# ClickFunnels vs Kajabi · CheckoutScale

> Source: https://checkoutscale.com/compare/clickfunnels-vs-kajabi

## ClickFunnels vs Kajabi

Head-to-head [All head-to-heads →](/compare) 

Pick ClickFunnels if you build sales funnels that push cold or paid traffic to an offer and want the fastest page builder, the best templates and no cut of your sales; pick Kajabi if you sell courses, coaching or memberships to a warm audience and want the course player, community and email under the same login as your checkout.

By [Marcus Reyes](/authors/marcus-reyes), Editor. Updated 27 September 2026.

**Disclosure:**We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings. 

Quick answer

**ClickFunnels** is our top pick for most people. ClickFunnels is the pick if you are starting out and want proven templates and a familiar platform that bundles pages, checkout and email. 

* **ClickFunnels.** Best for Beginners who want templates and fast, simple funnels in one familiar platform. From $97/mo.
* **Kajabi.** Best for established coaches and creators running their whole business from one dashboard. From $179/mo.

### Side by side

|                       | ClickFunnels | Kajabi  |
| --------------------- | ------------ | ------- |
| From                  | $97/mo       | $179/mo |
| Same-URL split test   | No           | No      |
| Multi-MID routing     | No           | No      |
| Order bumps & upsells | Yes          | Yes     |
| Free trial            | 14 days      | 14 days |

ClickFunnels and Kajabi both promise to run your pages, your email and your checkout from one login, and on a feature list they look close. Look at what each was built to do first and they answer different questions. ClickFunnels is a sales-funnel builder: point cold or paid traffic at a page, convert it, and add order bumps and upsells at checkout. Kajabi is a coaching and course suite that happens to include a checkout. If you are genuinely down to these two, the deciding question is not which is better software. It is what you sell and who you sell it to: an offer pushed to traffic that does not know you yet, or a course, coaching program or membership sold to an audience that already does.

ClickFunnels is funnel-first, and it shows. It ships the nicest templates in this category, its page editor is the one non-technical sellers get comfortable with fastest, and a single-offer funnel with an order bump and a one-click upsell is quick to stand up. It takes no cut of your sales: you pay the plan and your own processor fees, and nothing else. The trade-off is depth and price. Long-term users describe it as expensive and rigid once a flow gets complicated, and the move from Classic to 2.0 frustrated customers who expected a clean import and got a rebuild. Its checkout connects a single processor rather than routing across accounts.

Kajabi comes at it from the creator side. One login covers online courses, coaching, memberships, a community, marketing email, landing pages and a checkout, so a solo expert stops paying for and wiring together five or six separate tools. It takes no revenue share, the pages and student experience look polished out of the box, and it has run since 2010 with the vendor claiming more than 100,000 businesses and $12 billion in sales, so it is not going to disappear mid-launch. What it is not is a paid-traffic tool. The checkout runs a single processor, there is no same-URL split testing and no multi-MID routing, and long-term users report support that is slow and mostly automated when a launch breaks.

#### Where each one wins

For a direct-response seller pushing paid traffic to an offer, ClickFunnels is the closer fit of the two. You want a page that converts and a checkout that adds bumps and upsells, and you want to build it fast without learning a full course platform to get there. ClickFunnels gets a funnel live quickly and then stays out of your way, and because it takes no cut of your sales, a scaling offer keeps its own margin. Kajabi can build a sales page too, but everything around it, the course player, the community, the membership tiers, is weight you are paying for and not using if your product is a physical or digital offer rather than knowledge.

For a coach, consultant or course creator selling to a warm audience, Kajabi wins, and it is not close on breadth. If your traffic is your email list, your webinar attendees and your community rather than cold ad clicks, the courses, memberships and email being built in beats stitching ClickFunnels to a separate course platform and email tool. For a higher-ticket coaching or course business that keeps its own margin, taking no revenue share matters, and the polished student experience is the product your buyer actually experiences. Ask which describes your week, because the two platforms are built for different ones.

#### On the checkout itself

This is the part worth slowing down on, because it is where the two are more alike than their marketing suggests. Both give you order bumps and one-click post-purchase upsells, both do coupons and subscription billing, and both run through a single payment processor you connect yourself. Neither lets you split-test the whole checkout, and neither sends different traffic sources to different merchant accounts. Kajabi gives you slightly more control over how a course or membership is priced and bundled; ClickFunnels gives you a faster path to a clean, converting sales page. For most single-offer sellers that difference is a wash, and the deciding factor is everything around the checkout, not the checkout itself.

#### Pricing, tier by tier

ClickFunnels starts at $97 a month on Launch, then $197 on Scale and $297 on Optimize. There is no free trial, but a 30-day money-back guarantee. Its bill is predictable: the plan fee plus your processor's rate, with no platform cut on your sales.

Kajabi is a flat subscription and it is the more expensive of the two. Basic is $179 a month, Growth $249 and Pro $499, each about 20% cheaper billed annually. It takes no revenue share, though card processing still applies (Kajabi Payments runs 2.9% plus 30 cents down to 2.7% by plan, and a third-party processor adds 2%, 1% or 0.5% on top). There is a 14-day free trial with a card required and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Note that prices rose across all plans in January 2026, and the popular Growth plan works out to $2,388 a year before processing, which is hard to justify until you are already selling consistently. So the fair comparison is $97 ClickFunnels against $179 Kajabi Basic, and ClickFunnels is the cheaper way to run a straight sales funnel.

#### If you run paid traffic: a third name to weigh

Both of these leave the same gap open, and for a media buyer it is the whole decision. Neither ClickFunnels nor Kajabi does same-URL split testing, and neither routes payments across more than one merchant account. If you buy media at volume, those two absences matter more than template quality or a built-in course tool, and they are what ElasticFunnels is built around.

ElasticFunnels is a funnel platform for teams that live on paid traffic. Same-URL split testing is its lead feature, and it is the one both other tools lack: variants rotate server-side under one campaign link, so Meta, Google and TikTok keep their optimisation and a new test never sends the ad back through review. It is not only a testing tool. It builds the pages, with an AI builder that generates one from a prompt or clones one from a URL, and its checkout runs order bumps, one-click upsells, subscriptions and multi-MID routing, so a hold on one processor does not stop the money coming in. The click, the order, the rebill and the refund land on one timeline with a CRM and attribution, which is the reconciliation work a paid-traffic team usually splits across four tools. Every feature is on every plan; the plans differ by traffic, at $97, $197 and $497 a month, with a 14-day trial and no card. EF-hosted checkouts carry a 0.5% fee on the revenue you route through them, and sales you run on outside platforms are not charged.

The honest catch is age. ElasticFunnels is newer than both ClickFunnels and Kajabi, and there is very little independent third-party review coverage to check its claims against, so until you push real volume through it you are largely taking the vendor's word for it. That is what you would expect of a platform this recent, and the no-card trial exists precisely so you can prove the split testing and the checkout on your own traffic before you move any spend. The thin outside coverage limits how much you can lean on other people's reviews today. It does not change what the pages, the split testing or the routing do once your own numbers are running through them. For the detail, read our [ElasticFunnels review](/reviews/elasticfunnels) and [ElasticFunnels vs ClickFunnels](/compare/elasticfunnels-vs-clickfunnels).

#### The short version

The two-way answer holds, because these platforms are built for different businesses. Pick ClickFunnels if you build sales funnels that push cold or paid traffic to an offer: it gives you the fastest builder, the best templates and no cut of your sales, and for a direct-response seller it is the cheaper and closer fit. Pick Kajabi if you sell courses, coaching or memberships to a warm audience and want the course player, community and email under the same login as your checkout, and you can live with a single-processor checkout and a flat, rising subscription. And if the decision is really being driven by how you test creative against paid traffic, that is the signal to put a third name on the shortlist before you sign anything. If you are still weighing the funnel builders against each other, our [ClickFunnels vs Kartra](/compare/clickfunnels-vs-kartra) breakdown covers the closest pair. 

### ClickFunnels: strengths and trade-offs

##### What works

* It is the fastest way to launch a simple opt-in or sales funnel, and the templates are nicer than most rivals ship.
* The training, books and community around it are unmatched, which shortens the learning curve for a first-time funnel builder.
* It takes no percentage of your sales; you only pay the monthly plan and your own processor fees.

##### What to watch

* Long-term users call it expensive and rigid once you need deep customization or complex flows, and the bill climbs faster than the value as you scale.
* The move from Classic to 2.0 was rough, with users reporting rebuilds rather than clean imports; its checkout is single-processor, so it is not for routing across several merchant accounts.

### Kajabi: strengths and trade-offs

##### What works

* Genuinely one platform for the whole business. Courses, coaching, a community, memberships, email, landing pages and a checkout run under one login, so you stop paying for and wiring together five or six separate tools.
* Kajabi takes no cut of your sales. You pay the plan fee and card processing, and the checkout handles order bumps, one-click upsells and subscriptions, so a higher-ticket coaching or course business keeps more of its revenue than on a percentage-fee storefront.
* It is established and well-funded. Kajabi has run since 2010 and says more than 100,000 businesses have earned over $12 billion through it, so it is not a platform likely to disappear mid-launch.
* The pages, checkout and student experience look polished out of the box, with a large template library, so a solo creator can ship a professional-looking course or membership without a designer.

##### What to watch

* It is expensive, and prices rose again in January 2026\. Plans start at $179 a month, and the popular Growth plan is $2,388 a year before processing fees, which is hard to justify until you are already selling consistently.
* Support is the most repeated long-term complaint. Even four-year customers describe chat that is mostly AI and replies that take hours or days, so do not count on fast human help when a launch breaks.
* It is not built for paid-traffic direct response. The checkout runs a single processor, with no same-URL split testing and no multi-MID routing, so media buyers who need to rotate whole checkouts or spread volume across merchant accounts will hit a wall. For a coach selling to a warm audience, none of that applies.
* Running the whole business inside one platform is its own risk. An outage or an account issue can take your site, courses, email and checkout down at once, and long-term users cite exactly that.

Our pick

### ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is the pick if you are starting out and want proven templates and a familiar platform that bundles pages, checkout and email.

[Visit ClickFunnels (opens in a new tab) ](https://www.clickfunnels.com/?utm%5Fsource=checkoutscale.com&utm%5Fmedium=affiliate&utm%5Fcampaign=comparison) 

### Frequently asked questions

Is ClickFunnels or Kajabi better for paid traffic? 

Pick ClickFunnels if you build sales funnels that push cold or paid traffic to an offer and want the fastest page builder, the best templates and no cut of your sales; pick Kajabi if you sell courses, coaching or memberships to a warm audience and want the course player, community and email under the same login as your checkout.

Which is cheaper, ClickFunnels or Kajabi? 

Compare the "From" row in the table above. The cheaper sticker is not always cheaper at volume, once processing fees, add-ons and annual upgrades are counted.

### Related reading

* [ClickFunnels review](/reviews/clickfunnels)
* [Kajabi review](/reviews/kajabi)
* [The full ranking](/best)

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We rank the platforms that build the pages and host the checkout for teams running paid traffic: order bumps, one-click upsells, split-testing whole checkouts, different checkouts per traffic source, and payment routing for high-risk verticals.

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