Kajabi is one of the most popular online course platforms on the market and it consistently ranked among the best – alongside the likes of Thinkific, Teachable, and Podia.
More than 50,000 online tutors – across over 120 countries – have already used its tools to sell online courses worth $1.5 billion to 41 million students and counting. According to this breed of users, Kajabi offers a perfectly comprehensive blend of features for building and selling their online courses.
After months of testing out Kajabi, I’ve created this detailed Kajabi review, based on the following review criteria…
Our Kajabi Review Criteria – The Main Factors You Should Consider
In essence, our Kajabi review prioritizes the fundamental factors you should consider while choosing an online course platform for your eLearning business.
They include:
- Website Hosting: Does the online course platform run independently on its own web hosting servers, or will you be forced to integrate it with a third-party hosted website? How fast are the web hosting servers? What type of websites does it host? What features come with the hosting package?
- Site Building: Can you build your own website from scratch? And if so, what type of site builder will you be using? Is the whole process easy enough for non-coders? How far can you customize your website? Do you get any themes/templates for quick site-building? What tools does the platform provide for website management?
- Online Course Creation: How easy is it to build and structure online courses on the platform? What type of courses and lessons can you set up? What type of content can you upload to your lessons? How many courses are you allowed to create? Do you get any templates for online course building? How far can you customize the courses? How does the platform deliver the courses?
- Online Course Marketing and Selling: What marketing channels does the platform support? Do you get any marketing automation capabilities? Does the platform allow you to set up and manage a sales pipeline? Can you embed and sell your courses on third-party platforms? Which course selling modes does the platform offer? Is there any possibility of integrating third-party marketing and sales tools? How are payments processed on the platform?
- Student Management: How do you sign up students for your online courses? How many students can you host in your programs? How do students view and interact with the course content? Can students freely interact with each other in your courses? Which student parameters can you track on the platform? Do you get to evaluate and certify your students?
- Customer Support: Is the technical support team available 24/7? Which customer support channels does the platform offer? How long does it take to get through to the customer support team? Do you get any supplementary self-help resources? Does the platform offer onboarding?
- Pricing: How much will it cost you to set up and run an eLearning business? Is there a possibility of getting free online course-building tools? What features come with each pricing plan? Does the platform charge transaction fees on your online course sales? How does the whole pricing schedule compare to other market rates? Is the online course platform worth its money?
Kajabi Review – An Overview of Kajabi Online Course Platform
Pros:
- Kajabi is capable of running fully automated email marketing campaigns without integrating third-party tools.
- Kajabi comes with a fully-developed Sales Pipeline Builder for creating and managing automated sales funnels.
- The Community feature allows you to set up highly-interactive student forums.
- You can sell your online courses through one-off payments, recurring subscriptions, long-term payment plans, etc.
- Through its Product Blueprints, Kajabi offers customizable templates for building online courses.
- The Sales Pipeline Builder itself comes with its own range of pre-built Pipeline Blueprints, which happen to offer conversion-optimized landing pages.
- Kajabi offers a one-step checkout system that substantially minimizes your cart abandonment rate.
- The platform gives you an Assessments tool for setting up and running different types of quizzes and surveys in your online courses.
- Kajabi is one of the few online course platforms that offer 24/7 customer support.
- Your online students have the option of following the lectures on-the-go via Kajabi’s mobile app.
- The course player is built to run smoothly on all types of devices.
- Kajabi allows you to segment your contacts and subsequently set campaign triggers to target them.
- Kajabi comes with a content management system that’s capable of building and running a blog, as well as tweaking SEO settings.
- The platform itself won’t deduct commissions from your course sales.
- Kajabi online course platform supports affiliate marketing programs.
Cons:
- With a starting price of $119 a month, Kajabi is considered to be a bit costly for small business owners.
- There’s no built-in feature for awarding course certificates. You can only do so after embedding third-party tools.
- 24/7 customer support is an exclusive provision for users on Kajabi’s Growth and Pro which means you won’t be getting it on the Basic package.
Kajabi, for starters, is not built like Udemy, SkillShare, or any other online course marketplace. Instead, Kajabi happens to be an all-inclusive online course platform that combines pretty much all the standard functionalities under one roof.
That means it doesn’t stop at creating and selling online courses. You also get tools for setting up a fully-featured website, as well as managing your eLearning students.
In short, therefore, you could say that Kajabi is a holistic learning management system. It gives you a page builder for designing your website, a course creator for uploading lesson content, landing pages for converting your prospects, sales tools for selling your courses, as well as trackers for keeping tabs on your students’ progress.
Now that’s more or less the same range of features you get from the likes of Thinkific, Teachable, Podia, and Ruzuku. Each of these online course platforms comes with a full stack of learning management system (LMS) tools.
But then get this. If you compare Kajabi vs Thinkific, Kajabi vs Teachable, Kajabi vs Podia, or Kajabi vs Ruzuku, Kajabi is bound to emerge victorious on the marketing and sales front.
You see, the thing is, Kajabi happens to be one of the few learning management systems that come with built-in automated marketing and sales pipeline management.
Please note, though, that the least you should expect to pay here is $119 a month. That makes Kajabi a bit pricey for small businesses, freelancers, and startups- as they would pay only $29 per month on Teachable, or $39 a month on Thinkific.
And as if that’s not bad enough already, it turns out Thinkific even offers a permanently free online course solution plan- consequently placing Kajabi in a very awkward position.
But then again, some critics argue that Kajabi’s pricing is fair when you consider the features it offers.
Well, let’s find out for ourselves by exploring the main features.
Kajabi Features
Hosting and Building Your Website
1. Hosting and Domains
As an all-inclusive online course platform, Kajabi is the type of LMS you’d expect to come with web hosting capabilities. As such, you should be able to proceed with your own custom domain- although you can still use Kajabi’s subdomain.
Another standard provision you’ll find here is a free SSL certificate for your eLearning site. And no, you don’t have to configure it. Kajabi will integrate it automatically.
2. Page Builder
When it comes to setting up a website, Kajabi provides a neat drag-and-drop editor to help you with everything. The tool is officially known as the “Kajabi Page Builder”, and it comes in the form of a visual WYSIWYG designer.
The interface itself is pretty neat, as it gives you a live preview of your web pages while you tweak their appearance and layout settings.
And the best thing is, you don’t need any technical skills here. Even a beginner should be able to figure out Kajabi’s basic editing functions right off the bat.
3. Website Themes
Although the page builder is flexible enough to start you off from scratch, you might want to save yourself the trouble and take advantage of Kajabi’s website themes instead.
The platform comes with about 11 elegant pre-designed themes. It just takes a single click to install your preferred template, after which you can proceed to customize its layout using the page builder.
Creating Online Courses
1. Product Blueprints
Kajabi doesn’t limit itself to website themes. Another set of pre-built templates you’ll find here is Product Blueprints- which offer structures for different types of courses.
If you intend to build a basic online course, for instance, you could simply proceed with the “Online Course Blueprint”. That’ll give a flexible framework for organizing your content into lessons and modules.
As for small courses, on the other hand, your ideal template would be Kajabi’s “Mini-Course Blueprint”; while the “Blank Blueprint” is reserved for users who prefer to start from scratch.
2. Course Builder
When you finally choose your preferred Product Blueprint, the system will automatically launch its course builder for non-technical editing and customization.
You can, for instance, name and organize all your course lessons (Posts) and modules (Categories). Kajabi’s course builder allows you to arrange all these elements through dragging and dropping.
What’s more, you can freely introduce subcategories under the modules to create multiple lesson levels. Then when it comes to content uploads, you’ll appreciate the fact that Kajabi supports pretty much all types of media- from basic text and PDF to video, audio, and images. You could even add stuff from your DropBox or Google Drive cloud storage.
However, one thing you won’t be able to do is, upload several content files to the same lesson. Turns out Kajabi doesn’t support- for example- two different videos in the same lesson.
Marketing Online Courses
1. SEO Blogs
One thing you might not want to miss out on while building your online course website is Kajabi’s blogging tools.
Yes, that’s right. Kajabi stretches beyond the standard site capabilities to provide its own content management system, complete with relevant SEO settings.
The blog itself automatically generates index pages for your content, all of which you can further tweak through Kajabi’s page builder.
Then when the design process is done, you can go ahead and publish highly-optimized pieces to boost your site’s SEO profile. Kajabi’s SEO settings allow you to quickly and conveniently adjust all the page essentials without any coding knowledge.
The sad bit, however, is- Kajabi’s CMS isn’t exactly as flexible as, say, the WordPress platform. But then I guess that’s a compromise that many tutors would be willing to make.
2. Automated Email Marketing
Apart from SEO, the Kajabi online course platform gives you the benefit of leveraging email marketing.
Now, please don’t get me wrong. We’re not talking about the same old email broadcasts you find on other LMS platforms. Kajabi is capable of much more than that.
Basically, this happens to be one of the few online course platforms that come with a built-in engine for automating your email campaigns. You can use it to not only create automated email sequences but also manage and target subscribers in segments.
As such, I’d say that Kajabi runs almost like a fully-fledged email marketing solution. Its automation even follow the If/Then formula for conditions, complete with actions that are based on specific triggers.
You can, for instance, set your Kajabi system to reach out to cart abandoners with special offers.
3. Affiliate Marketing
Kajabi further gives you the chance to capitalize on affiliate marketers. The idea here is to promote your online courses through affiliates, who’ll subsequently earn a commission (at a predetermined rate) for each sale you make from their referrals.
Kajabi hands you basic tools for not only creating the affiliate programs but also keeping tabs on your affiliates’ respective performances. You get to specify all the rules- including the commission rates, the courses to promote, as well as the promotion periods.
Affiliates won’t be left behind, though. As soon as you add them to your campaigns, Kajabi gives each individual their own private dashboard for copying the affiliate links, plus tracking their numbers.
Selling Online Courses
1. Course Pricing Structures
To help you sell quickly and conveniently, Kajabi takes a rather dynamic approach when it comes to pricing online courses. You get to choose not only the price rates of your courses but also the sale structure and mode.
You could, for example, sell your online courses through one-off payments, long-term payment plans, or recurring subscriptions. The payment schedules here can even be set to run yearly, monthly, or even weekly.
But, it doesn’t end there. You’ll also find free courses among the list of options. That means you could offer some of the courses without charging anything- perhaps to generate interest and expand your subscriber base.
Such an offer doesn’t have to run indefinitely, though. You could, alternatively, set up a free trial period for first-time students.
Another trick you could employ here is selling multiple courses in one package- all thanks to Kajabi’s course bundling feature.
2. Sales Pipeline Builder
As far as online course sales are concerned, the most powerful selling feature on Kajabi’s arsenal is the sales pipeline builder.
And as you’ve probably guessed already, this is what you use to build sales pipelines on the online course platform. Or, in other words, it allows you to piece together a complete sales funnel that encompasses multiple lead engagement strategies- including email campaigns, web forms, landing pages, etc.
Now, when you combine that with Kajabi’s automation, you get a sales funnel that’s capable of systematically channeling leads through multiple qualification stages, which ultimately leads to conversions and upsells.
Thankfully, though, Kajabi doesn’t leave you to figure out all these intricacies alone. Rather, it gives you a headstart through pre-built Pipeline Blueprints that offer high-converting landing pages and email copies.
Managing Your Online Students
1. User Management
When you log in to your Kajabi online course platform, you’ll be greeted by a neatly designed admin area. Then on the main menu bar, you’ll see four primary options- Website, Products, Marketing, and People.
Now, the “People” section acts as the core user management section. This is where you go when you need to view your students’ profiles, segment them, add tags, and control their access privileges.
Kajabi even throws in filters to help you sort through all the entries. Hence, you should be able to zero in on specific groups of students based on parameters such as courses purchased, enrollment period, etc.
You can also conduct bulk actions like exporting the student list; registering selected students to a specific program; adding them to email sequences; revoking their access privileges, etc.
And it doesn’t end there. From this vantage point, it’s also possible to track the life cycles of the individual students. Simply click on their specific names to launch their profiles, and then proceed to review their corresponding emails, course progress, purchases, certificates, etc.
2. Mobile App
While it continues to keep tabs on your students, Kajabi also tries to facilitate seamless learning.
As such, they don’t even have to take their lessons via PC. Students can go ahead and download the Kajabi mobile app to keep up with their classes while on-the-go. Then you, on the other hand, could use the opportunity to engage them via push notifications.
The app itself comes in both Android and iOS versions. Plus, all the course player themes on the online course platform have been specially developed to respond smoothly to mobile screens.
3. Assessments
Kajabi also tries to help you keep everyone focused.
The tool of choice here is Kajabi’s Assessments, which has proven to be fairly effective in boosting course engagement rates.
Well, the trick is fairly straightforward. Just use the tool to introduce quizzes to your curriculum. Kajabi’s Assessments is capable of integrating all sorts of engaging queries- from open-ended questions to multiple-choice questions.
You could also have your students provide answers through content submissions. Kajabi’s Assignments is flexible enough to support their file uploads.
And speaking of flexibility, it turns out the quizzes are not limited to the course environment. You could even roll them out on your landing pages for the sake of lead generation.
And that’s not all. The Assessments feature is also great for surveys. Hence, you could set it up to collect feedback from your students.
However, and rather, unfortunately, it’s not dynamic enough to run serious tests and grade them. Therefore, you’ll be forced to bring in a specialized third-party tool to handle such advanced assessments.
And the same applies to course certificates. Since the Kajabi online course platform doesn’t offer built-in certificates and awards, you’ll have no choice but to seek assistance from third-party solutions.
4. Student Community
Within Kajabi’s collection of digital products, you’ll also find a “Community” option. This one is intended to help you set up a student community forum, which you could either sell as an autonomous product or perhaps link it to your membership website.
Whichever approach you choose, Kajabi’s Community will give your students a highly-interactive environment for holding discussions. Once they join the forums, they get to participate in community topics, as well as create their own posts.
Kajabi Pricing and Plans
1. Kajabi Basic Plan
This is the cheapest package, and it costs $149 a month with monthly billing or $119 a month with annual billing.
That’ll subsequently give you 3 digital products, sales and marketing automation, 3 sales pipelines, hosting for 1 site, 1,000 active online students, 10,000 contacts, unlimited marketing emails, unlimited landing pages, and a single admin account.
2. Kajabi Growth Plan
Kajabi’s Growth Plan is the intermediate level package, and it costs $199 a month with monthly billing or $159 a month with annual billing.
This grants you pretty much all the features on the Basic Plan, plus advanced automation, affiliate marketing, course assessments, 10,000 active online students, 25,000 contacts, hosting for 15 digital products, 15 sales pipelines, hosting for 1 site, and 10 admin accounts.
3. Kajabi Pro Plan
With a price tag of $399 a month with monthly billing, or $319 a month with annual billing, the Pro Plan is Kajabi’s most advanced package. It particularly targets multi-site enterprises that have highly-demanding needs.
They get all Growth Plan features; plus a code editor, hosting for 100 digital products, 100 sales pipelines, 20,000 active online students, 100,000 contacts, hosting for 3 sites, and 25 admin accounts.
Kajabi Support
Customer support, as it happens, is another area where Kajabi does a considerably good job. Its tech support team is always on standby 24/7. You can get in touch with them via live chat at any time of the day or night, throughout the year.
But then again, I guess you really don’t have to, since Kajabi additionally offers an impressive array of tutorials. In the event you experience a technical issue, just go to the Kajabi Assistant bar and run a quick search. It’ll subsequently generate a range of relevant articles on the issue.
Interestingly, however, Kajabi doesn’t stop there. In addition to the technical articles, this online course platform offers what it calls “Kajabi University”. It’s more like supplementary knowledgebase, with pieces on how to build and manage your eLearning business.
You could also seek help from your fellow online tutors. Thanks to its popularity, Kajabi has managed to build quite an extensive community of experts and general users. You can always connect with them on Kajabi’s Support Community forums.
And if you ever need some motivation, you could check out Kajabi’s Hero Program. You’ll find relatable stories from different tutors who were once in your position but then managed to dramatically grow their businesses. If you follow suit and hit certain revenue goals, the program will celebrate you too through its exclusive perks and rewards.
Final Thoughts
Evidently, Kajabi is not the type of solution you’d go for if you’re in the market for a cheap online course builder, or a free online course platform. Instead, I’d advise you to try out Thinkific, Teachable, Podia, or Ruzuku. The choice is yours.
But, if you’re seeking an all-inclusive online course platform that offers real value through automated marketing and selling, then I’d gladly tell you to join the Kajabi bandwagon. Kajabi has proven that it can indeed set up and run automated email marketing campaigns like a pro.
Then to top it off, you even get a sales pipeline builder for connecting the emails with landing pages, web forms, and other elements to form comprehensively-automated sales funnels. Enough to keep converting leads on your behalf while you attend to your online students.
Now that’s something you certainly wouldn’t mind forking out at least $119 for every month. Or would you?
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