Find a Cheaper Alternative to Kajabi: A Simple Guide

Stop burning cash as a creator and find a cheaper alternative to Kajabi. In this guide we'll share 9 platforms like Kajabi to consider.

For educators and course creators, choosing the right online content creation platform is essential.

The best platform facilitates easy course design, assists in marketing, and deals with payments. It offers interactive and dynamic tools that elevate course content. And it does all of this within a reasonable budget.

Kajabi is a powerful course creation platform but with prices starting at $149 per month for three courses, it is a premium product. There are cheaper alternatives to Kajabi out there, many of which have the power and the features that course creators need.

In this article, we look at 9 of the best alternatives that are available with a lower monthly subscription than Kajabi.

Kajabi is a course creation platform developed in 2010 and claims to offer an all-in-one solution to create, promote, and sell courses online. 

Its drag-and-drop course editor is intuitive and Kajabi also offers plenty of customizable site templates. It has some of the most powerful sales and marketing tools of any course builder.

In particular, the pipeline and sales funnel features stand ahead of other learning management systems. It also offers advanced email marketing features, as well as affiliate marketing. 

Payments can be accepted via Stripe or PayPal and Kajabi has plans to launch its own payment gateway so users wouldn’t have to go through a third party provider.

Prices for Kajabi start at $149 per month, which effectively only allows you to create three courses, but it does allow for 1,000 active students. 

More expensive Kajabi plans cost $199 and $399 per month and enable you to create 15 and 100 courses respectively, making it a very expensive proposition compared to others. 

And, while Kajabi does have advanced marketing features, its community engagement features are somewhat lacking considering its price.

Kajabi is an expensive solution, especially if you are just starting out or want to publish multiple courses. But there are cheaper alternatives to Kajabi that offer course-building and marketing features. 

Below, we look at 13 of these cheaper Kajabi alternatives to help you find the one that best fits your business.

Kourses is currently in private access but potential customers can sign up to join the waiting list and gain access to the software as soon as it releases.

Kourses offers a drag-and-drop editor that is easy to use and provides fast video hosting as well as the ability to attach PDF files and other downloads. Lessons and schedules can be scheduled and even et to auto-play or favorited by students so they can come back and view their chosen lessons at a later time.

With Hubs, you can set up communities that incorporate one or more courses and provide additional content relevant to those courses, and then allow access to each hub according to membership level and other factors. 

Third-party integration means you can use your existing payment solution to accept one-off and subscription payments, or you can incorporate CRM and email marketing software and funnels to help propel your marketing efforts.

However, Kourses does need further development as it is still closed, and although there are plans for further community features, there are services with more of these features already available.

With Podia you can build your own course website before populating it with courses. While the free membership only allows the creation of a single course, all paid plans allow unlimited courses.

You can also establish and run an email marketing campaign through Podia. Email marketing features include email templates and automated emails.

As well as courses, you can set up coaching sessions, offer ebooks and other downloads, and host webinars. You can even bundle items together, potentially increasing your revenue per sale.

Podia is easy to use, and it offers very good limits even on its cheaper plans. However, its simplicity means that your customization options are limited. You will need third-party software for email segmentation, for example.

Podia has three subscription levels:

• Free – The Free membership costs $0/month but you are charged 8% per transaction and are limited to a single course and one download.
• Mover – Costing $33 per month, there are no transaction fees with the Mover package and you can offer unlimited downloads and create unlimited courses.
• Shaker – The most expensive package costs $75 per month, has no transaction fees, and allows unlimited courses. It also offers affiliate marketing capability.

FreshLearn is relatively new to the learning management system industry, having launched in 2020. 

It can be used to set up a website without any coding knowledge needed and it has some very useful features including gamification features. 

You can also create coupons and offer certificates to students who successfully complete courses and pass assessments.

However, third-party integration is somewhat lacking, which is a shame considering the email marketing package, while present, could be expanded upon. 

Also, while your students can make referrals and you have the capability to set referral payment levels, you can’t run a full affiliate program.

FreshLearn has three subscription levels including a free plan:

• Free – The Free plan is completely free and doesn’t even charge a transaction fee. However, you can only have 25 enrolments before you need to upgrade.
• Pro – At $39 per month, the Pro Plan offers up to 3,000 emails as part of your email marketing, and you can add assignments and live classes, but only one administrator.
• No Brainer – The No Brainer subscription costs $69 per month and offers all of the features of the Pro account plus gamification, access to the referral program, and custom themes. You can also have 3 administrators.

Teachery is an inexpensive course builder that makes it really easy to add courses and embed content in those courses. The key to Teachery is its simplicity. 

It doesn’t offer site-building features and is targeted at those who want to sell courses from an existing website. Its simplicity also stretches to its pricing as there is only a single membership option. It does offer affiliate marketing and its checkout is streamlined and efficient.

However, Teachery’s simplicity is also its biggest downfall and many features are lacking or fall short. Videos can be embedded into courses, but you have to host them on your own site. 

There are no gamification features, and you won’t even find assessments or certificates. You can’t accept payment by PayPal, either.

Teachery’s pricing is simple with a single subscription plan costing $49 per month. This means that you gain access to all features at an admittedly low price.

Systeme.io is a course creator with a drag-and-drop site and course design platform. It is geared towards the use of sales funnels and, as such, it has some handy features in this area. 

Even the free plan allows for the setting up of three funnels, each with 15 steps. You can also use systeme.io to set up blogs and you receive unlimited email sending with all subscriptions, which is generous.

Its sales funnels and marketing automation tools are strong, but systeme.io offers limited third-party integration, and with essentially four different packages, the subscription options are a little more complicated than is necessary.

Four membership packages are available from systeme.io:

• Free – The Free plan costs $0 per month and has no transaction fees, but you are limited to 2,000 contacts, 3 sales funnels, and 15 sales funnel steps. You can also only create one course.
• Startup – The Startup plan allows 5,000 contacts, 10 funnels, 50 steps, 5 blogs, and 5 courses. It costs $27 per month.
• Webinar – At $47 per month, the Webinar plan offers 50 funnels and 300 funnel steps with 20 blogs and 20 courses.
• Unlimited – The Unlimited plan offers unlimited everything, including courses, and it costs $97 a month.

On the surface, Udemy is a cheaper alternative to Kajabi and pretty much all other online course platforms because there is no monthly subscription charge to create and sell courses.

However, you need to create and sell courses on the Udemy platform, rather than your own site, and there are transaction fees that can prove very high.

Udemy also has control over your prices when it comes to sitewide sales, which means you could see your $100 course selling for a few bucks while only receiving a small portion of that fee.

Udemy charges a percentage per transaction. If a sale comes via a link you provide to potential students, the fee is only 3%, which is reasonable considering Udemy hosts your content and deals with payments. 

However, if a sale comes through the Udemy website, you will effectively pay 67% of the transaction so are only left with a third of the course fee.

Thinkific is a reasonably priced all-in-one platform that enables you to set up a website and, with any of the paid plans, create unlimited courses. 

The free plan only allows for the design of a single course. Once courses are set up, you also get access to a variety of widgets that can be embedded on your other sites and other online real estate so you can sell courses anywhere.

While Thinkific does enable you to design your own website, its themes and options are limited. You will also need to integrate third-party software for email marketing, and there are very limited automation features available.

Thinkific has a range of free and paid plans available:

• Free – The Free package is completely free, with no transaction fees or monthly charges. It only allows a single course and one community, but it does give you unlimited student registrations.
• Basic – The Basic package also offers unlimited students and provides 1 community, but it provides unlimited courses. It costs $36 per month.
• Start – The Start package costs $74 per month and increases the number of spaces per community from the 5 you get with Basic to 10.
• Grow – At $149 per month, the Grow package is the most expensive but it offers 3 communities, 20 spaces per community, and allows 2 administrators while also giving priority customer support.

Mighty Networks is all about creating networks around the courses you sell. This can offer a more classroom-based feel to your courses, with students able to help one another develop.

Additional community features enable you to ask questions and start discussions with your groups. It even has mobile apps for students to use.

The themes and templates available are somewhat limited, although this is fine if one of the ones available suits your theme. It also has a lot of community features, and it can feel overwhelming at first, while the analytics on offer are very basic. 

And, if you already have a community on your own website or another platform, you will have to manually invite them which means you will likely lose members along the way.

Mighty Networks has two plans available, as well as the Mighty Pro package that is tailored to your specific needs. You will need to get a quote for the Pro package.

• Community – The Community package costs $33 per month and does allow paid memberships but doesn’t allow course creation.
• Business – If you want to create and sell courses, you will need the $99-a-month Business package which also offers featured pages and gives access to analytics data.

Teachable enables users to set up schools, with each school consisting of courses and with the potential for its own easily built website. 

Courses can incorporate video, text, and audio, and you can also add assessments and quizzes. It also enables you to accept payment by card, PayPal, and even Google Pay.

Although it is simple to use and the school and course layout is intuitive, Teachable has limited themes and basic marketing functionality, and its Basic plan, which has a monthly subscription, also has quite high transaction fees.

Teachable has a free plan as well as three paid plans, but you need to head to the more expensive options to avoid transaction fees.

• Free – The free plan doesn’t have a monthly subscription but it does charge $1 + 10% per transaction. It allows 1 of each published product and does allow student referrals.
• Basic – The Basic plan costs $39 per month, which is a reasonable price, but it also has a 5% transaction fee. It allows five of each published product and offers basic email marketing.
• Pro – The Pro plan costs $119 per month but has no transaction fees. It gives users 50 published products.
• Pro+ - The Pro+ plan is the most expensive, costing $199 per month. It allows the addition of 200 courses, 200 coaching products, and 200 each of the other published product types.

Kajabi is only one of a growing number of online course-building platforms and while it is a powerful solution, it isn’t ideal for everybody, especially those on a restricted budget.

Above are 9 cheaper Kajabi alternatives that you can use to set up or grow your online course business.

Our recommendation: Join the Kourses waiting list to be informed when it opens for use, or choose an alternative like Podia which, despite being an inexpensive alternative, offers some very high limits with all its subscription levels.

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