Kajabi was originally an idea by Kenny Reuter, who wanted to start a side-business teaching people how to make toys online. Although he was not that passionate about teaching people online, he was passionate about making it easier for people to sell their knowledge online.
It was easy to see the vision. 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 helped thousands of people escape from jobs that don’t suit them anymore and have enabled them to realize their dreams.
This overview will provide a basic understanding of Kajabi. This includes online course creation, marketing, pricing, and so 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. Do check out our article below, however, because it has a comprehensive overview of Kajabi.
General Overview How Kajabi Works
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
- Great customer support
- Intuitive course builder and highly customizable themes
- Uses Wistia as a video host
Cons
- Kajabi pricing is higher than average prices
- Students cannot be issued custom certificates of completion by users 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. Kajabi can take care of everything, from course creation to marketing and much more.
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. You have three options: Basic, Growth, and Pro. 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.
Assessments are easily done by typing the questions and giving options (if you have chosen the multiple-choice type ).
Now you can market your products. In Kajabi, you can build pipelines. 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.
When the prospect becomes a student, you can process payments through the site. All without having to leave Kajabi. How Kajabi Works
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 choose Kajabi?
You want to maximize your investment as an entrepreneur. Kajabi can help you market valuable content. This guide will help you launch your business and keep it 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
- Make course offerings
- Keep track of student progress
- Manage subscriptions/payments
- Run email marketing campaigns
Kajabi’s price is one thing that has been criticized. It is more expensive than other alternatives, but that’s okay. But, take into account that this takes away the hassle of using expensive plug-ins for your business. There is also the added stress of figuring out how to seamlessly make these plug-ins work with each other. 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. The process can be complicated and confusing, even for those who are willing to learn. 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. Even without learning how to code, you will be able to create an online business in no time with Kajabi through its drag-and-drop editor.
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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. As mentioned earlier, you would not need to spend a lot of time finding out which plug-ins or extensions work together well. 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. You can create and market courses using this platform. You can provide coupons for discounts to entice your potential students, follow-up leads, and handle payments without leaving the Kajabi website.
Kajabi’s email marketing and funnel creations are a great fit for me as a busy entrepreneur. It was easy to automate my follow-ups and it is very simple. How Kajabi Works
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 offers a lot of support 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 show you related tutorials.
You can also find videos and tutorials on the Kajabi University to help you get started in creating and growing your business. Some of these topics cover creating your online courses, marketing your products on social media and other platforms, and setting up payments.
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. With a Basic Plan, customer chat support is available at limited times during the day. Despite this, the support team responds very quickly. So far, I have not had any problems with how they handle things.
Kajabi also offers a rewards program that provides incentives to creators who achieve their revenue goals and includes some exclusive perks.
Customer Support
If you have got a query that cannot be found in the Kajabi online guides, the next thing you can do is contact customer service. So, if you are stuck on an issue, you can always rely on them to provide you with the answers. How Kajabi Works
The Growth and Pro Plan gives you access to the Kajabi customer service team 24/7 via 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.
This is one of the reasons why the more expensive plans are worth the extra money if you are not confident about your computer skills. 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:
Kajabi’s course creation is quick, easy, and customizable. After you have given a name to your product, you will see “New Product” in the upper right corner of your screen. There are three pre-built product blueprints that can be used for different digital products. You can also create your own listing. Let’s go through them one by one:
- Mini-course
- Although it contains less material than the Online Courses, a mini-course is very easy to complete. This can be used to gauge customer interest as well as build your brand’s 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 allows you to keep your product advertised and constantly making sales. It will generate passive income for you even after it is launched. Marketing aside, this option allows you to trickle feed your content to your students and 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 offers video hosting for Kajabi. You can also upload bulk files. How Kajabi Works
How to Upload Your Content
Videos
Kajabi offers built-in streaming via Wistia as an 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.
As mentioned earlier, you will be able to upload your videos in bulk without worrying about bandwidth. In all the Pricing Plans of Kajabi, you are provided with unlimited bandwidth. You can choose to upload from your computer, Dropbox, Google Drive, or by URL links. However, take note that it would not accept URLs from Youtube or Vimeo as the uploader looks for the file type in the URL.
Once your files have been uploaded, Kajabi can automatically transform these uploads into articles that you can edit later on. This saves you the hassle of going through the posts and uploading videos one by one.
With Wistia being the video host, your subscription will be worth it. Wistia standalone subscriptions can cost $99 per month. You can get Kajabi’s Basic Plan for $119/year if you add $20. This is a great bargain.
Assessments
Assessments are great tools to gauge student learning and engagement. When they can see how well they are doing with their lessons, the students can determine whether or not they understand the course material. This can motivate them to work harder. You can also use this feature to get feedback from students about your products and if you opt for content locking.
It takes less than two minutes. You can create assessments by opening the People tab from the Dashboard. 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. Although, it does support assessments such as multiple-choice questions 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. Pictures help to set the tone for your website and give your students a visual preview.
You can easily upload images by clicking on the Pick File button on the right side of the editor.
Certificates
Kajabi is almost an “all-in” platform. This is due to its inability to provide certificates to students who have completed the courses. Kajabi allows creators to issue certificates of completion but they cannot be issued 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. I think that the Kajabi creators should highly consider this.
Downloads
Even if we call it online students, some do not necessarily stay online for the whole duration of the course. Some students download course materials and complete tasks offline. This feature was added by Kajabi to make things easier for students. 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 can choose to add a description or even a transcript for your videos. Students may prefer to review transcripts over watching the entire video.
If you choose to only add a description, it will help students know what the lesson is all about and what topics will be discussed in the video. How Kajabi Works
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.
You don’t need to leave Kajabi in order to interact with your students or with each other. Kajabi offers a fully integrated feature called Community. This is one of their student engagement tools.
Your Community can be protected with a paywall so that patrons have access. This Community will allow you to directly address student queries and give students the chance to do the same with each other.
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 what I observed in a lot of Facebook groups. This makes it difficult to understand your audience and listen to 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. It is beneficial for entrepreneurs with an online course business.
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Content Access
Kajabi allows you to choose how your students will 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. This last option tends to increase student engagement because they must complete the lesson before accessing the next. How Kajabi Works
Dripping Course Content
Instead of giving your students everything at once, drip-feeding your courses can be an option.
You can keep your students coming back to your page to see new content by drip-feeding it. Second, this will prevent them from jumping too far ahead and skipping possibly essential parts of your course.
It is also a useful feature when choosing a type of membership.
Content Locking
Content locking forces your student to finish a lesson before they can gain access to the next one. An assessment can be given at the end of lessons. This way, they increase their participation, and you can keep track of their progress in understanding lesson materials.
Course Analytics
Kajabi prides itself on providing the best tools to help entrepreneurs handle their business with the course analytics. What it does is create heatmaps and video stats. It will give you insights into which parts of your courses are performing well and which need to be improved.
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. I mentioned that some students prefer to download the course material and read the transcript rather than watch the video.
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. Information presented in text blocks is not the best way to process it. 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. Usually, there is a general downhill trend wherein people tend to stop watching at the start 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. How Kajabi Works
With the Viewer Heatmap, you can now check which segments of the viewers were not that interesting to your students and which parts they repeatedly watched. This could indicate that the students found these parts interesting or 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
Strong blogs can make a big difference in promoting your company. 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.
Admittedly, Kajabi has plenty to improve on in this feature. 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.
If you want to personalize the photos in your Kajabi blog, you need to do some basic coding. When you upload a photo on top of a blog post, it will show up in the recommended image size. Kajabi works with HTML. You would have to fiddle with HTML to change some of the dimensions. 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. If you wanted to add a photo that you have previously used in other articles, you would need to upload it from your computer or sites like Google Drive again. These are the things Kajabi will hopefully focus on in his 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. Unlike in other blogs where you can easily refer to previous tags, the tags themselves don’t appear even as suggestions when you type them down.
It can be a hassle to remember the tag you used, or to put it on a separate list for each blog post. How Kajabi Works
Marketing Tools
These are Kajabi’s most vital support for its users. Kajabi is built to sell. With so many marketing features, your business will be in safe hands. 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 provides blueprints to help you start your pipelines. 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
A disclaimer here: the affiliate program is only available with the Growth and Pro Plans. Now, you and your partners can efficiently market your goods and with the program. It becomes easier for you to give them the agreed-upon commission. You will have access to a private affiliate dashboard. It will allow you to see statistics about clicks and conversions as well as other relevant data that can be used to market your business.
Automation
Email Marketing
Kajabi makes it easy to start your own business. Depending on your schedules, you can launch email marketing campaigns quickly. 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. Templates are also available to fit your email’s purpose. This freedom is not available in many other options.
Let’s say a visitor adds a product to their cart, but they have not made a decision to buy. Kajabi can send them an email reminding them about your offer. This allows you to track sign-ups automatically from your email campaigns. Just relax and see the improvement in your conversion rates.
Of course, if you choose to use other email platforms, you will find that you have many options Kajabi can integrate with.
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. How Kajabi Works
How to Price Your Products
There are several factors that you need to consider when pricing your courses – time spent in planning the content and creating it, charging for your expertise, operational costs, and so on.
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’.
They can be sold individually or packaged together. Once you make a new deal, you will receive a prompt to enter the title offers, product, and cost. Now, you will only be able to choose one product, but there will be some options for you to choose from in terms of bundles and payment options on the following pages. 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. This comes with the convenience of not paying for transaction fees as Kajabi does not charge you. But, you do have to answer to the cost of its payment method partners.
One convenient thing about partnering with Paypal is that it makes it easier to pay affiliates their commissions through Paypal Mass Pay with an exported list of all your affiliate sales.
Refunds are also made more straightforward. Kajabi makes it easy to request refunds from the site without leaving it.
Kajabi Pricing
As mentioned earlier, Kajabi’s pricing can seem higher than other platforms. \Most people would probably hesitate to use the platform because of its price.
Kajabi is a never-ending investment. Kajabi is not just a course-building platform. While pricing may be cheaper for other platforms, you may end up paying for three or more different tools for email services, blogs, and sales pipelines. All of these come with your Kajabi subscription. Prices are higher than competitors due to the large suite of tools. However, of all the platforms, Kajabi offers the most value for money.
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.
Below is a detailed breakdown of each pricing plan to see how they differ. How Kajabi Works
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Basic Plan
The lowest-priced plan starts at $149 monthly. If billed annually, you will only pay $119.
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. The Basic Plan might not contain some of the essential marketing tools you would like to use for your business. 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 – A popular online sales tactic. Through your affiliates, your products will receive a wider reach. Your affiliates will receive commissions for recommending your products to their audiences.
- 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.
We understand that you are not in the business solely to make money as a creator. You want your products to be worthwhile. This is beneficial from a business standpoint since if consumers are getting their money’s worth, they are more inclined to return for more. It’s a win-win situation for both parties.
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. How Kajabi Works
If you chose Kajabi’s Pro Plan, you could set billing monthly for $399 or yearly for $319. Take note, this is a massive investment that you would need to consider. Most big companies or those with a good amount of courses to sell choose this option. 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
For those who are not new to course-creating, you probably used other platforms. It is excellent that you are still considering options for your business and thinking of 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 keep in mind is that owing to a security issue, your members will need to reset their passwords. This is excellent news for you and your colleagues. Kajabi is concerned about the safety of your company. This means that after the switch is done, other platforms will no longer have access to their information.
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 stated earlier, Kajabi aims to help you streamline your business process in one site and make it profitable. With its many marketing features, it gives you the edge to push your products to new heights.
Now that you’ve read this review, you have a better understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of using Kajabi. Overall, I believe Kajabi is an excellent tool for managing your business, from conception to marketing. How Kajabi Works
Frequently Asked Questions: How Kajabi Works
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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?
- Kajabi does not currently have a free plan. It does, however, offer a 14-day trial period during which you can test out its features.
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Is Kajabi worth the money?
- This depends on your business needs and how you can optimize Kajabi’s features. Kajabi is well known for being user-friendly and having a variety of built-in integrations for smoother 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. You may establish a custom domain using Kajabi’s branding with the Basic Plan (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.