Kajabi vs. CoachAccountable: which platform is best for coaches?

Kajabi and CoachAccountable are both online coaching programs that let you create, publish, and sell online coaching programs, incorporating your own brand and setting your own prices.

So if you’re looking for coaching software that will make it easy to grow your coaching practice, you’re likely comparing these two platforms. Which one is best for streamlining your coaching practice? Which makes it easier to take care of your clients? And which one gives you the resources and support to improve your coaching skills?

In this in-depth article, we’re doing a complete Kajabi / CoachAccountable comparison to see how they stack up as your go-to option for building a profitable coaching business. 

We’ll compare Kajabi vs. CoachAccountable capabilities in these key areas:

1. Automating work
2. Easy-access digital portal for your clients
3. Payment processing
4. Coaching
5. Courses
6. Membership community
7. Referral or partner program
8. Support
9. Client database
10. Additional features available with Kajabi

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

What is CoachAccountable?

CoachAccountable was founded in 2012 to enable coaches to create a better offer, get better results with their clients, and focus on doing more of what they love. As stated on their website, the goal is “to keep your clients on track without having to babysit them.”

With CoachAccountable, you can sell coaching from your own website, your social media channels, or your email newsletter. And it includes appointment scheduling, intake forms, and payments.

It’s important to note, however, that CoachAccountable isn’t an all-in-one coaching platform. It can help you manage your coaching, but it doesn’t include a website, marketing tools, or other mainstays of a successful digital business. 

Compare that to Kajabi, the industry-leading all-in-one coaching and course platform that fully equips you to launch and grow a profitable digital business. It gives you the tools you need to build your coaching practice and turn it into a successful business.

The cost of CoachAccountable vs. Kajabi

As an all-in-one knowledge commerce platform, Kajabi isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison to CoachAccountable. With Kajabi, your monthly fee is higher, but it gives you far more than just your coaching platform. It also includes:

• Your website
• Email software
• Payments
• Funnel builder
• Landing page builder
• Memberships
• Communities
• And more

Kajabi has three packages, each offering full access to every feature. The Basic package lets you build up to 3 coaching products for just $149 per month. 

CoachAccountable takes a different approach to pricing. With them, pricing is based on the number of active clients. So if you’ve got two clients, you’ll pay $20 a month. But as your practice grows, so does your fee. 

For 20 clients, for example, you’ll pay $120 a month. For 100 clients, you’ll pay $400 a month.

Like Kajabi, you get all of CoachAccountable’s features at all levels. But you’ll need to carefully manage your growth, so you aren’t paying more for your coaching software than you’re bringing in with your coaching services. For instance, you may need to avoid free or trial offers, since they’ll give you more users and will significantly raise your rates.

And remember, CoachAccountable isn’t an all-in-one product, so you’ll need to invest in marketing and business tools to grow your business. In addition to this app, you’ll also need:

• Email software, averaging $50 a month
• Website hosting, averaging $10 a month
• Landing page builder, averaging $50 a month for an entry-level package
• Funnel builder, averaging $100+ a month
• Podcast hosting, averaging $25 a month

Even if you only choose to invest in a website and email marketing software, you’ll pay $60 a month for a basic business set-up — plus your CoachAccountable fee.

With Kajabi, you get everything you need — $235+ worth of essential business-building tools, plus coaching and courses — for just $149 monthly.

Features review

We’ve touched on some of the tools you get with Kajabi and CoachAccountable. Now let’s take a close look at how their features compare.

Automating work

Kajabi and CoachAccountable both include automations that facilitate your client interaction. They both sync with your calendar, making it easy for clients to book calls with you. The apps then automate reminders, so you can focus on taking care of your clients.

But Kajabi also automates your marketing and client interactions. Through Kajabi’s Pipelines, you can build funnels for a variety of use cases: webinars, freebies, product launches, coaching campaigns, and more.

Each pipeline gives you a proven framework, or blueprint, for the type of campaign your building. 

For example, this Webinar Pipeline Blueprint includes a registration page, confirmation page, four emails leading up to the event, five email after the event, a sales pages, and a checkout page:

With a few clicks, you’ll have your entire webinar campaign set up. And you don’t have to worry about forgetting a key email or web page, because the blueprint builds it for you. Just add your branding and messaging.

Easy-access digital portal for clients

It’s important to create a portal that gives clients a friendly, intuitive interface and lets them manage their own experience: update their user profiles, take notes, and interact with you on the go.

Both Kajabi and CoachAccountable make it easy for clients to access your training materials and enjoy a premium experience. 

Kajabi goes one step further, giving you a mobile app, available in the Apple Store and Google Play. That makes it easy for your clients to stay connected on the go.

Payment processing

Kajabi and CoachAccountable process payments through Stripe and PayPal. CoachAccountable also allows payment processing through Square.

Neither platform charges additional fees for payment processing. So you’ll only pay the processor’s fee:

• 2.9% plus 30 cents per charge on Stripe
• 3.45% plus 49 cents per charge on PayPal
• 2.6% plus 10 cents per charge on Square

That puts more money in your pockets, where it belongs.

Coaching

As a coach, you need a platform that makes it easy to manage your clients, their payments, and their progress.

CoachAccountable gives you a dashboard for managing each client’s engagement. There, you can track their progress, the days left in their coaching package, invoices paid, and email notifications.

With CoachAccountable, you’ll create action lists for your clients. They’ll check off items as they complete them and receive reminders when an action is overdue. You may also take notes on your coaching sessions, then mark them private or share them with your client.

Coaching on Kajabi is designed for scale. It helps you build a high-growth coaching program that still provides a personalized experience.

The Coaching dashboard lets you manage all of your clients in one place, including their join date and the date of their last activity. You can then open any client profile page to track their progress.

A client profile page in Kajabi

Setting up your coaching programs is easy in Kajabi. It gives you a Session Template for each session. Use it to plan the agenda for that session, add resources, and take notes.

The goal: to provide a personalized, tailored experience at scale. So you can continue to grow your coaching practice and help more people.

Courses 

Both Kajabi and CoachAccountable include a course builder. This is key, since digital courses add value to a coaching program.

Keep in mind, with CoachAccountable, you can only give course access to as many people as your subscription plan allows. So at $20 a month, you can only have two coaching students in your course. 

With Kajabi’s Basic plan, you can have 1,000 members. That gives you a lot more room for growth before you have to upgrade to the next plan.

And Kajabi is considered by many to be the industry-leading course builder. It was named a 2020 Company to Watch by the Startup Weekly.

Kajabi’s intuitive interface makes it possible to build a profitable course in just a few clicks. And you can build whatever type of coaching experience you want, delivering your content all at once or releasing it one lesson at a time. 

Membership community 

Adding a membership area to your coaching program allows you to build a community around your coaching program while encouraging engagement. 

Groups is the CoachAccountable alternative to Facebook groups. It gives you a forum board for group discussions and for sharing updates with your members.

Kajabi offers this through their Community feature. It adds a forum to your coaching program or course, so you can build a thriving membership community. That increases engagement, encourages interaction, and creates a space for transformation and connection. 

Referral / Partner program

Both Kajabi and CoachAccountable encourage referrals. With CoachAccountable, you can earn 50% of a new coach’s first paying month and 5% of every paying month after that. With the Kajabi Partner Program, you earn a 30% lifetime commission for any new referral that stays active past their trial period.

Support

As for support, CoachAccountable offers email support. They promise a response within 24 hours, usually one to two during business hours. They also offer chat.

Kajabi has 24/7 live chat with Growth and Pro plans. You’ll also get phone support as an Access member. Kajabi Access is an upgrade that offers new resources, services, and one-on-one guidance to help you maximize the platform for real success. 

Client database

Kajabi and CoachAccountability both have some form of customer management. 

As mentioned above, CoachAccountable’s client profile page gives you a place to track each client’s progress. 

On Kajabi, open the People tab to see all your contacts and members. There, you can add contacts, manage tags, and add or remove people from segments. To manage individual clients, open their profile. You can view their history, purchases, products, and even take notes on your interactions with them. 

What features does Kajabi have that CoachAccountable does not?

There’s no denying that CoachAccountable is an effective way to manage your coaching business. But it’s not an all-in-one, which means it doesn’t equip you to market and grow your business. 

You’re going to need other tools and resources, and you’re going to have to integrate those tools. If an integration fails, it’s up to you to figure out what’s wrong and the best way to fix it.

With Kajabi, you get a frictionless environment with no workarounds. You get a complete toolset for building your products, marketing and selling them, and growing your business long-term.

Here are some of the features that make Kajabi stand out:

Smooth member experience

With Kajabi, you can easily expand your business and enroll your clients in multiple products or programs. They get one login for all of the products they purchase from you. That creates a seamless experience as they interact with your brand. And it helps you upsell and cross-sell as you develop new products.

Note: The ability to upsell your clients is especially valuable when you consider that, with Kajabi, you aren’t paying more every time you add another coaching client. You can add hundreds of students and clients without impacting your costs.

Website tool

When you buy CoachAccountable’s app, it’s an add-on to your existing website and publishing channels. There are no landing pages, blog, or podcast included. You’ll need to invest in separate tools for these assets.

With Kajabi, you can build your entire business in one place. It has all the business-building tools you need: website, blog, podcast, courses, coaching programs, and more.  That saves you time and effort because you only have to master one tool, and everything comes pre-integrated.

Email marketing

To grow your business, you need to build an email list and engage with them on a regular basis. Kajabi knows this. So they’ve built email marketing software into the platform. 

When someone buys a product, they’re automatically added to your email list. They’re given immediate access to your coaching platform. And it’s not on you to build those integrations. 

Kajabi also gives you pre-built templates for beautiful, customized emails in minutes. Give them your branded look and feel, so your clients always recognize your emails in their inbox.

Podcast hosting

One of the hottest trends today is podcasting. Around 41% of Americans listen to podcasts once a month. According to Edison Research, 49% of podcast super listeners — meaning they listen to podcasts five or more hours a day — say that a podcast is the best way for a brand to reach them.

With the ability to offer free or paid podcasts built into the Kajabi platform, it’s a no-brainer to start a podcast to boost your authority and expand your audience. 

Built-in affiliate marketing program

As we’ve already mentioned, you can easily add another income stream to your business by referring Kajabi to your friends and clients. And let’s face it, Kajabi is an easy sell. 

Anyone who’s tried to build a knowledge commerce business knows how hard it is to duct tape together all the tools and resources they need. Kajabi’s all-in-one program just makes sense.

Why would someone choose Kajabi over CoachAccountable?

When comparing Kajabi vs. CoachAccountable, the best platform for you is the one that equips you to build your ideal coaching business.

With CoachAccountable, you get a beautiful app for managing the coaching side of your business. But you’ll still need to build out the rest of your business. That’s going to require an investment in basic business tools and resources. And it’s going to cost you time, energy, and a headache or two as you research the tools that play nice with one another and figure out how to get them on the same playground.

With Kajabi, you can keep your focus where it belongs — on your clients and your business. Because you’ll have the tools you need, and you know they work well together.

If you’re ready to start or scale your coaching business (headache free), Kajabi is the clear choice. Start your free trial today!

Still researching? Read our other comparisons:

Kajabi vs. Teachable
Kajabi vs. Thinkific
Kajabi vs. Podia
‍Kajabi vs. Squarepace
Kajabi vs. LearnWorlds
‍Kajabi vs. Patreon
Kajabi vs. Wordpress
Kajabi vs. Clickfunnels
Kajabi vs. Ontraport
Kajabi vs. ConvertKit
Kajabi vs. Gumroad
Kajabi vs. Samcart
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Kajabi vs. Clixli
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