These days, many solopreneurs and entrepreneurs alike want to sell their own educational courses online. (Think Udemy, Lynda, etc.)
In fact, Inside Higher ED leaked a staggering statistic: by 2020, the worldwide e-learning market will grow between $27.1 B to $47.9 B.
(That’s a lot of money for a planet supposedly “bankrupt” and in an economic decline. But the facts don’t lie.)
You have the ability to create, market, and sell your own courses on the internet – being a “one-stop shop” for information and teaching.
However, as any savvy marketer will tell you, compiling all that work and marketing it is a lot of work. It’s almost a Herculean task that is not for the feeble-minded or weak-hearted.
That’s why course creators are such fantastic platforms: they do most of the struggling tasks “for you”. I say for you, but in all honesty, they help you distribute your content and products so your business can be run more effectively – by you.
When it comes to which platform, though… there are two heavyweights contending for the best (and easiest) platform to use to help you. I’m talking about Kajabi and Thinkific.
Let’s take a look at what the pros and cons are of these two modern powerhouses – and why they’re butting heads, and which will help you do your job easier and faster.
First Up: Kajabi
Kajabi was founded in 2009, and Thinkific was created in 2012. Personally, I’m always liable to do business with people who have been “in the game” longer. Since their timeline gave them more time to work, perfecting their platform – and figure out how to make the system easier for their customers.
Kajabi lets you build stunning online courses. There are a number of training portals that even come with file downloads. Intuitive enough, right?
However, this platform is slightly more secure, as it uses a PCI Level 1 Service Provider. (Here are more reasons on why that’s awesome.) Whereas Thinkific merely states that it is “PCI Compliant and SSL enabled.” (I’m not sure about you, but I prefer specificity when it comes to security.)
There are 3 plans: Basic, Pro, and Premium. (Per month: $103, $311, and $719, respectively.) While this seems like a pricey platform, keep in mind it’s an investment for your business.
You can have up to 25, 100, or as many landing pages as you wish. You can sell up to 5, 100, or an unlimited number of products. (How many courses can you come up with in a year?)
Kajabi focuses on building your customer base. As such, their highest package (Premium) lets you have up to 100,000 marketing emails a month. Their Basic plan? 1,000 marketing emails. (If your courses and products are successful, surpassing 100k will be no problem.)
Let’s Talk Thinkific
At the other end of the spectrum, Thinkific lets you build multimedia courses and host video content. Lord knows prefer video content over text. (Over 60 percent of people use video for email marketing, according to Single Grain.) You also don’t need any design or tech experience.
You can customise your own look and aesthetic as you want. (Nifty.)
Also interesting is the fact that you can choose from any number of landing/squeeze page options that have their own CTA templates.
Teachers who value the importance of interacting with their students will enjoy this: you can track your students with graded quizzes and assignments. The platform lets you issue surveys your students can use.
Fans of integration tools should have fun with this: Thinkific has over 600 third-party tools using Segment.io and Zapier. This means you can use Google Analytics, Aweber, Mailchimp, and more. (That’s a bit of a learning curve for me, personally.)
Packages range from $0 for the “Starter” plan all the way to $219/mth. for the “Advanced.” Each preceding package includes the features of the ones before it, including “Priority Support”, payment plans, and Public API.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, both platforms accomplish their mission goal: helping you utilise your expertise to educate people. However, Kajabi seems to be more focused on ensuring you teach the largest amount of people as possible, as easily as possible, generating lucrative profits all the while.
When it comes time for me to assemble my e-learning course, I think I’m going with Kajabi. All signs point to them caring more about customer reach and maximising bottom-line profitability.
