Shopify vs Kajabi 2024: A Comprehensive Comparison

When it comes to the battle of Shopify vs Kajabi, the right option for you depends mainly on what you want to accomplish.

Shopify is an excellent tool for commerce, but Kajabi is one of the better solutions available for course design and online learning.

Of course, there are some overlapping features between the two platforms too, such as integrated payment processing capabilities, and website design tools.

Let’s take a closer look at what you can accomplish with each platform, to help you make the right choice.

Shopify vs Kajabi: The Quick Comparison

Overall, Kajabi is a more robust online course creation tool, with built-in sales funnels, AI tools for developing educational solutions, and more. However, Shopify is a more versatile platform, allowing companies to sell any kind of product across a range of sales channels.

Feature	Shopify	Kajabi
Core features	Shopify offers everything companies need to build an online store, blog, or website. You can sell any product, across a range of channels, with minimal effort.	Kajabi offers website building and landing page tools, sales funnels, and course creation features. You can sell digital products like coaching and online memberships.
Ease of Use	Drag-and-drop website editing tools, convenient step-by-step guidance, and a straightforward user interface for beginners.	Convenient drag-and-drop tools, templates, AI solutions and a clean interface for beginners, with no coding knowledge required.
Web design and templates	A huge variety of free and premium templates to suit a range of stores and websites, with comprehensive customization options.	Wide range of templates and tools for creating customized membership sites, forums, websites, and landing pages.
Ecommerce and sales channels	Support for selling any product or service across a range of channels. You can also sell offline using Shopify POS, though transaction fees apply on all plans.	Support for Stripe and PayPal integrations. You can only sell digital products through your Kajabi website or an integrated website.
Apps and Integrations	A massive collection of apps and add-ons available for virtually every use case, from marketing to sales and course creation.	Integrations for marketing tools like Drip, conversion tools, website builders, and analytical platforms.
Customer support	Various self-help solutions like guides and tutorials, as well as email or chat support.	Chat or email support, as well as guides, blogs, tutorials, videos, and self-help tools.
Pricing	Pricing starts at $5 per month for the basic Starter plan, or $39 per month for more comprehensive features. Transaction fees apply.	Prices start at $149 per month, with no transaction fees on any plan. Discounts are available on annual purchases.

Kajabi vs Shopify: Similarities and Unique Features

Let’s start with a brief overview of the similarities and differences between Kajabi and Shopify. Kajabi is a comprehensive platform allowing companies to sell digital products, such as coaching programs, membership, and online courses.

Shopify is an ecommerce platform with an integrated website builder, and payment processing solutions for physical and digital products.

Both platforms include their own website and blog builder, email marketing tools for customer engagement, and easy-to-use backend environments.

They also both come with payment processing features, so you can allow customers to checkout online.

Ease of Use: The Simplicity of Kajabi and Shopify

Both Kajabi and Shopify are extremely easy to use. You don’t need any coding knowledge to start creating your online presence, or selling products and services.

Both tools come with drag-and-drop editing solutions for websites, so you can customize your site to suit your specific needs.

Additionally, they both offer fantastic step-by-step guidance for beginners, with tool tips to walk you through each step of the creation process.

Shopify does make it a little easier to create an omnichannel sales experience, with integrations to marketplaces and social media platforms.

You can also easily sell globally, through Shopify’s international sales tools, which automatically adjust currencies for your customers.

Plus, Shopify has built-in tools for managing your business, tracking sales, and dealing with order fulfillment and delivery. The Shopify app market also makes it a lot simpler to access integrations, without the need for any complex API development.

Kajabi makes it simpler to manage your sales funnels, creating comprehensive automations and triggers.

Although there are automation options available through Shopify Flow, there aren’t as many options for building entire sales funnels.

Kajabi also has some great AI tools that help to guide you through the course creation journey, and assist you with producing content. Overall, however, they’re both relatively neck and neck in terms of simplicity.

Website Design and Templates

One area where both Kajabi and Shopify overlap, is in the ability to create attractive websites for selling your products online.

Kajabi’s website builder allows you to create stunning, responsive websites, using attractive templates, and a drag-and-drop editor.

You can choose your own custom domain, access built-in payment tools for selling digital products, and even design landing pages and sales pages for customers. Additionally, you can dive into HTML and code if you want to take your site to the next level. Plus, you can design forums for customers.

Shopify is similar to Kajabi, offering a wide range of templates for every kind of Shopify store and website. It comes with built-in SEO features to help your online business stand out, as well as a user-friendly editing tool for adjusting your themes.

Though Shopify doesn’t offer separate tools for designing landing pages, you can create virtually any page you like within the Shopify editor, and adjust it to suit your needs.

There are also plenty of integrations available if you want to access more advanced landing page options.

Both tools allow you to create your own blogs for online marketing, and you can also user the user-friendly tools to create subscription-based membership sites.

Ecommerce, Sales Channels, and Payment Processing

Perhaps the biggest difference between Kajabi and Shopify is in what you can sell through the platforms. Kajabi only allows small business owners and entrepreneurs to sell digital products. This includes online courses, coaching sessions, and digital downloads.

With Shopify, on the other hand, you can sell anything. Shopify supports the sale of physical products, with inventory management tools, solutions for dropshipping and print on demand, and more.

You can even use Shopify POS to sell products in brick-and-mortar or pop-up shops.

Both the Shopify ecommerce platform and Kajabi accept a range of payment options, including mobile wallets, credit cards, and debit cards, through integrated payment processing systems. You can integrate Kajabi with PayPal and Stripe, and sell anything without transaction fees.

Alternatively, Shopify allows companies to sell through Shopify Payments, or choose their own payment processing systems.

There are transaction fees on all plans, and you’ll pay extra fees if you accept payments through anything other than Shopify Payments.

When it comes to selling options, both tools support subscription-based memberships and one-off payments, and both can integrate with social media platforms.

However, Shopify is the only tool that also allows users to sell through marketplaces, and in offline environments.

While both tools offer responsive and customizable checkout pages, with options for upsells, adding testimonials, and adding order bumps, there are fewer customization options available for Shopify sales pages.

Apps and Integrations

While both Shopify and Kajabi offer a range of tools to suit various business needs, you may find yourself looking to integrate more features and capabilities into your site. Fortunately, both tools come with support for add-ons and integrations.

Kajabi integrates with a handful of tools, such as Drip for email marketing, ConvertKit, and Google Analytics. You may need to rely on solutions like Zapier if you want to design more comprehensive automated workflows.

Shopify’s app market offers a much broader range of tools and add-ons to choose from. You can access course creators, sales funnel tools like Clickfunnels, email and social media marketing apps, and even tools like Printful for print on demand selling.

Customer Support: Guidance and Help Options

If you need help developing your business or online store, both Kajabi and Shopify offer a lot of useful resources.

Both tools come with blog posts and guides, featuring screenshots and step-by-step tutorials. They also both have video content available for learners.

Both platforms also offer email and live chat support, depending on your specific needs. However, neither tool will allow you to reach out to the team over the phone.

One slight difference is that you can hire Shopify experts through the company’s partner program if you need extra help.

Shopify and Kajabi Pricing Plans

From a pricing perspective, both Shopify and Kajabi offer reasonably good value for money. However, Kajabi is a lot more expensive for beginners, particularly when compared to other tools for online learning and assessments, like Thinkific.

Kajabi Pricing

Kajabi offers a free trial, followed by three premium plans. There’s no free plan available, but you can save 20% by paying for an annual plan. Packages include:

• Basic: $149 per month: 3 products, 3 funnels, unlimited marketing emails and landing pages, 10,000 contacts, 1,000 active customers, 1 website, and 1 admin user.
• Growth: $199 per month: All the features of Basic, plus 15 funnels and products, 25,000 contacts, 10,000 active customers, 10 admin users, affiliate programs, advanced automations, and you can remove Kajabi branding.
• Pro: $399 monthly: All the features of Growth, plus 100 products and funnels, 100,000 contacts, 3 websites, 20,000 active customers, 25 admin users, and a custom code editor.

None of these plans include transaction fees, and you can request a unique tailored plan if you need to scale your business.

Shopify Pricing

Shopify offers a range of pricing options, starting with the “Starter” plan for $5 per month. However, this plan doesn’t include access to Shopify’s website building tools. The core plans include:

• Basic Shopify: $39 per month for full access to the website builder, SSL certificates, 1000 inventory locations, 2 staff accounts, blogging, marketing tools and payment processing.
• Shopify: $105 per month for all the features of the basic plan, plus 5 staff accounts, professional reports, multi-channel global selling and shipping discounts.
• Advanced: $399 per month for all the features of Shopify, as well as advanced reporting, 15 staff accounts, shipping discounts, gift cards, and import tax tools.

You can also access Shopify Plus, the enterprise plan, starting at $2,000 per month for advanced API access, uptime guarantees, and more customization features.

All of Shopify’s plans include transaction fees, which vary depending on the package you choose.

The Verdict: Shopify or Kajabi?

Overall, Shopify and Kajabi are both excellent tools, with integrated website builders, content management system solutions, and powerful sales capabilities. They even have their own mobile apps for android and iOS. However, they serve very different purposes.

Kajabi is definitely the right option if you’re looking to sell online courses with sales funnels, AI features, and powerful solutions for community building.

On the other hand, Shopify might be better for you if you want more freedom to sell a wide range of products.

With Shopify, you can sell physical and digital products across a range of channels, and even access brick-and-mortar sales tools, like the Shopify POS system.