Kajabi or HighLevel

Updated 2026-09-19

Stay on Kajabi if your course or membership is the product and its presentation is what customers buy. Move to HighLevel if the course is how you deliver a coaching or service business that wins clients through calls, follow-up and SMS, and you are paying separately for those pieces today.

What Kajabi is built for

Kajabi is built as an all-in-one system for experts who sell courses, coaching programs and memberships under their own brand: content hosting, marketing pages, email and payments bundled around delivering a digital product. It suits an educator or coach whose business is the course itself, sold largely to people who buy without speaking to anyone first.

Where a coaching business starts to need more

A course-first business often reaches a point where it needs a sales pipeline with stages for discovery calls, two-way SMS for reminders and re-engagement, booking with round robin across a growing team, a CRM record for enquiries who never buy the course, invoicing for retainer or one-to-one clients running alongside it, or a second brand or client account kept separate under one login. None of these are faults in a course platform. They are needs a course-first tool was not built to carry.

What HighLevel puts on one plan

Courses, memberships and communities sit on every published HighLevel plan alongside the CRM, pipeline, calendar, email and SMS, as at September 2026, so an enquiry who never buys the course still gets a contact record and a follow-up workflow instead of disappearing. Starter, at $97 a month as at September 2026, covers one coaching business with three sub-accounts; the plans page sets out where the plans divide. Kajabi can still be the fit where the course itself is the whole job: its course area and video hosting are built around presenting one brand's programs, and that presentation is what you would be leaving.

What moves, what is rebuilt, what is lost

Contacts, tags and your email list move across. Courses are rebuilt, with video re-uploaded and lessons recreated in the new structure, and the same goes for checkout pages, email sequences, landing pages and any community area. Course progress history, Kajabi-hosted video URLs and past analytics do not move and are lost in the switch, as at September 2026. Check HighLevel's own course documentation for current video hosting limits before moving a large library, and check Kajabi's own export tools for exactly what your account can output.

How long it takes

A Kajabi move typically runs 3 to 8 weeks depending on how many courses and sequences need rebuilding, as at September 2026. The sending domain warm-up runs 2 to 4 weeks in the background and should start on day one. Do not email the student list from the new domain until it is warm: a list sent early from a cold domain is where replies and opens fall after a move. Email deliverability covers that step, the timeline tool builds a week-by-week plan for your course count and list size, and the checklist lists every step in order. The switch hub covers moves from other tools.

Who owns the move

Name who owns the rebuild before you start. A move that nobody owns stalls halfway, with the old and new systems both half-configured and neither running the business. Put one person's name against the sending domain, the pipeline and the first workflow, even if that person is you. Build the enquiry workflow before you rebuild every course: the courses can wait for a cohort break, and the enquiries arriving this week cannot.

The decision

Stay on Kajabi if:

1. The learner's experience inside the course is your brand, and your revenue depends on that presentation.
2. Students find and buy without speaking to you, and self-serve checkout is how you sell.
3. Your whole team's workflow already lives inside Kajabi and nothing outside it is a bottleneck.

Move to HighLevel if:

1. You sell mainly by discovery call and pipeline, and the course supports that relationship rather than replacing it.
2. You need SMS, missed-call handling or a phone number tied to the same contact record as the course.
3. You run more than one business, brand or client account and want them kept separate under one login.

If your business is built around course delivery rather than coaching by call, HighLevel for course creators and courses, memberships and communities cover how the course side works day to day. The fit test turns the conditions above into a verdict for your business, and the calculator puts a year-one figure on it. If you have decided, start here for the first week's order.

Questions people ask

Can I move my Kajabi courses to HighLevel?

Yes, but the courses themselves are rebuilt rather than imported. Video is re-uploaded and lessons are recreated in the new structure; contacts, tags and your email list move across first.

What will I pay after moving from Kajabi?

A HighLevel plan plus usage for email, SMS and any add-ons you choose; the plans page and the calculator give current figures for your case. Kajabi's own pricing page has its side of the comparison.

Will my students notice the change?

They will see a new checkout and login area, so plan the switch for a natural break such as between cohorts, and test the new checkout and lesson access before pointing students to it.

Can I keep Kajabi for courses and use HighLevel for the rest?

Some businesses run both for a period, using HighLevel for the CRM, pipeline, calendar and SMS while Kajabi keeps hosting the course. It adds a second subscription and a manual link between the two contact records, so most owners treat it as a step toward a full move rather than a permanent setup.

How long does the move take?

Typically 3 to 8 weeks depending on how much needs rebuilding, as at September 2026, with the 2 to 4 week domain warm-up as the floor. The timeline tool builds a plan specific to your course count and list size.