Are you trying to decide between Kajabi and ClickFunnels?

I know exactly how you feel.

You see, before ClickFunnels 2.0 came out, picking between them was simple. Kajabi was the clear winner.

I’ll be honest – even I found it hard to choose, now that ClickFunnels 2.0 is here!

Here’s why you can trust my opinion: I’ve spent over 4 years working with both tools, building funnels and creating courses.

Let me break down everything you need to know about both platforms.

Ready to learn more?

Overview

Features	Kajabi	ClickFunnels
Pricing	Starts at $69/mo	Starts at $97/mo.
Courses	Advanced course management and creation	Basic course functionality, recently introduced
Communities	Feature-rich, enables gamification and accountability	No community feature
Page Builder	Minimal but flexible, good for basic web design	Powerful and intuitive, feels like using dedicated page builder
Funnel Building	Contains different kinds of funnels, visual builder	Advanced funnel building with automation, split test, and analytics

Let me tell you about two powerful all-in-one platforms that I’ve been using – Kajabi and ClickFunnels.

I’ve watched Kajabi grow from a simple course platform into something really special.

Now it’s got everything you need – courses, memberships, coaching tools, email marketing, automation, websites, and even a community space where your students can interact and earn points.

As for ClickFunnels.

It’s really good at building marketing funnels.

Think of it as your go-to tool for creating landing pages and basic membership sites.

But here’s what changed: In October 2022, ClickFunnels 2.0 came out.

They added some really useful features:

• Funnel hub
• Basic courses
• E-commerce
• Blog builder
• Website builder
• Email marketing
• CRM

Why people are ditching ClickFunnels?

But in spite of them adding these new features, the old charm of ClickFunnels is gone.

Why?

The platform has been losing more users than it is gaining.

More and more marketing funnel-hackers are moving from ClickFunnels to GoHighLevel.

Meanwhile, coaches who focus on teaching and community building are switching to Kajabi since it provides better value for their needs.

Back in the day, people were happy to pay premium prices for it – just like how we don’t mind spending extra on Apple products.

But things have changed.

Here is what is exactly going on in people’s minds:

These days, people look at ClickFunnels plans and think “wow, that’s expensive” – especially with all their limits and extra fees.

I mean, they take a 4.9% cut from every sale you make!

I’ve noticed this shift happening as AI makes tools more affordable for everyone.

I guess it has more to do with the macro shift that is happening.

Where people are no longer loyal t brands but instead look at the brands that offer the best value.

We can see it in the retail market as well.

No?

🚨 Added to this, 2024 and beyond, there’s been growing pushback against “bro marketing” tactics—like the “One Funnel Away” challenge and Russell Brunson’s hype-driven marketing style.

And here’s the truth: community-driven expert businesses are the future, especially in the age of AI where information and knowledge is available at the fingertips.

People value people and the “sales-before-people” mindset is losing its appeal. Concepts like upsells and hard sales are pushing people away.

And did I tell you that ClickFunnels doesn’t come with community features but the ability to set 50 different upsells?

Quick decision – Kajabi vs. ClickFunnels

What they have in common

• They do it all: Both Kajabi and ClickFunnels are complete platforms that help you create courses, build funnels, and handle email marketing. Everything works together smoothly.
• Smart automation: Both have tools to help you visualize and manage your sales funnel, with triggers, actions, and ways to track how well each step works.

Where does Kajabi excel over ClickFunnels? 👍

• Mobile apps: Kajabi has apps for both iPhone and Android. Your students can watch courses, talk to others, buy stuff, and get updates right on their phones.
• Advanced course features: Kajabi gives you advanced features like drip content, certificates, detailed student tracking, and tools to see how people watch your videos.
• Built-in quizzes: You can easily make quizzes and surveys. Plus, you can set up automatic actions when someone finishes a quiz.
• Great community features: As one of the best community platforms, Kajabi lets you create challenges, set up meetups, give badges, and use points to keep people engaged.
• Kajabi Events: You can run live streams right in Kajabi – no need for extra tools like Demio or Zoom Webinars.

Explore Kajabi

Where does ClickFunnels excel over Kajabi? 👍

• Better page design: It feels like using professional design tools like Elementor. You get rows, sections, templates, parts that update everywhere at once, and A/B testing.
• Visual funnel builder: Their canvas tool helps you see and build complex funnels easily. You won’t need extra tools like Funnelytics or Geru.
• More checkout options: ClickFunnels gives you lots of ways to customize how people pay.
• Physical product sales: You can set up an online store using their drag-and-drop tool. They handle shipping, inventory, and taxes for you.

Explore ClickFunnels

Upfront bottomline

Choose Kajabi if you’re serious about creating engaging online courses and building a thriving student community.

Go with ClickFunnels if your primary focus is advanced funnel building.

No communities.

No advanced course features.

Only funnels.

Okay.

If funnels are what you need:

Please do note that at ClickFunnels’ price point, GoHighLevel offers the best value for money.

In fact, there is a mass exodus happening.

But on the other hand, Kajabi is a league of its own.

If you don’t identify yourself with the good ‘ol funnel hacky vibe:

For most course creators and coaches, Kajabi offers better value and more relevant features.

And you know what?

Kajabi’s community features and mobile apps are game-changers.

They’re the key to maintaining high student engagement and participation.

Here’s what I’ve learned from experience:the tools you pick shape how you think and work.

👉 I’ve noticed that Kajabi helps you focus on building real relationships with your audience, not just selling to them.

Course creation

Kajabi – it’s built from the ground up for creating courses.

That’s its main strength.

When you start making a course, you’ll find a really straightforward course builder.

You can organize everything neatly with modules, sub-modules, and lessons – it’s all very logical and easy to use.

I really like how flexible it is with lesson types.

You can create video lessons, audio content, or even assessments to test your students’ knowledge.

Here’s something really practical – you can give your students extra resources like checklists, worksheets, and templates.

They can download these right from their lesson page.

Now, let me show you some powerful features that Kajabi has that you won’t find in ClickFunnels:

• AI course creation: Facilitates the creation of AI-driven courses.
• Bulk video uploads: Allows for mass uploading of course videos.
• Cloud uploading support: Integrates with Google Drive and Dropbox for cloud uploads.
• Drip scheduling feature: Enables delayed release of course content.
• Content locking for compliance: This allows for control over content access until prerequisites are met.
• Customizable course player: Provides 7+ templates for tailoring the student’s course player dashboard.

Let me show you what the most popular course player looks like in Kajabi:

Of course, as I told you before, Kajabi gives you 7+ different templates for your course player and dashboard.

Now, let’s look at ClickFunnels.

🙁 It almost feels like ClickFunnels UI designers blatantly copied Kajabi’s design elements for their 2.0

One thing both platforms do well: you can control how students move through your course by locking or scheduling lessons.

Students need to finish one lesson before moving to the next.

This helps make sure your students actually complete the course in the right order.

Here’s something you need to know about ClickFunnels lessons – they all use the same basic template.

Want to change how your lessons look?

You’ll need to edit the template first and work with placeholder variables.

It’s not as simple as it could be.

🏆 Bottom line: Kajabi. I’ve tested both platforms extensively, and Kajabi’s course features are really impressive (in par with Teachable). ClickFunnels just added course features recently, and honestly, they still have a long way to go.

Memberships and community

After Kajabi bought Vibely, they added tons of cool features to make their community better.

Things like points, badges, meetups, and ways to keep people accountable.

These really make a difference.

It’s right up there with the big community platforms like Circle and Mighty Networks.

Let me show you how it works.

In Kajabi communities, you can create different groups and set prices for each one.

Once people join, they get access to everything – the main feed, group challenges, and places to set up meetups.

👉 Important: Kajabi has apps for both iPhone and Android, so your community members can stay connected. ClickFunnels? They don’t even have community features, let alone mobile apps.

But wait – there’s more.

If you’re using ClickFunnels, you’ll have to work with their Courses and Blogs feature to make a membership site.

Then you can drip out content over time, like I mentioned before.

This is how a typical membership content page looks like on ClickFunnels.

👉 Also read: 7 Kajabi Community Examples Crushing it with Gamification

🏆 Bottom line: Kajabi (no comments)

Design and page builder

🎨 Let me tell you about the page builders. Both platforms have their own builders now. I’ve tried the old ClickFunnels – it was pretty buggy and slow. But with version 2.0? Things are much better.

Kajabi gives you more than 10 free themes to work with.

ClickFunnels?

Just 1 theme.

Yes one.

Let me tell you about the page builder in Kajabi.

It gives you over 40 different sections you can add to your pages.

Pretty neat, right?

👉 The page builder is simple but gets the job done. I know plenty of people who use Kajabi to build their entire website instead of WordPress or Squarespace.

But here’s the thing – if you want to do really fancy web design stuff, Kajabi’s page builder might feel a bit limiting.

You’ll need to know some advanced design tricks to make it work.

Now, about ClickFunnels.

Their 2.0 page builder is totally different from before.

They’ve added rows and sections to help you design pages better.

Building pages is super easy now – it feels just like working with premium tools like Elementor.

Want to know what makes ClickFunnels special?

It has some really cool features that other page builders don’t have.

You can create “Global sections” that update everywhere at once, and you can test different versions of your pages to see what performs better.

👉 Here’s something really cool – they’ve added a feature where multiple people can work on the same page together, just like when you’re working on Google Docs. Nobody else is doing this yet!

Both Kajabi and ClickFunnels let you use your own domain names and subdomains.

And if you go for their more expensive plans, both tools let you remove their branding and use your own instead.

🏆 Bottomline: ClickFunnels. Both tools have good page builders that let you customize a lot. But ClickFunnels gives you more templates and options to work with.

Funnel building and automations

Let me show you how Kajabi handles funnels.

You get different funnel types to choose from – just click any blueprint and you’re ready to go.

It gives you a visual funnel builder where you can map out your whole funnel right in front of you.

And guess what?

You can add automations right there in the flowchart too.

Want to know how well your funnel is doing?

Kajabi’s got you covered.

The funnel builder shows you all the important numbers like how many people are converting, how much money you’re making, and how well everything is tracking.

Now, Kajabi’s automation features – they’re super beginner-friendly.

Here’s what’s cool – you can set up automations that kick in when students finish their lessons.

Want to motivate your students?

• You can automate sending one-time coupons after lesson completion
• Auto-register students for upcoming Kajabi Events.

Pretty neat, right?

Now, let’s look at what ClickFunnels offers.

ClickFunnels 2.0 comes with something called FunnelHub – it’s basically your control center for managing your entire site.

Building funnels is super easy – they give you more than 15 funnel templates that you can start using.

Here’re few funnel recipes:

• Optin funnel
• Lead magnet funnel
• Product launch funnel
• Video sales letter funnel
• Squeeze page funnel
• Etc.

Don’t like the templates?

No problem.

You can always build your funnels from scratch using their page builder.

And here’s something really cool!

ClickFunnels now has Funnel workflows that make automating your funnels super easy.

Think of it like this – you set up some triggers, and your funnels start working on their own.

You can even have multiple funnels running at the same time.

This is perfect when you want to build complex marketing funnels.

Let me show you some of the best features:

• Funnel canvas
• Funnel analytics
• Conditional split paths
• Split test

👉 I’ve been testing this out, and I have to say – ClickFunnels really did their homework here. They rebuilt their funnel system from scratch to make it super easy to use. Now you can do some really interesting marketing stuff without getting lost in the technical details.

🏆 Bottom line: ClickFunnels. I’ve tried both, and ClickFunnels just makes more sense for funnel building. Their split testing and conditional paths are really powerful, plus you get 20 funnels on the Basic plan – that’s way more than what Kajabi offers.

Email marketing

With Kajabi’s email marketing, you can send both one-time broadcasts and email sequences.

And here’s what’s great – you can either use their templates or build your own emails from scratch.

Just like ClickFunnels, they keep things simple with a visual editor.

You just drag and drop different blocks to build your emails.

It’s really easy to use.

👉 What I love about Kajabi is their autoresponder sequences. Think about it: you can create email sequences for things like a 7-day or 30-day challenge to help people improve their lives. It’s a great way to keep your webinar attendees engaged and moving forward.

Want to make your Kajabi emails even more powerful?

Just combine them with automation rules.

There’s so much you can do with automation.

Here’s what I mean:

When someone clicks a link in your email sequence, you can automatically sign them up for a webinar in Kajabi events.

One click, and they’re in!

Pretty neat, right?

Now, let’s take a look at what ClickFunnels offers.

ClickFunnels 2.0 has completely changed their email marketing system (they used to call it Actionetics).

Now you get more than 15 email templates for all sorts of things – promotional emails, invitations, newsletters, and order confirmations.

Here’s what you can do with these templates:

• Cart abandonment
• Community connect requests
• Drip email notifications
• Assessment completion emails
• New community comments
• Much more

They also have a dedicated email builder that lets you create really nice-looking emails.

You get different layouts and building blocks to work with.

But there’s a catch – right now, ClickFunnels only lets you send broadcast emails.

They’re working on adding follow-up sequences soon.

Need this feature right away?

No problem – you can use flows to create email funnels with delays as a temporary fix.

⚠️ Here’s the main issue though – you can only send emails through ClickFunnels’ domain, not your own. But don’t worry – they’re working on adding support for other email providers.

🏆 Bottom line: Kajabi wins this one. Why? Because it already has email sequences built in.

Checkout features

Want to make more money from your sales?

Both Kajabi and ClickFunnels help you do that with features like upsells, downsells, and order bumps.

Looking at Kajabi’s checkout features, you can now add up to 10 upsells and downsells when someone’s buying your stuff.

This is pretty new – they just added it recently.

Now, about ClickFunnels:

They give you more checkout templates that really work well for getting sales.

I’ve tested them myself.

Both platforms want to help you make more sales, but there’s one thing to keep in mind: Kajabi only gives you one template to work with. You’ll need to customize it yourself using their page builder.

🏆 Bottom line: I have to go with ClickFunnels here. They’ve been doing checkouts and one-time offers longer than anyone else, and they give you lots of tested templates to choose from. From my experience, their checkout process just works better for getting sales.

Affiliate marketing

ClickFunnels provides an affiliate center app where you can create multiple commission plans and build affiliate funnels.

Affiliates get personal dashboards to track performance and access promo links.

One really unique feature is their two-tier affiliate system, allowing affiliates to earn commissions from referring other affiliates.

😕 However, their cookie-based tracking system has limitations, and they haven’t implemented server-side tracking yet.

Let me tell you about Kajabi though:

Kajabi also includes built-in affiliate marketing features that let students promote your products.

It’s only available on Growth ($199/mo) or Pro ($399/mo) plans.

It offers flexible affiliate management with auto-approval or manual review options.

What’s unique?

You can create VIP affiliates with special product discounts, and track performance through comprehensive analytics showing clicks, conversions, and customer acquisition rates.

🏆 Bottom line: Tie.

Integrations

Let me break down the integrations for you.

Kajabi gives you about 10+ built-in integrations to work with.

ClickFunnels goes a bit further with 25+ integrations.

Both platforms work with Zapier and Webhooks.

This means you can connect them to pretty much any other app you’re using.

👉 When it comes to taking payments, Kajabi has something special – their own payment system called Kajabi payments. It’s really convenient because it lets your customers pay with Google Pay and Apple Pay, plus the usual options like Stripe and PayPal.

🏆 Bottom line: ClickFunnels. As it gives you more options with its 25+ direct integrations. Though honestly, both platforms work well with Zapier and Webhooks, so you can connect them to pretty much any tool you need.

Pricing

Kajabi’s pricing is on the higher side compared to ClickFunnels, especially if you’re looking at the advanced features.

Here’s what you get with Kajabi:

The Basic plan costs $149/month, but you’re limited to just 3 products and 3 funnels.

That’s not a lot if you’re planning to grow.

Want the good stuff like the affiliate program, advanced automations, and no Kajabi branding?

Upgrade to their Growth plan at $199/month.

I know – it’s not cheap, but that’s what it takes to get the full feature set.

Now, ClickFunnels 2.0’s pricing:

They keep it simple with just two plans.

The basic plan starts at $97/month and gives you 3 brand workspaces, unlimited funnels, and courses.

The main difference between plans is the CRM contact limit.

👍 Something important to note: Unlike Kajabi or Teachable, ClickFunnels doesn’t put any limits on how many products or courses you can create. That’s a big plus.

🏆 Bottom line: ClickFunnels is more affordable at $97/month with unlimited funnels and courses, while Kajabi starts at $149/month with strict limits.

Conclusion

If you need really good course features, want to build engaging communities, offer coaching, start a podcast, have nice mobile apps, and want everything in one place – go with Kajabi.

I’ve tested both, and trust me, Kajabi’s course features are way better than what ClickFunnels offers.

But here’s the thing:

If you’re more focused on building great marketing funnels, want to test different versions of your pages, and need a really good page builder with templates that actually convert, then ClickFunnels is your best bet.

It’s all about marketing – that’s their main focus.

No communities.

No deep course features.

All, funnels!

Kajabi, on the other hand, does both marketing automation and helps you deliver value through courses and community building.

ClickFunnels gives you that marketing vibe. Kajabi gives you that kind of a value marketer’s vibe.