Kajabi started as a simple idea of Kenny Reuter wanting to begin a side business teaching people to make toys online. He was not passionate about teaching online but he was passionate to make it easier for people who wanted to share their knowledge online.
The vision was simple. Kajabi founders Kenny Rueter and Travis Rosser knew they wanted to help people monetize their knowledge and premium digital content online. They needed a platform that made it easy for entrepreneurs to do this.
If you’re an online course creator, you have probably heard of Kajabi before. It is one of the most popular online learning platforms today. Kajabi has grown to be the online learning platform it is today since its inception in 2010. It has empowered thousands to escape the jobs that no longer fulfill them and help them realize their dreams.
This review will cover the basics of what you need to know about Kajabi. These include marketing, pricing, online course creation, and much more. With this, you will have a good idea of what you will get should you choose Kajabi as your platform.
For those of you who prefer a more visual experience, here is a video review from Lane Sebring’s YouTube channel. To get a comprehensive overview of Kajabi, you may still want to check out our article below.
General Overview Gumroad And Kajabi
Pros
- A highly integrated platform featuring a lot of built-in tools
- Intuitive marketing tools that help you promote and sell your products.
- User-friendly
- Amazing customer service
- Intuitive course builder and highly customizable themes
- Wistia is used as a video host
Cons
- Kajabi prices are higher than average
- Users cannot create custom certificates of completion for students on the platform
- Assessment customization is limited.
What is Kajabi?
Kajabi is an online platform for creating courses that allow users to manage their businesses from one location. From course creation to marketing and so much more, Kajabi will take care of it for you.
How does Kajabi work?
Kajabi is built to sell. It boasts how simple it is to use. The first thing you can do is to purchase a plan. There are three options available: Pro, Growth, or Basic. We will discuss them later in this review.
Once you have selected a plan, you can easily set up your account and upload your content. You can upload your video lectures, give lesson titles and descriptions using the lesson editor.
You can easily complete assessments by simply typing the questions and selecting the options (if you’ve chosen the multiple-choice option).
Now you can market your products. You can create pipelines in Kajabi. You can use these mechanisms to increase conversion rates and turn prospects into potential students through efficient marketing channels. You can add landing pages, freebies that get leads to enter their email addresses, video marketing, and so on.
Once the prospect is enrolled as a student, payments can be made through the site. All without having to leave Kajabi. Gumroad And Kajabi
Now, some features make Kajabi an almost “all-in-one” platform. I will talk about them in the later sections of the review. But, Kajabi can go head-to-head and over most online course platforms with the features and benefits it offers.
Why should you choose Kajabi:
As an entrepreneur, of course, you would want to make sure that you make the most out of your investment. Kajabi can help you market valuable content. It includes what you need to jumpstart your business, keep it running and growing.
It’s more than simply uploading course content and waiting for students sign in. It requires you to build out a curriculum, develop assessments or goals for your students, design your course website, and market it to your target audience. You can do the following and more with Kajabi.
- Build a website
- Create course offerings
- Track student progress
- Manage subscriptions/payments
- Run email marketing campaigns
Kajabi’s price is one thing that has been criticized. Admittedly, it is pricier than some alternatives. This eliminates the need to purchase expensive plug-ins and saves you time. You also have to figure out how to make the plug-ins seamlessly work together. This is time-consuming, expensive, and requires a lot of effort. All of which could be avoided under one single platform.
Platforms that are well-designed consider what their users need and want. These platforms will provide valuable tools for creating sales pages, emailing your students, and doing all sorts of marketing activities.
So, if you’re a professional looking to sell your knowledge, I would say, with Kajabi, you will be in safe hands. It’s a powerful all-in-one solution for creating, marketing, and selling online courses.
Kajabi: A Beginner-Friendly Tool
Many great teachers don’t have the technology skills to share their knowledge online. Even with the willingness of some to learn, the process can be complex and confusing too. Kajabi creators created the platform so that it is accessible and easy to understand even for those with problems with computer work.
It uses a visual layout which makes it easy to use and intuitive. Kajabi’s drag-and-drop editor will make it easy to start an online business, even if you don’t know how to code.
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Almost “all-in-one”
Kajabi is suitable for almost everything, save for a few minor features that developers are still working on. You don’t need to spend too much time trying to find the right extensions or plug-ins. Imagine, one update could cause these plug-ins to disrupt your business processes.
If you want to save yourself the headache, Kajabi already has excellent tools for creating landing pages and sales funnels and converting visitors into customers. This platform allows you to create courses and market them. To entice students to your courses, you can offer discounts, follow up leads, and manage payments from the Kajabi website.
As a busy entrepreneur with not a lot of free time on my hands, I enjoy the email marketing and funnel creations of Kajabi. I could easily automate follow-up sequences, and it’s effortless to do too. Gumroad And Kajabi
Overall, Kajabi fulfills more than other platforms can do with what it offers.
Tutorials
For people who are complete beginners, there could be some doubt on the truthfulness of this “easy-to-use” claim. But they will be pleasantly surprised to find out that it is indeed true.
Kajabi provides a lot to its users. The Kajabi Assistant Bar gives you access to many searchable tutorials. Simply head over to the top and type out whatever query you might have. It will display related tutorials.
You can also find videos and tutorials on the Kajabi University to help you get started in creating and growing your business. These topics include creating online courses, marketing on social media, setting up payments, and creating your product pages.
These tutorials come in both video and text format for your convenience.
The third and most important feature of the onboarding process, is the 28-day Hero Challenge. It is basically a month-long crash program to help you launch your website and make your first sale. This challenge will teach you everything about the platform and give you strategies to market your products.
Kajabi offers one of the best customer service in the industry. Now, if you have the Growth or Pro Plan, you get access to 24/7 round-the-clock customer chat support. Customer chat support is only available during business hours for Basic Plans. Despite this, I would still say that the support team is pretty prompt with responding. So far, I have not had any problems with how they handle things.
Lastly, there’s a rewards program in Kajabi that is designed to provide incentives for creators who reach their revenue levels and offers some exclusive perks.
Customer Support
Contact customer service if you have a question that is not covered in the Kajabi online guides. So, if you are stuck on an issue, you can always rely on them to provide you with the answers. Gumroad And Kajabi
With the Growth and Pro Plan, you can access the 24/7 Kajabi customer support team live chat.
The Basic Plan does not have 24/7 customer support if you choose to opt for it. However, staff members will only be available Monday through Friday from 9 AM to 7 PM. Although it functions as a ticket system you will receive an answer within one day. Even with this, they always reply promptly. I do not have to wait too long for my answers.
If you’re not confident in your computer skills, the more expensive plans can be worth it. The other two Kajabi plans offer around-the-clock access to support, while the Basic Plan does not.
How to use Kajabi:
Creating a Class:
Course creation in Kajabi is fast, efficient, and customizable. Once you provide a name for the product, head over to the upper right side of your screen, and you can see “New Product.” There are 3 pre-built product blueprints for various digital products. You can also create your own listing. Let’s take a look at each one.
- Mini-course
- Although it contains less material than the Online Courses, a mini-course is very easy to complete. You can use this to gauge customer interest and also build your brand value.
- Online course
- These are full-blown courses your students can take, from workshops to seminars and lectures about your expertise.
- Evergreen Training
- The Evergreen Course will help you keep your product in front of people and make sales. Essentially, after you launch it, it will keep creating passive income for you. This option, aside from marketing, allows you to drip feed your content to students to keep them interested.
- Blank
- If you’re an advanced user and want to fully customize your content, this is a good option for you.
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To upload your courses, you can use Kajabi’s intuitive editor. These can be uploaded from your computer, Dropbox, or Google Drive.
Kajabi supports many file types. You can add audio, video, pdf and text files to your lessons. Wistia provides video hosting for Kajabi, and it is great because you can upload in bulk too. Gumroad And Kajabi
How to Upload Your Content
Videos
Kajabi provides built-in streaming through Wistia as a video host. There will be an icon that you can spot immediately, and it will ask you to upload either a video or an assessment.
You can upload multiple videos at once without worrying about bandwidth. All Pricing Plans at Kajabi include unlimited bandwidth. Uploads can be made from your computer, Dropbox or Google Drive. You can also upload via URL links. It will not accept URLs from Youtube and Vimeo. The uploader searches for the file type in URLs.
After your files are uploaded, Kajabi will automatically convert them into articles you can edit later. This eliminates the need to go through each post and upload videos one at a time.
Now, with Wistia as the video host, rest assured that alone makes your subscription worth it. Wistia standalone subscriptions can cost $99 per month. If you take a look at the cost, with $20 more, you can already get Kajabi’s Basic Plan at $119/year with its features. This is a great bargain.
Assessments
Assessments are great tools to gauge student learning and engagement. Students can gauge their understanding of the material by seeing how they do with lessons. It can also aid in motivating them to work harder. This feature can be used to receive feedback from students on your products, and for content locking.
It takes less than two minutes. Open the People tab in the Dashboard to create assessments. Choose Assessments and then +New Assessment and finish the prompt to begin customizing.
One of the coolest features is the ability to set it to automatically send additional materials to students if they fail to complete their assessments.
There are some limitations. First, I have observed that the user cannot include both a video and an assessment under the same category.
It does not support randomizing questions, nor question banks. It does however support assessment such as multiple-choice and paragraph-style questions.
Your students can also upload files for you to check through its assignment submission feature.
Photos
You can upload a poster photograph for your lessons. Having pictures help set the tone of your website and gives your student a visual preview of what you have to offer.
Click on the Pick File button to upload images.
Certificates
I would consider Kajabi as an almost “all-in-one” platform because of its inability to natively provide certificates to students who complete the courses. While Kajabi does allow creators to give out certificates of completion, you cannot make them onsite.
To create these certificates, you would have to rely on third-party services like Canva, Google Slides, Accredible, or SmartDraw.
Personally, I do not mind this for my business, but some would find it a minor hassle.
Another thing, Kajabi does not indicate the amount of time spent studying the courses or any continuing education credit. This can be a huge deal for people who wish to choose eLearning to earn credit. This should be something that Kajabi creators ought to seriously consider.
Downloads
Even if we call it online students, some do not necessarily stay online for the whole duration of the course. Others opt to download the course materials and do the tasks offline. To make it easier for your students, Kajabi included this feature. This can be found in the Downloads section on the right side of the page.
Your students will be able to download whatever material you place there while they are on that specific lesson.
Body
You have the option to add a description, or even a transcript to your videos. Students may prefer to review transcripts over watching the entire video.
It is best to add a brief description. This will allow students to understand the content of the lesson and the topics that will be covered in the video. Gumroad And Kajabi
Student Interactions
Community
With eLearning, it would be great for platforms to provide an avenue where students and members can engage with each other and discuss subjects in their course materials, similar to how they would do if they were in a traditional classroom setting. Some have used Facebook groups over the years. To join the group, you will need to be a member of Facebook.
Conveniently, you do not need to exit Kajabi to interact with your students and with each other. Kajabi has a fully integrated feature called the Community. This is one of their tools for student engagement.
You can even set your Community behind a paywall for patrons to gain access. This will enable you to address student questions directly and allow students to share their experiences with one another.
Because you can make the Community available as a standalone product. Those who are not too keen on purchasing the entire course could just buy access to the discussions.
Organizing Your Topics
Forums have a problem with organization. Both the students and the creators may find it difficult to keep track of particular topics. This is something I noticed in many Facebook groups. This makes it hard to listen to your audience and understand them.
In Kajabi, the page administrator is allowed to organize and reorganize the feeds. They can organize the posts by topic or pin specific posts to improve viewability.
Overall, Kajabi’s Community feature is a significant advantage over its competition. This feature is very beneficial to entrepreneurs who run an online school.
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Content Access
Depending on your style, Kajabi gives you the option of how your students receive your courses. You can either allow them to receive all the classes and resources at once, drip-feed them on a schedule, or lock your content. The last one tends to increase student engagement as there is a requirement to finish the lesson first before accessing the next one. Gumroad And Kajabi
Dripping Course Content
You can choose to drip-feed your courses after a pre-set duration instead of allowing your students to receive everything all at once.
When you drip-feed your content, you can keep your student interested in returning to your page to check for new content. This will also prevent your student from skipping important parts of the course.
Third, it is a valuable feature for when you decide on a membership type.
Content Locking
Content locking forces your student to finish a lesson before they can gain access to the next one. You can end your lessons with an assessment to be completed. This way, they increase their participation, and you can keep track of their progress in understanding lesson materials.
Course Analytics
Kajabi is proud to offer the best tools for entrepreneurs to manage their businesses with the course analytics. What it does is create heatmaps and video stats. Through it, you will get insights on which aspects of your courses are doing well and which ones need to improve on.
It also provides information about your affiliates, students, sales transactions, and other relevant information that could help you optimize your products.
Play Rate
Play rate is a way to see how many people have viewed a particular video. Early on, I mentioned how some students opt to read the transcript of the video and download the course material rather than watching.
Average Engagement
This data shows you the average percentage of video your students watched. Since some students prefer to skip some segments of the video, you can get an idea of how well you can keep your students engaged in what you need to say.
Visual Engagement Viewer
This will create a graphic overlay for your video. This is a great feature for visual learners like me. I am not able to process information well when it’s all presented in blocks of text. I prefer having my data in graph form.
The Visual Engagement Viewer presents a report of your students’ engagement in specific points of the video. There is usually a downhill trend in which people stop watching the video at the beginning of the outro.
Viewer Heatmaps
Now just because your students opened your videos does not mean that they are watching them. They could have kept it running in the background while they do something else, in the guise of multi-tasking. Gumroad And Kajabi
The Viewer Heatmap allows you to see which parts of the viewers are not interesting to your students, and which ones they have viewed repeatedly. It could mean that these are parts that they found interesting or they found difficult. This meant that they needed to watch the video again to make sure they understood what was going on.
You can trust that Kajabi will provide you with a valuable array of analytic tools to better your content. Your data can be used to create a strategy that will guide your business decisions.
Blogging
A strong blog can do wonders for promoting your business. Students can get updates and additional information about your products, while new customers are introduced. A solid blog can increase traffic and generate leads that could lead to potential students.
Kajabi still has a lot to do in this area, however. It is not on the same level as what you would have with something like WordPress. Despite its limitations, Kajabi’s ability to store everything in one place makes up for them.
Basic HTML Know-How
You don’t need to know how to code in order to create your website or customize any Kajabi-related items. However, it is a good idea.
You will need to learn basic programming to personalize your Kajabi blog’s photos. When you upload a photo on top of a blog post, it will show up in the recommended image size. Kajabi works with HTML. To change certain dimensions, you would need to play with HTML. This isn’t too difficult. You can find many tutorials for basic coding by doing a quick internet search.
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Text wrapping is another thing you should be concerned about. Without HTML, you cannot change the way text wraps around images in your blog.
Lastly, there is a lack of an image bank in Kajabi. You would have to upload a photo you’ve used previously in another article. Hopefully, Kajabi will focus on these things in their subsequent updates.
Tagging
Kajabi has many great features. However, I find it frustrating that I can’t pick the tags I want to use in my posts. The tags don’t show up as suggestions, unlike other blogs that allow you to refer to past tags.
It can be a hassle to remember the tag you used, or to put it on a separate list for each blog post. Gumroad And Kajabi
Marketing Tools
These are Kajabi’s most vital support for its users. Kajabi is built to sell. Your business will be safe with so many marketing tools. There are automation, pipelines and many other features. In this section, we will discuss a few features.
Pipelines
Kajabi has a pipeline built into platforms that will simplify sales and marketing. The name itself refers to Kajabi’s goal of transforming the same number of leads to the same number of paying customers. You can have three, fifteen or 100 pipelines depending on which Price Plan you choose.
Kajabi will give you a visual representation of your schematics, and editing is easy and intuitive. You can add videos, images and offers using the drag-and-drop editor. This will help you increase your conversion rates. There are suggestions if you don’t know where to start.
Kajabi offers some blueprints for its pipelines so that you do not need to start from scratch. The blueprint you choose will help you set up funnels including landing pages, email automation and offers. This template was carefully crafted by Brendon Burchard, one of the world’s leading high-performance coaches.
With the Pipeline Stats feature, you can monitor the progress of your marketing plans and use it to evaluate the areas that are lagging. This feature allows you to see each page and email of the pipeline and data on your earnings per view.
Affiliate Program
The Growth and Pro Plans are required to access the affiliate program. Now, you and your partners can efficiently market your goods and with the program. You can now give your partners the agreed-upon affiliate commission much easier. You will have access to a private affiliate dashboard. In it, you can see statistics of clicks, conversions, and other pertinent data to help you market your business.
Automation
Email Marketing
Kajabi is your business made easy. You can quickly launch email marketing campaigns depending on the schedules you have set. This feature allows you to decide on the sequence of the mails, add multiple emails to be sent out in the set sequence, and upsell additional offers. You can also use templates to suit your email purpose. Not a lot of alternatives offer this much freedom.
Suppose a visitor adds something to their cart but has not yet decided to make the purchase final; you can set up Kajabi to send an email to remind them of your offer. This allows you to track sign-ups automatically from your email campaigns. Just relax and see the improvement in your conversion rates.
You can also use Kajabi to integrate with other email platforms.
Marketing Partners
Kajabi integrations allow you to manage your entire business from one platform. Currently, Kajabi has 10 native integrations. To name a few, it has ConvertKit, Aweber, MailChimp, and Active Campaign. Gumroad And Kajabi
How to Price Your Products
Pricing your courses should take into account several factors, including the time you spent creating and planning it, your fees for expertise, and operational costs.
Once you have determined the price, Kajabi gives a simple method for pricing your products. Click on the Offers tab to the left and select ‘Add New Offer’.
You can sell them individually or package them as a set. Once you make a new deal, you will receive a prompt to enter the title offers, product, and cost. You will now only be able choose one product. However, there will be many options available for bundles and payment options. You can also decide on the currency of your product’s price.
You have several options if you’re concerned about people not being financially able to pay for your course.
- Free
- One-time Payment
- Multiple Payments
- Recurring Payments
From here, you may also create coupon codes or generate bulk coupon codes as well as special offers that apply to the coupon.
Payment Methods
Kajabi uses Stripe and Paypal for payment processing. You can customize your checkout to create flexible payment options and offer custom payment options for students. Kajabi doesn’t charge transaction fees so this comes with the convenience. But, you do have to answer to the cost of its payment method partners.
Partnering with Paypal makes it easy to pay affiliates via Paypal Mass Pay. This includes an exported list of all sales.
It is also easier to request refunds. Kajabi makes it easy to request refunds from the site without leaving it.
Kajabi Pricing
Kajabi’s pricing may appear to be higher than that of other sites as previously stated. Because of the platform’s cost, most individuals would undoubtedly be hesitant to use it.
Well, one thing I can say is that it is an investment that keeps on giving. Kajabi is not just a course-building platform. Even though it’s a bit more expensive than other platforms, keep in mind that you do not need to pay separately for three or more different tools for email services, blogs, and sales pipelines. All of these come with your Kajabi subscription. Because of the extensive tool set, prices are greater than those of competitors. But, Kajabi still provides the best value for money out of all other platforms.
Unrestricted bandwidth, unlimited Wistia video hosting, and 0% transaction fees are included in all three pricing plans. It also has chat support and assessment features.
To check how the plans differ, below is a thorough discussion of each pricing plan. Gumroad And Kajabi
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Basic Plan
The lowest-priced plan starts at $149 monthly. You will only have to pay $119 if you are billed annually.
The basic plan is the most affordable option. Take note, it limits you to only 3 products, 1 website, 3 sales pipelines, and around a thousand members. The Kajabi logo branding will remain on all products.
However, landing pages and marketing emails are unlimited. Some of the crucial marketing tools you’d like to use for your business might not be included in the Basic Plan. Although Kajabi has excellent customer care, you would need to limit your queries to office times. Unlike with the higher plans, they have access to a 24/7 live chat with customer support.
Growth Plan
For $50 more, you can upgrade to this tier and get five times more courses. The monthly payment sets you back $199, but if billed annually, it will cost only $159.
Fortunately, though, even the basic pricing plan has a lot of features to play with. Most plans have the same basic suite of functions, but they scale according to the pricing plan. For example, the Basic plan only allows for 3 products and 3 pipelines, while the Growth plan allows for 15 products and 15 pipelines. As a result, when you purchase a higher-tier plan, you are not paying for new features, but rather for the expansion of existing ones. In addition, Kajabi does not charge a transaction fee for any sales made on the platform.
You can build new goods, pipelines, and members at the second level. White-labeling, affiliate marketing, and automation are just a few more reasons to acquire this plan.
- White-labelling – This allows you to remove the Kajabi branding from your website and completely customize it.
- Affiliate advertising – well-known online sales strategy. Your products will reach a bigger audience thanks to your affiliates. For suggesting your products to their audiences, your affiliates will be paid commissions.
- Automation – As discussed earlier, automation makes it easier for you to follow up with your students. With this, the system automatically sends out the programmed response through a prompt. For example, if a student is lagging on assessments, you can set an automated response of an email with supplemental course materials for them. No need for you to keep track of their progress manually.
As a creator, we are aware that you are not in the business to only make money. You want your products to be of value as well. Business-wise, this is valuable because if people are getting their bang for the buck, they will be more likely to return for more. It is a win-win situation.
Pro Plan
{This is the priciest plan Kajabi has to offer. But it does come with some pretty neat features. You can market up to 100 products, handle 3 sites and at most, have 20,000 members. Because of the number of courses you can market, you can have 25 admin users to help you manage. You also have access to round-the-clock customer support.|This is the most expensive plan offered by Kajabi. It does, however, have some interesting features. You can sell up to 100 products, manage three websites, and have a maximum of 20,000 members. You can have up to 25 admin users to assist you in regulating the amount of courses you can market. You also get access to customer service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
These features plus all features you would enjoy from both Basic and Growth Plans are included. While there are unlimited landing pages, the advertising emails are limited to two million.
A bonus to getting the Pro Plan is access to the Experts Academy. In it, you will find more information on how to market your brand. Gumroad And Kajabi
You could schedule billing monthly for $399 or yearly for $319 if you picked Kajabi’s Pro Plan. Take notice that this is a significant investment that you must consider. This is the option that most large firms or those with a large number of courses to sell pick. But if you are just starting or your business does not warrant the need for a Pro Plan yet, then I would suggest the other two plans. Just my two cents in. You would still get to enjoy a lot of what Kajabi has to offer on the budget you set.
Moving to Kajabi
If you’re not new to course creation, you’ve probably utilized various platforms. It’s fantastic that you’re still researching company choices and looking for ways to improve. If you have decided to move to Kajabi, another concern would be how to move all of your data into the platform.
Not to worry, though. Fortunately, you can simply import your members’ names and email using a .csv file. But, you can only do this 500 members at a time. So it would require you to do multiple importations if needed.
Another thing to note is that your members will have to reset their passwords due to a security issue. This is good news for you and your members. Kajabi takes your business’ security seriously. This means that other platforms will not have access to their information once the move is made.
Conclusion
Kajabi is a popular choice for many creators, and it has a lot to offer to your business for the price you choose to pay. It has excellent support, a well-integrated system, and is highly beginner-friendly.
As previously said, Kajabi’s goal is to assist you streamline and profit from your business processes in one place. It gives you the advantage to take your products to new heights thanks to its numerous marketing capabilities.
Now, this review has given you some insight into the benefits and downsides of choosing Kajabi. Overall, I can still say that Kajabi is a wonderful tool to manage your business from creation to marketing. Gumroad And Kajabi
Frequently Asked Questions: Gumroad And Kajabi
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What does Kajabi mean?
- According to its founders, it is an aboriginal word that means “to take flight.”
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Is Kajabi free?
- Currently, Kajabi does not offer a free plan. However, it provides a 14-day trial for you to try out its features.
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Is Kajabi worth the money?
- This is dependent on your business requirements and how you can make the most of Kajabi’s features. Kajabi is well-known for being user-friendly and for having a number of built-in integrations that help streamline business processes. You also receive excellent support.
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Is Kajabi easy to use?
- Yes. Kajabi is easy to use. In fact, because of this, thousands of course creators have it as their platform of choice.
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Is Kajabi accessible via a mobile app?
- Yes. Your students have the convenience of accessing Kajabi via a mobile app. It is available in both iOS and Google Play.
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Can you use your domain?
- Yes. With a Basic Plan, you can create a custom domain with Kajabi’s branding (yourdomaintitle.kajabi.com). With the Growth and Pro Plans, you can opt to erase all traces of Kajabi’s branding and have a website solely focused on you.
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Does Kajabi have transaction fees?
- No. There are no transaction fees, but you can still be subject to pay the standard Stripe merchant processing fee.