Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover memberships & subscriptions. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| Kajabi | Memberful | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $143 | From $49 |
| Pricing model | Free trial, then paid | Paid subscription |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | 4.9% of what you earn |
| Runs on | Web, iOS, Android | Web |
| Covers | Courses & Coaching, Landing Pages & Funnels, Memberships & Subscriptions | Memberships & Subscriptions, Community Platforms, Monetization & Payments |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
Courses, funnels and email under one roof
Kajabi is the expensive end of course platforms and sells the reason for it plainly: landing pages, email, checkout, community and the course itself all built by one company, so nothing has to be wired together. Coaches with a working offer tend to stay. Anybody still testing whether the offer works is paying several hundred a month to find out.
Our note
This is the expensive end of the category by a distance, and the money buys one bill and one support line rather than a better course player. Worth it once the offer is proven. An expensive way to find out whether it sells.
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Paid memberships bolted onto a site you own
Memberful sells memberships from a site you already run rather than moving your audience to a platform, and it is the tool most WordPress publishers reach for when they start charging. One price covers everything and the money is charged on top as a percentage. Nothing is billed until a first payment comes in, so a launch that never launches costs nothing.
Our note
The 4.9 percent is the number to model, because it is charged on revenue rather than on profit: at $2,000 a month collected it is about double the subscription. Against Ghost, which takes nothing, this wins on flexibility and loses on arithmetic once you are large.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.
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