Building an audience and monetizing it is never easy, but it helps a lot if you have the right platform in place.
Both Kajabi and Skool enable you to grow your audience. I’ve tried out both platforms extensively and found Kajabi superior for growing a business.
Key Takeaways:
- Kajabi costs from $69/month with zero transaction fees
- Skool costs $99/month and charges transaction fees on each sale
- Kajabi is a full business solution, while Skool is for communities
Skool vs. Kajabi at a Glance
| Feature | Kajabi | Skool |
|---|---|---|
| SupplyGem Platform Ranking | No. 2 | Not ranked on SupplyGem |
| SupplyGem Score | 9.5 | 5.5 |
| Trustpilot Score | 4.4 | Not rated on Trustpilot |
| Costs From | $69/month | $99/month |
| Free Trial | Get a Growth plan 30-day free trial | 14-day free trial |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 30 days | 30 days |
| Platform Pros | – All-in-one platform – Create communities, courses, coaching, and more – Diverse monetization opportunities – No transaction fees – Marketing and sales tools included | Those who want a full business solution for selling digital products |
| Platform Cons | – Higher learning curve – Fewer gamification features | – Expensive considering the limited features – Transaction fees on all sales – Can’t sell courses independently from your community |
| Best for | Those who want a full business solution for selling digital products | Those who want to focus on community building only |
What Exactly Do You Use Kajabi and Skool For?
While Kajabi and Skool certainly have some overlapping features, they are quite different.
Kajabi is designed as an all-in-one business solution for creating, marketing, and selling digital products, while Skool is centered on a community you create and run.
In essence, you use both platforms to build an audience you can monetize, but the approach for each is quite different.
Skool vs. Kajabi: How We’ve Rated Their Affordability
The two platforms have very different pricing structures. Starting at $69/month, Kajabi offers four pricing plans aimed to suit where you are in your business journey. A 20% discount is given if you prefer to pay annually.
Skool charges a flat fee of $99/month per community. No annual payment option is available.
But wait! Skoll has a sneaky transaction fee that applies to ALL your sales. The fee is 2.9% + 30c, and that’s on top of your $99 per month subscription fee.
Kajabi has zero transaction fees, so all you pay is your regular subscription fee.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what Kajabi costs. You get access to most features on each plan, but what changes are the plan limits:
| Plan | Monthly cost | Monthly cost for annual payment | Total annual cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kickstarter | $69 | $55 | $660 |
| Basic | $149 | $119 | $1,428 |
| Growth | $199 | $159 | $1,908 |
| Pro | $399 | $319 | $3,828 |
So, while Kajabi may be a bit more expensive than Skool—particularly on the higher plans—at least you get to keep all the money you make. And this can make a real difference once you start making sales.
Bottom line? I’ll take a slightly more expensive subscription fee over transaction fees any day!
Skool vs. Kajabi: Community and Course Building Features
Let’s dig a little deeper into the overlapping features of Skool and Kajabi.
Communities
You can’t use Skool unless you create a community, so this is the defining feature of the platform.
It has a nice, easy-to-use interface and a decent range of engagement options. You can also create different conversation categories to keep the chat threads organized.
You can keep posts interesting by including downloadable files, video links, polls, emojis, and more. Other members can interact with posts by liking them or responding.
There’s also a calendar feature where you can set up events such as Q&A sessions, webinars, or casual chat groups. However, if you want to use live streaming, you’ll have to connect Skool with Zoom or similar.
One interesting aspect of Skool’s communities is the chance for members to “level up.” They do this by engaging with other people’s posts. The more they engage, the more points they get, and their level increases.
You can choose what happens at each level, although it’s fairly basic. Essentially, you choose which courses unlock when a certain percentage of members have attained a specific level.
To boost motivation, there are leaderboards for the week, month, and for all time.
Finally, you can monetize your Skool community by creating paid access levels that are chargeable as a monthly subscription.
All in all, it’s a decent community platform with plenty of engagement opportunities, but it is missing some key features, which I’ll highlight below.
In comparison, Kajabi’s community feature is actually very similar in terms of categorizing chats, posting, and responding. The interface is also user-friendly, and it’s easy for users to navigate and use the platform.
Like Skool, Kajabi has a point and leaderboard system, but there are no levels to gain or a feature for “unlocking” content.
What is different is the ability to set up and run challenges. These can be for literally anything, but if you’re stuck for ideas, Kajabi provides some blueprints for challenge ideas that you can use.
For example, I set up a self-care challenge in my community and invited people to post about what they were doing to take care of themselves.
I feel this directs the purpose of engagement a little better and gives people a reason and motivation to post.
Another key feature definitely missing from Skool is the ability to live stream without integrating with a third-party tool.
Kajabi has its own “live room” where you can create scheduled events or jump into a live session ad-hoc. There are lots of features here, too. Members can comment while the session is running, and you can even split your audience into breakout sessions to work on group tasks.
I always find that getting in front of my audience has the biggest impact, and Kajabi Live makes it easy.
Bottom line? Kajabi gives you more tools for engagement, so I find it the better platform for building a community.
Course Building
The second feature that overlaps Kajabi and Skool is the ability to build courses.
Honestly, I’m not impressed with Skool’s course builder. It’s ultra-basic with little room for customization.
Each lesson consists of a page you have to format and create from scratch. There are no templates available. To make the content more interesting, you can add links to external resources and upload videos, images, and digital files.
Here’s the real kicker, though. There are no monetization options for the courses, and you cannot offer them independently from your community.
That means the only way you can charge for the courses is by charging for the community as a whole. In my opinion, this really limits what you can achieve with this platform.
Kajabi has a much better course builder. For starters, your courses can be completely independent of your community, meaning you can offer a course on its own, several courses together, or courses and a community. So, you get a lot more flexibility in that respect.
The building tool has a lot more going for it, too. The layout is much nicer and you can better divide your content by structuring it into lessons and modules. Content can be dripped so students follow a specific learning path.
A couple of things that will make your life easier are the choice of course templates (which you can customize, of course) and the AI content generator. Simply plug in your course title and a description, and the AI will do the heavy lifting and design your course outline.
While you still have to do plenty of work, the AI gives you a good foundation to build.
Finally, you are free to price your courses however you wish, whether that’s on a subscription basis or a one-off payment. You can even invite customers to “pay what they want.”
Bottom line? You get so much more flexibility with Kajabi. I suppose Skool will do if you plan to focus on your community more than course content, but the restrictions around the feature will soon get frustrating.
Why You Will Get More Value with Kajabi
Not only does Kajabi have better features than Skool, but it also has way more of them.
Think about it. Once you have created your community and a couple of courses in Skool, how will you promote them?
Moreover, what are you going to do when you need to expand or diversify your offers to grow your business?
The answer is not a lot. At least, not on Skool.
In contrast, Kajabi is a full business solution, and you get everything you need to start your business and scale it. In fact, many six and seven-figure businesses use Kajabi to run their empire, so I’m not making a wild claim here.
The fact is that Kajabi gives you far better value. Besides the community and course builders, you also get:
Coaching, podcast, digital downloads, and newsletter product builders
A website builder
Funnel and landing page builders
Automation
Email marketing
Sales tools (including a native payment gateway)
And a whole lot more!
Skool vs. Kajabi: Our Final Verdict
If Skool had some seriously awesome community features that made it stand out from Kajabi, I’d say it would be worth giving a go.
But, it doesn’t.
Kajabi has pretty much all the features that Skool has, plus a whole lot more. It’s reasonably priced, and you get to keep all your revenue.
In my mind, Skool is expensive and doesn’t deliver value for money. Right now, it’s just not worth it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Skool or Kajabi Best for Community Building?
Kajabi is better for community building than Skool. Both platforms offer similar community chat features, but Kajabi also has a native live stream tool and the ability to set up and run challenges.
Is Skool or Kajabi Best for Building Courses?
Kajabi is better than Skool for building courses. Skool’s course-building feature is basic, and you can’t sell courses outside your community. Kajabi offers templates, advanced customization, AI, and many other tools to make course creation easy.
Do I Need Skool If I Have Kajabi?
No, you don’t need Skool if you have Kajabi. Kajabi does everything Skool can do; plus, it provides a full range of marketing, sales, and product creation tools.
