I am getting an increased amount of emails regarding this new marketing platform called Kajabi. Hopefully this post will answer all the questions that I am receiving regarding the Kajabi platform.
The emails that I am receiving are of the following types:
- Offer to buy Kajabi through an affiliate link
- Question from users asking me if I am going to buy Kajabi
- Question from customers asking if they should invest in Kajabi
Am I Going to Buy Kajabi?
No! Why not?
- Why should I invest in a new platform that requires me to pay month after month after month when I am already using the best CMS platform (WordPress) which cost me nothing? I can turn any WordPress site into a powerful marketing platform with the help of thousands of free and premium plugins and themes which doesn’t require me to pay every month.
- Why am I going to invest in a hosted solution when I want to build up a brand and establish my own domain? When you use Kajabi the domain that you get will most likely look something like “www.john.kajabi.com” which is technically owned by Kajabi. I don’t like to spend time, effort and money decorating an apartment when I am only renting the apartment. This is the very reason why I like to use self hosted WordPress site so the domain (this is my asset) belongs to me.
- I can virtually get any functionality that I want in WordPress by using plugins. If I don’t like a plugin then there are always alternative plugins to choose from. The WordPress community is huge and there is always help available. What happens when I don’t like a specific functionality of Kajabi?
- I don’t do email marketing… I rely on natural search engine traffic to sell my products. Who is going to go to my super awesome Kajabi sales page? WordPress is the best publishing platform that I use to publish my content which gives me natural search engine traffic in the process.
Should You Buy Kajabi?
This advice is for people new to selling online (a lot of my customers fall into this category). If you are a veteran internet marketer then you already know what is best for you so you don’t need my advice.
I am sure Kajabi is a nice platform but If you are new to this then I think you have other problems to solve first before you spend time and money buying expensive solutions. Kajabi will probably come in handy for people with a big email list as they can just send an email to the list that will bring instant traffic to their funnel page.
Everyone has different needs so make up your mind based on your needs but if you are trying to sell online then in my honest opinion your time is better spent focusing on the following first:
- Producing great content
- Establishing your name/brand
- Getting more traffic
- Creating products that people want to buy
- Learning a little bit of HTML and CSS (these will come in handy no matter what platform you use)
- etc.
So what is your opinion? 🙂
The one other thing you left out that I have read on a number of sites is that there is NO EXTERNAL BACKUP OR EPXPORT OPTIONS. So you can never take your data with you if you alter decide to quit. Why would I possibly want to have that risk?
Loved the post, good work.
Fletch
Just an update for those who might be thinking about OP. I am now finally testing it out for a membership site, and I gotta say that I absolutely LOVE it! James Dyson and his team have added some awesome functionality to an already amazing WordPress theme since launching it in the fall, and they seem determined to continue adding new features. Originally it was just intended for sales/launch pages (nothing bloggy or membership related), but they then added blog functionality and some great membership pages templates etc. You still need a decent membership plugin (ie it’s not a membership script by any means – it just helps you create a nice membership site structure).
I decided to use WishList (actually bought eMember, and plan to use it for other OP membership sites, but the documentation for integrating WL with OP is available in the OP training dashboard so I took the easy route). I AM however using eStore, and was really pleased with how easily it integrates with WishList (THANKS Ruhul!).
I haven’t launched yet, but have been really happy with how easily everything seems to be coming together (this coming from a serious tech-dummy). Will aim to update again once everything is actually rolling.
B
great opinions here guys. I really needed some enlightenment . An d what you think about Optimise Press?
Wow,
It’s so refreshing to see someone is up to honest feedback and opinion.
Thanks for sharing all this with us.
I really like your site and will come back often and check your plugins for WP.
I did the $2,400 VideoBoss course with Andy Jenkins who designed Kajabi (VideoBoss was the first training course released on Kajabi). In fact he was developing it from the feedback he was getting during the course. As a user I was initially very frustrated but then Andy kept fixing the bugs and in the end it looked pretty good. (the course was actually very good too). I’m now doing Link Liberation who are also drip feeding the course out through the Kajabi platform and they are struggling big time with massive bugs and problems. Makes them look foolish and unprofessional. In fact the chatter amongst students hints at a mass exit asking for refunds at the 30 day mark unless they get their act together very quickly. I can’t tell if it’s them or Kajabi yet. Either way it doesn’t look good for them. I can’t see Kajabi being around for long at $99 per month (and by the way that’s just the intro price – if you want other features like being able to have ipad viewers see your video you need the $198 or $298 per month option) Go figure!
There is another reason you shouldn’t buy kajabi right now. It doesn’t work as advertised. We spent weeks trying to get it to do what can already be done in WP, and finally bailed out.
It’s amazing how many things that were in the sales letter/video didn’t actually work when purchased. We’re back to our commitment to WP. I think we have to waste a bunch of time every now and then just to remind us just how good WP is! 🙂
Ed
ps: Wish I’d seen your post before we did all that work!
I 110% agree with you! WordPress is THE WAY to go if you’re looking to be in control of your own ship and not depending on others to control it for you. All of your products rock! Keep up the great work.
Dale
Absolutely Spot on .Thanks for helping to educate the thousands of newbies
who get sucked into this hype.
Just great review, it’s wonderfull to see someone not being hyped and giving his opinion honestly.
Thanks Ruhul, I use (bought) all your products and I’m ever more happy to see you keep helping people.
Esteve.
@Lee, to me it kind of looks like you just need a WordPress membership plugin. There are a few other there so I don’t think this will be a big challenge for you. Just do a Google search on WordPress membership plugins and then compare them.
Hi to everyone who has posted and thanks for the great info 🙂
I was wondering if anyone could tell me what wordpress plugins i would need to get a similar effect to KAJABI , i love wordpress and would like to use this as a content delivery system for a product im thinking about releasing.
But have a problem as i want to automate a certain part. 🙂
I want my customers to purchase from a sales page ie “pay pal button” then i want to redirect them to a link or thank you page where they recieve a unique password and link which points them to the “wordpress url” or “product”
And from this i would like my customer to have a unique password to log into wordpress to access what they had just purchased via the paypal button on the landing page (which would have a different url) 🙂
So in short
1 =customer pays
2= customer directed to thank you page with link to product, maybe via aweber etc. where they would recieve a unique password and link to my product??
3= somehow automate unique passwords so that customer could log onto wordpress with password straight after they have purchased?? 🙂
Thanks for reading if you already got this far 🙂 but really am stuck on how to automate or even semi automate this process and cant find a plugin which allows unique customer accounts after purchasing via paypal?
Any light or help would be greaty appreciated and many thanks in advance for taking the time out to read my problem:)
lee
I am of the opinion that this is yet another way for
Andy to make money on an over-priced and unproven product that looks and smells a lot like Membergate.
For all, I agree that Kajabi looks slick. But the ongoing monthly fee is a show stopper for me. I was also recently interested in something called Easy Video Player 2. But upon signup you are auto-enrolled for an ongoing $37 per month fee. Of course you are able to opt out later, but that smacks of underhandedness to me to advertise that something is a one off purchase, then auto enroll you in an ongoing program. Tips & Tricks have been nothing but up front and very reasonable with their products and that’s the way I like it.
@Patrick – I’d LOVE to hear more about what you are doing with AWS3, as I have some needs and would appreciate speaking with someone that’s been down that road already.
Excellent advice on OptimizePress.com. I canceled my free trial with Kajabi and bought OptimizePress just now.
Kajabi is a great concept, but way too expensive. Plus the SEO and ownership issues concerned me too.
Plus I tried working with the free trial and found the process required a lot of time to understand the components and how to put them together effectively. It is clearly designed for someone who already has a system in place and is converting their current site to Kajabi. But if that is the case then one would think they are already successful using what they have. So I dont see the benefit of moving to Kajabi unless it was a more efficient system.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestion of OptimizePress.com. I think it will serve my purposes as I build my content and training system.
Joseph
Good post. You have highlighted every points about Kajabi Platform. In my opinion it is one of the finest marketing tool. Thanks for details.
Thanks for the suggestion… I will definitely check it out.
Whoops – didn’t notice that Kim wrote about OP as well. Sorry bout that! lol
Hi guys – interesting topic. I totally agree with Ruhul on this one.
By the way if you DO want some fancy Kajabi-looking launch sequences, sales pages etc, I recommend checking out OptimizePress. I am in no way involved in the company but did recently purchase it. Seems pretty easy even for a tech dummy like me.
Now in the process of trying to combine it with Ruhul’s awesome ecommerce plugin.
B
SO nice to see people standing up with a different opinion! I think Andy Jenkins is great, but couldn’t agree more!
You guys provide SUCH great support for your products and quality content… I really value your opinion.
I found another product last week (I’m not an affiliate- they have a closed affiliate program right now)- for a WP theme called ‘Optimize Press’ http://optimizepress.com.
I bought it (it was a one time fee of $97- think it’s kind of in pre-launch right now), but is SO easy to use!
You have to install it in a subfolder (if you want to use it with an existing site)- but has about 20 diff. layouts (w/video, headers, two column, etc.) and has a 6 page launch sequence.
I’ve set it up already and am SO thrilled with it! The developer has been great about responding to questions (many of which were re: Kajabi). I’ve followed most of the Q & A, and it looks like there are tons more features coming.
I’ll be doing a full review of it on my site soon, but I HIGHLY recommend it for WP users!
Thanks,
Kim
Hey Patrick, thanks for sharing your opinion 🙂
We added an “Auto Upgrade” feature to eMember which should allow you to do time release content to some degree. I will look into the future content previews option.
BTW I really like the “Patrick’s last blog…” feature you have hear.
Thanks for the write up. I was really contemplating the Kajabi platform, but was concerned with the organic traffic and the hosted solution.
I was going to test a new product using the 14 day trial, but now I don’t think its worth it. I already use WP with several of your plugins and others. I use AWS-S3 which is the same that Kajabi “Krunch” is hosting yoru videos on. I use Camtasia and more to produce videos in any def and quality I want. I have Aweber (although its a mess of lists for me, since I didn’t know what I was doing in the beginning) and that is a program Kajabi is linking to. I am using a pretty slick theme from sz-solutions that allows “1 click” options for default, blog, landing or squeeze page templates and that really is all you need.
I have 3 of the Kajabi screens open right now about to buy the free trial, but now I know I am going to close these down.
For anyone thinking about it, looks slick, is slick, and the only thing I really want is the community tools like comment categorization and the membership with the “evergreen” timed release and coming soon or next content features.
Ruhul, if you are thinking of the NEXT https://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com plugin, perhaps refining the eMember to include time release content and future content previews. I think they are using it via a member dashboard.
Sorry this is long, but I wanted to share with everyone where and how you can do it yourself, even if you are ADHD, half crazy, half insane entrepreneur with poor organizational skills like myself.
I agree with you 100%. Self-hosted wordpress is also my choice.
Kajabi is a powerfull tool to make HQ videos, that can sell your product.
I completely agree, I am a web solutions company and while at first the glam of Kajabi got me, the more I think about it, the more I know WP fulfills these needs and even more. The ownership factor really bothered me the most also. thanks for the write up!
I think that if you can afford the monthly payments on Kajabi then you probably don’t need it – the base rate of $99/mth (plus $99 setup) is for ONE product apparently.
I’ve also heard that the search engines are likely to blacklist sites such as Kajabi because of all the subdomains (that’s each site that users are paying for) selling different products. There goes your SEO and any organic search engine traffic….
I couldn’t agree with you more.
Thanks for your detailed and honest opinion. Earlier, I added a todo list item for me to go and checkout the videos that they put up. I also prefer to just use WordPress so if Kajabi is a hosted solution then I won’t be wasting my time reading up on it.