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. To do so, they would need a platform that makes the process painless and seamless for entrepreneurs.
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. Since its launch in 2010, Kajabi grew to become the powerhouse that it is today. 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. These include marketing, pricing, online course creation, and much more. This will give you a clear idea of the benefits you’ll get if you choose Kajabi.
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 Patreon vs 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
- Students cannot be issued custom certificates of completion by users on the platform.
- Assessment customization is limited.
What is Kajabi?
Kajabi, in a nutshell, is an online course platform that allows its users to take care of their business using only one site. 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. The platform boasts of how easy it is to use. The first thing you can do is to purchase a plan. You have three options: Basic, Growth, and Pro. These options will be discussed later in this review.
After you’ve selected a plan, you can set up an account and upload your content. Using the lesson editor, you can upload your video lectures and give the lesson description and titles.
You can easily complete assessments by simply typing the questions and selecting the options (if you’ve chosen the multiple-choice option).
Assuming this is all done, you’re now ready to market your products. You can create pipelines in Kajabi. These mechanisms allow you to achieve high conversion rates by turning prospects into potential students by giving efficient marketing funnels. Landing pages can be added, as well as freebies to get leads to submit their email addresses. Video marketing is another option.
Once the prospect is enrolled as a student, payments can be made through the site. All this without leaving Kajabi. Patreon vs Kajabi
Kajabi is almost an “all-in” platform. These features will be discussed in the next sections. But, Kajabi can go head-to-head and over most online course platforms with the features and benefits it offers.
Why 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. Kajabi allows you to do all of these things and more.
- Create 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. It is more expensive than other alternatives, but that’s okay. This eliminates the need to purchase expensive plug-ins and saves you time. 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.
Good platforms think of what their users want and need. These platforms can be used to create sales pages, email your students, or do all kinds 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
Not all great teachers are technologically inclined enough to share their knowledge and information 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.
The platform utilizes a visual layout that makes it intuitive and super simple to use. 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 can be used for most things, with the exception of a few features that are still being developed by developers. 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.
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. Patreon vs 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.
Second, under the Kajabi University, you can check out a catalog of tutorials and videos to get you started with creating and developing 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.
Third, one unique feature about the onboarding process is the 28-day “Hero Challenge.” It is essentially a month-long crash course to help you get your website launched and your business making its first sale. The challenge covers all you need to know about the platform, as well as some strategies for successfully marketing your products.
If your queries aren’t answered, Kajabi has one of the best customer support out there. If you are a member of the Growth or Pro Plan you will have access to live chat support 24 hours a day. With a Basic Plan, customer chat support is available at limited times during the day. 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.
Kajabi also offers a rewards program that provides incentives to creators who achieve their revenue goals and includes some exclusive perks.
Customer Support
Contact customer service if you have a question that is not covered in the Kajabi online guides. If you have any questions, they can help you. Patreon vs 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. It functions as a ticket system, but you will find an answer within the day. They always respond promptly, even with this. They never take too long to reply.
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 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. Essentially, after you launch it, it will keep creating passive income for you. Marketing aside, this option allows you to trickle feed your content to your students and keep them interested.
- Blank
- This is an excellent option if you are an advanced user who wants to customize your content.
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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 a wide variety of file types, so you can include videos, audio, pdf, and text documents in your lessons. Wistia offers video hosting for Kajabi. You can also upload bulk files. Patreon vs Kajabi
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.
You can upload multiple videos at once 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. It will not accept URLs from Youtube and Vimeo. The uploader searches for the file type in URLs.
Once your files have been uploaded, Kajabi can automatically transform these uploads into articles that you can edit later on. This eliminates the need to go through each post and upload videos one at a time.
With Wistia being the video host, your subscription will be worth it. A standalone Wistia subscription can set you back at $99 per month. You can get Kajabi’s Basic Plan for $119/year if you add $20. This is a great bargain.
Assessments
Assessments can be a great tool to measure student engagement and learning. 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. Select Assessments, then +New Assessment, and follow the prompt to start 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. Pictures help to set the tone for your website and give your students a visual preview.
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. 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. Others opt to download the course materials and do the 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. Some students prefer to read transcripts rather than watching entire videos when they review.
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. Patreon vs Kajabi
Student Interactions
Community
It would be wonderful for eLearning platforms to allow members and students to interact with one another and discuss topics in their course materials. This is similar to what they would do in a 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 has a fully integrated feature called the Community. This is one of their tools for student engagement.
Your Community can be protected with a paywall so that patrons have 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. You can also buy access to the discussions for those who don’t want to purchase the whole course.
Organizing Your Topics
One problem that forums have is the lack of 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.
Kajabi allows the administrator to organize and reorganize feeds. They can sort the posts by topic and also ‘pin’ specific posts for better viewability.
Overall, the Community feature is one advantage Kajabi has over its competitors. This feature is very beneficial to entrepreneurs who run an online school.
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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. The last one tends to increase student engagement as there is a requirement to finish the lesson first before accessing the next one. Patreon vs 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. It creates heatmaps and videos stats. It will give you insights into which parts of your courses are performing well and which need to be improved.
Therefore, it shows you information on your courses, affiliates, students, and sales transactions that can 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. I find this quite handy as a visual learner myself. 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 displays a report on your students’ engagement with specific parts 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. Patreon vs 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. 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. Current students can receive updates and more information about your products and services while new customers are introduced to them. Having a solid blog boosts traffic for you and generates leads that would transform visitors into 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
It is unnecessary for you to code to build your website and customize most things in Kajabi; it is still a good idea.
You will need to learn basic programming to personalize your Kajabi blog’s photos. Uploading a photo to a blog post will display it in the recommended size. Kajabi works with HTML. You would have to fiddle with HTML to change some of the dimensions. Of course, this is not too much of a problem. 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. You cannot edit the way the text wraps around a picture in the body of your blog unless you deal with the HTML.
Kajabi does not have an image bank. 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
While I enjoy most of Kajabi’s features, one thing that gripes me is the hassle of being unable to pick from existing tags in my post. 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. Patreon vs Kajabi
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. We will be discussing a few of these features in this section.
Pipelines
Kajabi has developed a platform that makes it easy to sell and market. 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 provide you with a visual representation for your schematics. Editing is simple and intuitive. There is a drag-and-drop editor for you to add videos, offers, images, and other elements that can help you achieve high conversion rates. There are suggestions if you don’t know where to start.
Kajabi provides blueprints to help you start your pipelines. Your chosen blueprint will guide you through the setup of funnels, including landing pages, email automation, offers, and much more. 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. You and your partners will be able to market your products and the program together. You can now give your partners the agreed-upon affiliate commission much easier. A private dashboard will be available to you. 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 is your business made easy. Depending on your schedules, you can launch email marketing campaigns quickly. This feature lets you choose the sequence of emails, add multiple emails to the set sequence and upsell additional products. You can also use templates to suit your email purpose. Not a lot of alternatives offer this much freedom.
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. With this, you do not have to manually track the number of sign-ups from your email campaign. 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
You can run your business under one platform, and Kajabi’s integrations help make that happen. Currently, Kajabi has 10 native integrations. To name a few, it has ConvertKit, Aweber, MailChimp, and Active Campaign. Patreon vs Kajabi
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.
Kajabi provides a simple way to price your products once you have established the price. 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 choose the currency for your product’s pricing.
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. \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.
All three pricing plans offer unlimited bandwidth, unlimited video hosting via Wistia, and 0% transaction fees. It also has chat support and assessment features.
Below is a detailed breakdown of each pricing plan to see how they differ. Patreon vs Kajabi
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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. However, you are limited to having 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. Despite Kajabi’s superb customer service, you’ll want to keep your questions to office hours. In contrast to the higher plans, who gets access to a live chat with customer care 24/7.
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. So when you buy a higher-tier plan, you are not paying for new functions but expanding the ones you already have. Kajabi also doesn’t charge a transaction fee for any sales made on the site.
The second level allows you to create more products and pipelines as well as members. More reasons to get this plan: white-labeling, affiliate marketing, and automation.
- 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.
Access to the Experts Academy is included as part of the Pro Plan. More information on how to sell your brand can be found there. Patreon vs Kajabi
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
For many creators, Kajabi is a popular choice, and it has a lot to offer for the price you choose to pay. It comes with exceptional customer service, a well-integrated system, and is extremely user-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, 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. Patreon vs Kajabi
Frequently Asked Questions: Patreon vs 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?
- 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). You can choose to remove any traces of Kajabi’s branding and create a website that is purely focused on you with the Growth and Pro Plans.
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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.