Kajabi vs. CustomerHub: a comparison

We’ve tested and used a number of membership and LMS plugins over the years. After none of them met our needs, let alone exceeded our expectations, we put our Software Engineering expertise to work and developed AccessAlly.

We continue to review and test membership and LMS software and platforms available on the market and share our knowledge with you.

Today we’ll share the comparison between Kajabi vs. CustomerHub, covering features, integration options, customer support, pricing, e-commerce capabilities, and more.

Kajabi and CustomerHub are both platforms that can support your member management site, protected content, online courses, and/or online programs.

That’s where their similarities end and differences begin.

CustomerHub is a cloud-based platform that offers bare-bones features to support restricted content. It requires an integration with Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) or Active Campaign.

Kajabi is an all-in-one platform that aims to support every aspect of your business and doesn’t require any integrations to function.

So, although they are both platforms, they have different philosophies and intentions for supporting your business.

When considering solutions for your membership site or online courses, it’s important to choose the platform or software that will meet your needs right now, as well as in the future. 

If you choose the wrong platform, you’ll find its feature limitations and additional integrations limiting the growth of your business. You could be forced to upgrade to a much more expensive tier, or migrate to another system entirely. 

Another area to consider is using a platform vs. a software. When you use a platform like Kajabi or CustomerHub, you’re setting up foundational elements of your business on rented space. 

When you choose a software, like AccessAlly, you actually own the space that you’re setting up those foundational elements on. 

When you use Kajabi and CustomerHub, you’re relying on them to make updates, solve issues, and provide appropriate customer support if the platform isn’t working correctly. 

Kajabi can be a great option if you’re just starting off, don’t plan on offering a robust membership site, and you want everything in one place. 

CustomerHub can be a great fit if you’re already using Infusionsoft or Keap and looking to protect your content and don’t require advanced LMS functionality and features.    

Whether you choose Kajabi or CustomerHub, be sure to consider your business right now, as well as your needs in the future. 

When it comes to integrating with your current tech stack, it’s important to understand the depth of integration and consider all costs, both financially and with time investments. 

There are two levels of integration that can happen between systems: 

1. One-way integration: where one system pushes information to another, but there’s not a return of information back and forth between them 
2. Two-way integration: where both systems can send data and communicate back and forth with each other

A two-way integration offers better communication between platforms and gives you more power to create a memorable user experience.

Kajabi can integrate with other platforms using a one-way integration. You’ll use a third-party connector tool, like Zapier, to connect these systems. There are usually additional costs associated with both the system and the connector tool you use. 

Kajabi does have some integrations included, for example, ClickFunnels, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, Aweber, Segment, and Drip. These integrations are still one-way, but they’re connected through your Kajabi dashboard instead of a third party connector like Zapier.

The required integration between CustomerHub and Active Campaign or Keap is a two-way integration that works through a campaign. You can check out the Infusionsoft marketplace for pre-made campaign templates to install and get up and running even faster.  

CustomerHub outshines Kajabi here because of this two-way integration. It can be used in many ways, for example, when someone fills out an order form, they’ll be setup as a member in CustomerHub and have an account profile there. If they update their account profile on CustomerHub, their Infusionsoft record would be updated.

The two systems can communicate back and forth with each other.

CustomerHub does support other integrations such as live chat services, help desk integrations, and a Facebook integration if you’re comfortable creating a Facebook app. It’s important to note that these integrations are one-way and will have additional monthly costs associated with them. 

In summary, Kajabi offers more integrations than CustomerHub, but CustomerHub supports two-way integration with Keap or Active Campaign. Kajabi doesn’t require integrations to function as CustomerHub does.  

With both Kajabi and CustomerHub, if you find yourself needing integration after integration to support your business, these platforms may not be the best fit for you. Consider choosing a different software or platform that will support your growth out of the box and require fewer integrations.

When it comes to the design of your membership site, you want to strike a balance between honoring your brand look and feel and using known membership site best practices. 

When you can combine a great learning experience with your brand, your users will stay engaged, build loyalty, and ultimately have a better all-around learning experience. 

Kajabi offers theme choices from either their Premier Framework or other Legacy themes. Within each theme, you’ll find layout presets for common pages, such as landing pages, internal course pages, and blog layouts. 

You can customize these presets with your brand fonts, colors, and images. The templates and presets give you a foundation, and from there you can add sections to support your vision. All their themes and page presets are mobile responsive. 

If you want full design flexibility, you’ll need to be on Kajab’s Pro plan and hire a skilled developer to implement and maintain your membership site and website. Remember on the lower tiers you won’t have access to the code editor, therefore won’t have open-ended design flexibility. 

CustomerHub offers a library of themes and page templates that strike a balance between known best practices, customization options, and mobile-responsiveness. You’ll be able to edit the look and feel of these templates using a WYSIWYG editor. 

Similarly to Kajabi, you can customize fonts, colors, and images. On CustomerHub you’ll have access to full CSS for customization. You can also install custom javascript. 

In summary, both Kajabi and CustomerHub offer templates you can customize that are mobile-friendly. 

If a fully customized site is important to you, CustomerHub offers CSS access, but if you’re using Kajabi, you’ll have to pay $399 / month on the Pro plan to get access to the code editor.

When it comes to e-commerce capability, both CustomerHub and Kajabi process payments.

CustomerHub integrates with Stripe and can connect to PayPal through Zapier.

Kajabi does support payments directly through their own payment processor. Or, you can set up a direct Stripe integration or PayPal integration to process payments. Kajabi only supports PayPal for one-time payments, not for payment plans or subscriptions. 

As the business owner, all of your orders can be viewed and managed from your Kajabi dashboard. 

Kajabi offers customizable coupons so you can use unique codes, expiry dates, or limit the number of uses. They also support multiple currencies. 

If you want to keep everything in one system, Kajabi may be a better fit for you. It is, however, important to note that Active Campaing and Keap do offer advanced and full-service e-commerce features that can be used with CustomerHub.

CustomerHub does not have native affiliate functionality on its own. However, Keap does have an affiliate system. We won’t get into these details since this is a direct comparison of Kajabi vs. CustomerHub, but at least note that an affiliate program is possible through Keap. 

Kajabi offers a native affiliate tracking program. This means that affiliates can sign up, view their unique links, see their clicks, commissions, and conversion rates from their account within your Kajabi setup. 

It’s lacking in the way that affiliate materials can be shared. There’s no seamless dashboard that your affiliates can log in to in order to see your marketing copy, images, and promotional details. 

All those materials are shared through notification emails, either through Kajabi or a different platform. 

Since clear communication, direction, and easy access are a high priority with your affiliates, this is a drawback to Kajabi’s affiliate functionality. Remember that you must be at least on the Growth plan at $199 / month in order to access the affiliate featureat all.  

If a fully functional, robust affiliate system is important to your business, neither CustomerHub alone nor Kajabi will meet your needs. Remember that Infusionsoft or Keap does offer an affiliate program. So although we’re not covering those details in this comparison, it’s worth considering their option. Consider exploring a WordPress affiliate plugin to meet all the needs of your affiliate program.

When making your final decision, consider not only the monetary costs, but also time, energy, and effort when it comes to implementation, maintenance, and migrations.

With Kajabi, most businesses should budget for the Growth plan at $199 / month. Map out all your desired features so you know which integrations you’ll need to pay for. Also calculate the cost of your third-party connector tool.

As with any integration, budget time for implementation and maintenance. With Kajabi, strongly consider the tier limitations and make sure you won’t be forced to upgrade because of them. Remember that you’ll have to be on the Pro tier to have access to the code editor. Make sure your design ideas fit within the themes and page layouts offered, or budget for the higher tier and a skilled developer.

If you’re leaning towards CustomerHub, budget for the $79 / month Pro plan. Be sure to add the cost for ActiveCampaign or Keap into your budget.

If you know you’ll want additional integrations, budget those monthly costs as well as the connector tool.

Know that with CustomerHub, you’re getting a bare-bones membership site that you may outgrow quickly. When it comes to design, you do have full access to the code, so if you want it customized, be sure to budget for a skilled developer.