Kajabi Vs WordPress – A Detailed 2024 Comparison

There’s no doubt that Kajabi and WordPress are great platforms to showcase your business and digital content. 

Both help build and market virtual products such as selling online courses and memberships.

The real question is, “Which of these two will suit you the best?” 

In this Kajabi vs WordPress post, you’ll find both platforms’ strengths, weaknesses, and key differences (i.e. which is better for creating online courses).

Skip the dreading hours of manually comparing the tools. Stay with us, as we’ll provide you with a detailed comparison so you can decide which is the right platform for you.

Differences Between Kajabi and WordPress

What is Kajabi?

Kajabi is one of the premier all-in-one course platforms out there. Its primary purpose is to let you create, sell and market your online courses and other digital products. You can pretty much do everything to grow your business in the digital space using this tool. 

Aside from letting you create and sell online courses, memberships, coaching programs, etc., you can also:

• Build your company website.
• Manage your email marketing campaign(s) and automation.
• Create landing pages for your digital products.
• Connect with your customers inside the platform.
• Advertise your digital products using different advanced marketing tools. 
• And much more. Read more Kajabi features in our review.

Also, Kajabi offers a simple and beginner-friendly interface for its subscribers. You don’t need to learn to have custom coding knowledge, add tech-savvy plugins, or hire other people to do stuff for you. It has an easy learning curve when compared to a WordPress website.

They made it easier for solopreneurs, coaches, and business owners to create and sell digital products without lengthy study time. 

Although Kajabi is an all-in-one platform, it still gives you enough freedom to integrate third-party tools that you choose.

You can see what features to expect and everything you can do on the Kajabi website. Also, take advantage of Kajabi offers like the extended 30-day free trial. 

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a free and very popular content management system (CMS) that has been around for over 18 years. It lets you create blogs, websites, and web pages.

It has many features, including robust security and plugin functionality, to help your website become more dynamic or interactive. In addition, WordPress can be used on most servers worldwide with just about any hosting plan unless your host provider sets other limitations.

While it’s true that both options are pretty similar, WordPress can offer more to its users.

Kajabi primarily focuses on creating, marketing, and selling online courses, while WordPress is a broader platform. It can be used as a simple blogging platform or for building more complex sites such as an e-commerce store (with Woocommerce plugins), personal websites, membership sites, or business websites for law firms.

As long as you have the right plugins, you can pretty much build anything on WordPress.

Web Hosting & Domain Registration

Kajabi has an advantage in this category. Unlimited video and web hosting are included when you pay for one of their plans. If you have an existing domain, you can use that to brand your site(s). 

Kajabi is a standalone platform and has all the tools you need. No need to pay monthly/yearly for hosting, unlike WordPress, which is why it seems like it costs more.

WordPress doesn’t offer domain registration or web hosting in their package. You have to sign up with other hosts such as Bluehost, Siteground, Dreamhost, etc. Luckily most web hosting sites offer 1-year of free domain use, and it doesn’t cost much to renew your domain name access.

After subscribing to a hosting plan, you’ll need to download WordPress. But nowadays, some hosts automatically install WordPress and updates, so you won’t need to do it yourself.

Online Marketing Tools

For marketing tools, I believe both Kajabi and WordPress are great but in different terms. WordPress offers flexibility, while Kajabi provides convenience.  

Since WordPress is a web-building tool, it doesn’t have any marketing features out of the box, but many plugins are available for you.

WordPress Plugins are like mobile apps but for your website. For instance, if you wanted to design a landing page for your company website (without coding knowledge), you’d have to install a landing page builder plugin like Elementor.

WordPress is a good option for those who love versatility and freedom. Just remember that you might need to spend a lot of time learning how to use the marketing plugins for your website. 

Whereas Kajabi is for people who find too many choices something daunting. It is perfect for beginners and busy people. 

It lays out all of the tools necessary for your marketing campaign. This includes email automation, sales funnels, user lists, affiliate marketing programs, and more. 

It also lets you build landing pages, offer upsells to your students, and create a Pipeline. Basically, you can use the Kajabi Pipeline builder to create sales funnels. (Note that sales funnel software like ClickFunnels start at $97 per month… Kajabi has one built-in).

What makes the Pipeline builder more impressive is its drag-and-drop feature. You can access all of this on the marketing tab located on your dashboard.

Website Set Up & Customization

Both platforms have website themes and offer free general ones that you can modify to your liking.

If you’d like to quickly build a great-looking website without the coding, a Kajabi site is your best option. WordPress is your best friend if you prefer more customization and choices for themes. 

Let’s say you used Kajabi and are ready to design and set up your site. You can choose to use the theme that was automatically installed, or you can pick one from the free premium themes of Kajabi.

Just go to the Website tab and click design. Pick the best theme for your business, and you can start customizing your website right away with their website builder. Aside from the themes being highly customizable, Kajabi makes the process easier with their drag-and-drop option. 

This platform also allows you to pick different themes for your digital products. 

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system, so it’s highly changeable. You can choose from thousands of free and paid themes and design your website whichever you want. But the disadvantage of this is the steep learning curve, and it’s time-consuming.

It’s possible to have a drag-and-drop feature in building your website on WordPress, but you’ll need to pay to enjoy full access. Some of these plugins are Elementor Pro and Divi.

As I had the chance to use both tools, I can say that it’s much easier to build a website on Kajabi than WordPress. 

Although WordPress provides more options for you, the amount of time, knowledge, and money you’ll need (plus the stress you’ll get) is too much for beginners. I don’t think many people could sacrifice those things just for a wider selection of themes and plugins. 

Themes

Here are some of the best available themes on Kajabi:

• Emilia
• Rise
• Kim

For WordPress, here are some themes you should check:

• Astra
• Ocean WP
• Kadence

Online Course Creation & Delivery

Although you can sell courses on both platforms, Kajabi has a better system created for that purpose. 

Its interface is designed for its subscribers to easily create, market, and deliver virtual products.

Thanks to its friendly interface, arranging lessons and sections for your online course is a no-brainer. You can easily upload multiple files to make your products better, like videos, downloadables, links, audio, texts, images, and PDFs.

Kajabi also provides powerful features that can make your online courses more interactive, like quizzes, assessments, and comment sections. You can also choose whether to offer a mini-course or a drip course. You can adjust the type of digital product to offer.

Another thing that Kajabi allows you to give for your student experience is the downloadable e-certificate. However, you have to design it and upload it. The platform can then automate this certificate so that your students can get it once they finish your course. 

Delivering your online course to your customers is relatively easy with Kajabi.

Whereas online course creation on WordPress won’t be as simple. 

Why? 

Because WordPress isn’t designed to sell courses which leads to many technical limitations such as: 

• no direct payment gateway integration
• inability to offer recurring billing cycles (e.g., monthly subscriptions)
• and lack of automated delivery emails

Although it’s not impossible to do it, and WordPress offers more freedom, it will require configuring many plugins and multiple customizations to achieve the goal of selling and delivering online courses.

Obviously, Kajabi wins in this category.

Creating Digital Products

Aside from the online course, you can also sell other digital products on Kajabi and WordPress.

Kajabi has a built-in feature that you can use to create and sell virtual downloadables, PDFs, eBooks, music, coaching programs, memberships, and more.

You won’t need to download or integrate other software as you can do everything on one platform.

Although possible, there’s no direct way of selling these kinds of products on WordPress.

You’ll need to install some plugins to create an eCommerce page and sell digital downloadables like Cartflowss or a checkout cart like ThriveCart, or SamCart.

The only difference is that making digital products on WordPress requires more effort. Although more and more plugins are becoming easier to use. I suggest that you find what’s easier and more convenient to use.

Payment Portals

The available payment portals on Kajabi are PayPal and Stripe. This caters to most countries worldwide, so it’ll be easier for your customers to pay for your online course wherever you are.

You’ll receive payments directly on Kajabi through these payment integrations and won’t deduct any transaction fees. Zero transaction fees!

If neither Stripe/PayPal works for you, contact Kajabi’s customer support, and they’ll help you connect third-party apps.

Whereas payment portals aren’t integrated on your WordPress site. You’ll need to hyperlink your call-to-action elements on your site to your Stripe or PayPal’s default checkout page.

And lastly, with WordPress, you’ll need to configure what happens post-purchase. How is your course delivered?

Is it membership only protected? Will they be able to set up login details to your course or download your digital product after they pay automatically? Or will they receive a product access email post-purchase?

These are all obstacles WordPress course creators overcome to make their tech stack work.

3rd-Party Integrations

Integrations connect third-party tools to your platform and make the system look unified.

Both WordPress and Kajabi have a lot of powerful integrations. However, there are some that you’ll find on Kajabi and others that only exist in WordPress.

Although Kajabi offers multiple integrations, they primarily focus on making online course creation, business marketing, and analyzing product insights accessible for you.

Some useful Kajabi integrations are Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Google Analytics, and ClickFunnels.

If you can’t find your favorite plugin from the natively integrated apps on Kajabi, you can use Zapier and connect to more third-party apps.

WordPress offers more integrations by default because it’s a CMS that can work with more marketing and sales tools than just the course creator plugins. The only thing is that you’ll need to pay for them separately to enjoy and utilize them on your site.

For this category, I can say that they are tied. WordPress has more integration possibilities, but Kajabi is more convenient. You get most of the features without dealing with a complicated backend like you would on a WordPress site.

In addition, Kajabi integrates with other platforms that allow users to create email campaigns and landing pages – something not offered by WP.

Analytics & Reporting

This data is crucial in determining whether you’re marketing your products correctly and if people are interested in them. In addition, it can help you in planning your next marketing campaign.

Kajabi has a built-in analytics dashboard where you can track your subscription, purchases, page views, sold offers, net revenue, recent activities on your account, and more.

Aside from the built-in analytics, you can also track your progress using Google Analytics.

Like the other features, WordPress doesn’t have built-in analytics. You can, however, integrate Google Analytics or MonsterInsights (which you’ll need to configure to track the same type of data Kajabi tracks).

For this round, I’ll give my point to Kajabi.

Ease of Use

When choosing which hosting platform is more friendly, navigable, and accessible, Kajabi is the winner.

Kajabi is one of the easiest to use in the industry. In general, it requires less user participation and customization than WordPress does. Its default settings are smartly designed for most users’ needs.

You don’t need advanced skills to see progress when building your online business. Because Kajabi made their platform easy and complete, you will be comfortable using it and not look at any other platform.

Note: Kajabi has a Hero Challenge that sets up its users to be successful with their platform.

While it’s challenging to navigate, the WordPress interface becomes much easier once you get comfortable with it. It is perfect for those who love customization and are okay with learning new skills while building their successful business.

Remember that you’ll need to learn how to use different plugins (such as a capture form plugin and a page builder plugin at a minimum).

Customer Support

WordPress only offers documentation and forums as support. Meaning to say they don’t have a live chat, and you can’t email them for help.

Although the available data is beneficial, it’s limited. Like for the forums, it is community-based, so answers are given by users and not from the WordPress team. This may lead to unsolved issues or unanswered ones.

Even with the amount of forum help and video tutorials, sometimes you’ll need one-on-one help. And even though you can read what’s out there, it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to implement the solution. This is why some WordPress users hire a web developer for monthly maintenance.

On the other hand, Kajabi provides a 24/7 live chat, Kajabi Assistant, and email support. In addition, Kajabi Assistant works as a search bar that is accessible on all dashboard pages. All you need to do is type what you want to know, and it will provide you with relevant resources and results.

Besides excellent customer support, the Kajabi team also conducts live training and webinars for its users.

There’s no doubt that Kajabi wins this round!

Affiliate Marketing Management

Kajabi supports affiliate marketing. They have an affiliate management feature you can use to motivate your customers to sell your online courses for you and get a commission out of it. 

The good side is that your partners don’t need to be your students to market your courses. And Kajabi will be the one to monitor and distribute payment on your part, so it’s less work for you. Plus, it will also provide you with detailed and updated affiliate reports.

Let Kajabi do the tedious tasks. The only thing you need to do is find more partners. 

WordPress doesn’t have an affiliate marketing management plugin. You’ll have to invest in checkout cart software that offers affiliate marketing of products or a standalone 3rd party affiliate manager platform.

I’ll give this point to Kajabi.

Kajabi vs WordPress Pricing

You might be surprised that WordPress is free CMS, but the catch is that you’ll need to invest in a hosting service and pay yearly for a domain to access it.

Simple web hosting, like Bluehost, will usually run you about $6/month ($72/year), and a “.com” domain will run you roughly $12/year.

Plus, building an online course business site on WordPress (not recommended for beginners) will require you to install multiple paid plugins (such as Elementor Pro & LearnDash).

Kajabi doesn’t have a free version. It only offers three paid plans you can choose from.

• Kickstarter – $69/month (NEW)
• Basic – $149/ month
• Growth – $199/month
• Pro – $399/month 

Most people get a price sticker shock when they see how much the Kajabi pricing plans cost. But, they usually don’t understand how much time and money it’d cost to try and glue everything that Kajabi does with a WordPress course website.

Watch the video below to give you an idea of how much Kajabi vs a traditional online course tech stack would cost.

The Kajabi price might look more expensive than WordPress hosting, but remember that you can use almost all of Kajabi’s features just by paying $149/month. You won’t need to buy or add anything else.

As for WordPress, you can access it for as low as $6/month. This depends on your hosting platform and the kind of hosting you choose (shared, private, cloud, etc.)

But it doesn’t end there. You’ll need to invest in plugins, WordPress themes, and other software to build a good course website. Depending on your chosen tools, this can cost you up to $250+/month.

Final Takeaways: Kajabi vs WordPress

Although the Kajabi platform won most parts of this comparison, it doesn’t mean WordPress isn’t a good choice. It still depends on what your purpose is.

If you’re looking for the best in terms of course creation and marketing, Kajabi is a better choice. But if you want a platform that will give you more freedom to create other stuff, you go for WordPress.

Kajabi is a complete, handy, all-in-one platform for businesses who want to make money from digital products, improve their brand’s authority, create course content for their audience, and build a good relationship with their customers.

See it for yourself. You don’t have to choose Kajabi now, but you can try it for free.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What are the benefits of using Kajabi?

A: Kajabi is an excellent choice for people who want to invest in the least number of online marketing tools possible. The benefit is that it keeps everything under one roof for a reasonable monthly price. If needed, you can always integrate Kajabi to WordPress

Q: Is Kajabi good for search engine optimization? 

Yes, Kajabi is good for SEO! Kajabi is just like any other website on the internet that can benefit from search engines. You can do keyword research and find out what your competitors are doing. The same SEO strategies you’d apply on a WordPress site work on a Kajabi website!

Q: What are the limitations of Kajabi?

A: Kajabi does not have as many predesigned template themes as WordPress. However, if you have web dev skills, you can customize themes.

Q: Is Kajabi Worth It?

It is! Kajabi is a great platform that can help you build your online business and sell courses easily. If you need help using their platform, they have Kajabi University! Read our in-depth Kajabi review for more details.

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