89 Comments

1. 

   Angie on January 10, 2021 at 8:57 pm

   Hello Forrest,
   Thanks to you for the review. I am considering using Kajabi and would like to set up a consultation with you.

   Reply
2. 

   Andro Donovan on November 7, 2020 at 9:51 am

   Thanks a brilliant review
   My question
   Is there a webinar function or a way or recording an Evergreen webinar on this platform?

   If no can I ‘easily’ upload my Zoom recordings?

   Reply
   • 

     Forest Linden on November 9, 2020 at 11:39 pm

     Hi Andro,

     The tools for running a webinar in this app are essentially an opt-in/registration page for the webinar, and set of automated things that can happen before and after the webinar, such as applying a tag to webinar registrants and sending them a series of emails before the webinar and after the webinar. 

     It doesn’t have any functionality to do actual live streaming of the webinar itself. Most people use Zoom or Youtube Live for the actual live streaming of the webinar.

     However you end up recording the webinar, yes, it’s super easy to create a page where people can go to watch the recording of it. You can just upload the exported video recording of the live webinar onto a page and send people to that. 

     You can even use the recording of your live webinar to create an evergreen webinar on this platform, where people can sign up for it and then instead of being sent to a live Zoom or Youtube webinar stream, you can send them to the page with the recording of the live webinar.

     Hope this helps!
     Cheers,
     Forest

     Reply
3. 

   Roger Bourne on September 17, 2020 at 1:02 am

   Hi Forest,
   Thankyou for your extraordinary review.
   My question is that if i set up a course (already prepared) and then bring in joint venture partners (people that sell my program) can they be credited their commission, automatically?
   And aslo, how do you deal with customer service inquiries about my product, on this platform?

   many thanks,

   Roger (in Australia)

   Reply
   • 

     Forest Linden on September 18, 2020 at 8:40 pm

     Hey Roger, 

     glad to hear that my review was helpful for you. 🙂

     If you connect with JV partners in an affiliate relationship, meaning, they become your affiliates and promote your program to their audience, they will automatically get credited for their commissions when the people they send your way sign up for one of your courses/products. 

     They’re not paid automatically (you’ll need to pay them manually via Paypal or another method, like Venmo), but they’re credited for each sale automatically. 
     For customer service requests, I usually recommend that people use either Help Scout or Zendesk. 

     Both of those give you a full platform to manage customer support inquires. This becomes necessary to have when you have multiple people on your team answering customer support emails. 
     In both cases, it’s just one line of code that you drop into the app from either Help Scout or Zendesk and then you’ll have a little support icon in the lower right corner of every page of your site. 

     Messages sent through the box that pops open will land in the shared inbox in either app you’re using of those two. 
     Hope this helps!

     Let me know if you have any other questions. Happy to help. 

     All the best,
     ~Forest

     Reply
4. 

   DAVID HUGHES on August 20, 2020 at 12:09 pm

   Hi Forest.

   How would you rate Kajabi’s ability to offer live teaching? I need to use a virtual classroom (Interactive whiteboard, class view, screen sharing for me and my students, etc.)?

   Reply
   • 

     Forest Linden on August 20, 2020 at 4:36 pm

     Hi David,

     It doesn’t have any features that allow you to do live teaching. 

     Most people who use it who also have a need to do live teaching use Zoom, which has a whiteboard and screen sharing for both you as a presenter and your students, if you give them access to share their screen. 

     I’m not sure what you mean by “class view,” but maybe you mean a view that allows other students in the live class to see the students who are in the virtual classroom? If so, Zoom can do that as well.

     Folk who use Zoom with it use Kajabi for all that it can do, such as their main marketing website, blog, online multimedia course content, payment processing, email marketing, and so on, and then they send out emails with links to their Zoom room when live classes happen. 

     Students click on a link and attend the class on Zoom.

     Hope this helps!

     Let me know if you have any other questions. Happy to help. 

     Cheers,Forest

     Reply
5. 

   Mel on June 19, 2020 at 6:46 pm

   Hi Forest!
   Thank you for the great review. I’ve scrolled through all of the comments and I did not see my question addressed, so here goes…

   I am looking to offer:

   1. One course to start and then use that course to “up-sell” my membership site.
   2. Membership site: members will receive fresh, ongoing weekly content (a combination of recipes, audio messages, and written content) that will keep them coming back.

   I’m looking into MemberPress, but to be honest, I am not looking to mess around trying to figure it out- I know just enough to get myself into BIG trouble (:

   Any advice here would be SO appreciated. Thanks Forest!

   I know I can accomplish #1 via this app. But is it possible to do #2 somehow?

   Reply
   • 

     Forest Linden on June 22, 2020 at 7:49 pm

     Hi Mel!

     So glad to hear that my review was helpful for you 🙂

     As for your question: yes, creating a membership site with regularly added content is totally possible with this app. 

     The one challenge you may run into isn’t really related to just Kajabi, but with that much content being published every week, you will eventually have a lot of content for people to navigate through in the member’s area. 

     That would be true if you were using Memberpress or any other teaching platform though. So, Just be aware that you’ll need to come up with a method to archive or condense the older content as you keep adding more. Otherwise you’ll end up with a member content navigation issue when you’ve got a couple year’s worth of weekly posts in there. just something to think about for the long term. 

     And yes, I hear you on not wanting to learn all the ins and outs of Memberpres. Most people feel that way when faced with trying to figure out how to use one of the WordPress plugins for creating an online course area or membership site area.

     Kajabi is much easier to use than WordPress plugins, and if it seems like it will work for the rest of what you’re trying to build, you can get my Kajabi Made Easy video course for free if you sign up for a free trial of Kajabi via one of my referral links, like this one, which will give you an extended 28 day free trial.

     No pressure on that at all. Just wanted to be sure you knew about that, since dozens of folks have told me that learning to use it via my course was way easier than trying to figure it all out from their own training materials. 

     Let me know if you have any other questions about anything. I’m happy to help. 
     All the best,~Forest 

     Reply
6. 

   Charles Napier on June 18, 2020 at 11:51 am

   Can I use this app to put up a web site outlining my company and offer courses for sale? All in one site? Essentially I draw customers into my website and let them walk through a door into my training platform that offers courses for sale.

   Reply
   • 

     Forest Linden on June 18, 2020 at 6:54 pm

     Hi Charles,

     yup! That’s exactly what it allows you to do. 

     You can create your marketing website that has pages like your homepage, about page, and sales pages for courses, and then they buy the course and get access to it all within one website/platform.

     Hope this helps a bit. Let me know if you have any questions about anything else. 

     Cheers 🙂
     Forest

     Reply
7. 

   Penny on June 13, 2020 at 6:50 am

   Hi Forest thank you so much for this detailed review it is exactly what I have been looking for. I already have Teachable and Convertkit for my current courses but love the idea of the one stop shop! Couple of questions
   1. Because Teachable’s checkout is problematic for anyone outside of US (I am down under) I use Thrive Cart, like it and got the lifetime purchase recently. Can Thrive Cart be integrated with this eapp easily and does that mean you can’t use its funnels etc? Is it hard to import mailing list from Convertkt to Kajabi and students from Teachable. Many thanks

   Reply
   • 

     Forest Linden on June 14, 2020 at 7:26 pm

     Hi Penny 🙂

     Glad the review was helpful for you!

     As for your question, you won’t need Thrive Cart with this app, because it has its own checkout cart built in that integrates directly with Stripe or Paypal. 

     You could put a Thrive Cart checkout form on a Kajabi page, but it won’t sync up with the rest of the platform after a payment goes through, so you won’t be able to use Thrive Cart with it. 

     If you’re going to move to this app and use it for everything, which is what it’s designed for, you wouldn’t need convert kit, teachable, or thrive cart. All of the functionality of those three apps is built into this platform. 

     If you wanted to keep Convert Kit in the mix, you could do that. It integrates easily, and that would give you the ability to keep using one of the best stand-alone email marketing platforms in conjunction with this larger online course platform. You’d then leave your list in Convert Kit, but would use opt in forms in funnels that are Kajabi’s, and you’d send folks through the Kajabi checkout/payment process, which would allow you to send people to a list with tags inside Convert Kit. Folks do that all the time. 

     But if you’re looking to simplify things with your tech stack and remove some apps, you can do that. Migrating your list from Convert Kit into this platform isn’t that hard. It only gets a bit complicated if you have a lot of courses in Teachable and you need to move a lot of different groups of students who would need access to the same large number of courses.. 

     It can be done though. Just takes a little longer. 

     But if you have a pretty straightforward mailing list in convert kit, plus a few groups of students segmented in Convert Kit,  and a few courses in Teachable, it’s not that hard to move everyone over.. 

     Hope this helps a bit!

     Let me know if you have any other questions. Happy to help. 

     Cheers,~Forest 🙂

     Reply
     • 

       Penny on June 14, 2020 at 9:26 pm

       Hi Forest thanks so much for your answer. The reason i am interested in this app is so I can stream line everything and to be able to do it myself, including the website. 3 other quick questions if that is ok. Is there any issues with this app doing AUD dollars? teachable is a pain with that. Second does it offer a refund direct from their site when purchased from their site? teachable has this issue which is why I went with thrivecart so i could control the purchases and not teachable. I don’t offer refunds at this stage for my programs. Third question i have heard varying reports on how hard it is to set up and operate – is this true? I would like to learn to do it all myself as that is the point of wanting to be in one place. Many thanks Penny

       Reply
       • 

         Forest Linden on June 15, 2020 at 7:00 pm

         Hi Penny,

         glad my previous answer was helpful for you 🙂

         1) Yes, you can sell products in AUD. If you use Stripe integrated with Kajabi, wherever your business bank account is located, the one you’ll associate with your Stripe account, that’s the currency that will be used by Stripe. 

         You can also set the displayed currency in it as well. So, you’ll be set on that. 

         I had some clients in the past in Australia use this app (they’re still using it I believe) and you’ll need a way to handle the GST. 

         Easiest way to do that and have it automated is to use Quaderno: https://quaderno.io/#_r_forest75 , which integrates well with it. 

         2) With refunds, yes, you can process those directly from within the app if you like, though you can also process them through Stripe. 

         3) This app can be a bit challenging to learn (with a few parts of it that tend to confuse people) by going through their own video tutorials. 

         That’s why I created my own video tutorial course, called Kajabi Made Easy. 

         It has over 12 hours of easy-to-follow videos that take you step by step through the processes you’ll need to go through to build out every part of a site built on this platform, including things like building a free offer sign up workflow (funnel design), or how to set up the full workflow for someone buying a course through your site. 

         You can get this course for free if you sign up for a free trial of it via my referral link, like this one: https://app.kajabi.com/r/nfLjy4F6/t/4tbeyzcb , which will also give you an extended 28 day free trial. 

         Even though they updated some of their videos about 6 months ago, I still have people go through my course, then try a few of their videos out, and the write me to thank me for how clear and easy to follow my videos are.

         Okay…hope this helps a bit!

         Let me know if I can answer anything else for you. 

         All the best,
         ~Forest

         Reply
8. 

   Johnsen on June 12, 2020 at 8:22 am

   Hi Forest,

   Thanks for the review first of all.

   I have one question.

   Let’s say that I habe basic plan ($119/Mo) and I create an online course and I sell it 500 people with the price of 5 and it makes 500×5 = $2500 and I sold it within 2 years and after 2 years nobody is buying my course but I need to pay $119 monthly which is a loss for me around 119×12 = $1428 yearly.

   What happens if I cancel my contract after two years? Think that 500 people have already bought my course and they should have life-time access to the course. What will happen to the course and how those 500 people will continue to watch the course if I cancel my account after two years?

   Thanks in advance.

   Reply
   • 

     Forest Linden on June 13, 2020 at 11:19 pm

     Hey Johnsen,

     I would be very careful about promising lifetime access to the course. 

     If you feel you need to do that, I would phrase it as “lifetime access (meaning, the lifetime of the course)”. Otherwise, people may assume that they’ll get access to the course for as long they’re alive, which isn’t realistic.

     But if you did offer lifetime access and you canceled your account, you’d need to move your course somewhere else, like a self hosted wordpress site, and tell all your members how to access the course over there.

     People move their course content from one platform to another all the time. It can take a while to move it, but it’s not that uncommon. 

     Hope this helps a bit!
     Cheers,Forest

     Reply
9. 

   Tom Nagel on May 23, 2020 at 1:27 am

   Signed up for this app through the link in this blog, and got a full 28-day trial period instead of the standard 14 days. Went through Forest’s video course about how to use the app he wrote about in this review then called him for a complementary half hour consulting call. In this call, Forest told me exactly what I needed to hear, not necessarily what I wanted to hear. I was going to keep my old web site. Forest -“redo in Kajabi.” Was going to keep my current email service. Forest – “move your list to Kajabi.” Was using the Premier template – Forest “use the newer Encore template.” Didn’t need to blog. Forest – “blog.” After the initial shock, I decided to take his advice and now everything is working together and I am even saving $87 per month by only using this app. Subsequent coaching calls have been worth every cent. I now have a trustworthy guide who can take me through the steps I need to get my course up and running online. Thank you Forest!

   Reply
   • 

     Forest Linden on May 23, 2020 at 2:23 am

     You bet, Tom! Glad I could help you simplify things so you can get everything closer to your goals!

     Reply
10. 

    Savitree on April 23, 2020 at 10:38 pm

    Thank you so much for taking the time to write this and to put the video together. It helped tremendously, and you will be the reason why we go with this app. When we pull the trigger, which will be soon, I will make sure I do it from this blog.

    Reply
11. 

    Robert Lunte on April 2, 2020 at 12:09 am

    Forest is the BEST. I truly mean that. I have had the opportunity to work with him as one of his clients. Mind-blowing customer service, detail-oriented and gets it done better than any other contractor I ever had, and I have had many. That is totally sincere. Forest is so reliable, consistent and on point, he is like a freak of nature.

    Reply
12. 

    Heather on March 25, 2020 at 5:43 pm

    Great write up. May I ask a question? Just to be super clear since I have read about their partners program. The affiliates option you discuss that is a feature is for a paid user to be able to create a course and then give out their own affiliate link for others to get commission if they sell the course correct? It is not a link to sign up for this app – just making sure I am clear. Thank you for the clarification.

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on March 25, 2020 at 9:32 pm

      Hi Heather 🙂

      Glad you enjoyed my review.

      And yes, I’m happy to answer your question. 

      The affiliate tools I mentioned in my review are tools for you to be able to give your affiliates unique links to send folks from their communities to your site, and track sales that your affiliates make of our courses or other products you sell on Kajabi. 

      This app does also give you the option to become a referral partner for Kajabi, where you’d give out your unique referral partner link to your audience when you want to promote their app and earn commissions from them for sending them customers. 

      Every owner of this app has the option to do that by default, but the affiliate tools I mentioned in the review were the tools you’d use as a business owner to let other people send you qualified leads to buy your products and earn commissions from doing that. 

      Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions. Happy to help. 

      All the best,
      ~Forest

      Reply
    • 

      Derek Hart on March 28, 2020 at 6:35 am

      Hi Forest… I would like to begin reviewing your training videos but don’t want to start the timer on my 28 days because I’ve ordered a new computer which won’t be here for 10 days. Is it possible to gain access to that training now and start and then come back and fill out your form when I’m ready to begin my 28-day trial?

      Reply
13. 

    Misty Funk on March 19, 2020 at 5:38 pm

    Wow, Forest. Your attention to detail on this post is spot on. Thank you so much for taking the time to put this together. It can be tough wading through all of the content online these days. Thanks for making everyone’s research and decision-making process easier!

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on March 23, 2020 at 10:26 pm

      Hi Misty!

      Thanks so much for your note. 

      I’m so glad to hear that the review helped you. You’re welcome for creating it. It makes me happy to hear when my work helps other people who happen across it. 

      And thank you for the work you do in the world as well. I just took a cruise through your website. Looks like you’re up to some great things!

      And the photo story on your about page was super fun to scroll through 🙂

      Hope you’re staying safe and healthy over there. 

      Be well,
      ~Forest 

      Reply
14. 

    Jason Stratos on March 17, 2020 at 7:34 am

    Greetings Linden and excellent review.

    I would like to book a free session to talk about consulting with you to help me start this subscription based training and consulting service.

    Please let me know the best time to contact you, or feel free to contact me at your convenience.

    Thanks again, and look forward to hearing from you.

    Jason

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on March 23, 2020 at 10:31 pm

      Hi Jason,

      I just sent over an email response to you.

      Looking forward to chatting with you soon 🙂

      Cheers,
      Forest

      Reply
      • 

        Steph on April 21, 2020 at 1:54 pm

        What’s comparable to this app’s functionality wise but cheaper? 1800 a year can be a lot if you’re not even making that monthly yet.

        Reply
        • 

          Forest Linden on April 21, 2020 at 6:25 pm

          Hi Steph,

          you could check out Podia, which is a less expensive competitor to Kajabi.
           
          Podia doesn’t do as much as this app does, but it’s similar and costs less.

          Podia has had some hiccups in the last 6 months that were pretty problematic for people using it (like charging hundreds of customers all of their remaining payments in a payment plan all at once on the same day) but I think it’s still worth considering at this point. 

          As for the monthly cost, I tend to look at software expenses like that as the cost of doing business online. 

          If I had a brick and mortar store in my city, the rental cost for just the physical space alone would be $8,000/mo.

          If you work towards selling an online course that costs, say, $47, you’d only need to sell 3 of those per month to cover the cost of this app if you’re on the Basic plan.

          And if you work hard to grow an email list in the first year of your business, if you were to do a bigger product launch of your course to a list of 1000 people who know, like, and trust you, you could end up selling 100 seats in your course, which would bring in $4,700…and that would just be one of your revenue streams.

          From that perspective, the monthly cost is minimal, given everything it allows you to do.

          Hope this helps a bit!

          Let me know if I can be of any help around the decision process. 

          All the best,
          ~Forest

          Reply
15. 

    Jude on February 26, 2020 at 5:41 am

    Hi Forest, great review! I am thinking about using this app as an all-in one solution. I want to have a blog and eventually sell courses for audio recording. Would the SEO capabilities for blogging be sufficient for building a large audience by creating silos of content?

    I can’t think of any logical reason why it couldn’t drive traffic. But I guess I’m hesitant because I haven’t seen any examples of someone who does a lot blog content (tons of articles) as a big part of their traffic strategy for building an audience.

    Do you know of anyone using a heavy blogging content focused strategy that drives traffic using this app? And would you recommend it for someone like me that wants to include a lot of blog article creation one (possibly big) part of my audience-building strategy?

    Thanks!!

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on February 27, 2020 at 8:55 pm

      Hi Jude 🙂

      I’m glad to hear that you enjoyed my review!

      With SEO and this app: there’s a list of about 56 things that need to be done with regard to on-site SEO work for any given piece of content. 

      It’s a checklist that I myself run through for every piece of content I create, like software reviews. You can find that on-site checklist at the backlinko.com site.

      You can do each of the items on the list on a Kajabi site, so there’s no problem there. 

      Beyond that, the other key part of SEO work is getting back links to your content and promoting your pieces of content.

      Those things don’t have to do with your website software though, so there’s no issue there that would concern this app.

      So, you shouldn’t have any troubles with creating a lot of content in terms of getting any content on your site to rank well in search results, at least in terms of the part of your SEO efforts that require you to do things on your site.

      There’s many other factors that go into getting content to rank well in Google search results though, so even if you do everything correctly with your on-site SEO work, that doesn’t guarantee that you will end up ranking in the top 10 or top 5 spots in search results.

      But as far as this app is concerned, it won’t hold you back at all. 

      As for examples of Kajabi sites that use a lot of content marketing/blogging to drive traffic to their site, have a look at https://jenrene.mykajabi.com/blog 

      I searched through a handful more site examples that I know of, but am not finding any others I know of at the moment that use a lot of blogging for traffic generation. They exist, I’m just not finding any on my list of examples.

      Hope this helps a big 🙂

      Let me know if you have any other questions about anything. 
      All the best,
      ~Forest

      Reply
16. 

    Susan Cox on February 17, 2020 at 12:28 pm

    What a great and comprehensive review -thank you so much!

    Can this app replace an email marketing platform? Will it accommodate newsletter sign ups?

    Thank you!

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on February 17, 2020 at 10:38 pm

      Hi Susan,

      glad you liked the review and that it helped you out a bit!

      Yes, this app has built in email marketing features and can replace whatever you’ve been using for your email marketing needs.

      And yes, it makes creating opt in forms for newsletter sign ups, or free offers, very easy because the tools to drop opt in forms on any page of your site are directly integrated into the platform and will put people on your email list with you just needing to make a few clicks to set it all up. 

      Hope this helps a bit, and let me know if you have any other questions.

      All the best,
      ~Forest

      Reply
17. 

    tasha on February 1, 2020 at 11:08 pm

    Do you have an example of a kajabi site that has used html coding etc to create. i think it’s super simple to use but it’s hard to get past the basic presentation. also do you know why people like brandon and chalene dont use it on their main site?

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on February 3, 2020 at 6:16 pm

      Hi Tasha,

      I don’t have any examples of Kajabi sites that have done any customizations at the level of creating custom HTML via the Liquid programming language. 
      Sorry about that. If I think of any, or find any, in the coming days, I’ll circle back to you and send you a link.

      One thing to keep in mind is that they just released a major update to their Pages section, which allows you to create much more complex, interesting, and unique page designs without touching HTML.

      These tools are only currently available for the stand alone pages you can create in the Pages section of the app, which you’d use for pages like your About page or sales pages for products/services. 

      The new design tools are part of the Encore theme platform, which is more powerful than the Premier theme platform that was available in the app.

      I am a few days away from being able to update my review here to show the new Page builder tools that come with Encore, which is why you didn’t see any of that in my review at the moment.
       
      One caveat to these new design tools: you can’t use them yet for the homepage or the blog page. Those pages are controlled by a separate design editor in the app. The Encore design tools will come to those areas of the platform sometime in Q1 of this year, so, they should arrive within a few months from now.

      The new Encore design tools allow you to create designs/layouts that are similar to what you can do with the Divi theme in WordPress, if you’re familiar with that theme platform.

      If you haven’t started a free trial to take it for a spin recently, I’d recommend checking it out again and going into the Pages section to see what’s possible with the new appearance editor, which is using the Encore theme platform. 

      Here’s an extended 28 day free trial if you’re interested in checking things out in there again: https://app.kajabi.com/r/nfLjy4F6/t/i42dd7g3

      Hope this helps!

      Let me know if I can be of any help around anything..

      All the best,
      ~Forest

      Reply
18. 

    Mitchell Summers on January 18, 2020 at 12:13 am

    This is an incredible and detailed review, Forest. We just signed up for this app!

    I’d like to talk about using it for a membership site. Not a course site.

    We’re building a course for Financial Advisors on Kajabi. We’re in and purchased a plan. We will teach Financial Advisors soft skills in the course.

    The second piece of the puzzle is a membership site, not for Financial Advisors – but for their clients. The Advisors will give their clients access.

    We need a landing page with content for a clients – a paid login that then allows access to:

    -The site that has various categories (think widowhood, this crisis, that issue etc)
    -Blog Material
    -Videos to accompany the blogs
    -Community

    The community feature doesn’t appear to tick the above boxes and the blog on this platform seems to be lacking.

    Someone we know recommeded it for the courses BUT mighty networks for the Membership site for the clients of the financial advisors.

    Can you please provide some insight as we embark on this leg? Thank you!

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on January 21, 2020 at 2:44 am

      Hi Mitchell,
      glad that the review was helpful for you!

      If the goal is to give the advisor’s clients access to paid content, what you’d need to do is create a separate site for each advisor.

      The content that you want to put into blogs would be put into a structured course area with separate categories and then each lesson post in a given category would contain what you were thinking of putting into blog posts. 

      You can add videos on each post as well as any downloadable files you want people to be able to access. 

      Then, clients who sign up for access to this paid members area would get access to the product/course with the content for them in there as well as the Community product you’d set up for them.

      One purchase process would give them access to both the course and the community area.

      That would solve what you’re trying to do, but in order to pull that off, as I mentioned above, you’d need a separate site for each financial advisor.

      That would be true of any platform you use though. The higher level plans would give you the ability to create many separate sites, and if you need more than what a given plan shows on their pricing page, you can contact them and set up a special Enterpirse plan behind the scenes. 

      I like most of what Mighty Networks does around their community features, though I’m not a big fan of their fly out pages for reading posts. I’m in a Mighty Networks site often every week as I’m part of a community that uses it. It’s nice, and it could possibly work for presenting the content you wanted to put into blog posts, but their course features are new and not as easy for people to use as Kajabi’s course features, and they don’t have built in video streaming like Wistia does. (You’d need to use their course area in Mighty Networks to be able to organize your content for the clients of the advisors.)

      So, this app would work great for what you’re trying to do, at least based on what you’ve told me.

      Hope this helps!

      All the best,~Forest

      Reply
      • 

        Neil Covert on January 25, 2020 at 3:57 pm

        Hi Forest,

        Hope you are doing well.

        Just as a heads up I really enjoyed your course content that I subscribed to last Fall. Very well done.

        As a follow up to Mitchell’s question, I’m wondering if you could do the following instead of having separate websites for each Financial Advisor. Could you have let’s say 3 membership levels – Silver, Gold and Platinum – and each FA would subscribe to the particular level they were interested in. Within each membership level, you could have additional video courses as you would graduate to the higher levels. Then each FA could invite their clients into whichever level the FA was a member.

        Would that accomplish the same or something similar to what Mitchell was asking?

        Thanks.

        Neil

        Reply
        • 

          Forest Linden on January 30, 2020 at 8:25 pm

          Hi Neil!

          I’m glad to hear that my Kajabi tutorial course was helpful for you!

          As for your question, Mitchell followed up with further clarification of what he’s trying to do via a private email. What he wants to do is less complicated than what I originally thought he wanted to do, so there’s likely an easier solution for him. 

          To your question though, you could have 3 different membership levels and each of those levels/plans could have different amounts/types of content.

          The way you’d do that is create 3 separate products/courses in the app and set the content up for each of them appropriately, with, for example, the Platinum version of the product/course having more than the Silver level version of the product. 

          Then you’d create 3 separate offers that would give access to the appropriate version of the product/course. The offers could also give clients access to other products as well, based on what each plan level is supposed to give clients. For example, the Platinum level could give clients access to a Community product, meaning, they’d also get access to a private community group space in the member area where they can interact with other people and get support from someone in there who could answer further questions for them. 

          So, yes, you can do what you’re talking about, but I seem to recall that you were thinking of setting up something similar, but that it may have been slightly different than what Mitchell is wanting to do…or maybe you’re both wanting to set up the same exact kind of workflow?

          Either way, I hope this helps a bit. 

          Cheers!
          Forest

          Reply
19. 

    Wanda Downs on November 21, 2019 at 2:50 pm

    Thanks so much for the legwork. I especially like that you gave the limitations/drawbacks of this app as well as the benefits. I have one question regarding pricing. How easy is it to upgrade from one level to the next? For example, if we purchase either the basic or growth plan, can we upgrade if we need to move to another level?

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on November 21, 2019 at 5:20 pm

      Hi Wanda,
      glad that you got some help from this review 🙂

      It’s very easy to upgrade from one plan to another in this app. Just takes a couple clicks and you’re done.
       
      Hope that helps!

      Let me know if I can answer any other questions for you. Happy to help.
      All the best,~Forest

      Reply
20. 

    John on November 4, 2019 at 10:28 pm

    Thank, Forest for the great review! It looks like this app will be way, way simpler to set up than the tech stack I was cobbling together! That said, I saw that Kajabi integrates with Active Campaign. However, from what I understand, Kajabi can already handle marketing automation and bulk email campaigns. So, I’m wondering what could AC bring to the party that would help improve this larger platform that can run courses?

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on November 21, 2019 at 5:22 pm

      Hi John,

      Yes, you can do all of the basic email marketing automation tasks in Kajabi that you can do in Active Campaign.

      There’s a handful of things that Active Campaign can do that this app can’t, but those things aren’t the kind of things that would prevent you from being able to build a multi-six or seven figure business if you decided to use the built in email marketing features in this app instead of using Active Campaign. 

      Active Campaign has a more flexible email builder that allows you to create more custom looking email designs, but that’s not actually something I’d recommend doing, because plain black and white text emails with a photo or two actually convert better than fancy looking, heavily designed emails that look like their from REI. 

      AC also has some CRM pipeline tracking and artificial intelligence powered list segmentation and personalization features that Kajabi doesn’t have, but again, those things aren’t super necessary to get a new business off the ground, or to grow the business you already have.

      Hope this helps a bit!

      If you’d like to chat a bit more about whether or not Kajabi is a good fit for you, I’d be happy to do a free 30 min call about that with you and see if I can be of any help in your decision making process, if you haven’t decided yet. 

      Regardless of that though, good luck with everything!

      All the best,
      ~Forest

      Reply
21. 

    Renae Gregoire on October 14, 2019 at 12:24 am

    Hi, Forest. As all those who came before me said — thanks for the review! It’s awesome 🙂

    I’m not quite clear on what I’d need payment-wise. Do I need additional tools or apps to use Paypal and Stripe?

    And about the limit of 5 courses … I know you don’t have anything to do with it, but I wanna say … that’s some steep cliff, man! Does each invoice count toward the limit? Or can I sell lots of digital products AND 5 courses? What if I just sell access to videos from a live program? Is that a course?

    Here’s what I’m using now:

    *Infusionsoft, including affiliate and ecommerce
    *Thrive Themes
    *Memberium
    *Vimeo
    *I’m sure a bunch more!

    I’d like to keep my site based on Thrive Themes, but can it be hosted by Kajabi?

    And, for my great-big question, the one I’ve been scouring the Internet to find: What else could I possibly need if I were to switch to this platform? Or, rather, what’s a Quick List of what it’s missing in terms of what’s out there in the industry?

    Thanks so much. I’m considering clicking inside that purple box 🙂

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on October 14, 2019 at 11:59 pm

      Hi Renae!

      So glad to hear that the review helped you in some way 🙂

      As for your questions:

      With the payment processing: all you need is either a Stripe account or a Paypal Business account, or both. You can use either of those, or both together. I recommend to folks to just use Stripe because that will keep folks on your site during the payment process. If you use Paypal, they will stay on your site, sort of, but the paypal checkout process pops up in a pop over on top of your site, and it adds a couple extra steps to the payment process, which can increase the percentage of people that don’t complete the payment process.

      As for the limit of 5 products: it’s actually a 3 product limit for the Basic Plan, and 15 products for the Growth plan (which is the plan I’d recommend using because it comes with the Automations, which are super necessary to build your email list.)

      What that means is that you can create 3 online courses, or 15…or, 2 online courses and a monthly community (for example), meaning, a “product” refers to either an onlien course or a community space (which is like a private Facebook group but not on Facebook…it’s right inside your member area.)

      And you can sell as many seats in those courses or communities as you can.

      So, you could create a 3 month online course with videos, downloadable pdf worksheets, and written lessons, for example, and you could sell it to 1,000 people (or more) and that would just count as 1 product in the 3 product, or 15 product, limit.

      Then, you could create a community product and sell that as a recurring monthly membership and sell it to 10,000 people, and that would be 2 products of your 3 or 15 product limit.

      Hope that clears that piece up for you 🙂

      As for the Thrive theme wordpress site: if you want to keep using your wordpress site, Kajabi wouldn’t be able to host it. They are a hosted solution and their websites live on their servers, and they don’t host websites on other platforms.

      Some people to keep their wordpress site and then just use Kajabi for their online courses and member areas, but that means that in order to make things easier on you, you’d want to have a separate email marketing platform, meaning, you’d not use Kajabi’s email marketing features.

      This is because integrating its email marketing features with your wordpress site isn’t the easiest thing to pull off and involves messing around with code.

      So, if you want/need to keep your wordpress site, you’ll still need a webhost for that, and will also need an email marketing app in addition to this app for your online courses and/or community spaces.

      Infusionsoft is probably a bit of overkill for you, and you’re probably paying a lot for it, but if you want to stay with it, you can. There’s a way to integrate Kajabi and Infusionsoft.

      If you want to simplify your tech platform, using this platform I reviewed here for your marketing/blog site to replace your WordPress site would allow you to really simplify things, because then you could use it for your main website, your email marketing app, your online course/community app, landing pages, video streaming, checkout/payment pages, and your affiliate marketing system.

      But it would come down to whether or not you would be happy with the design options available to you in Kajabi.

      As for the list of things that it’s is missing, that’s a great question. They call their app an “all-in-one” app, but in reality, it’s a “mostly-all-in-one” app.

      The biggest feature set that it’s missing is a customer support ticket system to handle emails from prospects and customers.

      There’s an easy fix for that though: use Help Scout for your customer support system. Then, you’d grab one line of code by copying it and pasting it into a spot in the settings of your site and you’ll then have a button that anyone can click on in the lower right corner of every page of your site, including inside the member’s only area.

      They click on that button and a pop up opens up where they can send you an email to get help.

      We’ve been using Help Scout for years and love it.

      It’s a life saver and super necessary to have once you have even just one team member helping you answer customer support emails.

      Hope this helps a bit, and I’d be glad to pick up the conversation in a free call if you like.

      Cheers!
      Forest

      Reply
22. 

    Joyce on September 29, 2019 at 1:59 pm

    Thank you for the review, Forest! I’m just starting to learn all the different aspects of running a business with online courses. This app keeps coming up and so I appreciate you spending the time to share your knowledge.

    I do have a question…who owns the email list?

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on September 30, 2019 at 3:48 pm

      Hi Joyce!

      Glad to hear that my review was helpful for you 🙂 There’s definitely a lot to learn when it comes to running a business that sells online courses, eh? Hope my review made that process a bit easier. (Oh, and by the way, if you haven’t already downloaded it, there’s an ebook on my homepage at claritylab.co that will give you a broad, comprehensive overview of everything that’s involved in creating a business like this. I wrote it for folks like you who are at the beginning of the journey because there just isn’t a good map out there that shows folks everything that’s involved.)

      As for who owns the email list on your Kajabi site, you do 🙂 Same goes for any content that you put on the site. They never take ownership of anyone’s content or email list, as those are assets of your business.

      Hope this helps a bit. Let me know if you have any other questions. Happy to help 🙂

      All the best,
      ~Forest

      Reply
23. 

    Melissa A Toole on August 23, 2019 at 1:14 am

    Thank you for the in depth review Forest. It is very helpful.

    I am wanting to create a monthly membership site. Is this platform set up to automatically process recurring payments, and if they are, can it be set to removed a member’s access if their payment method is denied? I would also like an option where they can pay a year at a time for a course. Does it get confusing if they have one course and then purchase another course?

    Thanks for your time.

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on August 23, 2019 at 11:13 pm

      Hi Melissa,

      You’re welcome for the review. I’m glad you found your way to it and that it helped you out.

      Yes, you can do monthly recurring payments for a monthly membership site on this platform, and yes, if their payment is declined, they automatically will lose access to the member’s area.

      And yes, again, about setting up an option for your members to pay for an annual subscription to your membership.

      No, it doesn’t get confusing if people purchase multiple courses. They can always go to their My Library page and access any of the multiple courses or memberships they’ve purchased from you.

      Hope that helps!

      Cheers,
      Forest

      Reply
24. 

    Skyler on August 16, 2019 at 8:37 pm

    This app looks great, and you cover quite a bit in this review. I have been having trouble finding what the emails actually look like when sent from it. Do you know if there are ways to visually customize the email layouts and graphics, not just the text content?

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on August 22, 2019 at 1:42 am

      Hi Skyler 🙂

      Kajabi’s emails are currently pretty straight forward: centered black text with a white background. You can add photos wherever you want, but they don’t have tools for creating HTML email templates, like Mailchimp or Active Campaign’s email builders do.

      I’ll drop in a screenshot of what the emails look like below (and thank you for making me realize that I forgot to put in a screenshot like this in the review.)

      This is the welcome email folks get when they get access to my video tutorial course about this app (just for context):

      This is the top area of the email builder area:

      https://www.evernote.com/l/ACqDR42Er-1LYpIzVllS69wn8H0accdMUyM

      And this is a little lower down the same page:

      https://www.evernote.com/l/ACp-HnjuJ7pNoIcDbvwa2b2vD_t6joK0aC0

      And this is what the emails will look like in an inbox:

      https://www.evernote.com/l/ACqBJTNtDPJASLPpmHVvR-jgJUHxAwWG0N4

      As you can see, they are pretty clean, simple, and straightforward. If you’re concerned about that, though, I wouldn’t be concerned.

      If you google around for it, you’ll find a bunch of usability studies that have been done over the years that show that plain text, black and
      white emails without any fancy colors, columns, or graphics, always, always convert far better than fancy HTML designed email
      templates.

      The reason? Simple black and white emails without all the fancy graphic design and columns look like emails that you get from a friend.
      And that helps people feel like you’re not trying to sell them anything, which helps them be more open to actually buying things from you
      in the future when you do promote things you’re selling.

      When people get fancy, highly designed HTML emails, those emails look like emails from big companies, like REI, which makes people
      feel like they’re being sold something, which they don’t like, which makes them less likely to keep opening your emails and to actually
      buy things from you.

      Just thought you’d find that interesting if you weren’t aware of those usability studies.

      Bottom line: plain text emails work way better than HTML emails with lots of colors, graphics, and columns.

      Hope this helps a bit!

      All the best,
      ~Forest

      Reply
25. 

    Doug Mattice on June 18, 2019 at 12:51 am

    I am starting a website that will showcase my personal branding photography, marketing and business coaching to small business owners. I want to have a blog, opt-ins and the ability to sell online courses AT A LATER date. Would this app be a good platform to build from even though online courses would come later? Not sure which direction to go between this app or Word press site. I would welcome your opinion.

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on June 19, 2019 at 1:43 am

      Hi Doug 🙂

      It’s hard to answer your question fully without a few more details about what you’re wanting to build, but there’s a good chance that this app could be a great fit for you.

      Part of it would come down to how you wanted to display your photography work. If you’d like to have a customized looking gallery for your photos, a self-hosted WordPress site might be a better option.

      You could still use this app for your online courses, email marketing, and landing pages though.

      But the blogging and opt-ins for free offers all work really well on Kajabi. Building the same kind of functionality on a WordPress site takes a bit more work and plugins to manage your opt in forms.

      And if you went the WordPress route, you’d likely need to use a third party email marketing platform, like Active Campaign if you wanted to do more that what you could do by using it’s email marketing features integrated with a WordPress site.

      I’d be happy to hop on a call and have a quick chat about this with you and see if this app could be a good fit for you.

      If that sounds interesting, you can book a free 30 minute discovery call here: https://claritylab.satoriapp.com/offers/18037-30-minute-discovery-call

      Looking forward to chatting with you if that sounds good to you!

      All the best,
      ~Forest

      Reply
26. 

    Lea Jacobson on May 17, 2019 at 12:47 pm

    Is there still no email segmenting?

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on May 17, 2019 at 9:01 pm

      Hi Lee,

      there is definitely email segmenting in this app…a lot of it actually.

      There are about 35 different ways you can create segments for broadcast or autoresponder emails in it.

      Hope this helps, and let me know if you have any other questions about anything. Happy to help.

      ~Forest

      Reply
27. 

    Yvonne on May 7, 2019 at 3:25 pm

    Does it allow for other languages? All my courses are in Spanish and the menus should be in Spanish.

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on May 7, 2019 at 3:53 pm

      Hi Yvonne 🙂

      yes, you can display the language on a Kajabi site in Spanish.

      Funciona bien!

      It won’t change all the text on your site, but it will change things like checkout page instructions and text on the member profile page.

      Other text on your site, like the menu items, can be manually written in Spanish by you.

      Hope this helps…

      Adios,
      ~Bosque

      Reply
28. 

    Aysha on April 23, 2019 at 7:05 pm

    Hi there, thanks for the great review! What about the webinar feature: is it any good? Is it a good substitute to Webinar Ninja, for example?

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on April 29, 2019 at 8:40 pm

      Hi Aysha!

      I’m glad the review was helpful for you 🙂

      With this app’s webinar feature, they don’t actually have webinar features built in in terms of running the actual webinar. To run the actual webinar, you’d still need to use something like Zoom, Webinar Jam, or Webinar Ninja.

      In other words, it doesn’t handle the live video streaming of your slides and webcam, if you’re using one to show you on screen with your slides.

      What they have for Webinars is everything but the live video streaming part: the registration/opt in page, adding people to your email list, automated emails before the webinar, automated emails after the webinar, sales pages for your offer, and payment processing for folks who buy your offer that you pitched during the webinar.

      So, it’s basically everything you need except the live video streaming part. In the emails that go out before the webinar, and on the thank you page people see after they sign up, you tell folks how to access the webinar when it’s time for it to happen (whether it’s live or pre-recorded) by giving them a link to join the webinar.

      And beyond that, the rest of the platform comes into play, such as all the things on the front facing marketing/blog site and the online course area for delivering digital products like online multimedia courses (they use Wistia for video streaming, and that’s built in, but again, Wistia doesn’t do live streaming for webinars yet.)

      Hope that helps a bit!

      Let me know if you have any further questions about anything.

      All the best,
      ~Forest 🙂

      Reply
      • 

        Bridgett on September 17, 2019 at 1:35 pm

        What do you recommend for live streaming webinars? There are so many options! Some so expensive! Is there a simple inexpensive one that you can use an animated PowerPoint and have a chat box?

        Reply
        • 

          Forest Linden on September 17, 2019 at 4:13 pm

          Hi Bridgett,

          I’d recommend using the webinar version of Zoom. That would allow you to show your powerpoint slides on your screen and also have a chat box next to the slides.

          And when you want to, you can show yourself on camera instead of your slides.

          Cheers!
          ~Forest

          Reply
          • 

            Angie on May 21, 2020 at 12:41 am

            Hi Forest,

            Thank you so much for providing such an incredibly detailed and honest review, and feedback in the comments section – even down to the nitty gritty details and comparisons, so hugely helpful!! 😀

            I’ve been researching Kajabi vs ClickFunnels vs a WordPress build for a month or so, and I still learned about additional features from you that I wasn’t aware this app even included!

            I have a couple questions for you…

            If I’ll be relying on an ad to an evergreen webinar, where people can then purchase my course at the end, would EverWebinar be a better option to integrate with than Zoom?

            And can you bundle 2 products: with a Course set up as 1-time payment, and the other product: access to the Community as a recurring payment (yearly, etc)?

            Thank you so much!

          • 

            Forest Linden on May 22, 2020 at 6:37 pm

            Hi Angie!

            So glad to hear that my review helped you out in your decision process.

            Crazy how much time it takes to research what software to use for your business, eh?

            As for your questions:

            1) Everwebinar has a few more features for setting up evergreen webinar funnels than Kajabi does, but you can create the basics that you need for an evergreen webinar funnel right in this app.

            You’d create a webinar pipeline, then set it to be a recurring evergreen webinar, then on the webinar page where people will go to view the webinar, you’d simply put the recording of your live webinar on that page.

            So, if you did the original live webinar on Zoom, you’d record that either with Zoom or with screen recording software like Screenflow, and then you’d put the recording of the live webinar on the webinar replay page.

            Everwebinar has some features that allow you to make it look like your recurring webinars are live, when they really aren’t, so if that’s what you want to do, I’d use Everwebinar instead.

            Just keep in mind that if you go that route, you’ll need to also use an email marketing platform like Active Campaign so that you can connect that to Everwebinar AND Kajabi, because Everwebinar doesn’t integrate easily with its email marketing features.

            2) with the bundle: access to products in this app are set up via offers, and each offer has one set payment option.

            So, if you want to bundle Course A with Community A, you can do that, but that offer would have one price with one payment method, such as a one time payment of $497.

            You can then also bundle Course A with Community A and offer it for a 5 payment plan, such as 5 monthly payments of $97.

            Both of those payment options for the course and community could live on your sales page for the same offer. They buy the course and community either with a one pay option or the 5 monthly payment plan option.

            Or, you could offer Course A and Community A both for a monthly recurring payment with no end, which would be a “cancel whenever you want” style of membership.

            But you can’t bundle Course A as a one time payment but in the same purchase set up a recurring monthly payment for Community A.

            Those would have to be sold separately. They’d have to buy an offer that gives them Course A for a one time payment, and then in a separate transaction, they’d need to buy access to the Community A for a monthly recurring fee.

            Those are two separate payment types that need to be set up differently in Stripe or Paypal, and they can’t be combined in one payment process.

            If you’re aiming to have monthly recurring revenue, I would consider shifting your business model to just offering the community and course together for a monthly recurring fee.

            The focus with this kind of model shifts more towards the benefits of the community and secondarily they get access to your course content, but the course content is dripped out to them in a way that keeps them in the membership for a while, meaning, you don’t give them access to your whole course all at once.

            Hope this helps a bit, and I hope you have a great weekend over there!

            All the best,
            ~Forest

          • 

            Angie on May 22, 2020 at 7:16 pm

            Hi Forest,

            Wow. Wow. WOW!! What a detailed and ridiculously thorough response to all of my questions!! I am so blown away and appreciative of your sharing so much 😀

            Here are my responses and some additional questions that have come up while processing…

            Part 1:

            EverWebinar + ActiveCampaign: When researching building everything out separately on WordPress, I was hugely interested in ActiveCampaign. I know you can combine that with Kajibi for more power in general – but after reading your review and seeing that it probably isn’t necessary – that was great news!! …And now to find out I would still need to use it if I were to use EverWebinar… I’d really like to keep things as simple, but also as powerful as possible while building an online course focused, online business. So I would probably use the other routes you suggested, then I would avoid using EverWebinar and ActiveCampaign. (Plus, combining the 2 gets expensive overtime as your number of subscribers increases).

            (If it helps, my new online course will be focused on life coaching in general, but also diving into intuition, Law of Attraction, and more ;))

            Do you have any thoughts on creating a course in mostly audio format like a podcast vs mostly video (which I know is more popular/standard), in terms of which delivery method is more effective and engaging for students?
            – I don’t plan to need to show things on video much (like in the case of a screen share).
            – I prefer calls myself, in terms of providing them to students, and as a student myself (unless you need to see a demo of course).
            – How would the audio options play out in this app – I believe they would work…

            What about offering coaching via calls vs. webinars? And while I understand more about how the webinars will work in it (all thanks to you!), how would offering coaching calls with it work?

            Part 2:

            Thank you so much for explaining how all the bundles would work in this app too! I will take your membership suggestions into consideration as another option.

            I have been doing more research on the options of lifetime access to all vs not, and I am leaning towards lifetime access to all, because I have received feedback that the conversion rates are better.

            On that note, do you have any additional feedback on including lifetime access to everything up front or not:
            – A: Lifetime access to the course and lifetime access to the community vs.
            – B: Lifetime access to the course with 1 year access to the community, then charging every 6 mo or 1 yr for access to the community?
            – I believe the conversion rates will be higher when offering lifetime access to everything upfront
            (like I mentioned), and/but I also understand that having the option for upgrades later will increase the lifetime value of each client.

            Further along that note LOL – can you offer any feedback on pricing a value packed, super comprehensive, “master,” “signature,” course at $1995 vs. $2995?
            – Especially if there are no other related up-sells?
            – Would also probably make more sense to charge the higher rate when offering lifetime access to the whole thing vs a recurring subscription to a community membership, and I realize the $1995 is more common and would probably have a higher conversion rate too, but again, I want to consider everything haha.

            Thank you again and have a wonderful weekend 😀

          • 

            Angie on May 22, 2020 at 9:04 pm

            PS: To answer your first question in your last response – yes, it is so eye-opening and crazy really, how many things you have to consider when building an online course and choosing the appropriate software – but also very exciting, interesting and causing me to geek out haha

            Also and thanks to your review – the Kujabi community definitely seems to be the way to go for your course community versus a Facebook group. In the Kajibi community, and in any other locations students can comment, upload homework etc., that’s outside the community, can you provide access to team members to be able to go in and review / comment in any / all of those areas as well?

            🙂

          • 

            Angie on May 23, 2020 at 9:34 pm

            Hi Forest,

            I remembered reading that your wife’s online course, The Art of Money runs year-long, I checked out her pricing structure, and I’m wondering if that’s similar to what you recommended in your previous response in terms of memberships?

            I also realized you may need more info in order to make it easier to answer my questions, so here’s much more detail if any of it helps:

            By the time I launch, I will have spent over a year studying the content I’ll be teaching, studying how to build and sell online courses, organizing and creating all of my content etc. I’ve seen somewhere along the way, a signature / master course could go as high as $10,000 (I know there are others even higher), but I also want to strike that balance of a steady stream of evergreen signups, so it’s not maybe so limiting with an even higher price point.

            My new online course will be focused on life coaching in general, but also diving deep into the energetic side of things like intuition, Law of Attraction, and more, such as lessening anxiety. I’ll focus on selling them what they want (how it’ll feel in their body when they’re not anxious, and are calm, peaceful and relaxed), as opposed to using the actual word (and giving them what they’ll need to get the results), because they may not actually consider themselves to be anxious people. I didn’t, and I’ll be taking them through a similar journey as my own that spanned 16 years of my life (wowza, just calculated that).

            It’ll be super in-depth, transformational and can definitely be life changing – that is the goal and what I had in mind when I was asking about the pricing, because there’ll be SO much value included and I won’t really be upselling them into anything else because it’ll be (nearly) everything they’ll need 😉

            My huge personal transformation happened from participating in online courses that provided all video learning, and also by listening to audio podcasts. I am also more introverted, and my target market probably will be too, or a mix. From my own experience, audio and videos are both definitely transformational. Audio are easier and faster to record, update, and you can listen to them anywhere / anytime, they don’t require watching, which makes them more accessible too in my opinion.

            My Course Outline:

            Starts from the outside, slowly dives deeper on the inside. There are sections that are more in depth because they may be more challenging / have a deeper learning curve, vs others that are included to kind of round things out, and because it’s all included is a holistic and complete picture:

            1. Environment (setting it up your for success, de-clutter, organize, connect with nature) (more brief)
            2. Physical (activity, rest, breathwork, food, emotional eating, yoga) (more brief)
            3. Mindfulness and Meditation (medium)
            4. Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence (in depth)
            5. Mastering Your Mind (in depth)
            6. Communication and Relationships (more brief)
            7. LOA (medium)
            8. Ego and Soul (in depth)
            9. Purpose (more brief)
            10. Goal Setting (more brief)

            My plan of action is:

            1. Building my Mailing List + and maintaining an ongoing Newsletter, while offering a 5 Day Challenge as a Freebie, leading to a Low-Priced Offer (so I can monetize my marketing).
            2. While my Mailing List is building, I’ll be working on building my Master Course V1 (Beta), launch it to my mailing list, update it according to student feedback.
            3. Then halfway through that, begin updating and building the Master Course V2, with it’s launch planned for January 2021
            4. Run FB ads, to webinar, to sign up for the course, and to run this evergreen all year.

            This will be my only offering, until later on, I’m considering creating another online course teaching people how to create an online course 😀

            Thank you again!

          • 

            Angie on May 27, 2020 at 8:27 pm

            Hi Forest,

            Thank you SO MUCH for this great information and NO problem at all and I hope you enjoyed your weekend 😀

            1: Amazing feedback!
            2: Ohhhh, ok great!
            3: Yes, haha
            4: Yes, completely understand!
            5: Whoo hoo!!

            Your feedback has all been so helpful, I’m so appreciative of the time you’ve taken and the detail you’ve provided!!

29. 

    G Ross Clark on November 13, 2018 at 11:09 am

    Hello, Forest

    I am confused about only 5 digital products offered in the Basic plan for $139.

    I would like to build 12-mini courses and 2 8-week courses with the basic plan.

    Can I build these 14 courses or am I limited to only 5?

    Thank you,
    Ross

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on November 13, 2018 at 6:10 pm

      Hi Ross,

      sorry for the delay in responding. I was offline for a rare unplugged vacation.

      With the Basic plan, you can only have 5 “products,” which is what online courses are called inside of the platform.

      If you want to create 14 separate courses, you’d need the Pro plan, which allows you to create up to 100 products/courses.

      You’ve probably figured this out already, but in case you haven’t, I hope this helps.

      Cheers!

      Forest

      Reply
30. 

    Valda on November 5, 2018 at 4:08 pm

    Thanks for a great review! I’m totally sold on using this app as a membership site but have a problem with the payment options. I’m not at all keen to use PayPal and to get Stripe is a challenge in South Africa. I have to bill in local currency due to market circumstances and would like to go with a local payment gateway. Is there ANY way a different gateway can be integrated/use an API to communicate with the platform?

    Reply
31. 

    Bryan B on August 11, 2018 at 4:06 pm

    Thank you for sharing your in depth review. I will be building a membership site but there will be no courses offered. Rather I will be offering live training via screenshare as well as a growing videolibrary. I would also like to offer a community or social platformish feature for my subscribers. Can the members area be setup to showcase these features? Can the members area be customizable so that it doesn’t look like a course outline with lessons and so on?

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on August 12, 2018 at 4:07 pm

      Hi Bryan,

      if you are doing live screensharing as part of your offer for your courses (even if you’re not calling them courses, you can think of them as such, especially if you’re going to create a video library of past training sessions), you can embed a Youtube live video on Kajabi pages inside the member’s area, and you can use it’s events features to let people register or pay for those (whether they are one off trainings or part of a larger course.)

      What I would do, however, is use Zoom for your live screenshare trainings. It’s a better platform than Youtube live videos.

      You wouldn’t be embedding the live Zoom videos into your site though. You’d provide access information for the live Zoom sessions and you’d run those trainings in Zoom, then record them in there as well. Then you can upload the recordings of the sessions into post/lesson pages inside a member’s or course area. Those videos would stream via Wistia, which is integrated with this app.

      I’m not sure what you mean about customizing the member’s area so that it doesn’t look like a course outline with lessons. On a course dashboard page, you can show lesson categories or an outline of categories and lessons in each category. You can’t do much customizing to the way that course dashboard page is laid out, as it’s designed to show categories and lessons within categories.

      Hope this helps!

      Cheers,
      ~Forest

      Reply
32. 

    Russell Walker on July 30, 2018 at 4:02 pm

    Great Review…extensive!
    Here’s my issue before I make up my mind to sign up with this app or not. I’ve gone onto their website as a potential buyer of a course and I can only find 12 pages with 20 courses on each page. Surely that can’t be all they offer.
    There are more than 80,000 courses on Udemy and all I do is pick one and buy it “off the shelf”. Am I missing something really obvious with this app?
    Thanks a lot.

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on July 30, 2018 at 5:03 pm

      Hi Russell,

      glad you enjoyed the review!

      As for your questions about the courses available on this app: The courses you’re seeing are those that are listed by Kajabi owners in their new marketplace. Most owners aren’t listing their courses in that marketplace and are just selling their courses on their own, via their own marketing and sales channels.

      Udemy has a different business model, so that may be where you’re getting confused. Udemy positions their platform as a place to host your course content and sell it via their marketplace, and they take a percentage of your sales.

      Kajabi is selling their software platform via a monthly fee. You’re buying the use of their software, and their marketplace, as far as I know, is just a new offering from them in the last year. I don’t believe they take a percentage of sales you make of your courses via their marketplace.

      With this app, you’ve got full control over your course content and you’d take responsibility for marketing and selling your courses.

      Hope that helps clear things up a bit.

      Cheers 🙂

      Reply
33. 

    Joe on July 25, 2018 at 10:46 am

    Hi Forest, this review was really excellent – thank you!

    I have 3 questions regarding pricing flexibility:

    1) I plan to use this app to sell 10-15 short but distinct courses that I’m currently making. In addition to selling these individually, I’d like to be able to include a membership type option that would allow someone to have access to all my courses for a period of time for a one-off fee (e.g. say 10 courses at $100 each, but if you paid $400 ‘membership’ fee you’d have access to all 10 of them) – is this possible?

    2) If the above is possible, would I be able to offer the ‘membership’ option as an upsell?

    3) Can I limit how long my students have access to courses/membership – ideally I’d prefer them to have access for 3 months as opposed to access for life

    Sorry for so many questions, and thanks again! Joe

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on July 25, 2018 at 6:04 pm

      Hi Joe 🙂

      You’re welcome for the review! Glad you found it helpful!

      As for your questions:

      1) Yes, that’s possible. You’d create an offer that gives access to all of your courses and you’d set the period of time people who buy that offer have access to those courses.

      2) Yes, you can create an upsell to sell that membership offer. They are called “order bumps” and you can set that up within any given offer. So, if you create an offer for Course A, in the settings for Course A, you’d create an order bump and upsell folks on the membership option.

      3) Yes, you can limit how long folks have access to their courses/memberships.

      Hope that helps!

      Cheerio,
      Forest

      Reply
34. 

    Miguel on July 16, 2018 at 11:44 am

    Hi Forest, wow this was an amazing review. I only found out about this app today, and while it seems to solve a lot of the things I was worried about, it of course has a few downsides too. But I was wondering why no one even mentioned ClickFunnels. It seems to excel in the exact areas (marketing and email campaigns and functionality) but also seems complicated to use, but maybe they all do to me right now.
    Anyway, I want to offer at least 5 physical products (drop shippable) and 3-5 e-courses, not all of which are created by me, so affiliate info products, and then my own courses. I would love to do a phone consultation and see about the turn-key websites that you set up! thanks

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on July 17, 2018 at 12:45 pm

      Glad you enjoyed the review, Miguel!

      We can talk more about this in a free 30 min discovery call, but, for those reading the comments, Clickfunnels isn’t yet as feature-rich as the app I reviewed here, though Clickfunnels is definitely heading in the direction of what Kajabi is already capable of doing.

      And there isn’t yet a platform on the market that can easily sell digital products AND physical products, but there is a way to use some stand alone software for running an e-commerce business that sells physical products in conjunction with a site on this platform (you can do this, for example, with Shopify.)

      At any rate, let’s hop on a call and talk about the possibilities and see if I can help you find the best combination of software for your business.

      Looking forward to chatting soon.

      ~Forest 🙂

      Reply
35. 

    Dan Norton on May 7, 2018 at 12:43 pm

    This is an excellent, in-depth review! I’ve been going back and forth between teachable and this app. I like both platforms but Kajabi is just so versatile for future stacking.

    The two main things keeping me right down the middle is the pricing (Teachable is $100/mo with unlimited students)

    The second is what I’m unsure about.

    In teachable you can have other instructors and they get an agreed upon percentage of each sale that is auto payed right to them. This is helpful because I’m working on a fitness course for busy parents but need my friend who is a personal trainer to teach most of the modules.

    I know you can add other instructors in this app but I have not been able to find if the feature exists that they can be automatically be paid a percentage of each sale.

    Would love to schedule a call with you if you know the differences between the two programs?

    Reply
36. 

    Louise Knudsen on February 3, 2018 at 3:40 pm

    Wow, thank you for the review. One question. Is this possible with NewKajabi:
    I sell online courses to companies with 30-60 employes. The company buy the online product on my website to lets say 40 employes. Then the employes sign up individually on my website to get login and password and get acces to their courses. And for me to get their email (for extra sell). The employes are to get 3 different categories of courses: office, athlete and coach.
    Can I do this with this app?
    Do I make 3 coupon types (office, athlete, coach) for the company to give to their employe, so they can sign up for free? Is it possible to have a coupon give acces to a certain course?
    Thank you. 🙂

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on February 3, 2018 at 4:40 pm

      Hi Louise 🙂

      Glad you enjoyed the review!

      You can do what you’re talking about with with this app, but there’s a slightly different workflow you would likely want to do:

      1) A person at a company buys 40 seats in your program either via a special checkout link you make just for them, based on exactly how many people they want to get into your course, or, via a group purchase button you put up on your site for a set number of people.

      2) In the welcome email you can send out to them automatically after their payment goes through, you tell the person at the company who paid that you need them to send you a .csv file or spreadsheet with the names and email addresses of each employee they want to have in your course.

      3) once you get that .csv file or spreadsheet, you, or someone on your team, would copy/paste it into the area where you can add multiple people to a course all at once. When you do this, you’ll add them to whatever set of courses they should get access to. When you add a group of people this way in this app, they will all get an email automatically with login information to access your courses.

      This way, you can control exactly which group of people get which courses.

      You could do it via coupons as well, but I think you’d find that the above workflow would be better for everyone in the end. Either way is possible though.

      Hope this helps!

      Cheers,
      Forest

      Reply
      • 

        Louise Knudsen on February 19, 2018 at 3:41 pm

        Thank you. 🙂 I have to figure out what to do with new employes the company hires. I guess the company could send me a list with names each time. Again thank you.
        Are you planning to do a review of Simplero? Im trying to decide between Simplero and Newkajabi.

        Reply
        • 

          Forest Linden on February 19, 2018 at 5:42 pm

          Hi Louise,

          yes…if a company hires new employees and they are supposed to get access to your courses via your agreement with a given company, they’d need to send you a list of names/email addresses of employees that need to get access to your courses, and you and your team would add them manually…or, you give them a coupon to get into a paid course for free…or, you make the course a free product so that all an employee needs to get in is a link to register for the course for free. And the only people who would have that link is that company.

          You’d have to keep an eye on that though and cross check to make sure that only their employees are signing up and getting free access, because some of the employees may share that link with friends.

          We don’t have any plans to review Simplero in the near future. We’ve got a lot of other reviews we’d like to get to before reviewing Simplero. Sorry about that.

          At any rate, good luck with the decision process, and let us know if we can be of any help to you.

          Cheers,
          Forest

          Reply
37. 

    Vernon Ross on December 26, 2017 at 3:38 pm

    Great review and the video is an extensive overview! One thing I’m not clear on is if there is a way to actually embed js code for a podcast player? I would assume so but not sure if that works in this app. I’ve used Thinkific and testing teachable now but I’m not impressed with either from a full solution or even to integrate with my current site.

    I even looked Invato, part of AppSumo bundle and although a good deal it appears I’ll have to do a lot of configuration and I’m not sure it compares with this app. I would love to know more about embedding code.

    Thanks,

    Vernon

    Reply
38. 

    Dan on November 26, 2017 at 3:37 pm

    Great overview. Thanks! I’m considering all-in-one options as a way to both consolidate things and save money. Everyone who pushes WordPress tell you how cheap it is, but when you add the cost of many of the premium plugins you may decide you want (security, SEO, caching, page builders, backups, etc.), and the cost of actually good hosting with good customer support, it can add up fast. Or, skip all that and have a relatively slow site and spend too much time troubleshooting and tweaking. 🙂

    Of course, as you note, the problem with all-in-ones is that they tend to be masters of nothing. My biggest problems with this app are 1) weak site design/builder options, 2) weak email marketing options, and 3) affiliate marketing only at the $300+ plans. That said, if one’s happy with what they offer in these regards, the LMS and membership features are solid and you’d be hard pressed to find a better deal given the inclusion of email marketing.

    Rainmaker is essentially no more, and I’m looking into Simplero, but I expect to find similar shortcomings with that one too. We’ll see.

    Decisions decisions.

    Reply
39. 

    Jonathan Crondstedt on October 3, 2017 at 3:32 pm

    Wow Forest, thank you so much for this amazing review. We really appreciate it and you did a great job showcasing what Kajabi does, but more importantly helping people understand why it will be powerful in their business.

    Reply
    • 

      Forest Linden on October 3, 2017 at 3:33 pm

      Glad you liked the review, Jonathan! Keep up the great work over there at headquarters! We love using your app and building it into the tech systems of our clients, and it just keeps getting better and better. Good stuff!

      Reply
40. 

    Morgan on June 16, 2017 at 2:10 am

    Great detailed review Forest. This was helpful for me right now in sorting through the myriad options. I’ve set up courses on Rainmaker, on self-hosted WP sites, and now I’m considering this app for a client. This gave me a lot of details and insights to help in the vetting process. Hope you’re well.

    Reply