Kajabi vs Udemy: In-Depth Comparison

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Kajabi and Udemy are two popular platforms that educators use to sell online courses. 

Kajabi and Udemy help creators out by giving them a space to host their material and a means of selling it to the wider public.

Kajabi vs Udemy

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Kajabi vs Udemy at a Glance

Main Differences Between Kajabi and Udemy

Kajabi and Udemy are both course platforms but have some major key differences. 

The main difference is that Kajabi is a business platform and Udemy is a course marketplace. 

Kajabi gives users tools to build their own course website, while Udemy allows educators to upload their courses to an already existing marketplace where students can buy them. 

Here are some more specific differences:

  • Price: Kajabi costs at least $149 while it’s free to upload courses to Udemy
  • Features: Kajabi gives uses tools for building a business/brand, Udemy does not
  • Functionality; Kajabi gives users much more flexibility when making courses
  • Marketing: Kajabi has a powerful suite of marketing tools, Udemy does not give creators tools to market courses

Overall, Kajabi is much better for building a sustainable course business, but selling courses on Udemy can be a good way to generate a modest stream of passive income. 

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Pricing Comparison

Kajabi has a 3-tiered pricing structure:

  • Basic – $149/mo
  • Growth – $199/mo
  • Pro – $399/mo

Each plan gets you access to all the basic features and unlimited marketing emails. Kajabi is a bit more expensive than some other course platforms, but you need to keep in mind that you won’t be paying separately for extensions, plug-ins, hosting, or your domain name.

All of the stuff is included in Kajabi’s subscription price. So it’s not actually as expensive as it seems. None of the plans include transaction fees either. 

It does not cost anything to upload a course to Udemy, but the site will take a 50% commission on each course you sell. So that means if you sell a $100 course, you only get $50 of it. There are some options to make this rate more favorable to creators, such as promotional coupons and paid acquisition channels. 

Overall, It is cheaper to sell courses on Udemy, but you lose a lot of the potential profit. Kajabi is moderately expensive but includes everything you need along with no transaction fees on sales.

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Marketing Tools 

Kajabi is clearly superior when it comes to marketing tools. The best marketing features for Kajabi are the email automations and pipeline builder.

Email automations can be used to set up complex trigger sequences to respond to customer actions, and you can segment your email lists by demographics for running effective campaigns.

Users get access to a huge library of marketing email templates and every pricing plan allows for unlimited marketing emails. 

Kajabi also has “pipelines”; their take on sales funnels. The pipeline builder gives a visual representation of your sales funnel where you can add sales, landing pages, and opt-in forms with the drag-and-drop editor.

The pipeline tools are built to increase your conversion rate. 

Udemy does not give creators access to marketing tools, but Udemy creators have some marketing options.

You can sign up for the Marketing Boost program and Udemy will push your content using their network of affiliate partners.

Udemy also lets some creators create “Instructor’s coupons” so students can buy reduced courses. Savvy educators can also use Udemy as a marketing asset itself to funnel students to their main course website. 

Overall though, Kajabi is clearly superior when it scones to marketing tools. 

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Website Building Comparison

Again, Kajabi comes out on top when it comes to web building tools. The main reason why is that Udemy does not give you any tools to build your website.

Kajabi’s main page builder uses a simple but powerful drag-and-drop editor.

You can create pages with ease from the main toolbar and each element can be placed where you want.

Kajabi’s interface makes keeping track of your pages simple and you can also create special membership pages, landing pages, sales pages, and more.

Kajabi includes hosting with the subscription plan, and all modules are integrated into one package, so you don’t have to worry about stringing together extensions and plug-ins

Since Udemy is not a stand alone platform, it does not come with any web-building tools.

There are a ton of courses on Udemy about how to use web building tools, but course creators are not given any to create a website.

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Theme Comparison

Kajabi runs on a theme-based design. In the past, Kajabi offered 11 themes to choose from.

Now, they have put 10 of those themes on the backburner and are instead focusing on the Premier Theme. The Premier Theme has been developed into an ultra-flexible one-size-fits-all framework that anyone can use to make a personalized design. 

Within the Premier Theme, there are 6 layout presets you can pick from and customize. All layouts are clean and modern; perfect for an online storefront.

Kajabi also lets you assign themes on an individual product level, so the product page for one thing can have a different feel than another. 

Since Udemy does not give you web building tools, there are also no themes to choose from. So, Kajabi clearly wins this round of our matchup. 

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Course Creations & Student Engagement Comparison

Courses are the bread and butter of both Kajabi and Udemy. 

First Kajabi. Kajabi’s course building module is super simple to use. Courses are organized into lessons and categories, and structuring a course is a similar process to making a blog post on a WordPress.

The interface has a logical flow to it, and once you create your course, you can set offerings.

Kajabi also includes a handful of assessment tools such as quizzes.

Quizzes can be inserted into lessons and set so learners have to finish the quiz first before moving on to the next lesson.

Current question types allowed are multiple-choice, true/false, and written. You can also keep tabs on student progress using the analytics tools in the dashboard. 

Udemy also has a decent course builder that is easy to operate.

One thing we like is the Udemy has a lot of resources to help creators create and upload courses, such as instructions, recommendations for equipment settings, and more.

You can also add multiple file types to a single lesson. The course building tools are one of Udemy’s strongest features. 

But student engagement tools are lacking. You can insert quizzes of your own making into lessons, but there is no quiz module that lets you make them from scratch.

Udemy does let you keep track of how many students are viewing your courses, which is one way to figure out what keeps them engaged. 

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Integrations

Kajabi currently offers 10 built-in integrations, including MailChimp, Drip, ConvertKit, Google Analytics, and Clickfunnels. Kajabi also has an integration for Zapier.

The Zapier integration allows you to create custom integrations for non-native third-party apps. So in other words, Zapier lets you integrate with any other third-party service not already included on the list. 

In general, Udemy does not have any integrations they offer content creators However, Udemy does offer integrations as part of their business partnership services. So the average content creator on Udemy is normally locked out of those integrations.

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Customer Support Comparison

Lastly is customer support. Kajabi is known by its users for excellent customer support with its 24/7 live chat service team. In addition to live chat services, Kajabi users get access to Kajabi University, a massive online library of educational resources and how-to guides that cover the key aspects of working with the platform and how to start your own course business.

Udemy, in contrast, has minimal customer support. They have a website for troubleshooting common issues with the platform, but no live chat options to troubleshoot in real-time. Instructors get access to the Udemy training center that has basic resources to get started, but not much else. 

Conclusions: Kajabi or Udemy?

When it comes to picking a platform to start an online course business, Kajabi is the better choice by far.

Kajabi gives you tools to create your own website, manage students, and run marketing campaigns, all from the same platform.

Udemy, in contrast, is just a course marketplace with little marketing and no website building tools.

Udemy also charges a standard 50% commission on every sale on the platform. Udemy can be a good option if you want to establish a moderate side stream of income, but otherwise, Kajabi is the superior choice for selling online courses. 

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