Kajabi vs LearnDash: the honest version from someone who builds on both
Prices and platform details last checked 2 September 2026.
Kajabi is a rented all in one. LearnDash is a course engine you bolt onto a WordPress site you own. That’s the whole difference, and everything else in this comparison is a consequence of it.
Kajabi costs from $143 a month paid yearly, or $179 month to month, and gives you courses, email, checkout and pages in one login, with one company to blame. The LearnDash LMS plugin starts at $199 a year for one site, plus hosting and any add-ons you need, and gives you a platform you control. Both prices were checked against the vendors’ current pages on 2 September 2026.
We build on both. Here’s who should stay, who should leave, and the one question that settles it in about a minute.
The one question: do you want to rent it or own it?
Every other argument in this post is downstream of this one.
If you want to rent, Kajabi is an excellent landlord. You pay monthly, you get a furnished flat with the lights already wired, and when something breaks you phone one number. You also don’t get to knock through a wall, and the rent goes up as your business grows.
If you want to own, LearnDash on WordPress is a plot of land and a very good set of tools. You pay for the build once, you pay a small amount a year for the licence and the hosting, and you can change anything. You’re also the one who calls the plumber.
Most people know which of those they are before they finish reading this paragraph. If you don’t, the Platform Finder asks you four questions and tells you straight, no email required.
Price over three years, honestly
Numbers first, then the caveats. Every vendor price here was checked against the vendor’s own current pricing on 2 September 2026. Check them again before you decide, because they change.
| Platform | Starting cost | Three-year platform cost | Key caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kajabi Basic, yearly billing | $143/month | $5,148 | 5 products and 2,500 contacts |
| LearnDash LMS, one site | $199/year | $597 licence only | Add hosting, email tools and any paid add-ons |
Kajabi, three years
- Basic, paid yearly: $143 a month, so $5,148 over three years. Caps: 5 products, 2,500 contacts.
- Basic, paid monthly: $179 a month, so $6,444.
- Growth, paid yearly: $199 a month, so $7,164. Caps: 50 products, 25,000 contacts.
- Pro, paid yearly: $399 a month, so $14,364.
- Kajabi lists US Kajabi Payments card rates of 2.7% to 2.9% plus 30 cents per sale. On its new plans, using a third-party processor can add 2% on Basic, 1% on Growth or 0.5% on Pro where Kajabi Payments is available. Kajabi says the extra fee does not apply to PayPal, legacy plans or regions without Kajabi Payments, so check the rule for your account and country.
LearnDash on WordPress, three years
- LearnDash LMS plugin for one site: $199 a year, so $597 over three years. LearnDash also sells add-ons and higher bundles for groups, advanced reporting and multi-instructor use, so price the features you actually need rather than assuming the base plugin is the whole stack.
- Hosting: this is our assumption, not a vendor price. Say $30 a month for decent managed WordPress hosting, so $1,080. Yours may be less or more.
- The build: from $2,500 with us for a proper platform, or a migration from $1,500 if you’re moving an existing course. Once.
- Your email tool: Kajabi includes email, LearnDash doesn’t. Add whatever you already pay for Kit, MailerLite or ActiveCampaign, or the plan you’d move to.
So a LearnDash platform built by us and run on the one-site plugin is around $4,177 over three years, plus your email tool and any paid add-ons, against $5,148 for Kajabi Basic paid yearly. That is not a dramatic gap in year one. Here’s where it becomes one.
Year four onward. The LearnDash site costs the $199 licence and the assumed $360 hosting, about $559 a year before add-ons. Kajabi Basic costs $1,716 a year and Growth costs $2,388 at the current annual rates. The build was a one-off. The subscription is not.
When you cross a cap. On Kajabi, product six or contact 2,501 moves you from Basic to Growth, a jump of $672 a year on yearly billing. On LearnDash there’s no product cap and no contact cap. Your hosting bill grows a little as you grow, and that’s it.
When you sell a lot. If you run your own processor, Kajabi’s extra 2% on Basic is $2,000 on every $100,000 in sales. LearnDash with WooCommerce and Stripe takes nothing above Stripe’s own fee.
Could you build a LearnDash site yourself for less than $2,500? Yes, and plenty of people do. Our honest view is that the build is where most self built platforms go wrong, which is why we exist, but it’s your call.
Where Kajabi wins
We’d be lying if we said it doesn’t.
- Speed to launch. A course, a checkout and an email sequence can be live in an afternoon. On WordPress that afternoon is a fortnight, even for us.
- One support line. Something breaks, you message Kajabi. On WordPress, something breaks and you ask whether it was the theme, the plugin, the host or the update.
- No updates, no backups, no plugins. Kajabi does all of it. This matters more than people admit, especially if you’re the only person in the business.
- Pipelines. Kajabi’s funnel builder is good and it’s included. On WordPress you’re buying CartFlows or FunnelKit and wiring them up.
- Email and courses in one place. Tagging a student because they finished lesson three and then emailing them is trivial in Kajabi. On WordPress it’s an integration.
If you read that list and thought “that’s me”, stay. Seriously. A Kajabi site you actually use beats a WordPress site you’re scared of.
Where LearnDash wins
- Design. Your course can look like your brand, down to the lesson page. Kajabi has a ceiling, and you will hit it the day you want something specific.
- Ownership. Your domain, your database, your student records, your checkout. Nobody can change the deal.
- No LearnDash platform percentage on sales. Your payment processor and any checkout extension can still charge their own fees.
- Groups, cohorts and certificates. LearnDash was built for structured learning. Groups with their own leaders, drip by cohort, quizzes with real grading, certificates that mean something. This is where tutoring centres and training companies live.
- Integrations. Anything with a WordPress plugin or a webhook. Your CRM, your booking tool, your community, your accounting.
- SEO on your own domain. Every lesson page, every blog post, every sales page builds authority for a domain you keep.
- A nine year old can log in without his mother. That one’s specific. We built a picture password login for a kids coding academy on LearnDash because the children couldn’t type. You can’t do that on Kajabi. You can do it on WordPress. Here’s the build.
Where both of them lose
Neither platform wires your checkout for you. Kajabi gives you a checkout page; LearnDash gives you WooCommerce. In both cases the sequence of what happens after someone clicks buy, the emails that go out, the order bump, the failed payment recovery, is something a human has to design. Most of the abandoned carts we see are not a platform problem. They’re a nobody set this up properly problem. That’s what Checkout and Funnel Repair is for, and it works on either side of this comparison.
Neither platform grows your list or your traffic either. That’s Ongoing Growth, and it’s the same job whichever one you pick.
Stay on Kajabi if
- You sell one to five products and you’re nowhere near 2,500 contacts.
- Pipelines are a real part of how you sell, not a feature you tried once.
- Nobody on your team wants to think about hosting, updates or plugins. Ever.
- You like how your site looks, or you don’t care much how it looks.
- Your students are happy and your support inbox is quiet.
Move to LearnDash if
- The bill has gone up twice and you still can’t change the thing you want to change.
- You’re about to cross a product or contact cap.
- Your live classes, bookings or community already live in other tools and you’re paying for all of them.
- You run groups, cohorts, certificates or multiple instructors, or you’re a training business rather than a solo creator.
- You want to own the platform and the data outright, and you’re fine paying someone to look after it.
What a move actually looks like
Moving from Kajabi to LearnDash is not a button, and the plugins that say otherwise move structure, not students. Kajabi lets you export your contacts as a CSV, export a course template as a backup, and download your videos. From that raw material, the new platform is built beside Kajabi while it keeps selling, every lesson and student is moved and checked, and the switch happens in a quiet window. Students keep their email, set a new password once, and log in the next morning to the lesson they were halfway through. Four to eight weeks for most course businesses, from $1,500 USD.
The full method, what moves and what doesn’t, and the questions people ask before they book are on the Kajabi to LearnDash migration page. Coming from Teachable instead? That page is here.
The recommendation we give clients
If Kajabi is helping you sell and your learners are happy, stay. A migration
should solve a measured constraint, not satisfy a vague feeling that WordPress
might be better. Spend the migration budget on the part of the business that
is actually holding growth back.
Move when the limits are specific: the learner experience cannot match the
programme, a required workflow cannot be built cleanly, ownership matters, or
the long-term stack no longer makes financial sense. That is the standard we
used on the real Lucy Wolfe Sleep Plans migration:
the case for moving came from the platform and learner journey the business
needed, not from pretending WordPress is maintenance-free.
Questions people ask
Is LearnDash harder to run than Kajabi?
Yes, a little. It’s WordPress, so there are updates, backups and plugins to look after. Most of our clients either keep us on a small monthly retainer for that or have a host that handles the basics. If you want zero maintenance, that’s a point for Kajabi and we’ll say so on the call.
Does LearnDash have email marketing built in?
No. LearnDash sends course notifications, but newsletters and sequences live in a separate email tool like Kit, MailerLite or ActiveCampaign, connected to LearnDash so it knows who finished what. Kajabi includes email in the plan price, which is part of why its monthly bill is higher.
Can I keep Kajabi for email and use LearnDash for courses?
You can, and some businesses do it temporarily while they settle. It is expensive though: Kajabi Basic is currently $143 to $179 a month, and much of that all-in-one value is wasted if the courses live elsewhere. Most migrations should compare the cost and risk of moving the email list rather than assuming either a permanent hybrid or an immediate cutover.
Is there a Kajabi to LearnDash importer?
Not one we’d trust with your students. Kajabi exports contacts, a course template and your videos; it does not hand you a file of who finished which lesson. The tools that claim one click migration move course structure and leave the students, progress and payments behind. A proper migration rebuilds from the exports and verifies every student by hand before cutover.
Not sure which side you’re on?
The four question Platform Finder gives you our real logic, no email needed. Or book the free call and bring your Kajabi bill. Either way you leave with a straight answer, not a pitch.