The best Kajabi alternative overall is ElasticFunnels. It replaces Kajabi as the whole business, not just the course player: courses and a passwordless members area, sales pages and funnels, split tests on any page under one URL, a checkout with bumps and one-click upsells, subscriptions with dunning, your own affiliate program, a CRM with email and SMS automations, and every sale tied to its ad. It's all on one customer record, on every plan, with no product or contact caps, and a flat 0.5% on its own checkout where Kajabi adds 2% for using your own processor on Basic. The full Kajabi vs ElasticFunnels comparison goes feature by feature.
The others replace one slice of Kajabi: Teachable, Thinkific, Podia and LearnWorlds host courses, Mighty Networks hosts a community, and Systeme.io, ClickFunnels and Kartra are funnel bundles with courses on the side.
Kajabi hosts the course, runs the community, sends the emails and gives your students a branded app. The trouble starts when you look at what you pay for that, how much of it is capped, and how little of it helps the part that brings in the money: the pages and the checkout.
I spent nine years as CTO of a direct-response company before I started ElasticFunnels, and the question I learned to ask of any platform was where the money comes in. For a course business, it comes in on a sales page, a checkout and an upsell, and then it stays in through a subscription and a student who keeps logging in. ElasticFunnels is built to run that whole path in one place.
Move one course and compare. Rebuild the sales page, link the product to the course, and buyers are enrolled and logged in the moment they pay. Every feature is on every plan.
Why course creators look for a Kajabi alternative
Almost every reason comes back to Kajabi's own pricing page. As of 29 September 2026:
- The entry price is high. Basic is $179 a month on monthly billing ($143 a month billed annually), Growth is $249 and Pro is $499. There is no free plan, and the trial runs for up to two weeks, with a $149 authorization hold that Kajabi's help center explains.
- The limits sit low on Basic. Basic allows 5 products, 2,500 contacts, 2 admin users and 1 community. The next step up is Growth at 50 products and 25,000 contacts.
- Features you might expect are an upgrade. The affiliate program, the branded mobile app and the API start on Growth. Webhooks are on Pro.
- Your own processor costs extra. Kajabi Payments charges 2.9% + $0.30 on Basic. If you use your own Stripe or PayPal instead, Kajabi adds a 2% fee on Basic and 1% on Growth, on top of the processor's own fee.
- Testing is limited. Kajabi's A/B tests cover landing pages. Visitors are randomly assigned, a test runs for 1 hour to 30 days, and it "cannot be canceled once started". Split testing checkout or sales pages is not publicly stated.
That third-party fee is the one people underestimate. Say you sell $10,000 of courses in a month through your own Stripe account on Basic: that's $200 to Kajabi on top of Stripe's fee and the $179 plan, every month you sell that much. On ElasticFunnels, the same $10,000 through your own Stripe account carries a 0.5% fee on any plan, on top of Stripe's own fee, and there are no product or contact caps to upgrade past.
The best Kajabi alternatives at a glance
Entry prices are monthly on monthly billing, taken from each vendor's pricing page on 29 September 2026. Most are cheaper billed annually, and most cap products, contacts, students or admin seats per plan.
| Tool | Best for | Starts at | Free plan or trial | Key strength |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ElasticFunnels | Best overall: creators who want to grow sales | $97 a month | 14-day trial | Courses, members area, funnels, checkout, subscriptions, affiliates and CRM on one record, no product caps |
| Teachable | A simple course business | $39 a month, plus a 7.5% fee | 7-day trial | Student apps on every plan |
| Thinkific | A growing course catalogue | $54 a month (US) | 30-day trial | Unlimited courses on every plan |
| Podia | Small creators on a budget | $49 a month, plus a 5% fee | 14-day trial, no card | Store, community and email in one |
| LearnWorlds | Structured training | $29 a month, plus $5 per paid enrollment | 30-day trial | Assessments and certificates |
| Mighty Networks | Community-first courses | $79 a month, plus a 2% fee | 14-day trial, no card | Community, courses and events together |
| Systeme.io | The tightest budget | Free, then $17 a month | Free plan | A free plan that includes a course |
| ClickFunnels | Funnel-first with courses | $97 a month | 14-day trial | Funnels, email and courses on one login |
| Kartra | Coaches who want every tool | $59 a month, plus a 5% fee | 14-day trial | Email, SMS, helpdesk and webinars |
| Kajabi, for reference | Courses, community, app | $179 a month | Trial of up to two weeks | Courses, community and email in one |
How we picked these tools
We did not score or star-rate anything, and we're not going to pretend we ran nine businesses on nine platforms. What we did was narrower, and you can check every bit of it.
- The field. We started from the tools that show up again and again in "Kajabi alternative" searches and roundups, and kept the ones a course creator could realistically move to.
- The sources. Each vendor's own pricing page and help center, read on 29 September 2026. Where a vendor doesn't state something publicly, we say so instead of guessing.
- The criteria. What it costs at the plan you'd actually need, what it takes per sale, how it hosts and delivers a course, what the checkout can do (order bumps, upsells, subscriptions), whether it can split test the pages that sell, and whether it has a community or a mobile app.
The tools fall into three groups, and knowing which group you need saves most of the research.
- Course platforms (Teachable, Thinkific, LearnWorlds, Podia) do the learning side well and keep the selling simple.
- Community platforms (Mighty Networks) put the members first and the course inside the community.
- All-in-one platforms (ElasticFunnels, Systeme.io, ClickFunnels, Kartra) run the pages, the checkout and the follow-up, and deliver the course too. This is the group that can replace Kajabi as a whole.
The nine alternatives, one by one
We make ElasticFunnels, so it's listed first, and every competitor fact below comes from that vendor's own pages. If anything below is out of date, email [email protected] and we'll fix it.
1. ElasticFunnels: best Kajabi alternative overall
ElasticFunnels runs a course business end to end: the sales page, the checkout, the upsell, the subscription, the course, the affiliates and the follow-up, all on one customer record. Buying a product that's linked to a course enrolls the buyer on the spot, and the checkout logs them straight into the members area, so there's no second account to create and no password to forget. Unlike Kajabi, nothing is capped by products or contacts, and nothing is held back for a higher plan.
Best for: course creators, coaches and membership sellers who want to grow sales, whether the buyers come from a list, a launch or Meta, Google and TikTok ads.
What replaces what:
- Kajabi's courses. Courses with modules, lessons and materials, ready-made course and player pages, and a copy button to clone a whole course for a new offer.
- Kajabi's student portal. A members area with passwordless login by magic link or code. Students see their courses and progress, orders, subscriptions and bonus downloads, and can manage or cancel a subscription themselves, with a retention offer before they go.
- Kajabi's sales pages and funnels, with real testing. A visual builder, an AI page builder that builds any page you describe and a cloner that turns a live Kajabi page into an editable one. Split tests serve 2–5 variants of any page, the checkout and upsells included, under the URL the ad already points at, so its learning phase isn't reset. Kajabi's tests stop at landing pages.
- Kajabi's checkout, on your own processor. Custom checkout pages on Stripe, NMI, PayPal, Klarna and Authorize.net, with order bumps, coupons, Apple Pay and Google Pay on Stripe and NMI, and one-click upsells and downsells on Stripe, NMI and PayPal. Subscriptions come with intro prices that step up, prepaid discounts, dunning for failed payments and MRR, churn and lifetime value reports.
- Kajabi's affiliate program, on every plan. Commission groups, a creatives library, an affiliate portal and payouts, where Kajabi keeps affiliates for Growth and up.
- Kajabi's email and CRM. Enrollment, magic-link, receipt and subscription emails go out from your own SMTP. A built-in CRM with pipelines collects every form entry and quiz answer, and visual automations send email and SMS, tag students and call webhooks. Newsletters sync to Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp or Kit.
- Quizzes and lead magnets. A quiz funnel builder with scoring and branches, forms and exit popups, all feeding the same CRM.
- More in the same account. Server-side conversions to Meta, Google Ads, TikTok and Taboola, with each sale tied to its ad, UTM and page variant; a call center that works abandoned checkouts and failed payments; and, if you sell through several NMI merchant accounts, MID routing with caps and a per-MID report.
Pricing (September 2026): Starter is $97 a month, Growth $197 and Scale $497, with a 14-day free trial. Every plan includes every feature; plans differ only by usage limits such as page views, brands and team seats, never by products or contacts. A 0.5% fee applies only to revenue through the ElasticFunnels-hosted checkout. Details on the pricing page.
Pros:
- The whole sales path, from presell page to upsell, is testable without touching the ad.
- Buyers are enrolled and logged in the moment they pay.
- No product or contact caps, the same 0.5% checkout fee on every plan, and affiliates on every plan.
Cons: no discussion community or branded mobile app. Students learn in the members area on the web.
The side-by-side is on Kajabi vs ElasticFunnels, and the course setup is on funnels for course creators.
Here's why I put the funnel ahead of the course hosting for ad-driven creators. Picture a course sold on Meta at a cost per purchase close to its price. One extra point of conversion on the checkout, or an upsell that one buyer in five takes, is the difference between an ad account you can scale and one you switch off. The lesson player doesn't move that number. The sales path does.
2. Teachable: best for a simple course business
Teachable is a course platform that keeps things straightforward: build the course, sell it on Teachable's checkout, and let students learn on the web or in its iOS and Android apps.
Best for: creators with a small number of courses or coaching products who want a clean student experience without running a funnel.
Standout features:
- iOS and Android student apps on every plan.
- Drip content and auto-graded quizzes, with course certificates on Growth.
- Coupons, upsells, order bumps and abandoned-cart emails listed in its feature grid, with an affiliate program from Builder.
Pricing (September 2026): Starter is $39 a month with 5 products and a 7.5% transaction fee. Builder is $89 with 10 products and no Teachable fee, and Growth is $189 with 50 products and 5 admin users. Annual billing brings them to $29, $69 and $139. There's a 7-day free trial and a 30-day guarantee, and no free plan.
Pros: an easy start, student apps included, and no platform fee from Builder up.
Cons: products are capped per plan, and the 7.5% fee on Starter adds up quickly once you sell.
Consider it if… you want the closest thing to Kajabi's course side at a lower price, and a handful of products covers you.
3. Thinkific: best for a growing course catalogue
Thinkific is a course platform that doesn't cap how many courses you publish. It adds communities and a set of selling tools, and it has the longest trial in this list.
Best for: educators who plan to build a catalogue of courses and want room to grow without changing plans for every new product.
Standout features:
- Unlimited courses on every plan.
- Order bumps and an affiliate program from Basic; bundles, upsells and payment plans from Start.
- Communities (1 on Basic and Start, 3 on Grow), and a standard API with webhooks from Grow.
Pricing (September 2026): Thinkific shows local prices. From Europe its page lists Basic at €53, Start at €107 and Grow at €213 a month on monthly billing. After Thinkific's August 2026 price change, published US prices are $54, $109 and $219 a month, or $40, $82 and $164 billed annually. Thinkific Payments processes at 2.9%. There's a 30-day free trial and no free plan. A branded mobile app is a $199-a-month add-on on its custom Plus plan.
Pros: no course cap, a long trial, and selling tools on the entry plan.
Cons: the branded app is expensive and limited to Plus, and the API waits until Grow.
Consider it if… your plan is more courses, not more funnels.
4. Podia: best for small creators on a budget
Podia bundles a website, an online store, courses, a community and email marketing into one simple account. It's built for solo creators who sell a mix of courses, downloads and coaching.
Best for: creators starting out who want one tidy place for everything and don't need advanced funnels.
Standout features:
- Courses and community on every plan.
- Email marketing included, with subscriber limits by plan.
- Affiliate marketing and upsells from the Shaker plan.
Pricing (September 2026): Mover is $49 a month with a 5% transaction fee, 50 products and up to 100 email subscribers. Shaker is $99 with no fee and up to 500 subscribers, and Earthquaker is $179 with unlimited products and up to 1,000 subscribers. Annual billing brings them to $42, $84 and $150. The trial is 14 days with no card.
Pros: simple, fairly priced, and community is included from the first plan.
Cons: the included email lists are small, and the 5% fee on Mover makes it expensive once you sell regularly.
Consider it if… you're early, your audience is small, and simplicity matters more than conversion tools.
5. LearnWorlds: best for structured training
LearnWorlds leans into the learning experience: interactive video, assessments, certificates and learning paths. It serves both creators and training teams.
Best for: course creators and trainers whose students need to be tested, certified or tracked through a program.
Standout features:
- Advanced assessments and course certificates from Pro Trainer.
- Subscriptions, memberships, payment plans and a community from Pro Trainer.
- A branded mobile app as an add-on.
Pricing (September 2026): Starter is $29 a month plus $5 per paid enrollment, capped at 1,000 active learners a month. Pro Trainer is $99 with no enrollment fees, and Learning Center is $299. Annual billing brings them to $24, $79 and $249. There's a 30-day free trial.
Pros: assessments and certificates from Pro Trainer, and a low entry price.
Cons: the $5 enrollment fee on Starter adds up fast on a low-priced course, and community is not on Starter.
Consider it if… the learning outcome is what you sell. This is where "Is LearnWorlds better than Kajabi?" usually lands: for training, yes; for marketing, Kajabi does more out of the box.
6. Mighty Networks: best for community-first courses
Mighty Networks starts from the community and puts courses, events and live sessions inside it. It suits creators whose members stay for each other as much as for the content.
Best for: memberships and cohort programs where discussion and events are the product.
Standout features:
- Community, courses and live events on every plan.
- An AI assistant it calls AI Cohost on every plan.
- Branded apps through Mighty Pro.
Pricing (September 2026): Launch is $79 a month, the next tier $179 and Growth $354, with transaction fees of 2%, 1% and 0.5%. The trial is 14 days with no card, on Growth features. Branded apps are on custom Mighty Pro pricing.
Pros: community, courses and live events in one place.
Cons: a transaction fee on every plan, and the funnel and checkout side is basic next to a funnel tool.
Consider it if… Kajabi's community is the part you'd miss most.
7. Systeme.io: best free Kajabi alternative
Systeme.io is the low-cost all-in-one: funnels, email, courses, a blog and an affiliate program in one account, with a genuinely free plan.
Best for: first-time course creators who want to launch without a monthly bill.
Standout features:
- A free plan with 2,000 contacts, 3 sales funnels and 1 course, and no card or expiry.
- Unlimited email sends, and no transaction fee on any plan.
- A/B tests, one-click upsells and order bumps from the $17 plan up.
Pricing (September 2026): free, then Startup at $17 a month (5 courses, 5,000 contacts), Webinar at $47 (unlimited courses) and Unlimited at $97.
Pros: the lowest entry cost, with email included.
Cons: courses are capped on the lower plans, and the design and testing tools are simpler than a dedicated funnel builder.
Consider it if… budget is the deciding factor. Full comparison: Systeme.io vs ElasticFunnels.
8. ClickFunnels: best funnel-first alternative with courses
ClickFunnels bundles funnels, email, courses, a community and a store under one login. It's built around selling one offer through a funnel, with the course delivered afterwards.
Best for: creators who think in funnels and want their course hosted in the same place.
Standout features:
- Funnels, email and courses on one account.
- A/B testing from its second plan.
- An Affiliate Center on Dominate.
Pricing (September 2026): Launch is $97 a month with 3 courses and no A/B testing, the next tier is $197 with 6 courses, and Optimize is $297 with 10. Dominate is $5,997 a year. There's a 14-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Pros: strong funnel tooling with courses included.
Cons: courses are capped by plan, and A/B tests and the affiliate center are upgrades.
Consider it if… you want a funnel builder first and a course platform second. Compare it with Kajabi on ClickFunnels vs Kajabi.
9. Kartra: best for coaches who want every tool
Kartra bundles pages, email, SMS, courses and memberships, a helpdesk, calendars and webinars. It's the closest to Kajabi's everything-in-one approach, with more marketing channels.
Best for: coaches and consultants who want email, SMS and support on the same account as the course.
Standout features:
- Unlimited email and SMS from Starter.
- Affiliate management, surveys and quizzes and a helpdesk from Growth.
- Unlimited courses and memberships from Starter.
Pricing (September 2026): Essentials is $59 a month with 500 contacts, 1 course and a 5% transaction fee. Starter is $119, Growth $229 and Professional $549, with no transaction fee. There's a 14-day trial.
Pros: a very wide toolset on one login.
Cons: Essentials is limited, and the useful plans cost about what Kajabi does.
Consider it if… you like Kajabi's model and want SMS and a helpdesk in it. Full comparison: Kartra vs ElasticFunnels.
Kajabi alternatives compared feature by feature
The five most-searched options next to Kajabi. "Not publicly stated" means the vendor's pricing and help pages don't say, not that the feature is missing.
| Feature | Kajabi | ElasticFunnels | Teachable | Thinkific | Podia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Course hosting and members area | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Enrolled and logged in right after checkout | Not publicly stated | Yes | Not publicly stated | Not publicly stated | Not publicly stated |
| Order bumps | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not publicly stated |
| Upsells after the sale | Yes | Yes, one click | Yes | From Start | From Shaker |
| Split tests | Landing pages | 2–5 variants of any page, checkout and upsells included, under one URL | Not publicly stated | Not publicly stated | Not publicly stated |
| Server-side conversions to ad platforms | Meta | Meta, Google Ads, TikTok, Taboola | Not publicly stated | Not publicly stated | Not publicly stated |
| Built-in affiliate program | From Growth | Every plan, with portal and payouts | From Builder | Yes | From Shaker |
| Built-in marketing email | Enrollment, receipt and dunning emails from your SMTP; email and SMS automations; newsletters through Klaviyo and others | Built-in marketing email | Not publicly stated | Built-in marketing email | |
| CRM pipelines and call center | Not publicly stated | Every plan | Not publicly stated | Not publicly stated | Not publicly stated |
| Community | Yes | Not built in | Yes, on higher plans | Yes | Yes |
| Caps that force an upgrade | Products and contacts | Page views, brands and seats; no product or contact caps | Products | Not publicly stated | Products and email subscribers |
| Platform fee per sale | 2% or 1% with your own processor, below Pro | 0.5% on its hosted checkout, every plan | 7.5% on Starter | Not publicly stated | 5% on Mover |
Read the ElasticFunnels column from top to bottom: it answers every row but one on every plan, with no product or contact caps. The row that decides it for a growing course business is split tests, because the sales page, the checkout and the upsell are where a course makes or loses its money.
How to switch from Kajabi
A move goes smoothly when students never notice it. Do it in this order, and keep Kajabi running until the last step.
- Export your data. In Kajabi, export your contacts (Contacts, then Bulk Actions, then Export), your offer purchases (from the Sales tab) and your transactions. Each export arrives by email as a CSV, and the download link expires after three days.
- Rebuild the course. Upload lessons and materials to the new platform and recreate the module structure. Keep the original video files; re-uploading is faster than trying to pull them back out.
- Rebuild the sales pages and checkout. Recreate each sales page, offer, bump and upsell. In ElasticFunnels you can paste a live page's URL into the AI page cloner and get an editable page back, then link each product to its course so buyers are enrolled automatically.
- Plan subscriptions separately. Saved cards and active subscriptions don't always move between processors. The low-risk route is to leave existing subscribers where they are and sell new ones on the new checkout; ask both vendors before you try to move cards.
- Give existing students access. Grant access on the new platform for everyone in your purchase export, and email them the new login link before anything changes.
- Move the domain last. Point your domain's DNS at the new platform only once pages, checkout and access all work, then send one ad or one email to the new funnel and compare it on sales.
In ElasticFunnels, the course and the checkout live in the same account, so linking each product to its course is the whole access setup: every new buyer is enrolled at checkout, with no integration or API in between.
Which Kajabi alternative is best for you?
For most course businesses, ElasticFunnels. The course platforms on this list replace Kajabi's lesson player and stop there. ElasticFunnels replaces the course, the members area, the pages, the checkout, the affiliates and the follow-up, removes the product and contact caps, and adds the testing and ad tracking that grow sales.
- You sell to your own list: ElasticFunnels. Courses and a members area, checkout with bumps and one-click upsells, and affiliates on every plan, without a cap on products or contacts.
- You sell with paid ads: ElasticFunnels. Split tests under one URL on the sales page and the checkout, and each sale sent back to the ad platform.
- You sell memberships or subscriptions: ElasticFunnels. Dunning, save offers at cancellation and MRR and churn reports keep the recurring revenue in.
- A different job: if the community forum or a branded app is the product itself, a community platform like Mighty Networks is built for that.
If you're still between two tools, these side-by-side pages go deeper: Kajabi vs ElasticFunnels, ClickFunnels vs Kajabi and GoHighLevel vs Kajabi. For the wider market, see our best sales funnel software guide, and for the checkout side, how to add an order bump and a one-click upsell and downsell.
- Price the plan you'd need at twice your current sales, fee per sale included. The entry price is the least useful number on a pricing page.
- Don't swap Kajabi for a cheaper lesson player. The course isn't where a course business grows; the sales page, the checkout and the upsell are. Pick the platform that runs those and the course together. That's ElasticFunnels, and it's why I built it.
- Don't move active subscribers in the same week you move everything else. It's the one step where a mistake costs you customers who were already paying.
Kajabi puts a course business behind one login, then caps it by products and contacts and charges extra for your own processor below Pro. ElasticFunnels puts the same business behind one login without those limits, and adds the tests, the upsells and the ad tracking that grow it. Use the trial to move one real course, not a demo page, and compare the sales.
