ThriveCart vs Kajabi

Kajabi vs ThriveCart

Two products remain, and they serve different purposes. ThriveCart takes the payment, offers an order bump, and can show another offer after the buyer pays. Kajabi can host the course, run the community and handle email from the same account. Your monthly bill depends on which of those you still need.

ThriveCart's homepage presents a checkout and funnel stack, with subscriptions and ThriveCart Academy bundled in, and it states 0% fees on sales. The card processor still charges its own rate. Kajabi's homepage describes products, payments and marketing as one connected system: courses, coaching, communities, memberships, newsletters and podcasts, with upsells, downsells and order bumps on the checkout.

The plan bills, side by side

The cart rows come from ThriveCart's pricing post. The account rows come from Kajabi's pricing page. ThriveCart still offers a lifetime Standard license next to the monthly plans.

The annual total is a full year at the annual rate, before card fees. Compare Standard with Basic while you are still on Kajabi's first row. Growth is the next row up.

What each sale costs after the subscription

The subscription is the first bill. Processing is the bill on every sale after that.

ThriveCart's homepage puts the platform's own fee at zero percent of sales. Your processor bills its own rate on top.

Kajabi's pricing page says there is no revenue sharing. On Basic, Kajabi Payments lists US cards at 2.9% plus 30 cents. A third-party processor on that same plan adds 2% on top of the processor's own charge.

Leave the course in Kajabi and take payment in ThriveCart

ThriveCart's Kajabi article describes sellers who already divide the work. Kajabi hosts the course. ThriveCart runs the funnel and the checkout, and it can manage an affiliate program. Zapier can trigger on a purchase, a refund or a cancelled subscription, and grant or revoke access to the Kajabi offer.

You pay two subscriptions to run it that way. Students still open the lessons where they already sign in. Order bumps and post-purchase offers are handled in ThriveCart. The article puts affiliate management on the higher cart plan. The Pro+ page names the affiliate center and automated payouts, which is the same tier as dunning and a custom domain.

Where the lessons actually live

Standard includes Academy Starter. The homepage lists unlimited courses and students with that bundle.

Course creators who tried the video hosting say it handled video poorly. Sellers who use it to take payments describe the checkout as solid. Kajabi fits a coaching or membership business that wants the lessons, the community and email in one account.

Some sellers who already pay for Kajabi still use ThriveCart for checkout. Others call the Kajabi subscription expensive. They pay it when the whole business runs in that account. Basic's product and contact caps are in the table above. A larger catalog or a larger list means Growth or Pro.

When the ad URL has to stay the same

A checkout that changes while the ad URL stays the same, or a first sale split across merchant accounts you control, calls for a different product. The checkout split testing guide explains that case.

My take

If students should access the course, the community and their email in the same account that took the payment, I would use Kajabi and its order bumps.

If the lessons already live somewhere else, and you want order bumps plus an offer after payment, I would use ThriveCart for the checkout and leave the lessons where they are. The cart subscription is the smaller of the two bills in the table. The ThriveCart review covers the two cart plans.

Shoppers still comparing carts can read SamCart vs ThriveCart. If the other option also hosts the course and the email, read ClickFunnels vs Kajabi or Checkout Champ vs Kajabi.