When it comes to digital marketing platforms, there are two titans that rise above the rest: Kajabi and MailChimp.
Both platforms have unique features and benefits for business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers.
But which one is more worth it?
In this MailChimp-Kajabi comparison, I’ll show the similarities and differences between these two platforms.
I’ll also show the key features, compare pricing, and give my verdict to help you decide.
Which do you think will be crowned the king of digital marketing? Read on to find out!
Table of Contents
What is Kajabi?
Kajabi is one of the most buzz-worthy online course platforms right now.
Since its release, Kajabi has helped more than 100,000 people collectively earn over $4B. Those numbers alone prove how great the tool is.
Besides its course creation and student engagement capabilities, Kajabi offers sales and marketing features to help you promote and sell your online courses.
These include email marketing features, website customization, landing pages, sales funnels, payment integrations, and more.
Kajabi’s user-friendliness amidst being a robust platform is what makes it stand out from its competitors.
What is MailChimp?
MailChimp has been around longer than Kajabi.
It was founded in 2001 and has had over 13 million users in 20 years. 2.5 million of these are active users, according to Expanded Rambling’s statistics.
MailChimp started as an email marketing platform. But it’s since grown as an individual company and expanded in offering a suite of marketing tools.
This platform now provides marketing campaign automation, a website builder, email segmentation, analytics, social media, and more.
Kajabi vs MailChimp – Overview of the Similarities and Differences
Main Similarities
Kajabi and MailChimp are tremendous solutions for business owners and entrepreneurs who want to manage and boost their marketing efforts.
As you already know, they both have email marketing tools that are great for building your email list, sending out email marketing campaigns, and nurturing your customers.
However, these platforms have more features in common than you can imagine.
That includes the landing page and website builder, customer relationship management (CRM) tools, automation, third-party service integrations, and reports.
Key Differences
- Free Plan vs Free Trial – MailChimp provides a free plan for users with a small subscriber list. In comparison, Kajabi only offers a 14-day free trial on all its plans.
- All-In-One Business Platform vs Comprehensive Marketing Suite – Kajabi provides all the tools you need to manage and grow your business. MailChimp, however, focuses on offering marketing tools, especially for email marketing.
- Pricing – MailChimp has more affordable plans than Kajabi.
Let’s have a better look at their features and pricing.
User Interface
When starting out, you don’t want to deal with a clunky and complicated tool. That’s why software with a simple and user-friendly interface is the best.
Both MailChimp and Kajabi pass in this aspect. They give tips and short instructions on using the tools, so you’ll understand how they work even without watching tutorial videos.
MailChimp has a clean interface that allows you to navigate the platform easily.
Moreover, the tools are grouped and organized in tabs. So if you need to check all the email marketing features, you can click the drop-down arrow of the “Campaigns” tab.
Building your website and pages with MailChimp is also effortless, as the controls are pretty basic.
In comparison, Kajabi also has a minimal and well-designed interface.
I actually think it’s better than MailChimp because of the other tools that are included in the features.
For example, you can use a drag-and-drop editor when creating your website, pages, and emails.
It also offers built-in blueprints for course creation, digital products, and sales funnels. So it’s super easy to create courses and build a complete marketing workflow, even for newbies.
Best Choice for User Interface – Kajabi. It offers more user-friendly tools crucial in speeding up your creation process.
Marketing Features
Email Marketing
Kajabi and MailChimp let you set up engaging email campaigns to drive more sales and boost your conversion rates.
Kajabi offers a variety of premium email templates to choose from and the ability to customize your own.
You can also include images, videos, and other media in your emails to increase click and response rates.
Additionally, Kajabi provides comprehensive email reports, so you can track your progress and improve your results over time.
You can see the percentage of unsubscribers, opened and delivered emails, and hard bounced.
MailChimp, on the other hand, is an email marketing platform, to begin with. So it provides all of those and more. MailChimp’s real strength lies in its segmentation and A/B testing features.
Although Kajabi has the segmentation tool, it’s not as advanced as MailChimp.
For example, MailChimp has pre-built segments that are based on your customer behavior, demographics, and engagements.
You can use them for your email campaign if you don’t know where to start.
Additionally, A/B testing is an integral part of marketing. With MailChimp, you can test different content and designs to see which works best for your audience.
Sales Funnels
Kajabi will be the undisputed champion when it comes to funnels.
It offers a wide range of pre-made funnels and landing pages. And it has incredibly powerful customization options.
Funnels are beneficial in building a complete sales and marketing strategy for your business. They are valuable tools so your audience can turn into paying customers.
With Kajabi, you can create high-converting, attractive, and strategic funnels and landing pages in just a few clicks.
In contrast, MailChimp doesn’t have a funnel builder, so you must design your own strategy and connect them manually.
Affiliate Marketing
Compared to the marketing strategies above, affiliate marketing provides the highest return on investment (ROI).
So if you’re serious about getting more customers and increasing your sales, you should consider affiliate marketing.
With Kajabi, you can monitor and manage your affiliates through share links.
It also calculates their earnings based on the commission you’ll set and provide you with a detailed report.
The only missing feature is the automatic payout. But the features are enough to choose Kajabi for affiliate marketing.
In contrast, MailChimp doesn’t have this type of marketing tool. The platform even discourages its use inside the Term of Use. So, I don’t think they’ll add it soon.
Best choice for marketing tools – Kajabi. MailChimp is the best email marketing tool. However, Kajabi provides more ways to promote your business and attract more customers.
Website and Page Builder
Besides continuously marketing your business, you also need to establish a place where you can tell your customers how you can help them. The simplest way to do that is to create a website.
With Kajabi, you can build a beautiful and unique website.
You can easily create web and landing pages, such as a home page, contact, about me, sales page, blog, and more.
This is possible because of the available themes and templates inside the Kajabi. The platform also Kajabi provides themes for your online courses and membership sites.
Since Kajabi values intuitiveness and harmony, it uses the same site builder throughout the platform. The drag-and-drop editor and sections available on your website customization are the same inside your email and landing page builder.
MailChimp doesn’t have the drag-and-drop tool, so moving sections inside the builder are challenging. It’s also not as flexible as Kajabi in terms of personalization.
For example, you can’t add a countdown timer inside your landing pages.
The color and font style are limited as well. And unlike Kajabi, it doesn’t offer templates. So you can only create a basic website.
Best choice for website and page builder – Kajabi. You can create your dream Kajabi website in no time, thanks to the premium templates, drag-and-drop editor, and various media formats and content you can add.
Integrations and Automation
Both platforms provide integrations and automation, which can help expedite some of your tasks.
For example, you can create email automation to send welcome emails to new subscribers or follow-up emails when someone abandons your checkout page.
Kajabi offers some marketing automation but isn’t as elaborate as MailChimp. With the latter, you can connect multiple automation and build your own workflow depending on your needs.
Kajabi, on the other hand, only lets you build one workflow with one Trigger and Action. You can add a condition if you’re on the Growth Plan. But it doesn’t add much flexibility to your automation.
Furthermore, MailChimp integrates with over 1173 third-party services, while Kajabi only has a few native integrations.
If you want to connect more apps, you’ll need to do it via API, Webhook, or Zapier. This might not be ideal for non-techies.
Best choice for integration and automation – MailChimp. It gives you more opportunities to personalize your workflow and automate your business.
Support and Resources
Regarding online resources, Kajabi and MailChimp provide in-depth knowledge base support.
Kajabi has the Help Center, customer support, and Kajabi University, where users can find how-to videos and text tutorials, FAQ answers, and tips on growing and promoting business.
The platform also offers downloadable guides like “How to Monetize Your Followers with Kajabi,” “Critical Things Your Website Needs to Sell an Online Course,” and more.
In comparison, MailChimp also has a Help Center and a Marketing Library. If you want to access the how-to guides of this platform, you can check MailChimp 101.
For customer support, the two platforms are almost equal.
They have email and live chat support, but this isn’t available on MailChimp’s free plan.
If there’s one thing that Kajabi has that MailChimp doesn’t, it is its free two 1:1 call with a Kajabi expert. This private support can help creators and entrepreneurs plan their businesses more effectively.
Kajabi vs MailChimp – Pricing
There’s a big difference in the pricing plans of these two platforms.
MailChimp’s marketing suite plans are as follows:
- Free – $0
- Essentials – starts at $11/month
- Standard – starts at $17/month
- Premium – starts at $299/month
The difference between them is the number of seats and the features you can get.
For example, you can get up to five seats for the Standard but only three for the Essentials.
Additionally, the other audience features are only available on the Standard, not the Essentials. That includes predicted demographics and address finder.
Kajabi, on the other hand, has three price plans:
- Kickstarter – $69/month (NEW)
- Basic – $149/month
- Growth – $199/month
- Pro – $399/month
Note on Plans: You can get a Kajabi discount on plans by paying annually. Kajabi sometimes offers a free plan called Build Mode. In the case they do not keep it for long, they let our readers get access to a 30-day trial!
Although expensive, the plans are great because you get almost all the necessary tools.
For example, the Basic plan gives you access to student engagement features, email marketing tools, online courses, website and page builder, and analytics.
Kajabi also doesn’t charge you any transaction fees.
The only reason why you’ll need to upgrade to the Growth plan is if you need higher quotas for products and funnels. Or you want access to the Affiliate Marketing program they offer to their users.
On the other hand, the Code Editor is only available on the Pro plan or Kajabi Access. If you want more customization, you need to upgrade to the highest plan or pay an additional $99 per month.
Kajabi vs MailChimp Conclusion – Which is the Best?
Kajabi and MailChimp are great digital marketing platforms.
They are helpful for small businesses and bigger ones. If you can’t decide between the two, you can integrate them and enjoy using both.
However, if you need to pick one, I’d recommend Kajabi.
Kajabi is more than an email marketing platform. It provides everything you need for your online business. The course creation tool can also allow you to earn money for your online business. Check out our full review of Kajabi here.
If you want to compare both tools by yourself, you can claim the Kajabi free trial and MailChimp’s free plan.
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