No time to watch? No problem! Read the cheater notes.

I’m a blogger. I live in the blogging world. Wordpress is still the industry-standard blogging platform and it has served me very well over the years. For blogging.

But not for business.

Long {sob} story short:

• Blogger becomes writing coach {that’s me}.
• Writing coach {still me} develops online courses.
• Online course creator {are you following? Me again} wants to migrate off of Teachable and build courses in her own website so she can control the look, feel, and delivery. 

Enter Wordpress! Naturally, right? I mean, it makes perfect sense to simply build out my course content on my existing Wordpress website. Only in this case, my husband {also an entrepreneur} and I decided to team up to host both our courses on one website, so we chose to build a new site from scratch. No biggie {says the tech-challenged blogger writing girl who had thus far always hired web designers to do her dirty work}. I can do this.

I purchased the hosting plan. I loaded Thrive Architect—drag and drop, simple, they say. I added the LearnDash plugin {to build the course content}, the MemberPress plugin {to manage enrolled students}, and a SamCart integration for creating checkout pages and processing payment. All these pieces I puzzled together—and I actually got them to work!

Almost.

Toward the end of what became a two-week project that SUCKED THE LIFE FROM MY BRAIN—dang proud of myself as I was for building a complex site from scratch {realize I have ZERO official programming education; I know only what I’ve picked up from blogging experience over the years}—I at last could NOT, and I mean COULD NOOOOOOT get the myriad plugins to talk to each other the way I needed them to so that I could present my final course offer the way my customers deserved.

I scoured the interwebs for documentation. I read every blog post, watched every training video. But what it came down to is this. Each plugin and component is its own entity, its own business. And none of those entities are sitting around the table together talking about the very best way to make the plugin puzzle seamless for the end user. Or, at least not the non-techie end user. LearnDash said, “Get to this point and MemberPress will do the rest.” MemberPress said, “Get to this point and LearnDash will handle it from there.” SamCart said, “You’re all idiots, we’re miles ahead of you” okay not really, although that might be true. But did these plummeting cliffs at the end of each “how-to” training scenario help me make the leap? No.

I might have cried. Just a little.

Until I remembered Kajabi.

A few colleagues had mentioned on a biz-mom Facebook group that they’d built their new sites in a tool called Kajabi. I knew very little about it, only that it wasn’t Wordpress and therefore scary and strange. And possibly sacrilegious.

But I’d reached the end of my wits and my skills within the Wordpress family of integrations, so I had to try something, anything, to salvage my hopes of a self-contained course site. I grabbed a colleague’s affiliate link and signed up for a free trial with Kajabi.

And I still can’t believe what happened.

I built in two days what had taken me two WEEKS to build, still unfinished, in Wordpress.

Do you hear the angels singing?

From my experience, I feel compelled to offer you some honest pros and cons. If you’re considering building out a business website, especially for the purpose of online courses, then you HAVE to weigh Kajabi as an option. Two months ago I would not have said that. But now I know better. Here’s why.

I thought Thrive Architect was reasonably easy to use as a drop-and-drag design tool. But Kajabi’s built-in site builder was beyond anything I’d seen before. SO easy and intuitive. Miles ahead of the Thrive Theme tools. I hardly even had to read through the documentation; just a quick (and I mean quick—like two minutes max) tutorial video from the Kajabi Knowledge Base and I was off and running on building pages, headers, calls-to-action, navigation menus and so much more. I could upload and insert my own images, choose my own brand colors, arrange my own page hierarchy. And adding content to each page is as simple as selecting blocks from a menu of functions, including text, forms, buttons, testimonials, videos, spacers, accordion lists, countdown timers, and so much more.

I did get a little confused sometimes on the layers of content. Kajabi uses a building block approach, meaning in order to create a call-to-action, for example, I first needed to create an offer, which means I needed to create a product in order to tie to the offer, and so on. And page details (title, URL, SEO) are updated in a separate screen from page content (called the Customize tab), but once I figured out how to get around, I was fine. I just found myself toggling back and forth between screens and functions quite a bit before I could visualize how all the site’s content came together.

Want to know the BEST news (for you)? After building countless Kajabi sites, courses and sales pages, I created a super helpful Easy Build Checklist and I give it out for FREE to anyone who signs up for Kajabi through my referral link. This interactive PDF is 15 pages of step-by-step tasks and clear outlines so you can actually SEE how all the pieces come together. And most importantly, you don't need to hold all the how-to in your head. Use the checklist! I use it myself now, just to make sure I don't miss a thing.

Kajabi gives you several template options, although it does highly recommend sticking with its latest default template. Within the template, you’re given specific areas in which you can upload images or change text. It’s as simple as clicking “upload” to add an image and voila! the image appears—exactly where it’s supposed to.

However, I do admit there was a bit of overkill in image uploads when it came to building my course content—at least using the template I chose. Every unit and post called for two or three images in two or three different places. But Kajabi does offer one tremendously helpful feature—it tells you right at the upload point what size (in pixels) your image should be. {And my Easy Build Checklist includes a list of all the images and sizes you'll need... all in one place!} So all I had to do was open Canva and whip up a quick custom-size image. I used photos from the Canva library and created templates so I could easily reproduce these same sized images with different pics or text in a matter of seconds.

Granted, Kajabi purposely keeps things streamlined in order to make it easy, and because of that you might not have the same flexibility in design as you would building a custom design in Wordpress. But in my case, as a DIY project, I didn’t need any flexibility beyond what Kajabi offers. In fact, I’m thrilled the design was somewhat locked down because this prevented me {the non-techie, remember} from inadvertently botching my design spacing or page display, which I did multiple times in Wordpress. The block interface gave me enough options to present my content the way I wanted to, without giving me freedom to mess anything up.

This is the most beautiful benefit of Kajabi. All parts talk to each other because they are all components of the same tool. No worries about one plugin not gelling with another because there ARE NO PLUGINS, just one Kajabi hamster talking to another Kajabi hamster, and they all get along swimmingly in the cage.

My biggest hiccup with Wordpress and all the plugins was getting the buyer to a simple login page, with a simple email explanation of how to access their purchase. I had to jump through a dozen hoops in Wordpress, in which one plugin actually required ANOTHER third-party plugin just to operate correctly. What the what??

Kajabi has a clear solution to this issue. As soon as a buyer enrolls in a course, Kajabi sends them an email containing account and/or login info. {You can request a test email to see exactly what they see.} The login page was easily customizable and branded—right within Kajabi. {In Wordpress I had to use third-party tools to customize my login page.} And when a buyer makes a purchase, I can immediately see their account info in my Kajabi Members dashboard. I can add tags and automations to my purchase pages to organize my member list as well.

I do wish I had more flexibility in designing the look of the email message that gets sent to buyers after a purchase. It’s not very pretty, just functional. They are actively working on an update to this, though, so I expect improvements soon and I’m looking forward to seeing what design options they offer. But at this point all I truly care about is that Kajabi is ending my users their login info directly and they can get into the course they purchased without extra hassle on their end or mine. Currently I am integrating with my existing ConvertKit account for a follow-up sequence, at least until Kajabi enhances its built-in email design capabilities. Migrating off of ConvertKit is more than I can chew right now.

Kajabi does not require a third-party hosting plan. Kajabi hosts your website in Kajabi. You can set up a custom domain if you choose (which I did, and I confess I outsourced that one task because I didn’t want to mess it up), or you can keep your URL tied to Kajabi, for example, yoursite.kajabi.com.

One really helpful feature is that Kajabi hosts all course videos on its own servers, through a relationship with Wistia. In Wordpress, using LearnDash, I had to host my videos in Vimeo and link them to my LearnDash content. Kajabi eliminates the need for a third-party video hosting platform.

One thing I really liked about SamCart was the ability to create professional, easy-to-use checkout pages with bump offers. Thankfully, Kajabi’s checkout design and function is just as good as SamCart’s, in my opinion, with the added benefit that it doesn’t require hooking into (or paying for) a third-party service. All of my payment transactions stay in Kajabi. I can accept payment from credit cards (through Stripe) and PayPal, which I like because many consumers have a strong preference for one or the other.

The only little drawback, which bugs me, is that I can’t add an image to my bump offer. SamCart can, and I miss that feature because I think a visual would help entice buyers to add the bump. But I did submit a suggestion to Kajabi to add the image feature, and we’ll see if they take me up on it.

Kajabi is made for online courses. That is one of its best features. Having created online courses in multiple tools now—including Teachable and LearnDash—Kajabi’s platform is just as user-friendly as Teachable and more flexible than LearnDash. And I like the look of it better than the other two platforms, which is a bonus. 

A few perks of the course tool in Kajabi:

• Kajabi offers several different templates for displaying your courses. Each presents the content slightly uniquely, giving the content creator flexibility that other platforms don’t offer. And these templates are truly professional looking and easy for the customer to navigate.
• Like I mentioned earlier, videos upload directly to Kajabi, without needing a third-party hosting platform like LearnDash requires.
• I can upload supplemental documents not just in PDF format but Word, too (which matters to me because I have a book proposal template for my Write Like a Pro course students that’s best manipulated in Word).
• Quizzes, called “Assessments,” are super easy to create and insert, and they appear to the end-user directly inside the course video box. Results or “grades” can be set to appear right away, and/or I can request results to be sent to me via email. If you’re grading your students or offering rewards for certain achievements, I can see how this would be a helpful feature. You can also attach automations to quiz questions, so that anyone who answers “A” goes into one funnel and anyone who answers “B” goes into another, etc. Oh the possibilities! These “Assessments” can be used for polling and other functions as well, not just for course quizzes and exams.

In Wordpress I have two options for building marketing pages and opt-in forms: OptimizePress and ConvertKit. I do like and use both of those tools for various purposes. But Kajabi also has all of this functionality built in, using its super easy builder interface. This is a big selling point of the all-in-one system; I just haven’t taken advantage of it yet. I’m happy knowing it’s at my fingertips for when I’m ready to begin testing—and for no extra cost.

Kajabi also has a built-in function called Pipelines, which is their word for funnels. So you can automate what happens when a visitor lands on a page, opts in to a form, buys a product, etc. Again, I like that this feature is built right in with no need for a third-party tool.

Here’s where Kajabi and I have a love-hate relationship. On the one hand, adding your Facebook tracking pixel is SUPER easy. There’s a field for it under the settings tab—can’t be much simpler than that. BUT, as many of us know, Facebook isn’t the only ads game in town. I’m focused on a Google ads strategy in YouTube right now, and for that I need to add Google tracking code to specific pages in order to measure my results. The bummer about Kajabi is that as easy as they make it to enter Facebook tracking code, they make it especially clunky to add Google snippets. As things stand right now, I cannot add the necessary analytics code to an individual page without digging under the hood and messing with the base theme code. The double trouble with that is, you can only access the theme code if you’re on Kajabi’s top tier plan for $300 a month.

Now. I discovered this AFTER I had already made the scary leap from Wordpress, rebuilt the entire site in Kajabi, fell in LOVE with Kajabi and its user-friendly EVERYTHING. And I refused to give up just because I hit this one—albeit crucial—wall

So I got on the horn with tech support. And I’m telling you what, they came through!!

I explained what I was trying to do and why, and the tech support rep gave me temporary access to the theme code editor while I was on live chat with her so that I could add my Google tracking code. Then she appealed to her manager and got me approved for permanent editing privileges, without having to pay beyond my current Growth plan. Whaaat?? This proves to me that Kajabi cares about real customers using their platform for genuine purposes. I’ve since submitted a few votes for enhancements to Kajabi’s built-in tracking functions, and I suspect this is one feature we’ll see improved in the months to come.

So while we’re on the subject of tech support, let me tell you why I think this is one of the biggest advantages to choosing Kajabi.

In Wordpress, with all its distant cousin plugins, there was no place to go with questions. Each piece or plugin had its own “tech support,” which came in various forms like blog posts, written documentation, videos, or maybe I had the option to email somebody and wait for them to get back to me. On occasion I could get somebody on live chat, but when my questions were related to why I couldn’t get their product to talk to another product, they’d just refer me to tech support at the “other product’s” place, where I got the same answer—go talk to those other people. So I felt like I was constantly running in circles with no clear answers. And again—I’m not super techie, so sometimes their “tech support” was SO out of my league, with coding and developer instructions that made no sense to me and risked the possibility of me breaking something… I often wanted to bang my head and scream.

In Kajabi, there’s this beautiful thing called “Kajabi Assistant.” It’s a search field that persists at the top of every page of the interface, and all you have to do is enter a keyword or question, and a list of related answers or articles shows up—right in Kajabi. I found simple video visuals and clear, short answers to my questions that made sense because Kajabi is built for the non-techie user. It’s made to be easy for content creators who are not necessarily website developers.

Also, Kajabi’s live chat support is available 24/7 for their Growth and Pro plans. Like I mentioned earlier in this video, I’ve had a great experience so far with live chat. They went above and beyond for me, which tells me this is a company that’s invested in my success as a business owner, and they care about my experience with their platform.

Something else super helpful is Kajabi’s own online courses, which they give you for free when you sign up to build your site. They have something called Kajabi Bootcamp, which is a step-by-step course on how to build and market your course in Kajabi. Doesn’t get much clearer than that.

Did you know? Kajabi is not NEW. It’s actually been around for 12 years and currently serves 20,000 clients. And those 20,000 clients have made over a billion dollars online so far through their Kajabi site offerings. So Kajabi as a company has spent a long time now building and testing their service, which is probably why it’s so user-friendly and effective.

They keep up with trends and needs and actually invite their users to submit requests for updates and enhancements to the platform’s features. I had heard of Kajabi for about a year before I actually tried it. I think the reason it’s not quite a household name yet is because Wordpress has long been the industry standard. You start a blog or website, you use Wordpress. Or maybe some people rebel and use SquareSpace or Wix or something… but for the most part, online business functions are offered through Wordpress-compatible plugins. So if you want to use those plugins and integrations, you’ve got to stay on Wordpress. Or so most people think.

The beauty of Kajabi is that you don’t need the plugins in the first place. Kajabi already does it all—and all in one place. So you can gain independence from the Wordpress kingdom and be free to build a site that works for you. And with the rise of online courses, Kajabi has figured out a way to fill this need better than any other tool I’ve experienced. So I think that’s another reason it’s gaining in popularity now. It is meeting the online course need better than anybody else. And I, for one, am grateful.

Now, if you use other marketing or sales tools and you want to stick with them, you can easily integrate with Kajabi. Just because you don’t NEED a separate email tool doesn’t mean you can’t use one fairly seamlessly. Like I said, I’m sticking with ConvertKit for my email management for now, and Kajabi’s integration with ConvertKit was the simplest I’ve seen. It was easier to integrate ConvertKit with Kajabi than it was to integrate with Wordpress. You can integrate other email tools or checkout tools and so on as well. If you want to.

But I suspect down the road I’m going to find I don’t need ConvertKit anymore, either, which doesn’t hurt my feelings because I’d love to save the money I’m currently spending on a third-party email tool. As soon as Kajabi updates its email tool a bit, I’m going to seriously consider making the jump. And I love that I have that option.

Here’s where most people slam the door. And I’ll admit I did, too, at first. When I first heard about Kajabi several months ago, I didn’t even consider it. Why move away from Wordpress, where I’ve established my audience, my plugin tools, and all my integrations? (Oh, the endless integrations!) And for over $100 a month?!? No way.

For a hobby blogger, that’s a reasonable conclusion.

But not for a business blogger. Or any other online entrepreneur, whether course creator or otherwise.

Here’s why. {And mind you, I learned this the hard way.}

I chose Kajabi’s middle option—the Growth Plan, for $159 a month, billed annually. (Monthly it’s $199.) This allows for 15 products (courses), unlimited landing pages, unlimited marketing emails, 25,000 contacts and 10,000 active members—meaning anyone who has either enrolled in or accessed one of my courses in the last 30 days. That’s PLENTY for my needs at this point. There is a cheaper option for $119 and a pro option for $319 (which covers 100 products, three websites, 2 million emails—uh, not for me just yet, thanks… but cool to know somebody is out there crushing it).

Keep in mind Kajabi is an all-in-one solution, meaning I no longer need to pay for hosting, a payment integration tool, or separate functional plugins.

Let’s compare this to what I was prepared to pay in Wordpress.

• Wordpress hosting—$199/year
• Memberpress—$249/year
• Vimeo—$200/year
• LearnDash—$189/year
• SamCart—$99/month
• Thrive Architect—$67 one-time fee

Add it all together {not even bothering to count Thrive Architect’s single payment}, and my WordPress online course site was poised to cost the equivalent of $169 a month.

Suddenly Kajabi’s $159 price tag looks like a bargain, eh?

If you’re a beginning blogger and you have no need of membership or online course functions, then by all means, stick with Wordpress. I’m keeping my original author website in Wordpress, and I have no plans to switch. It’s cheaper, it’s beautiful designed, and it provides all the comfort of industry support.

But if you’re seriously considering turning your blog into a business, or starting an online business from scratch—particularly as an online consultant or course creator—then give Kajabi a close look. It’s worth your consideration, and for DIY site builders it’ll inspire a much happier stress level.

Want to know for sure if Kajabi is right for you—before you pay for it? Get a free 30-day trial by signing up through my affiliate link. I’d be happy to answer any questions you have along the way. Just reach out to me at [email protected].

And be prepared to love Kajabi as much as I do!