Kajabi vs. Keap For Your Membership Site and Online Training?

(Check out the Keap CRM Mastery page for more tips and tricks.)

Back then—and still today—Infusionsoft (today Keap, now part of Thryv) offered some powerful features that Kajabi does not:

• Deep API integrations to expand the platform
• Multi-media marketing automation including email, direct mail, voice broadcasts, and text/SMS via the API
• CRM
• Sales pipelines with automation

But to be fair, Kajabi offers some features that Keap does not, such as better, prettier, more responsive, and easier-to-build:

• Landing pages
• Sales pages
• Webinar pages
• Event pages
• Video hosting
• Assessments/quizzes
• Multi-step checkout

(To continue being fair, CustomerHub offers many of the same features as Kajabi. It used to only work with Keap, but that is no longer the case. If you already own Keap, take a look at CustomerHub to see if it can meet your membership portal needs.)

Please understand that everyone I have worked with on Kajabi has had good things to say about the platform, especially its ease of use.

And I'm a big fan of:

"Buy and deploy whatever it is you will actually use!"

However, what I have learned after growing my own marketing agency since 2006 and working with entrepreneurs in dozens of countries is this question:

"What are your intentions?"

If what you offer is easy to replicate, someone will steal it and sell against you.

Not good.

Not good at all.

But it happens every day.

Embrace Complexity

If your intention is to go big, then you need to embrace Dan Kennedy's recommendation to "embrace complexity."

What he and I mean by that is your system needs to be so complex under the hood that it is hard for someone to copy, but easy for your employees, staff, and contractors to run.

Apple is a great case in point. There is some magic-ninja-voodoo-mojo going on under that glassy exterior of the iPhone, iPad, iMac, etc.

It's not easy making something so elegant and functional, yet easy and intuitive to run. That's why Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Keap learned this the hard way, which led to its rebranding, its simplified platform, its exit from the membership portal space, and eventually its place inside Thryv.

So Keap + CustomerHub or Memberium is for you if you're looking for:

• CRM & Sales Pipeline Management
• E-Commerce With Unlimited Products
  • Storefront
  • Custom order forms
  • Invoices
  • Quotes
  • Subscriptions
• Affiliate Marketing
• Marketing Automation
• Landing Pages
• Tracking & Analytics
• Multiple Simultaneous Users
• Email Marketing
• Deep Customization

Kajabi helps you embrace complexity with ease. Kajabi is for you if you're looking for:

• A Membership/Training Portal
• A Professionally-Hosted Website + Blog
• Video Hosting
• Limits by plan on products, domains, and contacts (check their current tiers)
• Limited Pipelines
• Affiliate Marketing (on higher tiers)
• Marketing Automation
• Unlimited Landing Pages

All in all, Kajabi is a solid platform with great features. Both companies ship updates constantly, so check current features before you decide.

Deep Integration With Keap

"The first big difference is the level of integration with Keap.

"With Kajabi, you get a one-way data push from Keap to Kajabi.

"This means the member data comes over, but that is all—you are largely left to keep the two databases up to date on your own from there, so if you're delivering on a subscription membership model, be prepared for lots of manual updating.

"Memberium (and CustomerHub), on the other hand, offers a bi-directional sync with Keap, which means that all of the information in both systems stays up-to-date all the time, and both systems inform each other regarding changes (much more automated)!"

CustomerHub Allows For More Customization

"Second thing is related to the core functionality of the products.

"Kajabi is really set up to be a plug 'n play system, which is nice in many ways and can help pragmatist users get set up easier. Problem is that this also really limits what you can do with the product. If you can't do what you want out of the box, you're kind of SOL.

"Memberium and CustomerHub are both pretty easy to use and set up but don't offer as much in terms of plug 'n play content creation (at least for now). This means that users have to put a little more effort into content creation, but they have much more flexibility in terms of how they present that content to the end user."

Native Billing Portal

"Lastly, both Memberium and CustomerHub offer an out-of-the-box billing portal.

"This means that your members can not only consume membership content but also manage their accounts, passwords, billing, etc., all in the same place!

"This was at first a unique benefit of Memberium that no other system offered.

"There are lots of other little differences but I think these are the main ones to be cognizant of as an Infusionsoft Certified Partner. Hope this helps!"

Kajabi vs. Keap?

This is a tough call.

If you use all of the features of Kajabi, you may come out ahead vs. piecing them together around Keap. And while the integration between Keap and Memberium or CustomerHub is seamless, they are different companies.

If you need a full-blown CRM with enhanced e-commerce capabilities to build a big email list and manage bigger deals over time, Keap (now part of Thryv) is the way to go.

If you're still unsure—and it's okay if that's the case—take the Best CRM free quiz.

Why the CRM Didn't Fix It

I've used Salesforce since 2004, Keap since 2008, and HubSpot and Ontraport since 2014. Every tool on this page works. Plenty of owners still give up on it.

The tool was never the problem. A shiny CRM with no written process is just expensive dashboardery. Write down how a stranger becomes a customer first. Then pick the software that fits that process.

Get a process before you get the software →

Market like you mean it.
Now go sell something.