Head-to-head
ClickFunnels vs Kajabi
Pick Kajabi when the course, the membership or the coaching is the product. Pick ClickFunnels when the funnel, the bumps and the upsells are how you get paid.
Quick answer
Pick ClickFunnels if you sell through multi-step funnels with order bumps, one-click upsells and A/B tests and will put in the learning time; pick Kajabi if courses, coaching or memberships are the product and you want the stronger delivery experience on one login.
You have already narrowed it down to these two. Both put pages, email, checkout and a course behind one account. ClickFunnels' homepage sells a funnel builder that turns visitors into paying customers. Kajabi's homepage calls it the operating system for human expertise.
If the course, the coaching or the membership is what you sell, price the plan you will still be on in six months.
Side by side
The two tools you are choosing between, plus one more worth knowing if you run paid ads.
| Tool | Free trial | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| ClickFunnels | 7 days | Course, coaching and info-product sellers who want a proven funnel platform and will learn it |
| Kajabi | 14 days | Established coaches and creators selling courses, memberships and coaching |
| ElasticFunnels | 14 days, no card | Teams running paid traffic |
What you are really choosing between
A direct comparison on Reddit describes ClickFunnels as "mainly for high-converting funnels, landing pages, and upsells, with email as a secondary feature." Kajabi is the other half of that choice. The course, the coaching program or the membership is what people log into, and the pages exist to sell it.
Two objections show up as soon as you read the long-term reviews. On Capterra, a reviewer writes: "There is a learning curve at the beginning because there are so many features." A Reddit thread describes ClickFunnels course delivery as "basic course delivery not great long-term."
The caps sit in different places, which is why the entry price is a poor guide on its own. ClickFunnels caps contacts, email sends and courses. Visitor numbers stay unlimited on every plan. Kajabi includes funnels, landing pages and marketing emails throughout, and it sells extra contacts in blocks. Automations are marked unavailable on Launch and turn on at Scale. The Affiliate Center is an Optimize feature. Kajabi puts affiliates and advanced automations on Growth, so that is the plan a seller hits once referrals or longer email flows matter.
Where each one wins and loses
ClickFunnels
What works
- It is a proven, funnel-first platform with a deep ecosystem. ClickFunnels invented much of this category, and that shows in the template library, the FunnelFlix training, the huge community and the endless walkthroughs online. When you get stuck building a funnel, someone has already documented the fix. For a non-technical seller, that lowers the real cost of getting a funnel live.
- The funnel and checkout mechanics are its strength. Order form bumps, one-click upsells, one-time offers, A/B testing and a Smart Checkout are what ClickFunnels was built for, and they still hold up. If your business runs on multi-step offers, these tools are where ClickFunnels has put most of its work.
- One login covers the whole path. Pages and funnels, checkout, email, a CRM with pipelines and appointments, courses, a community and a store all sit on one platform, so a course or coaching business can run without stitching plugins together.
- It takes no cut of your sales, and hosting is unlimited. ClickFunnels charges 0% on your transactions, so you keep every dollar, and every plan includes unlimited funnels, unlimited pages, unlimited visitors and hosting on a global edge network. Even the entry Launch plan does not cap your traffic.
- There are real safety nets to try it. You get a trial to build a funnel inside the platform, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee on a paid charge, so you can put a real funnel together before you are locked in.
What to watch
- The learning curve is steep. This is the single most consistent complaint from long-term users. The 2.0 editor is deep, and reviewers describe weeks or months of use before it felt fluent, with some still running into limitations regularly. Plan for weeks of setup before your first funnel goes live.
- Bugs and glitches still show up. Version 2.0 fixed the worst sluggishness of the old platform, but reviewers who use it daily still report intermittent glitches, logouts and middling page-speed scores, which can hurt search rankings. Most call it usable with rough edges rather than broken.
- Support is inconsistent, and billing complaints are real. Some users praise live video help, while others report slow answers and no easy phone line. Public complaint records include over-billing and double-billing, so watch your statements and confirm cancellations went through.
- It is not cheap, and the entry plan is tight. Launch caps you at one workspace, two team members and 10,000 contacts, and email and contact limits push many users up to Scale. Priced against simpler tools, ClickFunnels is a premium spend.
- It is hard to leave. Pages built in ClickFunnels do not export cleanly to another platform, and no one-click import exists. If you switch tools later, budget time to rebuild. Your contacts come out as a CSV file, but your funnels stay behind.
Kajabi
What works
- The course, membership and coaching tools are the best in the category. Structured lessons and modules, drip scheduling, assessments, certificates and cohorts are all built in, and reviewers consistently rate the delivery experience as the most polished of any platform here. If your product is knowledge, this is the core job done properly.
- It really is one platform. Courses, communities, email and automations, landing pages, funnels and a checkout share one login and one contact database, so your student list, your emails and your sales reporting all line up without plugins or a Zapier chain that breaks.
- Kajabi takes no revenue share. Whatever your customers pay, you keep, minus only the card processing fee. That matters at volume, because a platform that skims a percentage of every sale can cost far more than a flat subscription once you are selling steadily.
- The checkout handles the things that lift revenue: one-time payments, subscriptions and payment plans, plus upsells, downsells and order bumps, with automated tax calculation built in.
- Pro adds a branded mobile app in the app stores, so an established creator can put their courses and community in a native app without hiring a developer.
What to watch
- Price is the number-one complaint. The entry plan already costs more than most course tools, and the top plan is roughly three times that. The most detailed 2026 review found pricing escalation was the single most common thing users complained about.
- There is no free plan, and the entry Basic plan is capped at 2,500 contacts, 5 products and 2 admin users. Advanced automations, affiliate programs and branding removal arrive on Growth, so the plan most sellers end up on costs more than the entry price.
- Support draws consistent criticism. Independent reviews report slow or unresolved tickets, and one flags a poor BBB standing with unanswered complaints. When a launch breaks, a fast answer is not guaranteed.
- It is more than a beginner needs. If you only want to host and sell a single course, you are paying for communities, funnels, an email platform and an affiliate system you may not touch yet. Course-only tools cost a fraction of this.
- Third-party payment processors cost extra. Kajabi takes no revenue share, but if you use an outside processor other than PayPal instead of Kajabi Payments, it adds a fee of 2% on Basic, falling to 0.5% on Pro, on top of the processor's own charge.
What they cost
The subscription rows are in the table. The fee line is the part people misread, because both companies say you keep the revenue from each sale. ClickFunnels charges a 0% transaction fee across its plans. Its pricing FAQ says you keep every penny you make, and your payment processor is the cost that remains.
Kajabi's pricing page says there is no revenue share and that you keep what you earn. Processing sits on top of that. Kajabi Payments on Basic is 2.9% plus $0.30, then 2.8% and 2.7% plus $0.30 as the plan rises. Bringing another processor adds 2% on Basic, then 1% and 0.5% further up. PayPal is excluded from that add-on.
ClickFunnels' signup path is a 7-day trial, and a paid plan includes a 30-day money-back guarantee.
| ClickFunnels | Kajabi | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly entry | Launch $97 | Basic $179 |
| Annual entry | Launch, about $81 | Basic $143 |
| Working plan | Scale $197. Affiliate Center on Optimize, $297 | Growth $199 annual, $249 monthly. Affiliates included |
| Entry limits | 10,000 contacts, 50,000 emails a month, 3 courses, 2 seats | Extra contacts in blocks of 25,000 at $125 |
| Visitors and pages | Unlimited visitors | Unlimited funnels, landing pages and marketing emails |
On Capterra, reviewers treat the subscription as Kajabi's main downside. One calls the price "quite expensive compared to other platforms especially for beginners."
A third option, if you run paid ads
ElasticFunnels is a funnel platform for teams that run paid traffic: pages, same-URL split testing, checkout, CRM and attribution on one data layer. Use it when sales come from cold ads and you need the click, the order and the refund on one timeline. When the offer is a funnel or a course, ClickFunnels and Kajabi are the two in front of you.
Same-URL split testing is what ad teams ask about first. It is one part of the product, along with the page builder and the checkout. Variants rotate server-side under one campaign link, so Meta, Google and TikTok keep their learning. The checkout can take order bumps, one-click upsells and subscriptions. Every feature is on every plan. Starter is $97 a month, and the limits are page views, brands, domains, seats and automation runs. A 0.5% fee applies only to revenue through its own gateways.
Independent reviews of ElasticFunnels are still thin, so the checkout and split-test claims are hard to check against anyone but the vendor. ElasticFunnels is newer than ClickFunnels and Kajabi, and the team has been building it since 2023. Until you run real volume through it, you are largely taking the vendor's word. That is what you would expect from a platform this new. Run your own traffic through the trial before you trust the checkout and the split tests. If you sell a course to people who already know you, Kajabi is still the default. Read ElasticFunnels vs ClickFunnels and ElasticFunnels vs Kajabi for the longer comparison.
Kajabi is the default when people pay you for a course, a membership or a coaching program and they live in the lessons after they buy. ClickFunnels takes over when the money depends on funnel machinery: bumps, one-click offers, and the Affiliate Center on Optimize.
My take. I would price both at the middle row of the price table, rather than the entry row. Launch runs out when contacts or email sends grow. Kajabi steps up when affiliates enter the picture. If those bills land close, take the product whose homepage already describes what you sell.
Our default pick
Kajabi
Kajabi is the pick if you sell courses, memberships or coaching and want them to feel premium on a platform that also handles the pages, email and checkout. Price is the drawback. The starting plan costs more than most course tools, and a beginner with one product is paying for a larger stack than that one product needs. Lean on the trial and the 30-day money-back guarantee before you commit.
Frequently asked questions
Is ClickFunnels or Kajabi better for online courses?
Which costs less, ClickFunnels or Kajabi?
Do ClickFunnels and Kajabi take a percentage of sales?
Kajabi or ClickFunnels for coaches?
What if my buyers come from paid ads?
Does the cheapest ClickFunnels plan include automations?
What we read about ClickFunnels
From ClickFunnels
- https://www.clickfunnels.com/
- https://www.clickfunnels.com/features/smart-checkout
- https://www.clickfunnels.com/features/funnel-builder
Other sources
15 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context.
- [cf-ab-step] A/B Testing Platform
- [cf-speed-sub2] Clickfunnels page speed
- [cf-speed-scripts] Speed optimization service for ClickFunnels
- [cf-mkt-complaints] Any opinion on ClickFunnels
- [cf-migrate-official] Upgrading to ClickFunnels 2.0
- [cf-price-starting] Good alternatives to ClickFunnels for solopreneurs?
- [cf-switch-ghl] Good alternatives to ClickFunnels for solopreneurs?
- [cf-price-steep] Is ClickFunnels still worth it?
- [cf-price-before-sale] Sales funnels are overpriced
- [cf-systeme-free] Sales funnels are overpriced
- [cf-split-sales] Split testing sales pages simply doesn't work
- [cf-kartra-switch] Does anyone have experience with ClickFunnels?
- [cf-getresponse] Is GetResponse Worth It?
- [cf-getresponse-2] Clickfunnels vs GetResponse
- [cf-capi] Anyone solved the CAPI de-duplication issue yet?
What we read about Kajabi
From Kajabi
Other sources
3 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context.
If cold ads are how you sell, start the ElasticFunnels trial. It runs for 14 days and requires no credit card.
Related reading
The full write-ups are the ClickFunnels review and the Kajabi review. Plan prices are in the ClickFunnels pricing guide and the Kajabi pricing guide. If you have already dropped one of them, see ClickFunnels alternatives and Kajabi alternatives.
Kajabi against the other bundles is Kartra vs Kajabi and Systeme.io vs Kajabi. ClickFunnels against the cheaper bundle is Systeme.io vs ClickFunnels. For paid traffic, read ElasticFunnels vs ClickFunnels and ElasticFunnels vs Kajabi. If you are still weighing more than these two, start from the ranked shortlist or the full comparison list. The methodology page spells out the ranking rules.
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