Kajabi vs Thinkific: After Testing Them Both (My 2025 Review)

Search for anything related to online course creation tools and you’ll have both Kajabi and Thinkific at the top of your list.

On one side, you’ll have users who swear by Kajabi’s all-in-one tech stack solution.

The appeal is clear—you get all the essential tools you need to build a knowledge business. That includes course creation, email marketing, website building, automation, sales funnels, payment processing, community features, and more. But all this comes at a higher price tag. 

On the other hand, you’ll find creators who champion Thinkific. 

Their argument is simple: it’s user-friendly, has solid course creation and student assessment features. However, I found Thinkific’s marketing tools fairly basic. So you’ll need to integrate additional tools like Kit for email marketing or ClickFunnels for comprehensive sales funnel building.

But which one should you choose? Thinkific or Kajabi?

I spent over 150 hours testing both online course platforms to see how they stack up against each other especially when it comes to:

• Online course creation & student learning experience.
• Community building.
• Marketing and sales features.
• Value for money.

In this Kajabi vs Thinkific guide, I’ll share my experience using both software to help you make an informed decision. So, let’s get right into it.

Kajabi vs Thinkific: Quick Verdict

Kajabi and Thinkific have many overlapping features. 

Both let you:

• Create, host and sell online courses.
• Start a learning community.
• Sell digital downloads, e.g. eBooks, templates, cheatsheets etc.
• Build a website which can act as a digital storefront for your offerings.

Given that, it can be challenging to choose between the two since they seem similar in a lot of ways.

However, after testing them, it’s clear that each platform suits different types of users.

Who should use Kajabi?

Kajabi is the best solution for creators, knowledge entrepreneurs, and online coaches wanting an all-in-one platform to build and grow their digital business. 

It offers strong marketing and sales features such as email marketing, sales funnel building, automations, checkout building, payment processing and webinar hosting allowing you to market and sell digital products without integrating third-party tools. 

While it’s more expensive compared to Thinkific, it consolidates multiple tools into one platform, making it a cost-effective solution in the long run while also eliminating the pain of juggling multiple tools.

👉 Explore Kajabi

Who Should Use Thinkific?

Thinkific is ideal for educators, course creators, businesses and online learning institutions that need a dedicated platform for online learning. It offers robust course creation tools, advanced assessments, and detailed student tracking.

For larger organizations, Thinkific Plus provides more customization, flexibility and scalability, making it a strong option for corporate training and learning institutions.

Unlike Kajabi, Thinkific is much more affordable. But you’ll also have to rely on third parties for much of your marketing needs which can quickly add up the cost. 

However, if you prefer to use dedicated marketing tools or already have a marketing stack in place, well, it won’t be much of an issue going with Thinkific.

👉 Explore Thinkific

Kajabi vs Thinkific: Comparison Summary

Kajabi vs Thinkific: Top Features Comparison + My Hands-On Experience.

In this section, I’ll compare Kajabi vs Thinkific based on their top shared features. That includes, online course building, communities, website builder, email marketing, sales features, and more.

1. Online Course Creation

Both Thinkific and Kajabi have solid online course building features, allowing you to:

• Natively host your learning materials.
• Import course materials from external cloud storage like Dropbox and Google Drive.
• Add various content formats, including text, videos, audio, PDFs,and images.
• Drip schedule course lessons.
• Use generative AI to streamline course setup.
• Assess students and track their progress.
• Issue course completion certificates.

However, when I was using the two platforms, I noticed some significant functionality differences between them especially when it comes to student assessments, and course design flexibility. 

Let me show you.

Thinkific supports more lesson types than Kajabi.

Thinkific doesn’t limit the lesson types you can have in your courses to video, text, and audio.

Instead it supports additional content formats including PDF, Multimedia, presentations and live sessions (via Zoom) as individual lesson types. 

Meanwhile, in Kajabi you can only add text, audio, and videos content formats as individual lesson types.

Both platforms support video hosting but Kajabi struggles with embedding videos hosted from thirdparty platforms.

Assume you have your course video recordings hosted on an external hosting platform like Vimeo, Wistia or Loom. 

You’ll want a platform that lets you quickly embed a video recording into your course lessons with just a link or embed code. 

Kajabi lacks a more seamless and practical way to embed your video recordings into your course lessons.

Although it has a Link Import tool, I tried it and it barely works. 

After a little research here and there and going through their knowledgebase I realized that the only way to add externally hosted videos is to embed them using the iframe code which you can add via its lesson editor.

Although the method works, there are some UX caveats in its course player.

Since the video can only be embedded in the body of the page, the video player doesn’t appear in the hero section where students naturally look first.

And so students will need to scroll a little down to access the video lesson. 

Also the video player placeholder at the hero fold will be empty unless you also add a thumbnail image. 

As you can see, that doesn’t look well for your course already.

Meanwhile, in Thinkific, embedding external videos is super straightforward.

Simply:

• Choose “Text” as your lesson type
• Click the video icon in the editor
• Paste your embed link or code

And the video will be well displayed in the course player’s hero section, exactly where students expect to find it.

Kajabi can natively host live sessions inside your course modules to further engage your students while Thinkific requires Zoom integration.

In Kajabi you can host live video sessions of up to 200 participants inside your course using its Live Rooms functionality.

This can come in handy especially if you’re planning on offering live interactive sessions, 1-on-1 student coaching, or group calls to your students all without spending extra to integrate a third party live streaming tool like Zoom.

You can schedule your live sessions to occur on a weekly basis or at a specific time of the week or day. You can also record your live sessions and automatically upload them as course materials. 

Meanwhile, Thinkific doesn’t support native livestreaming. Although it lets you include a live session as one of your course lesson types.

You’ll still need to use external live streaming tools like Zoom or any other video conferencing platforms to offer live coaching sessions, workshops, group calls and AMAs to your students. 

Thinkific has more student assessment tools than Kajabi.

Assessments lets you understand how well your students have grasped your course content. 

Thinkific offers four options to add assessments into your course. You can create quizzes, exams, assignments, and surveys. 

In quizzes you can set up multiple choice questions, set a minimum passing grade, add answer explanations and enforce a passing grade that a student must attain to proceed to the next module. 

You can also add different content formats into your quiz questions including images, videos, audio and file uploads. I also loved that its quiz builder lets you upload questions into your quizzes but only in .xlsx format.

On the other hand, Kajabi keeps everything simple. It only offers quizzes and assessments. 

Its quizzes offer various response types including, multiple choice, checkbox, short answers and also lets you add explanations to the answers.

However, it goes further by letting you add file upload as one of the response types. That way students can upload files when submitting the answers. Much like allowing them to submit their assignments.

You can set a passing grade, enable auto-grading or manual grading and even get notified when your students complete the quiz.

Bottom line: which is the best tool for building online courses?

Thinkific outclasses Kajabi when it comes to online learning. It’s more intuitive, has strong assessment and progress tracking capabilities. Meanwhile Kajabi falls short in assessments but comes on top when it comes to student engagement via its native live lessons.

2. Online Communities

If you’re building a course or a digital product, you probably want to build a space where your students can connect, ask questions, and engage with you beyond just watching videos. 

Both Thinkific and Kajabi offer tools to build an online community forum, allowing you to:

• Organize your community into sections using Circles in Kajabi and Spaces in Thinkific.
• Share content in multiple formats, including text, images, and videos, with engagement options like comments and reactions.
• Control access settings for different groups. 
• Schedule community events and allow members to RSVP.
• Send notifications to members about community events and activities.

In comparison, I found Kajabi to be more polished and a stronger choice for building engaging communities than Thinkific. 

Let me explain:

Kajabi offers more ways of engaging community members.

In Kajabi, you can create the classic community posts where you and community members can share text-based and media rich posts such videos, images and PDFs files in threaded discussions.

Schedule events and natively livestream them to up to 200 attendees.

And encourage members participation via challenges and leaderboards.

You can also start group chats where members can engage with each other in real-time (like in Slack).

Members can also DM each other encouraging interaction.

On the other hand, Thinkific’s online community engagement options are underwhelming.

It only allows you to build a basic community forum where you engage members via posts and events.

For posts, you and your members can share text-based posts with the ability to add media content such as videos, images and file uploads.

However, it’s important to note that although Thinkfic lets you schedule events and allow members to RSVP it doesn’t support native livestreaming.

That said you’ll need to use third-party video conferencing or webinar software to livestream your events.

Thinkific also doesn’t support community gamification or let you start a group chat.

Bottom line: which tool is the best for online community building?

Kajabi is the stronger option for building a thriving community around your digital courses. It outshines Thinkific with its more advanced engagement tools like live events hosting, gamification, and group chats. On the other hand, the Thinkific community tool feels like an afterthought. More like a basic forum attached to a course platform. That said, if community building is a key part of your strategy, you’ll find more flexibility and better engagement features with Kajabi.

3. Marketing and Sales Tools

Both Kajabi and Thinkific have built-in features that enable you to market and sell your digital products.

But Kajabi is a marketing powerhouse. 

It offers well-rounded tools for building marketing funnels, automated email sequences, and websites.

Thinkific on the other hand offers nearly the same marketing tech stack. Speak of funnels, email automation, and landing pages. 

But compared to Kajabi’s, Thinkific’s website builder, email marketing and sales funnel building tools are not as advanced.

Let me show you how Thinkific vs Kajabi compare in detail when it comes to sales and marketing.

Kajabi is a superior choice for sales funnel building.

Kajabi lets you launch intricate marketing funnels for your digital products so that you don’t have to use external tools like ClickFunnels for sales funnel building.

Its funnel builder provides you with 5+ templates for different campaign types like coaching, product launches, sales page, webinar funnels, etc.

When you choose either of the funnel blueprint, Kajabi will automatically generate all the relevant steps of the funnel pipeline.

For example, when you choose the Product Launch funnel blueprint, Kajabi will generate essential steps including an opt-in page, a 10 email sequence, value 1, value 2, value 3, and a checkout page.

Value 1, 2, 3 simply refer to pre-launch video content series to build anticipation and engage potential customers before the main product.

Using its visual funnel builder you can customize the steps in your funnel pipeline or add new steps if needs be. I found these blueprints SUPER useful because they make building funnels easier and faster even if it’s your first time building one.

On the other hand, Thinkific’s funnel builder is basic and rigid. You get two types of funnels (Free Lesson Funnel and Sales Page Funnel) with fixed steps.

For example, the sales page funnel template limits you to three steps in your pipeline—the sales page, checkout and a thank you page.

Unlike Kajabi, the Thinkifc funnel builder doesn’t allow you to add extra steps or even add an email sequence into your funnel. This means you’re basically limited to simple lead generation or direct sales funnels with no room to build sophisticated marketing funnels.

Kajabi has a more advanced website and page builder.

Both platforms allow you to create a website for your digital products, but Kajabi’s builder is more polished and feature-rich.

First you get access to 10+ professional looking website themes and over 20 page templates allowing you to launch fast. 

If you have a custom template, you can upload it and design everything within Kajabi’s interface.

The site builder is intuitive. You can add blocks and sections or customize existing ones from your theme template.

You can style individual blocks and columns by adding custom background colors, margins, animations, box shadow, and padding. You can further customize your pages using its collection of custom widgets.

Essentially, they are pre-designed elements you can easily add to your Kajabi pages to enhance functionality and visual appeal. They’re like plugins in WordPress.

For example, the 3D Cards widget lets you animate elements on your page.

However, these widgets are not free. They are available as add-ons, costing between $5 and $27 per month, depending on the number of widgets you use.

Kajabi website also supports blogging with SEO capability. So if creating content marketing is something you’re looking to pursue, Kajabi has you covered. 

But something I found quite interesting is its A/B testing for landing pages.

You can split-test different versions of a landing page to determine which performs better.

When setting up an A/B test, you select a winning metric such as, clicks, opt-ins, GMV, or conversions. Visitors are randomly assigned a version of the page, and the platform records the results. You can then analyze the metrics and choose the best-performing variation.

On the other hand, Thinkific has a simple website and landing page builder. You get access to 3 website theme templates to choose from. 

The themes are well built, mobile friendly and customizable. 

To build a page in Thinkific, open its site builder, and click “Add section”. 

You’ll  get access to over 20 section templates you can choose from such as, CTA, checklist, banner, timer, etc.

For example, let’s say you want to design the hero section of your website. You can choose the “banner” section. 

You can customize the section by adding images, text and a CTA button.

Although Thinkific website builder is pretty decent, it’s less flexible and lacks more advanced customization options like the ability to  change section padding, add animation or custom code. It’s challenging to customize any page beyond the prebuilt section layout making it hard to build a website that feels uniquely yours. It also has limited landing page templates and doesn’t support A/B testing and blogging.

Kajabi can replace your existing email marketing software, while in Thinkific you can only create basic automated email workflows.

In Kajabi you can build end-to-end email marketing campaigns to nurture your leads and sell your digital products. 

You can choose to create a typical email broadcast or an automated sequence. 

With email broadcasts, you can run A/B tests to determine which version performs better. You can test variations of your subject lines, text previews, or email content and designs. 

Kajabi also lets you control A/B test distribution, set winning metric criteria (such as open or click rate), and define the test duration.

For automated email sequences you can decide what’ll trigger an email series such as when a user submits a form or purchases a product. 

But you can take this further with conditional filters. For example, you can exclude contacts from your sales email series if they’re a customer. 

Below are some conditional filters you get access to.

Thinkific on the other hand, provides only basic email automation features. It supports simple sales flow and abandoned cart emails where you can have up to 3 emails in your sequence.

It also has limited automation options, which makes it hard to build well-refined email workflows.

Next, is email design and templates — and in this case, Kajabi has an undeniable edge as well. 

You get access to 10 customizable email design templates to choose from allowing you to style your emails appearance as per your brands needs.

Its email designer is pretty decent, allowing you to customize individual elements of your email using its visual drag & drop builder.

You can even save the design you like as a template so that you use it in all your emails for constituency. 

However, if you want to keep everything simple, you can decide to go with its Classic Editor which lets you keep your emails plain and simple. 

In contrast, Thinkific has a basic email editor which is limited to text-based emails. It doesn’t allow you to build visual-rich emails like embedding videos, and images. You can’t also add custom styling like adding logos, count-down timers and call to action buttons.

Both have decent sales tools.

Kajabi and Thinkific let you sell digital products online so it makes sense that they offer built-in tools to enable you to collect payments, and maximize your value order increasing your sales.

Let’s start with their payment processing. 

Both platforms provide proprietary payment solutions powered by Stripe, but with differences.

In Kajabi Payments you can accept payments via:

• credit/debit cards,
• digital wallets like,  Apple Pay and Google Pay, 
• and Buy Now, Pay Later options like Afterpay and Klarna. 

You also get a unified dashboard where you can manage transactions, collect sales tax, send invoices, issue refunds, and handle subscriptions.

However, I quickly noticed that Kajabi Payments is only available to customers in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and some European countries. It’s not supported in South America, Asia and Africa. So if you’re a creator in one of these unsupported regions, you’ll want to use PayPal, Stripe directly, or integrate third-party checkout builders.

Meanwhile, Thinkific Payments delivers a more comprehensive solution through its TCommerce suite. Unlike Kajabi it supports more digital wallets like CashApp and Amazon Pay. 

You can also manage your payments from a single dashboard, just like with Kajabi.

Same as Kajabi, Thinkific Payments is limited to the US, UK, Australia, Canada and some EU countries. You can view the supported countries here. 

Both platforms let you build checkout pages—but Kajabi offers more functionality.

With Kajabi, you can create popup checkouts that trigger from any page—landing pages, website pages, or funnels. 

That means your buyers can complete a purchase without leaving the page they’re on, reducing drop-offs.

Kajabi also has a Shopping Cart feature. It lets your customers buy multiple offers—courses, coaching, memberships, downloads in a single checkout flow. This improves the sales flow if you’re selling bundled products.

Meanwhile, Thinkific doesn’t support a native shopping cart. If you want to sell more than one product at a time, you’ll need to use workarounds like bundling or upsells.

Both platforms allow you to maximize your order value during checkout via:

• Upsells
• Orderbumps
• Bundling
• Discounts
• Coupons

But Thinkific also has Gifting. Essentially it allows you to let buyers purchase your products as gifts for others.

Bottom line: which has the best marketing and sales features?

Kajabi. It crushes Thinkific in all things marketing. It has a superior marketing funnel builder with 5+ customizable templates versus Thinkific’s rigid two-template system. Its email marketing platform is astonishingly good, featuring behavioral triggers and contact tagging. While Thinkific is trying to catch up, many of its marketing tools are subpar. Its sales funnel builder lacks customization options, and its email marketing tools are lacking in functionality.

Thinkific vs Kajabi: Pricing Review

Kajabi is more expensive than Thinkific but offers more value in the long run.

Kajabi costs more than Thinkific. And if you’re just getting started, that price difference feels significant.

I mean, if you scan through its pricing page, you can see that its lowest tier plan (Kickstarter) starts at $89 per month.

For that, you can sell just one digital product, build one website, create one community, and manage up to 250 contacts. That’s a tight limit, especially at nearly $90/month.

Now compare that to Thinkific’s Start plan at $99/month.

You can sell unlimited courses, digital downloads, coaching offers, and webinars. There’s no cap on the number of digital products you can offer.

At first glance, Thinkific gives you more flexibility for less money.

However…

If you think about it, Kajabi is a complete all-in-one platform. Which means, you won’t be purchasing a couple of third-party apps to fill in functionality gaps.

However, if you go with Thinkific and want to build a successful online education business or coaching program you’ll need to use third-party solutions like:

• Zoom – for video conferencing
• Kit – for decent email marketing
• ClickFunnels – for sales funnel building
• Squarespace – for a sleek website
• Zapier – for workflow automation
• Skool – for building a thriving learning community forum

Each of these tools adds monthly costs, which quickly stack up.

So while Thinkific has a lower starting price, Kajabi can end up being more cost-effective once you factor in all the third-party subscriptions you’d otherwise need.

Bottom line: which one is more cost effective?

If you’re just starting and want to keep costs low, Thinkific is the better entry point. Its Basic plan is only $49/month and gives you everything you need to create and sell online courses without strict limits. But if you’re serious about turning your content into a full-fledged business and want all your tools in one place, Kajabi is the smarter long-term investment.

Kajabi vs Thinkifc: Pros and Cons

Below are the benefits and the downsides of using Kajabi and Thinkific as your online course platform.

Kajabi Pros and Cons

Thinkific Pros and Cons

Kajabi or Thinkific: Which One Should You Choose?

In this Thinkific vs Kajabi review, I tried my best to evaluate both tools to see where each one thrives and falls short. 

And honestly, both platforms do well when it comes to creating and selling courses online and other digital formats like downloads and communities. 

However, after evaluating the two tools in detail, I noticed that each tool best suits different audiences.

Here’s my final take on each platform.

Choose Kajabi if you want an all-in-one platform that does more than just host courses. You’ll get tools for marketing, sales, automation, and community management baked into your subscription. This saves you time and money down the road, especially if you’re scaling a knowledge-based business.

Go with Thinkific if your focus is purely on course creation and student experience, and you’re okay piecing together third-party tools to manage marketing and sales. It’s flexible, easy to use, and cheaper to get started with.

Also read:

• Best online course platforms
• Thinkific alternatives
• Kajabi vs. Circle
• Kajabi alternatives

Kajabi vs Thinkific: FAQs