Kajabi and WordPress are both awesome platforms, and I can’t rate their features highly enough. Because it’s so difficult to pick one over the other, I recommend using both for maximum results.
Key Takeaways:
- Kajabi is the best option for digital learning content creators
- WordPress is best for informational websites and bloggers
- GoHighLevel is an alternative for physical and service-based businesses
Kajabi vs. WordPress: A Quick Overview
| Feature | Kajabi | WordPress |
|---|---|---|
| SupplyGem Platform Ranking | No. 2 | Not ranked |
| SupplyGem Score | 9.5 | 9.0 |
| Trustpilot Score | 4.5 | 1.8 |
| Costs From | $69/month | Free |
| Free Trial | Get a Growth plan 30-day free trial | Free plan available |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 30 days | 7 days for monthly 14 days for annual and biennial |
| Platform Pros | – All-in-one platform for digital creators – Best-in-class tools for courses and communities – Top-rated support – Very easy to use – Beginner-friendly – No need for third-party apps | – World’s most used website builder – Excellent for SEO – Limitless possibilities – Thousands of theme choices – Very affordable |
| Platform Cons | – Expensive plans – Basic website builder with limited templates – Only suitable for digital product | – Bad online reviews – Not beginner-friendly – May need lots of plugins to get the right functionality |
| Best For | Digital learning content creators | Information sites and bloggers |
Using Kajabi and WordPress Together: Get the Best of Both Worlds
Kajabi and WordPress are not cut from the same cloth. Although some features certainly overlap, they both serve very different purposes.
WordPress is the gold standard for website building. Over 40% of all existing websites are built using WordPress, and it’s easy to see why.
It offers a robust and secure platform and an incredible number of customization options. Using themes and plugins, you can precision-tailor your site to suit your business. Moreover, it’s excellent for SEO and getting your pages to rank.
In contrast, Kajabi is a platform aimed at digital creators who want to build and sell learning products. Kajabi is also a best-in-class platform that provides users with excellent features to build engaging products.
Many business owners employ both platforms (something that I thoroughly recommend), which gives them the best of both worlds—a top-class website and a high-quality product offering.
Which Should You Choose for Your Business?
Although using Kajabi and WordPress together is a winning combo, I get that you might not want to use two different platforms.
If you’d prefer to choose just one, that’s no problem. Since Kajabi features a website builder and WordPress has plugins for courses, you can get the same functionality if you really want to.
However, the one you choose all boils down to your business type. I recommend choosing:
- Kajabi for digital product sales, courses, membership sites, and live coaching
- WordPress for informational-based businesses, affiliate sites, and blogs
I will also throw in a curveball here and introduce a third choice. Service-based businesses and brick-and-mortar local businesses will find GoHighLevel incredibly useful.
GoHighLevel also offers an all-in-one solution with many tools and features tailored toward running these types of businesses online. If you’ve never heard of this platform, be sure to check out the articles we have about it on SupplyGem.
Kajabi vs. WordPress: Cost and Affordability
Right off the bat, WordPress certainly looks more affordable than Kajabi, with plans starting at $9 per month. It even has a basic free plan available instead of a free trial.
However, you have to consider functionality.
Its two cheapest plans are unsuitable for online businesses, so you need either the Business or Commerce plan to get business features. Additionally, depending on your needs, you may require the use of paid plugins and themes.
Kajabi is certainly priced higher, with plans starting at $69 per month, but remember that you don’t have to pay for any extras or third-party apps.
- WordPress gives subscribers a 55% discount for paying annually
- Kajabi annual subscribers get a 20% discount
| Plan | Monthly price | Monthly price paid annually | Total annual cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kajabi Kickstarter | $69 | $55 | $660 |
| Kajabi Basic | $149 | $119 | $1,428 |
| Kajabi Growth | $199 | $159 | $1,908 |
| Kajabi Pro | $399 | $319 | $3,828 |
| WordPress Personal | $9 | $4 | $48 |
| WordPress Premium | $18 | $8 | $96 |
| WordPress Business | $40 | $25 | $300 |
| WordPress Commerce | $70 | $45 | $540 |
| WordPress Cloud | $65 | $65 | $780 |
Why Kajabi Is Better than WordPress for Digital Creators
All-In-One Solution
It’s important to understand that to build courses on WordPress, you must first select and use a plugin for this purpose. Then, if you want tools to market and sell your courses, you need additional plugins for this, too.
Most of these plugins come at an additional cost, which soon adds up, never mind the fact that you’ve got to try and connect everything (something that gets quite technical and complicated).
On the other hand, Kajabi offers everything in one place on a single platform. You get everything you need to build, market, and sell learning products for a single subscription price.
You don’t have to worry about integrations, and all tools work seamlessly together.
Anyone who has used WordPress before will know it’s quite easy to “break” your site when you make changes and add new plugins. This doesn’t happen with Kajabi—ever.
User-Friendly Platform
If you don’t have experience with website building, WordPress can be notoriously complicated. This is largely due to the sheer number of available options, features, and plugins.
If that daunts you, you may prefer Kajabi. The platform is centered around ease of use, and the developers have absolutely nailed this part.
The interface is modern and, importantly, frequently updated. That means you’ll rarely encounter a glitch. Come to think of it, I don’t think I have ever had Kajabi crash on me.
Every inch of the platform is intuitive and simple to master. There are a ton of helpful prompts and guides that new users will find valuable, making the learning curve much faster than WordPress.
Excellent Course Builder
Kajabi was built for course creators, so it stands to reason that its course builder is top-notch.
Again, ease of use comes into it. It’s super straightforward to use, especially since the platform introduced its awesome AI content generator. All you do is plug in a few prompts, and it’ll magic up a course outline and some of the content in seconds.
To make your content engaging, you can add all sorts of things like quizzes, videos, audio files, and more. Gamify your courses by including certificates of completion, unlocking access to exclusive content, and offering students prizes like discounts or free coaching sessions.
From a user perspective, students taking your courses will enjoy the experience. They can either log in via a browser or use the Kajabi app to access their content on the go, making the platform a flexible learning tool.
Top-Rated Community Tool
I’m a big fan of the Kajabi community feature. Having somewhere for my audience to congregate, chat, and get more involved with my products has proven to be an excellent way to gain more revenue and insights into what my customers want.
You have a lot of diverse options inside your community:
- Monetize it by creating paid access levels.
- Use the Kajabi live stream feature to engage directly with your audience.
- Set up and run challenges of all kinds.
- Create and run exclusive events.
- Set up chat circles to discuss different subjects and topics.
All these features create a buzz inside my community. I especially love the instant live room where I can surprise my audience with a spontaneous video chat or announcement. My community members feel like they are getting extra value and appreciate the opportunity to connect with me directly.
Built-in Checkout and Payment Features
I love the simplicity of Kajabi’s selling tools. Since they are all included within the platform, I don’t have to be concerned with connectivity or whether or not the payments will go through.
Although it’s possible to use Stripe and PayPal, Kajabi has also recently introduced its own payment processor—Kajabi Payments. This means you don’t have to use a third-party app to take and manage payments. It’s super convenient and ensures a seamless payment process for my customers.
The Kajabi checkout page is highly customizable, plus I can add order bumps to enhance my offers (and revenue).
For my offers, I can use any combination of products to create enticing bundles. For example, I like selling courses that come with a community. Then, I often include one-to-one coaching sessions as an upsell. Another great alternative is to bundle several courses together within a membership site.
Why WordPress Is Better than Kajabi for Website Building
Wide Choice of Themes
Kajabi gives you a grand total of 11 website themes to pick from, and that’s it. This limited choice can make it difficult to find one that aligns with your brand.
In contrast, WordPress has quite literally thousands of website themes available, and many of them are free.
Free themes are generally easy to install and customize but tend to have limited features. Premium (paid) themes will offer advanced features, customization, and enhanced support.
Whatever you want, you will find a theme that fits perfectly with your style and budget.
Fully Customizable
I don’t know where to start with WordPress customization—the options are so vast!
In comparison, Kajabi’s site builder feels minuscule, with only a handful of customization options (that does make it easier to use, though). Advanced users will be much better off with WordPress’s toolkit.
Besides the thousands of themes on offer, a vast library of plugins can enhance your site’s functionality—from SEO tools to e-commerce, enhanced security to language translators, and everything in between.
Then, you have the different page builders like Elementor and Divi, which allow you to design custom interfaces without understanding how to code. And if you do know how to code, well, you can design your own CSS, PHP, and HTML files for your site.
In all, this incredible array of tools allows you to create a truly unique and fully tailored website that you just wouldn’t be able to achieve in Kajabi.
Best for SEO
When it comes to getting your pages found in SERP, you can’t do better than WordPress.
Thanks to its built-in features and extensive plugin options, the platform is highly regarded for implementing SEO. These are designed to meet Google’s all-important best practices for getting your site ranked.
For example, WordPress offers URL customization, proper use of heading tags, and clean HTML markup, which search engines prefer. Plugins like Yoast SEO offer many tools to optimize your site properly.
Speed optimization for page loading times is also important for SEO, and WordPress helps with this through caching, image optimization plugins, and lightweight themes.
Implementing these things will please the Google algorithms, and your site will stand a much better chance of being seen organically.
Superior Content Management System
The limitations of Kajabi’s website builder become apparent when you realize it’s only meant to host your learning content. What I mean by this is that it’s not possible to create a website for other purposes, such as affiliates, portfolios, or sites that sell physical products.
WordPress has no such restrictions, and the platform’s flexibility allows it to cater to just about any type of website.
The platform actually started out as an easy solution for bloggers and has since grown into a full-blown content management system. Because of this, it’s the best option out there for sites that need to handle a lot of content.
Final Thoughts
Example of creator using Kajabi and WordPress together: https://robertoblake.com/
I believe that using Kajabi and WordPress together is a powerful combination, and you should definitely consider it for your business.
However, using one or the other is still a great option since both platforms are top-notch.
Have any thoughts on this? Let us know in the SupplyGem community!
Frequently Asked Questions
How Can I Connect Kajabi to WordPress?
You can connect Kajabi to WordPress by adding hyperlinks to your WordPress site pages. Or, you can use subdomains to connect Kajabi to your WordPress site domain.
Is There a Kajabi WordPress Plugin?
No, there is no WordPress plugin available for Kajabi. However, you can connect the two platforms by using Zapier, which will facilitate the transfer of data between them.
