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Kajabi vs. Teachable: What Is Better to Bring out Your Inner Teacher?
Distance education is the next big thing right now – everybody seems to be doing it. Individual teachers, big educational institutions and private training companies are all jumping on the bandwagon, with some businesses even turning it into their primary work mode and vice versa. Creating an online course can be profitable for individuals and companies as a part of content marketing strategy.
It is only natural that there are multiple platforms to provide the supply for all this demand. But which one will better suit your needs and help develop your business as a teacher? Today we will take a look at two notable representatives of the industry – Kajabi and Teachable – and, hopefully, help you make an informed choice.
Teachable offers four plans, starting at 0$ and climbing up to $299 (a little less than Kajabi’s mid-level Pro plan). However, in reality, its Free plan isn’t free – you pay rather steep transaction and processing fees and are have a very limited set of features to use. It, however, offers you a good opportunity to try the service out before committing to it in earnest.
Pros:
Pros:
Kajabi is, certainly, a more professional and “serious” service, offering comprehensive functionality for creation, marketing and distribution of digital content, all in a single package. You won’t need any additional tools, and although Kajabi is costlier than its competitor, you should take into account that you won’t have to spend additional money on marketing tools.
Teachable offers more budget plans and allows you to use it for free, albeit with severe limitations. It is useful for those who want to try their hand at online courses, doesn’t intend (at least yet) to make them a sole source of income, or has another marketing tool to fall back to.
To sum up, Kajabi seems to be a better fit for professional educators and businesses providing educational services. Teachable is somewhat limited in scope and may be inconvenient if you try to run a large-scale operation using only its functionality, while Kajabi provides a lot of room for growth and doesn’t require you to plug into additional services to get everything you need.
Choose wisely and good luck!
Melissa Burns is an entrepreneur with six years of experience in marketing and SEO. Burns began her career as an independent journalist, right after graduating from Iowa State University in 2008. Her favorite fields of research are startups, marketing, and IT--in particular, IT implementation in the sphere of education.
It is only natural that there are multiple platforms to provide the supply for all this demand. But which one will better suit your needs and help develop your business as a teacher? Today we will take a look at two notable representatives of the industry – Kajabi and Teachable – and, hopefully, help you make an informed choice.
Pricing Policy
Both services offer multiple payment plans to cover different segments of target audience. Kajabi offers 3 variants, ranging from $129 to $899 monthly (with 20 percent discount if you choose annual billing), covering all areas from amateur content creators to full-fledged businesses aimed at selling digital content. All three plans have their distinct features and target clientele – you don’t pay for more than you are going to need.Teachable offers four plans, starting at 0$ and climbing up to $299 (a little less than Kajabi’s mid-level Pro plan). However, in reality, its Free plan isn’t free – you pay rather steep transaction and processing fees and are have a very limited set of features to use. It, however, offers you a good opportunity to try the service out before committing to it in earnest.
Site Features
At a glance, it seems that the functionality of both services is very similar, at least at comparable pricing plans. Both offer you an opportunity to use your own site with a personal domain and custom branding: your website will look exactly the way you want it and make the visitor believe that it is completely independent and custom-made. Both offer an opportunity to create static pages and run a blog to market your course. However, Kajabi has one very important advantage over its competitor: it allows for much greater customization of website design, allowing each project to actually look and feel unique.Product Support
Again, both services offer a similar set of features. They provide means to distribute free products and drip content to the clients (i.e., deliver it to them based on when they made a purchase). Again, Kajabi wins in terms of design, giving you an opportunity of using fully customizable themes that can be fine-tuned to accentuate specific product features.Marketing Functionality
This is one area where Teachable falls unmistakably short, as it offers virtually no functionality for creating leads and growing your customer base. At the same time, Kajabi offers numerous tools necessary for generating and supporting leads as well as motivating them to become paying customers. Autoresponders, email broadcasts, opt-in forms, landing page creation tool – it is really helpful for those who don’t want to combine several different services to pursue a single purpose.Member Management
Both services offer similar member management functionality: you can moderate comments, track member progress, import new members and make announcements for the client base.Advanced Functionality
Both Kajabi and Teachable have comparable sets of additional functions, including an option to have more than one admin (in payment plans eligible for this), customer support, mobile integration, availability in multiple languages and so on. The notable difference is that Teachable has functionality to run quizzes, while Kajabi provides a live chat option.Summing up
Kajabi
Pros:
- Comprehensive functionality, a universal all-round platform for creating, distributing and marketing digital contet;
- Flexible pricing policy;
- Excellent design and customization opportunities;
- Powerful additional functionality.
- Relatively high price, especially at a Premium level.
Teachable
Pros:
- A free version, albeit rather limited, is available;
- Relatively low prices throughout all subscription plans;
- Clean and simple interface with many additional functions;
- Virtually non-existent marketing functionality;
- Poor customization and design options for products and websites.
Conclusion
Both Teachable and Kajabi are important players in online course creation and distribution market, and it would be incorrect to say that one is, hands-down, a better choice than the other. The truth is, they both have their target audiences and are equally useful in their respective segments.Kajabi is, certainly, a more professional and “serious” service, offering comprehensive functionality for creation, marketing and distribution of digital content, all in a single package. You won’t need any additional tools, and although Kajabi is costlier than its competitor, you should take into account that you won’t have to spend additional money on marketing tools.
Teachable offers more budget plans and allows you to use it for free, albeit with severe limitations. It is useful for those who want to try their hand at online courses, doesn’t intend (at least yet) to make them a sole source of income, or has another marketing tool to fall back to.
To sum up, Kajabi seems to be a better fit for professional educators and businesses providing educational services. Teachable is somewhat limited in scope and may be inconvenient if you try to run a large-scale operation using only its functionality, while Kajabi provides a lot of room for growth and doesn’t require you to plug into additional services to get everything you need.
Choose wisely and good luck!
Melissa Burns is an entrepreneur with six years of experience in marketing and SEO. Burns began her career as an independent journalist, right after graduating from Iowa State University in 2008. Her favorite fields of research are startups, marketing, and IT--in particular, IT implementation in the sphere of education.