Beyond Kajabi: Exploring Kajabi Alternatives for Online Course Creators

Here’s the thing about being a creator: It’s not just about making content, it’s about running a complex business on top of it.

When you’re feeling good, your business is feeling good too. But let’s be real, the wrong online course platform can quickly put that fire out. 

Maybe you’re working hard, drowning in a sea of Kajabi features you barely use, and looking for a change.

Or you’re just starting your search and looking for the best online course platform. Either way, choosing an alternative to Kajabi doesn’t mean settling for less, it’s finding the one that works for you.

So, are you ready to explore the top Kajabi alternatives? Let’s get into the platforms we tested when building out courses for Peak Freelance, my membership community. 

What is Kajabi and its benefits?

Kajabi is a popular online course builder and business suite. You can host, create, market, and sell any digital product, like coaching, courses, membership sites, and subscriptions. 

With Kajabi, you own all your content. Kajabi provides access to all of their features across every plan. While Kajabi doesn’t offer a video-on-demand service, it does give you a mobile app for customers to use. 

Some features include:

• Email marketing software
• Marketing tools
• Video and podcast hosting
• Landing page builder
• Shopping cart
• Newsletters

Overall, if you want to sell digital products, Kajabi is a good choice. 

Best Kajabi alternatives compared

1. Uscreen

Best for: Scaling your online course business. 

Reasons to use: 

• All in one platform for membership sites.
• Branded mobile and TV apps.
• Built-in marketing and community tools. 
• Extensive video monetization options.

G2 rating ⭐: 4.8 out of 5 

Uscreen is an all-in-one membership platform and one of the best Kajabi alternatives for educators wanting to create a membership community and sell online courses. You can host paid online courses on your own website, and sell them individually, in bundles, or as part of a membership. 

Take Fader Pro, for example. The music education brand offers hundreds of courses on production. You can buy one-off video lessons, like the Nicky Romero masterclass. Or, sign up for a membership and get access to a massive library of expert-led courses.

As a creator, this helps you diversify your income. You can sell standalone courses alongside a membership program to maximize revenue and cater to different learners. You don’t have to choose between selling online courses or memberships anymore. 

If you create video content, Uscreen is a great fit. You can stream 4K through people’s TVs, laptops, tablets, or phones. You get full control over branding and course pricing. Plus, Uscreen includes a suite of marketing tools to launch and promote your own on-demand service. 

Let’s look at a few advanced features that make Uscreen a great fit growing an online course business.

Connect with members through live streaming

Most online course software doesn’t have built-in ways to communicate with students. You create a course, market it, and sell it. The relationship with your student ends after they’ve completed the course.

Uscreen is one of the strongest Kajabi alternatives since the platform gives you the tools to connect with students and build relationships, which improves retention and revenue. One of these tools is live streaming. 

Going live is a great way to connect with students and get to know them. You can set up Q&A sessions, group coaching, or even 1-to-1s with students. Uscreen lets you go live from your dashboard in minutes.

To improve the results of your streams, you can also:

• Build a pre-registration page so students sign up before the event. 
• Message viewers in real-time through live chat.
• Collect live event donations. 

Keep your knowledge business organized

Uscreen makes it easy to upload and manage video courses through the platform, while giving your audience a premium viewing experience. 

You can update course content easily, so you don’t have to relaunch and promote every course you create. Simply notify members so they can access the new course right away. 

From your dashboard, you can control:

• Video content
• Website customization
• Mobile & TV apps
• Subscriber management
• Community
• Marketing features
• Revenue reports

You can also create your own branded app and share your videos across all 7 major streaming services, like AppleTV and Roku. 

Monetize your content with ease

Just selling courses online through a platform like Kajabi is a lot of work. Launches include running ads, building complex email sequences, nurturing leads, and the lot. And in the end, you never really know how much money you’ll actually make. 

Uscreen lets you sell your courses from your website through various forms. The most popular is memberships, but you can also monetize content through ads, pay-per-view, and subscriptions. 

AdjusterTV sells online training through memberships on its website. 

Uscreen also doesn’t take a revenue share. We offer a pricing model that grows with your business. 

Build an online community

Community is big business for creators. In fact, memberships with a community area see a lower churn rate than those without one. Students want a place to hang out and share their wins, thoughts, and learnings with each other.

If you’re in the market for a solid alternative to Kajabi, then built-in community features should be high up on your checklist.

Example of student profile

Uscreen empowers students to engage through a few key community features:

• Profiles: You can create a profile with their name, picture, and location. 
• Following: You can follow other community members and see when they post something. 
• Engagement notifications: See who and how many people like your post.

As a creator, you can build a forum to discuss things with members, share life events, or inspire the group to reach their goals. 

Communities like B TRIBAL FIT thrive from members posting about their fitness endeavors. The group shares valuable messages to inform and encourage others to push on. 

Uscreen features

• Excellent customer support. 
• Global CDN delivery. 
• Customizable video player.
• Popular checkout options like PayPal, Stripe, and credit card.
• Integrations with Mailchimp, Hotjar, Profitwell, LinkedIn, and more
• Tiered membership options.
• Secure automatic content backups.
• Integrated growth-focused marketing tools.

Uscreen pros

• Exceptional VOD platform.
• Seamless community integration.
• Comprehensive monetization options.
• Custom branding capabilities.

Payout methods

There’s 2 primary payment providers: Stripe, and Authorize.net. PayPal is an additional option after you’ve connected to a primary provider.

Pricing

Uscreen has three different plans:

1. Growth: $149 per month + $1.99 per paid member, per month. Best for creators focused on growing a small video membership online.
2. Pro: $499 per month + $0.99 per paid member, per month. Best for serious creators growing a robust community on mobile & web.
3. Plus: Custom pricing. Best for established creators needing full brand control on all devices. 

It’s simple with Uscreen.

Build, launch and manage your membership, all in one place.

Start Free Trial

2. Teachable

Best for: Individuals starting out in online course creation. 

Reasons to use:

• Easy to set up.
• Beginner friendly LMS.
• Free version allows unlimited students.

G2 rating ⭐: 4 out of 5 stars

Teachable is a budget-friendly and feature-packed learning management system (LMS) often considered as a strong Kajabi alternative for its robust course creation and distribution capabilities. It has a generous free plan, which makes it a good choice for new course creators on a budget. 

Unlike Kajabi, Teachable places a stronger emphasis on course compliance. It allows course creators to encourage video completion, lecture order, and graded quizzes to ensure students fully engage with course material. 

Course builder

When we were discussing course creation platforms for Peak Freelance, Teachable was definitely in the list. One thing I really liked about Teachable was the user experience. 

Look, it’s not easy to build courses online. But Teachable does make it super easy to add videos and other content. When you’re building out a lesson, you can add various types of content and educational tools like quizzes, open-ended questions, and upsells. 

Making a course on Teachable really doesn’t get much easier than Teachable. If you’re stuck on ideas (because let’s be real, generating outlines can be tough), Teachable also offers an AI assistant to help with that. Simply fill out a description of your course, and just like that, the basics of your course are filled in. 

Here’s what my Photoshop 101 curriculum looks like, for example. 

I also really loved the Design Templates available. It makes the learning experience intuitive and less distraction for students. If you want to customize your theme fonts and colors, you can easily do so in your settings.

Marketing and sales tools

Teachable’s website building tools are super intuitive. You can build an entire website for your school in minutes using the AI assistant, then just edit the text. In the website builder, just click around the section you want to change and make edits accordingly. Once your done, you can publish a website that hosts all your courses. 

As you can see, the whole platform is really easy to use. You’ll also get access to a ton of marketing tools, like:

• Upsells and order bumps to offer upgrades at checkout. 
• Single or multi-use coupons.
• Student referrals.
• Email lead forms.
• Subscriptions and product bundles.
• Abandoned cart recovery.
• Affiliate marketing.

Teachable also acts as an online coaching platform. Paid Teachable members also get access to Coaching Options. This is good for entrepreneurs that want to sell their coaching services online. Teachable will set you up with a sales page and intake forms. You can even take advantage of its 1:1 coaching space where people can schedule sessions and communicate with you directly, no more emailing back and forth. 

Great customer support

Another neat perk of Teachable is its award-winning instructor support. You’ll find solutions to many of your problems in the extensive knowledge based and FAQ. But if you need more help, you can contact support through Live Chat or via email. This is super helpful if you get tripped up when creating your course and need some guidance with the tools.

One big con of Teachable was the pricing model. So yes, you get a free plan but the transaction fee is insane at $1 + 10%. It’s clear they are really pushing you to a paid plan. However, even when you are paying $39 a month for the basic plan, it’s still a 5% transaction fee.

The only way you pay 0 transaction fees is when you’re paying Teachable $119 per month, billed annually. Not extremely budget-friendly, if you ask me.

Teachable also lacks some of Kajabi’s advanced marketing features, such as automation and funnels, making it less suitable for those seeking an all-in-one marketing and course creation platform.

Teachable features

• Inbuilt course completion certificates.
• Built-in note-taking and subtitles feature.
• HTML/CSS embedding in lectures.
• Unlimited bandwidth for video hosting.
• Membership hosting with tiered access.
• Bulk and cloud media file uploading.
• Native payment gateways with affiliate payout handling.

Teachable pros

• High-quality course compliance features.
• Unlimited courses on paid plans.
• Built-in EU/VAT handling.
• In-depth student reports and video analytics.

Teachable cons

• Transaction fee on free and basic plans.
• Lack of a drag and drop builder.
• No community features.
• No built-in options for course player customization.

Payout methods

If you live in the UK, US, Canada, or Germany, you can receive payouts on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to your Stripe account. If you don’t live in those countries, you can get paid at the end of each month via PayPal.

Pricing

Teachable offers five pricing plans. 

• Free: Includes 1 published product. $1 + 10% transaction fee.
• Basic: $39 per month and includes 5 published products and community. 5% transaction fee.
• Pro: $119 per month and includes 50 published products and live chat support. 0% transaction fee.
• Pro+: $199 per month and includes 200 published products of each type. 0% transaction fee.
• Business: $499 per month and includes unlimited products, unlimited admin & author seats, and advanced theme customizations. 

3. Thinkific 

Best for: Customizable online courses

Reasons to use:

• Generous free plan.
• Free training.
• Big app store.

G2 rating ⭐: 4.6 out of 5

Thinkific is a top-rated online course platform and a Learning Management System (LMS) offering comprehensive tools for course creators. It was definitely in our mix of platforms to trial when building out Peak Freelance courses.

Overall, as one of the most popular Kajabi alternatives, Thinkific stands out in its flexibility to host various content types, like video, text, and downloadable files, all managed through a drag-and-drop interface​.

It enables custom domain branding (except for the free plan), creation of sales pages, and allows for different payment methods, like one-time and monthly payments with Stripe or PayPal​. 

The best part? It’s one of the only course platforms with a free option and no transaction fees. It also offers phone support, which is different from Kajabi and the other platforms in this list.

Let’s get into the details.

Incredible user experience 

When building courses on Thinkific, I found it to be really intuitive. When you’re navigating the platform, you’re guided by pop-ups and explanations from Thinkific, which is extremely helpful when you’re learning about a new product. 

I love these little messages because it shows the brand actually went through the same processes as you. It’s kind of like digital mind reading! 

Everything is drag and drop — your site, course, community, and membership builder. You can easily customize these elements without any technical knowledge. You can easily add or remove sections from your website in the builder.

Thinkific also has a feature called “Smart Sections”, which are automatically updated so your students will always see up-to-date information about your products. So, for example, if you change a lesson or chapter in your course, it’ll automatically update on your website. So changes need to be made. 

Simple course creation

Thinkific has a lot of strong features for creating and managing online courses. For example, you can:

• Support various audio formats like AAC, MP3, WAV, etc., and allows embedding audio in text lessons.
• Let students download course materials in different formats.
• Upload and present PDFs or PowerPoint slides, with an option to add audio commentary.
• Integrate with external content like webinars, surveys, Google Docs, YouTube videos, etc.
• Create quizzes to assess student learning.

But where does it all start? In Thinkific’s course builder, of course!

You can build a course from scratch or use the Bulk Importer, which is helpful if you’re migrating from one platform to another. As you can see below, the content types you can add are plentiful.

You can also change the branding, set lesson completion requirements, award certificates and more in the Settings section. Want to control when students can access lessons? Head over to the Drip section and set a schedule.

Setting your price is also simple. You can choose between a free course, one-time payment, monthly payment plan, or as part of a membership. Note: some pricing strategies require a paid plan. You can also add upsells that will automatically display to students after they purchase your course.

Overall, this Kajabi alternative has so many customization options for non-technical users. You can modify the look and feel of everything from your courses to storefront, completion certifications, quizzes, student discussion boards, and more. If you have a knack for code, you can access the sites HTML and CSS, too. 

Easy to use marketing tools

The magic doesn’t end after you create a course. Thinkific is a complete solution with various marketing tools like coupons, sales widgets, affiliates, and funnels. Say you want to start building a list to sell your courses too in the future, you can do that all in Thinkific.

I’m also a huge fan of integrations, which Thinkific has plenty of. They even have a tab dedicated to integrations in your dashboard. After you click it, you’ll find that your favorite apps like Mailchimp, Zapier, Zoom, and even GA4 (for the data nerds out there), connect with your course. 

Wait, but that’s not all! Thinkific has an entire app store where you can find apps to scale your business. Whether it’s business operations, social media, email marketing or site design, you’ll find an app to suit your needs.

The one drawback of Thinkific we found was no native email integration. At the time, we were looking for a course builder with native email to make communication easy with students. We didn’t have much money to spend in our early days of Peak Freelance, so adding on another app to pay for was going to bite into the budget. 

I personally felt the community feature was lacking a bit, which makes sense. Thinkific is primarily focused on course creation. At the time I wanted more advanced discussion forums, real-time chat, and more member management tools, due to the nature of Peak Freelance.

Thinkific features

• Free plan availability​.
• Customizable course design​​.
• Custom domain branding​.
• Intuitive drag and drop builder​.
• No limit on student enrollment or courses​.
• Diverse payment methods at checkout​.
• Can host externally hosted content​.

Thinkific pros

• Offers a free plan for course creators​.
• Exceptional customer service with phone support​.
• Course Builder for customization​.
• Allows different payment methods​.

Thinkific cons 

• Lacks an in-built email marketing platform​.
• The video lesson does not support multiple featured videos​.

Payout methods

PayPal, Stripe, or Thinkific Payments

Pricing 

Thinkific offers five plans. All paid plans include access to Thinkific’s Accelerator Program, an eight week interactive learning experience that helps you start selling online courses.

• Free plan: Includes 1 course and 1 community with 2 spaces.
• Basic: $36 per month and includes unlimited courses and 1 community with 5 spaces. 
• Start: $74 per month and includes unlimited courses, 1 community with 10 spaces.
• Grow: $149 per month and includes unlimited courses, 3 communities with 20 spaces each.
• Thinkific+: Custom pricing. Includes all features on other plans plus 1:1 onboarding, additional sales tools, CRM integration, and more. 

4. Mighty Networks

Best for: Community-led courses. 

Reasons to use:

• Easy to admin
• Community based platform 
• Robust analytics 

G2 rating ⭐: 4.6 out of 5

Mighty Networks is another alternative to Kajabi. The platform lets you build online communities, deliver courses, and build branded websites and apps. Mighty Networks also lets you host and manage online events, such as Q&A’s and 1-to-1s. 

In contrast to Kajabi, Mighty Networks focuses on community building and interaction. It offers tools to create spaces where members can learn, share, and grow. This makes it a comprehension membership platform, unlike Kajabi, which focuses on creating and delivering online courses.

Note though, Mighty Networks is not exactly the best option just to sell courses. It’s a bit of an afterthought. However, it’s well-suited for entrepreneurs, social media influencers, and brands looking to build a thriving community and offer courses to that community. It is not ideal for those focused solely on creating comprehensive online courses or for entrepreneurs without an existing community.

Effective onboarding

Mighty Networks starts off by asking you a few questions about your business. You start by entering the group of people you’re looking to teach, then its AI assistant generates a description for you. This is all to help set you up for success as you go to create your community space. 

If you’re brand new to the business, the AI assistant even helps you come up with names. Honestly, the Picture Perfect Community is a win for me. If you already have a name in mind, just add it and move on to the next step. 

Mighty Networks will then generate visual ideas for your community (which you can edit after, of course). It’ll set you up with colors and fonts, and examples of what your brand will look like on the platform. If you don’t like the first option, you can always click Suggest Again until you find the best fit. 

Community engagement and growth features

With Mighty Networks, you can build a community with engaging features and simplified interactions. Chats, events, videos, badges, location services, icebreakers, and more come with it. You build these in what is called ‘Spaces’, which are used to organize the community.

Simply click a template you like or build a space from scratch. Mix and match features in each Space, and reorganize and rename everything to your liking. You can even adjust settings to charge people for access to a specific space.

Every space lives in a Collection, which shows up in the left hand navigation of your Community. You can have a maximum of 30 Collections in your account and an unlimited number of Spaces. 

Mighty Networks does more than just host a community. It offers gamification, interaction, and monetization, as well as ways for community members to interact with each other, so your groups grow.

Mobile app

Mighty Networks is one of the alternatives to Kajabi that offers apps. If you upgrade to the platform’s Pro plan (custom pricing) you can get your own iOS & Android app. Members can download the app and access your entire community, from posts to live events and chats. 

From the creators side, you can create quick posts and articles to share multimedia content with members, including text, images, and videos. You can also livestream with multiple speakers and accommodate up to 200 viewers. If you want to expand the livestream function, you can integrate with Zoom. 

Mighty Networks features

• Unlimited members, spaces, hosts, and moderators​.
• Native live streaming with audience interaction​.
• Powerful paid membership options with multi-currency support​.
• Seamless Zoom integration for online and recurring events​.
• Comprehensive content creation and sharing tools​.
• Branded app for Pro users with custom notifications​.
• Advanced marketing automation with Zapier API integration​.

Mighty Networks pros

• Multiple features combined in one platform.
• Allows intentionality when engaging with members.
• Offers excellent pricing for its feature

Mighty Networks cons

• Fewer third-party integrations. 
• Relies on creators bringing their own community. 
• Platform can seem complicated for new users. 

Payout methods

Stripe.

Pricing 

Mighty Networks offer three plans:

• Community: $33 per month. This plan gives you everything you need to build a community with custom branding.
• Business: $99 per month. This plan gives you the tools to scale a community and integrate it with other tech.
• Pro: Custom pricing. 

Finding the best alternative to Kajabi for you

For the everyday knowledge entrepreneur, Kajabi is a solid choice. You can host, create, market, and sell any type of digital product, from courses to coaching programs and paid subscriptions. 

But, there are Kajabi alternatives that are better suited for some creators.

If you have a ton of amazing video content, and are in a niche like fitness, it makes sense to use a video membership platform like Uscreen. That way, you can give viewers a rich, seamless 4K streaming experience anywhere, anytime. 

Want to start a video membership and earn sustainable income? Try Uscreen today.

It’s simple with Uscreen.

Build, launch and manage your membership, all in one place.

Start Free Trial

Kajabi Alternatives FAQs