Kajabi vs. ClickFunnels: a comparison

As the creators of AccessAlly, a WordPress LMS Plugin, we’ve tested many course building platforms and software available so that we can share what we’ve learned with you. 

We want you to find the best solution for your business, even if it’s not AccessAlly. 

Kajabi and ClickFunnels are two possible solutions for you. In this article, we’ll share what we know about their philosophies, features, pricing, and more. 

By the end of the article, you’ll have a clear idea of how both Kajabi and ClickFunnels can support your business and which may be right for you.

Kajabi and ClickFunnels are both called all-in-one platforms and have some overlap in features, but they serve very different purposes.

Kajabi was created to support your online business from website building, accepting payments, and hosting your online courses and content.

ClickFunnels was created with a focus on sales funnels, and they also offer a protected content feature to host your membership site material.

So, how do they differ?

ClickFunnels has a singular objective: to increase your sales through funnels, no matter what kind of business you operate.

Kajabi, on the other hand, is for online course and content creators. Again, they aim to support every aspect of your business, including online courses and sales funnels.

Let’s get a full picture of the pricing structure for both Kajabi and ClickFunnels. They both come with a 14-day trial, and neither offers a free plan. 

Clickfunnels starts at $97 per month. They offer a middle-tier Platinum plan for $297 per month. They also offer the highest tier, called the Two Comma Club at $2,497 per month.  

On their lowest level tier at $97 per month, you’ll have limitations on pages, funnels, sub-users, payment gateways, and domains. The biggest drawback of this lowest level tier is that you won’t have access to follow-up emails. Arguably, that’s one of ClickFunnels primary features that you’ll be missing out on. 

On the Premium plan with ClickFunnels, you’ll have access to follow up emails, and you won’t have limits on your funnels or pages. You’ll also get access to priority support, and the option to join a weekly session called Hackathons. On these calls, you can get your funnels peer-reviewed and invite feedback. 

All in all, if you’re going to choose ClickFunnels, you’ll likely need the middle-tier Platinum plan at $297 per month, mainly due to that follow-up email feature restriction. 

Kajabi starts at $149 per month with their Basic plan. They have a middle-tier Growth plan at $199 per month. And their highest-tier, Pro at $399 per month. 

On the basic plan, you’ll have limits on your products, pipelines, contacts, active members, websites, and admin users. These limits are all reasonable for most businesses. The biggest limitation here is a 3 pipeline limit. Pipelines are what they call their marketing automation feature, so be aware of that limitation.  

On their middle-tier Growth plan, the limits jump up significantly higher. You’re looking at a limitation of 15 products and pipelines, which will work for most businesses. 

If you choose Kajabi, you may be able to start out on the Basic plan at $149 per month, but you’ll likely outgrow the 3 pipeline limitation relatively quickly and need to upgrade to the middle-tier Growth plan at $199 per month. 

Even though Kajabi limits some of its features like how many products, pipelines, and contacts you can have, they don’t restrict access to features like ClickFunnels does.

If you want to upgrade on Kajabi, it’s likely because your business is growing and you’re reaching those limitations.

With ClickFunnels, you may be forced to upgrade just because you want access to all the features they offer. 

Although both these platforms offer integrations, you’ll want to consider what your overall setup will look like once you’ve connected your systems. 

You certainly don’t want a duct-taped members area that leaves your users feeling confused and uninterested. 

Both Kajabi and ClickFunnels offer payment integrations, which we’ll talk more about in the E-commerce section of this comparison. 

ClickFunnels integrates with several systems to complete your setup. In fact, some people even integrate Kajabi and ClickFunnels. They use ClickFunnels to capture leads and introduce an offer. The contact information collected via ClickFunnels is sent to Kajabi which manages all their content and user experience.  

ClickFunnels offers integrations for webinars, SMS messages, calculating shipping costs, and a plugin to add ClickFunnels to your WordPress website. 

Although they do offer these kinds of integrations, it’s important to explore what that flow will look like for your users. They may have to log in to multiple systems, or otherwise see the duct-taped process you’ve set up. 

You can also use Zapier to connect ClickFunnels to another system. It’s not uncommon for businesses to use ClickFunnels, then trigger a membership site registration on another platform entirely. 

Kajabi integrates with other systems as well, but it’s important to remember that Kajabi is an all-in-one platform. If you find yourself needing integration after integration, then Kajabi may not be the best fit for you after all. 

You’ll want to rely on Kajabi’s native features as much as possible in order to get the most out of your money and create a seamless experience for your users. 

That being said, Kajabi offers integrations with Zapier. They have email integrations with AWeber, MailChimp, Drip, ConvertKit, and ActiveCampaign. They also offer integrations with analytics like Segment, Google Analytics, and Facebook Pixel. 

One benefit of Kajabi is that you most likely won’t need integrations. You can set up everything you need on Kajabi’s platform and literally keep it all under one roof. If you choose this route, you’ll keep your setup simple. You may run into limitations, but the benefit of having everything in one place might outweigh those limitations.

There are three areas to discuss with design flexibility for both Kajabi and ClickFunnels: website and funnel design, membership area design, and mobile-friendliness. 

ClickFunnels allows you to input content into their pre-built design. There’s little customization available. ClickFunnels offers a lot of templates to choose from for your funnels and website pages. They offer similar templates for the membership area. 

Overall, its templates are nice. There is a lot to choose from, so allow enough time to sift through them to find what you’re looking for. Their templates are very plug-and-play. So while you may have some flexibility to change fonts, move blocks in the layouts, and add images, you won’t be able to fully customize the look and feel of your website, funnels, or membership area.  

It’s also important to talk about a mobile experience for your users. With so many learners on their phones, they need an easy way to log in and easily access their content on a beautifully designed dashboard. That may very well be a deal-breaker for many businesses. That’s not possible with ClickFunnels. Kajabi, however, does offer a mobile-friendly experience for your users. 

Kajabi does offer templates and design flexibility. They have a variety of templates to choose from. While you certainly can customize your design, you can even hire a designer and developer to fully customize the look and feel, you don’t have to. 

Kajabi provides everything you need to get your site up and running with a designer, developer, or custom code. This is the case for your website pages, funnels, and membership site area.

Bulk course enrollment, also known as team accounts, umbrella accounts, and while label courses are continuing to grow in popularity. 

This feature makes it possible to sell a bulk package of licenses to a team leader. Then, the team leader has the power to assign those licenses to team members.

A robust feature would also come with valuable interactions between team leaders and their team members. They can purchase additional licenses, see their team member’s progress, and communicate with their team, all from an easy to use dashboard. 

Neither Kajabi nor ClickFunnels offers a bulk course enrollment feature. 

If this is part of your business plan now, or might be in the future, neither of these platform options will work for you.

The true cost of ClickFunnels is that you cannot offer a robust membership site experience. If you envision multiple products, memberships, and courses, then ClickFunnels will cap your growth and you’ll have to migrate to another system. 

The true cost of Kajabi is when you try to keep everything under one roof and end up having to compromise your vision based on the platform limitations. They may come in features, design, or overall user experience where you have to give up something you want because of the platform limitations.