New Zenler vs Kajabi Review

New Zenler vs Kajabi? I have to admit, I’m a long time Kajabi fan and still rate it as my top all-in-one platform for online courses. Still, New Zenler has been gaining ground, so it seems only fair to compare these two platforms. So, that’s exactly what I asked one of our lead Learning Revolution writers to do. – Jeff

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After scouring the internet for insight, I discovered that there are virtually no New Zenler vs Kajabi comparisons. This comes as a surprise to me, since not only is New Zenler one of the hottest new e-learning platforms, but its similarities to one of the biggest veterans in the game, Kajabi, is striking (especially when you compare costs!).  

In this article, we’re going to challenge New Zenler and Kajabi to a duel, of sorts. It’s up to you to judge and rate each “opponent’s” features as related your budget and business needs. Keep reading to find out which comes out on top.      

What are New Zenler and Kajabi?

New Zenler and Kajabi are both online learning platforms that allow you to create, host, market, and sell online courses. Ultimately, the major pain point they address is the multi-faceted nature of course creation and sales.

Selling courses often requires you to wear so many hats, that edupreneurs often throw in the towel. Developing courses is a whole expertise on its own, but when you add building a website, effectively marketing your courses, and creating a high-converting sales funnel/customer journey, then your eLearning goals might seem eons away.

But with New Zenler and Kajabi, everything you need is housed under one roof. You won’t need to juggle multiple bills and subscriptions for each aspect of the course creation and selling process. You can create courses like the pros and host them on attractive and well-designed landing pages. Though these platforms only require a very basic level of technical know-how, your customers will be none the wiser!

So, if you’re simply looking to monetize your expertise, then you’ll be able to focus on what matters most – creating compelling content. I personally prefer to focus on the higher-order, creative aspects of course creation, and often get bogged down by the seemingly-extraneous (but ultimately necessary) “logistics”. Not only is it more fun, but when the focus is providing value through quality content, everything else falls into place.

New Zenler and Kajabi go head-to-head in this regard. There’s almost a one-to-one correlation between both of their feature sets. Let’s take a closer look!

New Zenler vs Kajabi: The Ultimate Comparison Chart

Features	New Zenler (Pro)	Kajabi (Basic)
Transaction fee for sold courses	$0	$0
Pricing (monthly/annually)	$47 / $447	$149 / $1428
Email marketing	✔	✔
Marketing funnels/pipelines	100/month	3/month
Live classes/webinars	✔	✔
Number of schools/sites	3	1
Max. number of marketing emails per month	100,000	Unlimited
Max. number of leads per month	25,000	10,000
Community/ Memberships	✔	✔
Bulk enrolments	✔	✖
Blogs	✔	✔
Upsells	✔	✔
Site admins	10	1
Course authors	20	N/A
Integrations	✔	✔
Active students	Unlimited	1000
Out-of-box templates	✔	✔
Site Builder	✔	✔
Code editor (HTML/CSS)	✔	✔
Drip schedule	✔	✔
Automations	✔	✔
Quizzes/surveys	✔	✔
Completion certificates	✔	✖
Affiliate marketing	✔	✖
Site branding	✔	✔
Course reviews	✔	✖
Digital downloads	✔	✔
Multimedia within same lesson	✔	✔
SCORM support	✔	✖

Course Creation and Interactivity

Overall, creating a course in New Zenler vs Kajabi is fairly straightforward. While New Zenler allows you to create learning paths with hierarchical structures of Sections and Lessons, Kajabi works with Categories and Posts. But they both have the same idea. Like modules, sections house lessons, as do categories with posts, making them analogous. Moreover, both platforms let you rearrange your course modules and lessons via a simple drag-and-drop tool.

That said, Kajabi provides a bit more structural flexibility by enabling another level of “Subcategories”. It also helps streamline the course structuring process with Product Blueprints, or “pre-made” learning paths based on the type of digital product (e.g., coaching program, mini-course, etc.).

When it comes to uploading content to these lessons or posts, however, New Zenler streamlines the process by enabling bulk uploads from various sources like Dropbox, Google Drive, or your computer. It also enables a wider degree of file types, including SCORM zip files. So if you’re creating high-interactivity courses using powerful programs like Storyline or Captivate, then New Zenler’s the no-brainer here.

Kajabi’s somewhat limited in this regard. Like New Zenler, it enables all the basics like text, audio, video, images, documents, and PDFs, but there’s no SCORM support. But a plus with Kajabi is that if you’re making video-based courses, then you can bulk upload videos without any limitation on file size! Though, it’s quite inflexible when it comes to embedding multimedia within a single lesson. For example, Kajabi doesn’t let users add multiple videos, or a video and quiz, within a single lesson. However, embedding multimedia within a single lesson is a non-issue with New Zenler.

The best part is that both platforms enable users to drip/lock content, an essential feature with any online platform. Drip schedules are particularly useful with memberships. To keep customers coming back for more, you can make certain lessons/modules available after “n” number of days post-enrolment.

Content locking ensures that learners complete a certain lesson/assessment/activity before progressing to the next step. But I wouldn’t overuse this feature. Anything “forced” can be unpleasant. That said, if it’s a compliance training course, then this feature also acts as a record-keeping tool, especially for those pesky audits.  

In any case, uploading content and structuring your course is quick and painless. But I find that New Zenler sports a more minimalist interface that’s easier on the eyes, thereby flattening the learning curve for newbies.

Once you publish your course, both platforms will deliver it through a mobile-responsive course player. This is where Kajabi wins out. It provides over 10 course player themes which you can customize to your liking. This might come in handy if you’d like to adjust the design based on the nature of your product or memberships you’re targeting.

New Zenler offers a single course player with one very “humble” or “basic” theme. It would be nice to see more flexibility here. But it’s worth noting that New Zenler’s cheapest plan offers 3 school sites, each which can be customized to your liking, whereas Kajabi only offers one. So it makes sense that Kajabi would permit more customization within its single school site.

It’s also worth noting that, unlike New Zenler, Kajabi offers mobile app functionality for both Android and iOS.

When it comes to creating courses, no online learning platform is complete without the ability to test learner knowledge and receive feedback. Moreover, it is a necessary interactive feature to keep learners engaged and motivated. As such, both platforms offer quizzes/surveys that can be graded automatically, as well as the ability to submit assignments.

Kajabi offers all the basic question types, including multiple choice, multiple response, and short answer, but it lacks advanced features like timed assessments or question randomization. New Zenler is more flexible in that it offers all those advanced features and question types, plus more (e.g., true or false, image-based questions, etc.).

Based on course completion and assessment results, New Zenler has a native tool to autogenerate course completion certificates. Because it’s built in, you can automatically issue certificates. Kajabi doesn’t have this feature natively. You’ll have to integrate with a third-party tool to create and issue certificates, which I find oddly inconvenient (especially for their price point).

And to up the ante on interactivity, New Zenler and Kajabi enable live classes/webinars to create a blended learning experience. New Zenler integrates with Zoom such that you don’t even need to create a separate subscription (it’s included!). However, with Kajabi, you need to subscribe and integrate with a third-party platform (e.g., WebinarJam). Either way, both platforms let you create live classes or webinars that incorporate polls, live questions, and real-time interaction with instructors and peers. Moreover, both enable live streaming to popular social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook..

As you can see, there are some pluses and minuses on both sides. While Kajabi offers more flexibility when it comes to design and customization (i.e., course player themes), New Zenler offers more flexibility in terms of functionality (supported file types, advanced quizzes, etc.).

Website Design and Customizability

If you’re not a web developer or particularly tech-savvy, New Zenler and Kajabi assume no technical expertise. Straight out of the box, you’re given a free “.newzenler.com” or “.kajabi.com” domain and free SSL certificates. If you have a custom domain, even better! You can white-label both platforms and no one would know it wasn’t coded from scratch! However, this is where things start to diverge between these platforms.

As mentioned, New Zenler’s cheapest plan offers 3 sites, thus 3 custom domain names – Kajabi only offers one. So when it comes to customization options within a single site, Kajabi’s the clear victor. It gives you a solid head start by offering up 6 elegant themes (you can also import your own). Then, there are further customization options within each theme once you access Kajabi’s drag-and-drop page builder.

New Zenler doesn’t really have a themes feature; rather, it provides one default template. However, as with Kajabi, you can incorporate site-wide branding, such as your logo, favicon and fonts. However, its page builder also functions as drag-and-drop and makes up for the lack of theme options. Each site is built of dynamic and static blocks that yield countless block templates for each possible section of every page (footer, navigation bar, testimonials, FAQ, courses, calls to action, etc.). From there, you can effortlessly edit text, adjust spacing and padding, change the color or background images of blocks, etc.   

Similarly, Kajabi offers a large selection of templates for each section of your site. And from a user experience perspective, its interface is much cleaner. I like how it lists all the site sections to the left of the page, separating it from the page preview. That way, to add a site section, all you have to do is click “Add Section” and drag-and-drop the items in the left menu, rather than having to scroll up and down the preview page, as with New Zenler.

Overall, they both get the job done, but if you’d like more control over the look and feel of your course, Kajabi stands out here.

It looks to me as though New Zenler’s focus is course creation functionality over website design, and vice versa for Kajabi.

Payment and Checkout

When it comes to New Zenler vs Kajabi in marketing and selling your courses, the two platforms adopt very different approaches, yet still go toe to toe. Both offer a full suite of tools to carry you through the lead generation, marketing funnel, and sales pipeline process!

Let’s first start with pricing options. New Zenler lets you sell courses based on a one-time payment, subscription, or even split/partial payments! Many platforms will limit subscription plans to monthly and/or annual payments, but New Zenler also includes quarter and semi-annual payments, or set a custom schedule. Another unique feature is its tiered pricing plans (e.g., Gold, Silver, Bronze) which enables you to pick and choose what features learners get access to based on their plan.

Kajabi refers to their pricing as “offers”, and has the almost the exact same scope of options as New Zenler, minus tiered pricing. It also allows you to sell courses in different currencies, a nice-to-have that’s missing in New Zenler. But New Zenler bites back by offering EU VAT, an automated system that collects and reports your sales taxes (New Zenler’s single-currency system makes this easy)!

Moreover, both platforms enable a host of customer incentives, including free trials, order bumps, bundles, and 1-click upsells! It’s worth noting how flexible New Zenler’s coupon feature is compared with Kajabi’s and most other platforms’. For example, Kajabi lets you generate bulk or single coupon codes and choose which products it applies to. You can specify whether the discount is a fixed-price or percentage, and how big you’d like it to be.

New Zenler does all this but takes thing a bit further. For example, you can restrict the number of times a coupon code can be used (i.e., a redemption limit), and determine whether it’s a one-time or recurring discount. So all in all, it offers more pricing flexibility than Kajabi.

Furthermore, when it comes to your sales pipeline and checkout process, these platforms operate quite similarly. In both cases, the magic happens in the background. Every product you create automatically gets its own checkout page. Though New Zenler offers only one checkout page template, it’s highly optimized for customer conversion. For example, customers can register after they’ve paid, once investment is already there. You can also include conversion-elements like money-back guarantees, testimonials, etc.

All of that also applies to Kajabi, except – again – Kajabi offers more freedom and flexibility to customize your checkout pages (e.g., adding your logo). And unlike New Zenler, it also tracks abandoned carts by sending follow-up emails to partially-converted customers.

Sales and Marketing Funnels

If I could justify Kajabi’s higher price, I’d say it would be owing to its sales pipeline builder alone. Once upon a time, Kajabi’s sales pipeline builder was a real game-changer by letting users effectively market their courses with minimal knowledge. As an innovative pioneer in this regard, Kajabi virtually held monopoly on such an attractive feature. But after scouring both Kajabi and New Zenler, which is much more affordable, I think Kajabi will need to find new ways create value. Because now that New Zenler’s around and gaining ground, it’s hard to justify the price difference.

As with product blueprints, Kajabi provides a set of pre-made sales pipeline blueprints that do the heavy lifting for you. For example, a sales blueprint might simply contain two pages: Sales > Checkout. And a webinar blueprint might contain 3 components: Registration > Confirmation > Follow-up emails. This makes the marketing-funnel-building process ultra-breezy. Just choose a pipeline blueprint and replace the filler text with your own. Moreover, if you choose the blank blueprint, you can create your own customer journey from scratch. Either way, every aspect of each pipeline blueprint is completely customizable.

New Zenler’s marketing funnels aren’t quite as comprehensive or customizable as Kajabi’s, but they’re easy to work with and amount to the same thing. You can create two types – a Lead Magnet and a Video Series funnel. Lead magnets work by hooking users with a special incentive or freebie. It might contain the following: Sales page (with freebie) à Opt-in page (requesting customer info) à Thank you page.

I find that their Video Series are great for marketing to members. Create anticipation and loyalty by taking prospects through a series of value-drive videos (e.g., 1 video per day/week). This will help keep members active and coming back for more!

Each of New Zenler’s funnel pages comes with a solid selection of themes to choose from. You can go in and customize each page the exact same way we did with the website page builder! Note that New Zenler also generates course/webinar funnels each time you create a course/webinar – they’re located separately (under “Courses”).

Community and Memberships

Creating engagement and incorporating social learning into your learning environment are imperative in order to maximize not only profits, but learner potential. Here, we see a stark contrast when it comes to New Zenler vs Kajabi. New Zenler really made an effort with its Community feature, which enables users to create site-wide or course-specific memberships. You can also create pricing plans and discounts/coupons that apply to some or all members of a particular community.

Moreover, New Zenler integrates course comments with community discussions. When a learner comments under a lesson/course player, the comment automatically shows up in the “Discussion” tab. This convenient feature helps keep everyone – especially you – in the loop. It’s also a great way to harvest feedback and insights to improve future courses.

New Zenler’s community also acts as a digital forum for sharing ideas. Members can express themselves via different multimedia, including text, pictures, video, and file uploads. This makes it quite similar to a social networking site. Furthermore, New Zenler automatically sends members push notifications whenever someone directly replies to their comment or on the same thread. Speaking of social networking, you can even create community-specific live classes or webinar events that can be live-streamed to social sites like YouTube and Facebook.

Kajabi has some semblance of a “community”. For example, it has all the community forum elements that New Zenler has, where learners can start or participate in discussion threads, and even directly message each other. But you can’t organize events or live webinars/classes, which really takes the “social learning” aspect out of the community.

In any case, the community feature really makes New Zenler and Kajabi stand out from traditional platforms. That said, it would be nice if both platforms let users distribute polls and quizzes among community members – perhaps in the near future.

Integrations and Automations

Despite the depth and scope of both platforms’ capabilities, they both offer countless third-party integrations and automation tools. Their integration with Zapier virtually grants them access to any third-party integration on the market, so I find that there’s substantial overlap here.

For example, they both directly integrate with popular email marketing services like ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, and Mailchimp. But one key difference I noted, as mentioned, is New Zenler’s direct integration with Zoom for live classes and webinars. You’ll need to have a separate Zoom subscription with Kajabi.

As far as payment gateways go, both platforms integrate with numerous services, including PayPal and Stripe, so payment methods shouldn’t be an issue. Whether you need a project management tool like Trello or Slack, sales and marketing tools like ClickFunnels or ThriveCart, or key analytics tools like FB Pixel and Zoho Analytics, both of these platforms are optimized for integration!

Reporting and Analytics

When it comes to third-party integrations, the sky’s the limit! As such, so is your reporting and analytics capabilities. But for the sake of platform comparison, I’ll stick to their native reporting features.

Before I go further – Kajabi’s got New Zenler beat here, hands down. Their native reporting tool is not only attractive and well-designed, but robust and thorough. You can track customer activity and collect stats at every part of the pipeline, such as net revenue and number of opt-ins. You can even track sales from affiliate marketers! Moreover, you can refine your search using different filters. For example, Kajabi lets you analyze results based on a specific time period (e.g., week, month, year, etc.) or for a specific product.

New Zenler offers similar features in terms of sales analytics. Its analytics dashboard is divided into 4 sections: Course Progress, Quizzes, Sales, and Affiliate Marketing. You can view how many students have enrolled in a course and track their individual progress. Moreover, you can view quiz results at a glance or sales revenue based on certain products or periods. However, it’s not quite as thorough as Kajabi.

But here’s where New Zenler really drops the ball – learner engagement. While Kajabi lets you view learner engagement on course videos (play rate, time spent watching video, etc.), New Zenler has no such ability. It’s also missing key metrics like monthly recurring revenue, churn rate, etc. Again, this is nothing that a simple (and possibly free!) third-party integration can’t fix.

New Zenler vs Kajabi: Final thoughts

If you’re anything like me, you’re looking for the best bang for your buck. Kajabi is a sleek and well-designed platform that affords a lot of flexibility in terms of website/landing page customization. If anything, I’d say it was designed with a focus on marketing and sales more so than course creation. On the other hand, New Zenler is uber accommodating in terms of supported file and quiz-question types, but it still stands its ground when it comes to product pricing, marketing funnels, and building online communities.

That said, New Zenler costs $67/month while Kajabi is over 2x this rate, at $149/month. It’s hard to explain away this gap when they go toe to toe in so many ways. That said, there are a lot of Kajabi zealots who show unwavering loyalty to the platform.

But for me, quality course content comes first, then everything else naturally follows. So, economics aside, New Zenler’s already looking more attractive to me due to its course creation focus. If I need New Zenler to pick up the slack on its analytics, I can just leverage one of its countless third-party integrations.

– By Sydney Mansaray for Learning Revolution