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.
It was easy to see the vision. The Kajabi founders, Kenny Rueter & Travis Rosser, knew that they wanted to help others monetize their knowledge 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 widely used online learning platforms. 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. 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 Nine University 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
- Great customer support
- 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, in a nutshell, is an online course platform that allows its users to take care of their business using only one site. 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. You can start by purchasing a plan. There are three options available: Pro, Growth, or Basic. 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. Nine University Kajabi
Kajabi is almost an “all-in” 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. It includes what you need to jumpstart your business, keep it running and growing.
The business is more than just uploading your course content and waiting for students to 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.
- Create a website
- Create course offerings
- Track student progress
- Manage subscriptions/payments
- Run email marketing campaigns
One criticism Kajabi has is on its price. Admittedly, it is pricier than some alternatives. 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 takes time, effort, and money. All this could be avoided by using one 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.
If you are a professional looking for ways to market your knowledge, Kajabi is the right choice. Kajabi is a powerful, all-in-one tool 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. 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. 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. I could easily automate follow-up sequences, and it’s effortless to do too. Nine University 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. Just head to the top and enter any query. 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. 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. If you have any questions, they can help you. Nine University Kajabi
With the Growth and Pro Plan, you can access the 24/7 Kajabi customer support team live chat.
Although, if you opt for the Basic Plan, the staff will only be available on Mondays to Fridays from 9 am to 7 pm. It functions as a ticket system, but you will find an answer within the 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 also have the option to create a custom listing. Let’s go through them one by one:
- Mini-course
- A mini-course contains lesser material than the Online Course, but it is pretty easy to complete. This can be used to gauge customer interest as well as build your brand’s value.
- Online course
- From short workshops to seminars to lectures about your area of expertise, these are full-blown courses that your students can avail.
- 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
- 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. Nine University 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. 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.
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 can be a great tool to measure student engagement and learning. Students can gauge their understanding of the material by seeing how they do with lessons. 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.
A nifty feature is that when students do not fully succeed on the assessments, it can be set to automatically send out additional materials to help them.
Now there are some drawbacks. First, I have observed that the user cannot include both a video and an assessment under the same category.
Second, it does not allow users to randomize the questions or have question banks. Although, it does support assessments such as multiple-choice questions and paragraph-style questions.
Students can also upload files to be checked through the assignment submission feature.
Photos
For your lessons, you can upload a poster photo. 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
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 is a major problem for those who want to use 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.
Students will be able download any material that you have placed while they are in a lesson.
Body
You have the option to add a description, or even a transcript to 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. Nine University 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. Over the years, some have utilized Facebook groups, but that would require you to join Facebook and apply for the group membership.
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.
You can even set your Community behind a paywall for patrons to gain access. This Community will allow you to directly address student queries and give students the chance to do the same with each other.
Because the Community can be used 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
Forums have a problem with organization. It may be hard for both the creator and the students to keep track of specific 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, 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. Nine University Kajabi
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
Your student must complete a lesson before they can access the next. An assessment can be given at the end of lessons. You can increase their participation and keep track of how they understand the lesson material.
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.
Therefore, it shows you information on your courses, affiliates, students, and sales transactions that can help you optimize your products.
Play Rate
The play rate gives data on how many people have watched a specific 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
The data you receive here is the average percentage of the whole video that 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. Information presented in text blocks is not the best way to process it. I prefer to have my data presented in graphic 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. Nine University Kajabi
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. Thus, there was a need to rewatch to review.
Kajabi can provide valuable analytic tools that will help you improve your content. The best thing to do with your data is to help you develop a strategy to 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. 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. This is not as good as 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. With a quick search on the internet, you will find plenty of tutorials to do some basic coding.
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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.
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. Nine University 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. Depending on what Price Plan you chose, you can have 3, 15, or 100 pipelines.
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 offers some blueprints for its pipelines so that you do not need to start from scratch. 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
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. 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 makes it easy to start your own business. You can quickly launch email marketing campaigns depending on the schedules you have set. 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. 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. Nine University 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. Head over to the Offers tab found on the left side and click ‘Add New Offer.’
You can sell them individually or package them as a set. After you create a new deal you will be prompt to enter 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 or Paypal to process payments. You will be able to customize checkout and create flexible payment options for your students. This comes with the convenience of not paying for transaction fees as Kajabi does not charge you. However, you will have to pay for the costs of its payment methods 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
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. Prices are higher than competitors due to the large suite of tools. But, Kajabi still provides the best value for money out of all other platforms.
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. Nine University 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. 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.
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 – With this, you can remove Kajabi branding from your website and fully make it your own.
- 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.
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. Nine University 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
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 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, 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. Nine University Kajabi
Frequently Asked Questions: Nine University 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. With a Basic Plan, you can create a custom domain with Kajabi’s branding (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.