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Kajabi restructured its pricing in January 2026. Basic went from $149 to $179 a month. Growth went from $199 to $249. Pro went from $399 to $499. The $89 Kickstarter plan vanished from public pricing.
Then there’s the part that stung more than the price. Basic’s contact limit dropped from 10,000 to 2,500. Same plan. More money. A quarter of the list.
So you’re looking at Kajabi alternatives. Below are six worth considering, what each actually costs once fees are counted, and the cases where switching would cost you more than staying.
Four things happened at once, which is why the reaction was louder than a normal price bump.
Why people are leaving Kajabi in 2026
The entry point disappeared. Kickstarter at $89 was how a lot of people started. Without it, the cheapest way into Kajabi is $143 a month on annual billing, and that’s a different decision for someone who hasn’t sold anything yet.
The caps tightened while prices rose. Paying more for less is the specific thing that makes people start browsing competitors, and 2,500 contacts is a ceiling you can hit in a year of decent list growth.
Existing customers were moved onto the new structure. No grandfathering. If you’d built your business on the old numbers, the new ones arrived anyway.
A surcharge appeared for using your own Stripe. Kajabi still advertises zero transaction fees, and that’s accurate if you use Kajabi Payments. Use your own processor and there’s now a platform fee on top.
On r/CourseCreation, the recurring theme isn’t outrage about the price. It’s people describing how much they’d built inside the platform and realising how expensive it would be to leave. That’s the actual trap, and it’s worth understanding before you start shopping.
The best Kajabi alternatives at a glance
The best Kajabi alternatives in 2026 are Systeme.io for the lowest cost, Podia for the closest all-in-one experience, Thinkific for serious course structure, Teachable for a small catalogue, ThriveCart for one-time pricing, and a self-assembled stack for people who only use part of what Kajabi offers.
| Platform | Entry price | Transaction fee | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Systeme.io | Free, then $17/mo | 0% | Cutting cost to near zero |
| Podia | $42/mo annual | 5% on entry plan | Closest all-in-one feel |
| Teachable | $29/mo annual | 7.5% on entry plan | Small catalogue, low volume |
| Thinkific | ~$40–54/mo | 0% | Serious course structure |
| ThriveCart | $495 once | 0% | Checkout-led selling |
| Your own stack | From ~$10/mo | Processor only | People who like control |
A word on how we assessed these. We’ve set up and used Systeme.io and MailerLite directly. Thinkific, Teachable, Podia and ThriveCart are researched rather than run in production, which means documentation, pricing pages, and user reviews at volume. We think that distinction matters enough to state it. More on that in how we test software.
The number most alternative lists leave out
Almost every roundup compares subscription prices and stops. That’s how you end up switching to save money and paying more.
Teachable’s Starter plan costs $29 a month and takes 7.5% of every sale. Podia’s Mover plan costs $42 and takes 5%. Kajabi takes 0% through its own processor.
Here’s what that looks like at $3,000 a month in sales:
| Platform | Subscription | Platform fee | Real monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teachable Starter | $29 | $225 | $254 |
| Podia Mover | $42 | $150 | $192 |
| Kajabi Basic (annual) | $143 | $0 | $143 |
| Systeme.io Startup | $17 | $0 | $17 |
The $29 plan is the most expensive option on that table. Kajabi, the thing you’re trying to escape, is cheaper than two of its budget competitors.
Percentage fees scale with your success. A flat subscription doesn’t. At $500 a month in sales, Teachable Starter is a bargain. At $5,000, it costs $375 a month in fees alone. Whether an alternative is cheaper depends entirely on a number that no pricing page knows: yours.
1. Systeme.io: the biggest cost cut available
Pricing: free plan, then $17/month for Startup and $97/month for Unlimited. No platform transaction fees.
Systeme.io covers the same ground as Kajabi: courses, funnels, email, membership sites, affiliate program management, website builder. One dashboard, one bill.
The free plan is the outlier in this market. Everyone else retired theirs and replaced it with a trial. Systeme.io kept a genuinely usable free tier, which means you can rebuild your offer, test it, and only pay once it’s working.
Where it beats Kajabi: price, obviously. $17 against $143 is not a discount, it’s a different budget line. The free plan also removes the “commit before you know” problem that every trial creates.
Where it loses to Kajabi: design. The templates are functional and forgettable. If your sales pages are part of why people buy from you, you’ll feel that immediately. The email builder is basic. And support is a smaller operation, with slow resolution on complex issues showing up repeatedly in user reviews, particularly around migrating content in.
Choose it if the bill has stopped making sense against your revenue and plain design is a price you’ll pay. Skip it if your brand lives in the look of your pages.
2. Podia: the closest all-in-one feel
Pricing: Mover $42/month, Shaker $84/month, Earthquaker $150/month, all billed annually. 5% fee on Mover, 0% above it. No free plan, 30-day trial.
If what you valued about Kajabi was the everything-in-one-place feeling, Podia preserves it most closely. Storefront, courses, downloads, memberships, email, website.
Email included on every plan matters more than the feature list suggests. Platforms that skip it quietly add $29 or more a month to your real cost, and that number never appears on their pricing page.
Where it beats Kajabi: roughly half the price for a similar shape of product, with the same one-vendor simplicity.
Where it loses to Kajabi: the 5% fee on Mover catches people. Past about $850 a month in sales, Shaker at $84 with no fee is cheaper, and most creators work that out several months late. There’s no student mobile app. And tax handling is manual: Podia collects at checkout in jurisdictions you configure yourself, where Kajabi remits automatically.
Choose it if you want the Kajabi experience at half the money. Skip it if you sell internationally and rely on tax being handled for you.
3. Teachable: cheap to start, expensive to grow
Pricing: Starter $29/month, Builder $69/month, Growth $139/month, billed annually. 7.5% fee on Starter, 0% above it. No free plan.
Teachable’s student experience is one of the better ones, with native iOS and Android apps on every paid plan. Thinkific charges extra for that. Podia doesn’t offer it.
The pricing needs reading twice. Starter’s 7.5% is the steepest platform fee among the major options. The break-even against Builder lands around $533 a month in revenue, and past that the cheap plan is the expensive one.
Where it beats Kajabi: price at genuinely low volume, and the mobile apps.
Where it loses to Kajabi: no email marketing at all. Teachable sends order confirmations and password resets, nothing else, so budget for a separate email tool. Builder caps you at 10 products and 1,000 students, which is tight for anyone arriving from Kajabi with a catalogue already built.
Choose it if you sell a handful of courses and the app matters. Skip it if you’re doing real volume on Starter, where the fee will eat the saving.
4. Thinkific: the strongest course tooling
Pricing: entry paid plan around $40 to $54/month depending on billing cycle. No platform fee. 30-day trial, no permanent free plan.
If your business is teaching, Thinkific is the better product. Course structure, assessments, learner management and completion tracking go deeper than Kajabi’s, and every plan includes unlimited students.
About that price range. Thinkific reshuffled its plans during 2026 and raised them again in August, which is why you’ll find articles quoting $36, $40, $49, $54, $74 and $99 for what each calls the entry tier. None of them are lying. They’re snapshots of different plan structures at different moments, and most were never updated. Check the pricing page yourself before committing, including against this article.
Where it beats Kajabi: the learning experience, and no platform fee on any plan.
Where it loses to Kajabi: marketing. Funnels and email automation are thinner. Certificates, quizzes and live sessions sit a tier above the entry plan, so the cheapest number you see probably isn’t the one you’ll pay.
Choose it if course quality is the product. Skip it if Kajabi’s funnels and email were the reason you were there.
5. ThriveCart: pay once, keep it
Pricing: $495 one-time for the standard licence. No subscription. No platform fee.
ThriveCart began as a checkout and grew course delivery around it. The arithmetic is the pitch: $495 once is under four months of Kajabi Basic, and month five costs nothing.
Bump offers, one-click upsells, subscription handling, cart abandonment. These are the core product rather than features bolted onto a course platform, and it shows.
Where it beats Kajabi: checkout conversion, and the absence of a monthly bill.
Where it loses to Kajabi: course delivery is adequate rather than good, and the learner experience trails Thinkific and Teachable noticeably. No real email marketing, so you’ll pair it with something. And a lifetime licence carries a risk a subscription doesn’t: you’re betting the company is still around in five years.
Choose it if checkout is where your money is made. Skip it if you want one vendor answering the phone for everything.
6. Build your own stack
Pricing: roughly $10 to $40/month depending on list size.
No platform will suggest this one, so we will: stop buying a bundle and buy the two or three pieces you use.
Open your Kajabi dashboard and count how many sections you’ve opened this month. For a lot of people it’s the course area and the email tool. The rest is paid-for scenery.
A dedicated email platform like MailerLite, a checkout, and a lightweight course host will often land under $40 a month combined. Each piece swaps out independently when it stops earning its place, which is the thing an all-in-one can never offer you.
Where it beats Kajabi: cost, and you stop paying for features you don’t open.
Where it loses to Kajabi: you own the integration problem. When two tools stop talking, there’s nobody to call. Setup takes longer and maintenance never fully ends.
Choose it if you use a third of Kajabi and resent the other two thirds. Skip it if an hour of your time is worth more than the monthly difference.
When staying on Kajabi is the right call
Every article on this topic assumes leaving is the answer. Frequently it isn’t.
Stay if you’ve built deep automation around multiple products. Rebuilding a mature funnel and email architecture takes weeks of your time, and nobody puts that in the savings column.
Stay if you’re clearing $10,000 a month and the platform works. At that level the subscription is noise. A migration that goes wrong during a launch is not.
Stay if the affiliate program on Growth is producing sales, because it pays for its own tier the first time somebody else sells for you.
And before you leave, look at downgrading. Plenty of people sit on Growth using Basic-level functionality. That’s $70 a month you can recover this afternoon without moving anything.
What actually breaks when you migrate
Course content travels fine. Videos, lesson text and downloads export and re-upload without drama.
Four things don’t:
- Active subscriptions. Recurring payments can’t move between processors. Every existing member has to re-subscribe, and a slice of them won’t bother. This is the largest hidden cost of switching and the reason most people who consider it end up staying.
- Automations. Every sequence, trigger and tag gets rebuilt by hand. No export path exists between platforms.
- URLs. Existing links break without redirects. If any are indexed or sitting in old emails, sort that before you move rather than after.
- Purchase history. Who bought what and when generally arrives as a CSV rather than as working customer records. Refunds and support requests for old orders get awkward.
Move in your quietest month. Never in a launch window.
How to choose your Kajabi alternative
Work through it in this order and the answer usually appears by the second question.
- How much do you sell per month? Under $500, percentage-fee plans are fine. Over $2,000, only look at 0% platform fees.
- Do you have active subscribers? If yes, the migration cost is high enough that staying deserves serious weight.
- Is the course or the marketing your product? Teaching points to Thinkific. Funnels and email point to Systeme.io or Podia.
- How much of Kajabi do you actually open? If the honest answer is two sections, build the stack yourself.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest Kajabi alternative?
Systeme.io, by a wide margin. A usable free plan, then $17 a month with no platform fees. Nothing else in this category is close.
Why did Kajabi raise its prices in 2026?
Kajabi hasn’t published a detailed rationale. What’s observable: the January 2026 restructure raised all three public tiers, pulled the Kickstarter plan from public pricing, cut the Basic contact allowance from 10,000 to 2,500, and added a surcharge for external payment processors. It was the first major pricing change in years, and existing customers were moved onto the new structure rather than grandfathered.
Is there a free alternative to Kajabi?
Systeme.io is the only serious one. Thinkific, Teachable and Podia have all retired their free plans in favour of trials, and Kajabi never had one.
Can I migrate my courses off Kajabi?
The content, yes. Videos and lesson material export and re-upload without much difficulty. Active subscriptions, automations, URLs and purchase history each need handling separately, and the subscriptions are the painful one.
Which Kajabi alternative is closest in features?
Podia for the all-in-one experience, Systeme.io for the feature list at a much lower price. Neither matches Kajabi’s marketing automation depth, which remains the thing Kajabi does better than its cheaper competitors.
Should I switch if I’m paying $143 a month?
Probably not, if it’s working and you’re selling. Weigh the annual saving against weeks of rebuilding and the subscribers who won’t re-subscribe. Under roughly $1,500 a year saved with a complex setup, the maths favours staying.
Our recommendation
For most people leaving Kajabi over the price, Systeme.io is the answer. The free plan lets you rebuild before you spend anything, and $17 a month against $143 changes what the business needs to earn to make sense.
If plain templates are a dealbreaker, Podia on Shaker. If you teach for a living, Thinkific. If checkout conversion is your lever, ThriveCart.
And if you’re running a profitable operation on Kajabi with subscribers and automations built up over years, the recommendation is duller than you were hoping for. Drop a tier, prune the contact list, and spend the afternoon on something that makes money instead.
Pricing verified 1 September 2026. Something out of date? hello@saasandstacks.com