So, I’ve been using Kajabi for the past 2 to 3 years, and recently, I started exploring Circle too.

And, I thought this is would be the right time for me to compare them!

In this comparison, I’ll mainly focus on course creation, funnel building, and communities.

  • Course Creation: How easy is it to create and structure your courses?
  • Funnel Building: Can you build effective sales funnels to maximize your conversions?
  • Communities: What features and tools are available to foster engagement and interaction within your community?

In the past, choosing between these tools was relatively simple.

However, now the decision has become more challenging than ever before

Why?

Kajabi significantly enhanced their community features (gamification)

… and on the other hand Circle introducing automation workflows!

First the overview!

Overview

Kajabi logo full 2

Kajabi was founded in 2010 by Kenny Rueter when he faced difficulty monetizing videos on YouTube.

Right from day one, Kajabi is into helping people turn their knowledge into profit.

But.

Today it offers various features such as the ability to:

  • Selling online courses
  • Coaching
  • Host podcasts
  • Communities
  • Email marketing

👉 One of the strongest features of Kajabi is its automation engine, which allows you to seamlessly integrate all the provided features in one platform, similar to having Zapier within Kajabi.

Over the years, Kajabi has raised significant funds and is currently valued at around $2 billion. This has enabled them to scale their team and make strategic mergers and acquisitions to roll out impressive features.

They are sitting on cash! 💰

Circle logo

On the other hand, Circle is an all-in-one community platform founded in 2019 by Sid Yadav, who was Teachable’s first designer. It was later backed by Ankur Nagpal, the first for Teachable, when Teachable was sold to HotMart in 2020.

Circle has gained significant traction due to its track record and is currently valued at $200 million.

In fact it’s the best community platform I recommend!

Circle is a modern tool that’s super easy to use – it’s built from scratch with simplicity in mind.

You know those apps like Notion and Slack that just make sense?

Circle follows that same modular approach.

Unlikeother conventional community platformssuch as Mighty Networks, Circle places extreme emphasis on UI/UX, integrations, and automations.

Quick decision

FeaturesCircleKajabi
Pricing starts at 💲$49/mo$149/mo
Transaction fees 💸4% on the lowest plan and 1% fee on the Professional plan0%
Mobile apps 📱iOS and AndroidiOS and Android
Courses 📚Yes (more coming soon)Yes (more features)
CommunitiesYesYes
Has native live streaming? 📷YesYes (also for coaching calls)

What do we like about Circle.so over Kajabi 👍?

  • Intuitive UI/UX: Circle’s interface is clean and user-friendly. If you’re already familiar with platforms like Slack or Notion, you’ll feel right at home.
  • Modular features: Circle is a flexible platform that allows you to build a community that fits your vision. It provides building blocks for various layouts like post view, list view, and card view, to customize how a particular space should look. Think of Notion, but for communities.
  • Embed widget: With Circle, you can embed spaces or groups on other platforms, such as WordPress or even Teachable, to promote and motivate students to join the spaces.
  • Live rooms and spaces: Circle provides live rooms and live spaces for small meetings (limited to 30 participants), similar to Twitter spaces.
  • Community moderation: Circle comes with security features like keyword blockers and profanity checkers, essential for preventing spam in large communities.
  • Rapid feature rollout: Circle is rapidly introducing new features. Leveraging their experience with Teachable, they are focusing on advanced goals, features, automations, and community AI.

Explore Circle

What do we like about Kajabi over Circle.so👍?

  • All-in-one platform: Kajabi not only provides the ability to create courses and communities, but also offers website building, funnel building, email automation, and feature-rich marketing functionalities, and also other extras like Podcasts, video repurposing tool, making it a comprehensive platform.
  • Specialist course features: Kajabi’s main forte lies in its highly advanced course creation capabilities. You can build various types of courses, create assessments, issue certificates, and also it has student level progress tracking with heatmaps and retention graphs.
  • Sales and marketing: Kajabi excels with its built-in funnels, automation rules, and blogging platform. Also it has a solid page builder to optimize your landing pages for conversions. In contrast, Circle.so requires additional tools like ClickFunnels at an extra cost for creating funnels.
  • Community gamification: Kajabi acquired Vibely to enhance online community engagement. It provides features like points, leaderboards, challenges, live rooms, and events, eliminating the need for third-party integrations. It’s even ahead of Circle here!

Explore Kajabi

Similarities

  • Email automation: They both come with the ability for you to send out broadcasts and email sequences right within the platform based on various triggers and conditional filters.
  • Automation features: Both of these tools have excellent automation engines to run various workflows. Based on triggers, you can execute actions, thus making your course and community management more efficient.
  • Premium platforms: Both Kajabi and Circle are premium platforms. They are not cheap – if you want to get access to all their automation features, you need to shell out around $200 per month.

Upfront verdict

Look, Kajabi is your one-stop shop for everything.

Website? Check. Landing pages? Yep. Email marketing, courses, community – it’s all there.

And the best part?

Everything works together smoothly thanks to their automation engine. They’ve been around for years, so they really know their stuff.

Now, Circle is the new kid on the block. But don’t let that fool you – they’ve built something pretty special. It’s like a box of LEGO blocks – super flexible and you can build exactly what you need.

Circle wants to be your all-in-one solution too. In fact, they just launched email marketing features to step up their game.

But here’s the thing:

If you want the most bang for your buck, Kajabi is probably your best bet (as of now) It’s packed with features and actually gives you better value than Circle, especially since Circle keeps their Automation Workflows locked behind their priciest plan.

Community

Community organization

Kajabi and Circle.so both include built-in communities.

A couple of months ago, Kajabi acquired Vibely, an online community-building tool for creating highly engaging communities.

Let’s take a look at all the features they support.

Kajabi community f38e4e53aa330def3611c971ed93401a5ec8a4d0964fc21c6855a75b1855bff7
Kajabi community

Let’s talk about access groups – they’re like VIP passes for your community.

You’ll want to set up different levels, from free to premium.

Here’s what each access group can do:

  • Circles: Think of these as chat rooms where people can talk and share ideas
  • Challenges: Get everyone fired up with fun activities and assignments (you know, to keep things interesting)
  • Meetups: Plan online or in-person events with handy reminders
  • Announcements: Share the big news with your group

Here’s a real example: Say you create a “Diamond members” group – these folks get special access to all the good stuff like exclusive challenges, circles, meetups, and announcements.

Pretty neat, right?

First about Circles.

Kajabi Circle Types
Create circle in Kajabi community

Let me break down how “Circles” work – they’re basically little hangout spots in your community where people can chat and share cool stuff.

Think of it like having different rooms in a house – each one has its own purpose.

In Kajabi, you get to pick between two different setups for your Circles:

  • Feed layout: Works like a forum where people can have longer discussions – you know, the kind where everyone gets to share their thoughts.
  • Chat layout: This one’s more like Slack or Discord – quick, snappy conversations that keep things moving.

So yeah, Kajabi’s circles give you that perfect mix of community vibes and casual chat feels.

Now, Circle takes a different approach.

With Circle, you’re in charge of creating entire communities.

circle space templates
Circle – Different space types available

Each community can comprise multiple groups, and these groups can further include numerous spaces, such as posts, chat, events, and courses.

Unlike Kajabi’s separate course function, Circle integrates courses as a “space type”.

Weird huh?

But.

This is logical and feels modular but can clutter the sidebar as both courses and discussion areas end up in the sidebar.

Gamification

About Circle, gamification is not a built-in feature but an emergent one.

It offers the following features that can be used for gamification:

  • Member tags: Tags can be assigned based on member behaviors and displayed as badges.
  • Activity scores: Members are assigned a score based on presence, contribution, and participation, compared to other Circle communities for accuracy. Scores are displayed on their profiles!

On the other hand, Kajabi, with its acquisition of Vibely, has implemented a lot of gamification features.

Kajabi Challenges
Kajabi challenge

Kajabi includes a feature for creating activity-based “Challenges” for specific groups.

Members can upload proof of completion and earn points based on their interactions.

adding points in kajabi
Kajabi’s gamification

Also, based on the points they get, you can provide them with badges and feature them on the leaderboards.

For more inspiration on how to utilize these features, check out some Kajabi community examples I published in another blog.

Other features

Both tools communities have features like:

  • Chat, group messages, & direct messages
  • Native live streams
  • Member profile pages
  • Customized member fields
  • Member tags (to implement badges)

Kajabi has a few unique features like:

  • Smart recording library
  • Challenges and badges

Course creation 📚

Kajabi has good course creation features and is more comprehensive compared to Circle.

Kajabi course outline
Kajabi’s course builder

When it comes to organizing your course material, you have modules, sub-modules, and the ability to have lessons/quizzes under them.

Kajabi lesson creation page
Kajabi’s lesson creation

When you create a lesson in Kajabi, it can either be a video lesson, audio lesson, or an assessment.

For any lesson that you create, you can upload a checklist or any downloadable to accompany it.

online courses in circle
Circle’s course builder

Also, Circle allows you to create different sections and lessons within them.

When it comes to adding course content, both support text, images, audio/video, and files.

Circle’s course lesson building blocks (similar to Notion)

Here’s what makes Circle stand out – you can add any type of content block to your lessons, plus custom HTML if you’re into that.

Just like Kajabi, you can drip-feed content to keep students from binging everything at once.

Speaking of drip-feeding – both platforms let you control exactly when students get access to new content.

Now, Kajabi’s got some extra things:

  • Provides completion certificates for your students
  • Makes sure students finish each module before moving on (no skipping ahead!)
  • Uses graded quizzes as checkpoints – gotta pass to move forward
  • Lets you run live coaching sessions right in the platform
  • Shows you detailed stats about how your students are doing (super helpful for tracking progress)

🏆 Winner: Kajabi. Kajabi has advanced course builder features, including certificates, content locking, assessments, video analytics, and AI content creation. Circle’s course features are roughly half as comprehensive as of now.

Design and customization

When it comes to design and customization, Kajabi takes the lead over Circle.

Circle themes
Circle theme customizer

Circle keeps it pretty basic when it comes to customization. You get to pick your theme (light or dark), add your logo and icon, choose your brand colors, and tweak a few theme settings. That’s it!

However, there is a lack of flexibility.

If you prefer more flexibility and a dedicated website builder, Kajabi is the better option.

Kajabi website templates
Kajabi theme customizer

With Kajabi, you can build your entire website using their 10+ different course and site themes that have a professional and modern look.

Additionally, Kajabi provides a feature-rich page builder with over 40+ different modules to design your pages.

kajabi website customizer
Kajabi’s page builder

While Kajabi’s page builder is powerful, some may find it lacking in flexibility. However, for non-developers, it offers more than enough customization options.

If you are using Circle, you still need access to website and landing page builders like Elementor or Clickfunnels.

Live streaming

Here’s the deal – both Kajabi and Circle let you run live events like meetups and webinars right from their platforms.

They provide native live streaming abilities.

Circle’s types of events you can host

Circle keeps things simple with live events – you can schedule them, start a live room, or go live with streaming. Pretty straightforward stuff.

Now, Kajabi takes it up a notch with:

  1. Meetups: Want to get people together? Kajabi lets you set up both virtual and in-person meetups.
  2. Webinars: Here’s where Kajabi shines – you get everything you need for webinars. One-time or recurring events, scheduling, automatic emails before and after, plus a solid page builder for registration.

The “Live Rooms” in Kajabi are packed with features – you can record sessions, share your screen, create breakout groups, chat with video, and even use emojis. Plus, these rooms work great for one-on-one coachingsessions.

Here’s something cool that sets Kajabi apart: You can schedule live video events right inside your course. Not many platforms do that.

Kajabi live events

This increases the webinar attendance rate as participants can easily register for events while going through the course content.

Sales and checkout options 💲

With Circle.so, you can easily charge your community and accept payments instantly using paywalls.

Circle Space Access
Circle community access settings

With Paywalls you can:

  • Charge bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual subscriptions.
  • Offer various membership tiers with different pricing plans.
  • Charge for private spaces and accept one time payments.

When it comes to checkout, Circle keeps things super basic – just a one-step checkout that only works with Stripe. No PayPal, no other payment options. That’s it.

Circle checkout page
Circle – Pat Flynn’s SPI checkout form

Here’s the thing – Circle’s checkout is pretty basic. You can’t add order bumps or upsells to make more money from each sale. And unlike Kajabi, you can’t even add social proof like testimonials to convince people to buy.

Want better checkout features?

You’ll probably need to use dedicated platforms like Thrivecart or SamCart. These give you more payment options and better conversion features.

But here’s one unique feature with Circle:

Circle space lockscreen
Circle’s lock screen

Here’s something cool – when someone tries to access a locked space in Circle, they’ll hit a login screen or paywall.

You can tweak this page to boost conversions using different building blocks.

While you can’t go crazy with customization, it gets the job done.

Kajabi checkout page customization
Kajabi’s checkout builder

Now, Kajabi keeps things simple with a built-in checkout that just works.

No fuss, no extra tools needed.

What’s cool is that you can make your checkout pages look exactly how you want them. Their page builder lets you drag and drop different elements to create something that matches your style.

Here’s where it gets really good – Kajabi lets you add upsells, downsells, and order bumps to make more money from each sale.

Circle?

Well, they’re missing the order bump feature, which is kind of a bummer if you’re serious about maximizing your sales.

Community moderation

Circle offers profanity checking, flagging inappropriate posts, and spam prevention for community moderation.

This ensures a safe environment for large or growing communities.

Kajabi lacks these features, but it may not matter much. After all, with Kajabi, I don’t see you hosting a large, free public community.

🏆 Winner: Circle.

Automations

Circle workflow type
Circle’s automation workflow type

Circle recently introduced the automation workflows feature in their business plan.

Circle automation rule
Circle’s triggered automation

This feature enables you to run triggered automation, perform bulk actions, and schedule various bulk actions on your site.

For example, if a particular person completes a specific course, then you can automatically send them a direct message.

Circle workflows
Circle workflow templates

It also provides different templates for creating automation workflows, similar to Zapier.

Kajabi, as an all-in-one platform, has an automation engine that connects all its functionalities.

kajabi automation triggers
Kajabi automation workflow

In the above screenshot, you can see that when BloggingX Gold Membership offer is purchased, I can do actions like:

  • Grant an offer
  • Sending an email.
  • Registering for an event (maybe onboarding webinar).
  • Add a tag.
  • Subscribe to the sequence
kajabi advanced automations
Kajabi advanced automations

On its higher plans, Kajabi gives access to advanced automations. These come with an additional “conditional” filter to further specify the rules.

🏆 Winner: Kajabi, hands down. It comes with more numbers of triggers and actions and even conditional filters. It offers more features compared to Circle’s recently rolled out automation features.

Funnels

Also, as Kajabi comes with a landing page and website builder, you can create entire funnels inside it.

For example, when you create a new funnel, you will be presented with a blank canvas in which you can link various landing pages, offers, and emails together, similar to how you do in any email marketing software like ConvertKit or Active Campaign.

Kajabi automation funnels
Kajabi funnels

For instance, in the above screenshot, you can see that whenever a person opts into my email list, they will automatically be sent an email sequence delivering my course content.

Then, they will be redirected to the thank you page to nurture them further down in the funnel.

To accomplish the same with Circle, you need to connect it with other funnel builder platforms like ClickFunnels, WordPress (with CartFlows and Elementor), or preferably Thrivecart, which I personally use.

If you’re looking for more insights on effective sales funnels, check out the best sales funnels for coaches.

Then, whenever a purchase occurs in your funnel, you need to use Zapier to add them to Circle.

Email marketing

Circle recently introduced email marketing capabilities with the introduction of Circle Marketing Hub.

Circle emails

As of now, it comes with features like:

  • Email broadcasts
  • Marketing automations based on triggers from member actions
  • Multi-step email journeys with timed delays
  • Triggers based on user behavior

When it comes to pricing, the service is free for up to 100 contacts.

Circle marketing hub addon

However, the pricing scales based on the number of contacts you have.

The pricing is quite cheaper than that of ConvertKit.

Having an email marketing solution built right into the platform where you also manage your community can be real helpful.

Now Kajabi:

Kajabi allows you to set up either email broadcasts or follow-up sequences.

kajabi email marketing
Kajabi email marketing

When you create a broadcast or a sequence, there are various email templates from which you can choose.

Additionally, Kajabi email marketing offers a visual drag-and-drop email builder. This tool includes a variety of building blocks, such as text, images, buttons, and conversion-friendly widgets like videos, countdown timers, and social icons.

kajabi email campaign automations
Kajabi automation engine

The best part is that Kajabi, as an all-in-one platform, also comes with an automation engine. You can set various automation rules.

For example, when a specific email link is clicked, you can automatically register your users for a webinar, thus enabling a one-click webinar registration functionality.

The sad thing with Circle is that it integrates only with Zapier.

Reporting and analytics 📈

Both Circle and Kajabi provide basic reports related to community traffic, engagement, members, leaderboards, spaces, and messages.

However, Kajabi provides more comprehensive and detailed analytics compared to Circle. For instance, Kajabi includes features such as student progress reports, course reports, funnel performance statistics, and video analytics & heatmaps.

The video analytics reports in Kajabi are particularly notable.

vedio stats retention graph
Kajabi – Video retention graphs

They include a retention graph that helps evaluate points of engagement and drop-off among course students, as well as metrics like the average engagement rate, total plays, and play rate.

On the other hand, Circle places a stronger emphasis on community engagement and interaction.

🏆 Winner: Tie. Kajabi is good at the course and student reports, while Circle has better community & member reports.

Mobile app 📲

Kajabi mobile apps 2
Kajabi’s mobile app screenshots
circle so mobile apps
Circle’s mobile app screenshots

Kajabi and Circle both have well-rated mobile apps for Android and iOS.

The apps aren’t white-labeled, unlike Mighty Networks.

With these apps, students can:

  • Consume courses on the go.
  • Access communities and memberships.
  • See all the product updates.
  • Take quizzes, assessments, and download the attachments.

To increase conversions, both support in-app purchases and push notifications.

As an added advantage, Kajabi also has an app for especially creators. You can manage your entire business on the go.

🏆 Winner: Kajabi. Apps support in-app purchases. There is also a creator app available to manage your business on the go.

Integrations

When it comes to integrations, Circle has some catching up to do.

Right now, they only work with Zapier for most integrations. But they are serious on automations and integrations.

Here’s something useful – Circle does offer single sign-on options with platforms like MemberStack, MemberSpace, WordPress, Teachable, and others.

Kajabi, on the other hand, is way ahead in this game. They’ve got tons of direct integrations besides just Zapier.

You can easily connect it with payment processors like PayPal and Stripe, plus popular email tools like ActiveCampaign, Drip, ConvertKit, MailChimp, and even Typeform. Pretty neat, right?

Kajabi integrations 4

🏆 Winner: Kajabi. It has more native integrations compared to Circle.

Pricing

circle pricing
Circle pricing

Circle’s pricing starts at $49/month – a solid deal if you just need the community features.

For most people, the Professional Plan would be the go-to option. You get courses, advanced analytics, and live streaming capabilities.

Also, recently, it has introduced a Business plan that costs $219/mo. You may want to choose this if you want Automation Workflows, custom fields and others.

Kajabi is more expensive than Circle.

Its premium pricing starts at $149/month.

Kajabi pricing
Kajabi pricing

As their basic plan supports only 3 products and funnels, Most people end up choosing the Growth plan, which costs $199 per month. This plan allows you to create up to 15 products and funnels, making it ideal for most users.

If you are a developer and require a code editor, opt for its $399/month Pro plan.

Conclusion 🏆

Both Kajabi and Circle are highly promising tools.

Circle keeps things simple – it’s all about building communities. The platform has a clean, user-friendly interface and some solid automation features. Plus, it’s built by the same folks who created Teachable, which is a good sign for its future.

Kajabi is the more seasoned option here. It’s packed with features – you get a website builder and a robust community space with fun stuff like challenges, leaderboards, and badges.

Here’s the deal with pricing: Kajabi makes more sense for most people. At $199/month, you get pretty much everything you need.

Circle, though?

You’ll need to shell out $219/month for their Business plan if you want all the good stuff like automation workflows.