Kajabi vs ClickFunnels: Which is best for your needs?

Nov 10, 2020

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Are you thinking about moving your business online or launching something totally new? That’s exciting! But you’ll need the right tools and platform to ensure the success of your new venture.

Trying to find the right online platform can be tedious, time-consuming, and a little overwhelming.

Today our goal is to help you learn more about the differences and benefits of Kajabi vs. ClickFunnels. (If you want a more general idea of how to choose an online platform, check out our guide to picking the right online course platform.)

By the end of this article, you should have a much clearer idea of whether Kajabi or ClickFunnels is a better fit for your goals and business.

Both platforms aim to help online entrepreneurs turn their ideas into incredible businesses and share similar features. But it’s important to note that they are for very different audiences.

In this ClickFunnels vs. Kajabi breakdown, we’ll see how the two popular platforms stack up against each other within the following categories:

Sales Funnels
Features
Prices

Overview of Kajabi vs. ClickFunnels platform offerings‍

Kajabi specializes in being an all-in-one online course platform, empowering people to turn their knowledge into digital products, online courses, and membership sites.

You get everything you need to create, market, and monetize right out of the gate.

Kajabi focuses on being an unmatched digital product delivery system and tailors its products to knowledge entrepreneurs who not only care about sales but also branding, design, and 24/7 customer service.

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ClickFunnels focuses on sales funnels, first and foremost.

You can use ClickFunnels to sell digital products, but a large portion of their users sell physical products like supplements, drop-shipped items, etc.

Kajabi vs. ClickFunnels: Three big differences

While Kajabi and ClickFunnels share a handful of features and uses, there are three areas where they differ most:

People
Products
Purpose

People

As we’ve stated earlier, the users of each of these platforms differ greatly.

Kajabi is 100% designed for digital entrepreneurs.

There are people who sell all kinds of digital products: online courses, membership sites, and coaching are just the tip of the iceberg.

You don’t have to be the most tech-savvy and design-minded person to create these products either. Kajabi’s intuitive interface and easy-to-use templates give users a quick and easy way to create and market their products. Still, those who are comfortable have more than enough room to customize as much as they please.

ClickFunnels has decided to cast a wider net, providing funnels for physical products as well.

And while they do also offer the ability to build online courses and membership sites, many choose to use them as a front-end page builder and hook up something like Kajabi on the backend as the digital product delivery system.

Simply put: Kajabi is suited for the digital product business, while ClickFunnels functions extremely well with physical products.

Products

Inside ClickFunnels everything is based around creating a robust funnel.

Kajabi is completely different. As a content delivery system, helping entrepreneurs create digital products is one of the things it does incredibly well. From full-blown online courses and membership sites to more bite-sized products like eBooks or mini-courses, each product comes with a pre-built template allowing you to fill in the blanks or use it simply as a guide.

This library of product templates empowers entrepreneurs to build out a “perfect” product faster than ever before.

Along with product templates, Kajabi is also designed to help the end-user learn more effectively while taking your online course or training.

By offering in-lesson assessments and homework, your customer is empowered to be more of an active learner.

For a Knowledge Commerce entrepreneur, Kajabi’s all-in-one structure makes life easier.

A look inside ClickFunnels:

A look inside Kajabi:

Purpose

Both platforms are equally equipped to help you succeed online. The answer could come down to the purpose you want your online course platform to serve.

It’s clear that Kajabi’s purpose is to be simple yet powerful.

It was built for those who want to deal with as few tech headaches as possible. The user interface within the platform is easy to understand and navigate. You can see this kind of attention to simple detail throughout the entire site.

Kajabi seeks to provide an easy, all-in-one solution for online educators, influencers, and infopreneurs.

While ClickFunnels may not be as simplified as Kajabi, its purpose is to provide a robust sales-building tool for a variety of uses. They do this extremely well.

Since they deal with the physical product as well, inside their platform there’s more opportunity for custom coding and the option to be more tech-heavy.

Bottom Line: Kajabi and ClickFunnels do have overlapping features, but by looking at the different types of people who benefit from each platform, the products that are supported, and the underlying purpose of the platforms, you can see that they don’t necessarily compare apples-to-apples. For entrepreneurs looking for the best digital content delivery, Kajabi is the ClickFunnels alternative you need.

Funnels

When comparing ClickFunnels vs Kajabi’s sales funnel features, you’ll find many similarities.

Both platforms offer pre-built funnels available to you with just a single click. Whether you’re looking to create an opt-in page, host a webinar, or sell your product, both can make that happen with relative ease.

Both also have a “blank” template available allowing you to build from scratch if that’s your thing.

The most notable difference between Kajabi and ClickFunnels’ funnels is that all of Kajabi’s Funnels come with pre-written email sequences.

Each email contains professional copy already written for you at every step of the funnel. You can rewrite it entirely, slightly tweak it, or use it as is.

With ClickFunnels, you need to write your email copy from scratch.

A look at Kajabi Funnels

Kajabi’s funnel feature is called Funnels.

You can generate one of several different Funnel templates with Kajabi depending on what your business needs. From your template, you can customize the Funnel as much or as little as you need.

Bottom Line: Sales funnels are ClickFunnels’ bread and butter, and they do them well. After all, it is in their name. But Kajabi’s Funnel templates can get your sales funnels up and running smoothly even if you don’t have a ton of experience or time.

Kajabi vs ClickFunnels: Features

How does Kajabi compare to ClickFunnels feature for feature? Let’s take a look.

Website building

Both Kajabi and ClickFunnels offer some kind of website builder with plenty of templates.

When it comes to ClickFunnels, it does not offer a traditional website builder. So, you’ll need to use their funnel builders and connect those to create a website, rather than starting with a website template like most other website creation tools.

In ClickFunnels, to build a website, every page needs to be some sort of funnel. Then, you would rename each funnel to the corresponding pages, like “about me” and “homepage”. It will not generate a navigation menu on your site, so you’ll need to manually craft that as well, or risk providing a poor user experience for your website visitors.

It’s a bit of a roundabout experience and to be honest, not user-friendly. And, trying to craft the website around your online courses or digital products may be challenging and take additional time.

If you have an existing website, then ClickFunnels sales funnels would supplement it. Their page builders do allow for some nice functionality on the funnel pages. ClickFunnels provides some page templates and it allows you to change the color and font, and add various page elements. They enable you to add SEO meta data, tracking code, and custom CSS.

The ClickFunnels templates and templates are older and less modern, which might not suit everyone’s taste. Not surprising, considering ClickFunnels Russell Brunson the owner of ClickFunnels believes that you don’t even need a website to make sales online.

But if you’re trying to build a website on ClickFunnels, it’s not the intuitive experience that many website building platforms provide.‍

Kajabi’s website builder makes it easy to develop the home base of your online presence. Kajabi's website builder provides a variety of highly customizable templates so that your website and landing pages can represent your brand while still being extremely compelling to website visitors. With integrated website forms that convert traffic into leads, we make it simple to develop your email list.

If you want your customers to return, to show people who you are as a brand, and nurture lasting relationships with your users, you need to build a beautiful website. And Kajabi is the ClickFunnels alternative you’ve been looking for.

Email marketing

Both ClickFunnels and Kajabi have high-quality email marketing systems. The only difference is that ClickFunnels is a little more complicated to use and requires both a custom domain and SMTP authentication.

When it comes to email marketing in ClickFunnels, it is limited to transactional emails only. If you want to send any sort of marketing emails, and we recommend that you do - you’ll need to spend the money to use another service. Along with costs, that also means you have to deal with the integration headaches.

With Kajabi, as soon as you sign up and upload your list you can begin sending emails. You can build drip campaigns and create professional-looking emails with ease.

Not to mention, while email comes standard with Kajabi’s lowest tier offering, it does not with ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels will require an upgrade to the $297 monthly option in order to use email.

Advantage: Kajabi.

Course creation

No surprise here. Kajabi’s all-in-one platform is a favorite amongst course creators due in large part to the superior course creation tool.

Creating courses on ClickFunnels is tricky. With ClickFunnels, it’s an entirely different setup. You’ll need to host your videos elsewhere on a platform that provides an embed code, like Wistia, Youtube, or Vimeo, then add the videos to your funnels. They do have a membership site funnel, so that includes a member area that’s built in.

But, for any video courses or coaching, you’ll need to craft the site framework yourself. So, ClickFunnels doesn’t really help you create digital products or online courses. To be fair, they’re not claiming to. It’s just something you need to know because it means you’ll have to pay for course creation software on top of ClickFunnels.

Kajabi’s course creation tool is simple to use, intuitive and fast. Many Kajabi clients get their courses uploaded and ready to sell just a few hours after signing up!

Kajabi has a world-class course creator and digital product generator. The Product templates mean with simply a few clicks, you can create a great-looking online course, mini course, membership site, community, drip course, or coaching program.

These templates make it simple for you to focus on the content in your online course and start selling faster. These are customizable to fit into your brand, too. Of course, you can build your digital products from the ground up and start from scratch if you’d like.

Your courses on Kajabi can be as simple or complex as you’d like. You can have video trainings, audio courses, worksheets, email-based courses, membership sites, and coaching. To host your content, Kajabi includes Wistia video hosting, and you can upload your videos in the Kajabi app.

For course creation, Kajabi vs. ClickFunnels is a no-brainer. Kajabi was designed for online educators and is the clear winner.

Integration

Because ClickFunnels is not solely focused on the course creation business it has an exhaustive list of integrations including ShipStation, Salesforce, and HubSpot.

Kajabi has several built-in integrations with must-have services like Zapier, Facebook, Mailchimp, Drip, and Google Analytics.

Affiliates

Want to create a referral program allowing your customers to promote your products for a share of the profits?

This important feature is available with both platforms and includes an array of tracking tools and performance indicators. It’s a tie here.

Support

Both ClickFunnels and Kajabi provide industry best educational trainings.

However, Kajabi goes a step further. The all-in-one platform prides itself on its world-class customer service. While Kajabi offers 24/7 technical and customer support, ClickFunnels uses a ticket system with a time window that can stretch up to 48 hours.

If you want a platform that’s going to be able to help and answer your questions 24/7, Kajabi is your ClickFunnels alternative.

Kajabi vs. ClickFunnels features: The bottom line

While ClickFunnels offers excellent funnel building and marketing capabilities, their course creation and webpage builder still leave a lot to be desired.

Russell Brunson provides high-quality marketing training for ClickFunnels users and there is a strong affiliate program. But it is clear that ClickFunnels is still focused on sales first and online courses second.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It just means that when it comes to course creation and digital content delivery, they aren’t the best. That’s where Kajabi comes in.

If you use ClickFunnels and want modern, professional, and mobile-friendly web pages, you’re going to need to pay for an additional service like Thrive Themes ($49 a month). You would also need to pay for additional software to create your own community. With Kajabi, you already have all the tools you need right at your fingertips.

As you can see from our head-to-head comparisons, Kajabi is clearly the best, easiest to use all-in-one platform for creating, marketing, and selling online courses!

If you’re sick and tired of trying to stitch together multiple systems (and making multiple payments every month) it’s time to move your online course business to Kajabi.‍

Kajabi vs. ClickFunnels: Price

As a knowledge entrepreneur, managing the money you spend on software and third-party tools seems like a never-ending battle. Before you know it, you’re paying for software you forgot you had and only using 10% of the ones you remember.

ClickFunnels: $97/mo Starter Account - 20 Funnels. With this plan, you do not get services like email marketing, affiliate software, or product creation.‍‍

Kajabi: $149/mo Basic Plan - 3 Funnels, 3 Products, 1 Website, 10,000 Email contacts. You can also get a further discount on Kajabi if you pay annually.

With Kajabi’s basic plan, along with 3 funnels, you also get email marketing, free website hosting, a production creation platform, and more.

Existing online businesses may even be able to save money by switching to Kajabi. You can eliminate all the expensive third-party integrations and keep everything under one roof.‍

Bottom Line: You get access to ClickFunnels renown sales funnels for a relatively low price, but you’ll have to pay much more to get anywhere close to the features Kajabi offers in their base plan.

The final word on Kajabi vs. ClickFunnels

Still trying to decide between Kajabi and ClickFunnels? Remember, Kajabi’s digital content delivery platform is unmatched. On the other hand, ClickFunnels sales tools are some of the best around if you offer physical products.

Both platforms clearly have their benefits, but Kajabi’s more robust platform shines a bit more brightly.

Why choose ClickFunnels

Does your business sell physical products like supplements, e-commerce items, or drop shipped goods?

Are you comfortable with some level of custom coding and integrating additional plug-ins or third-party services?

If yes, then ClickFunnels is a strong option for you.

Why choose Kajabi

Are you a Knowledge Commerce entrepreneur who sells online courses, coaching, and other digital products?

Is providing an immersive learning experience to your students important to your business goals? And does the thought of tech-headaches keep you up at night and you’d prefer to not have to worry about it?

If yes, then Kajabi is definitely worth trying out!

Last thing: At Kajabi we are known for our over-the-top customer service.

No matter where you are or what time of day our live chat is open, 24 hours, 7 days a week with someone eager to help you. No more getting stuck and losing momentum.

Unfortunately for ClickFunnels, it’s no secret that their customer service leaves much to be desired.

From frustrated former faithful users to new online entrepreneurs, the lack of hands-on help is causing a noticeable stir. And some users have even left because of it...