Kajabi

kajabi.comcontributed by Samuele Ongaro

KEEP IT

The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying.

An all-in-one platform for course businesses: courses, website, email marketing, funnels, payments and a community, sold as one subscription.

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is
Do not build this all at once. Every piece already connected is what you are paying for, and rebuilding it means rebuilding five products.

Courses, a website, email, funnels, payments and a community sharing one customer record. Each of those is a project on its own, and the value is that a person who bought the course is the same row as the one on the mailing list.

FIRST, THE NUMBER
- This is one of the most expensive subscriptions on the list. Work out what you actually use — if it is courses and email, two focused tools cost a fraction, and the shape of both is under Teachable and Ghost elsewhere in this catalogue
- If you use all six and the connection between them, the price is doing real work

IF YOU DO REPLACE IT, DO IT IN THIS ORDER
- **Courses and payments first.** That is where the revenue is. Hosted checkout, access derived from an active subscription rather than a stored flag, signed expiring playback URLs tied to an enrolment
- **Email second**, on the same customers table. One contacts table and one sends table, so a person is never mailed twice by two systems
- **The site third**, as a static generator. It is the easiest piece and the least urgent
- **The community last, or never.** A community that moves loses members, and it is the one asset that genuinely cannot be exported

THE SCHEMA DECISION THAT MAKES OR BREAKS IT
One customers table shared by every part. The course student, the newsletter subscriber and the community member are one row. That costs nothing to get right at the start and is a painful migration to fix afterwards — and it is the entire thing the all-in-one platform is selling.

WHAT TO CHECK BEFORE MOVING ANYTHING
Export everything and look at what comes out: students with their progress, email subscribers with their consent dates, orders, and the videos themselves. Progress and consent dates are the two that are often missing, and both matter.

THE ONE-LINE VERSION
Count what you use. If it is two of the six, leave — and share one customers table from the first commit.

What you lose

  • Courses, email, payments, funnels and a community sharing one customer record, which is a lot of integration you would otherwise write
  • Deliverability on a managed sending reputation
  • A single vendor to call when something breaks

If you would rather not build

  • Separate tools plus your own customer table
  • Podia, cheaper and similar in shape

What it costs

read from their page 15 Aug 2026

PlanBilled monthlyBilled yearlyLast read
Basic$179/mo$143/mo23 Aug 2026
Growth$249/mo$199/mo23 Aug 2026
Pro$499/mo$399/mo23 Aug 2026

Their pricing page is where these came from. Seeing a different price? Tell us.

The escape hatch

open source · no votes, no paid placement

Ghost

$0

Publishing with memberships and Stripe, covering part of the same job.

TryGhost/Ghostfree · open source

Listmonk

$0

The email half, self-hosted, driven by your own customer table.

knadh/listmonkfree · open source

Why this verdict

our own opinion · changed only by a person

32/100

Verdict no at 32. Any one piece is easy; the fee is for them sharing one customer record, and reproducing that is the actual project.

History

tracked since 10 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten

Interest · last 30 dayspeak 2/day
views01230 Aug4 Sept9 Sept14 Sept19 Sept24 Sept28 Sept
— views— prompt copies none yet— votes none yet

Questions about Kajabi

answered from the record above

Is Kajabi free?

No — the plan we track is $179 a month. Basic at $179/month billed monthly, $143 annually.

Can you replace Kajabi by building your own?

KEEP IT. The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying. Replacement score 32 out of 100, build time longer than it saves. Read what you lose before you decide.

How much does Kajabi cost?

$179 a month on Kickstarter — $2,148 a year. Recorded 23 Aug 2026.

What do you lose by replacing Kajabi?

Courses, email, payments, funnels and a community sharing one customer record, which is a lot of integration you would otherwise write; Deliverability on a managed sending reputation; A single vendor to call when something breaks. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.

Is there an open-source alternative to Kajabi?

Yes: Ghost, Listmonk. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.

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