Kajabi and Teachable are two of the most popular online course platforms available today. But despite having similar features, there still are subtle differences between them as platforms. In this Kajabi vs. Teachable review, we’ll explore what those are.
Keep reading to find out which one between Teachable and Kajabi is best for you.
Overview of Kajabi
First, let’s start with Kajabi. It’s probably the more known platform between the two. This is since it’s marketed to be an all-in-one platform for setting up online courses.
Kajabi is recommended for entrepreneurs of all levels of expertise. Whether you’re just starting out or already established, Kajabi’s features are fairly easy enough to use.
It has everything you need to get started with creating, customizing, and selling your online courses on the platform. The interface is easy-to-use to create a decent landing page and membership site.
Even students have a preference for Kajabi because it has a good variety of different subjects and modules available.
For a more in-depth review, you can also check out our Kajabi Review.
RELATED: Kajabi Alternatives
Pros
- All-in-one platform
- Email marketing tools
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Webinars
- Sales funnel and landing page creation
- Integrations
- Quiz options
- Course creation
- Drip options
- Analytics
- Online community
- Affiliate marketing
- 24/7 customer support team and live chat
Cons
- Site interface is overwhelming if you’re used to WordPress
- Affiliate program only works with the Growth and Pro Plans
- You can’t manage multiple clients on one platform
- Education credit is vague
- More expensive
Standout Features of Kajabi
Now, let’s break down what exactly is it about Kajabi that makes it stand out as a competent online course platform.
Email Marketing Tools
When discussing Kajabi’s features, its email marketing tools always come up first and for very good reason. With Kajabi, you can easily compose and send out bulk emails automatically.
As a membership site, automated emailing is helpful for teachers to communicate with their students on Kajabi. They can send updates, new courses, and other resources more efficiently to those parts of the membership site.
In turn, the students can also respond and ask whatever questions they have more quickly. Kajabi email features help with students’ learning and progress throughout the course.
And for course creators, they can even market their courses via an email broadcast with Kajabi. This will help them gain more potential users and students since they will be able to reach out to a bigger audience.
Plus, what’s great about Kajabi is that it automatically creates an email sequence for you so that you won’t have to manually get the email addresses of your subscribers. With a push of a button, you can broadcast a message to everyone already part of your user list.
Kajabi will also suggest what kind of email or message you should send out. It can analyze user behavior based on what step of the sign-up process a user is in. For example, if they failed to successfully sign up, an email will be sent asking them to complete their sign up sheet.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
What we really love about Kajabi is that it has a feature that can optimize your search engine rankings. This greatly helps in attracting users to subscribe to your courses. You just have to enable the Kajabi SEO and sharing settings on the platform.
Webinars
You can even upload webinars and interactive videos to enrich your courses on Kajabi. Most people like to use this feature to conduct live video tutorials to help each one of their students.
Sales Funnels and Landing Pages
With Kajabi, you can create sales pipelines and funnels. They’re what help streamline and organize your marketing progress so that you know what step goes after the other.
Instead of just winging it or figuring it out as you go along, a Kajabi sales funnel will keep you on track. And you’ll know on which stage of the process you are on exactly.
Kajabi also has built-in options that you can choose from to create landing pages, home pages, and sales pages. They help direct your users to specific steps of the process. You can even design a thank-you page.
Integrations
And though we did mention that Kajabi has really good email marketing features, you can still opt to integrate third-party tools to enhance your experience.
Kajabi is compatible with Aweber, ActiveCampaign, and MailChimp. If you’re more serious about your email marketing campaign, then syncing them could help grow your business even further. You’ll be able to reach out to a wider group of people.
Other software tools like Google Analytics, Zapier, and ClickFunnels can also be connected to Kajabi. And for course instructors, you’ll be happy to find out that third-party certificates and badges can also be awarded to your students.
Quiz Options
Kajabi has an Assessments feature that lets you make different types of quizzes for your courses. Quiz types include multiple-choice, identification, and essay types. Your students can also submit requirements by uploading them to the website.
And course creators can add the correct answer to the questions they make when they create the assessment. That way, Kajabi can immediately grade your students’ quizzes right after submission.
Course Creation
What sets Kajabi’s course creation apart from other course platforms is that it has something called Product Blueprints. These are pre-made templates that you can add your information to. After you input the details of our business and products, you’re all set to market them.
For every Kajabi blueprint you create, you can add categories and posts to your online courses. These are what will ultimately form your online courses, modules, and lessons.
You can also create different sections and subcategories for your lessons on Kajabi. Under these, you’ll be able to upload a variety of file types and resources. MP4s, MP3s, and PDFs are just some of the media types that you can add to enrich your students’ lessons.
There’s also added convenience because you can get your files directly from Dropbox or Google Drive.
Drip Options
Adding to the course creation features, Kajabi also lets you drip your content. This means that you can gradually send out a number of modules to your students within regular intervals.
Dripping the content helps the students ease into the subject and not get overwhelmed with information while on Kajabi.
Analytics
One convenient feature of Kajabi is that it provides Analytics to help manage your courses. You get to see a compiled report of your revenue, page views, and affiliate sales.
Teachers can view their students’ progress reports on Kajabi to determine how else they can improve their teaching. Students’ quiz results and scores are also updated instantly on Kajabi.
Related to this, Kajabi also shows you the engagement rate for all the things you post. You can see users’ click rate and play rate so that it’s easier to gauge what type of content works better with your students.
Online Community
Users can interact with one another using the discussion board on Kajabi. This encourages healthy discussions not just between members, but with the teachers as well.
And the teachers can also post important updates and announcements there. That way, communication is easier and faster.
Affiliate Marketing
One more thing that makes Kajabi great for your online business is that you can run an affiliate program on it. You can put up an affiliate program for the courses you make and have chosen affiliates market them for you on their respective blogs.
Affiliate marketing will increase the number of potential students for your courses. And Kajabi makes it easy for you to keep track of the progress of your affiliates. You can access payout reports right on the Kajabi dashboard.
You’ll be able to compute and send out the commission of your Kajabi affiliates much quicker. And your affiliates will also have their own dashboard on the site that they can view their progress on.
Customer Support
Finally, Kajabi has good customer support. Should you encounter any problems, you can easily hop on a live chat with one of the members of their 24/7 support team.
The site also has an index of guides and resources on how to use the platform features. There’s even a Kajabi Assistant that you can click on. It’ll recommend the tutorials that may be applicable to you, based on what stage of the creation process you’re in.
Kajabi Price
Like any other online course platform, Kajabi offers a free plan for a set number of days. Once the Kajabi free plan ends, you can choose from 3 paid plans.
YOU CAN ALSO READ: Our in-depth review of Kajabi Pricing
Kajabi Free Plan
Upon signing up, you’re eligible for a 14-day free trial with Kajabi. With it, you’ll be able to access Kajabi’s main features. You can even already build your own site and courses.
The free plan also includes the 28-day Kajabi Hero Challenge which is more focused on course creation. You won’t have to pay for a thing, whichever free plan you get.
Kajabi Basic Plan
The Basic Plan is priced at $149/month when you pay monthly. And if you choose to pay annually, it goes down to just $119/month.
This is a good choice for those who need something to get started but aren’t familiar with web design. It allows you to set up 3 digital products and 3 sales pipelines.
And even though this is the most affordable Kajabi plan out of the three, you still get premium benefits. You receive unlimited bandwidth, marketing emails, and landing pages. You’ll also be able to add 1,000 active members and 10,000 contacts to your own course.
Every Basic Plan subscription also entails you to ownership of 1 website with 1 official admin user. And to top all that off, you won’t have to pay any extra transaction fees.
Kajabi Growth Plan
The Basic Plan is priced at $199/month when you pay monthly. If paid annually, it becomes $159/month.
The features of this plan are the same as what you would get with the Kajabi Basic Plan. The only difference is that it has a few more added benefits.
You can create more than 3 digital products and sales pipelines. And you can exceed 1,000 active users for your site.
Plus, you can run an affiliate marketing program with the Growth Plan. Automated email marketing features will also be accessible, which aren’t with the Basic Plan.
There are absolutely no transaction fees for the Kajabi Growth Plan.
Kajabi Pro
The Pro Plan is priced at $399/month when paid monthly. Should you opt for annual payments, it costs $319/month.
Much like the Kajabi Growth Plan, you also receive the same features as the Basic Plan when you avail of the Pro Plan. But the catch is that there are even more added benefits, especially since this is the most expensive plan out of the three.
You’ll be able to set up many more products and sales pipelines with the Kajabi Pro Plan. It makes it the perfect option for enrolling big companies and teams.
And like the Growth Plan, you also get to run an affiliate program and automate your email marketing.
Finally, there are no transaction fees with the Kajabi Pro plan as well.
Overview of Teachable
Now, we can move on to Teachable. Much like Kajabi, Teachable is also a good tool to get started on creating and selling online courses.
Instructors can personalize their sites, customize the lessons, and then sell the courses they make with Teachable. The interface is really easy to understand so they don’t even need prior web design experience.
Aside from the course builder, Teachable also has helpful marketing options for expanding your online business. There’s email automation which allows for wider reach and engagement. There’s also a customizable sales page wherein you can input your own branding.
As a learning management system or LMS, Teachable is also popular among students. This is because it has an interesting catalog of online courses to choose from.
Overall, it’s a handy all-in-one platform that will help new creators expand their set up.
We also talked about Teachable more extensively on our Teachable Review. We reviewed it against its other alternatives, including Thinkific so there’s a short review on Teachable vs. Thinkific. Click here to find out how it’d fare in a battle of Thinkific vs. Teachable.
Pros
- Simple interface
- Customizable layout
- Convenient uploading process
- Optimized for devices
- Sales features
- Analytics tracker
- Email marketing tools
- Efficient customer support
Cons
- Delayed payout schedule
- Has transaction fees
- Limited design options
- No advanced quizzing features
Standout Features of Teachable
These are the great features that make Teachable a worthy competitor to go against Kajabi.
Simple Interface
Teachable’s interface is easy-to-use. It looks clean and is easy to navigate even if you’ve never tried it before.
The Teachable course setup is sped up by the site’s drag and drop mechanism. You’ll get to add files to the courses and arrange them into categories.
Students can easily go through all the materials they’ll need for the course because they’ll all be under one folder.
Teachers will also be able to monitor their students’ progress, among other things, in real-time through the Teachable dashboard. There, they can find analytics, student progress, and payout reports.
Customizable Layout
Adding to the simple interface, it’s also easy to personalize the look of your site. Teachable lets you select a color scheme that you can apply to all your courses. That way, you can establish and strengthen your branding.
You’ll also be able to add a logo to your site. Additional images and text can also be uploaded to further customize how your website looks.
Teachable offers a Power Editor. It allows you to further customize your page with CSS and HTML codes. Plus, you can even set a personalized domain when you avail of the latter two paid plans (Growth and Pro).
Convenient Uploading
One thing we really love about Teachable is its powerful uploader. It lets you upload almost any type of file to enrich your courses. Whether they’re photos, PDFs, or videos, Teachable is capable of adding them to your site.
Also, once you’re done uploading your materials, Teachable automatically stores them in a separate folder that you can access again later on. You won’t have to re-upload a file in case you need it again.
Finally, the files can also be uploaded straight from cloud-based apps, Google Drive, or Dropbox.
Optimized for Devices
Teachable is designed to be viewed on computers, laptops, tablets, and even smartphones. No need to manually customize your site design to fit on smaller screens because Teachable does it automatically.
It’s perfect for students who might only have smartphone and tablet access. Also, since it’s optimized for almost all devices, it adjusts its bandwidth accordingly. Video quality will load depending on where you’re accessing it.
Sales Features
One more thing we love about Teachable is that it’s designed to help you sell your courses. After you’re done creating a course, you can easily put it up for sale.
And as your sales increase, you’ll be able to keep track of them through the site. Teachable offers the option to bundle your best courses together as well to entice users to try them all out.
You can also give coupons and discounts to old users to motivate them to continue the subscription.
Teachable even lets you integrate an affiliate program so that you can persuade more people to subscribe to your course.
Analytics
Teachable offers an analytics report that compiles all your data into a chart. This way, you can easily see how each course that you’ve made is doing.
The report will show you how many students are part of each course, as well as their individual progress reports. You’ll get to know which areas to improve and which students need more guidance.
You’ll also be able to see how much your total revenue is per course. And one aspect that we love about Teachable is that you can connect a third-party application to enhance your analytics.
Google Analytics can be synced to Teachable so that you can find how much traffic you get. It’ll definitely help you improve your sales and marketing tactics.
Email Marketing
Speaking of marketing, Teachable offers really helpful options. One in particular is email marketing.
You can easily send email announcements, additional reading materials, and other important updates to your students. That way, it’s easier to communicate with each other. They can also ask questions in case they need any help.
Plus, you can use emails to gather new subscribers. Third-party email tools like ConvertKit, MailChimp, and InfusionSoft can be synced with your platform to reach more audiences.
Customer Service
When you opt for the paid plans, you can start a live chat with the support team. This also isn’t limited to the course instructors. Even the students can chat with the customer service team, in case they need any help.
Teachable also has something called a Knowledge Base on the website. It contains articles and guides that will answer frequently asked questions.
For more serious issues, users can also place a ticket with Teachable’s support team. They can expect a response in as fast as 24 hours after ticket placement.
Teachable Price
Teachable has three paid plans that you can avail of. But before you even choose which one you want, you can enjoy a 30-day free trial. For a more detailed discussion on the plans, click here.
Teachable Free Plan
For the first 30 days upon signing up, you can enjoy Teachable’s main features and options for free. Once the 30 days of your free plan are up, you’ll be asked to choose which of the three premium plans you want to subscribe to.
The thing about the free plan though is that though you can use it to create a decent site and online course, it’s still pretty limited in terms of features. It’s really only meant to be a taste of what the paid plans can offer.
And while this is a free plan, a portion of any sale you make during this period will go to Teachable. They ask for a $1 + 10% transaction fee for every product or course you sell.
Plus, just to be transparent, there’s also a 2.9% + 30 cents added fee that credit card and payment processors will charge for each transaction.
Teachable Basic
A Teachable Basic subscription costs $39/month. If you choose to pay annually, it’s only $29/month.
The Basic Plan is recommended if it’s your first time to create and sell online courses. It has all the tools you need to make a good course but without a high price. It’s the cheapest plan out of the three paid plans.
With Teachable Basic, you can automate user sign-ups, make a custom domain, and upload an unlimited amount of content.
In relation to content, you can also choose to drip it to your students. This means that you can schedule what new courses to release within specific intervals. That way, your students learn the courses at a decent pace.
A maximum of 2 authors per course is also allowed for Teachable Basic. This means that you can work with a partner or assistant to help you manage your online courses.
What also sets Teachable Basic apart from the free plan is that you can run an affiliate program with it. It’s a great strategy to gain new users.
One thing to note about this plan though is that Teachable charges a 5% transaction fee for any sale that you make. On top of that, you also pay a 2.9% + 30 cents fee to payment processors like Stripe and PayPal.
Also, for some reason, the monthly payout for the Basic Plan gets delayed by over a month. So expect to get your revenue after two months instead of just a month.
Teachable Professional
A Teachable Professional subscription costs $119/month. If paid annually, it’s just $99/month.
The Professional plan is the most popular choice among users. This is since, despite the slightly higher price point, it gives you more customization features for your course.
You essentially get all the same benefits that you’d get from the Basic plan, only with some more extra features. Instead of only 2, you get to add a maximum of 5 course authors. It’s great for those who want to expand their partnership into a team effort.
The assessment features are also more advanced. You can set automatic grading, create course certificates, and access reports. You can even view the analytics of your site.
Also, if ever you encounter a problem and you place a ticket to the support team, you get prioritized. You can also live chat with customer service for quicker responses.
And unlike the Free and Basic plans, you won’t get charged any transaction fees for your sales. The only extra charge you need to pay for is the 2.9% + 30 cents fee from PayPal and Stripe.
You can access your revenue much faster as well. As opposed to the Basic plan wherein you have to wait almost two months for payment release, you can get yours as soon as it’s sent by the user.
Teachable Business
A Teachable Business subscription costs $299/month. If you choose to pay for it yearly, it’s priced at $249/month.
If you get the Business plan, it has all the same features as the Basic and Professional plans plus some extra benefits.
Instead of only 2 or only 5 authors, you can set up to 20 authors for one course. You can also enroll multiple students in bulk. That’s why this plan is highly recommended for entertaining bigger classes and companies.
It’s a good option for those who plan on creating and marketing more than just one online course.
Another similarity it has with the Professional plan is that it won’t ask you for a transaction fee for every sale you make. You only have to pay for the 2.9% + 30 cents charge from payment processors.
Kajabi vs Teachable
Now that we have a general understanding of Teachable and Kajabi, we can analyze their similarities and differences. This is the part where you’ll find out which online course platform is more suited for your needs.
Similarities
The most blatant similarity they have is that they’re both online course platforms that are easy to use.
Teachable and Kajabi are known to have simple interfaces that let you set up professional-looking sites without any web design knowledge.
Both Kajabi and Teachable also come with pre-made layout templates and themes that you can use on your site. You can select a personalized color scheme to keep up with your own branding.
And in terms of course creation, they’re similar in the way that they let you upload a variety of file types as resources. You can put up videos, audio files, and PDFs to supplement your students’ lessons.
Kajabi and Teachable also both have the option to drip content. You can set an interval for sending out new course material and lessons to your subscribers.
Rewarding your students’ accomplishments with certificates and badges can also be done on both online course platforms.
Another similar feature that Kajabi and Teachable have is having automated email tools. They’re especially helpful for marketing an online course to new and potential users.
And speaking of marketing, they both allow you to run an affiliate marketing program. You can partner with affiliates who will promote your courses to their audience. Discount codes and coupons can also be given to your students in addition to this.
Customer service is also a highlight for both course platforms. They both have 24/7 live chat options, as well as a ticketing system and pre-existing online guides.
Both online course platforms offer a free trial upon sign up. They also have three different paid plans that you can choose from, depending on your budget and needs.
And both of these online course platforms offer a free discount on the prices of the paid plans if you choose to pay annually. The fees are significantly lower than when you pay monthly.
Differences
When we put Kajabi vs. Teachable, the most obvious difference is that you don’t get to create sales funnels and landing pages with Teachable.
Kajabi has options to make sales funnels that will organize your overall marketing process. It also allows you to customize your site by having customizable landing pages, thank-you pages, and home pages for your courses.
Another difference we noticed when you compare Kajabi vs. Teachable is that the design options are limited with Teachable. Kajabi has significantly more choices for you to choose from in terms of font style, color scheme, and other elements.
And when you put Teachable vs. Kajabi, you’ll notice a big difference. Teachable doesn’t have the option to create online discussions among users. Though you can send out emails, you can’t form an online thread or community on the course platform.
Finally, when it comes to the paid plans, it’s more expensive to choose Kajabi. Pricing for Teachable is much lower compared to Kajabi prices.
Conclusion
Upon analyzing the similarities and differences of Teachable vs. Kajabi, we found that they’re both really good online course platforms.
Kajabi offers almost all the same tools that Teachable does for its users to create a decent site. They also both offer a free trial for first-time subscribers and course creators.
With these two course platforms, you won’t need prior web design or development knowledge to create and sell a course. The interfaces are simple and easy to navigate.
The main differences lie in the price and added features. Kajabi offers more customizable options and elements but at a higher price point.
So if you’re a novice course creator who just needs a good platform to help you get started, then choose Teachable. It’s cheaper and you get exactly what you need in a course platform.
But if you’re more open to spending a bit more money, then Kajabi is the course platform for you. One added feature that you won’t get with Teachable is the ability to create a landing page, apart from being able to create and sell an online course.
So the question isn’t really Teachable vs. Kajabi but more of affordable vs. splurge-worthy. Kajabi may be more expensive but for good reason. And even though Teachable is cheaper, it still delivers quality features.
Overall, we think that these two course platforms are worthy recommendations. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re already expanding your business, both platforms will get the job done.
So in a battle of Teachable vs. Kajabi, it’s safe to say that they both win.
And if you’re still unsure which one of these platforms to choose, you can always just sign up for the free trials. That way, you can see if the platform works for you or not.
Plus, since it’s just a free trial, you won’t have to worry if you’re wasting your money on the course platform or not. You can freely explore both platforms without hesitation.
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