Choosing the right platform for your online community can feel like navigating a maze, right?
You’re looking for a space where your audience can connect, learn, and grow, but the options can be overwhelming.
Two popular choices often come up: Kajabi and Circle.
Both offer compelling features, but which one truly fits your needs?
In this Circle vs Kajabi comparison, we’ll discuss the key differences between these two platforms.
Overview
We’ve explored Kajabi and Circle, diving deep into their functionalities and user experience.
This in-depth comparison is based on our hands-on testing, community feedback, and extensive research, which allows us to provide practical insights into your decision-making process.
They offer a 14-day free trial, and no credit card is required. Click here to explore Circle’s features and see how it can elevate your community!
Pricing: It has a free plan. Paid plan Starts at $89/month
Key Features:
- Memberships
- Events
- Live Streams
Kajabi provides the tools to create, market, and sell online courses, along with building a professional website and engaging your audience.
Pricing: No free plan is available. Paid plan Starts at $69/month
Key Features:
- Website Builder
- Email Marketing
- Sales Funnels
What is a Circle?
Now, let’s dive into Circle, a platform built for communities.
Think of it as a digital clubhouse. It’s designed to bring people together.
You can create discussions, host events, and build connections.
It’s all about fostering a thriving community.
Also, explore our favorite Circle alternatives…
Our Take
Build a powerful community hub with Circle. Get a clean, branded space for your members to connect, with a variety of monetization options, and reduce your transaction fees from 4% to 2% by upgrading to the professional plan.
Key Benefits
Circle prides itself on fostering deeper connections and providing a distraction-free environment. They have a proven track record, powering communities for big names like Adobe, ConvertKit, and Teachable.
- Clean and organized: Easy to navigate and find what you need.
- Spaces for different topics: Keep conversations focused.
- Rich member profiles: Get to know your members better.
- Events and live streams: Host engaging online gatherings.
- Integrations: Connect with your favorite tools.
Pricing
Circle offers a 14-day free trial and three main pricing plans:
- Professional Plan starts at $89 per month: This unlocks more features and integrations.
- Business Plan starts at $199 per month: This unlocks everything in Professional Plus.
- Enterprise Plan starts at $419 per month: This is for large organizations with specific needs.
- Plus Branded App: Custom Pricing.
Pros
Cons
What is Kajabi?
Okay, let’s talk about Kajabi. It’s an all-in-one platform. Think of it as your online business hub.
You can create courses, build a community, and market your products in one place.
It’s designed to simplify the process of running an online business.
Also, explore our favorite Kajabi alternatives…
Our Take
Over 50,000 creators have used Kajabi to generate over $5 billion in revenue. Ready to build a profitable business? Start your free trial today!
Key Benefits
Kajabi’s biggest strength is its comprehensive suite of tools.
They’ve helped over 75 million customers turn their passions into profitable businesses, generating over $8 billion in revenue.
You get everything you need to create, market, and sell your digital products.
- All-in-one solution: No need for separate website, email, and course platforms.
- Built-in marketing tools: Create funnels, automations, and email campaigns right inside Kajabi.
- No transaction fees: You keep 100% of your earnings on all plans (minus payment processor fees).
- 24/7 support: Get help whenever you need it with their customer support team.
- Mobile apps: Members can access your content and community on the go.
Pricing
- Kickstarter: $80/mo – 1 Website, 1 Product + 1 Community, 250 Contacts.
- Basic: $134/mo – 1 Website, 3 Product, 10,000 Contacts.
- Growth: $179/mo – 1 Website, 15 Product, 25,000 Contacts.
- Pro: $359/mo – 3 Website, 100 Product, 100,000 Contacts.
Pros
Cons
Feature Comparison
Circle vs Kajabi Feature Comparison Circle is a platform for building a thriving online community, while Kajabi is a powerful all-in-one platform providing all the tools needed for a successful online business.
1. Primary Platform Focus
- Circle: The circle platform is focused on community building and community engagement, providing the community platform space for interaction, making it an online community platform.
- Kajabi: The kajabi platform is an all in one platform for online business owners, emphasizing marketing efforts, sales funnels, and create online courses, summarized well in any kajabi review.
2. Website Builder and Pages
- Circle: Circle offers a website builder with limited features to create landing pages and sales pages for the circle community, but cannot host the entire website or support unlimited pages.
- Kajabi: Features a robust and intuitive website builder and landing pages tool, allowing creators to build their entire website, unlimited pages, and sophisticated marketing campaigns on the same platform.
3. Course Functionality and Builder
- Circle: Course functionality is structured around the community space, making it an integrated course offering. The course builder is simpler, designed for social and cohort-based learning.
- Kajabi: The kajabi course builder is highly robust, offering the most advanced features for structured learning, assessments, and certifications, making kajabi makes the creation of online courses seamless.
4. Community Features
- Circle: Circle offers superior community features, including multiple spaces and space group organization, live stream capability, and moderation tools to engage members and foster the thriving online community.
- Kajabi: Kajabi offers basic community features (called “Circles” and “Challenges”) which have improved with the Vibely acquisition, but the community aspect is secondary to marketing features.
5. Sales Funnels and Marketing Features
- Circle: Circle offers limited marketing features and relies heavily on third party integrations to handle email campaigns and funnels.
- Kajabi: Kajabi offers comprehensive marketing features, including native email marketing software, automation tools, and customizable sales funnels to grow your business and sell online courses.
6. Pricing and Transaction Fee
- Circle: Circle’s pricing is tiered (professional plan, business plan, enterprise plan), increasing in cost based on advanced features and usage limits, and it charges a small transaction fee.
- Kajabi: Kajabi’s pricing is tiered (basic plan, growth and pro plans), starting at a higher price point, but it charges a 0% transaction fee on growth and pro plans—the processor fee is the only fee.
7. Live Streaming and Events
- Circle: Provides native live streaming and the live streaming feature, enabling creators to host events and run live streams for the entire community directly on the platform circle.
- Kajabi: Kajabi offers live video tools for live events and coaching sessions, but the experience is generally less integrated into the community space than Circle’s native solution.
8. Automation Tools
- Circle: Circle offers automation tools (workflows) which are key for community management tasks like sending a welcome message to new members or granting access to certain spaces.
- Kajabi: Kajabi offers more powerful automation tools tied to marketing campaigns and sales pipelines, triggered by email marketing, course progress, or purchases.
9. Target Audience and Business Type
- Circle: Ideal for community builders, coaching business owners, and those seeking a dedicated membership site and strong community engagement that rivals facebook group alternatives.
- Kajabi: Best for online business owners and course creator who want a simplified, all-in-one system to run their entire business, including web presence and marketing efforts.
10. Analytics and Insights
- Circle: Circle offers valuable insights and analytics to community management and engagement subscription metrics, helping to track group discussions and member activity.
- Kajabi: Kajabi offers detailed analytics on marketing campaigns, sales funnels, revenue, and student progress within the kajabi course builder, focusing on the profitability of the online courses.
11. Mobile App and Accessibility
- Circle: Provides a dedicated mobile app for the circle community, ensuring new users and other members have seamless access and interaction across the circle community.
- Kajabi: Kajabi offers the kajabi app for students to access online courses and engaging content, but its community features require a separate app for the best experience.
What to Look For When Choosing a Community Platform?
- Prioritize the platform that lets you keep all the money from sales, ensuring transaction fees are 0% (only processor fees apply), a major differentiator in any detailed kajabi pricing review.
- The platform should offer comprehensive features, integrating a website builder, online course hosting, and email marketing software—it should be designed to run your digital business from your kajabi account without relying on other platforms.
- Check the flexibility of pricing circle models; look for tiers like a growth plan that supports scaling with a fixed price for unlimited members and allows you to grow your business successfully.
- A strong user interface is key; look for a simple and intuitive website builder with drag-and-drop building blocks that let you create landing pages and kajabi websites with minimal effort.
- Evaluate the power of the ai course builder and artificial intelligence tools (kajabi ai), ensuring they simplify course creation and offer new features for a modern course platform.
- Look for robust community members management features that allow you to control access to private spaces and ensure community posts are organized.
- The platform must offer priority support and multiple support channels (live chat support, phone support) to effectively offer support when you need it most.
- The core features should include native sales and marketing tools like an affiliate program, sales funnels, and email opt ins to maximize marketing efforts.
- A platform that includes built in payments (google pay, apple pay, kajabi payments) simplifies the checkout process for customers and contributes to a successful business.
- Check the circle.so review or circle review of alternatives to understand if the community platform space offers truly superior engagement to the integrated community features of kajabi lets.
- Look for platforms that consolidate all your learning and support materials, such as kajabi university, blog posts, and tutorials, in one site for easy access and learning.
- Consider what other advanced features are missing and if the platform is an expensive platform compared to other platform options that might offer similar tools.
- The platform should empower creators with the ability to create coaching programs and host youtube videos or similar video content directly, enhancing the user experience.
- Ensure the platform supports sustainable businesses by providing tools to manage the entire business and is not just focused on basic monetization.
- Check that the platform can find courses easily through an internal search and provides rich community features like group discussions for all members.
Final Verdict
So, which one wins in the Circle vs Kajabi showdown? It depends on your needs.
Circle is a strong contender if you’re focused on building a tight-knit community and want the best engagement tools.
It’s also a great option if you plan to sell digital products or offer coaching and want a platform that integrates well with other tools.
However, if you’re a content creator looking for an all-in-one platform to create and sell courses, Kajabi is likely the better fit.
Platforms like Kajabi offer a full suite of features. Both platforms offer a free trial.
Take advantage of those free trials. See which platform feels right for you. Your community is waiting!
More of Circle
Here is a comparison of Circle with the specified alternatives:
- Circle vs Skool: Circle focuses broadly on community customization, while Skool adds strong gamification and simplified course delivery.
- Circle vs Swarm: Circle offers general community building, while Swarm emphasizes highly structured interest-based groups.
- Circle vs Teachable: Circle is primarily a community platform, whereas Teachable is focused on course creation with an integrated community.
- Circle vs GoHighLevel: Circle specializes in community features, while GoHighLevel is a comprehensive marketing automation suite that includes community tools.
- Circle vs MightyNetworks: Circle offers robust community features, while Mighty Networks integrates community tightly with courses, content, and events.
- Circle vs Bettermode: Circle provides customizable community spaces, while Bettermode focuses on deep branding and white-label community solutions.
- Circle vs Thinkific: Circle is a dedicated community platform, while Thinkific is mainly for online courses with the community as an add-on.
- Circle vs LearnWorlds: Circle builds diverse communities, while LearnWorlds integrates community specifically with interactive online learning.
- Circle vs Disco: Circle is for general community building, while Disco focuses specifically on cohort-based learning communities.
- Circle vs Kajabi: Circle is centered on community, whereas Kajabi is an all-in-one platform for courses, marketing, and community.
- Circle vs Wylo: Circle provides a structured platform for creators, while Wylo connects individuals through interest-driven discovery and communities.
- Circle vs Whop: Circle builds direct communities for creators, while Whop is a marketplace for selling access to digital communities and products.
More of Kajabi
- Kajabi vs Skool: Kajabi offers all-in-one business tools; Skool focuses specifically on community, courses, and gamification.
- Kajabi vs Swarm: Kajabi provides broad creator tools; Swarm is designed for structured, interest-based communities.
- Kajabi vs Teachable: Kajabi is a full business platform; Teachable centers on course creation with community features.
- Kajabi vs GoHighLevel: Kajabi targets creators with courses/community; GoHighLevel is a marketing/sales automation suite.
- Kajabi vs Bettermode: Kajabi is an all-in-one creator platform; Bettermode provides a highly customizable dedicated community space.
- Kajabi vs Thinkific: Kajabi offers integrated marketing/sales funnels; Thinkific specializes in course creation with community options.
- Kajabi vs LearnWorlds: Kajabi is a complete business platform; LearnWorlds focuses on interactive online courses and learning communities.
- Kajabi vs Circle: Kajabi is an all-in-one solution; Circle is a dedicated, modern community platform.
- Kajabi vs Disco: Kajabi is a general creator platform; Disco is built for cohort-based courses and learning communities.
- Kajabi vs Wylo: Kajabi is a business platform for creators; Wylo connects users via interest-based communities.
- Kajabi vs Whop: Kajabi is a platform for building and selling directly, while Whop is a marketplace for the community of sale/digital access.
- Kajabi vs MightyNetworks: Kajabi integrates robust marketing; MightyNetworks prioritizes community, courses, and content together.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Kajabi better than Circle
Neither is universally “better.” Kajabi excels as an all-in-one platform for course creation and sales. Circle shines as a dedicated community platform. The best choice depends entirely on your priorities.
Can I sell courses on Circle?
You can sell courses on CCircle, but it’s not its primary function. It’s better suited for community-focused learning experiences. You may need integrations for robust course management and sales.
Does Kajabi have a free plan?
No, Kajabi doesn’t offer a free plan. They offer a 14-day free trial, allowing you to explore the platform before committing to a paid subscription.
Can I integrate other tools with Circle?
Yes, CCircleintegrates with various tools, expanding its functionality. This lets you connect your preferred email marketing, payment processing, and other essential services.
Which platform is more affordable?
Circle generally has a lower starting price point than Kajabi. However, consider your long-term needs. Kajabi’s all-in-one nature might be more cost-effective in the long run if you need all its features.
English 
Spanish 
Chinese 
German 
French 
Russian 
Portuguese 
Japanese 
Korean