Online course builders are the solution to stay up to date with the changing workforce. The pandemic has led more people to turn to online courses to learn new skills or hobbies that they would otherwise seek in person. Software development can take you to many other exciting career paths that are not typical. Nowadays, there are plenty of things you can teach online if you love what you do. And if you are thinking of teaching online, there are many online course builders to choose from. You might also confuse yourself between the two terms often seen on a search engine results page: course builder and online learning management system (LMS).
What is the difference between a Course Builder and an LMS?
The difference between a course builder and an LMS is that the goal of an LMS is to track and assist you in improving your learning performance. A course builder will be the space for you to join and follow the course. However, it is not as mobile and engaged as an LMS.
Now that you know the difference, in this article, we will compare the two most popular course builders, Kajabi and Thinkific. If you’ve got something valuable to teach, you should be focusing on creating your content. A course builder can help you do the rest of the job. With a course builder, you can go very complex or simple. The end goal is for you to be able to sell and earn income.
We will start with our first impressions, then proceed to the most significant differences we found, talk about the pricing and conclude with a final winner!
First Impressions Kajabi vs. Thinkific
Our first impression of Kajabi vs Thinkific is that Kajabi is not only a course builder; it has more tools to support you in marketing your courses. Tools you can find only in Kajabi include an extensive website builder, marketing tools, and the ability to have your a community group.
Here are our first impressions of online course builders, Kajabi and Thinkific.
Kajabi – First Impressions
Nice section separation
Extensive website builder
Simple marketing tool
Community group creation
Thinkific – First Impressions
Easy to create content
Basic site builder
Course builder a bit messy
Focus on products, not community
What are the most significant differences between Kajabi and Thinkific?
Kajabi vs Thinkific Pros and Cons
Before we dive into the two most important tools, here are the pros and cons.
Marketing Tools
Overall, Kajabi has more tools to offer. As you prepare your marketing funnel, Kajabi can lead your potential customer through a landing page, create email automation to drive them through conversion, and you can even create events such as webinars. It is an all-in-one tool. You can also have your built-in blog supported by a mobile app where you can access your course from.
Thinkific is in this sense more minimalistic. The design options are more limited. But unlike Kajabi, you can distribute certificates to your students. The downside is that you cannot import content directly from Google Drive or Dropbox.
User Experience
As Kajabi is an all-in-one online course platform tool, it is riskier if the server runs into problems. As for the customer service, Thinkific has a very supportive help center. But an essential option we found in Kajabi is the tool to create community discussions, an important tool to drive engagement and long-term loyalty from your potential audience.
Course Builder Pricing
Thinkific offers a free plan, while Kajabi provides a free 14-day trial. Let us get into the details.
Kajabi offers 3 plans that is:
The Basic Plan: It costs $149/month with the option to create 3 products and 3 pipelines. You can create landing pages, emails with up to 10,000 subscribers with 1 admin user.
The Basic Plan: It costs $149/month with the option to create 3 products and 3 pipelines. You can create landing pages, emails with up to 10,000 subscribers with 1 admin user.
The Basic Plan: It costs $149/month with the option to create 3 products and 3 pipelines. You can create landing pages, emails with up to 10,000 subscribers with 1 admin user.
Thinkific offers a free plan, so if you’re not too sure and building courses online is completely new to you, this might be a great first option. You can create up to 3 courses, including quizzes and surves.
The Basic Plan is $49/month. You can have unlimited courses, email marketing integration and more marketing automation tools.
The Pro Plan will cost you $99/month. You can make your courses hidden or public, offer certificates and create membership bundles for your students.
The last plan will be the Premier Plan, at $499/month. You can add up to 5 site admin accounts, 50 course admins. You will also gain access to many tools, one being an email automation provider.
Final Winner
You must make the best decision when creating your course. You can save time and money and ultimately determine your course’s success, depending on your resources. Statistics show that the online Learning Market is predicted to have a growth rate between “8 and 11% per year and projected the industry will be worth between 319 and 375 billion USD by 2025 or 2026” (pre-pandemic numbers).
If you would like to make passive income for your long-term plan by selling a few courses online, Thinkific can be your best first option. You can subscribe to the free program and upgrade as you increase your base. But if community engagement and a product pipeline process are vital to your marketing strategy, we recommend that you choose Kajabi.