- 17th Jun '20
- Sell SaaS
- 13 minutes read
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SHAREKajabi vs. ClickFunnels — Who Creates the Best Landing Pages?
Do you need to make an informed decision on whether to use Kajabi or ClickFunnels?
That’s not an easy choice, considering how similar the two platforms are. It’s important to note that both offer a lot of value to their users who need digital marketing tools. Before explaining the factors you need to take into account to choose one platform over the other, there’s another matter to discuss — why is digital marketing crucial for your business to begin with?
All digital marketing can be boiled down to a simple premise — making a website for a product or service and filling it with appropriate content designed to generate sales. This entails all of the technical aspects of constructing a website, including graphic design and web design, as well as the marketing part of planning a campaign and executing it with captivating content.
Achieving this is not that difficult for large companies that either have enough resources to outsource the job to a marketing agency or develop an in-house team of their own. Small businesses have adapted to the world of online marketing with more difficulties and often with middling results.
Ignoring e-commerce as a revenue stream is not possible either. According to Oberlo, more than two billion people will shop online in 2020, with the volume of online sales expected to increase each year. With that much money at stake, digital marketing is far from the whiskey-sipping Mad Men experience.
Increasing online sales in 2020 means adhering to a precise data-fueled science. Using meticulous audience targeting, lead generation software, concrete sales funnels, and comprehensive social media campaigns is the only way to victory in this field.
The difficulties that entrepreneurs and small businesses had in this competition have led to the inception of a software niche aimed at leveling the playing field — such as Kajabi or ClickFunnels. Such software packages have the purpose of simplifying the complexities of marketing a service or product on the Internet. They also have fundamental differences that set them apart.
The Basic Differences between Kajabi and ClickFunnels
Image source: kajabi
ClickFunnels is a platform that wants to be the only thing you need for digital marketing. Their users can access a wide range of tools required to sell any product on the Internet. The ClickFunnels philosophy revolves around viewing your marketing plan in the form of a sales funnel, which the platform helps you execute in practice.
Kajabi has an almost identical purpose, along with a similar offering of features. This is also a funnel builder for online marketing, but with one crucial distinction — Kajabi focuses exclusively on digital products, making their target audience more focused. The platform has a range of features intended for the marketing of ebooks, membership programs, web courses, etc.
You can use ClickFunnels to sell physical products online as well — Kajabi lacks such capabilities. A closer look also reveals plenty of differences in the details, like the execution of similar features, integrative capacities, and pricing schemes. To recapitulate, the main distinctions are:
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ClickFunnels — funnel-focused marketing platform for both physical and digital products
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Kajabi— similar platform but only used for selling digital products to an online audience
ClickFunnels 101 — Sales Funnels for an Online Audience
ClickFunnels is one of the most extensively-used platforms for digital sales funnels. It should be noted that sales funnels weren’t invented for the Internet, or even in for the digital era. Marketing funnels are recognized as the oldest formal marketing model, dating back to the end of the 19th century. The basic steps of a sales funnel haven’t changed much since then:
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Raising awareness
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Educating the audience
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Converting leads
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Engaging potential customers
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Closing the final deal
There are different ways of approaching each of these steps using traditional media and modes of communication. On the Internet, however, the process is more focused, almost exclusively revolving around a single website for the product or service that you’re marketing. Each of the steps outlined above corresponds to specific parts of your website:
| Sales funnel steps | Online execution |
| Raising awareness | Making members of your target audience aware of the product through social media marketing, banners on related websites, etc. |
| Educating the audience | Creating content that educated website visitors about the value of your product, such as blog posts or guides |
| Converting leads | Providing a solution for the visitors’ issues through your product, mostly through copywriting on the landing page |
| Engaging potential customers | Following up on leads via email marketing or other types of messages |
| Closing the deal | Making a specific offer to customers and leading them to the checkout page where the transaction is finalized and processed |
In digital marketing, your sales funnel is your website. This is where technical aspects like web programming coalesce with the creative part that is product branding and content creation. ClickFunnels offers a way to complete both of them without a team of experts or any in-depth experience with either programming or design.
Image source: abc7news
ClickFunnels as a Content Platform
Any small business or individual can create a functional and professionally-designed website for product sales via ClickFunnels. There is no web programming involved, as their platform includes a visual interface, entirely abstracting any code like HTML or CSS.
Many website builders and content management platforms offer the same functionality — a visual editor that helps people avoid coding. ClickFunnels is unique because it streamlines the creative aspects of online marketing as well — the visual design and content.
The platform has a content marketplace where the ClickFunnels community of business owners and marketers share their work. Regardless of whether you’re selling organic produce or reselling digital products, there is bound to be a funnel template that suits your needs. You can purchase ready-made sales funnels or individual website pages. The ClickFunnels editor also makes it easy to perform any necessary changes to adapt the templates to your specific sales pitch.
ClickFunnels Features
ClickFunnels is not the cheapest sales funnel builder on the market. We’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that there are more affordable options available. The advantage ClickFunnels has in this regard is that it gives you a lot of value for your money and its straight-to-the-point pricing scheme. There are two packages to choose from:
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ClickFunnels Startup — costing $97 per month and offering a more limited set of features
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ClickFunnels Full Suite — costing $297 per month and giving you access to all ClickFunnels capabilities.
The two subscription plans differ when it comes to available features:
| Feature | Startup subscription | Full subscription |
| Themes and templates | Yes | Yes |
| Data overview | No | Yes |
| Membership options | No | Yes |
| Domains and hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Visual editing | Yes | Yes |
| Ready-made sales funnels | Yes | Yes |
| Newsletters and email marketing | No | Yes |
Top Features
Comprehensive platforms for digital marketing like ClickFunnels intentionally want to achieve the “wow effect” and dazzle you with a vast number of different features. A more detailed inspection helps you realize that most platforms in the sales funnel niche have similar options, with one or two standout features that seal the deal.
The visual editor is that feature for ClickFunnels. Most competing funnel builders (Kajabi included) opt for a visual interface instead of coding, to reach the widest audience. The quality of execution that ClickFunnels brings to the table is what sets it apart.
It is clear that the visual editor has been extensively tested, as it works almost perfectly. Bugs are few and in-between, so no annoying glitches will make your work longer than it should be. The drag and drop interface is immediately intuitive — anyone can pick up on how to use it in a matter of hours.
The way that ClickFunnels approaches content is also commendable. The intuitive website builder has allowed many people to tinker with the default funnel designs provided by the developers. All of them can share their work with the ClickFunnels community in the form of paid and free content. A glance is enough to see that the community is vibrant. You can find a template for pages or whole funnels in any industry quickly.
Professional digital marketers also utilize ClickFunnels when constructing a sales funnel without dedicated tools would require a bigger budget and more work. The focus here is on freelance marketers who continuously work on raising awareness of their personal brand through a variety of services and products. Many of them use their websites to offer white label marketing software under their own brand. ClickFunnels can be used to produce a functional online funnel for such products quickly, or even to offer funnel templates as bonuses accompanying other products!
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ClickFunnels and Your Business
The value of ClickFunnels to any business is evident from the platform’s versatility. The basic functionalities are designed for any product or service pitch, regardless of whether your product is digital or not. It doesn’t matter what you want to sell online, as long as you know what you want your sales funnel to look like. Even if you don’t, there are hundreds of templates for a wide variety of industries that you can adapt to your product without much fuss.
ClickFunnels Integrations
ClickFunnels and Kajabi have plenty of similarities, but their capacity for integration is not one of them. Compared to the latter, ClickFunnels offers a far more extensive range of options for third-party tools, such as:
| Third-Party Integrations | |
| Hubspot | Mad Mimi |
| Drip | MailChimp |
| Zapier | HTML Form |
| Active Campaign | |
| HTML Form | |
Kajabi 101 — Funnel Builder for Digital Products
Kajabi is also a funnel-building software suite, with some additional digital marketing tools. Just like ClickFunnels, Kajabi views the construction of a sales website through the lens of the sales funnel model.
These two platforms diverge when it comes to the type of product that they’re used for selling. ClickFunnels has no limitations in terms of whether you want to market digital content or a physical product that needs to be shipped. Kajabi is primarily used for marketing digital content — like ebooks, audiobooks, webinars, software, etc.
They offer more options for digital content management, so marketers pitching their branded software from providers such as Sell SaaS might consider opting for Kajabi instead of ClickFunnels. The former’s focus can be surmised from their own copywriting — they claim to be a “Knowledge Platform”, not just a funnel builder.
Image source: screenshot
Features of Kajabi
The main target audience for Kajabi’s platform is “infopreneurs”. Kajabi isn’t just a funnel builder for the sales of digital products — it’s a delivery system as well. Many people in marketing, software engineering, and education want to monetize their knowledge online — Kajabi gives these professionals a way to do it.
The specific form in which you’ll sell your expertise is up to you. Kajabi can help you make an ebook from scratch and then market it on your own website, with the website also being an optimized sales funnel. The main feature that draws people towards Kajabi is its course builder. Using this option, you can both create and market a variety of courses — all without leaving the Kajabi platform!
Course Builder
The Kajabi software environment includes a powerful course builder, allowing you to create both a membership website and a series of video courses. There are three basic “Kajabi blueprints” for your course:
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Mini-courses
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Full online courses
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Online training
You can also build a custom curriculum from scratch. Once you begin, the course is parceled into different sections and categories — all you need to do is to fill them with content and edit them according to the topic you’re teaching.
After that, you’re free to set the cost for your new course — there are options for monthly subscriptions or one-time full payments. You can also add an option that ties in with access to a membership website, where you can market additional products or services.
Once done, you can set the price of your course, which can either have a fixed price that they can pay in full or as monthly payments. Or you can add a subscription model that gives them access to the course as long as they pay a recurring membership fee.
Kajabi Website Builder
Kajabi isn’t just suitable for designing online courses. The platform also includes options for website construction for any kind of digital product. There are basic themes you can choose from, though their diversity is notably smaller compared to ClickFunnels’ due to a less integrated community.
The page editor itself is robust and stable, allowing you to add and edit all kinds of content — from opt-in elements to custom videos and images. The Kajabi interface is also full of pre-built website sections focused on interactivity, like comments, social media integration, countdown timers, etc.
Kajabi Integration
Kajabi is compatible with a variety of third-party software options:
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Facebook Pixel
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Segment
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Drip
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ActiveCampaign
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Zapier
ClickFunnels vs. Kajabi— How They Stack Up
ClickFunnels is an excellent tool for marketing both digital and physical products. They offer integration with shipping options for the latter, but they do not aid you in delivering digital products beyond mere payment processing. Kajabi is a better option for the latter.
Comparing Kajabi and ClickFunnels and giving a conclusive verdict is not simple due to their similarity. We will examine how these platforms fare in terms of:
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Budgeting
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Value
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Usability
Every business owner or entrepreneur must keep their budgetary limitations in mind. The best funnel builder in the world won’t be of use if you can’t afford it. From that standpoint, ClickFunnels is undoubtedly cheaper. The lowest-tiered plan sets you back less than $100 per month. In the case of Kajabi, this is a monthly subscription of $130. This may not seem like a lot, but 30% adds up on an annual basis.
Both platforms offer a decent amount of value, considering their range of features. You won’t find many differences here — for example, both platforms offer built-in email marketing suites. The Actionetics software found in ClickFunnels has only superficial differences compared to Pipelines from Kajabi.
The usability found in these platforms will depend on what you expect from your sales funnel. If you want to sell a physical product in the e-commerce world, ClickFunnels is the better option. They have integration options for shipments that Kajabi lacks.
Kajabi enters the spotlight when it comes to marketing digital products. If you’re looking to monetize a video course or dabble in reseller marketing, this platform can be your perfect delivery system.
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