Why did I select New Zenler over Kajabi?
Kajabi and New Zenler are similar in many ways. Before Kajabi became Kajabi it was called New Kajabi; similar to Zenler whose new version is called New Zenler.
And both tools followed quite similar trajectories with respect to the features they provide and their overall growth.
These are the two tools, which boast of being an all-in-one tool for online course creators. Both of these tools provide
Hosting course videos
Running membership site
Email marketing and automation
Running webinars
Creating sales pages
Upsells
Marketing funnels
As a unique feature, Kajabi has added a new feature of coaching.
Both these tools go toe to toe when it comes to features and their product development roadmap.
So, why did I select New Zenler over Kajabi?
Cost
Let’s face it, the cost is one of the major factors while selecting your online course hosting tool.
Kajabi’s base plan costs $149 if you pay month to month and $119 if you prepay annually.
Whereas New Zenler on its basic plan costs $67 per month if you pay month-to-month and $53.91 per month if you prepay annually.
So, Kajabi costs thrice of what New Zenler.
This is a huge price bump when you’re just starting out with your online course business.
Agreed, the price of New Zenler is low because it’s still in beta and cost may and will increase sometime soon. In fact, the price was increased from $47 to $67 just about three months ago.
For the same set of features, the cost of Kajabi is prohibitive for new course creators unless you have disposable cash and have no issues paying for a higher cost tool.
You can get other tools for less than $67 a month but for new course creators, I will suggest going with something that’s all in one instead of signing up for different tools and then learning each of them, connecting them with each other.
Not getting stuck in the tech rut is the key to running a successful online course business.
Company that listens
With time course creators will come across new requirements. Maybe the business model changes or something else happens.
Therefore listening to your customers aka online course creators is essential for the growth of the tool and their customers alike.
Both tools; Kajabi and New Zenler, have a Facebook group and other support channels.
Course creators are always asking for new features on these groups depending on what they need the most.
Sometimes they even report the issues and the bugs they encounter.
With the New Zenler community, I have seen they listen to what their customers demand. Once there is enough noise about a certain feature requirement, they do take in their product development roadmap even if it wasn’t in the initial plan.
You can see from the screenshot below, there was a requirement of limiting the number of students in the course demanded by many course creators.
Another feature of integrating Canva with New Zenler was introduced because to create course thumbnails and other images required in New Zenler people had to go back and forth between Canva and New Zenler.
So, bottom line, you need a company that listens to its customers and takes it seriously.
Coming to Kajabi; It’s not like they don’t listen to their customers. They do. But not at the scale at which New Zenler does.
Also, I felt there is some kind of elitism in the Kajabi group.
If you say something against the tool, a bunch of fanboys do come at you.
Also, I feel the community is bloated with more ‘success stories’ posts than helpful posts.
But, you’re open to checking both these communities and deciding for yourself. Even though you may not be using their tool, still both companies allow you in their community.
Ease of use
I personally feel Kajabi is a bit difficult for new course creators who are a little less familiar with tech.
If you want to sell a course, you need to create a product and then create a pipeline that needs to be connected to the product to sell.
In New Zenler this is very intuitive.
In a single course dashboard, you can set price, course content, the sales page, checkout page and all the things required to sell a course.
Plus you get the analytics of your funnel in a single view.
This is simple to understand for a course creator. You don’t have to jump from one page to another to check different statistics or make any changes.
Everything is laid out in a simple to use way.
What next?
The great thing about New Zenler is you can start using it for FREE. Kajabi gives you 14 days free trial, but with New Zenler you can start using it for free and whenever you think you are ready for the next step you can upgrade your account.
As a new course creator, this is a great start; without opening your wallet you can start selling your courses.
Of course, there are certain limitations of a free plan but when you are testing the waters a free plan is great for you.
What was my journey?
I started with Kajabi, used it for a couple of months, but the work required to set up everything was quite high.
So, I switched to Podia. And that was one of the best decisions I made. Podia is clean, sleek and easy to use.
But later on, my requirements changed, I wanted to use something that is all-in-one. I was tired of taping everything together with Zapier.
So, I switched to New Zenler, which was my second best decision.
And now, I have used New Zenler for more than 1 year and I have no qualms in saying that it’s one of the best tools out there.
And going with New Zenler would be a great decision for you as well.
If you want to sign up for New Zenler for FREE, click on the bottom below.
