If you run an online business then odds are you recognize that your sales funnel is important. A properly designed sales pipeline will attract and retain visitors throughout the sales process and create more leads and conversions.
Building a functioning sales pipeline requires a lot of experience and can be difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing. That is why if you run an online business you need to find a good marketing platform that can automate a large part of the process for you.
Clickfunnels and Kajabi are two powerful marketing platforms that can help you streamline your sales pipeline and generate more leads, conversions, and sales.
Today we are going to cover Kajabi vs Clickfunnels and figure out which one is superior for marketing your products.
Before we get started, we should mention that Kajabi and Clickfunnels are meant for different audiences.
Kajabi vs Clickfunnels: Differences
Kajabi is an all-in-one online business platform specifically designed for creating, marketing, and selling digital products, such as online courses, membership sites and more.
Clickfunnels can be used to sell both – physical and digital products.
In other words, the difference between the two is that Kajabi is designed for a narrower audience of course creators while Clickfunnels can be used by any kind of online business for their marketing efforts.
In this comparison, we will focus on Kajabi vs Clickfunnels in terms of marketing potential and see how each stack up compared to the other. We are going to cover each platform’s core marketing tools, including email, pipelines, sales functions, and more. At the end, we will give our verdict of which is the best between Clickfunnels vs Kajabi.
Kajabi: Overview
Kajabi is a comprehensive all-in-one business solution for entrepreneurs looking to sell online courses and other digital products.
Kajabi comes equipped with a full suite of tools for building your website, creating products/online course listings, marketing your products, managing your contacts, and creating sales pipelines. Kajabi stands a head above other platforms in virtue of the sheer number of features it offers users.
Kajabi’s versatility extends to more than online courses too. You can use the platform to sell E-books, videos, webinars, blog posts, create membership sites and more.
Kajabi is designed for digital products though you can use the platform to sell physical products as well. It features a simple drag-and-drop editor with a large variety of customizable templates.
However, the platform shines best when selling products and services like an online course.
One of the best features of Kajabi is its powerful suite of marketing tools (see demo).
Kajabi comes with everything you need to push your products to your audience and build a large online following Kajabi has powerful email marketing tools with several automation capabilities and a handy visual pipeline builder.
The pipeline builder is probably the single most unique feature of Kajabi and lets you visualize and customize the structure of your sales funnel.
Along with the marketing tool, Kajabi comes with membership site capabilities for active members, learning management tools for keeping tabs on student progress, and flexible sales features that let you create offers for different products.
We should also mention that a Kajabi subscription also gets you access to Kajabi University, an online library of resources, tips, and guide for building your online brand and marketing your products.
Pros
- Wide range of features and tools
- Intuitive and simple interface
- Powerful suite of email marketing tools and automations
- Intuitive visual pipeline editor for making sales funnels
- Landing & sales pages, membership sites, and more
Cons
- Relatively expensive subscription
- Student engagement tools could be better
- Limited number of products and students
- Designed specifically for digital products
Clickfunnels: Overview
Clickfunnels is a software platform designed specifically for building sales pipelines and marketing products.
Clickfunnels is very useful as you don’t need to have any technical knowledge to use it and it is versatile. With Clickfunnels you can make:
- Squeeze pages
- Landing pages
- Webinars
- Membership sites
- Sales funnels
- And more!
Clickfunnels is not a web-building tool so you can’t build a website with it. But Clickfunnels is compatible with most popular content management systems.
Clickfunnels comes with a bunch of great built-in features for marketing products for your business.
First off, Clickfunnels has 22 different sales funnel templates divided into 3 categories: lead capture funnels, sales page funnels, and event funnels. Each kind of funnel is meant to capture visitors at a different part of the marketing pipeline. There is also the option for special funnels like membership funnels.
The different funnels of Clickfunnels have a lot of functionality. You can use Clickfunnels to set up a 2-step tripwire funnel to upsell to visitors or create some nice lead generation pages that capture visitor emails to add to your list. You can even automate a thank you email whenever a customer buys a product.
Like Kajabi, Clickfunnels utilizes a cool pipeline editor which gives you a visual representation of your sales funnel. Using the drag-and-drop editor, you can add landing pages, opt-in forms, and more.
Clickfunnels offers a good selection of advanced page elements such as:
- Surveys
- Pricing tables
- Progress bars
- FAW blocks
- Countdown timers
- SMS signup forms
Clickfunnels subscribers also get access to the Funnel Fix, a training resource that covers the basics of using Clickfunnels and marketing tips and strategies.
Funnel Fix is not as in-depth as Kajabi University but it is a nice extra feature subscribers and active members get access to.
Pros
- Fantastic sales funnel building tool
- Comprehensive and flexible email marketing automations
- Great CRM
- You can create a personalized journey for each customer through the sales funnel
- Works for marketing digital and physical products
- Works with a membership site
Cons
- No web building tools
- Narrower focus in terms of functionality
- Limits on the cheapest pricing plan
- Higher learning curve that Kajabi
Clickfunnels vs Kajabi: Features Compared
As you can see, Clickfunnels and Kajabi have a lot of similarities and features in common, such as landing page editors, the pipeline builders, CRM systems, and email automation tools.
Both platforms put an emphasis on marketing products and creating complex sequences to nab contacts and make conversions.
However, the two platforms have some significant differences. Let’s compare each platform based on category.
Overall Interface
First of all, both Kajabi and Clicfunnels are super easy to use. Both platforms feature a simple drag-and-drop editor that requires zero technical knowledge whatsoever to use. When it comes to web building tools, we really appreciated a simple visual editor as it makes things much more intuitive and simple to manage.
Both platforms also have a wide range of predefined templates that can be customized to achieve a unique look.
Kajabi has overall more functionality than Clickfunnels as it features a web-building tool and online course creation tool. In fact, the online course tool is probably Kajabis most distinguishing feature.
However, given that Clickfunnels is not designed to be a web-building tool, it’s not necessarily a disadvantage of the platform. After all, it would not be fair to knock Clickfunnels for not doing something it’s not designed to do.
Sales Funnel
Kajabi
The pipeline builder and sales funnels are the core feature of Clickfunnels and one of the major features of Kajabi. Kajabi’s sales funnel tools are called “pipelines”.
Pipeline builder uses a simple drag-and-drop editor where you can change the layout and placement of the individual elements.
Choose from any one of the prebuilt pipeline templates which have templates for promotions, sales pages, reports, and more.
Once you have the basic structure of your pipeline and sales funnels set up you can fill in the info with text, images, videos, files, and more.
With the right understanding of the platform, you can have a comprehensive series of pages set up and working within just a few hours. Kajabi’s pipeline builder gives you the option to add as many pages as you want and set up email marketing automations based on customer status as visitors or active users.
ClickFunnels
Clickfunnels’ version of pipelines is called Actionetics. This email marketing solution has a number of impressive features that make managing and reaching out to your contact list easy and intuitive.
Actionetics is an integrated platform that gathers all social data on your contacts so you can run marketing campaigns. through your sales funnels.
Actionetics lets you segment your lists by geographic location, gender, age, and their status as visitors or customers. Segmenting your lists allows you to run distinct marketing campaigns for different users so you can maximize your reach and ROI.
Actionetics allows you to create a personalized journey for each customer through its robust series of sequences and triggers.
With Actionetics you can set up some pretty neat email automation sequences. For instance, you can set up automations to upsell a feature to a customer when they buy a product or send them a promotional offer when they subscribe to your mailing list.
You could also automate upsells via age group or geographic location if you notice a particular product does well within a particular demographic. Clickfunnels Actionetics is a great way to keep customers in the loop when launching new products or promotional deals.
Affiliate Marketing
Both Kajabi vs Clickfunnels offer neat affiliate programs so you can earn more revenue for your site.
Affiliates share links to the platforms and get a commission whenever a person signs up using their share link.
Clickfunnels
Let’s start with Clickfunnels. Clickkfunnels’ affiliate program requires users to sign up with their account and submit some forms to the IRS.
Luckily, you can do this digitally through the Clickfunnels affiliate website. Once your account is approved, you can generate share links that you can promote to your audience.
Whenever a person clicks on your share link it places a cookie in their browser. If the person signs up for Clickfunnels before the cookie expires then it counts as an affiliate sale and you get a commission.
Clickfunnels offers affiliates a 40% commission from any Clicfunnels subscriptions that sign up with their links. Clickfunnels makes affiliate payments once every 45 days via PayPal or by check. You must also have at least $50 in your account to get paid during a payment period.
Clickfunnels offers a nifty Backpack function that lets you manage your own affiliate users for your website.
The Backpack page lets you organize your affiliate users, generate share links for them to spread, and keep track of commission that you need to payout.
Kajabi
Kajabi also offers a nifty affiliate user program called the Kajabi Partner program.
The Partner Program is open to any account holder and is easy to apply to. Simply find the Partner Dashboard, submit the form, and get approved.
Once approved, you can generate and share sign up links, just like with Clickfunnels’ affiliate user program. If a customer signs up for Kajabi using a share link, then the affiliate user gets a lifetime 30% commission from that subscription amount.
Kajabi also offers a neat rewards program to entice Partners to keep sharing. You start off at the Blue level and work your way up by getting more users to sign up for the platform.
At each level, you get special prizes and Kajabi promotional gear. The current highest level is the Legendary level which corresponds to 200 active members signed up using your affiliate links.
One other important feature of the Partner program is that Partners get access to Kajabi promotional materials and marketing email templates to make sharing links as effective as possible.
You can share links quickly and efficiently by opening and creating links to campaign briefs.
Kajabi also lets you create affiliate users for your own website.
You can approve and manage your affiliate users form the dashboard and keep track of their click rates and commissions.
Sales Pages & Payments
Both Kajabi and Clickfunels have some built-in sales pages and payment functionalities.
Kajabi
Kajabi has some basic sales page templates that let you collect car numbers and other important information.
Kajabi comes with built-in payment functionality for Strip e-wallets, but you can add a third party payment processing app to handle other kinds of payments.
Kajabi does not handle the money directly so everything is handled through Stripe.
That means that Kajabi does not charge any processing fees but Stripe itself has a few. One criticism we can give of Kajabi here is that its sales and checkout pages can be a bit outdated.
A lot of Kajabi’s checkout setups are pretty long which can greatly hurt conversion rates.
The longer your pipeline is the longer it takes customers to get to the final page where they complete the sale.
Clickfunnels
Clickfunnels, on the other hand, has a much smoother and to-the-point sales and checkout system. One of Clickfunnels’ most well-known features is their library of one-step checkout pages. Customers simply have to type in their card information on a single page and complete the sale immediately.
Clickfunnels also has more native payment integrations than Kajabi, including Apple/Android pay, Bluesnap, EasyPayDirect, OntraPort, Recurly, and Stripe. You can also add PayPal functionality through a third party extension.
Discounts and Trials
Fortunately, both Clickfunnels and Kajabi have a few trial offers and subscription discounts for subscribers.
Kajabi
Kajabi offers users a free 14-day trial when you initially sign up. You get access to all the features of the platform for 2 weeks and then can decide if you want to pay for a basic plan.
Even better, Kajabi has a 30-day money-back guarantee so if you are not satisfied with the product you can get your full subscription purchase back as long as you cancel within 30 days of making your first payment.
Kajabi pricing plans do not typically offer any coupons or discount codes but they do have one option. Subscribers can sign up for annual billing instead of per month billing which cuts 20% of the entire yearly price.
That means that instead of paying on a per month basis, you pay on a single annual basis.
You pay for a year subscription all in one go but ultimately end up paying less over the course of a year.
Unfortunately, though, Kajabi does not have any free-tier pricing plans. The 28-day free trial is long enough to figure out if the product is right for you though.
The benefit of no free plans is that Kajabi will never try to upsell you extra products or plug-ins. Everything is included in your Kajabi pricing plan.
Clickfunnels
Clickfunnels also offers a 14-day free trial so you can try out the platform. The free trial gives you access to all major Clickfunnels functions so you can give the platform a spin.
Once the 14 days are up you get the choice to continue and buy a per month subscription plan.
Clickfunnels also does not offer a free-tier pricing option which means you will have to pay if you want to use Clickfunnels.
The basic plan is relatively cheap, but it does have some limitations such as a cap on the number of sales and landing pages. Each plan is on a per month basis.
Can You Integrate Kajabi With Clickfunnels?
Fortunately for content creators and online entrepreneurs, the choice between Kajabi and Clickfunnels is not a mutually exclusive one.
In 2016, Kajabi and Clickfunnels announced that the two companies would allow integrations with each platform. In that sense, Kajabi and Clickfunnels are not so much competitors but two software companies that mutually benefit one another.
This means that you can integrate Clickfunnels robust marketing tools with Kajabi’s powerful web building and course creation tools, getting you the best of both worlds.
Here is how the two work together. You can set up your sales process, product delivery, and customer service with Kajabi and run your sales funnel using Clickfunnels.
The integration of the two platforms opens up more possibilities for creative marketing campaigns.
It allows you to leverage the best parts of both platforms to get the most out of your online business.
Kajabi vs Clickfunnels: Which Is Superior?
There are a lot of reasons why one would want to compare Kajabi vs Clickfunnels.
Both have a broad suite of marketing and automation tools and both are fantastic platforms for marketing your physical for digital products.
However, at the end of the day, the platforms are designed for fundamentally different purposes, so it is not fair to compare them directly to one another and judge which one is the better option. After all, you wouldn’t judge a shovel based on how well it worked as a rake, would you?
In short, Kajabi is more geared towards the content creation and website side of online businesses while Clickfunnels is a more scaled-down tool focused specifically on marketing automations and processes. Both platforms excel at what they are designed for so neither can be said to be the better option for business, strictly speaking.
Once again, the choice between the two is not mutually exclusive. Thanks to the two businesses partnering together, Kajabi and Clickfunnels can seamlessly integrate with each other.
That means you can run the front end of your sales funnels and marketing pipelines using Clikcfunnels while relying on Kajabi for the foundation and structure of the website and course listings.
Regardless of which option you choose, both Clickfunnels and Kajabi are powerful platforms that can help your online business grow.
