Over the years, more and more people have become interested in taking online courses. This interest has allowed many creators to spread their wings and jump into the online learning world.
Two major players in the online course platform space are Mighty Networks and Kajabi. Both platforms believe in the value of online learning, but approach it in vastly different ways. This can make it hard to know which platform is the best fit for what you’re trying to build.
Ahead, we’ll explore what each of these online course platforms are all about. We’ll compare Mighty Networks vs. Kajabi to see which is best for you.
If you want more support in building your online course and community, come join OUR Mighty Community for free and meet other new and established community owners! We’d love to meet you. Join for free!
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1. Kajabi vs. Mighty Networks: Who are they?
Kajabi
Kajabi is an online course platform that heavily emphasizes the marketing and selling of online courses. With a synchronous LMS and lots of features like dripping content, quizzes, and custom landing pages, Kajabi has a good set of course-building tools.
This translates into Kajabi focusing a lot of resources on their email, landing page, and sales features that creators can use to get more eyes on their work.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks is an all-in-one online community platform that harnesses the power of cultural software, giving creators a platform where they can build vibrant communities, teach courses, and charge for membership.
Mighty uses Spaces that let you bring together content the 4 Cs: content, courses, commerce, and community. You can use Mighty to sell memberships, communities, events, and courses or bundles of any and all of these. And you can make the leap to your own branded apps when you're ready.
2. Kajabi vs. Mighty Networks: Different approaches to “all-in-one” platform
Both Mighty Networks and Kajabi are presented as “all-in-one” solutions for creators looking to build online courses. Here's how to two compare:
Kajabi
Kajabi’s strength is in its delivery of paid content online courses. Their platform is effective in offering creators aggressive marketing tactics to sell online courses and memberships and it does it extremely well.
When you build an online course on Kajabi, you’ll be able to design your content on the platform, creating awesome landing pages, sales pages, email drip campaigns, and more.
When Kajabi talks about its “all-in-one” platform, though, its focus is largely on sales and marketing of your online courses. It’s not “all-in-one” when it comes to other community-building features.
Even the recent launch of "Community 2.0" has improved Kajabi's community functions with a more comphrehensive forum--newsfeeds, events, and chat & DM. But Kajabi is so new to the community game it's still basic by comparison to a Mighty Network AND it requires a totally separate platform and login (it's not native to the core course engine).
Mighty Networks
“All-in-one” with a Mighty Network means that you can build custom Spaces that can hold any combination of courses, community, events, and more. Community and courses together are amazing, and with Mighty you can choose either a pre-recorded asynchronous course within a vibrant community OR you can live stream and teach a cohort-based course.
But do you know what one of the biggest differences between Mighty and Kajabi is?
Mighty Networks isn’t JUST a course platform. As we said above, you get unlimited Spaces with each Mighty Network, and each one can be dedicated to things like events, live streaming, and/or a dedicated subgroup.
Mighty Networks isn’t just a course all-in-one. It’s a community all-in-one that gives you everything you could need for a thriving community business.
And Mighty is making waves with community AI--Mighty Co-Host™ can help boost your creativity and connections with features like automatic course outlines, icebreakers, and writing assist. And like Kajabi, Mighty Co-Host™ runs on Chat GPT and can create a community name, brand, landing and sales pages, and more.
While a Mighty Network doesn’t have the same level of complex marketing flows as Kajabi, the power of the community and native mobile apps drive better results, faster growth, and deeper engagement.
The best part of a Mighty Network? It’s instantly available to your members or students on every platform—web, iOS, and Android.
Mighty Pro
For many creators and brands, the thing that really sets Mighty apart from Kajabi is Mighty Pro. Mighty Pro takes the awesome features of a Mighty Network and gives them to you on your own native app. That means YOUR brand in the App Store and Google Play Store.
This makes Mighty the ONLY platform that you can start on for as little as $33/mo and grow to your own custom apps. Or, if you're an established brand, we can launch with this right away.
One of the top reasons successful creators are make the jump from Kajabi to Mighty is for the power and profit of your own app.
We've built apps for brands and creators like TED, Fortune, Cambridge University, Adriene Mishler, and Sadie Robertson Huff. And when you build on Mighty Pro, you'll work with our team of Account Executives and Community Strategists who have scaled 7-figure creator brands and 8+-figure subscription businesses.
If you're a current Kajabi customer, we'll even handle the migration.
Schedule a call with us to learn more.
3. Kajabi vs. Mighty Networks: Pricing and monetization
Kajabi
Part of the decision between Kajabi vs. Mighty Networks should be the pricing and monetization options. Kajabi offers a great range of tools for creators to sell and market their content, but it comes at a hefty price tag.
Kajabi’s cheapest plan starts at $149/month and has limited features. The most popular plan is the “Growth” tier which is $199/month and gives creators access to unlimited landing pages, marketing emails, Kajabi University (a resource center filled with articles and guides), 1 website, and more.
On top of these costs, you'll also need to pay for the integrations you intend to use to supplement Kajabi's features.
In terms of monetization, Kajabi offers a robust assortment of options to creators who are looking to charge for their content. Online courses can be sold at a one-time, monthly, or annual fee or completely free. They also provide creators options for recurring payments in the form of subscription models.
Mighty Networks
We believe that offering an exceptional “all-in-one” platform also means that it’s priced at a point where many people have access to it. When it comes to Kajabi vs. Mighty Networks, there is a stark difference in perspective on how the platforms approach their pricing.
And once you’ve decided it’s right for the online courses you’re interested in running, our Business plan starts at only $99/month. You’ll get all of the awesome tools to use in making a thriving community space in addition to online courses, analytics, member data, and more.
In addition to offering creators a wide range of ways to create content (courses, events, and communities) they can also charge for these things. Creators can monetize using other currencies than the U.S. dollar – including their home currencies or selling token-gated communities.
All of these options give creators numerous ways to monetize their business. But there is more to it than that. When you have different monetization options it also gives your members more agency with how they interact with your content. That’s huge.
If you're interested in Mighty Pro, it is a bigger investment. But at the end of the day, you get a custom app, a team of developers, account strategists, and community designers behind you, AND most people who build on Mighty Pro find the additional revenue quickly pays for the cost of your own app.
- Example 1: A financial community that scaled FAST to $23K monthly from a $19.99 subscription.
- Example 2: The community of 2,500 members that introduced an add-on course, & unlocked an additional $100k in revenue within 2 months of launching!
Schedule a call with us and we'll show you more!
4. Kajabi vs. Mighty Networks: Onboarding and user experience
Lastly, let’s take a look at how Kajabi and Mighty Networks each approach onboarding and user experience (UX).
Kajabi
Kajabi is a great platform for course UX. As we said above, there are a lot of features for course creators to sell and market their courses.
But it's the extra features--features that are just a given for many modern students. Live courses. Community. Events. All these are limited, even with the new Community 2.0 solution. Want to live stream? You’ll need to hook up a YouTube account and live stream from there, sharing the link to your community. A lot of the features that are native in a Mighty Network require workarounds in Kajabi.
In fact, Kajabi still hosts its own Kajabi Hero community on Facebook -- which says a lot.
The lack of native features takes away from the UX.
Kajabi comes with decent apps for all devices. The app does courses well, which is – of course – what Kajabi was made for. It doesn’t do live events, which is a building block Kajabi recently added to its desktop platform.
Finally, if you’re interested in more in-depth resources and help for the online course you build on Kajabi, you’ll need to join their premium Kajabi Access service which is more money on top of your monthly subscription. (By comparison, the Mighty Community is free to join).
Mighty Networks
One of the most important factors for choosing an online course platform is choosing software that is easy to use yet powerful in functionality.
Creators can easily get started building an online course from scratch in a few simple steps when they start a Mighty Network – or, you can schedule and sell the course and teach it live.
This lets you bring in income before recording anything.
The platform has user-friendly tools for building online courses as you go. And, ultimately, Mighty has a powerful and comprehensive events platform, which Kajabi doesn't.
Last but not least, APPS! The Mighty Network apps are awesome, giving you every element of your Spaces in a mobile version: courses, events, community, messaging, and more. It’s available free in the App Store and Google Play store.
But Mighty also has a totally custom, white-building app team called Mighty Pro. If you want to build and sell your course on your own white-label app under your own brand, we’ll help you do it! Schedule a call with us to find out more.
5. Pairing Kajabi with Mighty Networks
If you can’t decide between Kajabi vs. Mighty Networks, there is another option you can consider. We have seen many successful big-name creators utilize both platforms and create a powerhouse business.
This approach uses Kajabi to create an online course and then adds a Mighty Network community for $33/mo. On your Mighty Network, even on the Community Plan, you can host virtual events, live stream, create a paid membership site, connect your online course students, and much more. These are all experiences that will heighten the foundation you’ve built on Kajabi and bring your business to new heights.
Examples of Mighty Networks paired with Kajabi
Commune + WeCommune
Commune is a premier media company for personal and societal well-being and has focused on providing robust online courses powered by Kajabi. Their online courses cover a variety of topics relating to global wellness, personal growth, mental health, and more. In addition to offering a wide assortment of courses with teachers like Marianne Williamson, Russell Brand, Deepak Chopra, and more.
In addition to their online courses, Commune has a bustling online community with over 100k members on a Mighty Network called “Commune Community.” On their private social network members can connect over course material, share insights from their own lives, pose questions, offer advice, and more.
The Business Class + The Lounge
Sophia Amoruso is a successful entrepreneur, New York Times Bestselling Author, and the founder of Girlboss and Nasty Gal. With years of experience starting multimillion-dollar business ventures, Amoruso offers an online course through Kajabi called “Business Class.” Over 8 weeks, members learn skills to develop their brand, marketing, and legal knowledge, leadership skills, and more.
Additionally, Amoruso has a thriving online community on Mighty Networks called “The Lounge” which she’s paired with her online course. In The Lounge, members can network with other entrepreneurs taking the course, ask questions, build connections, and offer advice.
In other words, if you are committed to building an online course via a platform like Kajabi, there’s still room to use a Mighty Network to bring your course members together before, during, or after your course.
6. Mighty Networks is the best place to build an online course
We’ve covered a lot today, but when it comes down to Mighty Networks vs. Kajabi, here are just a few of the many things you can do with Mighty:
- Take advantage of Community AI features like auto course outlines, discussion prompts, and text assist
- Offer paid memberships
- Create unlimited spaces
- You can post live and recorded videos, images, and audio clips
- Native live streaming and video storage for your Mighty Network
- Sell in your home currency or token-gating
- Create polls, discussion boards, quizzes, and Q&As
- Host and sell access to virtual events.
And our platform is constantly evolving with new and exciting features for creators to use in their businesses. Your Mighty Network is available across the web, iOS, and Android. So, you get more customization, flexibility, and mobility than what you can get on other platforms. Sounds pretty great, right?
Let’s get started!