Best Kajabi Alternatives With Advanced Courses in Mind

espite its price tag, we do understand why Kajabi is such a popular platform among single course creators. It’s an effective LMS, making creation and selling much easier. 

However, what if your course creation needs more? For instance, an advanced solution that suits your teaching style and beliefs.

The chances are that Kajabi won’t help here, even with all its capabilities and features. It does many things and does well, but not great. 

Let’s see what Kajabi lacks and explore effective Kajabi alternatives that better suit your teaching flow or sales goals.

Should you look for Kajabi alternatives?

First of all, in terms of online course development and selling, Kajabi is one of the best options on the market. 

The advantages are vivid: multiple products for selling, a decent online course builder, a helpful landing page editor, a mobile app, excellent marketing tools, and proper integrations. 

And such a suite comes in line with what Kenny Reuter, co-founder of Kajabi, says about Kajabi’s goal in a Tidemark interview: their product enables entrepreneurs'  journey, removes “some of the tech headaches…and delivers some best practices on how to start a business online.”

Yet, why would you require an alternative to Kajabi? 

Key Kajabi disadvantages

The main problem with Kajabi is that it does everything, but isn’t the best at it. 

Some of the platform’s tools and apps simply don’t suit the needs and teaching style of the creators. Simultaneously, many of them look toward Kajabi competitors as they see downsides. 

What are they?

Lack of engagement tools

After acquiring Vibely, a former community platform, in 2022, Kajabi now has a well-awaited solution to create communities of learners.  

Yet, if you want to link it to your online course, you should know that Community counts as a Product. It means that you either will: 

1. Use “circles” and “challenges” to create a program there 
2. Use third parties or a simple comment section to support engagement within an online course.

That way, the absence of in-built engagement tools may impede the learning process or the launch of advanced courses. 

Kajabi now offers some templates for online courses with gamification elements. However, these interactive options are too simple and require some effort to set it right.

Limited management and reporting

You may have already thought of the management and reporting of the platform. These are the issues that some Kajabi competitors, like Thinkific or Teachable, have as well. 

For instance, the Student Progress Report is basic enough, showing only completion rates and the last login time of users. At the same time, the product lacks a dashboard where one can manage courses and activities. In terms of content management, it doesn’t support the SCORM format.

Besides, some customers criticize the platform for non-intuitive editors and a steep learning curve.

Customization options and Kajabi pricing

Lastly, being a universal platform, Kajabi relies on templates and pre-built options. Unfortunately, it brings less room for advanced customization of pages and forms. 

Also, Kajabi reviews tell us that adequate plans are pretty expensive for some creators or even organizations, considering available tools. Kajabi pricing for the Basic Plan is $149/mo with 3 products only and no advanced options, while the Growth Plan is $199/mo, yet offers no custom code editor.

Kajabi alternatives for better learning flow and process (not sales)

• #1. EducateMe: Effective LMS for setting a smooth learning experience
• #2. Disco: Dynamic-feed software for communities of learners
• #3. Pathwright: Software with unique “paths” for active learning
• #4. Circle: Solid platform for growing communities and memberships
• #5. Maven: Intuitive software with a focus on group learning and networking

So, Kajabi is excellent for starting a course creator’s journey. However, you may consider other tools to provide a more profound and compelling learning experience.   

Which ones? Those that contribute to the interaction between students and management of the course, allowing active learning.

Here are the alternatives to Kajabi that give you plenty of options and higher control over the teaching flow:

#1. EducateMe: Effective LMS for setting a smooth learning experience

We should say that, despite offering no sales funnels and marketing tools, EducateMe is the best Kajabi alternative for creating advanced and effective courses with no hassle. 

EducateMe is a flexible platform with a significant focus on engagement and activity management. Thus, it should be your option if you take an intelligent and practical approach with communication and insights at the center.

Compared to Kajabi, EducateMe offers a more intuitive course builder and has a built-in messenger linked to the courses. It’s characterized by Slack-like channels, DMs, and comment sections. With them, you can start a discussion and break no flow of students’ thoughts.

EducateMe can support and optimize your workflow with smooth integrations, including Loom, Notion, Slack, and Zoom. Besides, this alternative to Kajabi offers a dashboard to track students’ activity and attendance by tags, leave notes, and get insights. Its management features work best with multiple courses and cohorts.

Interesting fact. EducateMe has been growing really fast, having doubled the number of learners on the platform (from 10,000 to 20,000) in just 4 months.

Other powerful EducateMe features:

• White label LMS. With a solid branding option, you can customize forms and course appearance, adjusting colors, fonts, logos, and shapes.
• Progress tracker. Use the Kanban method, allowing instructors to see, react, and administer the statuses of the assignments.

Pricing: 14-day free trial; Starter Plan contemplates $2.5 for an active user; Enterprise Plan is available upon the call with sales, where a plan can be devised based on the provider’s needs.

💡Highlight: If you value intelligence, control, and flexibility for advanced learning provision, EducateMe can grant you that with its management and engagement tools.

#2. Disco: Dynamic-feed software for creating a community of learners

Disco is a different online learning platform that uses dynamic chats and feeds for the building of communities of learners. It can be the best option for learning providers preferring a community-centered approach or selling memberships. 

First of all, Disco is better than Kajabi regarding online community creation.

It has a fresh, vivid design with a pretty easy-to-use course builder. Disco allows virtual spaces where users can add apps referring to content, curriculum, events, and feeds and support them with channels.

On the other hand, it organizes everything under one board, offering an online course builder and quick access to reporting and communication. Nevertheless, the significant disadvantages are basic reporting and analytics and overreliance on community format.

Interesting fact: Being a partner to different schools and academies like Dribble, Disco offers insightful pieces and interviews with experts on how to build communities.

Essential options of this Kajabi alternative:

• Automation. With it, you can create templates for automation for specific triggers or events. For instance, upon each registration, you can send a welcome message or add a person to the group.
• Space customization. Importantly, Disco allows customizing domains, spaces, labels, and colors.

Disco pricing

There is a 14-day free trial.

💡Highlight: With community tools and an appealing look, Disco can be a great option for creators looking for a space to build an online community of learners. 

#3. Pathwright: Simple software with unique “paths” for active learning

Another alternative to Kajabi that underscores the teaching needs is Pathwright. Pathwright is a very intuitive and learner-oriented platform that offers “paths” to create courses. 

To start with, it offers an innovative and clean design that adds to the user experience on any device. Pathwright uses a ‘path’ approach for instructors to build steps and define which turn the learning will take. It’s possible due to a smooth drag-and-drop course builder.

Also, Pathwright pays a lot of attention to active learning and allows teachers to engage instantly with students. That is why each path can be supported by discussion threads; you can use a community space as well. 

This Kajabi alternative offers basic e-commerce options, like preview access and discounts. The major downturns are limited reporting, the need to download reports, and poor content formats.

Interesting fact. More than 43% of the Pathwright team are active or former teachers.

Important Parthwright features:

• Intuitive content blocks. They allow adding interactive pieces, like annotated images, videos, flashcards, and questions.
• Brand and course customization. Due to the design, you can customize the brand page and course blocks by adding custom CSS code or changing the background colors and fonts.  

Pricing: free plan, Starter Plan is $99/mo (unlimited paths); Essentials Plan is $199/mo (3 cohorts per path, 5 mentor groups, custom domain); Complete Plan is $499/mo (unlimited cohorts, 20 mentor groups, certificates); Enterprise Plan is available upon the request.

💡Highlight: Being an uncommon solution with a clean design and smooth content provision, Pathwright is excellent for organizations that are underscoring learner-oriented and active learning.

#4. Circle: Solid software for growing communities and memberships

Circle is a comprehensive and customizable community platform that offers powerful engagement tools and an intuitive approach to creating virtual learning spaces. Like Disco, it has better community and course creation tools than Kajabi.

This Kajabi competitor offers a well-organized community builder where you can create virtual spaces and send videos, comments, and even voice messages. Even though it’s simple, you can add posts, chats, and events. There, you can use spaces to add primary content and create different courses depending on the access to the content. 

The software offers good flow automation and basic reporting features similar to other Kajabi competitors. Interestingly, Circle Plus offers app creation, allowing students to browse courses, engage, and attend live streams.

The major downturns are limited reporting and interactive course-building options.

Interesting fact. Circle issues monthly product updates, paying significant attention to product development and improvement of available functions.

Other exciting features of Circle:

• Live streaming. The platform offers a practical built-in live-stream feature to organize Q&A, discussions, or simply go live. 
• Search bar. This function is helpful if you have a lot of courses and communities, allowing you to look for keywords within posts, courses, and comments.

Circle pricing

A free plan (trial) is available.

💡Highlight: Circle is a powerful community learning platform, and if discussions and live sessions take a significant part in your courses, it should be your choice.

#5. Maven: Intuitive software with a focus on cohort learning and networking

Maven is an online learning platform offering a marketplace and organizing learning provision around cohort-based learning and networking for influencers and creators. Just like Kajabi, Maven brings marketing options to the table. Simultaneously, it offers a powerful community to help learning providers.

With Maven, course creators can create online courses, events, and projects (assignments) for cohorts via a user-friendly content editor. The app is pretty easy to use and allows uploading files for sharing. At the same time, it offers basic communication options, particularly channels and DMs, to start a discussion.

Besides, Maven allows surveying students before and after the course to organize courses better. Yet, the platform lacks integrations, reporting and assignment capabilities, and a diversity of formats.

Interesting fact. The co-founder of Maven, Wes Cao, left the company in September 2023. Such an event can affect the company’s vision and leadership.

Essential Maven features:

• Marketplace and marketing. The platform attracts some creators with the marketplace it offers. Creators can launch an email campaign, create lead magnets and alumni referrals, or develop a landing page. 
• Community. Maven has a robust community supporting influencers and creators. Besides, the Maven Accelerator program is pretty effective for new users.

Pricing: free trial; 10% of the learner fee, not considering transaction fee taken by Stripe (2.9% +30 cents per transaction).

💡Highlight: Being a synergy between the marketplace and easy course creation software, Maven suits influencers and experts with an audience best.

Kajabi competitors that help you sell (not teach)

• #6. LearnWorlds: Powerful LMS with a variety of interactive content options
• #7. Podia: Popular Kajabi alternative with solid email tools
• #8. Teachable: Alternative to Kajabi with greater content and format flexibility
• #9. Thinkific: A more affordable LMS with a focus on courses and tax support
• #10. Kartra: Powerful lead gen platform with membership option for course selling

Sure, we do understand that not all learning providers want to sacrifice the marketing and sales benefits of Kajabi. Its features simply are one of the best on the market. 

Yet, some options are cheaper, while others bring more in terms of course-building or flexibility.

#6. LearnWorlds: Powerful LMS with a variety of interactive content options

LearnWorlds is a bit complex but decent LMS, offering content variety and a solid function for setting sales and marketing. Compared to Kajabi, it brings better content format variety and offers good reporting.

Notably, just like Kajabi, it provides marketing and sales support. You can create a website with a blog and use an app for courses. 

Regarding content and assignments, LearnWorlds has multiple options with interactive elements. It allows better immersion of the students into the learning. Besides, the instructor can organize community discussions, hold exams, and issue course completion certificates.

Interesting fact. The co-founders of LearnWorlds, Panos Siozos, Fanis Despotakis, and Giorgos Palaigeorgiou, have years of education research experience and got a Ph.D. in Educational Technology in Greece before launching LearnWorlds.

Yet, such a devotion to content options results in disbalance. Because of multiple functions, there is certain complexity; while the design is outdated and can be hard to follow, bringing issues for operation. 

Other powerful LearnWorlds features:

• Interactive video editor. Add simple and interactive pieces and elements to your uploaded video content, including texts, images, questions, buttons, or subtitles.
• Reporting. Learnworlds provides a separate space for analysis of the enrollment, participation, and performance of students. It also presents primary sales data.

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LearnWorlds pricing

A free trial is available. 

💡Highlight: LearnWorlds is a great alternative to Kajabi regarding content and task options; it may be suitable if you rely on pre-recorded materials, videos, and students' autonomy.

#7. Podia: Popular Kajabi alternative with powerful email tools

Podia claims to be an all-around platform that allows you to create and sell courses and various digital downloads. This solution is a good alternative if you are looking for excellent email marketing capabilities. Other functions are similar to Kajabi functions.

Except for an in-built powerful email solution with segmentation and tags, it offers an online course builder that supports all primary content formats. Thus, there is no need to rely on templates. Importantly, you may use appropriate community tools. 

Coaching sessions and webinars (under the advanced plan) are other products you can create and sell. Nonetheless, this software lacks advanced features for engagement with students, content creation, and task management. Yet, compared to Kajabi, it’s more affordable.

Other features of Podia:

• Web page building. Podia offers a flexible web page builder to experiment with blocks, fonts, colors, and layouts.
• Affiliate marketing. This solution has a good affiliate program feature, allowing managing affiliates, links, and analytics.

Podia pricing

💡Highlight: Podia will suit creators or businesses that either focus on the email channel significantly for course distribution or consider diversifying their learning provision business.

#8. Teachable: Alternative to Kajabi with greater content and format flexibility

Teachable is a well-known platform that many creators use due to its flexibility and decent content builder. Likened to Kajabi, it offers better content and format options for creators to develop programs. 

Yes, the central area of Teachable operation relates to course building. Nonetheless, it allows for creating and selling bundles and digital downloads. With its intuitive course editor, you can add audio, PDF files, videos, build quizzes, or embed media files. Notably, the editor is powered by AI, bringing more efficiency to curriculum building. 

The main downsides of this Kajabi competitor are no community, lack of branding options, and high fees under specific plans (Pro Plan). 

Other Teachable features:

• Web page and marketing. Teachable provides a simple website builder where you can use blocks to add content. At the same time, it brings essential marketing tools to the table, yet they are far from being advanced. 
• App. Lastly, Teachable offers an app that learners can use to access courses.

Teachable pricing

💡Highlight: Teachable content-oriented tools look fresh and are ideal for single creators and experts starting their creator journey. However, for business growth or advanced courses, this platform may not be enough.

#9.Thinkific: A more affordable LMS with a focus on courses and tax support

Thinkific is a flexible learning solution for course creation and selling. It is a cheaper alternative to Kajabi, which has great course-builder and web page tools and brings some tax support to its users. Importantly, it puts course creation tools first, yet offers basic marketing options.

The good news is that it offers community options and a great content variety that can be inserted into the course. With the community, you can make posts and organize events. Simultaneously, you can add videos and links or quizzes for better immersion into the learning process.

However, it would be fair to note that Thinkific design and user interface look outdated, while there is still a lack of tools for proper engagement and student tracking. Besides, some advanced options can be accessed only within the high-tier plans.

Essential Thinkific features:

• Integrations. Thinkific provides a wide range of integrations that can compensate for the limited engagement options. Thinkific can divide them into categories, in particular, learning experience (BeastNotes or Elai), engagement and assessment (Pointagram or Ding), connections and social (Bonjoro or Community Box).  
• Marketing and sales tools. Thinkific has no built-in email marketing but offers solid third-party options. Also, there are options to use sales widgets or create affiliate programs. Lastly, it provides a tax automation solution for creators.

Thinkific Pricing

Learning providers can use a free plan. Basic Plan is $34/mo, offering unlimited courses, 1 community and 5 spaces. Start Plan’s price tag is $74/mo, providing 1 community and 10 spaces as well as assignments. The pricing for Grow Plan is $149/mo, giving access to 3 communities, 20 spaces per each, and advanced customization.

💡Highlight: Thinkific can be an option for advanced courses and proper selling if you are ready to spend time and effort to set the right integrations.

#10. Kartra: Powerful lead gen platform with membership option for course selling

Lastly, there is Kartra, a comprehensive marketing platform that offers features for course development and the creation of digital products. Compared to all Kajabi alternatives provided here, Kartra has more advanced marketing and sales funnel management features. 

What are the options for creating an online course, then? Well, creators can use membership tools to organize curriculum with categories and add content. Moreover, it offers the ability to create quizzes and discuss issues via comments. 

Yet, Kartra has significant limitations concerning communication with students, their engagement, and course development. That way, isn't the best option for developing advanced courses. 

Essential Kartra features:

• Solid builder tool to sales pages. Kartra offers good page-building capabilities thanks to numerous templates and the ability to change any element or block. Branding options are decent as well.
• Powerful lead generation options. Being a marketing platform, this alternative offers effective lead management (like tagging and scoring), multiple ways to generate leads (like email and affiliate marketing), and supports the lead’s journey with forms, pop-ups, and banners.

Pricing: no free plan but 30-day money-back guarantee; the Starter Plan costs $119/mo, providing 2 Membership sites, 20 products, 1 custom domain); Silver Plan costs $229/mo, granting unlimited products and sites, 3 custom domains; Platinum costs $559//mo and offers 10 custom domains.

💡Highlight: Kartra isn’t a learning management system; however, it can be the right solution if you seek more powerful marketing and sales features to sell digital products.

Conclusion: Which alternative to Kajabi to choose?

If you want a course creation platform that will help you to provide deep learning and advanced programs, Kajabi is not the one. You must focus on alternatives offering engagement, reporting, and management tools. What are they?

• EducateMe is the best Kajabi alternative for advanced course creation, with powerful course-builder tools to optimize the flow and handle conversations. It works best for academies or online schools. Why not test it or book a demo just now?
• Disco and Circle are excellent community learning features ideal for creators and learning providers developing an online community of learners or having a membership site. 
• Pathwright is just a smooth and flexible solution with the best design that puts simplicity and learner needs in the center. Besides, there is Maven for experts and influencers that allows building programs for groups and selling them on the marketplace.

However, if you’re interested in a cheaper option or one that has more content opportunities, here are platforms like Kajabi that help with sales:

• Learnworlds offers worthy content and interactive elements but lacks engagement means. Podia has powerful marketing tools and easy-to-use builders. 
• Teachable and Thinkfic are solid options with basic marketing but flexible and intuitive course editors. Notably, Thinkfic offers great integrations for collaboration and learning experiences.
• Lastly, there is Kartra, which is more of a marketing platform but with the possibility to build a membership site and build courses.