Kajabi vs Thinkific for Coaches: The $732-a-Year Question (2026)

I’ve spent years helping software companies shape their plans, and one question comes up every time: what will the customer compare us with? Kajabi vs Thinkific is a neat case of two companies giving opposite answers. Thinkific wants you to put plan next to plan. Kajabi wants you to put its bundle next to everything else you pay for.

On Thinkific’s terms, the maths is short. Its pricing page, checked 3 Nov 2026, no longer lists Basic. Thinkific retired it in late October; the cheapest plan is now Start, at $82 a month on yearly billing. Kajabi Basic is $143. That’s $61 a month, or $732 a year. Still a real number, though smaller than older comparisons show.

On Kajabi’s terms, it looks different. Kajabi isn’t only a course platform. It bundles a website, email marketing, funnels and a community. Thinkific is a course platform first, with a community on Start. So the fair comparison isn’t plan against plan. It’s your whole stack against your whole stack.

Below, I price two coach types who turn up in my conversations all the time. I’ve given them names so the numbers are easy to follow, but they’re composites, not clients. One sells 1-to-1 and has a single course on the side. The other runs group programs across four separate tools. They get opposite answers.

What you’re really comparing

Before the scenarios, here’s what each plan includes. Both from vendor pricing pages, checked 3 Nov 2026.

Two quick notes. Neither platform takes a cut of your sales, so revenue doesn’t change this fight. On Kajabi, that assumes you use Kajabi Payments. If you plan to connect your own Stripe account, check the surcharge first. And Thinkific has no free plan and no Basic plan any more, so “start free” or “start on Basic” advice from older articles is out of date.

The swing factor is the email line. Kajabi has full marketing email. Thinkific’s built-in email is basic. Whatever you pair Thinkific with is the number that decides the winner.

Coach one: Priya, 1-to-1 coaching and one course

Say her name is Priya. She’s a leadership coach who gets most of her income from 1-to-1 clients booked through her website. She has a six-module course on difficult conversations, priced at $197, that sells a handful of copies a month, mostly to people on her newsletter.

Coaches in her spot often start a Kajabi trial because a peer swore by it, then come away feeling they ought to use every part of it. That feeling is the warning sign. Feeling you should use a tool is not the same as needing it.

Strip it back and her list of needs is short:

• Somewhere to host one course, with quizzes and a certificate at the end
• A checkout page
• A fortnightly newsletter to about 800 people, with one welcome sequence

She already has a website she likes. She doesn’t want a community. Her only funnel is “newsletter, then link to course.”

Priya’s stack, priced

That’s the $732 in the title. Same course, same newsletter, same checkout.

Kit’s Free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers, with one automation and one sequence. Priya needs exactly one sequence. The plan has no app integrations, so buyers won’t sync from Thinkific into Kit automatically. She’d export new buyers once a month. It’s a ten-minute job.

What if Priya wants proper email automation?

The obvious next question: what if she wants buyers tagged and moved into a follow-up sequence automatically? That needs paid email. Kit Creator at 1,000 subscribers is $33 a month on yearly billing. Her stack becomes $115. Against Kajabi’s $143, she still saves $28 a month, or $336 a year.

If she used MailerLite Comfort instead, at $17.10 a month yearly for 1,000 subscribers, the stack is $99.10, and the saving is about $527 a year. Thinkific still wins for a coach like Priya, but no longer by a wide margin once paid email is in.

Coach two: Marcus, group programs and four tools

The second type is just as common. I’ll call him Marcus: a business coach who runs a 12-week group program for new consultants. He has a cohort a quarter and a library of recorded trainings that members keep access to.

Add up his costs and he’s paying for four things:

1. A website on Squarespace Basic
2. An email tool with about 5,000 subscribers and several automations
3. A course platform with a community for program members
4. Zapier, to glue the other three together

His real problem isn’t money. It’s the Sunday-night message from a new member who paid but never got a login, because something in the chain of Zaps broke. Coaches running this kind of setup talk about that message as a regular event, not a one-off.

Marcus’s stack, priced

Here Kajabi costs about $12 a month more, or roughly $146 a year. That’s close to a wash. And it’s before you count the hours spent fixing broken connections between tools. For someone like Marcus, those hours are worth far more than $146.

The deciding detail is the email bill. At 5,000 subscribers, Kit Creator costs $65.83 on its own. Kajabi includes email, but Basic only covers 2,500 contacts. Marcus’s list pushes him onto Growth. So the bundle doesn’t save him money. It saves him the glue.

The catch for Marcus

Marcus’s list is the catch, not his products. Kajabi Basic allows 5 products and 2,500 contacts. He has a group program, a training library and a small paid workshop. That’s three, so products fit easily. His 5,000-person list doesn’t. That’s why his Kajabi line says Growth: $199 a month on yearly billing ($249 monthly), with room for 50 products and 25,000 contacts. Check Kajabi’s pricing page before you plan around it.

If he cleaned his list down to under 2,500 people who actually open his emails, Basic at $143 would do the job. Then Kajabi would be about $44 a month cheaper than his stack. Plenty of lists carry that much dead weight. Just don’t plan on it until you’ve checked yours.

He also gives up Squarespace’s design tools. Kajabi’s site builder is fine for a coaching business, but if you love your current site, that’s a real cost even if it doesn’t show up in dollars.

Both scenarios on one chart

What changes is what Kajabi replaces, and which plan your list needs. For Priya, Kajabi Basic replaces one $82 tool and a free one. For Marcus, Kajabi replaces four paid tools, but his list puts him on Growth, so the two totals end up close.

Year two: when Priya’s list grows

Costs don’t sit still. Priya’s newsletter is about 800 people today. Say she wants it at 5,000 within a year or so, with proper automations. What happens to the Kajabi vs Thinkific gap then?

The saving drops sharply once Priya starts paying for Kit, then jumps back when her list pushes her onto Kajabi Growth at $199. After that it shrinks again as Kit’s price climbs. Even at 10,000 subscribers on paid email, Thinkific is still about $24.50 a month cheaper.

That’s worth knowing before you pick. Older comparisons say a big list makes Kajabi the cheap option. With Basic capped at 2,500 contacts, that’s mostly not true for a coach like Priya. The gap is much smaller than the headline $732 at some list sizes, but it doesn’t go away.

There’s one more wrinkle. Kajabi Basic’s limits come in a pair: 5 products and 2,500 contacts. Priya’s one course plus the two she has planned fits inside five. Her list is what would push her up a plan first.

Monthly billing changes the size of the gap

Everything above uses yearly billing. Lots of coaches start monthly, though, to keep the door open. Here’s what that does.

• Kajabi Basic: $179 a month on monthly billing, against $143 yearly
• Thinkific Start: $109 a month on monthly billing, against $82 yearly
• Thinkific Grow: $219 a month on monthly billing, against $164 yearly

On monthly billing, the gap between the two entry plans is $70 a month. For Priya on Kit’s Free plan, that’s $840 over a year. With Kit Creator at $39 monthly, her Thinkific stack is $148 against Kajabi’s $179, a $31 gap. For Marcus, Kajabi Growth goes to $249, while Kit Creator and Thinkific Start rise to $79 and $109. The two routes stay close, so convenience still decides it.

My usual advice: pay monthly while you test. Switch to yearly once the course is live and selling. You’ll pay a little extra for two or three months, and in return you can walk away cheaply if it’s the wrong fit.

Five questions that settle it

If you’re still on the fence, answer these honestly. They’re the same questions that sort Priya from Marcus.

1. Do you already have a website you like? If yes, Kajabi’s included site is worth little to you. Lean Thinkific.
2. How big is your email list, and how many automations do you need? Under 1,000 with one sequence, Kit’s free plan covers it. Lean Thinkific. Up to 2,500 with several automations, Kajabi Basic’s included email is worth real money. Past 2,500, Kajabi means Growth at $199, so price it carefully.
3. Do you run a community or membership? Both entry plans include a community, so the comparison stays Kajabi Basic at $143 against Thinkific Start at $82.
4. How many products will you sell in the next year? More than 5 puts you past Kajabi Basic. Thinkific Start has no course cap.
5. How much do you hate fixing connections between tools? Be honest. If one broken Zap ruins your week, the all-in-one is worth paying for.

Marcus would answer “no, big, yes, three, a lot”. That’s a Kajabi coach, even at Growth prices. Priya would answer “yes, small, no, three, not much”. That’s a Thinkific coach.

What switching between them actually costs

Many readers are already on one of these and wondering about the other. The cost of moving isn’t on any pricing page, so here’s how I’d think about it.

Kajabi to Thinkific means rebuilding your courses, but also finding new homes for your website, email list and funnels. Your list is the most important piece. Move it first, into whatever email tool you’ll keep. The course rebuild is the easy part. Re-creating funnels is the slow part.

Thinkific to Kajabi means consolidating. You’ll move courses in, rebuild your site in Kajabi’s builder, and import your list. The payoff is cancelling three or four other subscriptions. Time it so your other tools’ renewals fall after you’ve finished, so you’re not paying double for long.

Either way, don’t migrate in the middle of a launch. Pick a quiet month. Tell your students where to log in, twice.

Where Thinkific beats Kajabi

Price is the obvious win, even if it’s a smaller one now. These are the others.

• Unlimited courses on the entry plan. Thinkific Start has no course cap. Kajabi Basic stops at 5 products. If you like to make small courses, this matters a lot.
• A course builder that’s built for courses. Quizzes, drip content and certificates come on Start. Thinkific has been a course platform first for a long time, and it shows.
• You keep the tools you already like. If your website and email list are in good shape, Thinkific slots in beside them. You’re not rebuilding your whole business.
• Cheaper flexibility. Monthly billing is $109 on Thinkific Start against $179 on Kajabi Basic. If you want to test a course before committing, that $70 gap adds up.
• Lower risk if you leave. Your list lives in your email tool, not your course platform. Moving courses later is work, but your audience stays put.

Where Kajabi beats Thinkific

Kajabi has real strengths. They just only matter if you use them.

• Email that knows who bought what. Because email and courses live in the same system, you can send to buyers of one product without any syncing. No export, no Zap.
• One login, one bill. Site, funnels, email, community, courses. For a busy coach, fewer moving parts means fewer Sunday-night fires.
• Funnels built in. Landing page, opt-in, email sequence, sales page, checkout, all in one place. On a Thinkific stack you’d assemble that from pieces.
• Cheaper when it replaces four tools. If your list fits in Basic’s 2,500 contacts and you’d otherwise pay for email, a website, a community tool and Zapier, Kajabi Basic comes out ahead. Past 2,500 contacts, Growth lands close to the stack, as Marcus’s numbers show.

The hidden costs on each side

Neither pricing page tells the whole story. Here’s what each one leaves out.

Thinkific’s hidden costs

• Email. Thinkific’s built-in email is basic; most coaches pair it with Kit or MailerLite. Free can work for a while; paid gets you integrations.
• A higher floor. Thinkific retired its Basic plan in late October 2026, so $82 is now the entry price. The next step, Grow, is $164. Make sure you know which plan you need before you build.
• Your time. On a free email plan without integrations, someone has to move buyers by hand. Usually you.

Kajabi’s hidden costs

• The caps. 5 products and 2,500 contacts on Basic. Pass either and you’re on Growth at $199.
• Monthly billing. $179 against $143 yearly is a $36 premium every month you stay flexible.
• No cheap entry any more. The cheaper Kickstarter plan was retired for new customers in January 2026. If you’re starting today, $143 is the floor. Our Kajabi pricing explainer covers the change.
• Lock-in. When your site, list and courses all live in one place, leaving is a bigger job.

Both platforms pass on Stripe or PayPal processing, roughly 2.9% + 30¢ per sale. That’s a wash, so I’ve left it out of every total here.

Kajabi vs Thinkific: who should not buy each

This is the part most comparison posts skip.

Don’t buy Kajabi if you already have a website and email tool you’re happy with, and you just need somewhere to put a course. You’ll be paying $61 a month for features you’ll ignore. Also skip it if you plan to sell lots of small products, because Basic stops at 5.

Don’t buy Thinkific if you’re about to rebuild your whole online presence from scratch and you hate managing tools. You’ll end up stacking a site, an email tool and probably Zapier on top, and that’s where Thinkific’s price advantage drains away.

Don’t buy either yet if you’re a 1-to-1 coach with no course. You need scheduling and payments, not a course platform. Paperbell does that for $97 a month, or $970 a year. Our course platform rankings explain when to make the jump.

How we checked

All prices come from the Kajabi and Thinkific pricing pages and the other vendors’ own pages, checked 3 Nov 2026. Thinkific raised prices in October 2026 and then retired its Basic plan, so if you read a cheaper number elsewhere, it’s probably old. We re-check prices monthly.

Where a price wasn’t verified, I haven’t quoted it. I’ve written this from years of watching how SaaS companies price their plans, not from running a coaching practice. That’s why the focus is on the whole stack. Plans are designed to look cheapest on the line you compare first.

My verdict

If you’re like Priya, a coach with one or two courses and a website and list that already work, pick Thinkific Start. Pair it with Kit’s Free plan. You’ll pay $82 a month and keep $732 a year that would have gone to Kajabi. Upgrade to paid email when you need more than one sequence, and know that the saving shrinks to $336 a year when you do.

If you’re like Marcus, running group programs and paying for a site, a large email list, a community and glue between them, Kajabi is the better buy, but be clear about why. With a list under 2,500, Basic is cheaper than your stack. With a list Marcus’s size, you’re on Growth at $199, about $12 a month more than the stack. You’re paying for fewer failure points, not a smaller bill. For a coach like Marcus, that trade is worth it.

If you’re in between, here’s a quick test. Add up what you’d pay for Thinkific plus email, a website and a community tool. If your list fits in 2,500 contacts, compare that total with Kajabi Basic at $143. If it’s bigger, compare it with Growth at $199. Lower number wins. For the head-to-head with Thinkific’s nearest rival, see Thinkific vs Teachable, and for the full field, Kajabi alternatives.

Kajabi or Thinkific: common questions