Great question! We obviously think we’re pretty great, but here’s an honest comparison:

Both Podia and Kajabi allow you to sell online courses, downloads, webinars, coaching, and any other type of digital product you like.

Unlike generic online course platforms, Podia and Kajabi are all-in-one options, meaning you’ll also get email marketing capabilities, a website builder, affiliate program functionality, product upsells, and more.

To help you decide between Podia vs. Kajabi, let’s dive into the details.

Podia vs. Kajabi pricing plans

First, let’s talk numbers.

Podia pricing:

Podia has two plans to choose from, as well as a 30-day free trial. All plans have checkout features and payment options like payment plans, waitlists, preselling, and monthly subscriptions.

• Mover: $39/month or $33/month paid annually (5% transaction fee): Includes your website, blog, landing pages, and link in bio, plus unlimited digital downloads, online courses, webinars, product bundles, and coaching sessions. There are also more selling features like coupons, upsells, and access limits.

• Shaker: $89/month or $75/month paid annually (no transaction fees): Includes everything in Mover plus affiliate marketing.

Kajabi pricing:

Kajabi has three pricing plans and a free trial. Kajabi doesn't charge transaction fees, but there are additional fees if you use a third-party payment provider instead of Kajabi Payments (2% on Basic, 1% on Growth, 0.5% on Pro)

• Basic: $179/month ($143/month when paid annually): Includes 5 products, 1 website, 1 community, unlimited landing pages, unlimited funnels, unlimited marketing emails, up to 2,500 contacts, affiliate programs, and 1 extra admin user

• Growth: $249/month ($199/month when paid annually): Includes 50 products, 1 website, 1 community, up to 25,000 contacts, and everything in Basic, plus advanced automations, webhooks, third-party integrations, the ability to remove Kajabi branding, and 10 extra admin users

• Pro: $499/month ($399/month when paid annually): Includes unlimited products, 3 websites, 3 communities, up to 100,000 contacts, and everything in Growth, plus a branded mobile app, API access, a custom code editor, and 25 extra admin users

Here’s how this could shake out in real life:

You love editing photos, so you start sharing your work on social media. Your follower count grows, and you decide to set up a website.

Eager to monetize, you create a PDF ebook about your best editing tips to sell to your audience. Your followers love it, and you decide to expand further by offering a photo editing coaching service.

If all of these steps took six months, you’d spend:

• $234 on Podia's Mover plan (with unlimited products, 5% transaction fee)

• $534 on Podia's Shaker plan (with unlimited products)

• $1047 on Kajabi’s Basic plan (with a limit of 5 products)

Kajabi’s higher monthly fees could place unnecessary pressure on new entrepreneurs and course creators. You would need to earn at least $179/month to just break even, and truthfully, sometimes it takes a while to build momentum in your business.

Podia’s Mover and Shaker plans are perfect for small business owners who need a place to start without such high stakes.

But Podia isn’t just for beginners. Here’s how the future might look using our photo editing example above:

You decide to launch a course, and it’s a huge success. The ball is rolling now, so you focus on course creation, workshops, photo presets, and an affiliate program.

In one year of running your business, you could spend:

• $900 for Podia’s Shaker plan (paid annually with no transaction fees)

• $2,388 for Kajabi’s Growth plan (paid annually with no transaction fees)

If you used Podia instead of Kajabi, you’d save over $1,000 while running the exact same business.

Podia has unlimited products and customers. Kajabi has limits on almost all plans.

One of the biggest differences between Podia and Kajabi is that Kajabi imposes product and customer limits on all plans. This could be a problem if you hope to sell many different products over time.

Kajabi product and customer limits:

• Basic: 5 products, 2,500 contacts

• Growth: 50 products, 25,000 contacts

• Pro: Unlimited products, 100,000 contacts

On the other hand, Podia doesn’t have any product or member limits on the Mover or Shaker plans. You can create as many products as you want and enroll unlimited students, freeing you to try different things and see what resonates with your audience.

Podia product and customer limits:

• Mover: unlimited products, unlimited customers

• Shaker: unlimited products, unlimited customers

Consider this: If you have more than five courses, communities, programs, or downloads, you’d need to use Kajabi’s Growth plan, which costs $249/month and still has a limit of fifty products.

If you picked Podia’s comparable Mover plan, you would only pay $39/month and could make unlimited products.

Have an idea for a series of mini-courses? Want to add new printables to your shop every month? Excited to launch a year of different coaching programs? We say, the more, the merrier!

You can build a website and blog with Podia and Kajabi

Podia and Kajabi both come with a website builder so you can showcase your business and products. You can connect a custom domain, choose your favorite fonts and colors, track your traffic with Google Analytics, and adjust your site design to match your branding.

Podia’s website builder:

Podia offers an intuitive page builder that allows you to design your dream website even if you don’t know how to code. You can use Podia to build unlimited website and sales pages using a customizable collection of blocks that can be adapted to match your style.

With just a few clicks, you can display testimonials, promote your lead magnet or email opt-in form, highlight best-selling products, and tell customers more about your brand.

Plus, your blog and landing pages use the same user-friendly website builder so you don’t need to learn any new tech, and all your pages will look cohesive.

According to Podia creator Joseph D’Amico, “Podia makes website building so fun. I feel like I could set up a site in an afternoon, and it would look great. And there’s something to be said for how pretty it is. It’s the best-looking one by far.”

You can see the website he built on Podia here.

Kajabi’s website builder:

Kajabi offers a drag and drop website editor and a library of templates to help you get started. You can also create a storefront for your products or a blog to share your knowledge.

While it can be helpful to have themes as a starting point, some users report that there are limited customization options. You can make surface-level adjustments like swapping colors and images, but significantly changing the layout of an element is tricky.

Set up beautiful online courses

Both Podia and Kajabi offer top-tier course builders that make sharing your work a breeze. Both platforms let you add all the course content, lessons, and modules you want, with the option to make cohort programs, drip courses, and add interactive content like videos.

The big difference is that Kajabi caps the total number of courses and products you can create. If you want to make a wider range of courses and products, Podia’s unlimited Mover or Shaker plan would be a better fit.

With Kajabi, you can create assessments and quizzes with the option to segment students based on their results. You can also require students to complete assessments before moving on to the next lesson.

With Podia, you can create multiple-choice quizzes and issue course completion certificates to motivate your students. Course building is easy, and your students can enjoy their content in a clean, distraction-free interface. You can also enable discussion areas that are linked to each course you make, giving your students an easy place to connect and learn together.

Run your email marketing in the same place as everything else

Email marketing features are included with both Kajabi and Podia. Both platforms allow you to build your email list, send broadcasts, create email newsletters, run automated email campaigns, and drip content to subscribers over time.

Podia email marketing:

With Podia’s email marketing tools, you can design email sequences and run marketing campaigns all in one place, so you don’t have to pay for a separate email service integration like Mailchimp or ConvertKit (now known as Kit).

Podia Email includes automations, campaigns with entrance and exit conditions, tagging, segmentation, audience filters, and metrics like how much income you earned from each email.

There are over a dozen email templates you can choose from, or you can build your own using the easy email builder. And because your email is already connected to your website, blog, and products, it’s easy to click and add opt-in forms, set up lead magnets, and automatically pull in blog posts into your emails in just a few clicks.

All Podia Email features are free for your first 100 subscribers, and after that you’ll only pay more as your list grows. (And even then, the subscriber prices are some of the most competitive in the industry with 1500 subscribers starting at just $13/month.)

Kajabi email marketing:

Kajabi comes with basic email marketing tools and the number of contacts you can have depends on your plan. Kajabi also comes with a sales funnel feature where you can create automations to nurture leads and sell products.

Kajabi doesn’t charge extra for subscribers, but you are capped at a certain number of contacts on each plan. If you needed 1,500 contacts, for instance, you’d need Kajabi’s Basic plan which starts at $119/month.

Process payments

Podia uses Stripe and PayPal for payment processing. You can accept one-time payments, create payment plans, and charge recurring subscriptions for your digital products. You can also create coupons and discount codes to incentivize people to take action on your products.

Kajabi has its own payment processor called Kajabi payments. If you don't use Kajabi payments, there's an additional third-party payment provider fee.

If you're looking for more Kajabi alternatives, this guide is a great place to start.

Live chat and email customer support

Even the perfect tool can become frustrating if you can’t get help when needed. High-quality support is an essential ingredient when choosing what software will power your business.

Podia offers email support, a help center with 150+ articles, and the Podia online community where you can get questions answered. Friendly chat support is also available.

With Kajabi, you’ll have access to email support and chat support. You’ll also get access to Kajabi University and the Kajabi Facebook group.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for an all-in-one platform that makes it simple to run your online business, has world-class customer service, and is affordable whether you’re just starting out or growing fast, we built Podia just for you. Start your 30 day free trial today.