Kajabi vs New Zenler – Which is Best for Your Online Courses? 

Kajabi and New Zenler have been compared for the title of best online course platform...

Kajabi has been around for a while and has been one of the most popular all-in-one course hosting platforms for many years. Kajabi is used and recommended by some top experts and influencers in the industry including, Amy Portefield and Brendon Burchard.

But, recently, a few new platforms have emerged and are giving giant Kajabi some serious competition. New Zenler is one of them, but also check out our comparisons for Kartra and Podia.

In this article, I'm not going to give you a straight answer about which one is best for you - only you can answer that question. 

But I am going to lay out all the things you need to know before making a decision and how to decide between the two solutions.

Kajabi and New Zenler both belong to the same category of online course platforms: all-in-one.

Essentially, the promise of an all-in-one is that you could solely use one platform for everything regarding creating and selling your digital product. That includes course hosting, email marketing, automation, funnel building, and more.

Now we're contrasting that with standalone platforms (Teachable, Thinkific, etc.) that usually only provide the basics of hosting courses and leave you with the rest to take care of.

Not that one is better than the other, but this is the context of what we're looking at today comparing these two all-in-one platforms with the same selling proposition.

Finally, something we can compare and break down!

However, understand that you still need to be clear on your specific needs to determine which one is best for you (or if you're better off with something else altogether).

That said, let's dive into the breakdown. We'll compare the four key elements that are important to consider as a course creator: Features, UX, and Affordability and Community/Support. 

Here is a quick comparison of the top-level features on the two platforms:

Now, let's try to zoom in on a few features in each platform that I think are critical to a course creator.

Course Delivery - Inside the course for a student

There is definitely a different feel on each platform with user experience for the student and for you when navigating it in the back-end. 

When it comes to the course experience, there is quite a big difference between Kajabi and New Zenler.

Kajabi allows for maybe one of the most advanced kinds of customization you can have for a self-hosted platform.

You can pick different themes for each course and customize them fairly easily.

This includes different layouts depending on the type of online course you have. For instance, if it's a membership-based or a text-based course, then you will want different layouts.

With Kajabi, you can definitely find something you like that is easy to set up.

New Zenler, on the other hand, offers very little control over what students will see inside the course.

New Zenler’s setup reminds me of the simple way a Teachable course would look; not the most exciting, but it does the job.

Of course, design is not a big deal for you then you might not mind. But, if you have a lot of content or need to lay out the course in a particular way, then you may find New Zenler limiting.

Both Kajabi and Zenler offer a community feature.

But Kajabi's is much superior in every regard, providing a real way for members to engage and keep up with the community

Emails/Automations

In terms of pure feature comparison, the two platforms are doing pretty much the same when it comes to email and automation.

But, Kajabi does have a bit of an edge with the user experience on the back-end.

In New Zenler, you'll be limited in terms of the design of your email. For instance, if you want something a little nicer for the layout of your newsletters, it might be difficult or impossible to pull off in New Zenler.

Although having too many images rather than a text-based email is proven to be less efficient, it can be critical for your branding.

Note that you can add images in your New Zenler emails, but it is somewhat clunky and not as efficient as it is in Kajabi.

Other than that, using email automation is pretty similar on both platforms.

Pages & Funnel Builder: Kajabi Vs New Zenler

A big upside of an all-in-one platform is the capacity to build your funnel directly in it, and therefore have close control over the entire marketing experience.

Both Kajabi and New Zenler page builders are great. They have drag and drop visual builders allowing you to create sections/columns where you can add different block types like text, image, video, buttons, and more.

However, Kajabi's interface does look friendlier.

But, New Zenler is more ideal for those that want to spend as little time as possible creating pages.

New Zenler has a library of premade sections and blocks you can pick from, which can save you a ton of time if you want to use a proven design and tweak it to your liking.

Kajabi does have premade page templates, but they are not the most helpful, and you may end up being better off starting from scratch or from a template you bought off someone else.

One last note on New Zenler pages: they sometimes get buggy. Blocks can get stuck for some reason, padding will get off and can't be changed, and the menu gets wonky.  

All in all, with page building, as with most of this comparison, you'll have to decide between something easy to use (Kajabi) or something fast to create (New Zenler).

Other features

The features discussed above make up for the bulk of what you're going to be doing on either platform. But sometimes additional features can make a difference too!

For instance, Kajabi has an integrated blog feature, which could be a big deal for people who want to use the platform to host all of their content. The blog allows for easy management of the different posts, with a sidebar and an easy-to-add call to action. 

From an SEO perspective, the Kajabi blog is well optimized with automatic sitemaps creation (don't forget to submit to Google Search Console) and it allows you to add a custom Meta title and Meta description. Plus, the URL structure and hierarchy are optimized for search engine ranking.

New Zenler also has a blog feature, but it is a little less customizable.

However, New Zenler does excel at having a webinar feature. Whereas with almost all other platforms, you'd need to use an external tool for your lives and webinars (Zoom, WebinarJam, Demio) New Zenler allows for this natively.

You can get up to 500 attendees on the Premium plan. With New Zenler, you'll only be able to use one platform for everything, as long as the less-customizable blog isn't a big deal!

Here again, the choice will depend on what you value.

Both platforms offer a mobile app for your students to consume your content on:

Without going into too much details (see our dedicated article for New Zenler app here and Kajabi app here), both compare pretty similarly overall.

Price is always a factor to consider, especially when comparing platforms that promise to deliver on the same thing.

Kajabi and New Zenler currently have a substantial price difference. Keep in mind that New Zenler is still in beta mode and their prices are expected to go up.

But here is the comparison:

Quite a big difference at the moment!

Price is one of the main selling points for New Zenler.

Like many new software options on the market, New Zenler offers a cheaper alternative to the current widely used option (in this case, Kajabi).

There is a reason why community and support are one of the four elements we take into account when reviewing any online course platform.

There are some things that you can't really know before trying the tool, and that you may regret later on! A thriving community and support group can help you anticipate and overcome these obstacles.

New Zenler is still a young, and somewhat unproven, platform. And because of this, it has a smaller community, although the platform does make great efforts for quality support.

But it's indisputable that Kajabi has an advantage here. Their massive community, possibly the most engaged in the industry, gives a reassuring feeling to new buyers, further enticing users to Kajabi.

On the support side, the two are fairly similar and both have a ticket or live chat option.

Since price is a big concern for new course creators, it may be tempting to simply go for the cheaper option: New Zenler.

But, you should also consider the opportunity cost of choosing the wrong platform in the long term.

That said, both of these all-in-one platforms cater to slightly different needs and values. So, which platform to choose will depend on your unique needs.

Kajabi Vs New Zenler: The Bottom Line