The creator economy is buzzing with tools to help online entrepreneurs turn their knowledge and skills into a business.
Kajabi andClickFunnels are two of those tools: they combine several solutions to help creators easily build, market, and sell digital products.I've been using all sorts of marketing tools for years now, including ClickFunnels and Kajabi. I compared these apps last year, but since then, a few things have changed. So, to update this article, I went back into them to test all their features again and better understand each one's strengths and weaknesses. Here, I'll break down the pros and cons of each platform and explain how they stack up—to help you decide which is the best for your business.
- Kajabi is better for creating digital products
- ClickFunnels offers more for conversion optimization
- Kajabi is better for email marketing
- Both tools are using AI to streamline the content creation process
- Pricing is relatively similar, but ClickFunnels has the edge
- Both tools integrate with Zapier
ClickFunnels vs. Kajabi at a glance
ClickFunnels and Kajabi are both powerful platforms with tools to help you start and scale your online business. But when it comes down to it, they have pretty distinct core value propositions:
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Kajabi is 100% built for creating digital products, from courses to coaching programs, newsletters, communities, and podcasts. It has a robust digital content delivery system.
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ClickFunnels is focused more on the marketing and sales side. It'll give you fully automated funnels optimized for conversion to make promoting and selling your digital content easy.
Having said that, ClickFunnels and Kajabi do share many similarities that can make it tougher to pick between the two. So here's a quick rundown of their features—but keep reading for more details about each app and my experience testing them.
|
Kajabi |
ClickFunnels |
|
|---|---|---|
|
Ease of use |
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Super easy to use for less tech-forward and design-minded users |
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Also easy to use with lots of training materials to help if you get stuck |
|
Marketing and sales |
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Nice range of templates for building landing pages, websites, and sales funnels, but has limited funnel capability |
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Excellent assortment of templates for all marketing assets and an unbeatable funnel system; you can split test funnels for conversion optimization |
|
Courses |
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Robust course creation platform with advanced features like certificates, live sessions, quizzes, and automation |
⭐⭐⭐ Average course platform lacking advanced features |
|
Coaching |
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Includes live video and scheduler to enable you to host coaching sessions without third-party tools like Zoom |
Does not intrinsically support coaching |
|
Community |
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Excellent community-building tools, including live streaming and chat, newsfeed, and challenges to keep your audience engaged; you can also monetize your community with one-time or subscription payments |
⭐⭐⭐ Supports communities but lacks engagement features |
|
Email marketing |
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Built-in email marketing functionality with the ability to create automated email sequences; A/B testing; pre-written email copy |
⭐⭐⭐ Limited email marketing functionality, so you either figure it out with workflows or integrate a third-party tool |
|
Integrations |
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 15 native integrations and connects with Zapier |
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Up to 25 native integrations and connects with Zapier |
|
Pricing |
Kickstarter: $69/month Basic: $149/month Growth: $199/month Pro: $399/month |
Startup: $97/month Pro: $297/month |
Kajabi is better for creating digital products
Both platforms allow you to create digital products, like courses and memberships. But Kajabi supports more product types, including coaching programs, communities, podcasts, and newsletters, which can help with scaling your business.
Let's start with a product that's shared between them: courses.
Kajabi and ClickFunnels offer a nearly identical course creation workflow: provide general information about the course, and receive a structure with modules and lessons to hit the ground running. Customizing the modules and lessons is straightforward with both tools. You can drip the course to customers over a set period or lock modules to encourage them to complete specific lessons. Both platforms allow you to upload video and audio course materials directly from your device without third-party hosting sites.
But after that, Kajabi takes things up a notch by offering "when, then, if" automation rules in lessons to better manage your students and business. For example, you can set a rule to issue students a certificate or grant them an offer when they complete a lesson.
And if you want to give your students a more interactive learning experience, Kajabi allows you to hold live video sessions. For instance, you could hold weekly Q&A sessions to discuss the course and answer any questions your students might have. It even lets you record sessions and publish them as lessons.
Kajabi's courses also include assessments with short answer, file upload, and other question types, and you can require a passing grade to advance in the course to help increase student engagement. There's even automatic grading for checkbox and multiple-choice questions.
These advanced features are all notably lacking from ClickFunnels' courses.
When you're ready to create a recurring revenue system, Kajabi allows you to build memberships—you just have to add the course and community to an offer. You can create communities with multiple paywalled access groups that subscribers can only join after purchasing. And you'll get features like circles (Q&A), challenges, live meetup sessions, and broadcasts to manage your community.
It's a really streamlined process: create a course > create a community > add them to an offer.
In ClickFunnels, you can also create membership programs by connecting communities to courses. But the platform offers no community engagement features, and connecting the course to a community isn't so straightforward. In fact, since ClickFunnels and Kajabi play very well together, I'd argue that it's better to integrate the two, so you can create courses and memberships with Kajabi and then use ClickFunnels for sales.
ClickFunnels offers more for conversion optimization
Once you're done creating your digital products, you need a way to sell them. Both platforms provide sales funnels to help you capture leads and turn them into customers, but ClickFunnels' system is on a whole other level. The reason is obvious: the tool was built for sales.
Creating funnels is similar in both Kajabi and ClickFunnels: start from scratch or select a template, then customize it with a visual drag-and-drop builder. After that, ClickFunnels quickly differentiates itself with powerful funnel workflows, A/B testing, and conditional split paths.
When setting up a funnel in ClickFunnels, you can create variations of every page and then split traffic between them to see which brings in the most sales. You can test everything from design to headlines, copy, images, and
CTAs, and then use the results to optimize your offer and improve conversions.
Once you set that up, you can further optimize your funnel with conditional split paths that direct visitors to follow different steps depending on the action they take on your page. For example, you can set a condition to send visitors down a YES path and reward them with a gift, like early access to your course, if they provide their email address. Visitors who do not meet that condition will go down the NO path.
This feature helps you filter customers who pass on to the steps in your funnel. That way, you can target them better with upsells, downsells, and emails, increasing your chances of conversion. Unfortunately, Kajabi is lacking in this aspect, as it doesn't allow any form of funnel testing or optimization. That means there's no way to know why your funnel isn't performing as expected or the specific ways to improve it.
On top of that, ClickFunnels gives you many more funnels on all plans than Kajabi. And if you're also promoting physical products, you'll find ClickFunnels' funnels especially useful, as they enable you to promote several products simultaneously.
Bottom line: if driving the most leads to your offer and converting them to customers is your primary goal, ClickFunnels is your best bet.
Kajabi is better for email marketing
Part of the marketing and sales capability of ClickFunnels and Kajabi is built-in
email marketing. In both, you'll find automatic tagging systems, good-looking email templates, and an interactive drag-and-drop builder to make customization easy. But when it comes down to it, Kajabi offers a more streamlined process, making it a better fit for creators.For example, once you sign up with Kajabi and upload your contact list, you can start sending emails immediately. There's no need for any extra setup or configuration. ClickFunnels is quite the opposite: it requires you to set up a custom domain and SMTP authentication before you can send emails. While this might not be a big deal for experienced marketers, less tech-forward creators might find it complicated.
That said, the most notable difference between ClickFunnels and Kajabi's email marketing is that ClickFunnels limits you to email broadcasts, while Kajabi allows you to send broadcasts and
dripped email sequences. You'll find templates for real situations like making a referral, announcing an event, or showcasing your products. You can easily customize each template to your liking, set your schedule, and Kajabi will handle the rest.
You can even use automation rules to make your campaign more powerful. So, you can automate things like "when email is clicked, add a tag and send a single-use coupon." Kajabi also includes thoughtfully-written email copy inside all its templates. You're at liberty to personalize the copy or discard it, but it comes in handy if you want to save time and use tested
copy that's proven to convert.With ClickFunnels, you don't get email sequences out of the box. The only way to set up a sequence is to trigger a workflow (e.g., an event) and then use delays to connect the different emails as separate steps in your workflow. If that workaround is too complex, you can integrate your favorite
email marketing tool, but you'll have to pay extra for it.If you want to A/B test your emails, both tools allow you to do that (note: Kajabi only offers it for broadcast emails), but I'd argue that A/B testing is much easier in Kajabi than in ClickFunnels. Kajabi lets you set up the two email versions side by side so you can view them simultaneously.
From there, you can easily set the test distribution and other options. Plus, Kajabi provides clear directions throughout the process, so you won't even need any email marketing experience to get it done.
With ClickFunnels, you won't find any option for A/B tests in the email marketing tool. If you want to split-test an email, you'll need to set up a full funnel and add the split test to your email automation workflow. It's a complicated process for an inexperienced creator looking for a quick fix.
Both tools are using AI to streamline the content creation process
ClickFunnels and Kajabi are both using AI to help creators streamline the content creation process. They both have an AI assistant that generates a decent course outline, complete with modules and lessons, at the initial stages of creating your course. You'll also find the AI assistant in the editor to help generate and refine your copy.
Kajabi stands out with its Creator Studio, a powerful AI tool for repurposing course videos into all kinds of marketing content.
So, for example, after uploading a video to my LinkedIn Marketing 101 course, Kajabi AI extracted points from the video and used them to create a promotional email sequence, announcement, and discussion posts for my community, a sales page for promoting the course, and even video clips for Instagram. You can even upload videos from your device, and Creator Studio will turn them into course outlines, lessons, and descriptions.
That said, ClickFunnels isn't lacking in the AI department either. It works with an impressive AI tool, BarnumPT, that helps build fully-fledged funnels and landing pages in seconds and includes a bunch of other funnel-building tools. Just note that it's a browser extension that's only compatible with Chrome, Edge, and Firefox.
Pricing is relatively similar, but ClickFunnels has the edge
Neither ClickFunnels nor Kajabi would be considered downright affordable—they're both on the pricier side of marketing software. But when you compare the features they offer at different price points, ClickFunnels is the clear winner.
For instance, Kajabi's Kickstarter plan costs $69/month and includes one product (either a course, podcast, newsletter, coaching, or community), one funnel, 250 contacts, and 1,250 marketing emails. Meanwhile, ClickFunnels costs $97/month for the same level and gives you unlimited products (including courses), funnels, emails, and contacts. The only limitation is the number of brand workspaces and team members you can have on your account. ClickFunnels doesn't offer a middle tier, but Kajabi's middle plans—Basic and Growth—still cap the number of products, funnels, and contacts you can have.
The price difference becomes very glaring in their highest tier, where ClickFunnels charges $297/month and Kajabi $399. You still won't get unlimited funnels or products in Kajabi, but you'll be able to access a custom code editor if you want to customize your emails and pages with CSS styling. Meanwhile, ClickFunnels offers this code editor on all its plans.
Even though they both lack entry-level pricing, ClickFunnels clearly has the upper hand if budget is a deciding factor. The good news: both platforms offer a 14-day trial period with access to all advanced tools so you can take them for a spin before committing.
Both tools integrate with Zapier
Every tool becomes more powerful when you connect it with the rest of your tech stack. And since both
Kajabi andClickFunnels integrate with Zapier, you can connect them to thousands of other apps. This means you can do things like automatically create contact profiles when someone completes a form or create tasks for new purchases.Learn more about
how to automate Kajabi orhow to automate ClickFunnels, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.It's also possible you'll want to use both tools: Kajabi for creating your course and ClickFunnels for promoting it. In that case, you can use Zapier to
integrate Kajabi and ClickFunnels.Zapier is a no-code automation tool that lets you connect your apps into automated workflows, so that every person and every business can move forward at growth speed. Learn more about
how it works.Kajabi vs. ClickFunnels: Which should you choose?
Go with Kajabi if delivering digital content via courses or communities is your main goal. You'll get all the tools you need to turn your knowledge into income without paying for additional software, and you can promote it well, especially via email marketing. You just won't have access to in-depth conversion optimization features.
Choose ClickFunnels if sales and marketing are your priority and you don't mind using a different tool to deliver digital content. ClickFunnels will give you a robust system to market and sell both digital and physical products.
Related reading:
- ConvertKit vs. ClickFunnels: Which should you use?
- Kajabi vs. Teachable: Which online course platform should you use?
- The best platforms to create and sell online courses
- Thinkific vs. Kajabi: Which is best?
- ClickFunnels vs. ActiveCampaign: Which marketing automation software is best?
This article was originally published in December 2023. The most recent update was in October 2024.