Kajabi alternatives: Which is best for your business?

Thinkific

When it comes to course building, Thinkific is one of the best Kajabi alternatives out there. Thinkific's drag-and-drop page builder, drip-feed course content creator, and video hosting make it easy for you to create your courses your way. 

While Thinkific prevails as a course builder, it severely lacks as a business suite. You’ll need to build a website and tech stack separate from Thinkific to promote your online courses and other digital products. 

Thinkific has a free option for test-driving the platform. But to get tools for launching your course, you’ll need to upgrade.

The Basic plan ($39/month) lets you drip content, email students one-to-one, and offer coupons.

The Pro plan ($79/month) gives you private and hidden courses, communities, live lessons, and advanced course building. 

To get assessments, unlimited communities, and white labeling, you’ll need to upgrade to Premium ($399/month).

Trouble is, you still have to build your online presence, which means you need a website and marketing tools. 

Bottom line, Thinkific is a great course builder, but you’ll invest the most in building and maintaining your systems rather than growing your business.

Get our full Thinkific review here.

Teachable

Like Kajabi, Teachable helps you create online courses and a coaching program, build a brand, and scale your business.

Its features include an integrated website and builder, drag-and-drop course builder, sales page builder, and payment processing to sell your products. You can engage with students with comments, quizzes, and certificates of completion. And, you’ll get email marketing with a paid package.

A unique feature that stands out: they do automatic payouts based on user roles, so collaborations are easy.

Pricing is relatively affordable. The Basic plan starts at $29 a month. But with this plan, you’ll also pay a 5% transaction fee - which you don't have to pay with any of Kajabi's plans. 

Upgrade to Pro ($99/month), and you’ll be exempted from fees. This gives you a simple website builder, affiliate marketing, and advanced reporting.

You can upgrade to the Business plan ($249/month) to customize your website theme. 

Although Teachable focuses on courses, they also understand that you need to grow your business. Integrations with key tools like MailChimp, Zapier, ConvertKit, Google Analytics, Segment, and more are easy to set up. 

Don't forget to consider the cost of these and other third-party apps when comparing pricing. 

Read more about Kajabi vs. Teachable in our in-depth review. 

LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds is an online education platform for building and selling courses. Created for professional and compliance training, continuing education, and employee/customer onboarding, LearnWorlds equips you to create free, paid, private, drip-fed, and curated courses.

While LearnWorlds has features that support knowledge entrepreneurs, it wasn’t designed for creating and selling a variety of digital products. Its focus is courses, and it does courses very well.

With this Kajabi alternative, your courses allow a synchronized transcript, and overlay images and links on your videos. It also lets students add notes and highlights to your text lessons. Their randomized question bank makes it easy to create secure, randomized tests. And they provide certificates for students who complete the course.

Other learning activities include videos, ebooks, live lessons or webinars, and forums. LearnWorlds also features the ability to design sales funnels with cross-sells and upsells.

You won’t get features to create other digital products, like memberships and coaching programs. As you expand your business, you may feel limited in your options.

LearnWorlds has three packages: Starter ($24/month + $5 per course sale), Pro Trainer ($79/month), and Learning Center ($249/month).

This alternative gives you a good collection of tools for running a knowledge business. It also gets good reviews. But according to some users, it can be difficult to learn and looks outdated.

“Almost all templates need to be updated. It could be done by simplifying them. It is hard to describe but design is over complex (I am a Designer). You need to use html/css to fix so many not-good-looking-design things..,” wrote one user.

“The LearnWorlds platform has some severe usability issues for admins setting up courses that include: a poorly designed information architecture for admins, and some features that actually don't work when published (my current issue is social network links are setup correctly but don't work on the published site),” wrote another.

Check out our Kajabi vs. LearnWorlds review before jumping into this Kajabi alternative.

FreshLearn

Founded in 2020, FreshLearn is one of the newer learning management systems on the market. So far, it’s earning good reviews. 

FreshLearns equips you to sell a variety of digital knowledge products, including courses, digital downloads, masterclasses, and memberships. You can also create a personalized digital storefront. 

Courses may be video- and audio-based and have assessments and completion certificates. You can release the entire course or drip course content at whatever pace you like.

One unique feature is FreshLearn’s ability to change languages. In settings, you can set your language or define custom text for default terms, such as “member” and “sign up.”

You can get started for free with up to 25 enrollments. 

The Pro plan ($25/month) gives you no transaction fees and a white-label domain. Create unlimited products with drip delivery, assessments, and live classes.

The No Brainer plan ($41/month) adds gamification, a question bank, affiliate program, and customizable video player.

Podia

Podia equips you to build a website, digital products, and community. And like Kajabi, Podia lets you create a wide range of products:

You can get started for free, paying an 8% transaction fee for any sale you make on the platform. You’ll be able to build a website, a community, one coaching product, and one download. You’ll also have access to email marketing.

Paid plans include the Mover plan ($33/month), the Shaker plan ($75/month), and the Earthquaker plan ($166/month).

Paid plans allow you to build courses and remove transaction fees. To unlock webinars and affiliates, you need to upgrade to the Shaker plan at $75/month.

If you're interested in learning more about how these two all-in-one course builders stack up, read our detailed Kajabi vs. Podia review. 

Udemy

It’s hard to review course creators without including Udemy, one of the best-known course marketplaces. They give you a place to create a course without worrying about marketing. If users search for your topic, your course will show up in the search results.

All true… to a point. 

On Udemy, you can create high-quality courses for free. The user interface is intuitive. You’ll find plenty of support material to help you get started. And when it goes live, your course will be listed on Udemy’s website for sale. 

Trouble is, you’ll be listed among hundreds of other courses just like yours. Depending on your market and target audience, it can be hard to stand out and be seen as a recognized expert in your industry.

You also have limited control over your course, its style, and even your pricing. 

Courses must be video and at least 30 minutes long, featuring at least five lectures. Not to mention, you'll need to submit it to Udemy's review team before you can publish it. (If your recording isn’t good enough, you’ll have to re-record your course to meet their standards.)

Not only that, but Udemy has also been known to change its payment terms, taking a higher percentage of sales. And they’ll slash your prices whenever they run a site-wide sale. (Yep, your $250 course will sell like hotcakes for just $9.99.)

As a course-building platform, Udemy is a respectable choice. But you won’t build a six-figure business on this platform. 

If you want to build a business around your knowledge, Udemy should be just one channel for driving awareness. 

Read our Kajabi vs. Udemy review for more details on this alternative to Kajabi. 

Mighty Networks

Mighty Networks is a community-based platform that allows you to build paid memberships, including a website, hosted content, live webinar events, and videos. 

Think of it as a Facebook group that you own. Like the social media giant, Mighty Networks has its own ideas about how you should build your business. 

You have two plans: the Community plan ($33/month) and the Business plan ($99/month).

The Community Plan gives you a website and paid memberships. But you must upgrade to the Business Plan to access the course builder and analytics. 

Course features are somewhat limited, which may require some workarounds. For example, since Mighty Networks doesn’t have assessments, one user created a progress tracker on Google Sheets for his customers. 

“I have a progress tracker I host on Google Sheets, as well as homework uploads they upload to our shared drive - but the only way to get that to them is through email.”

You may also struggle with usability. As another user reports:

“Customizing landing pages and content isn't always as streamlined as I'd hope. Even after a few months of using it, I still find myself struggling to find what landing pages are where, and how to customize them. I'd also like to be able to more fully customize sign-up pages.”

Read our complete Kajabi vs. Mighty Networks interview here. 

Patreon

Patreon is a membership platform for creative professionals. It lets you create a landing page and communicate with your fans through posts, emails, and direct messages. You can also create different membership tiers and charge recurring subscriptions to access your digital products.

The idea is to fund your creative projects by gaining patrons, willing to pay you monthly to connect with you and support your work.

Patreon attracts all types of creators producing all types of products. So let’s evaluate it from a course creator’s perspective. Patreon lets you gate content, run limited-time offers, and create member-only live streams which makes it a viable option for launching a course.

But the question remains: is that enough to grow your business?

If you’re just getting started as a creator and want to test your ideas, sure, Patreon is a good option. You can build an audience and start developing your training. 

But you won’t have the features you need to create self-led courses, add assessments, offer coaching, or create other types of knowledge products. That’s going to limit your growth potential. 

On the plus side, Patreon doesn’t cost anything to get started. Instead of paying for the platform, you choose the package you want — Lite, Pro, or Premium — and pay a percentage of the monthly income you earn on Patreon; 5%, 8%, or 12% respectively.

The more features you need, the more money they take from your earnings. And while that’s not a big deal if you’re earning $100 a month, what happens when your audience grows and you start earning $5,000 a month?

8% of $100 = $8 (No big deal.)

8% of $5000 = $400 (Kind of a big deal!)

For that, you could get Kajabi’s Growth plan with $241 left over each month - Kajabi won’t take a cut of your profits!

Read our comprehensive Kajabi vs. Patreon review for more details on how these membership platforms compare. 

Memberful

Memberful is a membership platform for independent creators, publishers, educators, and podcasters. It gives you key features for running a membership: subscription plans, optimized checkout, dashboard analytics, member management, and payments.

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With Memberful, you won’t get a platform for hosting your products. Instead, you create and host your products, then use Memberful to manage member payments and access to your products. 

For example, you can: 

• Turn your free podcast into a private podcast by integrating with your podcast host. 
• Integrate with an email marketing software to send a paid newsletter directly through Memberful.
• Connect Memberful to Discord or Discourse for a paid community.
• Sell PDFs and MP3 downloads as standalone products or include them in a member portal.
• Sell courses you’ve built on LearnDash on your Wordpress website.
• Even sell physical goods by asking for the physical address during a sale.

You can get started for free. But you’ll pay a 10% transaction fee on each sale, and you’re limited to website integrations only and a private podcast. 

The Pro plan, at $25/month + 4.9% transaction fee, gives you member-only newsletters.

For full integrations and features, you’ll need the Premium plan, which costs $100/month + 4.9% transaction fee per sale. Only at this level can you remove the Memberful branding, creating your own branded membership.

This may be a good option if you have your own website and want to add a shopping cart that manages member access to your products. But with the 4.9% transaction fee on top of your monthly fee, your out-of-pocket expenses will add up quickly.

ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels has been one of the leading funnel builders since 2013. It can help you create funnels, landing pages, and lead generation campaigns.

It has an all-in-one appeal — build a simple website and membership area on the platform, then use its funnels and marketing automation to sell your products.

But this platform is designed for direct marketing, not a knowledge business. You’ll need to integrate many of your marketing tools to build a complete tech stack. 

For instance, there are no quizzes and assessments, discussion groups, video hosting, or other essentials. And, you won’t find features to build other digital products, such as coaching programs and podcasts.

Read our in-depth Kajabi vs. ClickFunnels review for more details on how this platform compares to Kajabi.  

Kartra

Kartra is an all-in-one platform focused largely on marketing and selling your products. While it’s a viable Kajabi alternative, it’s not actually a creation platform.

It gives you the tools for lead generation, email marketing, funnel building, and collecting payments. But for creating your products, you’re limited to memberships. It lacks advanced features for courses, coaching, and podcasting. 

From Kartra’s perspective, a membership is all you need to sell training and group coaching. But from our experience, you should never let technology tell you how to structure your business. To deliver your products your way, you may want more functionality.

Kartra gives you drag-and-drop page builders that create mobile-responsive pages and a basic membership site. There, you can upload your videos and training and serve your content through a drip-style feed. 

The cons? 

• More advanced e-learning features like graded quizzes, assessments, and certificates aren't available. 
• Some users say that customer support can be hit or miss. 
• Users report that the user interface needs to be improved. 

Gumroad

Gumroad is an ecommerce solution for selling whatever you create: video lessons, monthly subscriptions, digital products, and even physical products. It lets you take one-time, recurring, or fixed-length payments in your currency of choice. 

Gumroad isn’t a creator platform at all. It doesn’t host your courses or coaching program. But it does let you create a simple membership, giving customers access to a library of content for as long as they’re subscribed.

That said, you can create products, host them on your website, and sell them on landing pages built in your Gumroad store and/or your website. Bill customers monthly, quarterly, biannually, or yearly.

You’ll pay a transaction fee, plus $0.30 per sale, based on your lifetime revenue milestones:

Below $1,000 = 9% 

$1,000+ = 7% 

$10,000+ = 5%

$100,000+ = 3%

$1,000,000+ = 2.9%

Learn more in our Kajabi vs Gumroad review.