# Systeme.io vs Kajabi · Lander Report > Source: https://landerreport.com/compare/systeme-io-vs-kajabi Compare ## Systeme.io vs Kajabi By Marcus Reeve, reviewed by the Lander Report editors. Updated 2026-09-28\. [How we research](/methodology) **Disclosure:**We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings. ### The short answer Pick Systeme.io if you want funnels, an email list and a checkout for free or close to it and you run one lean business; pick Kajabi if what you sell is your own courses, coaching or a membership and you want the website, email, checkout and course delivery that hosts and sells it in one system. Neither rotates split tests under one URL, so if you buy cold traffic and live on ad learning, look at ElasticFunnels too. ### Side by side | | Systeme.io | Kajabi | | ------------- | ---------- | ----------------------- | | Starts at | Free / $17 | $143/mo | | Split testing | A/B tests | Basic A/B, not same-URL | | Checkout | Yes, bumps | Yes, no revenue share | | Free trial | Free plan | 30-day, card | ### Where each one wins #### Systeme.io ##### What works * A genuine free plan with funnels, a checkout, order bumps, upsells and 0% transaction fees, no card required. * Paid plans stay cheap ($17 to $97/mo) and every plan allows unlimited sub-accounts. ##### What to watch * The page builder is more basic than Unbounce or Instapage, so pixel-level design and speed tuning are harder to reach. #### Kajabi ##### What works * It genuinely replaces a stack, and takes no revenue share. One subscription covers courses, coaching, communities, memberships, a website, landing pages, email, automations and checkout, and Kajabi takes no cut of what you sell beyond standard card processing (2.7 to 2.9% plus $0.30). For a creator selling their own offer, that consolidation is the point. * It is established and low-risk to trust. The vendor reports over 100,000 businesses and more than $12B earned on the platform, and long-time coaches call it the default. You are not betting on an unknown or a brand-new product with no track record. * It is fast to launch and to follow up. Users who justify the price say the win is speed: a product, a sales page, an email sequence and a checkout live in days, backed by newer AI tools that draft the setup for you. ##### What to watch * It is a course and coaching platform first, not a lander tool. Landing pages and funnels are included, but page building is not its focus, and it does not offer the same-URL, server-side split testing that keeps Meta and Google ad learning intact. A paid-traffic affiliate who needs ad-safe A/B tests will not find them here. * It is expensive, and the most common complaint is price against a course-only use. Plans start at $143/mo billed annually and reach $399/mo, and users say that fee only pays off if you actually run the marketing and sales side, not just course hosting. * The editor frustrates power users, and the platform is sticky. Long-time users call the page and checkout editor unintuitive and dated with limited customization. Once your site, list, products and automations live inside Kajabi, moving out is painful, which makes the monthly fee harder to walk away from. ### Two products that meet on a shortlist by accident Systeme.io and Kajabi both promise to be the one subscription you sell through. Each builds pages, takes a payment, sends email and hosts a course, so on a feature checklist they overlap enough to leave a buyer stuck between them. But they were built for opposite people, and priced for opposite budgets. The reason you are down to these two is usually that you have not yet decided whether you are running a lean operation on a tight budget or building a business around your own courses. Answer that and the choice answers itself. Systeme.io is a free-to-start platform that bundles funnels, an email list, a checkout with order bumps and one-click upsells, a course area and an affiliate program into one cheap subscription. There is a real free plan under it: three funnels, a checkout, 2,000 contacts, one automation and 0% transaction fees, with no card. It is built for solo creators and small businesses who want the whole machine in one login before they spend anything. Kajabi is a course and creator platform. It wraps a website, landing pages, email, automations and a checkout around the thing it is actually built to do, which is host and deliver your own courses, coaching, communities and memberships. It takes no cut of your sales, the vendor reports more than 100,000 businesses and over $12B earned on it, and long-time coaches call it the default. It is built for an expert selling their own knowledge, and it is priced for one. So the split is not a feature you will miss. It is who you are. If you are one person counting every dollar and you want a funnel and a checkout live for nothing, one of these starts free. If your product is your own course or coaching program and you want the site, email, checkout and course delivery in one system, the other is built around exactly that, and priced accordingly. ### Pricing compared The two are priced on different models, and it is the first thing that separates them. Systeme.io has a genuine free plan (three funnels, a checkout with order bumps and upsells, 2,000 contacts, one automation, 0% transaction fees, no card), then paid plans run from $17/mo to $97/mo. It takes no cut of your sales at any tier. That is the cheapest entry of any tool on this site. Kajabi starts at $143/mo on its Basic plan billed annually, rising to $199/mo on Growth and $399/mo on Pro; month-to-month is higher at $179, $249 and $499\. The trial runs 30 days, but it requires a card and auto-bills when it ends. Kajabi takes no revenue share, though standard card processing of 2.7% to 2.9% plus $0.30 still applies. A price rise took effect in January 2026, so treat the published numbers as the current ones. So the entry decision is not close. Systeme.io is free to start and $17 to $97 a month; Kajabi is $143 to $399 a month before you have sold anything. Neither takes a percentage of your product sales, which is the one place both beat a dedicated checkout platform that does. If price is the deciding factor and you run a lean operation, this comparison is already over. ### What each is built to do This is where the overlap ends. Systeme.io's centre of gravity is getting a small operator live for nothing. The checkout takes payment with order bumps and one-click upsells, the email tool sends broadcasts and sequences, the course area hosts what you sell, and the affiliate program lets you recruit partners, all inside the free or near-free tier. The trade-off is polish: the page builder is plainer than a dedicated tool, and pixel-level design and speed tuning are harder to reach than on a specialist like Unbounce or Instapage. For a solo creator who wants the whole thing in one login without a bill, that trade is easy to make. Kajabi is the reverse. Its centre of gravity is your course and the people who buy it. Course hosting and delivery, memberships, communities and coaching are the product; the website, landing pages, email and checkout exist to sell and support them. Users who justify the price say the win is speed: a product, a sales page, an email sequence and a checkout live in days, and newer AI tools draft the setup for you. If what you sell is your own knowledge and you want it hosted, sold and delivered in one system, that is the machine Kajabi is, and Systeme.io's course area is a lighter version of it. So the clean split: Systeme.io gets a lean business live cheaply and keeps it simple; Kajabi hosts, sells and delivers your own courses and coaching in one place, and charges for it. ### The split-testing gap for paid traffic Here is the part neither pricing page tells you, and it decides the whole thing if you buy cold traffic. Both tools can test a page, and neither does it in a way that protects a paid campaign. Systeme.io runs simple A/B tests. Kajabi offers basic page A/B testing, but it is a course platform first and page experimentation is not its focus. Neither rotates variants under a single link server-side. Why that matters: when a test changes the URL, or sends a materially changed page back through review, Meta or Google can drop the campaign back into the learning phase and reset the optimisation you paid to build. For a buyer who lives on conversion rate, resetting ad learning to run a headline test is an expensive way to test a headline. If ad-safe testing is the deciding factor rather than a nice-to-have, it is worth looking past both of these, which the last pick below does. ### What long-term users report We do not run these platforms on live campaigns. We read what people who have used them for months actually say, alongside each vendor's own docs and pricing pages, and we verify prices with the vendor. Systeme.io's reputation is that the free plan is real and the value is genuine, and the criticism is consistent with what a cheap platform is: the builder is basic, and teams that outgrow it move to a dedicated page tool or a checkout platform once design and speed start costing them conversions. For a solo operator early on, that ceiling is far enough away not to matter. Kajabi is clearly a real, established product, and it is trusted by the creators it is built for. But its independent rating is more mixed than its size suggests: Trustpilot sits around 3.4 to 3.5 out of 5 across more than 2,000 reviews. The recurring complaints are consistent and worth planning around. Price is the loudest: users say the fee only pays off if you run the marketing and sales side, not just course hosting. The editor draws the next most, with long-time users calling the page and checkout builder dated and unintuitive with limited customization. And the platform is sticky, because once your site, list, products and automations live inside Kajabi, moving out is painful, which makes the monthly fee harder to walk away from. ### Which one should you pick? #### Systeme.io, for a lean business starting cheap Choose Systeme.io when you are one person or a small team, you want funnels, an email list, a checkout with order bumps and a course area, and you want it for free or close to it. The free plan is genuine, paid tiers top out at $97/mo, and there is no cut of your sales at any level. Go in knowing the ceiling: the page builder is plainer than a dedicated tool, so if you reach the point where design and speed decide your conversion rate, you will feel it. For getting live without a bill, nothing on this site beats it. #### Kajabi, for a creator selling their own courses Choose Kajabi when what you sell is your own courses, coaching or a membership, and you want the website, email, checkout and course delivery that hosts and sells it in one system. It takes no revenue share, it is established and low-risk to trust, and users who run the full marketing side on it say it earns the fee. Watch the two things they complain about most: the price, which only pays off if you use the sales and marketing tools rather than just hosting a course, and the editor, which power users find dated. As a lander tool for cold paid traffic it is the wrong shape, because page building is not its focus and it has no ad-safe split testing. #### ElasticFunnels, if you buy paid traffic and live on ad learning If the reason you are comparing these two is that you buy cold traffic and live on conversion rate, the honest answer is that neither runs the test you run most. ElasticFunnels is a funnel platform built for exactly that reader: affiliates, product vendors, agencies and ecommerce brands running paid traffic. It builds the pages, with an AI builder that drafts a lander from a prompt or clones one from a URL, and it split-tests variants under a single campaign link so Meta, Google and TikTok keep their learning and a test never goes back through ad review. That same-URL split testing is the reason most teams move to it, but it is one reason among several, not all it is: the checkout with order bumps, one-click upsells, subscriptions and routing across several merchant accounts (including high-risk ones), plus a CRM, automations and attribution, all sit on one record, so a click, an order, a rebill and a refund are a single row instead of four exports you reconcile later. Starter is $97/mo, every feature is on every plan, the 14-day trial needs no card, and EF-hosted checkouts carry a 0.5% fee on the revenue processed through them. The catch to state plainly: ElasticFunnels is newer than either Systeme.io or Kajabi, and there is very little independent third-party review coverage to check its claims against yet, so until you run real volume through it you are largely taking the vendor's word for it. That is what you would expect of a platform this new, and it limits your outside proof rather than the features, which are all on every plan. The sensible response is the one the no-card trial invites: run a test campaign on a real angle before you move a whole business across. Still weighing it up? Read the [Systeme.io review](/reviews/systeme-io) and the [Kajabi review](/reviews/kajabi) in full, see how the field stacks up in [the full ranking](/best), or read the [ElasticFunnels review](/reviews/elasticfunnels). If you want that last pick weighed head to head, [ElasticFunnels vs Systeme.io](/compare/elasticfunnels-vs-systeme-io) and [ElasticFunnels vs Kajabi](/compare/elasticfunnels-vs-kajabi) cover it, and [ClickFunnels vs Kajabi](/compare/clickfunnels-vs-kajabi) weighs Kajabi against a pure funnel builder. Our pick ### Systeme.io Systeme.io is the pick if you are starting out or watching every dollar. The free plan runs three funnels with a checkout, order bumps and 0% transaction fees. The builder is plainer than the paid tools and design control is limited. ### Frequently asked questions Which is better, Systeme.io or Kajabi? Pick Systeme.io if you want funnels, an email list and a checkout for free or close to it and you run one lean business; pick Kajabi if what you sell is your own courses, coaching or a membership and you want the website, email, checkout and course delivery that hosts and sells it in one system. Neither rotates split tests under one URL, so if you buy cold traffic and live on ad learning, look at ElasticFunnels too. Do Systeme.io and Kajabi both support A/B testing? Systeme.io: A/B tests. Kajabi: Basic A/B, not same-URL. ### What we read #### From Systeme.io * #### Other sources 11 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context. 1. \[s1\] [Best clickfunnels alternative out there? ](https://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurConnect/comments/1pt9a79/best%5Fclickfunnels%5Falternative%5Fout%5Fthere/) Reddit, 1 Jan 2025 2. \[s2\] [Best Systeme io alternative? one that actually works? ](https://www.reddit.com/r/best%5Falternative/comments/1vbt3m0/best%5Fsysteme%5Fio%5Falternative%5Fone%5Fthat%5Factually/) Reddit, 1 Jan 2025 3. \[s3\] [Systeme.io alternative? Recommendations? ](https://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurConnect/comments/1pt9jis/systemeio%5Falternative%5Frecommendations/) Reddit, 1 Jan 2025 4. \[s4\] [Systeme.io Reviews | Trustpilot ](https://www.trustpilot.com/review/systeme.io) Trustpilot, 1 Jan 2026 5. \[s5\] [Systeme.io Reviews 2026\. Verified Reviews, Pros & Cons | Capterra ](https://www.capterra.com/p/198994/Systeme/reviews/) Capterra, 1 Jan 2026 6. \[oc-price\] [Kajabi free trial vs $99 for 3 months ](https://www.reddit.com/r/onlinecourses/comments/1ssapju/kajabi%5Ffree%5Ftrial%5Fvs%5F99%5Ffor%5F3%5Fmonths%5Fi%5Falmost/) Reddit 7. \[oc-launch\] [Kajabi free trial vs $99 for 3 months ](https://www.reddit.com/r/onlinecourses/comments/1ssapju/kajabi%5Ffree%5Ftrial%5Fvs%5F99%5Ffor%5F3%5Fmonths%5Fi%5Falmost/) Reddit 8. \[lc-goto\] [Is anyone here using Kajabi ](https://www.reddit.com/r/lifecoaching/comments/1ihs5x8/is%5Fanyone%5Fhere%5Fusing%5Fkajabi/) Reddit 9. \[et-ux\] [Are you using Kajabi? What are the most annoying things ](https://www.reddit.com/r/edtech/comments/qflqld/are%5Fyou%5Fusing%5Fkajabi%5Fwhat%5Fare%5Fthe%5Fmost%5Fannoying/) Reddit 10. \[et-edit\] [Are you using Kajabi? What are the most annoying things ](https://www.reddit.com/r/edtech/comments/qflqld/are%5Fyou%5Fusing%5Fkajabi%5Fwhat%5Fare%5Fthe%5Fmost%5Fannoying/) Reddit 11. \[oc-pages\] [New course creator: all-in-one vs piecing it together ](https://www.reddit.com/r/onlinecourses/comments/1s4izni/new%5Fcourse%5Fcreator%5Fallinone%5Fkajabi%5Fghl%5Fvs%5Fpiecing/) Reddit ### Keep reading * [Systeme.io review](/reviews/systeme-io) * [Kajabi review](/reviews/kajabi) * [The full ranking](/best) --- Landing page builders, judged for affiliates [Best of](/best) © 2026 Lander Report. Independent and reader-supported. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on this page. It never affects our rankings. Lander Report