Kajabi vs Clickfunnels 2.0: Which Best Fits Your Needs?

As a business owner, perhaps you’ve asked yourself, “What is the difference between Kajabi and ClickFunnels 2.0?” or even which of the two fits your needs best. There are definitely a few differences between the two, and as a result you might eventually end up using both. In this article, I will try to help you understand what each platform can do and help you to choose which one is best for you. I jested above that you may end up using both, and I know some businesses that do, but my personal opinion is that you don't need to. Hopefully, this article will help you see each platform for what it is and then have a better idea as to which one you want to use.

Today I'm going to compare Kajabi vs ClickFunnels (their new 2.0 version) to explain what each digital platform is and how they function, compare their pricing, features and purpose, and in the end give you a verdict as to which one is the better choice. Let’s dive in!

Platform disclosure: I have only used ClickFunnels 2.0 over a short time period and have extensive experience with Kajabi. Also, unless specifically stated any reference to ClickFunnels is referring to their new platform ClickFunnels 2.0.

Kajabi vs ClickFunnels: The Digital Platforms

Is Kajabi a Funnel Builder?

Kajabi is a one-stop shop for your online business and is considered a funnel builder. Kajabi continues to evolve and grow over the years to add more functionality and features to help you with your business. Kajabi made its name early on as being one of the best experiences for creating online content like online courses or membership sites. In Kajabi's pricing plans, you can customize anywhere from three to two hundred products which include online courses, podcasts, training and coaching programs, membership sites, and public or private community.

Kajabi funnels is an area within the platform that guides the funnel-building experience with templates for different types of funnels and a setup wizard that helps connect everything (landing pages, email sequences, forms, tags for segmentation, etc) together. You can also start from scratch and combine whatever features you need to build a sales funnel specific to the needs of your online business. One nice feature of the funnels area in Kajabi is getting the combination of page, email, and sales analytics on one screen.

In the pricing plans of Kajabi, funnels are something that you get a limited quantity of. This isn't a problem for anyone I have met or heard of because nearly everyone I know builds their funnels themselves using the landing pages, forms, automations, and email sequences features of Kajabi independently and not within the funnel wizard. You lose the benefit of seeing the analytics on one screen but you gain other benefits of flexibility and having unlimited potential and quantity. Kajabi is an easy-to-use platform and it is a very simple process to connect your pages, forms, emails and tags through Kajabi automations.

What is ClickFunnels 2.0?

ClickFunnels is a funnel-building platform for selling both physical and digital products. It sets the standard for bells and whistles on the technical side of building a funnel that is customizable in every way. ClickFunnels 2.0 is a complete overhaul of the code that ClickFunnels was built on, essentially built new from the ground up and ads new features and makes the program run more smoothly while maintaining the core appearance and functionality of the system.

ClickFunnles is also an all-in-one platform and has a lot of overlap with Kajabi in the features it offers which I go over later on in this article. Something that is new in ClickFunnels with this big update is they added an eCommerce site builder, a blog builder, and improved their website capabilities.

ClickFunnles 2.0 is the new ClickFunnels. Users do have the option of continuing to use the old version of the software but for all intents and purposes, if you hear or read anything about ClickFunnels it is the new 2.0 version of the software that is being referenced. So from here on out, I'll be using ClickFunnels and ClickFunnels 2.0 interchangeably to mean the same thing.

Kajabi vs ClickFunnels: The Quick Verdict

Consider Kajabi as a well-rounded all-in-one platform that is focused on ease of use and creating an excellent experience for your customers in the courses or communities you provide to them:

• You want to create, high functioning digital courses and membership sites

• Your online business needs a website, landing pages, email marketing, sales funnels

• You don’t have any coding experience

• You want to focus more on your customer experience than you do on your customer's funnel experience

Consider ClickFunnels if have the interest and resources to build a complex funnel system that will be the backbone of your business: 

• You need sales funnels and all the tools to tweak and modify them to improve conversion

• Analyzing your performance and numbers is something you want to focus on

• You have an eCommerce store

• You want a great funnel platform to add to your suite of business apps

Now that we’ve gone over the quick verdict, let’s go over the detailed comparison breakdowns and give you a more in-depth look at which is the better choice.

Kajabi vs ClickFunnels: Pricing and Offerings

Here are the plan lineups that don’t really line up as neatly as we would hope:

1. Kajabi Basic: $149/month $119/billed annually vs ClickFunnels Basic: $147/month $127/billed annually

2. Kajabi Growth: $199/month $159/billed annually vs ClickFunnels Platinum: $197/month $157/billed annually

3. Kajabi Pro: $399/month $319/billed annually vs ClickFunnels Collective: $297/month $208/billed annually

Kajabi has the option to double your quotas and give you extra support and access to the code editor for an extra $99/month through what is called Kajabi Access.

Check out this article if you want a full review of Kajabi pricing.

Let’s compare the Basic plan offerings:

• Kajabi Basic provides 3 products and sales funnels with unlimited landing pages and emails for marketing (You can create an unlimited amount of your own funnels using landing pages and automations, but you only get 3 of the 'put together for you templates' in the funnel builder). You do not get access to the affiliate program, you must have Kajabi branding in your email delivery, and you do not get access to 24/7 chat support or advanced automations.

• ClickFunnels Basic is very similar to what you get with Kajabi with the same number of customers and contacts limit, website and landing pages, and limits you to 3 courses; but you get 20 sales funnels. I am not sure if you can build funnels outside of the "funnel builder" like you can in Kajabi.

Now for the mid-tier plans:

• Kajabi Growth provides 15 products and sales funnels, gives you the option to remove Kajabi branding, and supports up to 10 admin users and 10,000 active members, and 25,000 contacts.

• ClickFunnels Pro has the same products, customers and contact limits, it only gives you 5 admin users but you get 100 funnels and 3 domains.

Finally, for the top-tier plans:

• Kajabi Pro offers 100 hundred products and sales funnels, supports up to 3 websites and domains, gives access to up to 25 admin users, and you can get 20,000 active members and 100,000 contacts.

• ClickFunnels Funnel Hacker is where ClickFunnels and Kajabi differ more noticeably. Only 15 admins but 9 domains, 200 courses and 200,000 contacts and advanced analytics (I'm not sure how this differs from basic analytics).

Winner: Undecided

The lower tier plans are very similar in what they offer, ClickFunnels pulls ahead with the most expensive plan being lower priced and having a few quota limits that exceed Kajabi's. 

Kajabi vs ClickFunnels: Comparing Features

When we talk about comparing the main features of the two platforms, we are talking about:

1. Website Building

2. Course Creation

3. Funnels and Marketing

4. Analytics

5. Integrations

6. Affiliates

7. Support

Website Building

Kajabi has a streamlined and powerful website builder that is easy to use and requires no coding experience. For those coders out there or people like me who like to dable with some of the basics, you get easy access in the page editor to page CSS and text block HTML coding. If you are interested in getting some basic copy-and-paste code to make your Kajabi pages pop with an extra dose of flair, check out my free guide of 5 easy bits of code at the bottom of this article.

If you are curious about what some Kajabi-built websites look like, check out my article showing Kajabi website examples.

The upgrade to ClickFunnels 2.0 introduced new website functionality to ClickFunnels.  You could always build individual pages and link them together like a website, but now there are page design enhancements and something called universal elements that allow you to make it easier for consistency in building a website in ClickFunnels. This is a comment I will make on a few of these features but the weakness for ClickFunnels here is that a website isn't a focus of the funnel. Most successful product funnels don't involve a website, and because ClickFunnels's primary focus is bringing a customer through a funnel to make a sale, the website functionality isn't a huge focus of the platform.

Winner: Kajabi

My opinion is the overall customization and ease of use make Kajabi the better contender if you need a website builder.

Course Creation

Kajabi offers an industry-leading course platform. On the back end it is easy to manage your content and on the front end the customer experience is very good. Kajabi has an app your customers can use to access their course material and a new community that can be integrated with your course or membership.

Kajabi is just introducing (Q1 2022) what they call the Creator Hub, which is a content creation tool that takes material from your courses and helps you parse it down to social media or mini-course size bits so it can be repurposed for other things. This is a cool tool in beta as of Q1 2023 and from the comments, I've seen about it and what it has done for people, is going to be a good feature for course creators.

ClickFunnels 2.0 improves the course deliverable on ClickFunnels. There isn't as much customization or control over the user experience as with Kajabi and the backend for managing your content isn't as efficient. It is nice that ClickFunnels has this ability for its users so they don't have to have a third party for this, but they haven't done as good a job as Kajabi has with theirs.

Winner: Kajabi

Kajabi's course creator experience is very good. Kajabi focuses on the client experience and makes accessing the content very easy and intuitive. There is also a Kajabi app that clients can use to access their course material. Courses are an area where Kajabi has held a strong position in the market in for a long time. 

Funnels and Marketing

Both platforms are sales funnel software. Each platform has pre-built sales funnel templates, ready to use from the get-go. You can also build a sales funnel from the ground up if you prefer that instead.

That being said, the comment I made about ClickFunnels not giving the same attention to their website abilities as they do their funnels, is being said about Kajabi here. Kajabi gives you the ability to have a functioning funnel, but they do not go to the lengths that ClickFunnels does to make anything possible.

ClickFunnels excels with its split testing, order bump upsell down-sell mechanics and design. They also have cool features like being able to send people to different versions of pages based on what source of traffic they are, ie. from IG sees a red button and from Facebook sees a green button.

Winner: Tie

You may see my Kajabi bias come in here but I do have a reason for splitting this one down the middle.

I give Kajabi points for covering the basic needs of a sales funnel and doing it in an easy-to-manage way. That to me is important because a lot of people don't have the resources in their business to focus so much on sales funnels. Russel Brunson would probably knock me up the side of the head (in a good way, he seems like a good guy haha) for saying that and say that the sales funnel is what most online business owners should be focusing on. I disagree though, I think most people don't have the interest, time, or resources to make the funnel experience of their customers the focus of their business. Kajabi lets you build a funnel that will suit your needs 99% of the time, but not be the focus of your business.

I give ClickFunnels points because they have gone the distance with building sales funnel software and have focused entirely on creating an amazing sales funnel builder that will allow you to (if you put the work in) see every step of the way what can be optimized for conversion. What holds them back in my opinion is that it is more complex and I would hazard a guess that the majority of the funnels that people build with it could be replicated in Kajabi.  I think what this comes down to is my opinion that the funnel shouldn't be the focus of the business and I think that's the vibe ClickFunnles is going for.

Analytics

Both platforms have access to Google Analytics integration. Kajabi allows you to see things like revenue (both overall and per user), churn rate, affiliate progress, page views, and more.

ClickFunnels allows you to see all of this, plus a more detailed view into traffic (and whether organic or otherwise), referrals, audience interests and behavior, email statistics, conversion rate, and more.

Winner: ClickFunnels

I don't have very much experience with ClickFunneles analytics but from what I read about it online, I think it is likely better than Kajabi's so I am going to give them the win on this one.

Integration

Apps and Third-Party

Integration is something that both platforms are good at, especially since both can connect with Zapier, which then can connect with countless apps. When it comes to regular integrations, Kajabi allows you to integrate with 10 built-in apps—and you can even integrate with ClickFunnels itself—but ClickFunnels allows you to integrate with plenty of other options besides Zapier, Salesforce, ShipStation, or Hubspot.

Winner: ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels has more integration options.

Payment Processing Options and the Checkout Page

Kajabi can connect to Stripe and PayPal for payment processing and gives you the ability to have a wide range of payment options for your customers. You can have single payment, multiple payments (think payment plan), subscription payments, and pay-what-you-want offers. The pay-what-you-want offer is really cool and lets you set a minimum amount and the customer can pay that amount or a higher amount if they want. With subscription payments you can set the recurring period to week, month, year and choose what the interval is, 1,2,3,etc.. So you could have the subscription bill every 3 months, etc. You can also have a trial period and a set-up fee which gives you a lot of flexibility in how you charge for your programs. Kajabi also gives you coupon abilities so you can leverage discounts in a variety of ways.

ClickFunnels will integrate with several payment gateways including Stripe and PayPal. I haven't been able to confirm any details regarding what kind of payment options they allow you to offer your customer. It appears that coupons are not something that you can offer, but instead you create alternate funnel sequences that have different pricing options to give discounts. The checkout page is much more robust with ClickFunnels and gives you much more design control in the page itself and in the upsell and down sell process. While all of these areas are more robust, they are also much more complex in ClickFunnels compared to Kajabi. 

Winner: Tie

While Kajabi only integrates with Stripe and Paypal, those options seem to cover a vast amount of users' needs. What is really important to me is to easily offer a variety of payment plans and types which gives you flexibility in your sales process and gives Kajabi the lead here. Setting up checkout pages and managing payment plans is a much easier process in Kajabi.

There are things that are clearly better in ClickFunnels, namely the design options and the control you have over the upsell and down sell process. I don't think this extra functionality (Kajabi does allow you to use upsells and down sells, you just can't control as much of the process) is worth the price of the complexity of the system, but if you do then this would put ClickFunnels as the winner in this area.

Affiliates

Kajabi allows you to be an affiliate with a 30% rate for any referrals you provide them and performance-based commissions that naturally increase the better you do. You get to decide how much or how little you refer, and this can easily be seen in the partner dashboard.

Kajabi also allows you to set up an affiliate system so other people can be your affiliate which can be a great way to expand your sales process.

With ClickFunnels, you can earn six different types of commission as an affiliate. This encompasses new customers you refer, front-end offers, and SaaS offers depending on what kind of affiliate rank you achieve.

Winner: Kajabi

ClickFunnels has more available commission types, which can mean more commissions overall, but Kajabi lets you set up affiliate sales for your online course, which is probably more relevant to the majority of users.

Support

With Kajabi, you get plenty of training through Kajabi University, but that’s not where it stops. You also get 24/7 technical and customer support through chat. You can also reach them by phone, emails and tickets if needed, but the 24/7 chat is a nice go to for quickly resolving things. Note that the Basic plan does not have access to this chat 24/7, but their hours are reasonable.

As for ClickFunnels, there is plenty of educational training as well. They also offer emails, phone calls, live chat, form-filling, and scheduled callbacks. The chat function isn’t 24/7, but still good.

Winner: Tie

Both platforms have great access to support in different ways.

The Final Verdict

Both platforms have a lot to offer but each seems to have a different focus and intent. As I've been spending time in ClickFunnels 2.0 and researching it, it has a much different vibe to it compared to Kajabi.

Kajabi vs ClickFunnels

Kajabi comes out on top for being a well-rounded digital platform that is easy to use, performs very well, and focuses on making a good experience for the end user (your customer). If your focus is going to be on delivering your product to your customer and their experience, then I recommend Kajabi.

ClickFunnels vs Kajabi

ClickFunnels comes out on top for being a well-oiled funnel machine that rounds itself out with the ability to handle many of the needs of a wide range of digital entrepreneurs. If your business model is going to be focused primarily on your funnel then this is a good choice for you. With ClickFunnels, the funnel comes first above all else.

I teased in the introduction that maybe you would want to end up using both platforms, this is an option as you can work with them together and leverage the strengths of both. I my experience when people ask me if they need both, I ask them what they want their funnels to be like, and after they explain what they are hoping to do, I let them know they can do all of that within Kajabi.

I hope you see now that this isn't a question of which one is better, but which one matches your business goals and style.

If you are thinking Kajabi might be a good solution for most or all of your business needs, then I encourage you to try it out with this 30 day free trial. I am an affiliate for Kajabi and give all my referrals 30-days of 1-on-1 support and 2 months of group support for signing up through my link. This will hopefully give you the time and to figure out if Kajabi is right for your needs and the extra help to make a lot of progress during your trial.

JD

Kajabi Expert