Kajabi Community 2.0 & Vibely 

Kajabi has been one of the first online course platforms to offer a Community feature.

That being said, the first iteration of that tool was limited…

Enters the acquisition of Vibely, a dedicated community experience, by Kajabi in 2022:

This means that Kajabi users can now create a community from their account that will use the legacy technology of Vibely.

This comes at no extra cost and is already part of the platform when you create an account.

The biggest upside of this acquisition, instead of building the feature on their own, is that Kajabi now has by far the best community tool of any all-in-one platform!

Let’s dive into what Vibely now offers to Kajabi users:

Circles & Conversations

The core of any Community platform is to allow your students to connect and post in a private group setting.

Kajabi communities allow you to create different topic-based threads (called Circles) where anyone can create a post, similar to what they would in Facebook:

You can also start a group conversation with several members (for a more private discussion) or simply Direct Message one individual member.

This is a great way for people in your online course, membership or coaching program to network as each user has a profile with pictures and social handles.

You can even start a video chat directly from within the platform with a fellow member!

There isn’t a whole lot you can influence when it comes to the layout or design of your Community.

You can change the cover picture of the group as a whole, but can’t change the layout or colors there…

Event, meetups and live sessions

Although threads and messages are a good start to create a vibrant community, creating events and live calls can take it to the next level!

The Kajabi Community feature now allows for creating Meetups, which can be virtual or in person.

When these are online, you can use the native Live Room tool to run it:

This works very similarly to Zoom, with video and screen sharing capabilities.

But you can also create breakout rooms and record the session to have a replay available for the members that couldn’t make it.

Another type of event you can set up are Challenges.

These are time-based events that get people involved and engaged in the community as well as keeping them accountable!

You can even set up an optional Prize to motivate members even more.

Members engaging in Challenges and other events will gain points which count toward the Leaderboard for your Community.

These are a great way to gamify the whole experience and celebrate the most engaged and dedicated users.

Lastly, you can set Announcements which are sticky messages on at the top of your community to draw attention to something timely.

Mobile App & Resources

This Kajabi Community comes with its own dedicated app (currently still Vibely), separate to the Kajabi app for your online courses.

It’s accessible on both Apple Store and Google Play.

Members can do everything they would on Desktop, on the go!

They will receive push notifications (depending on their setting) to keep on top of replies and announcements.

But also get reminders for the events they’ve signed up for:

“Once someone RSVPs for the event, they will receive a push notification 24 hours, 3 hours, 1 hour, and at the start time.”

That goes for live sessions too:

Once you are in the live room for 1 minute, your community will receive an email letting them know you are live!

Although you can add videos directly to your post, you may prefer to have a dedicated part of your community for resources.

This is possible by adding 1 custom embedded page. Which is essentially an iframe of another website (which can be your Kajabi site).

You can use this to display a page with a range of downloadable content, videos, etc.

Or simply to display some rules and guidelines for the community.

Note that these can’t be pages that require a log in!

Lastly, to manage your members and community activity, you can appoint Moderators which will have the ability to delete messages.

One problem at times of all-in-one platforms such as Kajabi, is that each feature is good but not as advanced as a specialist platform.

For instance, Kajabi’ email is good enough for 95% of its users, but using a separate dedicated platform like Active Campaign would give you more flexibility.

However, this new Kajabi Community feature is different.

This time, Kajabi has acquired an existing community platform to do this as best as possible.

Vibely has been around for years and their team specializes in helping people build thriving communities.

And now all of this is available to Kajabi’s users!

Let’s say right now that no other online course platform or all on one platform currently offers something remotely as robust as this new community feature.

Now, it would be fair to compare it with other community platforms such as MightyNetworks or Circle.

All in all, Kajabi’s Community can do about 90% of what something like MightyNetworks can.

Here are some examples of the few things these can do a little better:

• Local Networking: Mighty Network allows for people to see a map of other users in their area and therefore make it easier to meet up in person.
• Whitelabel app: For an additional fee, MightyNetworks will build you a personalized app rather than using the branded one.
• Profiles: user’s profiles are a bit more detailed and flexible in Mighty Networks, which allows users to learn more about fellow members.
• Metrics: Mighty Networks does offer more analytics for you to track engagement and activity in your community.

These aren’t major and might not be a deal breaker for you.

Especially considering everything else Kajabi offers on the funnel, course and email side of things (see our Kajabi vs Mighty Networks review here).