Online courses are booming. The world is currently experiencing a pandemic, which has created a new indoor environment for many people. It’s no surprise that entrepreneurs are creating online courses to satisfy this demand, as they have the time and desire to improve their knowledge. If you are interested in selling e-courses or if you have one and want to move to another platform, this is the place for you. In this Kajabi and Thinkific review, we’ll compare two majors in online course building.
Each one will be examined in detail so you can make the best decision for your company. We’ll be looking at Kajabi and Thinkific, the core features they offer, what their costs are, and the pros and con of each SaaS. We will also be looking into their customer service quality and our final thoughts will be at the end.
We have a lot of information to share, so let’s get started!
Kajabi vs. Thinkific: Who is Kajabi?
Over 25,000 businesses have used Kajabi to date. You can find many success stories on their website. The Marketing Strategist set up her business in one day, while the Posture Expert made $1K in just a few days. Ryan Kingslien is an artist who has turned his talents into an online course that teaches others how to paint. These are just some of the many glowing testimonials Kajabi users have left!
This platform is for entrepreneurs who wish to share their knowledge online. This platform is also for people who have never run an online business. The site provides all of the necessary sales, delivery, marketing, and other features that you require in one place. Use their templates to create your courses. You can then modify the design and add your video, audio and text files.
Kajabi vs Thinkific – Who’s Thinkific
Thinkific is a large operation with over 36,000 course creators who sell to more than 10,000,000 students worldwide. Their platform has helped customers earn an incredible $200 million, as of the writing of this article.
Thinkific summarizes in just three steps what you can do.
Use their drag-and-drop editor to create and personalize courses that match your brand.
Your website will showcase your courses.
Thinkific’s business tools make it easy to market and sell your courses
Thinkific provides course creators with a flexible solution to build, market, and sell their e-courses. Thinkific users include Coastal Drone, a Canadian company. This brand helps people become drone pilots. John Lee Dumas, a podcaster, and Kate Erickson are both entrepreneurs who created the course. Elizabeth Rider is a nutritionist and coach and used her expertise to create online wellness and well-being courses.
Now that you know the basics of each platform, let’s take a look at the finer points.
Kajabi’s Core Features
The following categories are Kajabi’s characteristics:
- Your website is built
- Your following should grow
- Sell your products
- Please share your knowledge
- Automate your marketing
Let’s take a look at each one and explain what they mean.
Create Your Website
Kajabi is a website builder that can be used instead of WordPress, Wix or Weebly. Kajabi’s website builder offers you a variety of themes, hosting options, and a blog module. Kajabi’s auto scaling technology ensures that your site is optimized for speed.
Your Kajabi website is SEO friendly “out of the box”, which makes it easier to rise through Google’s search engine result pages.
Increase Your Following
We’ve already mentioned that there are many templates available to help you build your website and courses. Kajabi has templates for almost any type of website. There are templates for landing pages and sales pages as well as opt-in pages and webinar pages.
All these layouts can be used on mobile devices. You can also create your pages entirely from scratch. Kajabi’s templates are not required.
It is essential to be able to create and launch high-converting landing page designs. This will allow you to capture contact information, grow your email list and move contacts through your sales funnel.
You can segment subscribers into different lists and track what prospects do on your site. This allows you to tailor your email messages to each subscriber’s needs and interests. You can embed opt-in forms from different sources on your website.
Sell your products
Kajabi integrates seamlessly with Stripe, PayPal and PayPal to make it easier for you to access your funds quicker. You also have the option to choose the method you want to sell your courses. This could be a one-time payment or a monthly, weekly, or annual subscription. You can also use a one-click upsell feature to encourage students to purchase more courses from you while they are checking out. Students can also get free trials so they are more likely to buy your course.
Please Share Your Knowledge
Kajabi lets you add images, text and audio to your online course. You can also import content directly from Google Drive or Dropbox.
You can upload unlimited videos to video hosting. You can also drip feed your content directly to students and create assessments and quizzes to track their progress. It’s easy to engage with customers by setting up end-of-module testing. You can also look at the grades of your students to see if your content is hitting the mark.
You can also create forums within your courses for students to interact with each other. It is crucial to build customer loyalty. Don’t underestimate the power of creating a sense for community!
Automate your Marketing
Kajabi’s email tools allow you to create custom emails without the need for a third-party plugin such as ConvertKit, Mailchimp, or AWeber.
Kajabi’s email editor gives you the freedom to create and send attractive and personalized messages to increase and engage your email lists. You can add video, countdown times for special offers, imagery, and so on.
There are many beautiful HTML email templates that you can use. These templates are great for making sure your content looks professional. You can send individual messages or bulk emails, as we have already mentioned.
Kajabi makes it easy for you to create targeted and automated email campaigns based on user behavior. This allows you to engage students and bring in new customers. Simply tag your subscribers and segment them into a group. Then, you’re ready to go! This is a great way to streamline your marketing so that you can concentrate on creating amazing course content.
Thinkific’s Core Features
Thinkific divides its features into five categories:
Create your courses
Design and build your website
Market and sell
Your students are your support
Security
Let’s take a look at each one individually:
Create Your Courses
Thinkific’s drag-and-drop editor is similar to Kajabi and allows you to customize the look of your online courses to reflect your brand. No coding required. You can also hide, drip schedule, provide evergreen and remove outdated content when it comes down to the learning materials that you offer students.
Handy, right?
Thinkific supports a variety of multimedia files including text, video, Google Docs and downloads. These can be included in your course. You can also set up student tests. As you can see, there are many ways to keep students interested!
*At this point we want to emphasize that video content can be hosted for free.
Create and design your website
You need to make your online course sell like hotcakes. Thinkific’s website themes are a great choice. Pick the one that you like best, then modify it to fit your brand. It is easy to modify, rearrange or delete content as you go.
When creating a course, you can use your domain name to publish it on an existing site. If you have programming skills, you will be pleased to know that you can access the CSS code and HTML code and make any changes you wish.
A pre-built instructor is also available. This is just a fancy way of saying that there are video tutorials to help you get the most out Thinkific’s website building tool.
Market and sell
Do you want to make money with your courses? Thinkific’s marketing tools and selling tools are here to help.
It is up to you to decide how to package your classes to maximize income. You can offer memberships or subscriptions, as well as free trials and discounts, promotional offers, payment plans, and other options.
Thinkific guarantees that you will get paid immediately and in more than 100 currencies. Also, Thinkific accepts all major credit card, so any potential student should be able purchase your course regardless of their credit card provider or where they are located.
Marketing is easy with an affiliate program. Students and other marketers can be incentivised to share your course to those who might benefit.
Targeted email campaigns can be created and launched by you. You can also use data tracking (on the website, in your courses and via your Facebook and Google ads) and analytics to gain a better understanding about who your customers and what they like. There are over 100 business and marketing integrations. If used to their full potential, they will make running your business easier – MailChimp and Zapier to name just a few.
Help Your Students
It is crucial to keep students interested in your content once you have established a student base. Thinkific allows students to access course materials in replay and their preferred language. Students can be congratulated when they successfully complete modules or entire courses.
You can also set up automated messages to motivate students to complete lessons and coursework. Thinkific can also be used to create reports that show which students have completed your content and when.
Security
Thinkific claims that their “#1 priority” is to keep your course and content data safe. Here’s how they do that:
Your online school comes with SSL certificates and built-in security (included in all price plans of Thinkific), so that you and your students are confident that your course content will be safe. Everything on Thinkific is hosted in the cloud and backed up every day – so you won’t lose any of your course content.
Every site update is automatic. This means that you will always have the most recent version of Thinkfic’s software.
We also want to mention that Thinkific currently boasts a 99.9% uptime, which is quite impressive!
Kajabi’s Pros
- Get a 14-day free trial
- You have the option to choose whether you want to bill customers weekly, monthly, or annually as part of a membership subscription, or as part of a payment plan.
- Access to a customer support line available 24/7 (which is said to be excellent).
- You can manage your business from anywhere you are with an Android/iOS App
- There are no transaction fees
- Kajabi University Access
- Kajabi offers a single-stop shop approach to course creation and marketing.
- Zapier Integration Access
- Unlimited video hosting
- Kajabi’s Heroes rewards program – Kajabi gives you swag as a reward for earning more. A Patagonia Nano Puff Jacket is available for those who have earned more than $1m. Every hero receives a handwritten note by the CEO. These gifts won’t light the world on fire but they are a nice touch.
Thinkific’s Pros
- Get a 30-day free trial
- Every plan comes with a generous list of core features (includes the free one)
- You can get a freemium package (no credit card necessary)
- Thinkific’s homepage has a useful earnings calculator
- Customers can choose to subscribe to a membership, a payment plan, or a single price.
- Thinkific’s platform makes it extremely user-friendly
- Zapier Integration Access
- It is easy to personalize your online school
- Access to extensive training and online guides
Cons of Kajabi
- Kajabi is one of the most costly course builders on the marketplace
- There is no free plan
- Users report occasional technical problems.
Cons of Thinkific
- To get the best out of the platform, you will need to sign up for the higher-cost plans at Thinkific
- Live chat support is not available
- Thinkific’s marketing capabilities, in comparison to Kajabi’s, are rather limited
- Email support is available Monday through Friday from 9 am to 5pm
- Transaktion fees are charged
- Mobile apps are not available
- Thinkific’s training courses can be expensive if you are on a lower-paid or free plan. (See our customer support section below for more information)
What is the Cost of Kajabi?
We urge you to take a second look at Kajabi prices if you have already looked at them. Even though they are more expensive, you still get what you pay.
We have listed below the three pricing tiers for Kajabi.
Before we get into the details, we’d like to remind you that each plan includes a 20% discount if you pay annually and a 14-day free trial.
The Basic plan: This plan costs $119 per month (billed annually).
This is what you will get:
- Chat support automations available
- Transaction fees of 0%
- One website can be launched
- Three products can be created
- Three pipelines can be built
- Unlimited marketing emails and landing pages can be designed and sent by you
- One admin user can be registered
- You can save 10,000 contacts
- Register 1,000 active members
- Student surveys and quizzes can be set up
- Access to the Kajabi university
- Get access to Kajabi’s webinars & events
- Access to templates that are ready-to-use
The Growth Plan – This is Kajabi’s most popular plan. It costs $189 per month (paid annual).
This plan includes everything from the Basic Plan as well as:
- You can make 15 products
- To help you market digital products, you can create and manage your affiliate program
- Ten admin users can be registered
- Live chat support available 24/7
- You can build up to 15 pipelines
- You can save 25’000 contacts
- Register 10’000 members active
- You have the ability to remove Kajabi branding from your web pages and assets
- Access to automations advanced
The PRO PLAN: A discounted $319 per month (paid annual), you will receive all the benefits of the Growth Plan and Basic Plan plus.
- 2,000,000 marketing email
- 100,000 contacts
- 100 products
- 100 pipelines
- 25 Registered admin users
- Access to a code editor
- Three websites can be launched
- Active members: 20,000
What Does Thinkific Cost?
Thinkific pricing looks very attractive at first glance. They also offer 20% off your annual payment, similar to Kajabi. You also get a 30-day free trial, and there are no transaction fees.
Thinkific has five packages available, so let’s have a look at each. Thinkific gives each subscriber their “core features” free of charge (which are also included in all paid-for plans).
- You have access to a drag-and-drop course and website builder
- Cloud hosting secured with SSL certificates
- Phone and email support
- When your customers shop, you can make upsell offers
- Instant access to your funds
- Access to ecommerce tools
- Multiple profiles of instructors
- Send personalized emails to students
The Free Plan is $0. You can also add the following core features to your plan:
- Three courses
- Register unlimited students
- Set student quizzes & surveys
- Access to video, PDF and audio file hosting
The Basic plan: $39/mo (paid each year) You get all of the above and:
- Unlimited courses can be created
- Register unlimited students
- Coupons can be created to promote courses at a discounted price
- Students can be emailed individually
- You can drip feed your content
- To help you manage your affiliates, use affiliate reporting
- A custom domain
- Integrations of email with MailChimp and AWeber, ConvertKit, MailChimp, ConvertKit, Constant Contact
- Zapier triggers allow you to send your Thinkific data into other tools.
- Manual student enrollment is an option
- Export student data for use outside ofThinkific
The PRO Plan: This plan is Thinkific’s most favored, and costs $79/mo annually. All the above and more are included.
- Two accounts for site administrators
- Five Course Authors/Administrators
- Private and secret courses can be created
- Access to advanced pricing options for courses – subscriptions, payment plans, one-time, free and so forth
- You can create memberships or course bundles
- Students with certificates can be rewarded
- Access to advanced customization tools such as editing CSS/HTML and custom themes. You can also create member-only pages.
- Access to priority support
- Students can be assigned assignments
- One community can be created for students. This is similar to Thinkific’s Facebook group.
The Premier Plan is Thinkific’s most costly plan. It is designed for larger course creators. You get all the Pro features plus 399/mo
- Five accounts for site administrators
- 15 group analysts You can also assign members of your team to the position of “Group Analyst” in order to help.
- 50 Course admins/Authors
- Single sign-on (SSO).
- A package that includes training and onboarding calls
Unlimited Growth Package
Unlimited Growth is an additional package that’s available to Pro plan customers (and above). You can have up to 100 students enrolled. It costs $0.10 per student after that. The maximum $499 per month is the maximum.
The following features are now available:
- Ability to sell courses to groups or organizations
- Access to a Public API for web developers so they can manage and edit your site
- Advanced segmentation, such as bookmarks or search filters, can be used to organize your communication with students and track their progress.
- Use Webhooks to send Thinkific course information to any external tool you use
- You can build student communities around you content
- Students can be enrolled in bulk based on Zapier triggers
- Access to automated marketing and sales tools
- Students can be imported from other platforms and databases by using XLSX files or CSV files
- Brillum exams Integration: This integration allows you to personalize your student tests and set time limits.
Kajabi’s Customer Service
Kajabi customers have access to a 24-hour helpline that is not available on other platforms. You can also email your questions to Kajabi with a wait time of about ten minutes.
You can also learn how to make Kajabi work to your advantage by attending training webinars. You can find out more by watching the webinar “How to migrate an email list into Kajabi.” “If I create a community, how do I split it into two groups or do I need two products?”
Kajabi University is another great resource. You’ll find many “How To” topics here, including affiliate marketing, product details and editing audio files. Screen share courses can also be created and run on Kajabi.
Kajabi’s support team is impressive. They will walk you through how to set up an online course and manage it. If you don’t find the answer to your questions in the topics listed above, there’s an FAQ section and a search engine.
If you prefer a collaborative approach to problem solving, you are in luck. Kajabi’s Facebook group has a vibrant community of experts that you can join.
Thinkific Customer Support
Thinkific provides customer support through the following channels: Their blog, blog, training site and expert marketplace. You can also visit its status page for more information. You can search the Help Center for your problem and get tons of answers.
If none of these answers are satisfactory, you can also visit the FAQ section. This provides answers to questions such as: “How do you set up a domain?”, “Can live videos or webinars be recorded?” and “How do you get started with Thinkific?”
Thinkific’s blog is covered in many topics, including Sales and Marketing, Expert Interviews, and Grow Your Business.
Thinkific’s customer service team can be reached via email using their Help Center. Though Thinkific has posted warnings about COVID-19, they have not yet responded to all queries.
Thinkific can be contacted via YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The Resource Center at Thinkific looks quite comprehensive. You will find a lot of videos and PDFs that are subject-specific on a range of topics. These include “How to run a successful membership site,” “How to create and sell an online course or membership site,” and “Choosing your online course and positioning guide.”
Though these courses are quite expensive, Thinkific also has a Training Section. The Online Education Business Masterclass has 45 lessons and is $299. The “Design Great Courses”, which contains 16 lessons, costs $149. These courses are available for free if you sign up to Thinkific’s Premium plan (and higher).
Thinkific’s Expert Market allows you to pay recommended partners to help with your online content, school, and website creation. If you don’t have the budget to pay for an online course builder, this would be a huge loss. This is why it is a luxury option for those who can afford it.
You can also view the status page of Thinkific to see how it is performing in real time. This page allows you to see the status of your site and provides real-time information about Thinkfic’s uptime.
Conclusion
Which online learning platform is the best? Kajabi or Thinkific?
It’s not as simple as saying “yes” or “no” for either. It really depends on what you need and how you want to grow your brand into the future.
Kajabi is the best choice for anyone looking for a one-stop shop where they can access all their website building, marketing and course materials in one place. This SaaS option is available if your budget permits. You can also use a subscription-based or membership-based selling model. It’s great for hosting a blog along with your website and courses, which is something Kajabi’s competition doesn’t offer.
If your budget is not sufficient to pay for Kajabi’s packages however, Thinkific can be an excellent option. Thinkific is more focused on the free features that allow you to create online courses. The two platforms are therefore quite different.
Both offer an excellent user experience, great customer service, and make it easy to create an online school.
Although Thinkific is more affordable, Kajabi offers more sales and marketing tools. Thinkific is a great choice if you already have a website, sales funnels and other marketing tools in place. It’s not worth paying for additional features that you don’t use.
It’s up to you to decide which side you choose. These questions will help you determine your short- and long-term goals before making a decision.
Which type of course(s), do you wish to create?
Which person would you like to sell it?
What do you want to market?
What amount of heavy lifting would you like to do?
Once you have the answers, you will be better able to answer Kajabi vs Thinkific. Good luck!
In the comments below, let us know if you choose Thinkific or Kajabi. Will you choose to go with one of their competitors, Teachable or Udemy instead? Let us know if you have any questions!
