Which is Best, Kajabi or WordPress?

We've been using Kajabi in our business for over nine years now. And every week I get asked why did you switch from WordPress? Why is Kajabi better?

For those of you reading this that are thinking about Kajabi and making the switch yourselves, or paying someone to do it for you, this post will help you make that choice.

The first thing to understand is that the key difference between Kajabi and WordPress is the scope of what's possible. The Kajabi platform is hugely focused on helping entrepreneurs, coaches, trainers and other experts monetize their expertise.

It is a complete business service in a box that provides its customers with a comprehensive suite of tools for course creation and business marketing. All the tools are designed within an easy to use interface. Businesses and individuals with a vastly wide variation in the subjects they deal with using Kajabi, but its scope for how you can use it is relatively narrow.

Contrast that with WordPress, which is extremely broad and does not have a single focus. There are over 1.3 billion active websites on the Internet, according to a survey published by Netcraft. And that around 455,000,000 websites are using WordPress right now. This means that approximately 20% of all self-hosted websites use WordPress. That is a vast number.

There's not much you can't do with WordPress online providing you have the right extensions and plugins. As a consequence, to get the results you want as a business or entrepreneur, it can be much more challenging to set up, configure, and use. Plugins require regular upgrades and maintenance and often rely on developers who provide free plugins. You will often find what you really need is their paid-for versions. Developers may go out of business or stop supporting their work leaving the WordPress user with the risk of security vulnerabilities or sites that don't function correctly.

With that intro over let's look at things in more detail.

Kajabi to WordPress Set-Up Comparison

Kajabi and WordPress both have very flexible page builders that can make all kinds of attractive-looking pages. From our experience, however, Kajabi is more user friendly, and because you only have access to Kajabi's themes, everything works instantly. There's never a conflict because Kajabi doesn't rely on the heavy use of plugins. WordPress does.

Compared to setting up a WordPress site, which although can be installed on a server within minutes, Kajabi is generally much easier to set up because all the technical pieces are done for you. This makes maintenance more manageable as well as integrations into other platforms such as PayPal or Stripe. 

When you purchase Kajabi, you get hosting of all the tools you need to successfully create, launch and manage your online course or coaching business. Website, blog, email, payment checkout, landing page builder, analytics, and sales pipelines are all integrated.

This is the main reason we made the switch from WordPress to Kajabi. It keeps things simple and enables us to manage everything under one roof.

In the past, with WordPress, we had installed over a dozen plugins that we needed so we could make the basic WordPress set up meet our needs. And although the result was a bespoke setup, it was costly to maintain, manage and too often something it let us down.

So when given the opportunity of beta testing Kajabi in 2015, it was a breath of fresh air. Five years on and the platform has improved enormously. We have several sites running on it for the different businesses we have. Nor more plugins, no more tech headaches, nor more security vulnerabilities. All the tech is taken care of by Kajabi.

WordPress, on the other hand, straight out of the box starts really like an empty website building tool that needs installing on a server. Which hosting services to use is the first decision you need to make. And there are hundreds to choose from such as Bluehost. These services rent you space on their servers where you typically share space with other users. Once you have selected your hosting service, you then have to install your WordPress site and then configure it to meet your needs. This means working out what you want your WordPress installation to do for you and then hunting down the right plugins to install. Once you have added your plugins, you can then start to add your content.

With WordPress, technology management is your responsibility, and whether you do it yourself or hire someone to do it for you, it's your responsibility. Whereas with Kajabi, it's theirs. You pay a monthly fee for them to offer you their service as software and they have to make sure the tech works seamlessly.

Kajabi vs WordPress Pricing Comparison

Looking at the essential software required to install WordPress and comparing it to Kajabi, WordPress appears to be a no brainer. The software needed for WordPress is free.

However, there's more to it than that. With WordPress you need various other add ons that suddenly start to add up and before you know it your monthly WordPress charges are racking up.

Kajabi offers a transparent and straightforward pricing plan that has three plans:

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

And you can pay monthly or annually.

Whilst they don't offer a free plan, Kajabi does provide a 14-day free trial. The trial is a great way to test things out and get used to the platform before paying for a plan of your choice. 

One of the beauties of Kajabi regardless of the plan you choose is the fact that the entire cost is contained in the subscription price. There are no additional charges, unlike WordPress, where you will have to pay for hosting charges, plugins and integrations. 

Kajabi Customer Support

When problems occur with your WordPress site, which they inevitably will, turning to WordPress customer service is not an option. Sure there are thousands of WordPress developers that you can get support from, but there is no such thing as a WordPress customer support team. 

With Kajabi there is, and it's superb!

With Kajabi you get 24/7 live chat and email support. 

However, it would be unfair to imply that you can not get help with your WordPress site. There are thousands of tech support people working online that can help you with anything WordPress related so you'll never be stuck. But, WordPress doesn't have a dedicated team of customer support people like Kajabi. So if having support at your fingertips with real people helping you out in real-time is essential to you then Kajabi is your best choice.

Why We Chose Kajabi

Finally, the right platform for your online course or coaching business comes down to your individual needs. Since we primarily create and sell online courses, coach others on how to do the same and offer a 'done for you' course creation and Kajabi set up service, Kajabi is a superb choice for us. We chose it for the simplicity of use, fantastic customer support, and the feature-rich inbuilt tools that allow us to create and market stunning courses of our own and for clients.

If you are looking to create an income from selling your expertise online, coaching others or training your franchisees or employees, Kajabi is an excellent choice.

You will find everything you need for your business included in Kajabi. No need to worry about piecing together plugins to make it do what you want it to do.

On the other hand, WordPress is a powerful platform. Some of the worlds most amazing websites use WordPress at their core. You can make it do anything you want, but you need to know what you are doing or find someone that does to help you. And when time is of the essence, and you would rather focus on serving your customers, then think twice before you purchase a more complicated platform such as WordPress.