Kajabi vs Skool 

Kajabi and Skool both help course creators to host their programs online and deliver the best experience to their students.

They do so in different ways and that’s what we’re looking at today.

Before getting into the details, here is something to understand.

Fundamentally these are two different categories of online course platforms.

Kajabi markets as a one stop shop to cover all of your tech needs online. From funnel building to email marketing.

Skool on the other hand is mostly focused on the course and membership delivery, by helping you craft your own community.

Let’s look at the pros and cons of each platform quickly before breaking it down for each feature.

Keeping in mind the fact that Kajabi and Skool are catering to slightly different people, let’s get into the details.

We’re only going to talk about features both platforms have in common for the sake of comparing apples to apples.

Online Programs

Kajabi offers a comprehensive solution to help course creators build their online course or membership.

You’ll have access to a full curriculum builder and front-end design tools to customize the template you will have chosen among several:

Each Lesson can have 1 video or audio and a text description but also any downloadables you may want to add. (unlimited video hosting is available).

You can also build Coaching Products, built specifically for 1:1 coaching clients.

Skool allows you to easily build your course from the back-end but has more limited features.

First of all, video hosting is not supported and you will have to pay for an external tool (e.g. Vimeo).

The layout of the course itself, although fairly standard and good looking, is also not something you can customize.

There is also a lack of learning tools such as quizzes, assessments - which Kajabi covers to a good extent.

Overall, depending on what you’re looking for here, Skool can do the job but Kajabi definitely gives more flexibility and tools.

Community

Skool has chosen to build most of its platform around the community in your program and deliver the best experience there.

You can create your very own facebook-group-like community that you fully control. Each post can be liked and commented on.

Members can build their profile and message each other, which fosters networking and a sense of community.

Kajabi has a very similar community feature with a slightly different layout.

But the way both platforms work is very similar in how you can manage your community.

Kajabi also allows for Challenges and Meetups to be created. You can also go live directly in your community.

On the other hand, Skool gives you a slightly more intuitive layout and also a better way of seeing user engagement:

Both platforms offer a Leaderboard which gives you a way to gamify your student’s experience and increase their engagement further.

Overall both platforms offer a very strong Community feature in slightly different ways but are relatively on par.

Checkout

Of course, as part of getting people in your programs, course creators need a way to take payment and grant relevant access.

Both Kajabi and Skool now have a native payment system and checkout.

Kajabi offers its own payment gateway or Stripe and Paypal.

You can customize your checkout and offer order bumps, upsell and downsells.

These can be in any currency you want.

On the other hand, Skool only offers their own native payment solution with a processing fee of 2.9% + 30c. (which is a little higher than Stripe).

Checkouts also can’t really be customized and you’re only able to charge on a subscription basis (no one-off payment or split payments).

That’s because Skool is mainly focused on helping people build online memberships which most likely charges a recurring fee.

Again here, depending on what you’re looking for Skool can do just that but Kajabi does offer more flexibility here.

Others features

Let’s point out other tools that each platform offers that can help you make a decision on which one might be a better fit for you.

Kajabi:

• Pages & Funnel: Kajabi offers a visual page builder that’s fairly flexible to allow you to build all of you website and funnel directly in the platform.
• Email marketing: Kajabi has a native email marketing system to setup email broadcasts, automated sequences and other automations.

Skool:

• Calendar: Your Skool members will have access to a native calendar where they can see any events you have setup and keep track of what’s going on in the community

Mobile app: Both Kajabi and Skool offer a mobile app for your students to access their course and community on the go.

Now that you have enough context to understand what each platform offers, let’s look at their pricing!

Skool has a very straightforward pricing structure: 14 days free trial and a $99 per month plan to get full access to the platform.

You’ll be able to create 1 Group/Community and have an unlimited number of members and courses.

If you want a separate Group you’ll have to pay another $99/month.

Note that if you don’t already have a funnel builder and email marketing system, you’ll likely need to pay for that too to market your membership online.

Kajabi has a standard 14 days free trial (30 days with a partner’s link) and then 3 pricing plans.

The main difference between them is the number of courses/Product you can have, starting with 3 at $119/month billed yearly.

This is probably going to be the main reason you upgrade to further plans.