Technology has changed the world and how we do things. One of these things is how we take our courses.
Taking courses was an offline thing but now many people are taking courses online. According to a survey by Babson Survey Research Group, more than a quarter (28 percent) of higher education students are enrolled in at least one online course.
It is estimated that online learning industry’s value will top $250 billion by the end of this year. As an expert who has a lot of knowledge to impart, this is an opportunity to tap into this big market.
If you have a knowledge product to offer to a wide range of people, bringing it online opens you up to a wider audience than doing it offline. This is a step you must take because the online courses industry has been improving every year for the past decade.
But how do you go about this? This is where online course builders come in. These services give you a platform to create your courses online.
There are many online course builders online and two great ones are Kajabi and ClickFunnels. These tools are versatile and can be used for various things like building websites, blogs, membership sites, landing pages, email lists, sales page, opt-in page, etc.
In this post, I’m going to compare these two popular online course builders that you can use to kickstart your own product creation business.
We are going to be making these comparisons based on the criteria you may think of when planning to build an online course.
1. Kajabi vs. Clickfunnels – The Cost
One of the first things you must consider when looking for an online course builder is how much it is going to cost you. Even though you’re creating a product you’re going to sell, it is important to know how much it will cost you to set up an online course.
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For its standard plan, ClickFunnels charges $97 per month while it charges $297 per month for its Etison Elite plan. Clickfunnels offers a 14-day free trial for its standard and Etison Elite plans.
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Kajabi falls on the high side with its pricing. For its basic plan, it will cost you $103 per month while the Pro plan will cost you $311 per month. The most expensive plan is the Premium plan which goes for $719 per month. Kajabi offers a 28-day free trial for its three plans.
2. Ease of use
One thing you should also consider when picking an online course Builder is how easy it will be to use. If you’re like most people, you just want to focus more on creating your course that getting a migraine on all the techie stuff.
To make the best comparison, we will focus on the ClickFunnels’ Etison Elite plan and Kajabi’s Pro plan which have similar pricing.
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Clickfunnels provides a clean interface which allows you to create your courses as fast as you can.
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Kajabi, however, provides a simpler interface which allows you to create your courses into different modules and lessons. In fact, Kajabi co-founder, Kenny Rueter, says one of the major aims of Kajabi is to make course building as simple as possible.
3. Design
The design is a big part of any online course. This is because your course could fail to pick up if the design is awful and difficult to navigate for your buyers.
Clickfunnels and Kajabi have really done a good job of making the design for your online course as good as possible. They both offer mobile responsive templates which means you have no worry about users who might want to view your course on their tablets or smartphones.
One edge that Kajabi has over ClickFunnels with the design is that Kajabi has a system that allows you course buyers to continue an episode of your course where they stopped even if they are continuing on another device.
Kajabi allows you to pick a theme that you feel is suitable for your product and customize it according to your tastes.
4. Marketing
The success of your online course depends on how good you can market it. There are many great products that fail to sell whereas you see some average products that sell out every time.
The difference could be in how well you can market your product. Both ClickFunnels and Kajabi have “Marketing” as part of their plans.
There are two modes of marketing we will consider: email marketing and affiliate marketing.
Email Marketing
Clickfunnels allows you to set up your email marketing which allows you to have the email addresses of your customers.
With its actionetics, you can segment your email contact list, you can send unlimited emails per month and sequence emails according to the action of your clients. With this plan, you can also collect and manage your subscribers.
There is an advanced drag and drop email editor for sending your emails and your emails are mobile responsive.
Kajabi also offers email marketing and landing pages. It allows third-party integration with email marketers like MailChimp, ConvertKit, etc. and Zapier.
Unlike ClickFunnels, there is a limit to the number of emails you can send on Kajabi which is 75,000 per month.
Affiliate Marketing
Another essential aspect of online marketing is setting up affiliates. What if your friends or other people online could market your online course and make money for you while you’re sleeping?
Affiliate marketing is an attractive option that I want and you can get this option on both online course builders.
- Clickfunnels with its backpack, allows you to have affiliates and you can track the performance of your affiliates. You can track the number of impressions clicks and conversion by your affiliates. Clickfunnels allows you to have an unlimited number of affiliates and unlimited affiliate clicks per month.
- Kajabi allows you to set up the percentage payment for your affiliates and also allow tracking of their performance. Kajabi also allows you to make coupons that give a percentage discount to buyers who use it.
And in case you have a friend who should have your product free of charge, you can create a coupon that gives your friend a 100 percent discount. 😉
1). Payments
When you offer an online course, one critical part is how to get paid when buyers buy your course through your online course builder.
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Clickfunnels uses Easy Pay Direct as a platform for its payments. Clickfunnels allows you to set up your sales page and charges nothing for the transaction.
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Kajabi allows you to set up and customize your sales page with the necessary details like card number and other necessary details. Kajabi claims that it does not receive the users’ payments. It transfers funds to your account through Stripe, which of course has its own charges. Kajabi itself has no transaction charges.
2). Customer Support
These two providers have made the setup of your online course as easy as possible but no one is above mistake and no system is perfect. In case of a problem with one of your courses, can you depend on the customer care of these services to help you out of an emergency?
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Clickfunnels is not great at customer support. Its support is nothing to write home about and this can be a big problem if you have to ask about setting up a page. Miles Beckler gives this as one of the major reasons he stopped using ClickFunnels.
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Kajabi has a good customer service. In this post, Kenny Rueter talks about how Kajabi tries to make its customer support as human as possible rather than like robots.
No matter which platform you choose, you have to know that successful courses have been hosted on it. Watch this video of how Tim Cooper created his successful massage marketing mastery course on Clickfunnels.
Tim loves ClickFunnels because of its upsell feature he can introduce other courses to students who buy his low-cost courses. And they don’t have to re-enter their card details to make the purchase.
He also loves the sticky upsell which sends reminder emails to his students about new courses and a link that will take them directly to the shopping cart.
Watch this video of how Mandi McGee created her successful Simple Web Starter course on Kajabi. Mandi chose Kajabi because it is a one-stop shop.
She doesn’t need to get her shopping cart or plugins or membership sites from different sources as it can affect the satisfaction of students of her courses negatively. Kajabi is also beautifully fluid for buyers of her courses. She has successfully built three courses with Kajabi.
Popular online entrepreneur, Yaro Starak, hosted his training product on Kajabi. He loved that Kajabi gives the ability to time the release of email opt-in boxes on squeeze pages, the ability to drip feed the release of content in a membership site based on a time delay, and other benefits.
Wrapping it up
If you’re an expert online, this is the right time to create an educational course. You may feel the word expert is too big but there is something you know very well, more than many other people.
You can get paid for your knowledge.
If you’re looking for the perfect online course builder, you are not going to find it in this post or anywhere else. Because there is no perfect system. The most important thing is that the course builder you choose is able to get your course across to as many people as possible.
When you create an online course, you’re imparting your knowledge on others. The best part of it is that you’re getting paid to help people.
If you’re just starting your online course and you have little to spend, ClickFunnels will help you set up the necessary things like sales page and your courses at a lower price. It gives you enough options to set a strong platform for your courses.
However, if you don’t mind spending money and you want a premium, more streamlined experience, then Kajabi is your answer to that. You can track how engaged your students are with your courses. You can track when they stopped each lesson.
If you’re still unable to make a choice out of the two online course creators, you have covered. Take the free trials of the two services and through your experience using them, you can make a choice that suits you and your online course business.
Take the 14-day trial of ClickFunnels and the 28-day trial of New Kajabi and you can make a choice.