What Is Kajabi and Is It Worth It? – Read Before Signing Up

Finding a platform to host your online course business can be complicated when you see all the options. How can you know which platform is the right one for you?

If you’re on this journey, you’ve probably heard about Kajabi. Kajabi was created as an all-in-one solution for online businesses, but we must ask – is it worth it?

We’re here to answer that question with this article. Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is Kajabi, what it’s used for, and how much it costs
• What are the most significant drawbacks of Kajabi
• And finally, what is the best alternative for Kajabi, and how can you use it?

Without further ado, let’s get into it.

What Is Kajabi?

Image source

Founded in 2010, Kajabi is an all-in-one platform created to make it easier for people to run their online businesses. Like with similar platforms, you won’t need coding knowledge to make Kajabi work.

Kajabi is made so people can sell online courses, memberships, and coaching programs and market their services online. It comes equipped with creation and marketing tools to help you with this.

The creation tools help with the primary function of this all-in-one platform, which is to provide users with a place to host their websites, with landing pages, sales pages, and sometimes even with a custom domain.

Kajabi lets users create websites and landing pages with the help of a page builder with preexisting themes to handle the page design. You can also create online courses, membership sites, and educational content.

Image source

When it comes to marketing tools, Kajabi helps your business grow on this single and centralized platform by running a good content marketing system. Run marketing campaigns through automation tools, email marketing, sales funnels, and one-click marketing sequence templates. And if you want to see how email marketing and other marketing funnels are working for you and your marketing campaigns, turn to great analytic options.

What is Kajabi University?

Kajabi aims to be an all-in-one solution with a lot of different tools, which can be confusing. That’s why they created Kajabi University, where you can find out all you need to know about this platform and how to run an online business.

Kajabi University is also great for getting in touch with fellow entrepreneurs. However, you gain access to this only if you’re a paying member. Now let’s see what Kajabi is used for.

Image source

What Is Kajabi Used For?

Kajabi was made for all online businesses that sell digital products, but it’s primarily used for online courses and coaching programs. The platform was created to simplify the process of making, selling, and marketing digital products.

However, online courses aren’t the only thing this platform offers. Kajabi can also be used as a membership platform, where you can create a community and interact with members. Whether you are a personal development coach or a course creator, Kajabi makes it simple to run your business online.

Kajabi can also be used as a platform for hosting podcasts because it lets users share files both with the public and with members only. Finally, Kajabi can be a website builder for your online products.

How Much Does Kajabi Cost?

Image source

After a little Kajabi cost analysis, we have to say it isn’t cheap. There are more affordable online platform options, and they have good features to match. So, is Kajabi worth the price? Let’s break down the pricing plans.

First of all, Kajabi does offer a 14-day free trial, so you can see whether it’s the right choice for you or not. You’ll have to fill in your credit card info, but don’t worry — Kajabi is safe and has a money-back guarantee.

The pricing plans include web hosting, an unlimited number of landing pages, unlimited marketing emails, and access to Kajabi University. Also, Kajabi doesn’t take a portion of your revenue. But the number of products, pipelines, members, admins, and websites can vary.

The cheapest plan is the Basic plan, at $149 per month. With this plan, you can host three products and three pipelines with 1,000 active members and 10,000 contacts. With the basic plan, you get one website with a spot for one admin user.

The Growth plan is the most popular option and will cost $199 per month. This option comes with 15 products and 15 pipelines, with 10,000 active members and 25,000 contacts. The Growth plan is meant for just one website, but you can have up to 10 admins. You also get some additional features, like affiliate programs and the ability to remove Kajabi branding.

Lastly, the Pro plan costs $399 monthly and has everything the previous two plans have. However, it comes with 100 products, 100 pipelines, 20,000 active members, and 100,000 contacts. With this plan, Kajabi offers space for three websites and 25 admins, and you can even get access to the code editor.

As you can see, none of these plans are very affordable, especially for small businesses. Even the Basic plan has a high cost and is hardly suitable for small business owners. You can save some money by going annual subscription, which gives you 20% off your monthly subscription.

But is it worth it? So and so. Kajabi offers an all-in-one marketing platform that’s supposed to solve all of the marketing challenges you run into as an online business owner when it comes to marketing and selling your product. It’s made so you don’t have to turn to third-party tools to handle your online business – everything should be in one place.

However, the problem with Kajabi is its solutions’ quality. You can’t focus on individual tools and specific problems when you create an all-in-one platform. That’s why all of the tools are functional, but they can’t be described as exceptional. Let’s take a more in-depth look into what Kajabi lacks.

What Are the Drawbacks of Kajabi

Before we evaluate if it’s worth it, we should check out some disadvantages Kajabi has.

Kajabi is a reasonably simple platform; you don’t need coding knowledge for the landing page builder. However, the customization options are seriously lacking. Incorporating customizable themes is great, but they don’t let you be very creative with how you want your website, landing pages, and opt-in pages to look.

Additionally, the lack of customizable themes doesn’t just affect your landing page but also your emails. These are very simple and could be more eye-catching to pique the interest of your contacts in what you have to say. Other platforms offer more in this area than Kajabi does with its customizable templates.

Next, if course creators want to use Kajabi, know that student engagement tools come up short. They’re there, and they work, but one example is that you can’t randomize questions on quizzes and assessments, which can be a teaching and learning obstacle.

When it comes to the course marketplace on Kajabi itself, it’s relatively small and doesn’t have well-defined search options for students looking for a course. Also, you can’t offer certificates to students who finished your courses through Kajabi. If you want this, you’ll have to incorporate a third-party tool.

And speaking of third-party tools, it’s sort of complicated to integrate Kajabi with other third-party tools. Kajabi was created as an all-in-one platform, but sometimes you need to use a better tool—or one you’re used to—to meet your goal. The lack of simple integrations can be a significant downside.

For example, Kajabi supports Stripe and Paypal integrations, and these are the only payment options. But if you want to use Kajabi with a third-party tool for integrated payments, you’ll have trouble making Kajabi integrate. Additionally, Stripe payment gateway tends to have issues with cancellations.

Now, let’s get the price out of the way. Kajabi integrates a lot of tools, but it’s pricier, and the question is – is the cost-to-value ratio any good?

When it comes to building courses and creating a learning community, something you should aim for as a modern course maker, Kajabi lacks some finesse.

Kajabi lets you post a course, enables students to take it, and has all the basic features you might need. But that approach doesn’t have the same impact on students’ success and engagement online.

This platform places many different tools at the disposal of coaches and creators, but a lot of what they offer isn’t good enough to justify the price. You can find more suitable and affordable alternatives if you need more customization options or better student engagement tools.

How to Bring Your Community and Courses Together?

You can use Kajabi for their email marketing and other marketing tools, but when it comes to learning, modern problems require modern solutions.

Studies have shown that creating a network of individuals who are learning something together can not only improve their knowledge but also help improve student success and engagement.

From a business standpoint, the happier the students are with their results, the more likely they will keep being your clients and take other courses you offer.

Unlike Kajabi, GroupApp is a modern learning community platform for online courses. This platform is built to help you sell, deliver, and engage students in your online course through community-driven learning.

Let’s check out why GroupApp is an excellent alternative for course creators and coaches looking to build online learning communities.

Making Courses

You can share your skills with the people in your learning community on GroupApp by using course creation tools to make interactive online courses with videos, audio, worksheets, and posts. Different membership tiers can have different access levels to your content.

One of the helpful features GroupApp has to offer is the possibility of collaborative learning. For example, you can post traditional courses for individual students, or they can take them in a group. Collaborative learning can enhance student achievement and course completion.

Drip Schedule

If you want to control students’ access to your lessons, use the drip schedule option. This way, you can control how many days after enrollment they can access certain lessons or post lessons on a specific date for everyone in the group.

Tracking Progress

Analytics are essential in all areas, especially in student success. This feature will show you where students are struggling, so you can either help them personally or change something up in the course.

Organize Events

Video hosting and webinars are fantastic ways to engage with your community and offer focused learning opportunities. It will seem like you’re in a classroom with them, which can help with retention.

You can make events for your community with GroupApp and easily host them by integrating with Zoom. This way, you can host courses, webinars, and training programs.

Sell Courses and Resources

GroupApp allows you to sell courses and digital products inside of your community. This is an excellent way to get paid for your expertise and can become a reliable source of revenue.

Creating a Community

GroupApp connects your community and course to boost the success of your online course business. You don’t need to create a separate page or even a Facebook group for your coaching program, as you would on similar platforms.

On GroupApp you can create a community, allowing users to contact each other through channels, group chats, or public messages. You can also organize community discussions or course discussions in different channels. So if students have any questions or issues, they can share posts and directly ask for help from other peers enrolled in your course.

Channels

You can divide the community section into different channels based on your needs. You can create them by the topic or even by the membership area. Let’s say there’s a specific topic in your course you’d like to keep open to discussion with your members. Now you can create a channel just for that!

Because GroupApp lets you create a membership community and charge fees, different channels can be made for different membership tiers. This means you can create moderated channels where every person in your community can interact with a select group.

Library

GroupApp lets you put all of the resources for your students and the membership community together in the community library. Everything is near at hand, whether it’s videos, PDFs, worksheets, audio content, or any other additional materials.

Charge Membership Subscriptions

While Facebook groups and similar platforms allow you to build a community, they’re not very profitable. Also, they can be hard to control and distracting for students.

Hosting your learning community, charging membership fees, and having total control over the experience your members have are all made simple with GroupApp. You have the opportunity to make money with GroupApp by offering monthly, quarterly, 6 month or yearly membership subscriptions. Also, you can offer free trials for each plan.

Scheduling Emails and Posts

GroupApp also lets you schedule posts and broadcast them to your members. This way, you can prepare content in advance and free up your calendar for activities that add more value to your community. And your members will never miss out on a post!

Integrations

Integrating GroupApp with a third-party tool is done seamlessly, so you don’t have to worry if you still want to use some tools you’re used to. GroupApp lets you integrate with Zapier for better automation, or you can build your own workflow and integration with our API.

Pricing

Finally, GroupApp is a more affordable community and course platform than Kajabi. GroupApp allows lets you start with a free plan, so you can build and launch your learning community with up to 100 members for free. When you are ready to upgrade, GroupApp offers three affordable paid plans. You also have three other options, and they all come with a free trial.

The Basic plan will set you back only $39 per month and lets you create courses, build communities, and even get a custom domain.

The Pro plan is recommended, or just $99 per month. It offers everything the Basic plan does, plus additional features like the post and email scheduling and the ability to drip course lessons.

Lastly, brands and large organizations can use the Premium plan for $499 per month, where they also get things like custom API, 1:1 setup and onboarding, and even an account manager.

Final Takeaway

Here are the key takeaways.

The way courses in Kajabi work is old-fashioned and not suitable for small businesses. You can post a course, and people can take it. But, it fails to deliver a modern online learning experience for the students and the membership community.

It’s also not a very affordable option for what it has to offer, lacks student engagement tools, and isn’t very easy to integrate third-party tools.

If you’re looking to create a modern learning community of members that engage with your courses, work with each other, and are more satisfied with their results, try GroupApp.

Get started with our free plan or sign up for our 14-day free trial and see what our premium tools offer you.