2025 Showdown: Comparing Thinkific and Kajabi to Find Your Ultimate Course Platform

 Thinkific and Kajabi are two of the leading platforms for hosting online courses.

But which one suits your needs best?

When you’re setting up and selling an online course, your choice primarily depends on a few critical aspects: how your course website appears, the design and effectiveness of your sales pages, the student experience and how the dashboard feels during learning, and finally, pricing plans along with how your content is delivered—whether all at once or gradually over time.

The main goal is to offer a top-tier experience for your students so seamlessly that they feel they’re engaging with a professional educational brand, not just a course builder.

Both Thinkific and Kajabi are capable of delivering these features. Still, they differ significantly when it comes to pricing, membership options, and some important features. In this review, I will explore the key features of each platform to help you decide which one aligns best with your goals.

Let’s dive in.

Disclaimer: This article includes affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you decide to subscribe to a paid plan—at no extra cost to you. Nonetheless, I genuinely recommend these tools for online course creation. You can read my full affiliate disclosure in my privacy policy.

Thinkific is a cloud-based platform enabling you to create, promote, and sell online courses. It offers tools like customizable course websites, sales pages, automated email sequences, and curriculum management, empowering you to turn your expertise into a flourishing online business.

Some of Thinkific’s key features include a drag-and-drop course builder for uploading videos, quizzes, and organizing content; customizable pricing, scheduling, and automation tools to enhance learning; branding options to match your identity; engaging multimedia materials; dedicated course websites optimized for sales; integrated marketing tools and payment gateways; automated emails for progress updates and reminders; detailed student analytics including group and cohort reports; secure cloud storage with backups; and free hosting of videos through Wistia.

Check out my full Thinkific review for more insights.

Kajabi, on the other hand, is an all-in-one platform designed to help you build, market, and sell online courses, membership sites, and coaching programs. While it comes at a higher price point than Thinkific, it offers a polished experience tailored for creators focused on information products.

Kajabi offers pre-designed templates that streamline course creation. Everything—from marketing to payment processing—is managed through a unified dashboard, making it simple to upload content and monitor your business. It supports rapid project setup with ready-to-use templates and allows customization of pricing, course delivery, and packaging options. Integrated payment options via Stripe and PayPal make receiving payments straightforward, and the platform provides real-time business analytics to guide your decisions.

Some of Kajabi’s main features include a quick course and membership builder, ready-to-use customizable templates, flexible pricing options, seamless payment integrations, and comprehensive insights into your business performance.

Kajabi offers a comprehensive all-in-one platform that covers everything from automating emails to creating sales pages and managing sales pipelines. It also provides tools for hosting webinars, designing custom websites, blogs, and membership areas. For an in-depth review, check out my full Kajabi review.

Let’s explore the main advantages and potential drawbacks of these platforms to help you make an informed decision.

Before diving into a detailed comparison, here’s a quick overview of the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms.

Advantages: Thinkific offers a 30-day free trial, beginner-friendly tools, and simple pricing plans. You can start with a free plan that doesn’t require credit card details. The platform includes an earnings calculator on the homepage, and various subscription options such as memberships, payment plans, or flat prices. It supports live classes with interactive features like surveys and narration, integrates seamlessly with Zapier, and allows easy customization of your online courses. You can create affiliate programs to reward loyal users, embed multiple content formats within lessons, and access comprehensive training resources. Additionally, Thinkific enables selling courses through Shopify stores and provides course completion certificates without needing third-party tools.

Limitations: To access premium features, you need to upgrade to higher-cost plans, as some functionalities are not available on basic tiers. The platform does not offer live chat support, and its marketing capabilities are somewhat limited. Paid plans incur transaction fees, and there is no dedicated mobile app. Support is only available from Monday to Friday, 10 am to 5 pm PST, with no 24/7 email support. Also, their training courses can be costly if you’re on free or lower-tier plans, and integrating autoresponder campaigns requires third-party tools.

Advantages: Kajabi provides a 14-day free trial, with no transaction fees and integrations with Zapier. It offers unlimited video hosting, advanced email marketing, and automation features. As an all-in-one platform, it combines course creation, marketing, and sales tools. Users can set up multiple membership tiers with flexible billing options—weekly, monthly, yearly. Support is available 24/7, and onboarding is streamlined to ensure a smooth start. The platform includes numerous customization options, ready-made templates for quick course development without coding, and a mobile app for managing your business on the go. It also features a rewards program called heroes rewards, incentivizing users as they reach revenue milestones, with more rewards available as earnings increase.

Limitations: Kajabi tends to be more expensive than some competitors, and it does not offer a free plan. You can only add one content format at a time—quizzes or videos, but not both on the same page. To sell products via Shopify stores, you require an additional third-party payment gateway.

Choosing a platform that’s intuitive and straightforward is essential for a smooth course creation experience. All features should be easy to navigate without frustration.

Thinkific is designed for beginners, featuring a clear and user-friendly interface. You can start building your course immediately after logging into your dashboard. The platform’s menu is located on the left side, providing access to all functions including site design, marketing and sales tools, advanced reporting, content management, and student support. The navigation is simple; clicking on menu items reveals nested options without needing to open new pages. Additionally, if you have questions, there’s a “Help” option at the bottom-left corner of the dashboard, enabling you to search for solutions just like on a search engine.

All in all, Kajabi’s user interface is straightforward, with every option instantly accessible upon login.

Other features that make Thinkific user-friendly include a clean design, a drag-and-drop builder for uploading videos, creating quizzes, and organizing content—all without needing coding skills. It also offers automated content curation, ready-made themes to quickly launch your platform, and seamless integration with email marketing tools.

Kajabi, on the other hand, offers a sleek dashboard with menu options tucked neatly in the sidebar. It provides a summary of your activity over the past 30 days, including opt-ins, sales, comments, and member counts. Its menu includes sections like Website, Products, Marketing, and People. Additionally, Kajabi has a feature called the Kajabi Assistant, which is accessible via the search bar at the top. By entering relevant keywords, you can quickly navigate the platform and access features that might be harder to find manually.

Features that contribute to Kajabi’s ease of use include a clear interface, a product generator for creating courses and subscriptions, pre-designed templates and themes, bulk uploading of videos (up to 20 at a time), smooth payment integrations with Stripe and PayPal, customizable email marketing tools, and a mobile app to stay connected with your community whenever you need.

Despite both platforms being user-friendly, Kajabi is considered the winner due to its broader range of features, including extensive customization options and integrated marketing tools, along with the added benefit of a mobile app that facilitates communication.

Thinkific’s course builder features a visual editor, enabling you to develop your courses either from modules or starting from scratch. You can set up different membership tiers, customize how your course looks, and control when content becomes available (drip content) based on user access levels. The platform supports multiple content formats, including PDFs, quizzes, videos, surveys, audio files, and assignments, giving you a flexible and comprehensive way to develop engaging courses.

When it comes to adding content, the platform’s builder supports quick drag-and-drop for bulk uploading videos, audio files, and PDFs.

Additionally, you can tailor the look and feel of your courses by customizing descriptions for each course, choosing from several color themes, fonts, and adding personal branding elements like a course logo and lesson labels.

Kajabi also features a drag-and-drop builder for creating a variety of digital products such as online courses, membership areas, sales funnels, and landing pages. Its user-friendly interface allows you to customize ready-made templates provided by Kajabi, enabling you to build your offerings without any coding skills.

You can embed various media types into your site and courses, such as PDFs, images, and videos, either by uploading files directly or integrating third-party applications. However, it does not support adding multiple content types on a single page.

Choosing any project, you start by selecting a theme or template, then personalize it with your own images and content. Kajabi’s intuitive interface makes editing straightforward, with each section of your page represented as a specific block you can customize. For example, the offer section includes an “Offer block” and a “Text block.”

It also allows you to add animations, control element visibility on mobile devices, and adjust padding for a polished look.

Beyond the course and site creation features, Kajabi’s website builder offers comprehensive customization options to help you create a professional and engaging online presence.

Winner: It’s a Tie.

Both Kajabi and Thinkific provide visual, drag-and-drop builders that allow you to add diverse content and customize your courses easily.

Pre-made themes and templates simplify the process of creating courses, membership sites, landing pages, and more. It’s even more straightforward when multiple templates are available for different purposes.

Let’s explore what both platforms offer in terms of themes and templates.

Thinkific offers three distinct themes—Empire, Vogue, and Vision—in its library. You can preview and select different styles easily. You can modify and preview the appearance of these themes using the “Theme Settings,” which allow you to customize styles, colors, fonts, and banner images.

You can freely modify theme styles, including layout, colors, and fonts, through the “Theme Settings” panel for personalized customization.

Users have control over themes’ appearance, including styling, colors, typography, and banner images.

Kajabi offers a collection of 12 themes tailored for various types of products, like webinars, online courses, and membership sites. Users can select and customize themes to fit their specific needs.

Like Thinkific, Kajabi allows extensive customization of theme styles, including layout, colors, fonts, and banners.

Winner: Kajabi.

Launching a course and marketing it is just part of the process. To generate sustained income, you should create a membership site and offer bundled courses. Memberships enable recurring revenue, ongoing training, community engagement, and better customer retention.

Thinkific makes it simple to create multiple membership or subscription levels and sell your courses at various price points. By clicking on “Manage Learning Content” from your dashboard, you can set up your course bundles and membership tiers easily.

The platform offers a variety of membership options, including:

Thinkific also allows you to restrict access to specific content until students complete certain modules or reach milestones. However, access to this feature requires upgrading to Thinkific’s Pro plan.

Kajabi enables you to build a membership site or page using professionally designed templates. To get started, select a template under Products > New Products > Membership. You can create multiple membership levels and offer special discounts for different tiers. These tiers can include recurring subscriptions, one-time payment plans, trial options, one-click upsells, and more. It’s also possible to assign labels like Gold, Silver, or Bronze to different membership levels for clearer categorization.

Overall Verdict: It’s a Tie.

The primary goal when launching your course is to reach as many students as possible, making the comparison of each platform’s marketing and sales tools essential.

Thinkific’s sales and marketing features can be accessed through the “Market and Sell” section on the dashboard. This includes options to sell memberships and subscriptions, run promotional discount campaigns, offer free trials, and more. You can add customizable sales widgets to third-party websites or blogs, allowing customers to purchase directly from any external site. Additionally, Thinkific supports an affiliate program, encouraging students and partners to promote your course for commissions. The platform integrates with over 1000 business tools, including Facebook, Google Ads, and email marketing platforms like MailChimp and ConvertKit, enabling targeted marketing campaigns.

Other features include progress indicators, unlimited replays, language controls, built-in completion certificates, automated emails for progress updates and reminders, and support for multiple currencies and secure payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe.
When it comes to revenue, Thinkific supports transactions in over 100 currencies, accepting all major credit cards alongside integrations with PayPal and Stripe for seamless and secure payments.

Kajabi offers a comprehensive suite of marketing and sales features designed to help you effectively promote your courses or website.

Here’s a quick summary of the marketing tools included:

Kajabi provides ready-made templates tailored for various activities such as lead generation, product launches, and webinars. Each pipeline or template includes pre-written content and a full framework, guiding you and your audience through the necessary steps in the most effective order.

Kajabi’s email marketing features give it an advantage over other platforms. The intuitive visual editor, along with built-in email templates, allows you to easily customize and preview your messages. Templates are available for various types of emails, including event announcements and product highlights. The platform can analyze customer behavior and send targeted one-time emails or set up automated multi-step sequences. You can enhance your campaigns with personalization options like countdown timers, video embeds, and subject line validation.

Additionally, Kajabi includes a built-in customer relationship management system that automates interactions such as sending emails, offering discounts, distributing coupons, and granting product access based on pre-set rules. This system automatically tracks customer activity, imports contacts from CSV files, creates custom data fields, and segments your audience efficiently.

For payment processing, Kajabi seamlessly integrates with Stripe and PayPal, allowing you to manage transactions easily. The best part is that Kajabi does not deduct any fees from your revenue, making it financially attractive for course creators.

To sum up, here are the main marketing and sales features offered by Kajabi:

Winner: Kajabi.

Thinkific primarily focuses on delivering core educational features for students and learners. When it comes to marketing and sales, Kajabi clearly stands out because it offers comprehensive built-in tools. There’s no need to juggle multiple platforms since Kajabi bundles email marketing, CRM, landing pages, and other essential business features into one solution.

Understanding your audience through detailed reports is vital for optimizing your content and marketing strategies. Analytics reveal what your students enjoy, what needs improvement, and how well your courses are performing.

Thinkific provides advanced reporting features to monitor key metrics like revenue, number of orders, student enrollments, and engagement levels. Filters allow data to be sorted by product, time frame, payment processor, or affiliate source.

However, these detailed reports are available only with the Pro + Growth plan. Additionally, instructors can access students’ progress reports under the “Support Your Students > Progress” section, with options to export this data as CSV files for further analysis.

In addition, Thinkific integrates with Google Ads, Facebook, and other platforms for tracking analytics, retargeting campaigns, and ad optimization. Features include cohort analysis, segmentation, and data exports for deep insights.

Kajabi allows you to supervise your subscription growth and provides comprehensive data across all customer touchpoints. It measures revenue, sales of offers, opt-in rates, page views, and churn rates, helping you identify where to improve.

It presents detailed insights on student progress, revenue streams, and areas to optimize, including churn and retention metrics.

Winner: It’s a Tie.

Both platforms excel in providing in-depth analytics and insights. They also support integration with Google Analytics for enhanced data analysis, making it easier to understand your business performance.

Creating an engaging and premium experience for your students is essential. A positive experience encourages ongoing enrollment, referrals, testimonials, and long-term loyalty.

Thinkific enables you to incorporate various content types—videos, text, multimedia, downloadable files, images, presentations, quizzes, live streams, webinars, surveys, and audio—to enrich your course. Students benefit from a clear, attractive, and intuitive dashboard that displays their progress and upcoming lessons. For example, I once took a DSLR course on Thinkific, and the platform’s visual layout made navigating the material straightforward and engaging.

Source: Video Shooter Academy

Students can easily expand or collapse each lesson by clicking on drop-down menus. They also have the option to add extra text below videos and upload multiple types of downloadable files on a single course page.

Some other important features that enhance the student learning experience on Thinkific include:
– Free hosting for videos through Wistia (which significantly saves costs since video hosting can be pricey).
– Built-in certificates for students completing courses.
– Automated email reminders and progress updates.
– Customizable appearance options, including module colors, fonts, and themes.

Kajabi, on the other hand, allows you to incorporate various content types like text, videos, images, and quizzes into your courses. It offers several pre-designed themes to help you personalize your course’s look and feel. An attractive feature is Kajabi’s mobile app, which enables students to access courses and products anytime and anywhere with a simple click. The app also includes a “magic link” feature, allowing students to log in without needing a password and to resume their course progress from where they left off.

Choosing between these two platforms, the winner overall is Thinkific. Both platforms are user-friendly and facilitate learning, but Thinkific excels in creating a tailored experience, thanks to its comprehensive dashboard that shows student progress, motivating learners and simplifying course management. You can also collaborate with their onboarding team to develop a fully customized setup for your students. Although Kajabi’s handy mobile app makes it a very close contender.

Cost is another major factor when comparing these platforms.

Thinkific primarily offers four main pricing options:
– Free at zero cost
– Basic for $49/month
– Pro for $99/month
– Premier for $499/month

In addition, Thinkific provides a Growth plan as an add-on for the Pro tier, unlocking features available only on the Premier level. There’s also an Enterprise plan that offers more customized solutions. All plans include a 30-day money-back guarantee, and a 14-day free trial is available. Opting for annual billing can save you 20%. The plans come with core features such as easy drag-and-drop course creation, upsell options, student notifications, discussion forums, and support for multiple instructors.

All plans include features like a user-friendly drag-and-drop course builder, options for upselling, student notifications, discussion forums, and support for multiple instructors.

Although Thinkific typically offers a 14-day free trial, you can try their upgraded Pro + Growth Plan for a full 30 days using my link below.

You can access the Thinkific Pro + Growth Plan here.

Kajabi offers three main subscription plans:
– Basic at $149/month
– Growth at $199/month
– Pro at $399/month

A 14-day free trial is available, and annual payment options come with a 20% discount. Unlike Thinkific, Kajabi doesn’t provide a free plan.

At first glance, Thinkific appears to be the more affordable choice since it allows you to host unlimited students and create as many courses as you want.You won’t have to spend nearly as much as you’d pay with Kajabi. However, their subscription plans vary significantly based on the advanced features you need. For example, to set up a membership site on Thinkific, you’d need to subscribe to their Pro plan at $99 a month. Comparing plans requires considering various features; therefore, there isn’t a definitive winner when it comes to pricing.

Get started with a 14-day free trial of Kajabi.

The number of students each platform can handle is a vital consideration for online course providers. Thinkific allows unlimited students on both free and paid plans, with no transaction fees. In contrast, Kajabi’s plans determine the number of active members you can host: the Basic plan supports 1,000 members, Growth supports 10,000, and Pro supports 20,000. Based on this, Thinkific clearly leads here, especially given that Kajabi’s higher-tier plans come at a much higher price, while Thinkific’s basic plan at $49 per month offers unlimited students and even allows creating multiple courses on the free plan.

When it comes to creating courses, Thinkific again offers more flexibility. You can build up to three courses using the free plan along with different content types like PDFs, audio, and video. All paid plans offer unlimited course creation. Conversely, Kajabi doesn’t have a free plan; the Basic plan lets you create three products and pipelines, the Growth plan allows 15, and the Pro plan supports 100. Here, Thinkific is the better choice, especially considering it costs $49 monthly for the basic plan with unlimited courses, whereas Kajabi’s basic plan at $119 limits you to only three products and pipelines.

Customer support is essential for online platforms. Thinkific provides comprehensive support through their Help Center, a paid training site, blog, marketplace, and status updates. They also offer email support, phone support during business hours, detailed video tutorials, and an active Facebook community. Kajabi’s support includes a 24/7 helpline, access to a dedicated support team, and additional resources, though specific details about the scope are less extensive.

Kajabi enhances its support with training webinars and Kajabi University, making it easy to explore detailed features and learn best practices.

The clear winner in customer support is Kajabi. While both platforms provide excellent assistance, Kajabi’s live chat and free tutorials give it an edge. New users on Thinkific should note that some tutorials on their training site come with a cost, sometimes reaching up to $299.

Many potential users check a platform’s refund policy before making a commitment. Both Kajabi and Thinkific offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, allowing you to get a full refund if you’re not satisfied within the first month.

To conclude, Kajabi is ideal for experienced marketers or online course creators seeking an all-in-one platform. Its comprehensive features support the creation of courses, landing pages, and sales funnels, helping you reach a larger audience. Additionally, it’s suitable if you want to set up a membership site or subscription-based business model. Kajabi also serves as a replacement for email marketing services like MailChimp, and landing page builders such as ClickFunnels.

In my opinion, Thinkific is the overall best platform. It is more affordable than Kajabi but still offers customizable course experiences tailored to your audience. With Thinkific, you can:

Ultimately, what matters most is your students’ experience. Your goal should be to create a professional learning environment that feels high-quality, not like a basic course builder. Thinkific helps you achieve this at a lower cost than Kajabi.

However, I recommend trying out both platforms yourself to see which one suits your needs best—both are user-friendly, offer excellent customer service, and are straightforward to use.

Ask yourself: What type of online courses do you want to create? Who is your target audience? How much effort are you willing to put into managing the platform? Your answers will guide your decision.

For more detailed comparisons between top online course platforms, check out my guides: