Thinkific or Kajabi | Course Builder Review [2022]
If you’re looking to create and sell online courses Kajabi and Thinkific are two great platforms. Which one is right for your business?
We’re gonna find out here.
We have come up with eight different judging categories for Thinkific and Kajabi.
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Here we are going to discuss the following points about Thinkific and Kajabi Udemy Course Creating tools.
- Pricing
- Course Creation
- Assessments
- Communications
- Sales
- Analytics
- Site Builder
- Support
Thinkific Vs Kajabi Pricing Plans
We’re gonna start at pricing because it defines how much you are going to have to pay monthly or annually.
But the Kajabi and Thinkific are not necessarily the same in all aspects, they are pretty damn close but I do want to present this to you as closer.
Kajabi has some added different features that think if it does not so that is kind of important to kind of put an asterisk about this pricing.
Here we are going to break this down.
They both offer annual and monthly plans but to keep these things kind of on the same in terms, let’s just look at their monthly plans.
Here’s why even though I’m walking you through both of these platforms, you obviously may still want to kick the tires a little.
Paying for an entire year’s worth might be way too much of a commitment.
You probably will want to start monthly.
Now on Kajabi when you look at the monthly plans, it starts with the basic for 149 USD a month where you get three products.
A product is a course or like a downloadable or something like that, three pipelines, unlimited landing pages, marketing emails, thousand contacts.
Now again this is important to note because Kajabi does have this integrated email system which we’ll talk about more a little bit later.
Now they also have this growth plan the 199 USD.
That comes with15 products so that would be 15 courses, 15 pipelines, unlimited landing pages, so on and so forth.
We’re going to talk more about these again throughout I’m bringing this to you just at a high level.
Here’s the one thing I’m going to bring up about the Kajabi platform.
I do not think that a 14-day trial is enough with Kajabi because they have so many kinds of extra functions.
I feel like they should extend this to a 30-day trial because 14 days particularly if you’re an entrepreneur or a solopreneur, who’s doing this as kind of a side part of your business.
14 days just wasn’t enough for me to fully understand everything about the Kajabi platform and that’s saying a lot.
In between creating the courses, editing the video like looking at all the functions, I needed more than a 14-day trial.
Now if we flip over to Thinkific and again we’re going to make this an equal playing field.
What I really like about them, they have a free version and this is fantastic because it’ll allow you to test drive just like they say.
They are providing, Thinkific’s core feature set for free.
The free version includes three courses which are equal to the 149 that Kajabi is asking over there.
Three courses, unlimited students, quizzes, surveys, hosting content.
Again we’re going to get into these a little bit more.
Then you have your basic for 49 a month and 99 a month.
The free may not have all the features but I really love that.
They have a free version because you are gonna need time to go in and get used to how these platforms work.
So I currently use the Pro for mine but even on the basic version unlimited courses and students are provided.
That’s not offered anywhere in any of these Kajabi platforms.
That was just blown away by that.
There’s no unlimited here but your second level in on Thinkific, you get unlimited courses and students.
So big difference.
The huge difference actually when it comes to Kajabi versus Thinkific pricing, the pricing point goes to Thinkific.
If you’re looking at Thinkific versus Kajabi, it’s because you’re looking to launch courses for your business.
Course Creation
So now what I want to dive into, is the actual course creation experience.
So we’re going to start with Kajabi.
Now here’s one thing about Kajabi, you have two options, you can do a video or you can do an assessment or you could just keep it as text inside.
But you only have these two options when it comes to the media.
If you want to attach now conversely when we come over to Thinkific flagshiP.
I’ll just call this test.
It gives you a video, you can do a quiz. To be fair that’s what assessment is.
In Kajabi multimedia you can do just as a text, you can do a survey, you can do a PDF.
This would be a downloadable type of thing.
You can do an audio-only download.
You can put a presentation up there, a brilliant exam does require a brilliant account.
So it’s just a more advanced exam type.
You can create an assignment.
So if you are going to do a course or a lesson and you want to give someone, kind of homework that would be an assignment.
And then they have a live cast that is in beta and that gets driven through zoom.
You need to connect to Zoom before you add the lesson.
You have to look at all of these options when you create a lesson.
Thinkific versus Kajabi? It’s definitely an advantage Thinkific pricing point.
Assessment
When you’re creating a course, you’re going to want to create assessments or quizzes, tests for the people who are going through your course.
They can even be super simple true or false, one question, two questions but it does help to add that extra level of engagement and even understanding of whatever it is that you are teaching, showing, presenting.
So now what I want to do is take a second and walk you through and show you the differences between assessments on both Kajabi and Thinkific.
So when we look at Kajabi when you create a new post which again seems a little counterintuitive but we’re going to say post.
Let’s say you want to make this a quiz.
Okay, you click into it and you say oh I want to make this an assessment, wait …
This was so freaking confusing to me, that when you create an assessment you don’t actually create it in here.
To create an assessment you have to go to People Assessments then what you do is create a new assessment in there and then connect it to that lesson.
This is kind of, I would say the flaw.
That is constant throughout Kajabi’s user interface.
How things connect and where you find them is not intuitive.
It took me time to figure out where the hell to find some of this stuff is.
Now conversely if we come over there to Thinkific, let’s say add a new lesson and I want to do a quiz, I’m going to call this quiz 1, hit enter, look into it and boom it is created.
So it’s a lot more intuitive unless I want to add a question.
Kajabi has the same thing when you make it, so you could say one or more multiple-choice that kind of thing.
I would say that the answer assessments point goes to Thinkific.
Communications
In terms of pricing, Thinkific, and Kajabi are pretty close and when it comes to communications this is where they split off and have major differences.
Kajabi is kind of an all-in-one tool.
Inside of Kajabi, you can also do all of your email marketing.
They are an email service provider otherwise called an ESP.
So what that brings with it when you do courses using Kajabi, it adds this really great granular level of targeting.
When it comes to your communications, this is again just a template lesson but if you scroll down you see the automation button right there.
Now what’s really cool since Kajabi is your ESP, again your email service provider, you can set up conditions that when this lesson is completed, you can fire off an email.
This is super cool. I love this about Kajabi. This granular level of control with communication.
So this could be something, when someone completes a lesson or a quiz, you can send them an email immediately and say congratulations! great job.
Now unfortunately that does not exist inside of Thinkific.
Thinkific does not have an email component to it and this is where it might be a big deal-breaker for you if you do not have an existing what’s called ESP.
Going with Kajabi to be the all-in-one solution may be the answer for you.
You need to connect another email service with Thinkific, one that probably you would have to pay for, to set up these automated emails or these drip emails.
So you need to connect to another service that again you have to pay for.
I bought Thinkific and at the same time bought an active campaign.
I was able to buy both of those for less than the cost of Kajabi.
An active campaign does a ton more with email than Kajabi’s email system.
But again it’s going to require a certain level of understanding of how to connect these systems.
You know yourself better than anyone.
If that doesn’t sound good for you, it might be worth the extra cost to go with Kajabi.
Sales
When it comes to sales promotions and tools this is where these programs are pretty much the same.
They offer the ability to sell courses individually.
You can bundle them all together.
If you have similar courses on the same topic or related topics you can bundle them together and sell them for a discounted price.
If you’re going to buy them individually you can add coupons.
You can add affiliates.
So that’s a great tool on both Kajabi and Thinkific that you can add someone’s email and information and give them a unique URL and if someone buys it from there it can automatically tell you how much you can pay that person.
If you want to have an affiliate code and say hey if you sell this through your website I’ll give you 10 of your sales.
They give this kind of like sales widget functionality.
So you can create a little sales widget box.
You can add the HTML code to your website.
So again it’s kind of a small deal.
Not enough for me to say oh Thinkific is head and shoulders above Kajabi.
When it comes to sales they’re pretty much on equal footing.
Analytics
I love analytics, I love data and digital marketing.
You know sometimes it’s like drinking from a fire hose but when it comes to launching courses, if you’re doing this with Kajabi or Thinkific, you need to have data to understand what’s working and what’s not.
Where maybe you know they’re hiccups in particular courses or sales.
Again this is a situation where Thinkific really brings it.
They do a fantastic job of giving you this really in-depth data.
Now you’ll see here it’s in beta mode and we’re looking at sample data right here but it gives you this okay on revenue this great kind of chart
As far as sales, you can also look at individual orders, how these came in, what this looks like, which courses are responsible for it.
You can segment it down by product and type and coupons.
You can look at your actual enrollment.
In some cases, you have free courses so that would count towards enrollments versus maybe sales or orders.
You can take a look at that.
This is what I really love about Thinkific is this student engagement.
Now again I recognize and appreciate.
Data shows you that how many days does it take someone to complete the course.
This can help in forming an email campaign.
You may want to implement this as part of a coaching program.
This is something where you have a ton of people who sign up and they never complete it.
Well, you’re going to want to encourage them along the way understanding that.
You can look at statistics on the lessons, with their engagement, their reviews, how many completed versus attempted.
This is an amazing thing included in Thinkific.
Now to give equal time, if we come over to Kajabi, nothing like this exists over here.
There’s just no data anywhere near equivalent to what Thinkific gives you from revenue, student engagement to enrollments.
Again Thinkific really brings it when it comes to analytics.
Both platforms allow you to connect Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel that is really great because then you can track and even remarket to people who come to your course or website pages.
Kajabi is a one-stop shop. It provides you email service.
Here’s the thing that I did not love about Kajabi and their email service, it will not tell you that it is not able to give you the information on who clicked.
So it’ll tell you who opened it or it’ll tell you how many opens you had.
But it will not tell you who clicked or who opened it.
There is a big gap in data for your email when you use Kajabi.
I needed more information about people who are getting my emails and like I mentioned I did switch over when I moved to Thinkific to active campaign and it gives you tons of more granular data.
It gives you very high-level data when it comes to your email but it just doesn’t give me everything I wanted when it came to email data analytics point Thinkific.
Site Builder
When it comes to website building and course building again I’m going to bring u.
Kajabi is slightly different than Thinkific.
Kajabi is intended to kind of be the one-stop shop so you can actually create your entire website in Kajabi, in addition to your courses.
So if you are someone out there who does not have a website or is not happy with your website or doesn’t know how to do a website, Kajabi has a website builder.
And then when you create courses, it would automatically implement them into that.
You can create your entire company business website here in addition to your courses.
A key distinction from the Thinkific platform where if we come over to design your site and site builder.
Yes, you can create your website but really this is intended to be almost like the website that hosts and manages your courses.
If you are looking for a one-stop shop, if you are looking for a platform to help you create your entire website and then add the courses on, maybe courses is all you’re doing or it’s a coaching program Kajabi might scratch that itch.
I will say Kajabi has a little more granular level of control.
I did find their page builder to have a little bit more features than the Thinkific page builder and site builder point Kajabi.
Support
Customer support is really important when you get started on a platform, any platform but particularly a course building platform.
So when it came to Kajabi, when I signed up they reached out.
We set up a kickoff call with an actual human being.
We did a zoom call we walked through what I wanted to do, what I had done this far.
If there’s anything I needed help with.
If I had any questions.
It was great.
That kickoff meeting was very helpful and it does help you get fast-tracked into Kajabi.
Thinkific on the other hand did not have that kind of experience.
There was no kickoff meeting with an actual human.
I did have some questions and I reached out to support and I got a response maybe a day or two later.
So it wasn’t as good as Kajabi.
I will also say that with Kajabi since you have this kickoff meeting, you do kind of have this dedicated customer support person.
So if you have a question you can email them and they got back to me pretty quick.
That type of connection to customer service or a support person in Thinkific just doesn’t exist.
Let’s do a recap and look at our final scorecard.
When it comes to pricing I give the edge to Thinkific. They have cheaper plans. They even have that free plan so they get the point.
Course creation also goes to Thinkific. Its user interface is slightly easier to manipulate. You can get things done faster and easier which is the same reason why I give them a point.
Also on assessments now just when you think this is going to be a clean sweep.
The communications point goes to Kajabi.
Remember Kajabi is this all-in-one platform that integrates your email into it and you’re able to do some granular very specific things inside Kajabi.
When it comes to communications that you just can’t do inside of Thinkific.
Even with an integrated ESP sales, this point goes to both of them.
I didn’t think there was one specific thing that set apart one or the other.
They’re pretty equal.
Here analytics point to Thinkific.
If you remember back we have a ton more analytics available on the Thinkific platform.
When it comes to sales revenue and even how your students interact with the courses, site builder slight edge ever so slight edge to Kajabi.
Again because they offered the tools to create an entire website plus the course websites and I did find their site builder slightly easier to use with a little more functionality.
And the last point of support also goes to Kajabi.
They have a more structured, more hands-on level of support when it comes to you if you are signing up for the first time.
So when we do the count here, Thinkific is slightly edging out five points to Kajabi’s four points.
You may want to learn more about the best tools to create online courses.
You can download Thinkific here.
Download Kajabi.
If you have any questions about Thinkific or Kajabi drop them below in the comments and if you end up creating a course share it with us at MAXID.