Thinkific and Kajabi: Overview.
Thinkific is a cloud-based online course platform that allows you to create, market, and sell your online courses.
It offers features such as a course website, sales pages, email series, course programs, and more to turn your knowledge into an online business.
The main features of Thinkific are as follows:
- Drag-and-drop builder to help you upload videos, create quizzes, and organize your learning content.
- Set prices, schedule lessons, and automate your content to create an exceptional learning experience.
- Personalize courses to match your brand.
- Engage students with rich multimedia course content.
- Create a fully customizable course website designed specifically to sell courses and tutorials.
- Marketing features, integrations, and payment options to promote your business, sell courses, and build an audience.
- Automated progress and reminder emails, unlimited replays of course material, and language control to facilitate the learning experience.
- Group and cohort reports, detailed segmentation, and data exports.
- Secure cloud hosting and daily backups.
- Free video hosting on Wistia.
You can read my full review on Thinkific for more details.
Kajabi is an all-in-one cloud-based platform that helps you create, market, and sell online courses, membership sites, and coaching programs.
It's more expensive than Thinkific, but offers a slightly more upscale experience for information businesses.
It comes with pre-designed templates that make it easy to create a course and download educational content in just a few clicks. Everything, like marketing, payment gateways, course builder, and more, works in sync from a single dashboard.
Some of the main highlights of Kajabi are:
- Kajabi's Project Builder allows you to create online courses, subscriptions, and more in minutes.
- Ready-to-use templates at the click of a button.
- Personalize price, delivery, and packaging
- Integration with Stripe and PayPal to get paid easily.
- Make informed decisions with thoughtful, real-time information about your business through data.
- Grow, manage, and reach your subscribers and email list with customizable emails.
- Create a page that is fully integrated with the available themes.
- It allows you to follow your leads.
- Free video hosting on Wistia.
Kajabi is an all-in-one system that includes everything from email automation to sales pages and pipelines. You also have features for hosting webinars and creating custom sites, blogs, memberships, and more.
You can read my full article on Kajabi for further analysis.
Let's dig a little deeper and look at their main pros and cons.
Thinkific or Kajabi: Advantages and Disadvantages.
Before starting the detailed comparison of the two platforms, here is a quick overview of their pros and cons.
Thinkific.
Benefits
- 30-day free trial.
- Builder and pricing plans suitable for beginners.
- A freemium offer that does not require a credit card.
- A revenue calculator on the home page.
- Several subscriptions are offered - a membership, a payment plan, or a single price.
- Live or interactive classroom experience with investigative and storytelling features.
- Integration with Zapier.
- Possibility to easily personalize your online learning.
- Allows you to create an affiliate program and reward loyal users.
- Allows multiple content formats to be added to the same lesson.
- Comprehensive training tools and guides.
- Offers course completion certificates without third party integration.
- Allows courses to be sold in Shopify stores.
Disadvantages
- You need to subscribe to Thinkific's most expensive plans to take advantage of premium features.
- No live chat support.
- Limited marketing capabilities.
- Transaction fees on paid plans.
- No mobile application.
- No 24/7 email support. They only work Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PST.
- Training courses are expensive if you use their free or less-paid plan.
- You need an integration to create autoresponder campaigns.
Kajabi.
Benefits
- 14-day free trial
- No transaction fees.
- Integration with Zapier.
- Unlimited video hosting.
- Advanced email marketing and automation features.
- All-in-one online course creation platform with marketing and sales tools.
- The ability to create membership levels to bill customers weekly, monthly, annually, etc.
- 24/7 hotline.
- Great customer welcome experience.
- Plenty of customization options.
- Built-in templates to quickly build your course without any coding experience.
- An Android/iOS application to manage your business from anywhere.
- A hero rewards program that offers rewards when you reach a certain earnings threshold. The more you win, the more rewards you can get.
Disadvantages
- It's a more expensive course builder.
- No freemium plan.
- You can only add one content format at a time. For example, you can't add quizzes and video content to the same page.
- You need to integrate a third-party payment gateway to sell in Shopify stores.
Now, let's move on to my side-by-side comparison of Kajabi and Thinkific.
1. Ease of use
A good course creation platform should be user-friendly and intuitive. Not all of the features would be relevant if you're having trouble using the platform.
Thinkific
Thinkific is a course creation tool suitable for beginners and equipped with a neat user interface.
You can start creating your course as soon as you sign in to your dashboard.
You will also find all functions under the menu items in the leftmost part of your dashboard.
Menu items include options such as:
- Design your site.
- Market and sell.
- Advanced reports.
- Manage learning content.
- Support your students.
Navigation is also easy. You can view all embedded features with a single click without being redirected to a new page.
You'll also find the “Help” option at the bottom left of the dashboard, in case you have questions. You can type your queries as you would in any search engine like Google.
Overall, Kajabi's interface is beginner-friendly, and every feature is right in front of your eyes as soon as you log in.
Here are other features that make Thinkific easy to use:
- Clean user interface.
- Drag-and-drop builder for uploading videos, creating quizzes, and organizing your learning content.
- No development skills are required for personalization.
- Content automation functionality for content creation.
- Pre-established themes to easily launch your learning platform.
- Integration with email marketing tools.
Kajabi
Kajabi also comes with a neat dashboard with all the menu items nestled in the sidebar.
Kajabi's dashboard provides a quick overview of your stats from the past 30 days, including opt-ins, sales, reviews, and members.
The menu includes options such as:
- Website
- Products
- Marketing
- People
There is also a function”Assistant Kajabi“which you can access by simply clicking on the search bar at the top of the screen.
The assistant helps you navigate the platform quickly and use features that you can't find directly. All you need to do is enter the keywords that are relevant to your search.
Here are other features that make Kajabi easy to use:
- A neat user interface.
- Product generator that allows you to create online courses, subscriptions, and more.
- Ready to use templates and themes.
- Load course content in bulk. You can download up to 20 videos simultaneously.
- Seamless integration with Stripe and PayPal.
- Customizable emails to develop and reach your customers.
- A mobile application to connect with members of your community.
🏆 Winner: Kajabi
While both platforms are easy to use, Kajabi wins thanks to its more extensive list of features. It offers comprehensive personalization and marketing tools in one place. In addition, it has a mobile application that facilitates communication.
2. Course creation tools.
Thinkific
Thinkfic's visual editor helps you build your online courses using pre-designed templates or starting from scratch. You can create different membership levels, customize the look of the course, and deliver content based on membership levels.
It also supports various types of content that you can add to your courses, including PDFs, quizzes, videos, surveys, audio files, assignments, and more.
When it comes to adding content, the builder allows you to drag and drop video, audio, and PDF files in bulk.
There are several options for customizing the appearance, including adding descriptions for individual courses, different color themes, fonts, a course reader logo, and lesson labels.
Kajabi
Kajabi also comes with a drag-and-drop that allows you to build online courses, membership sites, sales pipelines, landing pages, and more.
The easy to use builder allows you to customize the pre-designed templates offered by Kajabi, allowing you to build your courses without any coding requirements.
It allows you to embed various forms of content into your site and courses, including PDFs, images, and videos. You can download files from your system or from a third party application. The downside online is that it doesn't allow you to add different types of content onto a single page.
Regardless of what you're building, all you need to do is choose a theme or template and customize it with your own content and graphics. Kajabi has themes and templates for every type of page, campaign, pipeline, course, or website you might want to create.
Customizing is easy as each section of your page has specific blocks. All you need to do is add custom content to these sections and publish your course.
For example, here, the “Offer” section consists of an “offer block” and a “text block.”
It also allows you to add animations, select the elements that will be visible on the mobile site, change the filling, etc.
Additionally, the Kajabi website builder allows you to:
- Unify the design of your website, blog, landing pages, etc.
- Customize the home page to align with your brand.
- Add a custom domain.
- Add alt tags to your images.
- Create an “About” page to share your story.
- Create a personalized store to present your digital and physical products.
- Create upsell and cross-sell options from your members page.
- Add quizzes, assignments, educational modules, and more to your courses.
- Segment your courses using categories and classifications. You can then add positions and subcategories to higher classifications.
🏆 Winner: Draw.
Both Kajabi and Thinkific have visual, drag-and-drop builders that allow you to add different types of content and customize your courses.
3. Themes and templates.
Pre-designed themes and templates make it easy to create a course, a membership site, landing pages, etc. It's even easier when you can access different templates for the different actions you want to take.
Let's take a look at the different options offered by the two online course platforms together.
Thinkific
Thinkific offers three themes with different styles in its theme library: Empire, Vogue, and Vision.
You can change and preview theme styles from “Theme Settings.”
Settings allow you to change the theme style, colors, typography, and banner image.
Discover Thinkific ->
Kajabi:
Kajabi offers 12 themes for various products, including webinars, online courses, membership sites, and more.
Like Thinkific, Kajabi also allows you to customize and style themes however you want.
🏆 Winner: Kajabi
4. Member memberships.
Creating a course and promoting it is far from enough. You need to implement an effective revenue strategy by using membership sites and selling courses in batches.
Creating memberships allows you to earn recurring revenue, provide continuing education, create a community of like-minded students, and retain customers.
Thinkific
Thinkific allows you to create multiple membership or subscription levels and sell your courses with different pricing options.
You can create a set of courses for your membership site by clicking on the “Manage Learning Content” option on your dashboard.
The online course platform allows you to define numerous membership options, including:
- Freemium plan.
- Single payment.
- Membership by subscription (monthly, annual, etc.)
- Monthly payment plan.
- Customized pricing plans.
Thinkific also allows you to “hide” specific content until a student has completed a certain module or stage.
However, you need to have the Thinkific Pro plan to access the membership feature.
Kajabi
Kajabi allows you to create a membership site or page using pre-designed templates. Start by choosing a new model under Products > New Products > Membership.
You can add multiple membership levels and even offer special offers and discounts for different levels.
The various levels of membership include:
- Recurring payment.
- Unique plan.
- Payment plans on trial.
- Incentive sales are just a click away.
- And even more.
This tool also allows you to add membership levels like Gold, Silver, and Bronze.
🏆 Winner: Draw.
5. Marketing and sales tools.
The end goal of creating your course is to sell it to as many students as possible. It is therefore essential to compare the marketing and sales tools of the two platforms.
Thinkific
You can access Thinkific's marketing and sales features by clicking on the “Market and Sell” option on the dashboard.
It allows you to sell memberships and subscriptions, organize promotional campaigns with discounts, offer free trials, etc. You can also place customizable sales widgets on any third-party website or blog, allowing students to buy your course from anywhere.
You can also create an affiliate marketing program to encourage students to share your course with those who will benefit from it.
Thinkfic also allows integrations with over 1000 business tools, including Facebook, Google Adwords, and more. For example, you can easily connect it to a email marketing software suchlike MailChimp, ConvertKit, and more to create targeted email campaigns.
Other great features include progress indicators, unlimited replays, language controls, built-in completion certificates, automatic progress and reminder emails, and more.
When it comes to remuneration with Thinkific, you can bill your students in over 100 currencies and accept all credit cards. Thinkific also integrates with PayPal and Stripe for fast and secure payments.
Kajabi
Kajabi comes with lots of marketing and sales tools and features to help you promote your courses or site.
Overall, here are all of the marketing options you'll benefit from:
- Create sales leads.
- Email campaigns.
- Automatisms.
- Events.
- Forms.
It comes with pre-built templates for various purposes such as lead generation, product launches, webinars, and more.
Each pipeline plan or model comes with a pre-written copy and a complete framework. It helps you point your students and your audience in the right direction and in the right order.
Kajabi's email marketing tool also gives it an edge over other course platforms. The visual editor and built-in email templates make it easy to personalize and preview email campaigns. There are templates for each type of email, such as announcing an event, presenting a product, etc.
It also evaluates customer behavior and sends unique emails or automates multi-touch sequences accordingly. You can further personalize your campaigns with things like countdown timers, automatic object validation, videos, and more.
There's also a built-in CRM (customer relationship management) tool that allows you to trigger emails, special offers, coupons, and product access. You only need to set a few rules once, and Kajabi's CRM does the rest automatically.
The CRM tool also allows you to track customer behavior, import contacts via CSV, create custom data fields, segment customers, etc.
As for payment gateways, the platform helps you set up your payment system via integration with Stripe and PayPal.
The good news is that Kajabi doesn't take a percentage of your earnings.
Here are some of Kajabi's main marketing and sales tools:
- Integration with Stripe and PayPal to get paid easily.
- Choose how to sell your courses: you can request a one-time payment or a weekly, monthly, or annual subscription.
- Use the one-click upsell option to encourage buying while students check out.
- Offer free trials to encourage students to buy your entire course.
- An integrated customer relationship management tool.
- It comes with integrated sales flow pipelines and email templates.
- Use the intuitive visual editor to personalize and preview emails.
- Automate and personalize email marketing without using a third-party email marketing plugin.
🏆 Winner: Kajabi
Thinkific focuses only on providing basic features to students and learners. So, Kajabi is the big winner when it comes to marketing and sales.
You don't need to assemble different platforms since Kajabi comes with integrated tools for email marketing, customer relationship management, landing page creation, and other business tools.
6. Reporting and analysis.
Reporting and analytics are critical to understanding your customers and identifying their preferences. They also help you determine whether or not your audience likes your content and what areas need improvement.
Thinkific
Thinkfic provides advanced reporting options to measure metrics like revenue, orders, enrollment, and student engagement. You can also filter your reports by product name, product type, time, payment provider, affiliate source, and more.
However, this feature is only available with the Pro+ Growth plan.
You can also view a detailed report on student progress in the “Supporting Your Students > Progress” section. It is also possible to export this data in CSV format by selecting the Export CSV button.
Additionally, it integrates with Google Adwords and Facebook for analysis, ad tracking, data tracking, and creating retargeting campaigns. Other analysis and reporting features include group and cohort reporting, detailed segmentation, data export, and more.
Kajabi
Kajabi helps you monitor your subscription rate and even shows data from all touchpoints. It also measures and tracks metrics like your revenue, offers sold, opt-ins, page views, subscription rate, and more.
It also provides detailed reports and analysis on student progress, profitable sectors, subscription cancellation rates, areas where you can improve, and more.
🏆 Winner: Draw.
Both platforms provide detailed customer information and progress reports to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, they both offer integration with Google Analytics for more detailed analysis.
7. Student experience.
The experience of your students during your online course is very important. It helps you generate future sales, upsells, testimonials, referrals, and word-of-mouth.
Again, the aim is to ensure that your course is of high quality and that it is not the product of a cheap course builder.
Thinkific
Thinkific allows you to add a variety of content formats, including videos (obviously), text, multimedia, downloadable files, images, narrated presentations, quizzes, live streams, webinar content, surveys, audio, and more.
Your students have a dashboard that is clear, visually appealing, and easy to follow. They can also consult their progress report and keep up to date with the rest of their course.
Here are the views of students from a course I took on DSLR cameras, using Thinkific:
Students can easily expand or narrow down each lesson using the options in the dropdown menu. They can also add text under the video and add multiple types of downloadable files to a video page.
Here are other key features that help Thinkific provide the best possible student experience:
- Free video hosting on Wistia (a big advantage as video hosting can be expensive).
- Integrated certificates for students.
- automated progress and reminder emails.
- Possibility to change module colors, fonts, themes, etc.
Kajabi
Kajabi also allows you to add text, videos, images, quizzes, and other types of content to your online course. The platform offers several themes to help you personalize the course for a better learning experience.
Another bonus is Kajabi's ready-to-use mobile app. It allows your students to access your courses and products anywhere, anytime and with a single click.
The application has a “magic link” function that allows your students to access your content without a password. It even records their progress, allowing them to resume the course where they left off.
🏆 Winner: Thinkific.
Both platforms facilitate student learning. However, Thinkific wins here because it's specially designed to create and deliver your courses. Its dashboard shows student progress, which motivates them and makes it easier to follow the course.
You can also work with their onboarding team to create a completely personalized experience for your students.
However, Kajabi's attractive mobile app makes it a close second option.
Discover Thinkific ->
8. Pricing
Cost is another important factor that will help you decide which platform to use.
Thinkific
Thinkific offers four main price levels:
- Free: 0$
- Basic: $49 per month
- Pro: 99 dollars per month
- Premier: $499 per month
In addition to these four main levels, Thinkific offers a Growth plan - a complement to the Pro plan. This Growth plan gives you access to advanced features that are only available on the Premier plan.
There's also the Enterprise plan for custom features.
All plans include a 30-day money-back guarantee and a 14-day free trial. You can also save 20% if you opt for an annual payment.
All of these plans come with basic features like drag-and-drop course creation, upsell offers, student notifications, discussion boards, multiple instructor profiles, and more.
While they normally offer a 14-day free trial, you can get started with a 30-day free trial of their Pro+ Growth Plan with my link below.
Try Thinkific Now ->
Kajabi
Kajabi offers three plans, including the following:
- Basic: $149 per month
- Growth: $199 per month
- Pro: $399 per month
You can start with a 14-day free trial and save 20% on annual plans.
Unlike Thinkific, Kajabi does not offer a free plan.
At first glance, Thinkific is the cheapest option. It allows you to host an unlimited number of students and create an unlimited number of courses without paying half of what you would have to pay with Kajabi.
However, subscription plans differ when it comes to a lot of advanced features. For example, you need to buy Thinkific's Pro plan ($99 per month) to create a membership site.
Likewise, you need to take into account various other characteristics to compare their plans precisely. That's why there's no single winner when it comes to pricing plans.
9. Student boundaries.
The number of students you can accommodate becomes a crucial factor when considering an online course platform.
Here is the student housing limit for each platform:
Thinkific
Whether you choose the free plan or a paid plan, Thinkific allows you to have an unlimited number of students in your courses. There are also no transaction fees.
Kajabi
With Kajabi, the pricing plan you choose determines how many students or members you can host.
Here is the breakdown of the number of students/users supported by each plan:
- Base: 1,000 active members.
- Growth: 10,000 active members.
- Pro: 20,000 active members.
🏆 Winner: Thinkific
Thinkific is the big winner of this ranking. For the price you have to pay to use Kajabi, there should be no restrictions on the number of members you can accommodate.
Discover Thinkific ->
10. Course limits.
One of the main differences between the two platforms is the number of courses you can create.
Thinkific
Here's what you can do with Thinkific:
- You can create up to three courses with the free plan. You can also host three different types of content, including PDFs, audio files, and videos.
- All paid plans allow you to create an unlimited number of courses.
Kajabi
Kajabi does not provide a freemium plan.
- The basic plan allows you to create three products and three pipelines.
- The growth plan allows you to create 15 products and 15 pipelines.
- The Pro plan allows you to create 100 products and 100 pipelines.
🏆 Winner: Thinkific
Kajabi charges $119 per month for its basic plan that only allows you to create three products and three pipelines. On the other hand, Thinkific allows you to create an unlimited number of courses with its basic plan that costs $49 per month, more than half of what Kajabi costs.
You can even create three courses with Thinkific's free (but limited) plan.
Discover Thinkific ->
11. Support.
Both Thinkific and Kajabi offer reliable customer support, but let's see which platform offers the most options.
Thinkific
The platform offers help through its help center, paid training site, blog, expert marketplace, and status page. There is also an FAQ section for self-service.
Additionally, Thinkific offers customer support through its website:
- Email support.
- Phone support (Monday to Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PST).
- Step-by-Step Video Tutorials.
- An active community on Facebook.
You can also engage with Thinkific through social channels like YouTube and Twitter.
With Thinkfic's “Premier” and “Plus” plans, you get options like a one-hour onboarding call and additional training on a dedicated site.
Kajabi
Kajabi provides customer support in the following ways:
- Customers have access to a hotline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can also reach their support team via email.
- Welcome call with all the plans.
- 24/7 live chat with the Growth plan and the Pro plan.
- It has a comprehensive FAQ section and a search tool.
- You can collaborate with a thriving community of experts on social media to solve problems.
- Live training to solve problems in real time.
Kajabi also provides help via training webinars and Kajabi University, which allows you to easily search for nested functions.
🏆 Winner: Kajabi
While both offer great customer support, Kajabi wins with real-time support and access to free tutorials. For new Thinkific users, the tutorials on their training site cost up to $299.
12. Money-back guarantee.
Many people consider the refund policy before choosing a platform. To be safe, you should also be aware of the refund policy.
Both Kajabi and Thinkific offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can get a full refund within the first month if you're not happy with the product.
Who is the winner?
Let's get this over with.
Kajabi is for more experienced marketers or online course creators who are looking for an all-in-one platform.
It's a holistic platform designed for information businesses, allowing you to create your courses, landing pages, and courses, and market them to reach a wider audience.
You should also opt for Kajabi if you want to create a membership site platform or a subscription-based sales model.
Kajabi also replaces email marketing tools like MailChimp and landing page creators like ClickFunnels.
In my opinion, Thinkific is the best platform overall.
It's cheaper than Kajabi, while still allowing for the personalized course experience you want for your audience. You can do the things you need to do:
- Customize the home page and design of your course site
- Add videos, text, and assignments on the same course page.
- Send email sequences continuously
- Send courses all at once or at a time.
Remember that at the end of the day, it's the experience of your students that matters.
I repeat: The main objective is to give your students the impression that you are not using a cheap course builder. You want your course to feel like a professional learning experience.
Thinkific can do it at a lower cost than Kajabi.
But honestly, test them out for yourself and see what you like best, because you can't go wrong with either of them.
Both platforms offer a great user experience, great customer service, and are easy to use.
Ask yourself the question: What type of online course do you want to offer? Who is your target audience? How much work do you want to do by yourself? It will make your decision easier.
For more online course comparisons, check out my guides on:
