Which community and membership stack is best for you? I break them all down and show you what their sales pages won't say out loud!
The course platform with everything in one bill: courses with quizzes, unlimited email and automations, funnels, payments, and a community tab. $179/mo to start, $143 on annual. No free plan, a 2,500-contact cap on Basic, and the community is the weakest part of the package.
Kajabi is the pick if the course is the product and you want the email list, the checkout, and the funnel in the same place. It's the wrong pick if the community is the product. The community tab is real, but it's the tab, not the house.
Pricing, checked on kajabi.com/pricing, 16 October 2026. Basic is $179 a month, or $143 on annual billing. Growth is $249, or $199 annual. Pro is $499, or $399 annual. 14-day trial. No free plan.
The thing to look at isn't the price. It's the caps. Basic gets you 5 products, 2,500 contacts, 1 community, 1 website. Growth lifts that to 50 products and 25,000 contacts. Pro goes to unlimited products, 100,000 contacts, 3 communities, 3 websites.
That contact cap is the number that bites. A contact is anyone on your list, not just paying members. Hit 2,500 subscribers on Basic and you're moving to Growth whether you wanted to or not.
Kajabi Payments is Kajabi's own processor, built on Stripe. On it, you pay 2.9% plus 30 cents on Basic, 2.8% on Growth, 2.7% on Pro, and that's the whole fee. No platform cut stacked on top. Compare Circle, where it's Stripe's 2.9% plus Circle's 2%.
Bring your own Stripe or PayPal instead and Kajabi takes 2% on Basic, 1% on Growth, 0.5% on Pro, on top of whatever that processor charges. Kajabi's help centre says you can have Kajabi Payments, Stripe, and PayPal all connected at once (Kajabi Payments overview). So the cheap route is obvious: use theirs.
Courses that are actually courses. Modules, lessons, quizzes inside the course (quizzes vs assessments), drip. If you've been building a course in Skool's Classroom and wishing it had a quiz, this is where that wish gets answered. Certificates still aren't native, though. Kajabi's own help centre routes you to a Zapier and Google Slides workaround.
Email. Unlimited marketing emails on every plan, plus automations. This is the big one. Skool has none, Circle charges $99 a month for it, Mighty hands you off to Kit. Kajabi just includes it. Keep in mind, the contact cap is the email cap.
Funnels, landing pages, checkout, offers, all unlimited on every plan. You can sell a course, a membership, a coaching package, or a one-time download as separate offers. Tiers are just more offers.
It exists and it's improved. Circles for separate conversations, challenges, live events, and a points system with titles, badges, and a 7-day, 30-day, or all-time leaderboard (Communities gamification). Members get 3 points for a comment and 100 for finishing a challenge. You can rename the points to whatever you want.
Here's the thing though. Nothing unlocks. Points earn you a title and a badge, not access to the next course. That's the loop Skool runs on, and it's not here. And below Pro you get one community per account, full stop.
Honestly, the Kajabi community is where your course buyers go to ask questions. That's a fine job for it. It's not a Skool group, and if you set it up expecting one, you'll be disappointed.
Contacts, yes. Export from the Contacts tab and a CSV gets emailed to you, link good for three days (How to export your contacts). The export is capped at your plan's contact limit.
Community posts and course content: not mentioned anywhere in the export docs. Assume you rebuild. And Kajabi is upfront that it offers no migration service in either direction (Does Kajabi offer migration services), just webinars on moving from Teachable, Thinkific, and Patreon.
Coming in: bulk CSV contact import is documented (How to import contacts).
One more thing on portability. Kajabi is your email tool, which means your list lives in Kajabi. That's convenient right up until you want to leave. Zapier and the API get contacts out to another tool as they come in, but the automations you built don't come with you.
No. 14-day trial, then $179 a month, or $143 if you pay for the year.
If you're selling courses with quizzes and you want one login for everything, yes. Skool plus a $30 email tool is under $40 a month, but you're stitching two things together and Skool's course builder is thin.
If the community is what you're selling, no. You'd be paying $170 more for a weaker feed.
Kajabi if the course and the email list come first. Circle if the community comes first and you'll pay $99 extra for email when you need it. Circle's community is better. Kajabi's everything else is better.
Kajabi if you want email and a real course builder included. Mighty if you want a free runway, your own Stripe, and a road to a branded app.
Sources, all checked 16 October 2026: Kajabi pricing, Kajabi Payments overview, Communities gamification, quizzes vs assessments, export contacts, import contacts, migration services.
The cheapest real course builder with a community attached. $54/mo, or $40 on annual, 30-day trial, 0% fees if you use Thinkific Payments. The community is one feed with 5 Spaces on Basic, the email tool is a few canned sequences, and bringing your own Stripe on Basic costs 5%.
A course and coaching platform, not a community platform. Teachable has paused its Community feature. From $39/mo with a 7.5% fee on Starter, 0% from Builder ($89). Shared student app, broadcast email, native Mailchimp sync.
Courses, downloads, community spaces, and real email marketing in one plan, from $42/mo billed annually. 5% fee on Mover, 0% from Shaker. Daily or weekly digests, eight native email integrations, no mobile app, no gamification.
