Kajabi vs New Zenler: A Definitive Comparison (July 2023)

At first glance, New Zenler might seem like a more affordable version of Kajabi. Only after testing both out, it became obvious to me that each online course platform has a completely different approach to the educator’s role.

Kajabi is business-oriented—viewing the educator as a solopreneur—so it focuses on pre-recorded content and provides advanced automations to free up the educator’s time.

On the other hand, New Zenler is human-centered, valuing the real-life connection between educators and their students. So it leans more towards live sessions and multiple instructors to create a virtual school setting that delivers an enhanced student experience.

Overall, you can achieve massive growth on both platforms but Kajabi makes the business side of it effortless. Still, New Zenler’s greatest success is making an affordable all-in-one platform that has allowed more educators to sell their knowledge online.

In this article, I’ll review Kajabi vs New Zenler regarding:

1. Pricing and Payments
2. Course Creation
3. Live Sessions
4. Additional Products
5. Branding and Customization
6. Sales and Marketing Tools

Comparison Summary: Kajabi vs New Zenler

Choose Kajabi if you want to run your business on autopilot with its advanced automations and pre-recorded courses approach. On the other hand, New Zenler is more suitable for experimenting with new courses. It’s also a better choice if you’re planning to lead lots of different courses, or want to teach many students with live sessions.

What is Kajabi?
“The solo educator’s business hub” 👨‍🏫👑

Kenny Rueter founded Kajabi in 2010 after building courses on YouTube and struggling to monetize them.

Today Kajabi empowers “knowledge entrepreneurs” to seamlessly set up and grow their digital product businesses with an all-in-one course-building platform. Kajabi understands that uploading course material is only one side of the teaching business, so it eliminates the hassle of managing third-party tools and specialized team members. Its array of built-in tools includes email marketing, communities, funnels, websites, and integrations.

Kajabi is far more than your simple LMS. Everything about Kajabi signifies confidence and professionalism: the blue color, the minimalist angular logo, and the sleek, modern typography. As a high-end course-building solution, Kajabi aims to gain the trust of experienced professionals that are shifting to the creator economy.

What is New Zenler?
“Live virtual schools” 🏫🙋‍♂️

Rakesh Vallil first launched Zenler as a corporate training tool at London’s Learning Technologies Expo in 2011, before it coincidently caught the interest of course creators.

Since its launch, Zenler took a human-centered development approach towards e-learning as it slowly built up the platform based on its users’ feedback. Eventually, in 2019, New Zenler was launched as a one-stop solution, including some new features like email marketing, a drag-and-drop page builder, integrated live sessions, and more. To date, New Zenler maintains its free plan to continue supporting emerging educators.

In essence, New Zenler leans towards individual educators rather than professional businesses. This is reflected in its logo — it uses curves rather than straight lines and sharp angles and merges the professional blue color with energetic yellow hues. With its multiple instructors and generous live session quotas, New Zenler is best for tutors who seek personal interaction with students.

Kajabi vs New Zenler: Pricing

New Zenler is more affordable for courses, but Kajabi has more product types.

Kajabi has a 14-day free trial, while New Zenler has a free Beta version.

Kajabi offers a 14-day free trial for its middle plan. However, if you join through an affiliate program, you’ll get a 30-day free trial for the starter plan 😉

On the other hand, once you sign up New Zenler automatically gives you free access as a Beta user to most of its functionality.

New Zenler offers unlimited courses, while Kajabi increases the number of products as you upgrade plans.

Both platforms offer more customers and larger email lists for their paid plans.

Kajabi limits the number of products (including courses) within every pricing plan, but it increases as you upgrade. Opposed to Kajabi, New Zenler has no limit on the number of courses you can sell on all plans. But it limits the number of participants in live streams.

New Zenler is more affordable than Kajabi and it’s currently offering extra discounts for its Beta users.

New Zenler’s monthly prices are much more affordable than Kajabi, especially since it offers more students, courses, and funnels per plan. What’s more, you’ll get substantial lifetime discounts if you upgrade to a paid plan before the official launch of the platform.

Both integrate with Stripe and PayPal. New Zenler also integrates with Razorpay.

Both platforms charge no additional fees for the paid plans, but New Zenler charges a 10% transaction fee on the free plan. In all cases, you’ll have to account for the processing fees of the payment gateway you choose.

Each platform has distinctive payment features.

Kajabi stands out by offering payments in multiple currencies, making your offers more relatable to international customers. Another helpful feature it has is cart abandonment emails, which remind your customers to make a purchase once a set time has passed.

On the other hand, New Zenler offers tiered pricing, which allows you to control the products your customers get access to, based on their payment plan. In addition, it offers automated EU VAT handling.

Winner: Choose Kajabi if you’ve got a limited number of high-ticket digital products. On the other hand, New Zenler is a better option if you want to target a wider customer base with more affordable products.

Kajabi vs New Zenler: Course Creation

Kajabi creates courses faster, but New Zenler gives more control over course content.

Both have intuitive course outlines, but New Zenler allows more content per lesson.

You can only attach one audio or video file for each lesson in Kajabi as well as additional downloads. Kajabi also allows bulk uploads for all the course videos. However, you can’t attach assignments to individual lessons, so they’ll appear as individual modules in the course outline.

On the other hand, New Zenler course builder allows bulk uploads of various file types, including video, audio, PDFs, and PowerPoint presentations. You can upload all those files to a single lesson and even include quizzes and surveys for assessments.

New Zenler also allows creators to add ebooks, custom codes, and SCORM/HTML files, allowing them to make more interactive courses.

New Zenler has more assessment options than Kajabi.

Kajabi has all its assessment features in one place. There are four question types to choose from, which allow for structured or open-ended responses. These options give you great flexibility in designing assessments for various topics.

New Zenler quizzes have three structured question types, but it gives more options, such as randomizing questions and enlarging the image size. However, file uploads and open-ended questions are only available in assignments, which are reserved for paid plans.

Kajabi integrates certificates more efficiently.

If you want to give out certificates for a course on New Zenler, they will be automatically generated for each student when they complete the course. You can choose a certificate template or upload your own design as an SVG file.

Kajabi’s certificates have similar options to New Zenler’s, including serial numbers and completion dates. But it goes further by integrating certificates with its built-in email automation, so your students automatically receive their certificates in their inboxes.

Kajabi leads with AI tools.

Kajabi is currently developing its AI hub, including the course outline generator. It can generate impressive course outlines so you don’t have to start from a blank slate, but you’ll still need to develop the lessons yourself.

Winner: Choose New Zenler if you want to have more control over the course outline and its content. On the other hand, Kajabi’s templates, AI course generator, and straightforward interface will allow you to quickly create well-organized courses.

Kajabi vs New Zenler: Live Sessions

Kajabi integrates live video with several products, while New Zenler is designed for longer live sessions.

New Zenler integrates with Zoom (subscription included), while Kajabi has built-in live video.

New Zenler has a dedicated tab for live lessons, which makes it easier to organize multiple sessions. A handy calendar shows you all the scheduled live sessions. You can choose between one-on-one coaching, classes for existing students, or webinars for external guests who registered for a specific session.

Although New Zenler doesn’t have a built-in live tool, it integrates with Zoom and includes a Zoom subscription for its paid plans. You’ll get a maximum of 300 attendees for the pro plan and 500 attendees for the premium plan.

On the other hand, Kajabi has its own built-in live video tool that you can use for coaching programs if you’re using the Kajabi scheduler or manual booking. If you want to use Calendly for booking, you’ll need to use a third-party tool like Zoom.

For pre-recorded courses, Kajabi allows a maximum of 200 participants per live session. You can schedule recurring live sessions for workshops or Q&A sessions to connect with your students even better.

Another method of live sessions on Kajabi is Meetups, which are restricted to community members.

New Zenler stands out with instructor roles for live sessions.

You can make better use of New Zenler’s live sessions by assigning several instructors, so you can grow your business into a virtual school. Having more instructors is especially helpful if your students prefer personal interaction.

Meanwhile, Kajabi only includes admin and assistant roles, but there are no instructors included. So, you’ll be the sole educator on the platform.

Winner: Choose New Zenler if you mostly teach through live sessions with a large number of participants. Kajabi is better if you prefer integrating live meetings with courses or communities.

Kajabi vs New Zenler: Additional Products

Kajabi monetizes more products, while New Zenler associates products with courses.

Both platforms have similar community features, but Kajabi monetizes individual community groups.

New Zenler communities can be an interactive alternative to Facebook groups because of their multiple post types. However, you can’t monetize access to communities on New Zenler. You can only attach a community to an existing course or site.

New Zenler offers bundles, which can be used as membership sites, but you can’t add individual communities to bundles. They’re associated with their courses in the bundle.

On the other hand, Kajabi has separate access groups within its community product.

You can monetize each access group by creating a separate offer for subscribers, or bundle several access groups and courses in a single offer.

Kajabi stands out with built-in podcasts.

You can host paid or free podcasts on Kajabi with a maximum file size of 250MB per episode. If you’re on your way to becoming an infopreneur, podcasts can strongly develop your personal brand as an expert in the field.

Winner: Kajabi should be your go-to option if you want to sell several digital products like podcasts. New Zenler is a more efficient option if you only need to attach a community to specific courses.

Kajabi vs New Zenler: Branding and Customization

Both have extensive customization options, but Kajabi guarantees a professional appearance.

Kajabi has more course templates, but New Zenler allows you to customize individual pages and instances.

New Zenler’s page builder allows you to extensively customize individual course pages, including sales, checkout, course access, and thank you pages. You get to set up a custom domain as well.

For each page, you can add and customize various blocks. You can change almost every detail about blocks, including fonts, background colors, spacing, and even block animations. With some CSS knowledge, your options are limitless. However, I’d recommend getting a designer’s opinion for proper font pairing or color matches to achieve a professional style. There’s an option to connect to WordPress too if you prefer that.

In contrast, Kajabi provides limited customization options for sales pages, including the primary color and header image. This ensures that the style remains consistent on all pages.

Similarly, Kajabi gives minimal control over the style of individual elements like headers on your course pages. There’s a limited variety of fonts, but they’re more sophisticated than New Zenler’s. Additionally, your font and color scheme choices are automatically applied to all course pages.

Both have websites with blogs and dynamic blocks, but Kajabi provides well-designed templates, too.

New Zenler has an array of dynamic blocks, so its content will synchronize with other website pages.

As with New Zenler’s course pages, you can customize individual instances on its website builder, including the colors of the course player (1), community (2), and blog (3).

On the other hand, Kajabi provides seven website themes to start with. The templates and unified page designs make it easier to build professional-looking pages in no time.

Winner: Go for Kajabi if you have a limited design background or if you want to set up your business quickly. Kajabi’s templates guarantee a professional appearance with minimal effort. On the other hand, New Zenler is better if you want more control over the style of individual elements on your pages.

Kajabi vs New Zenler: Marketing Tools

Both have funnels, automations, and built-in email, but Kajabi’s tools are more advanced.

Both have sales funnels, but Kajabi has better pre-built templates.

New Zenler has two basic funnel types: lead magnet and video series.

The email sequence and sales copy are already done for you, so you only need to customize the funnel to fit your offer. However, the themes are designed for ebooks or cheat sheets, so you’ll need to do more work if you have a different lead magnet.

On the other hand, Kajabi has over a dozen funnel templates that are more suited for specific purposes like product launches and webinars.

Both have automations, but Kajabi has advanced “when-then” sequences.

Unlike Kajabi, New Zenler’s automations aren’t grouped under one tab, making them more difficult to create integrated flows. So, for instance, each course has its own automations in a separate tab.

There are only two pre-built email sequences for New Zenler’s courses: “Enroll Email Sequence” and “Course Completion Email Sequence”.

You can edit each email sequence, but New Zenler has limited triggers (1) and actions (2). Triggers include joining and completing courses, as well as completing lessons.

Similarly, New Zenler’s marketing funnel automations have one trigger (1) and a few actions (2). Funnel actions include sending emails, tagging, and notifying admins.

On the other hand, Kajabi has multiple conditions for its “WHEN-THEN” automations. Kajabi’s actions (THEN) include sending offers, tagging customers, and unsubscribing from an email list. This gives you more control over your customers’ journey. For instance, you can provide an alternative lead magnet if they reject an earlier offer.

Added to that, it has various triggers (WHEN) which allow you to connect different sequences to create interconnected frameworks.

Both have built-in analytics, but Kajabi gives more detailed metrics.

New Zenler produces reports for sales, affiliates, course progress, and assessments.

You can have an overview of student enrollments and progress, which allows you to take action and improve your approach.

Meanwhile, Kajabi has New Zenler’s basic reports in addition to more metrics, such as opt-ins and page views.

For each category, Kajabi gives more granular insights, compared to New Zenler. For example, you can view the product progress for individual students, so you can reach out with a special offer or a coaching session for support.

Winner: Go for Kajabi if you need advanced analytics to develop your products, or if you depend on automated workflows to guide your customers through the pipelines. On the other hand, New Zenler has less-advanced tools, but you can complement them with third-party integrations and a team of instructors or admins.

Kajabi vs New Zenler: Pros & Cons

Final Verdict: Kajabi vs New Zenler

Kajabi is better for personal branding, while New Zenler is better for online teaching.

Here’s my final verdict on New Zenler vs Kajabi!

Overall, Kajabi has an edge because New Zenler is still under development. So far, Kajabi’s professional interface and built-in automations make it a more reliable option for professionals. However, New Zenler competes with live-session features and unlimited courses at exclusive price cuts — so it’s a great deal for beginners.

 

Use Kajabi if:

• You need a mobile app for your courses.
• You want to monetize communities and podcasts.
• You want to quickly set up courses, websites, and funnels.

Click here to get started with Kajabi!

 

Use New Zenler if:

• Your students prefer personal interaction through live classes.
• You want to have more control over the course and page design.
• You need to work with several instructors.

Click here to get started with New Zenler!