Thinkific vs Kajabi: A Side by Side Comparison (2023)
Rewind the clock a few hundred years to the medieval era. This was a time when knowledge could be difficult to impart because connecting the people who had it with the people who wanted it could be very hard to do.
There was also the issue of preserving knowledge. Books were expensive and not a lot of people could even read them. The modern university, that so many people take for granted today, has its roots in the medieval universities that were created to solve these vexing knowledge preservation and distribution problems.
Things are different now.
Knowledge is no longer confined to individuals or books and the few people who can gain access to them. Anybody who knows anything has a number of ways of passing their knowledge along. And a growing trend in this sphere? Online courses created and cultivated by individuals taking the initiative to do so. The primary problem is that creating a holistic learning experience is more complicated than writing things down. Creating digital content has been more complicated still because, in the past, it did require some knowledge of web design, coding, marketing and distribution etc. and not everyone has or can afford to retain people who have these skills.
Enter Thinkific and Kajabi, two industry leaders in online pedagogy that allow users to create and distribute their own online courses. If you have knowledge to pass on, Thinkific and Kajabi can help you to get it out to the people who want to have it.
But which one is right for you? When it comes to Thinkific vs. Kajabi, both companies have similar suites of tools and applications. This begs the questions, what’s the difference and which one should you choose? We’ll address some of the more notable differences below, so you can decide which platform will help you perpetuate your hard-earned knowledge and experience.
Thinkifik vs. Kajabi
We’ll do a brief examination of both platforms to get a sense of what they are capable of. Since these are constantly evolving SaaS products, features can change at any time of course, but we think that we can encapsulate the essentials to give you an idea of what you could expect if you use either one.
Thinkifik vs. Kajabi: Kajabi
Kajabi makes a concerted effort to be an all-in-one platform for creating online courses. Emphasis on all-in-one. Kajabi has virtually all of the tools that a content creator would need to form and operate an online education business.
Kajabi enables users to create different kinds of educational content.
Kajabi courses
Kajabi enables users to create mini-courses or more comprehensive courses that can be completed at the students own pace. See our full breakdown of Kajabi Course examples.
Coaching
Think of this as a digital, online version of traditional in-person coaching. Users can reach a massive, worldwide audience instead of being limited by geography.
Podcasts
Podcasting has seen explosive growth in recent years and for good reason. Podcasts can be accessed at any time and can be a passive experience giving the wide appeal. Kajabi gives users the digital tools they need to create their own compelling podcasts.
Membership sites
Rather than selling a single course, you can create a whole website’s worth of content that can only be accessed by subscription-paying members.
Communities
In November of 2022, Kajabi acquired Vibely, a platform for interactive, online communities. Once fully integrated into Kajabi’s suite of applications, this will allow content creators to create online communities that will facilitate live interaction between the content creator and their customers, enhancing the educational experience for all involved. As of this writing, this feature is not online but is slated to go live in early 20223.
Business Management
Kajabi offers a suite of applications that allow you to track customer engagement with your content.
Kajabi enables funneling of customers from the landing page to the payment processing page, and it supports the use of both Stripe and PayPal for customers to pay for all content purchased.
Once you have a paying customer base, you can use Kajabi’s powerful analytics tools to track key data. Sales, revenue, subscription data and other backend metrics can be analyzed on one dashboard. Data about student performance can also be tracked and analyzed so that you can make sure student customers are getting the experiences that they paid for.
Data analytics is streamlined and presented in easy-to-read reports that non-professionals can read, internalize and turn into useful tweaks both to their content and the way that it is presented.
Kajabi enables users to manage the whole customer experience from the landing page to the payment page.
In the past, getting content to the people who want it was a challenge. When successful, scaling an enterprise was another challenge that could hobble creators of compelling content.
Landing Pages and Websites
Kajabi has the tools to create compelling, professional looking landing pages and websites that present a slick, competent looking experience to potential customers. The templates are highly customizable and no programming or design skills are needed. Users can also create a customized domain name to add an additional layer of professionalism and credibility to their product lines.
Email marketing and communications doesn’t have to be conducted on separate platforms. Kajabi has the tools that enable content creators to create and distribute customized and individualized email campaigns to existing and potential customers.
Like landing pages and websites, users can access a library of templates that are highly modifiable with simple, drag-and-drop mechanics that enable users to create their own “theme”.
All of these features listed above are integrated into the Kajabi platform. This means that users don’t need to use multiple platforms to create, distribute, analyze and market content or try to get different applications to work together. All of this can be done on the same platform with seamless integration.
Managing every element of an online education business is now possible.
Pricing
Kajabi’s pricing and suite of applications come in three packages, Basic, Growth and Pro. Each package can be billed either monthly or annually. There are discounts for annual billing that make this option appealing.
The core of each package is the same; the difference is scaling. The Basic package enables users to support three products, three funnels, ten thousand contacts and a thousand active customers. The Growth and Pro packages enable incrementally larger numbers of all of these.
Growth and Pro come with some additional services like advanced automations, the ability to remove Kajabi branding from content and, with Pro, the ability to modify code for an enhanced level of customization
Thinkifik vs. Kajabi: Thinkifik
Similar to Kajabi, Thinkifik has virtually everything that an online course creator would need to create engaging online content, but their selection of course offerings is a bit more limited.
You can basically create three types of content: mini-courses, regular courses and landing pages. While the format for courses may be more limited, there are a number of other features that customers can use to enhance the experience for their students.
Regular courses
These are, as the name suggests, the premier content wherein you teach whatever knowledge you have. There is a tremendous amount of customization available and these courses can include anything from text, videos, audio, images and other content that will help you to best illustrate the points you are trying to make.
You can also create tests, quizzes and surveys to gauge how your students are doing and make sure that what you’re teaching is getting across.
Mini-courses
Think of these as demos. They can be either free of very low costs but give potential customers a taste of what your premium content will look like.
Landing Pages
Landing pages are basically a marketing tool that helps potential customers to decide if what you have to offer is what they are looking for.
Communities
Like Kajabi, Thinkifik enables you to create sites that are exclusive to paying customers. Communities on Thinkifik enable you to interact with your customers/students, host live events and allow you and your students to interact with each other on threads to enhance the learning experience through shared experiences and insights.
Business Management
Thinkifik has its own suite of powerful tools to record, track and present key data in easily readable and actionable reports. Sales, revenues, tax data and other customer data can be collected and easily accessed or exported (integration with QuickBooks is planned for the near future) so that the business end of your teaching business can be handled either from Thinkifik’s platform or another location.
Pricing
Thinkifik has a wider variety of packages for customers to choose from than Kajabi. There are four to choose from: Free, Basic, Start and Grow.
Like the Kajabi packages, these packages include more features or more support for existing features with every tier so that your business can scale as it grows.
In a Thinkifik vs. Kajabi comparison, Thinkifik scores very well here as the free option gives the potential customer the opportunity to try out the service and see if it works for them.
Kajabi vs. Thinkifik: Final thoughts
Thinkifik has a very similar suite of tools as Kajabi so doing a “Thinkifik vs. Kajabi” comparison can be a bit challenging.
Thinkifik vs. Kajabi: Content Creation
Both services offer intuitive, easy to use course and website construction applications. For those who are willing to pay premium prices and have some skill in coding, the top tier Kajabi package comes with the ability to modify code and give the user even more customization options. This probably isn’t necessary for more casual users, but some may find it compelling enough to break for Kajabi.
Thinkifik vs. Kajabi: Business Management
Both services also offer robust business management tools that allow users to collect and examine key data in highly readable reports. Data collection and analysis is a very challenging element of running any business, and both services do a very good job of providing a solution to this challenge. They make it as easy as possible with multiple types of reports being generated and accessed from the same platform.
Thinkifik vs. Kajabi: Pricing
There are some notable differences between the two platforms in pricing, and budget minded customers will need to think seriously about what they want to accomplish before they choose.
Kajabi provides more services and this is reflected in the price point. All of its packages are considerably more expensive than their Thinkifik equivalent. More isn’t necessarily better of course. For those who simply want to create online courses and aren’t all that interested in other things, they will probably find Thinkifik’s capabilities perfectly adequate.
Thinkifik’s more rudimentary but still highly usable free package is a good option for those who are thinking about getting into course creation and want to see if it’s for them. Both platforms make it pretty easy to upload existing content onto their dashboards so switching from one to the other, or using both, is pretty easy to do.
