Choosing the right platform to launch your online course or digital content isn't easy. A few years ago, content creators had limited options, but today there are many platforms to consider, and the feature sets available on those platforms have become more streamlined.
Kajabi and Circle are two such platforms, both of which provide sales, course creation, and community features. Here, we'll explore those platforms and consider which could be the best fit for your business.
What is Kajabi?
Founded in 2010, Kajabi is a course creation platform that helps entrepreneurs monetize their content. It supports everything from traditional courses to podcasts and coaching sessions. The platform also offers community features, website creation, and email marketing tools.
Kajabi's automation features and the gamification options on the learning side of the platform make it popular with creators who have a lot of courses or work with large cohorts.
Who Can Use Kajabi?
Kajabi is ideal for creators who want to monetize their communities. Most creators use it for online courses, but it can be used in other ways too. For example, life coaches who deliver 1-2-1s, and even podcasters or bloggers who want a centralized way of interacting with their community could take advantage of the website creation, community and sales parts of the platform.
The platform can work for a variety of coaching businesses. Kerry Marshall JR, guitarist and founder of "Kerry's Kamp", helps people of all ages learn how to play the guitar. Kerry has earned more than $400k in revenue from his courses. Another platform success story is Julie Soul of "Soul Sparklettes Art". A homeschooling parent, Julie earns $700,000 per year with fewer than 10k followers, sharing her curriculum and art knowledge.
How Does Kajabi Work?
Kajabi can be used to sell courses or memberships. If you opt to provide courses via the platform, you can offer access to the whole course in one go, or release the content over a set period - for example as weekly modules. It's also possible to give members access to a bundle of courses, so a creator could offer an annual membership with access to a set of courses, awarding a certificate at the end to people who complete all the content.
Creating a Community on Kajabi
To run a community on Kajabi, you'll first need to join the platform. As part of the enrollment process, you'll have to answer some questions about your business, and how you plan to use Kajabi. The survey is short and simple, and once you've completed it you'll be asked for your payment card details so you can start using the platform. There is a 14 day trial, so you won't be charged immediately, but you do have to provide card details to get started.
To make your first community on Kajabi:
- Navigate to the Product tab on your Dashboard
- Select Community
- Click New Community
- Fill out the name and description. Note that your URL will be automatically generated based on the details given here.
- Add an image to represent the community
- Give a name for your Community Access Group
- Choose the pricing for the Community
- Click Save and Finish
Communities can be free or paid. Each community can have more than one Community Access Group, and each group can have a different price attached to it. These options can be used to give people access to different offers or features within the community.
Once you've created a community you can go back to the dashboard and create products such as files or courses to share with the community.
Platform Customization
Kajabi offers a variety of powerful features, including website builder tools, course builders, and more. There are lots of free website templates creators can use to get started, and paid templates for those looking for a more bespoke appearance.
Creators have a lot of freedom when it comes to customizing their stores and courses too.
Engagement Tools and Customer Management
Kajabi provides creators with a powerful analytics hub that offers insight into net revenue, page views, the performance of affiliate marketing campaigns, subscribers, and more. Creators also have access to several automation tool to help with email marketing and sales funnels.
If the platform's built-in features aren't flexible enough, there's the option of using third-party integrations, so creators can use their preferred marketing solutions to engage with their subscribers.
Kajabi Customer Support
The documentation provided on the Kajabi knowledge base should cover the most common questions about community management, sales, and product creation. Live chat support is available for those who still have questions.
Entrepreneurs on the basic plan can access support between the hours of 6 AM and 5 PM Pacific Time. Those on the higher-tier plans have access to 24-hour live chat support.
How Much Does Kajabi Cost?
Kajabi's feature set and responsive support team come at a price. Compared to many other digital marketplaces, the platform is expensive for creators. There are three membership tiers:
- Basic: $149 per month
- Growth: $199 per month
- Pro: $399 per month
There's also a 'Kajabi Access' add-on which costs $99 per month and can be added to your membership. This add-on offers access to customer success managers and other personalized services and allows those on the lower tiers to create more communities and products without upgrading their memberships.
What is Circle?
Circle is a relatively young digital marketplace. It was created in 2019 by one of the early members of the Teachable team and builds on the knowledge and experience of that team. It's a modular platform with a polished user interface that gives creators a lot of freedom to customize their communities.
Who Can Use Circle?
Circle is squarely focused on community building. It enables creators and brands to build communities around their existing online presence via things like sharing posts and articles, uploading online courses, hosting streams or events, and engaging with community members.
The platform allows creators to build a white-label community, so brands have a lot of control over how the community looks and the way they drive members to it. This makes Circle a popular choice with larger brands and influencers, although anyone can use the platform.
How Does Circle Work?
Circle takes a modular approach to community management, and a lot of the features are reminiscent of other cloud services such as Slack. On a basic level getting started is easy. Just create an account, set up a community and point a domain (or subdomain) to it.
The platform offers monetization options and a variety of tools to integrate your community with your existing content management system, so creators who already have a WordPress blog or a learning platform set up can still take advantage of what the platform has to offer.
Creating a Community on Circle
Creating a community on Circle is a simple process. Simply go to the Circle website and click Get Started to begin the process.
- Provide a community name
- Choose a URL
- Decide whether or not to make the community private or not
- Click Next
- Work through the Getting Started checklist to customize your profile
The 'Getting Started' checklist will ask you to fill out your own profile and bio, add brand information, upload a logo and choose your community's color scheme. You can change these options at any time, so it's safe to experiment with different color schemes, etc.
Communities are made up of Spaces, which can be private or public. Spaces can be used to share posts or events. As part of the checklist, you'll be asked to set up some Spaces for your members.
After customizing the community and setting up some spaces within the community, you'll be given the option to set up a paywall, and then invite your first members.
Platform Customization
Circle offers the option to create a white-label community, so brand owners can integrate a Circle community into their existing web presence without having Circle's links and branding all over the community.
However, beyond changing colors and logos on the community itself, the level of customization offered is limited. Circle communities have a distinct look and feel, and it's not possible for creators to make sweeping changes to the layout of the community.
Engagement Tools and Customer Management
Circle excels when it comes to Engagement tools, offering a member directory, posts, events, live streams, chat features and moderation tools. Community leaders can even set up an Instagram-style space where members can share, like and comment on photographs.
Options for analytics are a little more limited. The analytics features are gated behind one of the higher-tier subscription plans, and the built-in reporting options are poor. Fortunately, it's possible to export the data in CSV format, to load it into third-party analytics tools.
Circle Customer Support
Circle doesn't offer live chat support. However, it does have an email support option, and the support team usually responds quickly to support requests during US office hours.
There's also a knowledge base that covers the most common questions and an active community of users in Circle's own community that share advice and tips. Circle's own team is active on the community, making it a goldmine of information.
How Much Does Circle Cost?
Circle offers a 14-day free trial, and has several different membership options. The Basic plan starts at $49 a month. The Professional plan unlocks courses, live streams and analytics features for $99 a month. API access, white-label emails and some AI-powered features are available on the business plan for $219 a month. In addition to these fees, there are transaction fees for each subscriber on these tiers.
There's also an Enterprise tier, costing $399 a month. This tier offers priority support, reduced transaction fees, custom Single Sign On (SSO) and other features large organizations are likely to need. Bespoke pricing options are available for brands looking to launch a white-label community app.
The prices listed above are the monthly fees. Discounts are available for users who pay for 12 months in advance.
Kajabi vs Circle: Which is better?
Kajabi and Circle are powerful apps, but they serve slightly different audiences:
Advantages of Using Kajabi
- An all-in one platform
- Easy-to-use website and course building features
- Built-in analytics
- Live chat support
Disadvantages of Using Kajabi
- High monthly fees
- Limited payment processing options
- Weaker community features than Circle
Advantages of Using Circle
- Powerful community moderation features
- Integrate with your existing site
- Lower costs for basic tier
Disadvantages of Using Circle
- Limited analytics features
- No live chat support
- Limited community theming options
An Alternative to Kajabi and Circle: Whop
As you can see, both Kajabi and Circle have a lot to offer, but the limited customization options and high fees may be off-putting for newer creators and those who want more control over their branding. Kajabi and Circle are not the only options available: enter Whop.
Whop is a creator monetization platform offering unprecedented freedom and flexibility. It's possible to sell almost any form of digital product, from podcasts and videos, to courses, trading signals and group memberships. Just like Kajabi, Whop offers its own course creation system, but creators don't have to limit themselves to the tools offered on the platform. Thanks to the Whop API, and the huge list of out-of-the-box integrations, it's possible to sell courses that were built elsewhere and hook up Whop's monetization features to your existing community.
With Whop, creators benefit from the opportunity to:
- Monetize their audience without having to pay a monthly fee to the digital marketplace
- Sell memberships and content with a low commission of just 3% on each sale
- Easily integrate with Discord and Telegram
- Promote their community on the Whop Marketplace to access a huge audience of potential customers
- Provide access to live streams, courses and 1-2-1 coaching sessions
- Get access to 24/7 365 support
Because Whop is so flexible, it's easy to integrate it with your existing community. If you already have a popular blog, have set up your own learning management system, or have lots of social media followers, you can build on that community via Whop. If you're starting from scratch, you can get building quickly, and you won't have to worry about platform lock-in because Whop makes it easy to export your data and use it with your preferred marketing and automation tools.
Developers can take advantage of the Whop API to connect their existing community apps or websites to Whop. If you aren't a developer but have an idea for an app, just contact the Whop team to discuss the integrations you'd like to see. The team is always open to new ideas, and new integrations are added frequently.
Whether you're trying to build a community around an online course or your life-coaching business or offer community features for fans of your digital art, there are many platforms to choose from that can help you with that goal. Getting started with Whop is free and all you'll have to pay is a 3% commission on sales.
Join today and start selling the easy way!
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Kajabi Access Worth It?
Kajabi Access is worthwhile for many creators. It offers one-to-one sessions with customer success managers and doubles the limits for products, sites and members on your current plan. This is an affordable way to increase the limits on those plans without having to pay for the Pro plan.
Do I own my content on Kajabi?
Creators own the content they make and upload to the Kajabi Portal. They have the right to remove that content or export it to use elsewhere as they wish.
Can you host live events with Circle?
Circle supports the hosting of live events, be that small-scale coaching calls or larger conferences. Creators can add events to their calendars, set up group calls, and invite members from their dashboards.
Does Whop offer community management features?
Whop gives creators and community leaders the freedom to manage their communities as they see fit, across numerous platforms. For example, creators can monetize a Discord server or a Telegram group, taking payments through Whop and using the platform's course builder and file-sharing features, while also benefiting from the sophisticated moderation and community features offered on Discord.
