Home App Reviews Kajabi Review: Is It Worth the Cost for Digital Businesses?
August 15, 2024
Editorial GuidelinesSuzanne is a freelance writer and web designer with 10 years of experience. She previously helped to rebuild a failed digital...
If you have a wealth of knowledge to share with others, you’ve probably thought about monetizing it at some point. While you could use a bunch of tools to build and sell your digital products or services, an all-in-one platform might be more effective.
That’s the promise that Kajabi makes. But is Kajabi worth it, considering the high costs? In this review of Kajabi, we’ll explore everything you need to know about how Kajabi works, what Kajabi is used for, and whether it’s worth it.
Kajabi is an all-in-one e-commerce platform for creators. It’s incredibly versatile and can suit the needs of all types of digital business owners. You can sell anything from one-time courses to ongoing memberships.
Kajabi is most commonly used to create and sell the following products and services:
Creators can also add special features and perks for their users. For example, course creators can add quizzes and challenges. Private forums and direct messaging enhance other kinds of memberships as well.
In addition to giving you a space to host and promote your knowledge products, Kajabi comes with a slew of business tools, like customer relationship management, email marketing, and a sales funnel builder.
Yes, Kajabi is a completely legitimate platform for digital creators. Over 100,000 people have used Kajabi to launch or maintain their online businesses. On top of that, Kajabi offers a lot of support to users.
You can find plenty of Kajabi testimonials on their website from creators testifying to how well it’s worked for them. While it won’t be worth it for everyone, it is a reputable service that has helped thousands of independent business owners.
Kajabi isn’t free, and it isn’t cheap. Before you can use their services, you have to pay for one of the monthly or annual plans. Kajabi pricing starts at $55 per month, which is a lot to ask.
On the plus side, that’s pretty much the extent of Kajabi fees. They have no revenue share fees, commission fees, or transaction fees. What you earn through Kajabi is mostly yours to take home, minus payment processing fees. This makes it a cost-effective option if you have lots of business income.
They also offer a 14-day free trial, so you can explore the platform without too much commitment. After the free trial, you’ll have to sign up for a plan to continue using Kajabi.
| Kickstarter | Basic | Growth | Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $69/month | $149/month | $199/month | $399/month |
| Annual price | $55/month | $119/month | $159/month | $319/month |
| Number of email contacts | 250 | 10,000 | 25,000 | 100,000 |
| Number of active customers | 50 | 1,000 | 10,000 | 20,000 |
| Number of websites | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Number of products | 1 | 3 | 15 | 100 |
| Number of sales funnels | 1 | 3 | 15 | 100 |
| Number of landing pages | 50 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Number of marketing emails | 1,250 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Advanced automations | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Affiliate program | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Custom branding | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Custom code editor | No | No | No | Yes |
| 24/7 support | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Kajabi’s pricing is without a doubt its biggest drawback. But why is Kajabi so expensive? This is an important question to ask since what you’re actually getting out of the service in exchange for these fees will ultimately determine whether or not Kajabi is worth it for you.
Kajabi is commonly referred to as course software. However, it offers users more than a set of course creation tools and a place to host their content. Here’s an overview of the Kajabi features that come with the cost of subscription.
Every business should have a great-looking website to represent it online. With Kajabi’s no-code, drag-and-drop website builder, it’s easy to create a complete website for your online brand.
In addition to creating a space to showcase your products and services, you can add other pages like Home, About, Contact, Resources, FAQs, and Blog. You can also choose a custom domain that matches your brand.
You won’t need to worry about the technical side of developing a mobile app—Kajabi takes care of that for you. What you will have to do is customize the following elements:
With an app of your own, your business will become discoverable in the iOS and Android app stores. What’s more, you can add features like push notifications to increase user engagement and in-app purchases to make more revenue.
Landing pages are different from the main pages of your business website. Landing pages are geared more towards capturing leads and closing sales.
For example, you could create a short landing page to promote your newsletter and build your email subscriber list. Or you could create a lengthy landing page to promote a high-ticket product like a weeks-long course.
Kajabi’s more expensive plans include tools that make landing pages even more effective. Advanced automations enable you to set up triggers and keep leads and other users moving through your sales pipeline and constantly reengaging with your business.
Kajabi has its own customer relationship management (CRM) tool. This will allow you to keep track of contacts and paying subscribers as well as manage your relationship and communications with them.
In addition, you can use tags, filters, and segments to better organize all of your contacts. This will make it easier to send targeted messages to certain customers based on their activity or purchases.
Email is often transactional in business, like purchase confirmations and “a new lesson is ready” notifications. But it can also be a promotional tool.
To start, you can add different email builder elements to your website. For instance, you can add a newsletter subscriber form. You can also add an exit intent pop-up to help capture leads or reduce website abandonment.
With the email campaign builder, you’ll be able to design personalized emails and even add elements like countdown timers. You’ll also have the ability to send one-time emails to your contacts or automated sequences to push them through your sales funnel.
With a sales funnel, you’ll use a series of messaging functions to usher interested prospects through the decision-making process. The goal is to convert as many of those people into paying customers as possible.
You don’t need advanced marketing training to create sales funnels with Kajabi. With the help of templates and pre-built frameworks, you’ll be able to get one up and running in no time.
Kajabi’s integrated payment processor, Kajabi Payments, helps to create a smooth checkout experience for your customers. It’ll also make your job easier when it comes to closing the deal and keeping your customers happy.
For starters, you’ll be able to accept a wide range of payment methods, including all major credit and debit cards. You can even offer flexible “buy now, pay later” options to customers.
What’s more, Kajabi’s checkout software offers the ability to issue refunds, pause subscriptions, close accounts, and automatically calculate sales tax. It’s also compatible with accounting software like Xero and QuickBooks Online.
In terms of collecting your earnings, Kajabi integrates with Stripe and PayPal for fast and convenient payouts.
The Creator Studio is an AI-powered tool that helps creators repurpose a single video into more than 40 different types of content.
For instance, let’s say you publish a new, 30-minute video course this month. With just a few clicks, Kajabi Creator Studio can automatically use that video as a base to generate all the following other types of content:
Course creation in and of itself is time-consuming, so having a tool to help you quickly spin up promotional materials for it is hugely beneficial.
The price of Kajabi might be high. However, when you consider the fact that you won’t need a separate website or other business software, that price might not seem like much compared to all the built-in value.
All in all, Kajabi offers a little over $160 worth of software in a single platform, as shown in the table below.
| Feature | Estimated Monthly Value |
|---|---|
| Website builder | $20 |
| Mobile app builder | $25 |
| Landing page creator | $50 |
| CRM software | $25 |
| Email marketing software | $12 |
| Sales funnel builder | $20 |
| AI-powered content marketing tool | $10 |
| TOTAL VALUE | $162 |
If you’re currently using multiple digital tools for your business, calculate their total cost to see how it compares. Also be sure to take into account whether Kajabi’s features allow the customization that your business needs.
According to Kajabi, its creators have made more than $6 billion since 2011. Some creators have even made six-figure salaries from their Kajabi products.
Kerry Marshall, Jr., for instance, has made more than $400,000 from his guitar community. Karla Lim makes about $100,000 per year from her calligraphy courses.
There are other stories online of people who’ve made massive profits on Kajabi. Wendy Conklin, for example, created a DIY chair upholstery course in 2019. She told TechCrunch that she made $34,000 in 1 week from 114 students.
While these examples are inspiring, they’re not likely the experience of the average user. If you’re looking to launch a paid course or membership as a side hustle, you might not have time for the rigorous marketing and sales automation needed to reach those types of revenue levels.
However, choosing a unique concept or product with sufficient demand could be enough to at least cover your monthly Kajabi costs to start.
Kajabi reviews are pretty divisive. Some creators praise the platform for simplifying and streamlining their business processes and making it easier to get started without advanced marketing or technological knowledge.
The main complaints from Kajabi users concern the sky-high costs, which can be unaffordable for new business owners. Another big issue is that Kajabi just doesn’t offer all the features and customization options that every business needs.
These reviews go to show that Kajabi is an excellent product for some users, but its value isn’t universal. To get a realistic sense of whether it’ll work for you, it’s important to consider the latest Kajabi reviews from people with business frameworks like yours.
Below are a few representative reviews from Kajabi users, highlighting both the best and worst parts about what the platform has to offer.
“I’ve been a Kajabi customer since 2016 so clearly I love it and prefer it over all the options […] They have the best support hands-down of any software I’ve ever dealt with (have been in online business since 2006 and was a VA for 12 years, so that says a lot). They have a very active FB group along with specialized communities for different features of Kajabi.”
“Kajabi is very un-intuitive to work with. I have been dealing with them for 5 years through clients.
“It looks good, until you need to do anything more complicated than creating a page, saving it and publishing.
1. The biggest gripe I have is the file picker: you need to re-upload everything and there is NO MEDIA LIBRARY which is infuriating.
2. The platsform is confusing in how it works with pages and landing pages. And editing them is a hassle.
3. Buttons, CTA’s, text… everything is hard to edit or preview. It fails miserable when compared to WordPress, which is amazing in how it handles edits, themes and previews.
4. You CANNOT RESTORE A PAGE. You have to upgrade to a 400 USD monthly plan to just edit the code, and it allows you to restore a JSON file. Super stupid.
5. Checkout pages are ugly and simple, and you have very limited options at customizing them.
6. Customer support is OK but usually it leads to ‘Sorry, we can forward your request to our developers’ which leads to… nothing. Which leads me to the next point:
7. Updates are DUMB and super slow. The platform doesn’t get the basics right, but instead of doing that they introduce AI and other gimmicks and seminars… idiotic.
8. Documentation is hard to google, not easy to understand and if you’re anything beyond a basic user who just needs a one-pages, it falls short of offering a solution.”
“Overall: I love Kajabi. I was able to pick up on how Kajabi works pretty quickly and found it to be an intuitive product that is easy to use.
“Pros: I love that with Kajabi, you have the ability to build all the basics in one location. You can create free content and publish via podcast, email marketing, blog, and website, and also have exclusive content, trainings, etc. behind the pay wall. It is all-in-one for basic use. A new online business owner can dive into Kajabi and have pretty much all the basic tools they need. I also love the automations built in to Kajabi.
“Cons: The biggest con I have heard from others is pricing prior to a new business generating steady income. However, Kajabi occasionally offers longer than normal trials that can help business owners hit the ground running. In the big picture, it is more streamlined than and comparable to linking together other platform options to achieve all of the same services as Kajabi. Kajabi makes it simple, so the price seems well justified.
“Switched From: WordPress and CloudLaunch
“Reasons for Switching to Kajabi: The switch was in process when I joined the team, but I’m thankful for that. Infusionsoft does a lot of great things but it’s much, much more complicated. Self-hosted wordpress is the same.”
“Overall: I wanted to love Kajabi but in the end, I began dreading interacting with the platform. I never did launch this side hustle because I began to feel so bogged down just getting the thing up and running. I was given the advice from colleagues that the way to success was to hire a designer to set up my Kajabi and then run it from there. Given the high cost of the platform, I found I resented the idea of needing to spend yet more to get it functional. In different circumstances, I might use Kajabi again but it’s not my first choice.
“Pros: I was very attracted to the idea of an all in one platform that would allow me functionality without needing to knit together many applications. I also appreciated a lot of their educational and motivational content.
“Cons: It’s very awkward. I was coming from Squarespace as a web platform and by comparison, getting the look I wanted required a lot of tedious, non-intuitive modifications to the template.” (Capterra)
“Kajabi, as an LMS, is not worth the money. The number one downside of using Kajabi is: Cost! It drains you month to month and if you’re a nobody like I was back then and still kind of am, those recurring fees can hurt you financially. […]
“The other thing to think about other than cost is the lack of options unless you’re on their best plan. Most of their cheaper tiers limit your usage and prevent you from actually growing in a natural and organic manner.”
Kajabi’s signup process is fairly straightforward. Just follow these steps:
The Kajabi dashboard has a four-step onboarding process for you to complete. You’ll need to add a product, connect your payment methods, set your product price, and add custom branding.
In order to use Kajabi, you must be 18 years or older. You also cannot reside in any country that’s under a US embargo. This means you cannot use Kajabi from the following countries:
You also must agree to the Acceptable Use Policy. It forbids certain actions, such as unlawful activity, spamming, and contacting people under 16 years old.
Having an all-in-one business solution to sell online courses, coaching, and other digital products sounds like a huge win. However, even though Kajabi is easy enough for beginners to use, the costs may just be too high for newbie entrepreneurs and self-starters who aren’t even making any money yet.
If you’re already spending lots of money each month on separate digital subscriptions and software, then Kajabi is definitely worth a try. But if you’re starting up a brand new business, make sure you’re committed enough to justify the high fees.
Also bear in mind that Kajabi is definitely better for some types of businesses than others. What’s more, some reviewers claim that Kajabi suffers from the issue of being a “Jack of all trades.”
Yes, Kajabi has all the tools you need to run an online business. However, there’s a reason why specialty software is built for each purpose. Kajabi’s features are okay, but they’re not great compared to the alternatives.
Before buying one of Kajabi’s expensive plans, carefully consider the advantages and disadvantages of the platform according to recent Kajabi reviews.
While Kajabi is a unique digital platform, you will likely have other options more tailored to your type of business. The best and cheapest alternatives to Kajabi really depend on the size, type, and goals of your business.
However, here are a few of Kajabi’s major competitors:
In addition to these more comprehensive platforms, there are also countless single tools to explore if you’re still in the process of starting your online business. Good examples include web hosts like Squarespace and Wix.
If you’re selling online courses, then you can also consider learning platforms like Udemy or Skillshare. Even though these sites take a commission fee, the upfront costs will be a lot lower.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.