If you’ve ever priced out Kajabi and immediately felt your stomach drop, welcome to the club.
Kajabi’s expensive monthly subscription rates are enough to give you sticker shock and if you’re a coach that is just starting out, you are not ready for that type of investment. I’ve been there.
Before I landed on my current platform, I tested five different free and low-cost alternatives, burning through more hours and frustration than I care to admit.
This post is the resource I wish I’d had. I’m going to walk you through the honest truth about best Kajabi alternatives for coaches, what alternative software is actually free, what the hidden costs are, and what I ultimately chose – and why it’s the best solution out there… better than Kajabi, even!
Why Kajabi is the best worst choice
All the top coaches use Kajabi because it’s an all-in-one coaching platform. And because they use it, others blindly follow without question.
But if you’re on a budget, you’re looking for that unicorn on YOUR budget.
Firstly, Kajabi’s Basic plan starts at $143/month but billed annually, with its most popular Growth plan at $199/month. The Pro plan is at $399/month. Woof!
And those prices aren’t even the ones that sting most – Kajabi raised its prices for the first time in a decade in late 2025, hitting new customers right away. Existing users had until January 2026 to decide whether to stay on legacy plans or migrate to the new pricing structure.
Let me tell you- migrating one course, along with its design, funnel and workflow system, is a pain in the butt!
If you’re an established coach with an existing audience and consistent revenue, Kajabi might appear worth the investment. But if you’re just getting started building your course and coaching business, paying close to $200 a month before you’ve made a single sale is a tough hill to climb.
Most of us are just looking for a stable, all-in-one toe-dip that will eventually become an investment.
Kartra – the other all-in-one heavyweight
Kartra is the platform that often comes up in the same breath as Kajabi. It’s another all-in-one coaching platform covering email marketing, landing pages, sales funnels, video hosting, membership sites, checkout systems, and appointment scheduling – all under one subscription.
If Kajabi is the polished, course-creator-first option, Kartra leans slightly more toward the marketing funnel and digital sales side of things.
On pricing, Kartra currently offers three paid plans billed annually: Essentials at $52/month, Starter at $83/month, and Growth at $125/month, with a Professional plan at $429/month. Kartra offers a 30-day free trial plus a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you have extra time to test it before plopping down your savings. That’s more generous than most platforms at this level.
Kartra does not charge transaction fees on any of its plans – though it doesn’t have a native payment processor, so you’ll still pay standard Stripe or PayPal processing fees on every sale.
Where Kartra gets tricky is the contact email limits. When you exceed your plan’s lead count, Kartra automatically upgrades you to the next pricing tier. This means your monthly cost can climb without warning if your email list grows faster than expected. That’s a real consideration for coaches actively building their email list.
What you actually need when setting up a coaching or course shop platform
Before jumping into comparisons, it helps to know what you’re actually shopping for. A capable coaching and course setup typically requires:
- a course builder with customizable landing pages and media hosting (or storage)
- email marketing with automation and subscriber lists
- live session capability for webinars or coaching calls
- the ability to bundle courses and offer digital downloads
- drip automation to release content over time
- a paywall system supporting one-time purchases, memberships, and payment plans
- sales tools like discount codes and funnel upsells
- community building
- some form of client management or calendar booking
- analytics
The problem is that most “free” platforms give you pieces of this, not the whole shebang. And stitching together three different tools to avoid a subscription is its own full-time job.
The uncomfortable truth about free course software
Free sounds good until you read the fine print. Here are the four traps that got me:
Hidden commission and payment processing fees
Most free platforms charge a percentage of your sales instead of a monthly fee – which can feel painless at first but adds up fast. Teachable’s free-tier transaction fees alone run 10% plus $1 per sale. On a $100 course, Teachable takes $11 before payment processing fees even apply – one of the highest platform fees in the industry. And that’s before Stripe or PayPal takes their standard cut of roughly 2.9% on top.
Free plans are designed to be outgrown.
Customization, drip content, completion certificates, coupon codes, email automation – these are almost always locked behind paid tiers. You upload everything, build your course, and then hit a wall the moment you need a feature that actually converts.
Third-party tools fill the gap, but they cost too.
Calendar booking, email marketing, and live webinar hosting are commonly not included in free plans, so you end up with multiple logins, multiple subscriptions, and a workflow that eats your time.
Course hosting
Some coaching software platforms do not offer hosting on content that requires large memory uploads. Many courses these days are in video format. Tip: if you’re trying to house video on YouTube unlisted or through a cobbled-together workaround, that’s its own risk. Unlisted YouTube videos can be shared or surface in playlists unexpectedly, and it’s not a professional look when students are paying you.
Avoid this time-wasting mistake
The biggest mistake I made early on was spending weeks setting up platforms that hit a paywall the moment I needed a feature that actually mattered. Don’t do that.
Look at the design and navigation experience first, read the fine print on transaction fees, and don’t upload your full course and designs until you know the platform works for your workflow.
What I tested and what I found
1. Notion
Notion is brilliant for organizing your coaching content and even building a basic client portal. It’s free to very cheap, and easy to set up. But it is not a course platform. It has no payment software, no lead page design, no appointment booking, no video housing, and no email funnel.
You’d need to pair it with a payment processor like Dubsado or WooCommerce, an email platform, and a video host. That’s three separate tools and three separate subscriptions before you’ve sold anything.
2. Membervault
Membervault‘s free plan lets you create up to three courses, which is decent for testing. But like Notion, you must host video elsewhere, and it lacks lead page design, appointment booking, and email funnels. Upgraded features come at an additional cost, and you’ll hit the ceiling fast.
3. Dubsado
Dubsado is client management and payment software, not a course platform. i’m putting it on here because it was recommended to me by a rather popular coaching course program I took from a reputable coach and it took me a while to understand why. This is for coaches who already have a course /content shop system in place and just need client contracts and invoicing. It’s especially helpful when you’re enrolling clients into a series of private or group coaching calls and you want to protect yourself legally. But it’s really only solving one piece of the puzzle. It does offer three free client trials to test the software.
I’ll be honest: I tried to like it and I wasted hours I’ll never get back. The triggers are not intuitive, customization for payment plans is limited, and you won’t know if you’ve set things up correctly until the system actually fires. So it requires a good deal of testing.
It doesn’t integrate into a website easily also, because it’s absolutely not visual. For a starting coach building from scratch, it’s not where I’d start.
4. Teachable
What Teachable does well as a cheap alternative to Kajabi, is ease of use. It’s clean, beginner-friendly and widely known. Teachable used to have a free plan with unlimited students, and that was one of its biggest selling points. It still technically has a free-forever tier, but it now comes with a 10% plus $1 cut on every sale, a cap of 10 students, and one published course – effectively making it a trial environment, not a stable solution.
Teachable’s paid plans currently start at $29/month annually (Starter, with 7.5% transaction fees), $69/month (Builder, with 0% fees and email marketing), and $139/month (Growth).
What it’s not: The Starter plan is accessible price-wise, but that 7.5% transaction fee is punishing if you’re actively selling. The Builder plan at $69/month is more workable, but you’re still limited to five published products. As a course delivery platform and not an all-in-one, which means you’ll likely be pairing it with separate email marketing software.
5. Thinkific
Thinkific has long been a solid option – mirroring Teachable– for straightforward course creation. It used to have a free plan, but as of 2026, that no longer exists. Thinkific now offers paid plans starting at $36/month annually (Basic), with no transaction fees on any plan. That’s an okay entry point for a pure course housing platform.
What it’s not: The catch is that Thinkific is not an all-in-one coaching or course sales platform. It’s a course builder with integrations, not a built-in email marketing system or funnel builder. You’ll pay more and rely on third-party tools once you need those features. Is it the best course platform for new coaches? Hardly. It’s focus is purely courses and if you’re looking for an all-in-one coaching platform, you’re better off considering Kartra which offers more features for a slightly higher price point.
6. Stan Store – a strong social-first alternative
Stan Store has become popular with creators who are monetizing directly from social media, and it deserves a mention here because it solves a specific problem really well.
Plans start at $29/month with zero transaction fees, giving you everything you need to sell right from your link in bio. The Creator plan includes a customizable landing page, an unlimited course builder, calendar bookings, subscriptions, lead magnets, email collection, a community feature, and built-in analytics.
The Leap The Creator Pro plan at $99/month adds advanced email marketing workflows, affiliate tools, and automation. Stan Store charges 0% transaction fees on both plans.
Stan is easy to set up – you can be live in under an hour. If your primary audience comes to you through Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube, and you want a fast, clean way to start selling courses, coaching calls, and digital products without building a full website, Stan is a legit starting point.
Where it has limits: Stan performs best with a small, focused product stack. If courses are your core product and you want advanced features like quizzes, gamification, in-depth learner tracking, or sophisticated marketing funnels, it’s not a choice fit.
Stan is best for: social media creators ready to monetize a warm audience quickly, coaches selling 1:1 sessions and simple courses, and anyone who wants to get something live fast without a steep learning curve.
7. New Zenler vs Kajabi: Whose best at what cost?
After testing everything above, New Zenler is the platform I chose and continue to use for my YouTube Jumpstart Academy. I’ll tell you exactly why.
New Zenler is an all-in-one course and coaching platform that combines course hosting, memberships, communities, live teaching, email marketing, funnels, and a website builder under one login – at a lower price than Kajabi.
The New Zenler Pro plan currently costs $67/month, or $647/year on the annual plan – saving you over $150 compared to monthly billing. The Premium plan runs $197/month or $1,447/year. And critically, there are no transaction fees on either paid plan.
Under $650 a year with no transaction fees, you have all features unlocked and the ability to run multiple sites. That is the first selling point.
What you can do inside Zenler Pro is genuinely impressive for the price: unlimited courses and students, 25,000 leads, 100,000 emails per month, 100 marketing funnels, three websites, live classes, webinars, and live streaming all included. It covers nearly everything.
There is an entire live feature set on the platform offering a native calendar and booking tool – separate features for running live classes, live webinars, interactive webinars, and live streaming – one of the most comprehensive feature sets available in this category. Honestly, it’s like being on an Unlimited plan and platform.
The creator of New Zenler is passionate about his product and is continually upgrading the product and adding new features the coaching market needs. Customer support is great and there are many videos on how to use things,
I’ll be transparent: New Zenler does offer a free plan, but it charges a 10% transaction fee on that tier – similar to the free traps on other platforms. When I started setting mine up, I quickly realized this was my unicorn platform and the annual paid plan was the move.
Furthermore, if you come in under a Beta invitation (my invite code here– I hope they keep running this deal!), it’s like being a founder of that payment tier. You are locked in to that payment tier for life. Your annual subscription cost never raises!
I came in six years ago under the $450/year beta, so that is my current annual subscription cost. The math was easy. I’ve even used it to set up a group tour sales page for my travel brand, which tells you how flexible the platform actually is.
A few honest cons worth mentioning: the interface can have a mild learning curve. There are so many awesome features are packed in, which can be confusing to navigate at first – especially for marketing funnels and webinar setup.
The affiliate program also exists but has been noted to require manual payouts in some cases, so factor that in if affiliate marketing is central to your strategy.
You do need an invite code to sign up – Zenler has kept this since its beta days.
Here’s my invite code to the NZ Beta program.
So which cheap alternative to Kajabi should you choose?
Here’s the honest breakdown by situation:
- If you have an existing social media audience and just want to start selling fast: start with Stan Store at $29/month. It’s the easiest on-ramp with no transaction fees and solid basics.
- If you want an all-in-one platform that covers courses, email, funnels, webinars, and coaching without stitching together multiple tools: New Zenler is the strongest option for the price. The annual Pro plan comes out to under $54/month, with no transaction fees and no artificial feature paywalls between plans. You get all the features.
If you’re an established coach or course creator already generating consistent revenue and want the most polished, full-featured platform with no compromises: Kajabi is still the gold standard, but plan to start at $143/month billed annually and grow into it.
If you’re a small creator building something real without Kajabi’s price tag, New Zenler is where I’d tell you to start. Use my New Zenler invite code to sign up for free and let me know how it goes.
Disclosure: some links in this post are affiliate links.
