Considering Teachable vs Kajabi?

If you’re looking to start your own online business selling online courses, then you may be considering these platforms.

However, both platforms differ in a lot of ways that you may not have thought of, and in this article, my goal is to cover them all.

So if you’re stuck on which platform you want to go with then keep reading.

Before You Start

Now before I get into all the details I have a few things that I want to mention just to be clear about things.

First, I am an affiliate of Teachable and I will earn a  commission if you buy through my link which will go to benefit this site.  However, I am an affiliate of Kajabi.  My comparison is an honest look at both products to see what they offer and to help you choose the one that’s right for you.

Second, this isn’t one of those reviews where I slam the opposing company just to make them look bad but more to give a fair and honest look at both platforms and what they have to offer.

With that said let’s get started.

Teachable vs Kajabi – A Complete Comparison Chart

In this comparison, I cover 35 of the top points, however, make sure you stick around and read what comes after the chart where I will cover 10 of the biggest differences between both platforms.

	Teachable	Kajabi
Can You Create Unlimited Courses?	Yes	Depends on the plan - Basic Plan: 5 products - Pro Plan: 100 Products - Premium Plan: Unlimited Products
Do They Offer SSL?	Yes	Yes
Can You Customize Your Site Design?	Basic Limited Design Options	Yes
Can You Setup a Custom Domain Name?	Offered with paid plans only	Offered with paid plans only
Do You Have Complete Control of Course Material?	Yes, you own the course and can co whatever you want with it	You own the course and can co whatever you want with It
Can You Control Pricing?	Yes, you can price your course for as much as you want or even offer it for free	You can price your course for as much as you want or even offer it for free
Do They Offer a Marketplace?	No	Yes
Can You Offer Coupons and Promotional Discounts?	Yes, you set any kind of discount for as long as you want	Yes, you set any kind of discount for as long as you want
Can You Offer an Affiliate Program for Your Course?	Yes, and you can also determine the commission percentage	Yes, and you can also determine the commission percentage
Allow You to Monitor Students Progress?	Yes, detailed reporting and analytics	Yes, detailed reporting and analytics
Do You Have Complete Control Over Students?	Yes, they are your students	Yes, they are your students
Do They Offer Quizzes?	Yes	Yes
Can You Offer Drip Content?	Yes, offered with paid plans only	Yes
Can You Have Multiple Instructors?	Yes	Yes
Can You Share Course Revenue?	Yes	Yes
Can You Offer Course Bundles?	Yes	Yes
Can You Offer Course Up Sells?	Yes	Yes
Do You Offer On boarding Calls	Yes, with Professional Plans and up	No
Can You Get Instant Access to Your Funds?	Not with Free Plans. Must be on the Professional Plan to get instant payouts.	Yes
Do They Offer Integrations?	Yes, but you need to be on the Basic Plan or higher	Yes
Do They Offer Advanced CSS/HTML Editing?	Yes	Yes
Do You Offer Unlimited Video Hosting?	Yes	Yes
Can You Create Additional Pages?	Yes	Yes
Do They Offer Their Own Payment Gateway?	Yes	No, must integrate with Stripe or Paypal
Can You Offer a Free Trial of Your Course?	No	Yes
How Many Admin Can You Have?	1 - Free Plan 2 - Basic Plan 5 - Pro Plan 100 - Business Plan	1- Basic Plan 10- Growth Plan 25 - Pro Plan
How Many Students Can You Have?	Free Plan has a 10 Student Limit. All other Plans are Unlimited.	Depends on the plan. - Basic Plan: 1000 Members - Pro Plan: 10,000 Members - Premium Plan: Unlimited
Do They Offer Training?	Offers Teachable U if you sign up for Pro Plan	Yes, you get access to Kajabi University Training Courses
Do They Offer an App?	Yes	No
Do They Offer a Free Plan?	Yes, free for as long as you want but limited to 10 students	Yes, but it is only a 28 day free trial
Credit Credit Card Processing Fees	- 2.9% plus 30 cents on US Sales - 3.9% plus 30 cents on international sales - 4.4% plus 30 cents on PayPal international Sales	2.9% plus 30 cents. With Pro Plans and up you negotiate lower fees when you integrate Stripe or PayPal.
What Kind of Pricing Options Do You Have?	- Free - One Time Payments - Recurring Payments - Payment Plan	- Free - One Time Payments - Recurring Payments - Payment Plan
Are There Course Transaction Fees?	- 10% + $1 for Free Plans - 5% for the Basic Plan - 0% for the Professional Plan and up	No transaction fees
Are There Monthly Payment Plans?	Yes - Basic Plan $39/Month - Professional Plan $99/Month - High Volume Plan $299/month	Yes - Basic $129/Monthly - Pro $389/Monthly - Premium $899/Monthly
Do They Offer Annual Plans?	Yes - Basic Plan $33.25/month = $399/year - Professional Plan $83.25/month = $999/year - High Volume Plan $249.91/month or $2999/year	Yes -Basic $103/month = $1476/year - Pro $311/month = $3732/year - Premium $719/month = $8628/year
How Much Do You Save By Paying Annually?	14% to 16% depending on the plan	20% if paid annually
	Click Here to Sign Up for Teachable	Click here to Sign Up For Kajabi

10 Ways Teachable Differs From Kajabi

Now that you’ve had a chance to compare Teachable and Kajabi I want to share the 10 major differences between each of these platforms below.

#1 Amount of Products You Can Create

The first major difference is the number of products you can create on each platform. With Teachable you can create as many as you want.  The sky is the limit but with Kajabi it’s totally different.

With Kajabi it all depends on the plan that you have.  If you have the Basic Plan you can only create 5 products, with the Pro Plan you can create 100 and with the Premium Plan you can create unlimited products.

The issue I have with this is that Teachable charges far less and you can still create as many products you want.  In fact, the free plan lets you create as many products as you want.

This just doesn’t make sense to me, the Kajabi platform charges three times as much as Teachable and you have a limit on how many products you can have.  This just makes absolutely no sense.

#2 MarketPlace

One thing I do like about Kajabi is that they offer a marketplace to sell your course in.  The only other platform that I know that does this is Udemy and Skillshare.  With a marketplace it allows you to gain exposure to your courses and products.

Overall the marketplace is very basic and does not have a whole lot of course in it.  On average every category might have four to ten courses in it.  This either means that nobody goes to it or it could be an opportunity to get in on something big.

My guess is that the marketplace in Kajabi isn’t getting much traction yet.

#3 The Free Plan

Kajabi also does not offer a free plan instead they offer a 14-day free trial offer while Teachable offers a completely free plan with no credit card needed to sign up.

The reason I like the free plan is that it allows you the opportunity to get started at no cost earning extra income on the side till you can afford to move over to a paid plan.

If you’re brand new to creating online courses there is no way you can create and sell your first course in 14 days.  Not only that the prices are a bit steep if you’re trying to bootstrap things. I’ll cover more on this in the next tip.

#4 The Cost

If you haven’t noticed yet the cost difference between both of these platforms is huge.  Besides Teachable’s free plan Kajabi is roughly three to four times the cost.

• Teachable’s Basic Plan runs $39 a month while Kajabi’s Basic Plan runs $129 a month
• Teachable’s Pro Plan runs $99 a month while Kajabi’s Pro Plan runs $389 a month
• Teachable’s High Volume Plan runs $299 a month while Kajabi’s Premium Plan runs $899 a month

Now if you decide to go for the annual plan you can save 20% by going with Kajabi but this doesn’t mean it would be cheaper.

• Teachable’s Basic Plan Annual cost runs $399 while Kajabi will run $1476 a year
• Teachable’s Pro Plan runs $999 a year while Kajabi’s Pro Plan will run $3732 a year
• Teachable’s High Volume Plan runs $2999 a year while Kajabi’s Premium Plan runs $8628 a year

As you can see Teachable is a far cheaper option than Kajabi.

#5 Students

I’m also not a big fan of how Kajabi deals with students.  Again based on the plan that you have with Kajabi determines how many students you can have all together.  With Teachable you can have an unlimited number of students. Below are how many students you can have with the various plans Kajabi offers.

• Basic Plan – 1000 Students
• Pro Plan – 10,000 Students
• Premium Plan – Unlimited

What doesn’t make sense with this is how Teachable can again cost so much less, offer a free plan, and still let you have unlimited students.

#6 Landing Pages, Webinars, and More

With all the extra cost and limitations of students and products you can have you might we wonder how is it that Kajabi can justify a higher cost and no lifetime free plan.

The answer:

Kajabi’s end goal is that their platform is designed to be an all in one solution so you don’t have to use any third party integrations.  This is why they include everything from doing landing pages, webinars, to advance email.

Their thought is that it would be cheaper to get their all in one solution than pay for third-party services separately.  While I agree this sounds like a great idea it does come with a few limitations.

The biggest of them being what if you like something else better than what Kajabi offers.  The weird thing is you can integrate these things if you want to but then if you’re going to integrate a third party product why pay all the extra cost in the first place.

#7 Apps

Another area Kajabi misses the mark is that they don’t have an app.  Both Teachable and Kajabi have mobile sites but Kajabi does not offer an app for students to access your courses faster and easier.

With everything going more mobile these days you would think this would be a must for the Kajabi platform, especially for the cost that you pay.

#8 Trial Offers

Trying to get people to check out your course can be hard to do.  One of the best ways to get people interested in your course is to offer a free trial offer.  For example, you could give one or two lessons away for free just to peak their interest.

The only problem is that Teachable does not offer this and Kajabi does.  My hope is that Teachable will offer this at some point but for now we’ll just have to figure out other ways to entice people to check out your courses.

#9 Transaction Fees

Both platforms also differ when it comes to transaction fees.

Side Note: I’m not talking about credit card transaction fees those are the same for both platforms (2.9% + 30 Cents)

The transaction fee I’m talking about is the one that Teachable charges per sale as a way to compensate for the lower priced plans. Teachable has two different transaction fees depending on the plan that you have.

• Free Plan – 10% plus $1 per sale
• Basic Plan – 5% per sale

Kajabi, on the other hand, does not charge any transaction fees, after all, they’re charging you at the very least $129 per month and the monthly fee is more than enough.

#10 Training

Finally, you have training, I feel this is one of the most critical parts of launching a successful online course business.  For most people getting started in this type of business, you need someone to guide you along in the process.

With Teachable they offer a course called The Profitable Teacher.  This course will show you everything you need t know how to develop your course idea, create your course, to launching and marketing it.  The only problem is that you need to on the Professional Plan to get it with the package deal.

With Kajabi they go a step further offering Kajabi University which will show you everything you need to know to grow and run a successful online course business, and best of all you get this when you sign up for any of the plans.

And The Winner Is…

In the end, Teachable is the clear winner here.  Is Kajabi a better platform?  In a lot of ways yes but I feel like the cost is the biggest drawback for me.  Sure you get all the tools from email to webinars but they mean nothing if you can’t even get off the ground in the first place.

More than that with limits on the number of students and products you can have it’s a big hangup when it comes to growing your business and will mean much higher cost in the end.

Teachable is a solid platform and best of all you can get started for free but if you can afford it I recommend the Professional Plan.  It includes The Profitable Teacher as an added bonus and will teach you everything you need to know in order to start your business the right way.

You can sign up for Teachable and start your online course business today by clicking here.

Cheers!