickFunnels.

Kajabi: Six Funnel Blueprints and a Website Builder That Competes With Dedicated Tools

Kajabi’s funnel builder offers six templates: 

• Product launch
• Coaching campaign
• Zoom Webinar
• Free book
• Sales page
• Freebie

When you select a blueprint, Kajabi automatically generates all the relevant funnel steps, including landing pages, checkout pages, and complete email sequences.

For example, the Product Launch funnel blueprint automatically creates an opt-in page, a 10-email nurture sequence, three pre-launch content pages, and a checkout page. You customize the content, and Kajabi runs the automation.

Kajabi also has a Shopping Cart feature that lets customers buy multiple products in a single checkout, unlike Thinkific.

7. Thinkific vs Kajabi: Website Builder

Both platforms want you to use their built-in website builder, so you don’t need Squarespace or WordPress. 

But the distance between what they offer is significant.

Thinkific Website Builder Is Decent, Just Not Impressive

Thinkific gives you three website theme templates that are clean, mobile-friendly, and usable. 

You can add sections using 20+ section templates and customize text, images, and CTAs within each section.

What you can’t do is change the color scheme of a template, reorder elements within a section, add animations, customize for tablet, or add a blog. 

The site builder is beginner-friendly, but it stops growing with you after about six months.

Kajabi Website Builder Is Closer to a Real Website Tool

Kajabi has 10+ professional website themes and a page builder that is significantly more flexible than Thinkific’s. 

You can change backgrounds, padding, animations, and custom CSS. 

It supports blogging with SEO settings and has A/B testing for landing pages, which is something very few course platforms offer.

Kajabi also has custom widgets available as add-ons. 

These are pre-designed interactive elements you add to pages for specific functionality like 3D card animations, booking integrations, and countdown timers. They range from $5 to $27 per month, depending on which ones you use.

8. Thinkific vs Kajabi: Mobile App

A branded mobile app means your community name and icon appear in the App Store, not the platform’s. Your students would also download your program and not some generic app.

This is a branding and retention advantage that most course platforms either don’t offer or charge heavily for.

Thinkific Mobile App Is a Separate $199/Month Add-On

Thinkific offers a branded mobile app for iOS and Android as a paid add-on at $199 per month on top of your plan subscription. It’s included on select Thinkific Plus plans.

So, on the Start plan at $99 per month, adding the mobile app brings the total to $298 per month. That’s a hard sell for many independent course creators.

Kajabi Mobile App Is Included on the Growth Plan

Kajabi includes the branded mobile app on the Growth plan at $249 per month. 

The app is valued at $199 per month on its own, so you’re getting the Growth plan plus a branded app for $249 instead of paying $199 + $249 separately.

The Kajabi Customer App is also available on all plans as a generic Kajabi-branded app where your community lives inside Kajabi’s interface. The branded app (your own name in the App Store) is included with Growth and Pro.

9. Thinkific vs Kajabi: Third-Party Integrations

Both platforms connect with Zapier, which technically gives them access to thousands of apps.

Thinkific Offers 90+ App Store Integrations

Thinkific has an app store with 90+ native integrations covering marketing tools, analytics platforms, email services, CRM systems, and course creation add-ons.

This is a lot more than Kajabi’s native integration count.

API and webhook access are available on the Grow plan at $199 per month and above.

Below that, you must use Zapier for anything beyond native integrations.

The Thinkific app store, on the other hand, includes integrations with Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Salesforce, and a wide range of education-specific tools.

Kajabi Offers 12+ Native Integrations With API on Growth

Kajabi has fewer native integrations than Thinkific, around 12 to 15 core ones, including Zapier, Facebook Pixel, ConvertKit, Mailchimp, Drip, and Typeform. 

The API is available on the Growth plan and above.

Given that Kajabi has more built-in functionality, the smaller integration count makes some sense.

You need fewer integrations when the platform already handles email marketing, funnels, and payments internally.

10. Thinkific vs Kajabi: AI Tools

Both platforms shipped significant AI updates in 2025 and 2026, and the tools they built reflect exactly who each platform was built for.

Thinkific AI Is Built for Educators

Thinkific’s AI tools are education-focused.

The AI course outline generator creates a curriculum structure from your topic description.

The AI quiz generator, on the other hand, creates multiple-choice questions from your course content, PDFs, and text lessons, saving you a lot of time.

Thinkific also has AI captioning for videos, generating accurate closed captions in the speaker’s language, which is valuable for accessibility compliance and international audiences.

Kajabi AI Is Built for Marketers

Kajabi’s Creator Studio is the standout AI feature.

It ingests your course video recordings and generates marketing content like social media posts, email newsletters, community announcements, and blog articles.

If you create video content and want to build a marketing presence around it, you don’t have to repurpose anything with Creator Studio.

Kajabi also has a new AI chatbot called Cofounder that gives business advice and content suggestions.

Reviews of its usefulness are mixed: some creators find it helpful for early-stage strategy questions, while others feel it is too generic to replace real advice.

Both platforms have AI course outline generators, and both are functionally similar for that specific task.

Thinkific vs Kajabi: Pros and Cons

Thinkific Pros and Cons

Kajabi Pros and Cons

Thinkific vs Kajabi: User Reviews

Feature breakdowns tell you what a platform can do, but user reviews tell you what it feels like to live inside one.

This is what creators on sites like G2, Capterra, Reddit, and Trustpilot report after months and years of using each platform.

What Thinkific Users Like

The two things that come up in almost every positive Thinkific review are the course builder and the ease of getting started.

“What I like most about Thinkific is how easy it is to use. The platform is very intuitive, which lets me focus on creating content instead of dealing with technical issues. It gives me everything I need to run my courses in one place, from hosting lessons to managing students and sales.” — Verified reviewer, December 2025 — Thinkific reviews on G2

“I like that Thinkific provides us with a complete course platform without needing a lot of custom development, allowing us to focus on content and learner experience instead of building tech from scratch. I love the course builder, the student experience, and the payments & access control features. The automation and analytics also stand out to me.” — Verified reviewer, December 2025 — Thinkific reviews on G2

What Thinkific Users Dislike

The common complaints are about everything that sits around the course builder, including marketing tools, live sessions, and the billing experience once you try to leave.

“I do wish that it natively integrated with more email marketing platforms. I had to join Kit and couldn’t natively use my other platform to automate sending emails.” — Verified reviewer, March 7, 2026 — Thinkific reviews on Capterra

“Some design and customization options are limited, and advanced features are only available on higher-tier plans. It would be great to have more flexibility in page layouts, more control over the checkout design, and access to advanced features without needing to upgrade to higher priced plans.” — Verified reviewer — Thinkific reviews on G2

What Kajabi Users Like

Kajabi’s strongest reviews center on one consistent theme: it replaced multiple tools and simplified operations.

“We have used Kajabi for our training portal for quite some time and recently moved our entire CRM and sales pages to the platform as well. It is great having everything under one roof!” — Austyn, Verified reviewer, September 10, 2025 — Kajabi reviews on Trustpilot

“I love Kajabi and use it for everything. Website, landing pages, checkout, payments, emails, courses, podcasts. It’s all great and I love having it all in one place.” — Deidrea Kiesling, Verified reviewer, September 22, 2025 — Kajabi reviews on Trustpilot

What Kajabi Users Dislike

Price has always been a concern, but the January 2026 restructure and a pattern of removing features and reselling them as paid add-ons pushed a new wave of frustration into review platforms.

“The new update is ridiculous. They removed the option to add subtitles manually just to force you to use their AI feature — it will cost an extra $90 monthly just to add subtitles. I was happy with Kajabi before.” — Adam, Verified reviewer, December 1, 2025 — Kajabi reviews on Trustpilot

“Used to be a great company… Now, they just make updates that don’t make sense and are not working correctly…” — Learn German With Anja, Verified reviewer, February 9, 2026 — Kajabi reviews on Trustpilot

The gap between G2 and Trustpilot on both platforms tells you something.

G2 reviewers are typically active users evaluating the software itself (they rate it highly).

On the other hand, Trustpilot reviewers are often writing after a billing dispute, a cancellation problem, or a feature being removed.

The software is good on both platforms, but the experience around it (billing, cancellation, pricing changes) is where the complaints live.

The 2026 Gap Neither Platform Fills

Both Thinkific and Kajabi were built for a solo learner who buys a course and watches it on their own (self-paced learning).

Neither was built for the format that’s driving the fastest-growing coaching and training businesses in 2026: structured group programs where a cohort of students moves through a curriculum together.

In Thinkific, the course and the community live in separate tabs.

A student finishes a lesson, wants to ask a question, clicks on the community, finds a feed of unrelated posts, and loses the thread.

The experience is better in Kajabi, but the course still delivers to individuals rather than to a cohort moving together.

Group learning is something both platforms added to their spaces after the fact and called it good enough.

But it’s really not good enough for creators running group coaching, certification tracks, or cohort programs

GroupApp: The Best Thinkific vs Kajabi Alternative for Group Learning

GroupApp is the group learning platform for coaching and training programs.

Over 1,100 programs run on it, including professional certification tracks, business coaching cohorts, and structured training programs for corporate teams.

Every lesson on the platform has its own discussion channel inside the same lesson. 

This means the conversation for Week 3 lives in the Week 3 lesson, so students can ask questions there rather than a general feed they have to scroll through to find.

That single design decision drives higher engagement and completion than either Thinkific or Kajabi can deliver, because learning stays social. 

This is what GroupApp brings to the table:

• Enforce Completion: Students who skip ahead rarely finish, so you can lock a module until the previous one is done. Students move through your curriculum the way you designed it, resulting in higher completion rates and more testimonials, referrals, and renewals.
• Progress tracking tied to automated re-engagement: GroupApp shows you who hasn’t logged in for 14 days, which lessons have the lowest completion rates, and which assignments are missing across every program, all in one dashboard. From there, a workflow automatically triggers when any member goes quiet and sends a re-engagement message without you having to touch anything. In essence, the platform watches over your students so you don’t have to.
• Cohort segmentation that runs itself: Members who purchase Plan A automatically go to Segment A. Each segment then controls which channels, events, resources, and workflows apply to that group, so your January cohort and your April cohort never mix. You also don’t have to adjust permissions every time someone joins.
• Group subscriptions that close corporate contracts: For corporate, one manager can buy a subscription tailored to their entire team instead of individual purchases for each team member. Similarly, when someone leaves, the manager removes them, and when a new hire joins, the manager adds them. You never touch the billing.
• Completion certificates on every plan that markets your next cohort: Certificates are issued automatically at program completion, branded with your logo and the member’s name. Members post them on LinkedIn, send them to employers, and use them to justify the program cost to their manager.
• A resource library that lives where students expect it: The Week 3 workbook lives in Week 3. The session replay lives in the calendar entry for that session. And access follows the same rules as everything else: gated by plan, segment, or course enrollment automatically. This means members never ask where something is, because it’s always exactly where the program logic says it should be.

GroupApp Pricing

• Free: $0 (For creators starting a paid community with discussions and events.)
• Grow: $64/month (For creators running learning programs with courses and coaching.)
• Scale: $144/month (For businesses running multiple programs with automation.)
• Organization: $384/month (For organizations needing custom integrations and priority support.)

All plans come with real 0% transaction fees, so you keep 100% of your profits.

Thinkific vs Kajabi: The Final Verdict

After going through every category, here’s where the Kajabi vs Thinkific: “Which is better?” question lands.

Choose Thinkific If:

• You’re starting your first online course and want the lowest possible entry cost
• Student assessment quality matters, with features like quizzes, exams, surveys, and assignments core to your program
• You already have an email marketing tool and a website you love, and you don’t want to replace them
• You serve a corporate or institutional audience that requires SCORM compliance (Thinkific Plus)
• You want a 30-day free trial instead of 14 days to properly evaluate the platform before paying
• You need 90+ third-party integrations and want flexibility to connect your existing tool stack

Choose Kajabi If:

• You want one platform to handle your course, email marketing, funnels, website, and community
• Community engagement is critical, so you need live events, gamification, and group chats to keep members active
• Native live video sessions inside your courses are non-negotiable for your teaching model
• You’re scaling a knowledge business, and the cost of multiple separate tools is already hurting your margins
• You want a branded mobile app and would rather have it included in your plan than pay $199 extra per month
• You want advanced sales funnels with six template blueprints and auto-generated email sequences.

Choose GroupApp If:

• You run structured group programs where a cohort moves through a curriculum together
• Students are skipping ahead, disengaging, or not finishing — and you need a platform that enforces the learning path
• You want community discussion to live inside each lesson, not in a separate tab
• You sell to corporate clients who need one purchase for an entire team
• You run multiple cohorts simultaneously and need automatic segmentation to keep groups separate
• You want workflow automation built for program delivery, not marketing sequences
• You want 0% transaction fees with no hidden surcharges as your revenue grows
• You are tired of stitching together five tools to deliver one program

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