Both Kajabi and Access Ally are membership website-building platforms designed to help you market and sell your courses to your students.
Both platforms also have a range of marketing tools. However, they are not equal.
Our team of experts spent weeks analyzing the pros and cons of each platform, and here’s what they’ve managed to find.
Main Differences Between Kajabi and AccessAlly
Kajabi and AccessAlly have many similarities, but here are the key differences:
- Function and Scope: AccessAlly is a WordPress plugin, Kajabi is all-in-one.
- Cost: Kajabi’s plans start at $149/mo. AccessAlly’s start at $99/mo
- Marketing: Kajabi has better marketing tools, but AccessAlly is a decent marketing platform.
- Website builder comparison: AccessAlly specializes in membership pages and has a builder precisely suited for that. Kajabi has a more general page builder.
- Course creation: AccessAlly has an excellent course builder with gamification aspects. Kajabi’s course builder is decent but lacks some elements.
- Integrations: Kajabi has ten native integrations, including Zapier. AccessAlly has many plugin options for email, shopping, and marketing.
Pricing Comparison
Kajabi has three main pricing tiers, starting from the cheapest to the most expensive:
- Basic: $149/mo
- Growth: $199/mo
- Pro: $399/mo
These plans are a bit more expensive than some other platforms. However, Kajabi plans come with hosting, domains, and all the tools for running your business.
So factoring all those external costs in, Kajabi is pretty affordable. You can also save 20% by opting for annual instead of monthly billing. Kajabi has a free 14-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
AccessAlly likewise has three plans:
- Essentials: $99/mo
- Pro: $129/mo
- In-House Training: $2500/yr (~$208/mo)
The Essentials and Pro plans are directed at small businesses or solo entrepreneurs. The In-House Training plan is for larger businesses that might have multiple employees working through AccessAlly.
You can get an 18% discount on the Pro and Essentials plan by switching to yearly billing. AccessAlly does not seem to offer a free trial, but they do have a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Marketing Tools
Kajabi has excellent email marketing and sales funnel tools.
Kajabi includes a built-in email platform and a large library of automations. These automations can be used to set up complex email sequences. Email lists can also be segmented by user demographics to run targeted email marketing campaigns.
Kajabi’s pipeline editor is also unique. The pipeline tool is a sales funnel editor. You can add in your landing pages, opt-in form, and more with the drag and drop editor.
Pipelines are a neat visual take on something abstract like a sales funnel.
AccessAlly’s main draw is its great sales tools. The plugin makes it easy to manage subscriptions, payments, orders, and other sales administration tasks. AccessAlly also has a pretty comprehensive affiliate user program. AccessAlly also has really slick order forms, which make checking out a lot more straightforward.
AccessAlly does not have many email marketing options, however. Aside from a few things like abandon cart emails and auto-response emails, there is nothing too unique. The other promotion and sales tools are nonetheless wonderful.
Website Building Comparison
AccessAlly is a WordPress plugin, so you need to run it with a self-hosted WordPress site. The membership page builder is straightforward and has a decent amount of customization options.
However, there is nothing that really makes the eye pop. You can make clean, attractive membership and sales pages and for some people, that’s good enough.
Kajabi has an intuitive drag-and-drop web builder. Making pages is simple, and there is a wide array of designs from which to choose.
Kajabi pages have a simple block-like format and can easily be customized with images, branding, video, and more.
One other feature Kajabi offers is the blogging tool. The blogging tool is extremely useful for building a community among your students.
Theme Comparison
Kajabi runs on a theme-based design. There used to be 11 Kajabi themes, but the devs are now focusing on the Premier theme.
The goal is to turn the premier theme into a versatile framework that users can personalize to their liking.
You can choose from six layout presets with elements and designs, further customizing as you go. It is an interesting and unique take on themes that not many platforms do.
AccessAlly is a WP plugin, and so works with your WordPress theme. AccessAlly should work with most WP themes though there are likely a few that may mess with some configurations.
As such, there are a ton of theme selections for AccessAlly, as long as you can get them to work correctly on your WordPress site.
Course Creation & Student Engagement Comparison
AccessAlly’s course creation tools are probably its strongest point, along with the sales options.
The course builder is very flexible, and you get access to unlimited courses/products right off the bat. Some of AccessAlly’s best course features are its gamification elements.
Students get rewards for lessons they complete, and they can keep track of their progress.
AccessAlly also has a unique automation tag which lets you set permissions on your courses. It is much easier to keep things organized on your membership site with this tool.
One other good feature is the quiz tools. AccessAlly allows for multimedia quizzes with embedded elements.
Kajabi has a similarly intuitive course design. Creating a course is like making a WordPress blog post. You can select your elements and rearrange them with the mouse.
Kajabi allows for different file formats. All video hosting is through Wistia, and you get unlimited hosting for your course files.
Kajabi’s quiz function is passable but could use some work. Mostly, it lacks some key options like word banks, multimedia compatibility, and randomized question sets.
Kajabi also cannot create any certificates completion. You will have to get a separate plugin for that.
Integrations
Kajabi is an all-in-one platform, so you don’t need to rely on integrations. That being said, there are ten built-in integrations, including MailChimp, Drip, Aweber, ConvertKit, and Clickfunnels.
Kajabi also has the Zapier integration, which opens up compatibility with hundreds of non-native apps.
The integrations are a good feature if you are already familiar with a specific platform.
AccessAlly has a very long list of integrations, including e-commerce, email, marketing, and more.
AccessAlly has integrations for some of the more popular services, including InfusionSoft, Contrport, ConvertKit WooCommerce, Stripe, and other WP plugins.
AccessAlly used to have Zapier but recently dropped the integration in favor of a more streamlined approach.
Customer Service
Customer service is a big deal for Kajabi. Users not only get access to 24/7 live chat and email support but also a huge library of resources and training materials.
Kajabi University is a massive online library full of videos, how-to guides, and instructions on topics ranging from how to build courses to more technical fare like how to do sound for videos.
The service team is knowledgeable, friendly, and can answer your queries like experts.
Lastly, the Kajabi development team offers regular live training webinars. These sessions cover the gamut of subjects related to running a business.
AccessAlly’s main support line is phone-based, and you can only call 9-5 M-F. There is also the AccessAlly Knowledge Base, which seems similar to Kajabi University in function.
AccessAlly lets users request certified experts for specific projects. You can hire web designers, developers, and other professionals, for the platform.
Conclusions: Kajabi or AccessAlly?
If you are looking for a comprehensive platform for creating, marketing, and selling courses, then Kajabi is your best choice.
AccessAlly has some really great sales and course building features, but the fact that it’s a WordPress plugin limits its use. You have to have a WP-hosted site to use. Kajabi does not have any sort of compatibility issues between its parts.
So our bid goes to Kajabi, if not for convenience than anything else.
Kajabi has a leg up in email marketing and ultimately has a more streamlined design.
AccessAlly could be a good decision if you already have a working WordPress website and don’t want to switch to an entirely different platform.
