As you already know Teachable and Kajabi are two super popular online course platforms. Though both are excellent tools for creating & selling online courses, they differ significantly.
Teachable is a beginner-friendly platform that provides a fast and easy way to create online courses and subsequently sell them.
Kajabi, on the other hand, provides an extensive set of features, facilitating the management of an entire online course business along with comprehensive promotional resources.
But which one is better for lifestyle entrepreneurs and solopreneurs?
Let’s find out in this Teachable vs Kajabi review.
Teachable vs Kajabi: TL;DR
- Product Type: Freemium
- Pricing & Trial: Free plan and pricing starts at $29 a month, no trial available
- Ease of use: Beginner- Friendly
- Marketing: Offers upselling and basic email marketing features
- Custom domain: Allows adding custom domains for paid plans
- Site customization: Allows limited customization of theme and course layout
- Transaction fee: $1 + 10% fee per transaction for the free plan, 5% fee per transaction for the basic plan
- Certification: There are various certificate templates that you can use and even code your own certificates
- Course compliance: Offers advanced options like enforcing graded quiz completion, video watching, and lecture completion
- Engagement features: Allows nested comments for courses
- Drip content: Allows unblocking sections as students progress through the course
- Cart abandonment: No option for abandoned cart recovery
- Analytics: Offers robust analytics and reporting features with course-level analytics
- Mobile apps: Offers only iOS app
- Product Type: Premium
- Pricing & Trial: Pricing starts at $119 a month, 14-day trial but allows claiming a 30-day trial
- Ease of use: Comparatively difficult
- Marketing: Offers advanced email marketing, sales funnel builder, and standalone landing pages
- Custom domain: Allows adding custom domain
- Site customization: Offers highly customizable theme and product layouts
- Transaction fee: No transaction fee for any plan
- Certification: Certification feature is absent
- Course compliance: Only allows locking a category until lecture completion
- Engagement features: Offers a separate community feature for student-teacher engagement
- Drip content: Allows setting time after which sections of a course will be unlocked
- Cart abandonment: Allows sending emails to people who abandon cart after adding products
- Analytics: Offers overall analytics and reporting but there is no course-level analytics
- Mobile apps: Offers both iOS and Android apps
Pros of Teachable
- Teachable is much cheaper than Kajabi.
- It includes the option to create online course completion certificates. Kajabi doesn’t have this feature.
- Teachable is easy to use, allowing for effortless online course creation, versus the Kajabi platform which is more advanced.
- It allows adding course compliance easily.
- With Teachable you can easily measure student engagement, sales and other important KPI’s.
- It offers robust tools for data analytics and reporting.
- It has the functionality for creating a blog to support your course business.
Pros of Kajabi
- Kajabi offers advanced marketing tools, allowing you to run an entire course business through its all-in-one platform. With Teachable, you will need several third-party integrations.
- With Kajabi, you can create a complete membership site, and it also offers a website & landing page builder.
- Kajabi has more themes than what teachable offers. The themes allow extensive customization.
- It offers powerful email marketing and automation features.
- Kajabi has better engagement tools compared to Teachable such as assessments, assignments, and communities.
- Kajabi has its own marketplace like Skillshare and Udemy, whereas Teachable lacks this feature.
- Kajabi doesn’t charge any transaction fee, but Teachable does.
Teachable vs Kajabi: Detailed Comparison
Comparison breakdown by features:
- Interface and Ease-of-use
- Online Course Creation
- Webinar Hosting
- Sales and Marketing Tools
- Affiliate Program
- Engagement Features
- Design & Customization
- Analytics & Reporting
- Pricing
1. Kajabi vs Teachable: Interface & Ease-of-Use
If the online course platform has a complex user interface, creating these will be more difficult. Luckily both Teachable & Kajabi make it simple even for the novice course creator.
Teachable:
Teachable offers a clean user interface with all features and settings accessible directly from the left menu. Each item on the left sidebar has sub-items that offer more features. Navigation is very simple and straightforward, which is great for beginners.
Kajabi:
Kajabi also offers a similar interface with a left sidebar where you can access all the tools and features. However, unlike Teachable, menu items are heavily nested. You will benefit from using the Kajabi Assistant, which is essentially a search feature.
Winner: Teachable has far easier navigation.
2. Kajabi vs Teachable: Online Course Creation
Creating online courses should be straightforward. Both Kajabi and Teachable have robust course creation features, however Teachable is much easier to use.
Teachable:
With Teachable, you can create an online course directly from inside the dashboard’s admin area.
The process is user-friendly, and it allows you to add necessary details like course title, subtitles (if any), course author, author intro, and more.
There are integrated SEO features, too, that you can use to improve the search engine visibility of your course.
You can add a variety of content types to your courses, which include text, video, PDF, code, quiz, etc.
You can embed videos and upload documents from a computer, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.
Overall, course creation with Teachable is easy.
Kajabi:
Online course creation with Kajabi is relatively difficult compared to Teachable. You need to start by clicking on the “Products” menu and then ‘All Products’ and finally select the course type you want to create.
Kajabi will also allow adding images, videos, PDFs, etc., directly from inside the platform. This online course platform will also allow you to categorize, classify, and segment the courses.
You can also add posts and sub-categories within the higher-level categories. This allows the creation of a better course structure.
Plus you can add videos, assessments, and unlimited blog posts for each lesson. On each lesson’s homepage, you get student engagement metrics for progress tracking.
Though not overly complex, the course-creation workflow of Kajabi is trickier than Teachable.
Winner: Kajabi has more features & a better course structure, however Teachable is easier to use
3. Kajabi vs Teachable: Webinar Hosting
Teachable and Kajabi offer webinar hosting, but while Teachable requires third-party integrations, Kajabi provides this feature natively.
Teachable:
Teachable allows webinar hosting through various 3rd-party integrations such as Twitch.tv, Adobe Connect, Ustream, Livestream, and YouTube.
The process is fairly simple. You start by selecting the online course and then selecting (or creating) the lecture in which you want to embed the webinar.
You must grab the webinar code from the third-party service and click on ‘Add Code’ on the Teachable platform.
Finally, paste the code you copied from the third-party service in the code box:
Kajabi:
Kajabi natively allows hosting live webinars. You can access the option from the ‘Marketing’ menu on the left sidebar and then select ‘Pipelines.’
Under ‘Pipelines,’ you will see the blueprint for the Zoom webinar (if you already have a paid Zoom account), or you can select the ‘Legacy Pipeline’ option at the bottom of the page to use the ‘Webinar Blueprint’ that utilizes YouTube.
Kajabi webinar hosting will allow you to capture emails for email marketing, create conversion pages, provide offers, etc.
Winner: Kajabi’s webinar hosting features are more robust compared to Teachable.
4. Kajabi vs Teachable: Sales and Marketing Tools
Both Kajabi and Teachable offer a variety of marketing tools.
Teachable:
With Teachable, you can use multiple sales pages for any online course and perform A/B testing. Plus, you can add CTA buttons anywhere on your course pages. There are upselling options on the Thank You page, too.
Additionally, Teachable also provides fundamental email marketing capabilities that facilitate communications with segmented users. This feature also enables control over notifications for automated emails.
Kajabi:
Kajabi has robust email marketing and upselling options. In fact, the platform offers full control over your email marketing campaigns.
You can create automated email sequences and email broadcasts, thereby eliminating the need for any third-party email marketing software such as Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, etc. Kajabi also allows adding triggers to both emails and opt-in forms.
Kajabi also offers a sales pipeline builder to create marketing funnels easily. There are various premade blueprints (templates) that you can use to automatically create Lead capture pages, email marketing campaigns, webinars, etc.
Plus, you can use the page builder to customize the pages such as landing pages, etc., that Kajabi automatically creates.
Instead of creating entire sales funnels, you can use Kajabi’s splash page builder to create standalone pages specifically for selling courses or generating leads. There are 20+ customizable templates for these pages.
Winner: Kajabi offers extremely robust marketing tools. Teachable does not offer landing pages, sales funnels, or opt-in forms.
5. Kajabi vs Teachable: Affiliate Program
Both Kajabi and Teachable offer affiliate marketing capabilities to generate more revenue from your course business.
Teachable:
Any student who signs up for your course can become an affiliate. However, you must manually approve the student. There is no automatic affiliate approval, and you cannot have a separate registration page.
Also, you cannot create any links for your affiliates. Any affiliate who wants to promote and sell courses must visit the sales page, grab the link and paste it into the link generator to get the affiliate link.
Kajabi:
Kajabi makes the process far simpler where you can make a separate registration page. If anyone signs up, the person automatically becomes an affiliate. If you want to manually approve an affiliate, you can disable the registration page.
Plus, you can create affiliate links pointing to your sales page or checkout page and display those links on the dashboard of the affiliates.
Winner: Kajabi’s affiliate process is far more intuitive.
6. Kajabi vs Teachable: Engagement Features
Both platforms offer student engagement features.
Teachable:
Teachable allows peer-to-peer and peer-to-mentor discussions through its integrated multi-thread commenting system that you can enable for every learning session with just a few clicks. Students can solve problems, add attachments, add comments, and ask questions.
Kajabi:
Kajabi offers a ‘Community’ feature to enable student engagement. The feature allows students and mentors to discuss, ideate, and solve problems.
Winner: The engagement features of both Kajabi and Teachable are robust.
7. Kajabi vs Teachable: Design & Customization
Whichever course platform you select, you will want the ability to customize the pages and courses.
Teachable:
Teachable will allow customization of the default theme and navigation. You can create pages, alter the custom texts, and add various code snippets.
Teachable’s professional plan will give you a Power Editor that you can use to edit everything, but you will need coding knowledge.
For course-level customization, you cannot customize the theme, but you can change the course design & layout.
Kajabi:
Kajabi offers a visual website builder that you can use to customize any page. The page builder is very versatile with many elements such as opt-in form, video, accordion, etc. There are various themes that you can use and edit.
Kajabi’s landing page builder will also allow you to customize product-specific pages, but certain modules will not be available.
Winner: Kajabi has more user-friendly customization options.
8. Kajabi vs Teachable: Analytics & Reporting
You need data to evaluate your online business performance and modify your digital marketing campaigns as needed.
Teachable:
Teachable offers various reports such as course completion rates, video engagement, quiz scores, leaderboards, etc. You can also get data on individual students from their profile pages.
You will also receive sales analytics that includes data like total sales, refunds, earnings, affiliate earnings, upsells, etc. You can connect to Google Analytics for conversion tracking and traffic data.
Kajabi:
Kajabi also offers overall reporting and video engagement data along with concise sales, affiliate, and marketing reports. Plus, it can connect to Google Analytics. However, it lacks the course-level analytics found in Teachable.
Winner: Teachable includes course-level analytics which gives you a clearer picture of how your students are engaging.
9. Kajabi vs Teachable: Pricing
Teachable and Kajabi have various pricing plans.
Teachable:
Affiliate program and live chat support are not available in Teachable’s Free plan and Basic plan. Custom domain support is available only for paid plans. However, student management is available for all plans.
Free Plan: Completely free
- Unlimited course: No
- Unlimited students: Yes
- Unlimited video: No
- Unlimited hosting: Yes
- Unlimited coaching: Yes
- Basic quizzes: Yes
- Drip course content: No
- Third-party integrations: No
- Upsells: No
Basic Plan: $39 a month
- Unlimited course: Yes
- Unlimited students: Yes
- Unlimited video: Yes
- Unlimited hosting: Yes
- Unlimited coaching: Yes
- Basic quizzes: Yes
- Drip course content: Yes
- Third-party integrations: Yes
- Upsells: No
Pro Plan: $119 a month
- Unlimited course: Yes
- Unlimited students: Yes
- Unlimited video: Yes
- Unlimited hosting: Yes
- Unlimited coaching: Yes
- Basic quizzes: Yes
- Drip course content: Yes
- Third-party integrations: Yes
- Upsells: Yes
Business Plan: $299 a month
- Unlimited course: Yes
- Unlimited students: Yes
- Unlimited video: Yes
- Unlimited hosting: Yes
- Unlimited coaching: Yes
- Basic quizzes: Yes
- Drip course content: Yes
- Third-party integrations: Yes
- Upsells: Yes
Kajabi:
Kajabi doesn’t have any free plan and the paid plans offer unlimited landing pages and unlimited marketing emails. Unfortunately, none of the plans offer unlimited courses.
Basic Plan: $149 a month
- 3 products and 3 pipelines
- 10,000 contacts
- 1 website
- No affiliate program
- Webinars & events
- Limited automation
Growth Plan: $199 a month
- 15 products and 15 pipelines
- 25,000 contacts
- 1 website
- Affiliate program
- Webinars & events
- Advanced automation
Pro Plan: $399 a month
- 100 products and 100 pipelines
- 100,000 contacts
- 3 websites
- Affiliate program
- Webinars & events
- Advanced automation
Winner: Teachable is more affordable than Kajabi.
10. Kajabi vs Teachable: Managing Payments and Business Finances
When it comes to managing payments and business finances, both Kajabi and Teachable provide features that make the process easier for online course creators. However, they each have their unique approaches and offers.
Teachable
Teachable supports a wide range of payment options. It integrates seamlessly with PayPal and Stripe to handle transactions, making it easier for course creators to collect payments from anywhere in the world.
Moreover, Teachable provides a built-in payment processor, Teachable Payments, for course creators in the United States and certain other countries.
This system allows for more regular payouts (daily, weekly, or monthly) and gives you more control over your revenue.
Teachable also has a BackOffice service which handles affiliate payouts, author payouts, and tax forms, but it comes with a 2% administrative fee.
Kajabi
Kajabi also integrates with PayPal and Stripe, making it easy to collect payments globally.
However, unlike Teachable, Kajabi doesn’t have its own payment gateway; instead, it relies entirely on these external payment processors.
When it comes to affiliate payments and sales tax, Kajabi offers comprehensive features for managing affiliates but doesn’t provide automated tax form handling like Teachable does.
In conclusion, both Teachable and Kajabi provide solid options for managing payments, but Teachable might come out ahead if you’re looking for a more built-in solution and automated handling of business finances.
As always, your individual business needs will dictate which platform is more suitable for you.
Teachable vs Kajabi FAQ
Which is the Best Online Course Platform; Teachable or Kajabi?
Kajabi has better marketing and automation features but allows a limited number of products. It is pricey, too!
Teachable allows the creation of unlimited courses on its paid plans and has better analytics & reporting features. It is much cheaper than Kajabi.
Which one is better will depend on your specific needs.
Is Kajabi better than WordPress?
Kabaji is primarily an online course-building platform with an integrated website builder to create blogs and membership sites.
WordPress is a flexible blogging platform that you can use to build your online business and sell courses.
If your goal is to build a blog using SEO from which you sell courses, start with WordPress and use Kajabi to create and sell your courses only.
If your goal is to create courses which you primarily promote on social media, but you also want to add some content, then Kajabi will likely be ok on its own.
Is Kajabi worth the price?
Yes, it is! Kajabi eliminates the need for using various third-party programs like email marketing software, sales funnel builders, etc. It is an all-in-one platform for your online business and its digital marketing needs.
However, you must explore other online course platforms like Teachable, Podia, and Thinkific, before settling for Kajabi.
I’d like to offer a combination of free and paid courses. Which platform, Teachable or Kajabi, better accommodates this approach?
Both Teachable and Kajabi offer the capability to host free and paid courses. However, Teachable’s pricing structure makes it slightly more favorable for hosting a mix of both.
The platform allows you to host unlimited courses (free or paid) on all its plans, providing you with greater flexibility.
In terms of course presentation, which platform provides a more engaging student experience, Teachable or Kajabi?
Both platforms allow for interactive and engaging course presentations, but Kajabi is often considered more comprehensive.
It provides a more polished and professional look and feel, and it includes robust features for course creation, including interactive quizzes and a wider range of multimedia content
Which platform is better for integrating third-party tools: Teachable or Kajabi?
Both platforms offer integrations with third-party tools. However, Kajabi comes with more built-in features and integrations, eliminating the need for many external tools.
It can integrate with numerous marketing, analytics, and customer management tools directly.
Teachable vs Kajabi – Summary
Teachable is a simpler, easier platform best for beginners or those who prefer quick and easy solutions. It’s budget-friendly, too, and allows unlimited courses on its paid plans.
Kajabi, on the other hand, has powerful email marketing, sales funnels, automation, and customization options and is best for those looking for an all in one online course and sales platform.
The one you select will depend on your business model. If you want your online business to be highly advanced, Kajabi is a better choice. If however, you want something simpler and more affordable for selling online courses, Teachable is your platform.
Good luck!
Teachable vs Kajabi – FAQs
What is the difference between Teachable and Kajabi?
Teachable and Kajabi are both powerful course platforms, but they differ significantly in their features and focus. Teachable is known for its user-friendly interface, making course creation straightforward, while Kajabi offers an all-in-one platform with advanced tools for marketing, automation, and a more intricate course structure.
Does Teachable own your content?
No, Teachable does not own your content. You retain ownership of the courses you create on the platform. Teachable provides a platform for course building, but the content you create is yours.
How much money can you make on Teachable?
The amount you can earn on Teachable depends on various factors such as your business model, marketing strategy, and the value of your courses. Teachable doesn’t impose earning limits, allowing you the flexibility to maximize your revenue.
Is it hard to learn Kajabi?
The learning curve for Kajabi may vary depending on your familiarity with course platforms. Kajabi offers an all-in-one platform with all the tools needed for course building, including advanced features. While it may seem complex initially, Kajabi provides extensive resources and tutorials to facilitate the learning process.
