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trygohighlevelnow.com is an independent resource, not affiliated with or endorsed by HighLevel Inc. We participate in the GoHighLevel affiliate program, which means we may earn a commission when you start a trial or subscribe through a link on this site. You pay exactly the same price either way. We publish the drawbacks alongside the strengths — if a tool is wrong for your use case, saying so is worth more to us than a commission.
How we evaluate this comparison
- We use it on client work
- We run GoHighLevel sub-accounts for real local-business clients — chiropractors, med spas, and similar. The opinions here come from configuring and operating the platform as a paying customer, not from a demo video.
- Prices come from the vendors, and are dated
- Every price is taken from the vendor's own public pricing page and stamped with the date we checked it. Usage costs (SMS, email, AI) are listed separately, because the plan price is not the bill.
- We name who should not buy
- Any verdict that cannot tell you who the product is wrong for is an advertisement. Every review and comparison here names the people we think should buy something else.
- We say when a competitor wins
- Comparison pages include the rows where the other tool is genuinely better. We earn nothing when you pick the competitor, and we still write the row.
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More on who we are and how this site makes money: About Michael Smith.
Kajabi alternative
Kajabi alternative: is GoHighLevel better?
Kajabi is the best place to sell a course. GoHighLevel is the best place to sell everything else and also, incidentally, hosts courses for free. The question is not which product is better — it is whether the course is your business or is merely one thing your business sells. And once you look at the AI, the split gets sharper: Kajabi's is credit-metered content help, GoHighLevel's answers the phone.
Pricing verified against both vendors' public pricing pages as of July 2026.
Choose GoHighLevel if…
- You sell high-ticket programmes on a call, not $200 courses off a list.
- You need a CRM, pipelines, SMS follow-up and a booking calendar.
- You refuse to pay a percentage of every sale to your software vendor.
- You serve clients and want white-labeled sub-accounts.
Choose Kajabi if…
- The course, membership or community is the product you sell.
- Student experience and a branded mobile app are part of your value.
- You want to launch this month, not learn a platform for a fortnight.
- You do not need SMS, calling, pipelines or client sub-accounts.
We earn nothing if you pick Kajabi. Pick it anyway if that is you — their pricing is here.
AI, side by side
GoHighLevel vs Kajabi on AI
| Feature | GoHighLevel | Kajabi |
|---|---|---|
| AI voice agent (answers the phone, qualifies, books) | Yes — Voice AI | No. |
| AI chat / conversation agent | Yes — Conversation AI across SMS, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Google Business Profile | No customer-facing booking agent. Kajabi's "Expert Agents" are listed as coming soon. |
| AI content generation | Yes — Content AI for emails, funnels, social and ads | Yes — AI course outlines, landing-page and email copy. Well aimed at creators. |
| AI workflow assist | Yes — workflow AI + a custom Agent Studio | Light, and the newer Backstage features are still being defined. |
| Predictive / lead scoring | No — intent detection only | No |
| Which tier gates the AI | Voice AI and Conversation AI on any plan; AI Employee Unlimited is $97/mo per sub-account | AI credits are included on every plan, with top-ups sold separately. |
| What the AI costs | Metered: ~$0.045/min engine + $0.015–$0.170/min TTS + LLM tokens ≈ $0.16/min blended | Credit-metered — Kajabi sells additional credits at about $15/month per 500-credit top-up. |
| Can you white-label and resell the AI? | Yes | No |
Kajabi's AI is aimed squarely at making a course faster to build, and it does that well. GoHighLevel's is aimed at the conversation that sells it — and it is metered by the minute, so price it in the cost calculator before you assume the $97 add-on covers everything.
Side by side
The full comparison table
| Feature | GoHighLevel | Kajabi |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $97/mo (Starter) | $179/mo (Basic) · $143/mo billed annually |
| Mid tier | $297/mo Unlimited | $249/mo Growth · $199/mo annually |
| Top tier | $497/mo Pro (SaaS Mode) | $499/mo Pro · $399/mo annually |
| Transaction fees on sales The line most course sellers miss | None from HighLevel — you bring your own Stripe | Kajabi Payments: 2.7–2.9% + $0.30, plus 0.7% on subscriptions. Third-party Stripe: 5% Kajabi fee on top. |
| Free trial | 14 days | 14 days |
| Course / membership experience What the student actually sees | Functional. Video hosting, drip, quizzes. Plain. | Excellent. Polished student UX, mobile app, communities. |
| Branded mobile app for students | Not included | Included |
| Video hosting included | Included | Included |
| Communities / cohorts | Basic memberships only | Yes — Kajabi Communities is a real product |
| CRM & sales pipelines | Full CRM, opportunities, pipelines | Contacts and tags. Not a CRM. |
| Native 2-way SMS | Included | Not included |
| Native voice calling | Included | Not included |
| Booking calendars | Native, unlimited, automation-aware | No — bolt on Calendly |
| Reputation / review requests | Included | Not included |
| Email marketing | Unlimited sends, ~$0.001/email metered | Included in plan, no per-email fee |
| Contacts included | Unlimited | Basic: 10,000. Growth: 25,000. Pro: 100,000. |
| Products / courses included | Unlimited | Basic: 3. Growth: 15. Pro: 100. |
| Client sub-accounts | Unlimited from $297/mo | Basic: 1 site. Pro: 3 sites. Not client isolation. |
| White-label the platform | Included | Not included |
| Resell as your own SaaS | Yes — $497/mo Pro | Not included |
| Affiliate program for your offers | Yes | Yes — Growth and above |
| Ease of use | Steep learning curve | Genuinely easy. Best-in-class onboarding for creators. |
| Best for | Agencies, local businesses, coaches who also sell services | Creators and educators whose product IS the course |
Sources: vendor pricing pages, July 2026.
Money
The fee nobody puts on the pricing page
Sticker price
As of July 2026, Kajabi is $179/month (Basic), $249/month (Growth) and $499/month (Pro) on monthly billing, discounted to $143 / $199 / $399 annually. The retired $89 Kickstarter plan still surfaces occasionally during trials but is off the public pricing page as of January 2026.
GoHighLevel is $97, $297 and $497. See the full breakdown, including the metered SMS, email and AI costs — which Kajabi does not charge, and which is a fair point in Kajabi's favour if you want a predictable bill.
Now the percentage
Kajabi takes a cut of your sales. Through Kajabi Payments that is roughly 2.7–2.9% + $0.30 depending on tier, with an additional 0.7% on subscription and payment-plan transactions and another ~1.5% on international cards. Use your own Stripe instead and Kajabi adds a 5% platform fee on top of Stripe's own processing.
HighLevel takes nothing. You connect your Stripe, you pay Stripe, and the software bill is the software bill.
Work it through. On $250,000/year of course revenue, Kajabi's marginal fees above bare Stripe processing run into the thousands of dollars annually — comfortably more than the entire GoHighLevel subscription. If you sell a lot, this is the single largest number in the comparison and it is not on either company's pricing page in a form you can compare.
And now the part where Kajabi earns it
Kajabi's student experience is better in a way that is hard to argue with. The course player is clean, the mobile app is branded to you, Communities is a real cohort product rather than a checkbox, and a non-technical coach can build and launch a polished offer in an afternoon. GoHighLevel's membership module works — unlimited courses, drip, quizzes, certificates, video — and it looks like software an agency built for itself, because it is.
If you charge $2,000 for a transformation, the experience is part of the product and Kajabi's polish is worth real money. If you charge $8,000 for coaching that happens on Zoom and the portal is just where the replays live, it is not.
Straight answer
The verdict
Kajabi wins if the course is the business
Creators, educators, membership operators, anyone whose P&L is "list × conversion × course price". Kajabi is a focused, well-made product for exactly that shape of business, and GoHighLevel's breadth is dead weight you will pay for in complexity.
GoHighLevel wins if the course is a deliverable
Coaches who sell on calls. Agencies who bundle training with a service. Local businesses who add a membership. Consultants running paid traffic to a booked consultation. All of these need a pipeline, SMS follow-up, a calendar and a CRM — none of which Kajabi has — and the course is simply where the content lives afterwards. GoHighLevel gives you that whole loop at $97, plus unlimited client sub-accounts at $297, plus zero transaction fees forever.
Our honest GoHighLevel review puts a 2.9/5 on ease of learning, and that is the tax you pay here: Kajabi you learn in a day, GoHighLevel you learn in a fortnight. Budget it before you switch. And if you sell a $47 course to a warm list, do not switch at all.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the best Kajabi alternative for a course creator?
- If courses are your business, the honest answer is another course platform — Kajabi's player, branded app and community are better than anything GoHighLevel offers, and switching to save money will cost you in student experience. GoHighLevel becomes the right alternative when the course is a deliverable rather than the product: you sell high-ticket coaching on the phone, you need a pipeline, SMS follow-up and a booking calendar, and the course is what the client gets after they buy. Then the transaction fee alone usually pays for the move.
- Does Kajabi have AI, and is it included?
- Kajabi has creator-focused AI — course outlines, landing-page and email copy — and it is credit-metered: every plan includes an allocation of AI credits and additional credits are sold as top-ups at around $15/month per 500. Its "Expert Agents" are still listed as coming soon. What Kajabi does not have is any customer-facing agent: nothing answers the phone, nothing replies to an SMS, nothing books a consult. If your sales process runs through conversations rather than a checkout, that is the gap that decides this.
- Is GoHighLevel a good Kajabi alternative?
- It is a good alternative if the course is part of your business, and a poor one if the course is your entire business. GoHighLevel hosts unlimited courses and memberships with video, drip content and quizzes at $97/month with no transaction fees, which is cheaper than Kajabi Basic at $179/month plus its payment fees. But Kajabi's student experience — the player, the branded mobile app, the communities — is meaningfully better, and if you are charging $2,000 for a cohort programme that polish is part of what people are buying.
- Does GoHighLevel charge transaction fees on course sales?
- No. HighLevel takes no cut of your sales — you connect your own Stripe account and pay only Stripe's standard processing. Kajabi, as of July 2026, charges 2.7–2.9% + $0.30 through Kajabi Payments plus an extra 0.7% on subscription and payment-plan transactions, and if you insist on using your own Stripe instead, Kajabi adds a 5% fee on top of Stripe's. On $200,000/year of course revenue that gap alone can exceed the entire cost of a GoHighLevel Pro subscription.
- Can GoHighLevel host a membership site?
- Yes — unlimited courses, membership tiers, drip scheduling, video hosting, quizzes and certificates are included on every plan including the $97 Starter. It works and it is genuinely unlimited. It is also plainer than Kajabi and the student-facing experience is less refined. If you want a branded iOS/Android app for your students, GoHighLevel cannot do that and Kajabi can.
- Which is cheaper, GoHighLevel or Kajabi?
- GoHighLevel, on both the sticker and the effective rate. As of July 2026 Kajabi runs $179 (Basic), $249 (Growth) and $499 (Pro) on monthly billing, versus GoHighLevel at $97, $297 and $497. But the sticker is the smaller story: Kajabi's payment fees scale with your revenue while GoHighLevel's do not. The one place Kajabi is cheaper is metered usage — GoHighLevel bills SMS, email and AI on top of the subscription, and Kajabi does not.
- What does Kajabi do better than GoHighLevel?
- The student experience, comprehensively. A better course player, a branded mobile app, Kajabi Communities, cleaner landing page templates aimed at creators, and onboarding a non-technical coach can complete in an afternoon rather than a fortnight. Kajabi is a beautifully focused product for people who teach. GoHighLevel is a Swiss army knife that happens to include a course module.
- Should a coach use GoHighLevel or Kajabi?
- If your revenue comes from selling a course or membership to a list, use Kajabi — you will ship faster and your students will have a better time. If your revenue comes from booking calls, running paid ads to a consultation, following up by SMS, and selling a high-ticket programme on the phone, use GoHighLevel — the course is the deliverable, but the pipeline is the business, and Kajabi has no pipeline, no SMS and no calendar.
Run the fee maths on your own revenue
Fourteen days free. Add up what percentage fees cost you last year, then decide whether the polish is worth it. Either answer can be correct.
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