Nowadays, investing in a platform that will only help you in one aspect of your business is not enough. You need comprehensive software that’ll take care of your marketing campaigns, customer relationships, website, and sales funnels.
Many of these platforms have emerged in recent years, and the two most popular ones are Kajabi and Hubspot.
In this article, we’ll take a comprehensive look at both software to see which one comes out on top.
Table of Contents
- What is Kajabi?
- What is Hubspot?
- Comparison Overview
- Kajabi vs. Hubspot: Pricing
- Kajabi vs. Hubspot: User Interface
- Kajabi vs. Hubspot: Online Courses and Membership Sites
- Kajabi vs. Hubspot: Marketing Features
- Kajabi vs. Hubspot: Sales and CRM Features
- Customer Support
- Conclusion: Which Platform Should You Use
What is Kajabi?
Kajabi is an online course creation tool that helps you launch and market your online courses efficiently.
It’s a powerful all-in-one platform with everything you need to build a successful online business. Some of its features are built-in email marketing, landing page and website builder, student management, and affiliate marketing.
Besides online courses, Kajabi allows you to create membership sites, coaching programs, and other digital products.
Who Is Kajabi For?
Kajabi is for online entrepreneurs and businesses who want to sell their knowledge and build credibility in their industry.
Because it’s a beginner-friendly and code-free tool, it’s also perfect for those who don’t have any technical skills.
What is Hubspot?
Hubspot offers a cohesive system for marketing, sales, and customer service. It’s a full-scale platform that helps small businesses attract visitors, convert leads, close customers, and transform them into promoters.
Hubspot’s best features include sales and marketing automation tools, SEO and built-in blogging tools, lead management, and detailed analytics.
Who Is Hubspot For?
Hubspot is for businesses of all sizes looking for an end-to-end solution to their business and clients’ needs. It’s software that can help you with every step, regardless of whether you’re just starting or are already an established business.
Comparison Overview
If you want to see the difference between the tools, here’s a quick overview:
| Kajabi | Hubspot | |
|---|---|---|
| Software Type | All-in-One Business Platform | CRM |
| Customers | Course Creators, Business Owners, Consultants, and Online Schools | Small to Large Businesses |
| Free Version | No; Only 14-Day Free Trial | Yes |
| Pricing | Basic – $149/month; Growth – $199/month; Pro – $399/month | Starter – $45+/month; Professional $800/month; Enterprise $3200+/month(Based on Marketing Hub Only) |
| Course Creation | Yes | No |
| Membership Sites | Yes | Yes |
| Email Marketing | Yes | Yes |
| Sales Funnels | Yes | Yes |
| Landing Pages & Website Forms | Yes | Yes |
| Lead Management | No | Yes |
| Contact Segmentation | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | Yes | Yes |
| Automations | Yes | |
| Live Chat Support | Yes | Yes |
| Email Support | Yes | Yes |
| Phone Support | Yes | Yes |
| A/B Testing | No | Yes |
| Blog Capability | Yes | Yes |
| Website Info: | Visit Website | Visit Website |
That’s everything at a glance, but let’s go into more detail about each software to see how they compare.
Kajabi vs. Hubspot: Pricing
Kajabi Pricing
Kajabi offers three plans you can choose from – Basic, Growth, and Pro. Most of the features are included in all the plans, with the main difference being the number of products, funnels, websites, and active members you can have.
- Basic plan. This plan costs $149/month, and it’s ideal for solo entrepreneurs and newbie course creators who want to nurture their small email list and sell around three products.
- Growth plan. For $199/month, you get everything from the Basic plan, higher limitations, and access to the affiliate program. If you have a significant amount of subscribers, want to sell more products, and want to grow a custom-branded website, then this plan is for you.
- Pro plan. The most expensive option at $399/month. It gives you everything from the Growth plan and more. With the Pro plan, you can sell up to 100 products, launch three websites, and provide access to 25 admin users. This plan is perfect for businesses aiming to create a course empire and scale up their online presence.
Editor’s Note: Kajabi introduced the Kickstarter plan, which now starts at $69/month – check it out here.
Kajabi provides a 20% discount if you pay annually. Find out more info on Kajabi costs on their pricing page.
Hubspot Pricing
In contrast, Hubspot’s pricing plan is more complicated than Kajabi’s. It divides the features based on their purpose and calls them hubs. This is an excellent option for businesses who want to pay only for the tools they need.
Inside these hubs, you can choose from three pricing plans – Starter, Professional, or Enterprise.
Their prices vary depending on your chosen hub: Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, CMS, or Operations. I’ll discuss some tools later, but you can view the complete list on Hubspot’s webpage.
For now, here’s what you can expect from each hub:
- Marketing. Get more leads and increase your conversion with the right tools and marketing automation. The Starter plan starts at $20/month, Professional at $890/month, and Enterprise at $3,200/month.
- Sales. Streamline your sales and payment processes, provide better customer support, and close deals faster with Sales hub features. Pricing starts at $20/month for Starter, $500/month for Professional, and $1,200/month for Enterprise.
- Customer Service. Provide different support channels and efficiently attend to your customers and team members’ requests. Customer Service Hub has the exact pricing as Sales Hub.
- CMS. Create a secure and premium website for only $25/month. If you want more tools to optimize and grow your business through data-driven results, choose the Professional plan at $400/month or the Enterprise plan at $1,200/month.
- Operations. This hub provides all the features necessary to automate your workflows and integrate other apps into your system. Respectively, the Starter, Professional, and Enterprise plans cost $20/month, $800/month, and $2000/month.
It also offers a bundle solution called the Hubspot “CRM suite,” which combines all the hubs. The Starter plan is quite affordable at $30/month. However, the Professional plan goes up to $1780/month, and Enterprise starts at $5,000/month.
Besides that, you can also customize your bundle, and Hubspot will provide you with a price based on your chosen features.
You get a lot of great and advanced features with Hubspot, but the price is significantly higher than Kajabi.
Kajabi vs. Hubspot: User Interface
Kajabi and Hubspot have clean, modern designs that provide a great customer experience. They categorized features into tabs for easy navigation. They also have a spotlight search bar that allows you to find the features or tools you need quickly.
However, because of the complexity of Hubspot, it can be pretty overwhelming for new users. They need to understand how the features work and how they can benefit from them.
Kajabi, on the other hand, is much easier to use. Even if you’re a first-timer, you can quickly figure out how things work. Everything is straightforward and self-explanatory.
Winner: Kajabi. Even course creators with no background in online platforms can understand Kajabi immediately.
Kajabi vs. Hubspot: Online Courses and Membership Sites
Kajabi is one of the most popular online course platforms for a reason. Its features make it the perfect tool for selling online courses and membership sites.
For instance, Kajabi provides blueprints that serve as your guide on what to put inside your products. You can use them to create premium and high-converting materials quickly.
With this platform, you can make your courses more engaging by adding quizzes, surveys, and multimedia content such as videos, audio and images.
It’s possible to offer online courses and membership sites with Hubspot, but it’s not as straightforward or intuitive as Kajabi. You’ll need to connect your Hubspot account to an e-learning software like Kajabi, Thinkific or Teachable, and it might take a while to set up everything.
Additionally, Hubspot’s membership site features are pretty more complicated when compared to Kajabi. It allows you to restrict access to certain pages or blog posts on your website. But you need to do this manually.
For example, you need to choose which content to restrict, change it to private, create a password, and select a list of contacts who should have access. It’s time-consuming and inefficient.
Winner: Kajabi. The course and membership site creation is smooth and effortless with Kajabi.
Kajabi vs. Hubspot: Marketing Features
Kajabi and Hubspot offer various marketing tools for businesses and course creators. They also use a drag-and-drop editor and provide professional website and email templates to speed up the creation process.
Some of the features they have in common are:
- Marketing campaigns
- Email marketing automation
- Website and landing pages
- Sales pipeline builder
- Popups & forms
- Built-in SEO features
- Analytics and reports
- Video hosting
These powerful inbound marketing tools can help you attract more leads and convert them into customers or students.
The email marketing platform of Kajabi and Hubspot allows you to create premium emails through their visual editor. This is important to attract more email readers and increase your open and click rates.
Although both platforms are solid, Hubspot still offers more advanced features for its users.
For example, you can create, manage, and track your ad campaigns inside the platform. This allows you to save a lot of time and effort because you don’t need to switch between different tools.
Hubspot also provides A/B testing for your landing pages. You may use this to improve your conversion rate by testing different versions of your content.
For example, you feel like your sales pages are not converting as well as they should. You can create two versions of the page and test each.
Hubspot will track the results and show you which version converts better so you can make necessary changes.
Winner: Hubspot. You can build a better marketing strategy that covers all possible channels.
Kajabi vs. Hubspot: Sales and CRM Features
Analytics
Kajabi and Hubspot CRM both provides sales data and other analytics. They allow you to track your marketing and sales efforts and see which areas need improvement.
With Kajabi, you can see your net revenue, page views, subscription rate, and other important data in one place. You can filter them by period, date, etc., to get a specific result.
Hubspot allows you to track the same things, but you can get more detailed graphs and data. For example, you can monitor a complete customer lifecycle or itemized reports to identify any effective and inefficient areas in your sales process.
Sales
The sales part of these two platforms is slightly different from each other. The Sales tab of Kajabi includes creating coupons and offers that you can use to boost sales. You can also manage your affiliates and monitor student payments under this section to stay on top.
In contrast, Hubspot’s Sales CRM is a bit more complex. It helps sales reps keep track of their deals, contacts, and tasks in one place. It includes meeting scheduling, activity reports, forecasting, and sales quotation.
These are very helpful if you’re managing a sales team and want better features to close more deals.
In terms of sales automation, both tools allow you to automate repetitive tasks like sending follow-up emails and offering coupons. However, Hubspot’s sales automation is more flexible and customizable.
For example, with Hubspot, you can bulk update your data, connect multiple email actions and triggers, schedule calls, and create task reminders. This automation isn’t available on Kajabi yet.
Customer Support
Both Kajabi and Hubspot have superb customer support. They have a live chat, email support, and online resources.
Kajabi has a Kajabi University and Help Center where you can find guides on using the platform and scaling your business.
Hubspot also has a Hubspot Academy, which is similar to Kajabi. I only noticed that Kajabi gives more detailed and easy-to-follow tutorials than Hubspot.
But overall, the customer support of both platforms is beneficial and responsive.
Conclusion: Which Platform Should You Use
Each software shines on its own, and picking a winner is hard. They are both excellent and offer many features that can help businesses grow. Additionally, they allow third-party integrations to extend their functionality.
It depends on your needs and preferences. If you need more advanced inbound marketing and sales features, then Hubspot is the way to go. However, you must be willing to learn and use complex software.
Kajabi, on the other hand, is easier to use and focuses more on delivering online courses and membership sites.
So if you’re looking for a beginner-friendly yet solid platform to sell digital products with good email marketing, CRM, and sales features, you try out Kajabi.
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