Explore the similarities and differences between Kajabi and Patreon.
- Kajabi is rated 9.8 and is the best overall platform on SupplyGem
- Plans cost from $149/month
- Kajabi has a rating of 4.6 on Trustpilot
- Kajabi is the overall winner of this comparison
- Patreon is currently not in top 10 of best platforms rated on SupplyGem
- Costs between 5% - 12% of your monthly revenue
- Patreon has a rating of 1.3 on Trustpilot
- Patreon is a low-cost and simple solution for monetizing content
Key Takeaways:
- Choose our top-pick Kajabi for an all-in-one digital content creation, sales, and marketing tool
- Patreon is satisfactory if you don’t require marketing tools because of an established audience
Kajabi vs. Patreon at a Glance
| Feature | Kajabi | Patreon |
|---|---|---|
| Current promotion | 30-day free trial | None |
| Course builder | ✅ | ❌ |
| Communities | ✅ | Via third-party apps |
| Coaching | ✅ | ❌ |
| Websites and landing pages | ✅ | ❌ |
| Live streaming | ✅ | Via third-party apps |
| File uploads | ✅ | ✅ |
| Video uploads | ✅ | Via third-party apps |
| Automation | ✅ | ❌ |
| Sales funnels | ✅ | ❌ |
| Email marketing | ✅ | ❌ |
| CRM | ✅ | ✅ |
| Integrations | ✅ | ✅ |
| Flexible payment options | ✅ | ✅ |
| Offer and promotion tools | ✅ | ✅ |
| Merch | ❌ | ✅ |
| Mobile app | ✅ | ✅ |
What Is Kajabi?
Kajabi is a top-rated course-building, sales, and marketing platform. It features a comprehensive and sophisticated suite of tools that allow you to build your digital products and then create automated marketing campaigns to sell them.
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Who Is Kajabi for?
Kajabi is for anyone looking to monetize their knowledge and expertise by turning it into an online business such as courses, communities, or coaching products.
What Is Patreon?
Patreon is a membership site platform that lets creators add their content and charge a fee for people to access it. Essentially, it’s a way to receive recurring payments from your followers or fanbase.
Who Is Patreon for?
Patreon is chiefly aimed at content creators, influencers, artists, and musicians. Given the lack of marketing tools, this platform will work best for people who already have an established fanbase.
Kajabi vs. Patreon: Pros and Cons
| Kajabi Pros | Kajabi Cons | Patron Pros | Patreon Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| All-in-one platform for courses and marketing | Price is very high | It’s free to get started | The platform lacks marketing tools |
| A huge number of tools and features | Not suitable for selling physical products | You only pay when you make money | Platform fees are high |
| User/beginner-friendly interface | Flexible monetization options | Terrible customer reviews | |
| Many tasks can be automated | Good selection of templates and themes | ||
| Excellent customer reviews | Suitable for all types of creators |
Kajabi vs. Patreon: Affordability
It’s tough to compare Kajabi and Patreon’s pricing on a like-for-like basis because their models are so different.
Kajabi requires you to pay a fixed monthly or annual fee for using its platform, while Patreon is free to use but takes a cut of anything you earn:
- Kajabi costs $149, $199, or $399 per month, depending on your chosen plan. Paying annually provides a 20% discount.
- Patreon takes 5%, 8%, or 12%, depending on which plan you choose. Payment processing fees also apply.
Winner Is Patreon
If we look purely at cost, then Patreon is clearly the more affordable and accessible option.
Kajabi requires a big financial investment which can be off-putting for beginners.
Kajabi vs. Patreon: Monetization Opportunities (What Can You Sell?)
Kajabi Monetization Opportunities
If you want to create and sell digital products, then Kajabi provides you with a ton of flexible options.
Thanks to its best-in-class range of features, you can use the platform to monetize the following:
- Courses and lessons
- Communities
- Live coaching sessions
- Live streams
- Video or audio content
- Membership sites
- Masterclasses
- Digital downloads
- E-books
- Webinars
- Podcasts
With flexible payment options, you can choose to sell your digital products for a one-time fee, a series of payments, or on a subscription basis.
Plus, you are able to bundle your products together to create bespoke offers for your audience.
What can’t Kajabi sell? Well, while you can use the platform to sell digital products, it’s not set up or equipped for e-commerce.
Therefore, if you plan to sell more than one or two physical products at a time, Kajabi may not be the right choice for you.
Patreon Monetization Opportunities
Patreon allows you to monetize your content by creating pricing tiers for your subscribers.
Then, you get to decide what’s included within each tier.
These can include:
- Newsfeed where you can add text, images, files, etc.
- Live stream events (via Vimeo, YouTube Live, or Crowdcast)
- Video content (via URL or Vimeo integration)
- Digital downloads
- E-books
- Live chat rooms (via Discord or Discourse)
- Audio content
- Merch (sticker, poster, mug, T-shirt, hoodie, or tote bag)*
As you’ve likely realized, the Patreon platform itself does not offer many monetization opportunities. If you want to monetize things like live events or video content, you must also use a third-party platform to do so.
*If you choose to use Patreon’s merch service, this will incur an additional 3% fee on top of your usual plan fee for every transaction.
Winner Is Kajabi
When you look deeper, it turns out there’s not a lot you can do with Patreon without having to use third-party applications.
The reality is that with Patreon alone, you cannot do much to monetize your audience beyond uploading files and posting on the newsfeed.
Kajabi, on the other hand, provides great flexibility and plenty of monetization opportunities.
Furthermore, almost all its features – including live streaming – are native, meaning you can do everything in Kajabi itself.
Kajabi vs. Patreon: Platform Features
Kajabi Features
There’s no doubt that Kajabi is feature-rich. And when you look at the features it offers, you can see why it commands a high premium:
- Course and lesson builder
- Quizzes and challenges
- Email marketing and automation
- Sales funnel and workflow builder with automation
- Landing page and website builder
- Blog creator
- Contact lists and pipelines
- Membership site creator
- Community creator
- Analytics and reports
- Mobile app (creator and customer versions)
- SEO-optimization tools
- Webinars
- Coaching tools
- Live streaming
- Integrated payments
- Flexible pricing options and promotional/offer tools
- Third-party integrations
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Patreon Features
For full capabilities, Patreon relies on your use of third-party apps.
Otherwise, the platform is somewhat limited in terms of native features.
Here’s what you get:
- Customized creator page
- Email and direct messaging
- Mobile app
- Analytics
- Flexible pricing options and offer tools
- Membership tier creation
- Native file uploads, including audio files
- Third-party integrations
- Merch sales
Kajabi vs. Patreon: Integrations
Kajabi Integrations
Since Kajabi has most of the required tools available natively, it’s not actually necessary to integrate with third-party software with the exception of payment gateways (PayPal and Stripe).
However, should you wish to use a third-party app, the platform does have a number of direct integrations available for various email, analytics, and marketing tools such as MailChimp and ClickFunnels 2.0.
For anything else, you can use Zapier to connect with thousands of apps.
Patreon Integrations
If you want to live stream, upload video content, or live chat with your audience then you will have to integrate third-party apps with Patreon.
The platform supports a few native integrations, and they are limited to Discord/Discourse, video streaming, and podcasting. For anything else, a Zapier connection is possible.
One advantage is that Patreon takes and manages payments natively so it is not necessary to connect with a payment gateway for this.
Winner Is Kajabi
One key set of features that Patreon lacks is marketing tools.
Therefore, it is surprising that you cannot directly integrate with any software apps for this purpose.
Kajabi, on the other hand, provides a decent choice of integrations even though you don’t actually need them.
Kajabi vs. Patreon: User Experience
Kajabi User Experience
Any platform with comprehensive features is going to require a learning curve, and Kajabi is no exception.
Most of the tools are very intuitive and don’t take too long to master.
The more complex areas of the platform, such as sales funnels, provide walkthrough hints and steps to guide you along.
All in all, the user experience is great and the platform is pleasant to navigate and use.
Plus, if you do get stuck, Kajabi’s learning center is nothing short of excellent. You’ll quickly find a detailed guide to help you along.
Patreon Experience
Navigating Patreon is pretty good. You get a launch checklist when you first sign up, ensuring you do all the things necessary to get your page ready.
The rest of the platform is fairly straightforward, but mostly because the functionality is limited so there isn’t a great deal to learn.
Its learning/support center could use some work though. Its help articles are heavy on the text and lack videos and images.
Winner Is Kajabi
Kajabi provides an all-around excellent user experience.
The platform operates smoothly and glitch-free and provides all the thoughtful details such as prompts to help you along.
Plus, its help center is top-notch.
Kajabi vs. Patreon: Customer Service and Support
Kajabi Customer Service and Support
Kajabi has two tiers of customer support available depending on which plan you subscribe to.
If you are on the Basic plan you get:
- Live chat support during business hours, which are 6 AM – 5 PM Pacific Time.
- Email ticketing for out-of-office hours.
The Growth or Pro plans level up your support and provide access to live chat 24/7.
One decent perk is that all new subscribers are given the opportunity for a 30-minute live call with an onboarding expert.
This is to get you set up and comfortable with the platform and provides an opportunity to answer any questions you might have.
Patreon Customer Service and Support
Patreon users have email ticketing at their disposal. And according to online reviews, it’s pretty dire, with customers saying it can take up to a week to get a response or that they don’t get a response at all.
Subscribers to the Premium plan also get access to a Dedicated Partner Manager who provides you with coaching, a monthly review, and insights.
Winner Is Kajabi
A little live support goes a long way and sure beats tapping your fingers waiting for an email to arrive.
Even though Kajabi’s live support is restricted on its low and mid-tier plans, it still far surpasses Patreon in this respect. The free 30-minute call is a great bonus on top.
Kajabi vs. Patreon: Customer Reviews
Kajabi Reviews
Kajabi gets great reviews on average. Customers love the platform’s comprehensive features and ease of use. If there’s one key criticism, it’s the price.
Patreon Reviews
Patreon fares well on Capterra and G2. However, its score is bad on TrustPilot. From analyzing the data it would appear that the platform has received a large number of negative reviews from non-subscribers in response to Patreon’s alleged support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Genuine customers enjoy the platform’s ease of use and flexible payment setup. They were less thrilled with the customer service and lack of native tools.
Kajabi vs. Patreon: Final Verdict
It’s clear that Kajabi and Patreon operate in very different spheres and are suited to different purposes.
While we feel that Kajabi overall has a much better and more versatile offering compared with Patreon, we also understand that its pricing is not accessible to everyone.
Patreon’s affordable structure gives everyone the opportunity to monetize their content but with limited functionality, it can be all too easy to outgrow the platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Is More Affordable – Kajabi or Patreon?
Kajabi costs from $149/month to use while Patreon is free to use but takes a cut of anything you earn. Therefore, in this case, Patreon is the more affordable option.
What Is the Difference Between Kajabi and Patreon?
Kajabi is an all-in-one digital product and course creation platform with sales and marketing tools included. On the other hand, Patreon is a platform that lets creators monetize their content but lacks any tools for marketing purposes.
Is Kajabi or Patreon Better?
Kajabi is best for digital product creators that want a high-functioning platform that lets them create, market, and sell products. However, Patreon may be better if you are a creator with an existing audience that you wish to monetize.
