Best Kajabi Alternatives, Competitors & Similar Software (2023)
Kajabi is an online course platform where course creators can create and sell courses for their students online. It also allows teachers to sell and market their membership sites and coaching programs.
Do you want a simple and easy-to-use platform and the option to create a healthy community where your students can share their learnings and experiences? Then, Kajabi might not be the ideal platform since you are looking for more than just selling courses online.
Creating an inviting and comfortable space for your students is key to a thriving learning environment. The right platform will provide the tools you need to succeed, like a built-in store for selling courses and push notifications to ensure your members don't miss a beat. Using the right platform, you can create a community that supports and encourages your students' success.
Since Kajabi is a desktop-first platform, you might want a more flexible option for your learning platform. There are many fantastic alternatives to Kajabi, but first, let's see what Kajabi's shortcomings are.
Why you should look for Kajabi alternatives?
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Kajabi is best for selling online courses and providing a web-first experience. However, it has a forum-like community where students only come if they have a specific question. Kajabi users have to create a Facebook group for community functions, and Facebook groups come with many distractions, so your students cannot focus on your content entirely.
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You'll still have to compete with others in the same field despite your best efforts at creating marketing campaigns, automation, and email sequences.
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Kajabi is significantly more expensive than other course platforms that offer comparable features. You might not get twice the value if you pay twice as much, mainly because it lacks the community function. This function is key to making courses successful.
We've got you covered! The following are the best 5 Kajabi alternatives you can use
Graphy Community Platform
Discord
Mighty Networks
Tribe
Circle
LearnDash
Thinkific
LearnWorlds
Passion
Podia
Ruzuku
Teachable
Graphy Community Platform
Graphy Community Platform is an ultimate community platform that helps you build a robust community where you can sell your courses and host live events, webinars, and live streams. It offers the best community features through which you can moderate, manage, and monetize your community all in one place - with your brand appearance, under your custom domain. Graphy Community Platform can also generate a whitelabelled mobile app and list it on the Play Store/App Store.
Features
Pros
- Available across in multiple formats & avatars; be it a web app under your domain, a native whitelabeled app on Android and iOS, integrations within your existing app or API-based integrations.
- Auto Scaling across platforms - Scenes uses powerful auto-scaling technology to keep your community blazing fast no matter how many visitors you have across all devices. They scale as you scale.
- The only platform that enables custom CSS for top to bottom granular-level user interface customization. You can make your community look close to your app/website's UI.
- A built-in coin system lets you incentivize your community members to engage more.
- Live audio-video features for your events, webinars and live classes where all your members can get notified and RSVP.
Cons
- You will lose some members during the platform migration process.
Discord
Discord barely needs any introduction as a community tool. Originally intended to be a text/voice-based group-chatting platform for gamers, Discord has broken the mould to house all kinds of communities. Think of it like a less-serious version of Slack. You have channels, role systems that enable you to restrict access to specific/all members and incentive systems (boosts).
Discord Features
- Interact via live/audio video and text-based channels with community members.
- Assign roles to restrict access to specific channels or to introduce status-based hierarchies within your community.
- Reward valuable social behaviour among your community members through Badges (a gamification tool).
Discord Pricing
- Starting price is $4.99/month for Discord Nitro Classic and $9.99 for Discord Nitro.
- A free version of Discord is available.
Pros
- Discord has unlimited file storage.
- Discord allows audio calls to up to 5,000 concurrent listeners.
- Discord allows you to make Public and Private channels.
Cons
- Discord has a limited group video-calling capacity with a limit of as low as 25 members.
- Discord works well for starters, but when you hit scale (500+ members), you will find that it is not at all customizable - no whitelabeling, no branding and no support. As a result, you don't have 100% ownership of your community.
- Discord does not provide valuable in-depth reporting and analytics that enables you to take critical decisions to steer the community.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks allows businesses of any size to create online courses, mobile apps, and communities. In addition, one can create membership sites to offer paid courses, paid groups, or bundles of courses and groups.
Mighty Networks Features
- It offers platform capabilities that scale as your community scales, allowing a seamless experience for you and your community members.
- White-label and customize your community under your domain and replicate your brand aesthetics.
- It has many LMS features that let educators and course-creators manage and run their online courses in one place.
Mighty Networks Pricing
- Starts at $39/mo.
- A 14-day free trial is available.
Pros
- It offers good social engagement features like live audio/video and chat that lets your members engage with each other.
- It comes with a native mobile app that is fully Whitelabeled (available when you buy the Mighty Pro plan)
- It has a very user-friendly UI on the web that replicates Facebook groups on some level.
Cons
- Not very customizable when it comes to their user-interface. Community owners have to work within a relatively rigid set of constraints.
- At $30,000, the native mobile app is the most expensive compared to other alternatives.
- The course creation experience has been said to be 'cumbersome' by many of their paid customers.
Tribe
Tribe is a Whitelabell community platform for businesses. It is famous for its customizability and integration capabilities. Primarily, Tribe is built for text-based conversations using features like forums, polls, etc.
Tribe Features
- The UI is easy-to-use and comprises customizable blocks called 'spaces'.
- It offers powerful rich-text features to format and deliver your content how you want to present it to your users.
- A moderation panel that lets you manage your community smoothly and efficiently.
Tribe Pricing
- Paid Plan starts at $59/month.
- The free Plan includes 100 total members, essential apps, and a custom domain.
Pros
- Offers a white-label community with a good level of customizations that lets you match your community aesthetics to your brand aesthetics.
- Has widgets and APIs that let you integrate with several third-party applications.
- Has a generous free plan that lets you house 500 members (without the Paywall feature, however).
Cons
- More of an old-school forum-based tool rather than a full-fledged community platform with real time-communication features like live audio/video.
- It lacks an incentive system and gamification features necessary for community engagement. Your users need incentives to engage.
- No built-in shop/paywall system that lets your users buy products from you, such as premium memberships, courses, and the like.
Circle
Features
- Scale a community without chaos or complexity
- Gather your community under your own brand
- Build a business, without the burnout
Pros
- Only Mighty has data from hundreds of thousands of thriving communities cultivated over the past five years.
- That’s how we know things like the optimal price to charge for a monthly membership, or how much content you really need to build your first online course.
- We share these learnings with you and more through Mighty Community and Mighty Insights™, the deep analytics and benchmarking you get with Mighty.
Cons
- Slower to reach ROI
- More Expensive
- Dangerous for public communities
- Adding live streams to your community can make it more alive. You get access to audio rooms where you can keep track of your community member’s interests and involve them in discussions.
LearnDash
LearnDash is a platform for creating course websites using WordPress. In addition, LearnDash offers great LMS features for course instructors, educators, and knowledge creators.
LearnDash Features
- The drag & drop course builder helps course creators create courses easily and quickly.
- It offers gamification tools like badges and certificates - Award certificates based on quiz results and course completions.
- It has a built-in notification feature that prevents your students from missing any necessary updates.
LearnDash Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $199/year.
- No free trials available.
Pros
- The video preview feature gives students a sneak peek into video lessons and makes the course more engaging.
- It offers a flexible quiz builder that makes creating QnAs easy.
- Provides gamification tools that help in engaging your members in your courses.
Cons
- Its URL structure is highly complicated, making SEO difficult. There is no way to shorten it.
- It takes some time to get used to all the new features. The learning curve is steep.
- It runs only on WordPress, which means you'll need to know all WordPress functionalities.
Thinkific
Thinkific is a digital course creation platform where educators can curate online courses for their students. In addition, they offer competitive LMS features that let their customers run online courses effectively.
Thinkific Features
- Assessments & Certificates - Offers comprehensive quizzes, engagement surveys, assignments, exams and certificates.
- Progress Tracking - In-depth reporting to track student progress.
- Live Lessons - Deliver lessons via live audio/video and let your students engage with you in realtime (via Zoom integration).
Thinkific Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $39/month to $399/month.
- The free plan includes access to all the core features of the platform.
Pros
- Easy-to-use UI that makes running courses on Thinkific all the more seamless.
- A very prompt support system responds to customer queries and problems and comes with an active Facebook group filled with Thinkific customers.
- You can design the access portal, the courses, and the payment methods all in one interface without needing third-party integrations.
Cons
- Not built for community engagement - in 2023, an LMS is not enough to successfully run courses. Thinkific lacks critical community features like gamification and incentive systems.
- Cannot manage multiple cohorts under the same roof - this may constrain you as your courses start scaling and diversifying.
- The pricing is slightly more expensive than alternatives and confusing for some.
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds is a learning management system that lets course creators create online courses. Using LearnWorlds, you can create student communities and sell online courses.
LearnWorlds Features
- Offers gamification tools such as badges so that you can acknowledge efforts & promote good behaviour.
- In-built shop for highlighting the details of your courses and selling them all in one place.
- A broad range of assessment tools to help the educator & the students measure the learning progress.
LearnWorlds Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $24/month (billed annually).
- LearnWorlds offers a free 30-day trial.
Pros
- You can create student communities in LearnWorlds so that your members can share their experiences, ideas, and learnings.
- Students can interact with your course content through LearnWorlds' course builder and enjoy a blissful learning experience.
- LearnWorld's live online classes encourage your students to have interactive sessions and discussions among each other.
Cons
- LearnWorld's interface is difficult to understand, and there are no tutorials that can help you get started.
- Regarding email management and funnel-building tools, LearnWorlds does not offer as many options.
- In LearnWorld, users complain that many features do not work when courses are published, making the learning experience less seamless.
- With LearnWorlds, you need too many integrations and more management, distracting you from your business activities.
Passion
Passion.io is an easy way to create a mobile learning platform for your online courses. You don't need any coding experience to create a fully-customizable learning ecosystem. Passion.io features pre-built tools like video, gamification and social sharing that are guaranteed to grow your community of users very quickly!
Passion.io Features
- Offers seamless orders & subscription plans.
- Provides easy payments and payout.
- Provides a hassle-free drag and drop option.
Pros
- Build interactive courses with pre-built templates or design your own from scratch.
- Simple to use interface.
- No coding or technical worries.
Cons
- Not affordable for everyone.
- Due to lots of features, it may take some time to be familiar with Passion.io
- The drip content feature is not available in the Pro plan.
Podia
Podia is a platform that lets you build a free, no-code website and sell your online courses. With Podia, you can create a business from anywhere in the world with zero fees or start-up costs.
Podia Features
- Connect your audience and your content – You can host an online community in the same place that your audience uses your digital products.
- Community – In Podia, you can create a community that works like a forum or Slack. The design is clean, and the workflow is simple.
- Course Features – Using Podia, you can quickly create lessons and quizzes.
Podia Pricing
- Paid Plans start at $39/month.
- It has a free version.
Pros
- You can offer your audience webinars using YouTube Live and Zoom with Podia.
- If you want your website to look professional and run smoothly, you do not need to be tech-savvy or have coding knowledge.
- You can connect your payments, scheduling, and sales pages all in one place in minutes with Podia.
Cons
- Podia does not have a mobile app if you want to build courses that will be accessible on mobile for your members.
- Podia doesn't offer in-depth lesson reports if you're interested in knowing how impressive your course is. Only some basic information about student progress is provided.
- To assess your students more effectively, Podia lacks open-ended questions. The use of multiple choice questions is not suitable for all courses.
Ruzuku
Ruzuku is an online portal where students from across the globe can learn by taking courses. The website enables education institutions to upload courses, track student performance and more efficiently manage monetary transactions which lead to a highly effective student-professor interaction as well as better ranking for prestigious institutions.
Ruzuku Features
- It helps you set up and configure different types of course content- including images, videos, quizzes, lists, etc- without coding anything at all.
- Course Analytics – As an online tutor, you should be able to track your students as they progress through the courses.
- A Flexible Subscription System – You could choose to have your subscription bill coming in every month or on an annual basis.
Pros
- Students can mark each activity as “complete”, and track their own progress.
- It provides a straightforward system of setting up your online courses and configuring the accompanying options. You could, for instance, select a relevant payment framework for your students, and then determine an ideal price for each course.
- You can rely on Ruzuku to handle not only the enrolment process but also the corresponding payments. All the students will be charged accordingly based on their selections and your precise course pricing schedule.
Cons
- You cannot offer a free trial of your course.
- There is no place to promote active, continuous and open discussion. It does not have a central forum.
- Can suffer from feature bloat(result of packing too many features and functionalities into a product).
Teachable
Teachable is a popular online course platform that allows anyone to create, host and sell their pre-recorded online courses. So if you have your videos recorded & ready, you can create an online course within half an hour without being tech-savvy.
Teachable Features
- Drag and drop builder - Building courses on Teachable can get slightly confusing if you try to do it all yourself. But thankfully, if you follow their tutorials, it becomes easy.
- Quizzes - You can add multiple choice questions alongside (or after) your lectures - this helps your students assess their learning progress.
- Promotional offers - You can create coupon codes. This is a good way to run discounts and increase sales on your courses.
Teachable Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $39/month.
- Teachable has free trial.
Pros
- Teachable is affordable even on the paid plans, making it accessible to everyone.
- Teachable is easy to start with - it best suits beginners to advanced-level users.
- You can sell a variety of add-ons alongside courses like ebooks and services and even set up workshops and conferences.
Cons
- Pay-out options are a problem for customers from outside of the USA.
- Teachable doesn't include email marketing, community management, or landing page software.
- Teachable does not offer gamification or live learning which can make your courses boring and not up to the mark, as per 2023 standards (where cohort-based courses are the norm).
Disclaimer: To curate the pros, cons and reviews - we mine the internet for customer references regarding the said software. Some of our sources include Reddit, Product Hunt, Twitter & Quora (and sites like G2 & Capterra).
What you should do now
Whenever you’re ready…here are 3 ways we can help:
If you’d like to turn your business into a community-led business, book a call with us. One of our community experts will understand your current situation, and suggest how a community can work for you.
If you’d like to learn the exact community-building formula we’ve used to help build 2000+ communities, watch this masterclass or read this guide.
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