Kajabi vs. Coaching.com

If you’re looking for an online coaching platform that lets you create, promote, and sell online coaching programs, you’re likely comparing Coaching.com vs Kajabi.

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

We’ll compare the two platforms’ capabilities in these key areas:

• Pricing
• Portal
• Client notes
• Scheduling
• Payments
• Videoconferencing
• Website
• Email marketing
• Membership sites
• Podcast
• Online courses
• Digital downloads
• Integrations

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

What is Coaching.com?

Founded in 2014, Coaching.com is a digital platform for finding, tracking, managing, and evaluating coaching. Designed specifically for coaching practices — both independent coaches and organizations with internal and/or external coaches — it aims to create efficiencies in how coaching is purchased and managed.

For individual coaches, the platform helps you manage your workflow, track client progress, and find new clients. But Coaching.com also gives large coaching companies, such as Hudson Institute of Coaching and DDI, the infrastructure they need to manage a large stable of coaches.

That may explain the platform’s complex interface. As one user reported, “If you do not put effort to learn their functionality and operation, it could be cumbersome to work with this system.” 

That being the case, it’s important to evaluate Coaching.com alternatives to be sure you’re getting an intuitive, full-featured platform that will help you grow your business.

Kajabi is your best Coaching.com alternative. It’s the leading all-in-one platform for knowledge entrepreneurs — including coaches, consultants, authors, and trainers. Since its launch in 2010, it’s empowered more than 60,000 entrepreneurs to serve 60 million clients and make over $5 billion in sales.

The platform includes a dedicated coaching app that helps you run your entire coaching business on one platform, with no workarounds or plug-ins required. But it also comes with a bundle of tools and features that help you expand your audience and scale your business.

Is it really an all-in-one?

Coaching.com sells itself as an all-in-one solution for coaches. And it’s true, if you only consider the coaching side of your business.

But what about a website? Marketing? Business building tools? For those additional features, you’ll need additional tools. And you’ll have to build integrations or manually move data from one app to another to run and grow your business.

Kajabi offers a true all-in-one platform for managing and growing your coaching business. Not only does it give you the resources to manage your coaching practice, it makes it easy to create your online presence, market your business, boost authority as a thought leader, and create and sell other knowledge products.

And since Kajabi gives access to all its business-building tools in every plan, you don’t have to invest in other tools or technology. Everything you need is included, and it all works seamlessly together.

The cost of Coaching.com vs. Kajabi

Coaching.com has three plans:

• Free, up to 3 active clients
• Standard: $49/month, up to 10 active clients
• Pro: $99/month, unlimited active clients

You need to be aware, though, that this fee is just a portion of the cost of this platform.

On the free plan, Coaching.com charges a 5% transaction fee to process payments. That’s on top of your Stripe fee (2.9% plus 30 cents per charge). So nearly 8% of your earnings is taken out of your income right away. In addition, you’ll pay a 25% commission when clients find you in the Coaching.com marketplace. 

On the Standard package, you’ll pay a 3% transaction fee and a 20% commission. On the Pro plan, you’ll pay a 1% transaction fee and a 15% commission. Again, that’s on top of Stripe’s processing fees.

So let’s do the math. 

Let’s say you’re in the Standard package, offering a $5,000 coaching package, with clients coming from Coaching.com’s marketplace. Each time you make a sale, Coaching.com will take a $150 transaction fee and a $1,000 commission off the top. Stripe will take their $145.30 as well. So you’ll take home just $3,704.70 for each sale.

Now, let’s compare that to Kajabi.

Kajabi has three plans:

• Basic: $149/month, 3 products, 1,000 active clients
• Growth: $199/month, 15 products, 10,000 active clients
• Pro: $399/month, 100 products, 20,000 active clients

At first glance, the price is significantly higher. But let’s look at what you get.

All plans include all the features you need to grow your business. Which means the Basic plan is all you need until you exceed 1,000 clients and three coaching programs. That gives you a lot of room for growth before you need to increase your expenses.

And Kajabi never charges additional fees or reserves important features for “premium” users. So you’re empowered to earn more money, and you’ll keep every dollar you earn after Stripe takes their processing fee.

Not only that, since Kajabi is a true all-in-one platform, you don’t need to invest in other tools for your podcast, newsletter, email marketing, landing pages, funnels, and more. That makes Kajabi one of the most affordable options on the market for coaches and knowledge entrepreneurs who are serious about growing a profitable business.

Features review

We’ve compared Coaching.com and Kajabi as business and coaching platforms. Now, let’s take a closer look at the features they offer.

Templates and automations

Creating a coaching program from scratch can be challenging, even if you know how you’d like to structure it. To help, both Coaching.com and Kajabi offer templates to give you a head start on building your program.

Both platforms have custom roadmaps with sessions, milestones, surveys, and assignments that will help you design your coaching programs. Both allow you to schedule notifications, content, reminders, and follow-ups, so your clients (and you) stay on track.

Kajabi also provides templates and automations for building out the rest of your business. Kajabi Blueprints give you pre-built marketing funnels (called Pipelines), emails, and marketing campaigns that follow today’s best practices.

There are templates for for the most popular types of knowledge products:

• Coaching programs
• Mini-courses
• Online courses
• Drip courses
• Memberships
• Communities

This makes it easy to build your products, your website, and your marketing with just a few clicks, so you can easily grow your business without taking your focus off your clients.

Portal

Coaching.com gives you a client portal for managing your clients. But the portal was actually designed for large corporations to manage multiple client portals for their coaches. Because corporations need to be able to track and manage their employees on this app, it’s not intuitive for individual coaches.

The Coaching.com portal lets clients schedule sessions, download resources, update goals, join video sessions, chat, and respond to forms. On the backend, you can keep an eye on your client’s progress, engagement, milestones, and more.

Kajabi was designed for knowledge entrepreneurs like you, not corporations. It has an intuitive interface that’s easy to pick up, even for new users. It lets you customize everything, from the number of live sessions to the agenda, the resources you offer, and notes from each session.

As with Coaching.com, clients can schedule sessions, access their training and resources, and update their progress. If you do group coaching and run a membership, they can also engage with you and other members in your community.

Client notes

Both Coaching.com and Kajabi have a rich-text Notes feature. Here’s a screenshot of Coaching.com’s notes:

In Kajabi, notes are part of a template that you create for your coaching sessions. There, you’ll set the agenda for your session and add your student’s resources and downloads — and take notes. That keeps everything in one place, providing a good learning environment for your clients.  

Scheduling

Coaching.com syncs with your calendar, so clients can book calls without overlapping your other events. The app automatically adds new sessions to your calendar.

Kajabi has a one-click integration with Calendly. If you use another calendar app, you can add its link instead. And if you prefer to manually schedule sessions, you have that option as well. 

Payments

With Coaching.com, you’ll integrate with Stripe to collect payments. Kajabi allows you to collect payments through Stripe and PayPal. With Kajabi, you can sell individual sessions or set up recurring payments for ongoing coaching. Recurring payments are billed automated, so you don’t have to remember to send invoices.

Coaching.com lets you create and send invoices any time you have billable activity.

Videoconferencing 

Coaching.com has integrated videoconferencing, accessible from your phone or desktop. It also integrates with Zoom, Teams, and other link-based videoconferencing tools.

Kajabi doesn’t have a built-in videoconferencing feature. Instead, you’ll use your favorite videoconferencing app for your coaching sessions.

Website 

To attract your best clients you don’t just need a coaching app. You need a dynamic website that clearly communicates the transformation you deliver to your coaching clients. 

That being the case, a true all-in-one coaching solution should include a website builder and website hosting. You also need to be able to use your branded domain name on your website.

With Kajabi, your website is part of the package, no matter which plan you choose. It includes your theme, branding, website pages, and landing page builder — so you can create an impressive online presence that attracts your best clients. 

Coaching.com doesn’t include a website. 

Email marketing 

With Coaching.com, you can create forms to collect and organize information. Think intake forms, surveys, assessments, evaluations, and pre- and post-session forms to help you assess the effectiveness of your coaching. But there’s no email marketing functionality.

Kajabi not only lets you create forms and assessments, it gives you email marketing software for staying in touch with your clients. 

You can build intricate marketing campaigns or send one-off broadcasts:

Use Kajabi’s Blueprints to create email marketing campaigns that engage your audience and sell more coaching programs. Or create a paid newsletter to add value to your coaching practice.

Since Kajabi’s email software is integrated into the entire platform, everything works seamlessly together. When someone buys a product, they’re automatically added to your email list and given access to your coaching platform. 

You don’t need to worry about your tech playing together nicely. It was made to work together.

And Kajabi’s beautiful, pre-built templates can be customized to match your branding, so your clients always recognize your emails in their inbox.

Membership sites 

A membership area is perfect for cohort or group coaching. Kajabi offers this through their Community feature. 

Use it to add a forum to your coaching program or course. An active membership community facilitates your clients’ learning and engagement. 

Coaching.com doesn’t have a membership feature. Instead, you’ll host your community in  a Facebook or Slack group.

Podcast

For building your expertise and expanding your audience, nothing beats a podcast. Around 41% of Americans listen to podcasts once a month. And they love finding new podcasts in their interest areas — so it’s a powerful addition to your marketing strategy.

Podcasting is built into the Kajabi platform, so all  you have to do is turn on your mic and start recording. With Coaching.com, if you want to benefit from the popularity of podcasts, you’ll need to find a podcast host. 

That’s an additional cost of about $25 a month, over and above your Coaching.com fee.

Online courses 

Coaching.com integrates with Dropbox, Google Drive, and other cloud storage apps so you can share documents and content with your clients. But there’s no course builder, so you can’t create a rich training portal for your clients. 

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

Its intuitive interface lets you build a digital course that supports your coaching clients — and you can create it in just a few clicks. That empowers you to build the coaching experience you want, delivering your content all at once or releasing it one lesson at a time. 

Digital downloads

Coaching.com integrates with popular document storage apps, including Google Drive and Dropbox, so you can share PDFs, website links, PowerPoint presentations, and other documents.

With Kajabi, you can add resources to your coaching session templates, so they’re readily accessible to your clients. Add as many resources as you like. Or create a companion course that includes self-paced training, downloads, and more.

Integrations

Coaching.com integrates with your calendar app, document storage, and payments. But it doesn’t integrate with the tools you’ll need to build a 360-degree business. For that, you’ll need to dig into the code to get all your tools talking to one another. 

With Kajabi, you get a complete business tool set, so you don’t need other tools. And the integrations are built by Kajabi, so you can be sure they work well together.

Coaching.com vs. Kajabi: Which is right for you?

If you’re looking for a way to manage your coaching sessions, Coaching.com can do the job. But if you want to build a digital business that has unlimited growth potential, you need more than just a coaching platform.

You need an online presence that puts you in front of your clients and gets them excited about working with you.

Only Kajabi can do that. A true all-in-one platform, it lets you (finally) focus on your clients. Because everything else just works.

Check out our ebook resources or webinars, then start your free trial today!

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