Teachable vs Kajabi for Coaching Packages: Which to Pick
Most “Teachable vs Kajabi” comparisons count features. For selling coaching packages, that’s the wrong scoreboard. A coaching package isn’t a course — it’s your time, sold in a wrapper. The platform question that actually decides your monthly bill and your growth ceiling is narrower than the feature lists suggest, and this comparison sticks to it.
The real question: is your product your calendar, or a program?
There are two very different businesses hiding under the phrase “selling coaching packages.”
In the first, the product is your hours: one-on-one calls, small-group sessions, hands-on feedback. Revenue is capped by your calendar, margins are high, and the platform’s job is modest — take the payment, book the call, hold a few resources. In the second, coaching is packaged into a program that runs partly without you: a lead magnet, an email sequence, a sales page, a self-paced core plus lighter live touchpoints, and a community that keeps people engaged. Revenue scales past your calendar, and the platform’s job balloons — it now has to run marketing, not just delivery.
Teachable and Kajabi sit on opposite ends of that split. Teachable is built around delivery and priced for it. Kajabi is built around the whole funnel and priced for that. Pick based on which business you’re actually running this year — not the one you hope to run in three.
What a coaching package actually needs from a platform
Before comparing brands, it helps to name the five jobs a coaching offer puts on software, because most feature lists blur them together:
Payments that fit coaching
Coaching is rarely a flat one-time charge. You need recurring billing (monthly retainers), payment plans (a $2,000 package split into four), and clean refunds. Both platforms do this; the difference shows up in fees, below.
Booking and delivery
Calls need scheduling; async work (worksheets, recordings, module drips) needs a home. Teachable leans on integrations for scheduling and is strong at structured delivery. Kajabi bundles more of this natively.
Client relationship and communication
As numbers grow, remembering where each client is becomes the real bottleneck. A basic customer relationship management layer — tags, notes, automated check-ins — is what separates ten clients from a hundred.
The funnel that fills the package
This is the job most coaches underweight and then overpay for. Selling a high-ticket package usually means a purchase funnel: something free to attract, email to nurture, a page to convert. If you run that funnel elsewhere (or not at all), a platform that charges for it is dead weight.
Teachable: the cheaper home when coaching rides on courses
Teachable’s center of gravity is course delivery, and that’s exactly why it suits a large slice of coaches. If you already sell (or plan to sell) a self-paced course and want to bolt on coaching — a “course + four calls” package, say — Teachable lets you do that without paying for a marketing suite you won’t open.
Its structured curriculum builder, straightforward checkout with payment plans, and simple student experience cover the delivery side cleanly. The tradeoffs are real, though. Marketing tooling (email, pipelines, funnels) is thinner, so you’ll likely pair it with a separate email tool. And its entry tier carries a transaction fee (more on that next), which quietly taxes every sale until you climb a plan. Teachable is the honest choice when your product is still mostly your hours plus a course, and your funnel lives elsewhere — see this walkthrough on selling coaching packages on Teachable alongside courses for the mechanics.
Kajabi: worth the premium only if you’ll run the funnel inside it
Kajabi is an all-in-one: website, email, funnels, courses, community, and coaching under one login, with zero transaction fees on every plan. When you genuinely use all of it, the math flips in its favor — one bill replaces a stack of five tools, and the funnel-to-fulfillment handoff is seamless.
The trap is paying the premium and then using Kajabi as a glorified course host. If your email lives in ConvertKit, your calls in Calendly, and your community on Circle, you’re buying a Ferrari to drive to the mailbox. Kajabi earns its price when you commit to running the lead magnet, the nurture emails (its built-in email marketing is a core reason to be there), the sales page, and the community inside the platform. If you won’t, Teachable plus a couple of point tools will almost always cost less and annoy you no more.
Pricing, honestly
Sticker price is where the two diverge most, and both platforms raised or restructured pricing recently — so treat the figures below as a September 2026 snapshot on monthly billing (annual runs roughly 20% cheaper), and confirm current numbers on the official Teachable pricing and Kajabi pricing pages before you commit.
| Plan tier | Teachable (approx/mo) | Kajabi (approx/mo) | What it means for coaches |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | ~$39 (Starter) + 7.5% per-sale fee | ~$89 (Kickstarter), 0% fee | Teachable is cheaper to start but taxes each sale; Kajabi has no entry-level bargain. |
| First “no-fee” tier | ~$69 (Builder), 0% fee | ~$179 (Basic), 0% fee | To drop Teachable’s transaction fee you jump one plan; Kajabi never charges one. |
| Growth | ~$139 (Growth) | ~$249 (Growth) | Kajabi costs more but folds in email + funnels you’d otherwise buy separately. |
| Top | ~$309 (Advanced) | ~$499 (Pro) | At scale, compare Kajabi’s price against your combined tool stack, not against Teachable alone. |
The transaction fee is the detail that flips decisions. Teachable’s entry Starter plan skims 7.5% off every sale, so once your monthly package revenue clears a few hundred dollars, the “cheaper” plan is no longer cheaper — the no-fee Builder tier wins. Kajabi charges no platform fee on any plan, which matters more than the headline price the moment you’re actually selling. (Standard card-processing fees, ~2.9% + 30¢, apply on both regardless.) If you’re still setting your package price, work backward from these fees — this guide on pricing an online course or coaching package shows how.
So which one — a straight recommendation
Choose Teachable if coaching is an add-on to courses, your revenue is under roughly $3–4k/month, you already run email and scheduling elsewhere, and you resent paying for tools you won’t use. It’s the lower-friction, lower-cost home for a delivery-first coaching business.
Choose Kajabi if the funnel is the point: you’re selling high-ticket packages, you want the lead magnet, emails, sales page, and community living together, and you’ll actually operate that machine. The premium is justified by consolidation, not by feature bragging rights.
And pick neither if all you need today is a booking link and a checkout — Calendly plus Stripe (or a simple payment page) will do it for a fraction of either, and you can graduate to a platform when you have a program to sell, not just a calendar to fill.
Before you migrate anything
The most expensive mistake here isn’t picking the “wrong” platform — it’s switching platforms twice. Migrating members, rebuilding funnels, and re-uploading content burns weeks. So don’t buy for the business you imagine; buy for the one that’s paying you now, and re-evaluate only when a concrete constraint (a transaction fee eating margin, a funnel you can’t stitch together) forces the question. Both tools are good enough that discipline about which job you’re actually paying them to do matters far more than the logo you end up with.
Frequently asked questions
Can I sell one-on-one coaching, not just courses, on both?
Yes. Both handle recurring billing and payment plans for one-on-one and group coaching. The difference is that Kajabi bundles more of the scheduling and client-journey tooling natively, while Teachable more often leans on integrations for booking.
Does Teachable’s transaction fee make it more expensive than Kajabi?
Only on its entry Starter plan, and only up to a point. Once your monthly revenue is high enough that the 7.5% fee exceeds the cost of moving to Teachable’s no-fee Builder tier, you upgrade and the fee disappears. Kajabi has no platform transaction fee on any plan, which is a genuine advantage at low volume.
Is Kajabi worth the higher price for a new coach?
Usually not on day one. If you haven’t built a funnel yet, you’ll pay for capabilities you’re not using. Kajabi pays off once you commit to running email, funnels, and community inside it; before that, a cheaper delivery-first setup is the more honest spend.
