Kajabi vs. Thinkific: a comparison

A successful online course and membership site can take your business to the next level.

You’re the teacher, and the expert on your topic, and with the right course platform to support your member’s site, you can skyrocket your growth.

You don’t want to get caught up in having to also become a tech expert just to get your site up and running.

Using an all-in-one platform like Thinkific and Kajabi can be beneficial if you want to get your site up and running as quickly as possible, and want to keep your tech stack to a minimum.

Thinkific is designed so that you can build your website, member’s site, collect payments, and support your students all from your Thinkific dashboard.

They offer simple email communication with your students that are classified as “notifications” rather than email marketing. Here are a few examples of events that will send email notifications to your students: a welcome email when a new student signs up, a notification email when they submit their assignment(s), or if they cancel their subscription.

If you want more advanced communication and email marketing, you’ll need to integrate with a marketing system like ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, or ConvertKit, among others. We’ll cover these integrations and others a bit later in this comparison.

Kajabi is an all-in-one platform as well. They too offer one place where you can create your member’s site, host your website, and support your students. In comparison to Thinkific, Kajabi offers more advanced options when it comes to sending emails.

While Thinkific only supports notification emails, Kajabi offers an email feature where you can create emails with videos, countdown timers, automations, and more. That being said, they’re automations aren’t as advanced as what you’ll get using an email marketing system.

You may run into limitations on advanced automations or segmentation of your list when you’re using Kajabi’s email feature.

If you’re looking for a platform-as-a-service option, that’s also a true, all-in-one system that supports email marketing, Kajabi outshines Thinkific.

There are a few elements to consider when looking at the monthly costs of platforms like Thinkific and Kajabi. 

First off, if you’re choosing to go with one of these platforms, you really want to try to keep it truly all in one place and use as few integrations as possible. That way you use the platform to its fullest capacity, keep your setup as simple as possible.

It’s important to note that some platforms-as-a-service options charge additional transaction fees on every sale you make. Luckily, neither Kajabi nor Thinkific charge additional transaction fees. That means you’ll only be paying the fees charged by your payment gateway, most likely Stripe or PayPal. 

Thinkific offers 1 free plan and 3 paid plans. 

Here are your Thinkific paid plan options: 

• • Basic: $49/month
  • Pro: $99/month
  • Premium: $499/month 

You can test-drive Thinkific with the free plan, but you’ll quickly outgrow that plan once your site goes live.

Thinkific’s most popular tier is the Pro plan at $99/month. You’ll get more advanced features and customization options, like randomized quiz banks, progress-based video access, and assignment or homework functionality. 

Remember Thinkific has limitations on email communication, so be sure to budget the cost of an email marketing system, a third-party integration tool like Zapier, and the time to implement and maintain those integrations. 

With Thinkific, you have an unlimited number of students and courses on any paid plan. 

Kajabi doesn’t offer a free plan, but they also offer 3 paid plans. 

Here are your Kajabi paid plan options: 

• • Basic: $149/month
  • Growth: $199/month
  • Pro: $399/month 

Kajabi’s most popular tier is its Growth Plan at $199/month. With this plan, you’ll get features like 24/7 chat support, advanced automations, and the use of their affiliate program feature. 

Within each tier of Kajabi, you’ll have limitations on products, pipelines, active members, and contacts.

Here are some examples of limitations on their most popular Growth plan: 15 products, 15 pipelines, 25k contacts, and 10k active members.

Limitations like these can limit your growth and force you to upgrade to a higher tier on Kajabi. Or push you to find new software that won’t cap your potential.

Although both Kajabi and Thinkific offer the ability to integrate with various systems, it’s best to use as few integrations as possible so you can take advantage of as many of the features as possible within their all-in-one platform.

That being said, you may find yourself loving one of these platforms but still needing to use an integration or two. If you find yourself exploring more than 2 or 3 integrations, then these platforms might not be the best option for you.

There are two main levels of LMS integrations: A one-way integration and a deep two-way integration.

A one-way integration is just as its name implies: a one-way street from Thinkific or Kajabi to another system, such as ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, or Drip. This one-way communication is achieved by using a third party connector tool like Zapier.

This one-way integration can be useful for simple solutions like adding a new contact to your email system or triggering an email upon purchase.

Two-way integration allows the two systems to communicate with each other and create experiences accordingly. For example, with deep two-way integration, you can communicate with your CRM when a new student signs up, then trigger a welcome email and queue up all future module release emails. With a deep two-way integration, you could then create experiences on your member’s site based on interactions with those emails. For example, unlocking new content, getting a special bonus, or being granted early access because of their participation.

Even though you’d be using two systems, a deep two-way integration creates a seamless experience for your users that will keep them learning and coming back for more.

Neither Kajabi nor Thinkific can offer deep two-way integrations to create this type of learning experience for your users.

Thinkific outshines Kajabi with its LMS features. You’ll need to be on the Pro plan to access features like quizzes, randomized quiz question banks, and assignments. 

We know features like quizzes increase the learning experience for your students and create more retention. LMS features like this help your students stay engaged, keep coming back for more, and all-around have a better understanding of your materials. 

Out of the box, Thinkific only offers multiple-choice quizzes. Any other type of quiz would need to be supported by a third-party integration. 

Kajabi offers assessments out-of-the-box, but they don’t offer any kind of assignments, homework, or video bookmarking. 

These features make for a better learning experience for your students and can be essential for certain types of business models. Especially those that offer official certifications and training. 

If learning reinforcements are an important part of your online courses or programs, Thinkific will serve you better, but your quizzing functionality will be limited. They don’t offer the flexibility to offer personality tests, scoring tests, or even a fully integrated multiple-choice quiz that can support videos or images. 

Both Thinkific and Kajabi allow you to accept one-time payments, payment plans, and subscription plans. Both platforms offer Stripe integration and PayPal integration.

It’s important to note that PayPal can only be used for one time payments, not payment plans or subscription plans on both Kajabi and Thinkific.

Both Kajabi and Thinkific have similar features with their coupon codes. With both platforms, you can create product specific coupon codes with specific expiration dates, unique codes, and have a choice of the discount type (either dollar amount or percentage).

Out-of-the-box, Thinkific meets the basic needs of an order form but if you want more advanced features, like upsells, you’ll have to use a third-party tool or change your purchase flow entirely.

You can change your currency within Thinkific, but you cannot give your customers the option to purchase using their currency of choice.

Kajabi does allow for upsells and order bumps that can be used on your products. Luckily, you won’t need additional integrations to support these features.

With Kajabi, you can sell your offers in multiple currencies but this feature requires multiple versions of the same product in order to change the currency on each of them. When you’re adding your products to the sales page, you’ll add one for each available currency.

Thinkific does support a basic affiliate setup that’s designed for tracking purposes only. You can assign the affiliate role to any user on your Thinkific site, then each affiliate will have their own unique set of links they can use to direct traffic to your Thinkific hosted courses or membership.

When a prospect visits your site through the unique affiliate link, then purchases within 30 days, that affiliate will get credit for the sale.

You have the ability to exclude certain courses or bundles for your affiliate program. Let’s say, for example, you offer 1:1 coaching, but you don’t want affiliates getting credit for that sale, you could exclude that product from your affiliate tracking program.

It’s important to remember that Thinkific’s affiliate feature is designed for tracking purposes only. All the payouts to your affiliate will happen outside the Thinkific platform.

They also don’t provide a seamless way to communicate with your affiliates. There’s no dashboard to share images, swipe copy, or other marketing assets with them.

When you’re on the Growth or Pro plans with Kajabi, you’ll be able to use their affiliate feature. Anyone can be an affiliate for your products, meaning that it’s not just limited to members of your site.

Similarly to Thinkific, new visitors to your site from a unique affiliate link will be attributed to that affiliate if they purchase within 30 days.

Kajabi’s affiliate program is designed as a tracking system as well. It will track your affiliate transactions, and all payouts will take place through another system, not Kajabi.

Kajabi doesn’t provide an easy way to share marketing assets with your affiliates either. That means any swipe copy, images, or other materials will need to be sent by email or shared on a different platform.

Although both Kajabi and Thinkific have a basic tracking system for affiliates, it’s not a fully functional system.

If affiliate marketing important to you, you’ll need to use a different setup, like a fully functional WordPress affiliate plugin, to support your business.

• • You want a basic course-website and have no plans of expanding your offerings in the future
  • You’re not attached to a specific design and willing to flex your vision when met with system limitations
  • You don’t have a CRM setup and have no plans of setting one up in the future
  • You won’t mind setting up your business on ‘rented land’ and manually migrating when your business grows

• • Budget isn’t a major concern for advanced features
  • You’re a brand conscious business owner and want as much design flexibility as possible
  • You’re in need of more advanced LMS features such as quizzes and homework submissions
  • Community engagement is important to your online course
  • You want direct integration with your CRM or email marketing system
  • You don’t mind giving up full control to have your courses hosted for you on a 3rd party platform that you can’t easily export or leave