We get a lot of questions about what platform people should use to sell online courses.
Two platforms we hear a lot about are InfusionSoft by Keap and its competitor, Kajabi. The two providers have good marketing potential, but there are significant differences between the two.
So we are going to review and compare the two platforms in this Kajabi vs InfusionSoft review. Then we will give our verdict about which platform is superior.
Main Differences Between Kajabi and InfusionSoft
The most important difference between Kajabi and InfusionSoft by Keap is the focus and target audience.
InfusionSoft is primarily a marketing and CRM tool for small-to-medium-size businesses.
Kajabi is geared more toward course creation and has an all-in-one design for running an online business.
InfusionSoft is not a dedicated course platform, and so it is not desirable on its own if selling courses is your bread and butter.
- Features/functionality – Kajabi is an all-in-one platform, while InfusionSoft is optimized for marketing and CRM functions
- Pricing – Kajabi starts at $149/mo while InfusionSoft starts at $199/mo
- Marketing – Kajabi and InfusionSoft both have similarly powerful marketing tools
- Web building tools – Kajabi has intuitive and straightforward web-building tools
- Integrations – Kajabi has ten (10) native third-party integrations. InfusionSoft has many more.
Pricing Comparison
Kajabi offers customers three (3) main pricing plans:
- Basic: $149/mo
- Growth: $199/mo
- Pro: $399/mo
High pricing is a common complaint about Kajabi. However, it is important to note that this price includes everything you need to run your business; hosting, domains, marketing tools, and payment options. So factoring in all of those costs, it’s not actually that expensive.
The company does not offer a free tier plan, but you can sign up for a free 14-day trial.
Customers can also opt for annual billing to save 20% on subscription costs.
InfusionSoft has recently been rebranded as Keap. But they still offer the core InfusionSoft product along with two “lite” versions of the software under the Keap name. The three plans are:
- Keap Grow: $79/mo
- Keap Pro: $149/mo
- InfusionSoft: $199/mo
These are starting prices and can be increased depending on how many contacts you need. Contacts start at $30/mo for 1,000 contacts. Each plan gives you the first month free, and you can also try a free demo of each package.
InfusionSoft users are also required to enroll in the company’s expert coaching program. Infusion soft has a lot of useful tools, but carries a very high price tag.
Marketing Tools
Marketing is InfusionSoft by Keap’s main draw.
The platform advertises itself as an “all-in-one” marketing and CRM platform.
InfusionSoft gives you access to lead generation/organization tools, web forms, company records, sales pipelines, automations/integrations, affiliate marketing, and more.
Unfortunately, many of the most valuable tools are locked inside the most expensive pricing plan.
Using InfusionSoft, you can manage your entire marketing operation from one place. You can customize your dashboard to see the most relevant info, and the navigation is relatively simple.
There are a lot of tools, so it can be overwhelming to know where to start initially.
Kajabi likewise has powerful marketing tools. Each Kajabi plan gives you unlimited landing pages and marketing emails (except the Pro plan) and lots of templates for marketing emails.
Kajabi includes the pipeline tool, which lets you edit the structure of your marketing pipeline.
Kajabi also includes powerful automations that can arrange complex trigger sequences.
Overall, InfusionSoft has more powerful marketing/sales tools but Kajabi is much easier to use because everything is integrated into a single package.
Website Building Comparison
All Kajabi and InfusionSoft Keap plans both give users access to landing pages.
InfusionSoft’s page builder is decent, but nothing to write home about.
Building pages for marketing is fairly simple, and there is a decent library of email advertisement templates to draw on. Other than these, InfusionSoft does not offer any meaningful web-building tools.
Kajabi, on the other hand, has a powerful, intuitive point-and-click page editor.
Creating pages with Kajabi’s editor is fast and seamless and can be completed in just a few minutes.
Kajabi is capable of much more customizable and unique landing pages than InfusionSoft, and they are just easier to build.
Using Kajabi, you can make a clean and navigable business website.
Kajabi also includes hosting and domains for all of your pages. So you won’t have to pay extra for any of those services.
Theme Comparison
Kajabi’s design is based on themes.
Kajabi is currently focusing on the Premier Theme, intending to turn it into a highly customizable skeleton for site design.
You can still choose from the ten older themes, but they will no longer receive support.
With the Premier Theme, you can pick from six layout presets, each of which can customize further.
Kajabi also lets you set themes on an individual product level.
That means you can give your membership site pages a different look and feel than your main public pages.
InfusionSoft has a lot of great themes for its different modules. It has order form themes, shopping cart themes, and it can be integrated into WordPress themes.
This means there are a lot of theme options for InfusionSoft, but none are designed to be customizable like the Premier Theme of Kajabi.
The point of InfusionSoft themes is to give the customer a consistent shopping experience.
Course Creation & Student Engagement Comparison
InfusionSoft is not a dedicated course platform, so it offers little in the way of course building tools.
InfusionSoft is not a hosting service and does not offer video hosting.
In a world dominated by video-oriented courses, video hosting is practically a must for online courses.
InfusionSoft also doesn’t include student engagement tools such as quizzes or assessments.
Again, InfusionSoft is not an LMS, so it is not designed for these things.
Kajabi, on the other hand, has course building tools and unlimited hosting for materials.
Kajabi uses Wistia for all its video hosting, and there are no limits to how much you can upload.
Creating courses on the platform is easy and feels much like creating a WordPress blog post.
Once you have your course organized, you can fill in the content using the drag-and-drop editor.
Kajabi also has tools for keeping track of student progress. You can set up quizzes and assessments and set assignments for automatic grading.
However, Kajabi’s quiz tools leave a bit to be desired. Most notably, there is no ability to randomize assessments or use answer banks.
Integrations
Kajabi includes ten built-in integrations for popular providers like MailChimp, ConvertKit, Drip, Aweber, Stripe, Google Analytics, Segment, Clickfunnels, and more.
Kajabi is an all-in-one platform, so you don’t have to install any integrations to use the platform to its fullest.
The integrations are a nice feature in case you are already familiar with a particular platform.
Kajabi also has a Zapier integration.
With Zapier, you can set up custom integrations with 1,000s of third-party apps & services. Zapier functions as a ‘catch-all’ for integrations with no native support.
InfusionSoft by Keap currently has 28 native integrations, including Outlook, Optinmonster, Quickbooks, ThriveCart, Wistia, and WordPress.
Most InfusionSoft integrations are geared towards marketing/CRM features or eCommerce features.
In that sense, they lack a lot of the additional functionality that Kajabi offers.
Customer Support Comparison
Kajabi has fantastic customer service. Subscribers to the Growth and higher plan get 24/7 live chat and email support.
All users get access to Kajabi University, an online library with a bunch of training resources and educational materials for people starting with their online business.
The library has tons of articles on topics from creating a course to more technical features like recording video lectures.
Lastly, the Kajabi devs give regular in-person and live webinar training sessions.
InfusionSoft does not have 24/7 support, but they do have a live chat and call option from M-F 6am-7pm.
Lastly, you can email the help center, but some customers claim email support takes a while to respond.
InfusionSoft has a large community space where you can go to get help, tips, and suggestions.
Conclusions: Kajabi or InfusionSoft?
Both Kajabi and InfusionSoft have good marketing potential, but ultimately, InfusionSoft is too limited to create, market, and sell courses on its own. InfusionSoft is a marketing and CRM tool, not a course-building tool. InfusionSoft works well for marketing your courses; you will just need other platforms to handle aspects like hosting and course creation. Considering how pricey InfusionSoft already is, selling courses with the software could cost a lot.
In contrast, Kajabi is all-in-one, so you don’t have to purchase extra extensions or plugins. Everything you need to create, market, and sell courses is ready to go right out of the box. So when it comes to platforms for selling and marketing online courses, we recommend Kajabi.
