The closest Kajabi alternative on WordPress is a Reign site running Learnomy for courses and BuddyNext for community, with a separate email and funnel tool such as FluentCRM or Groundhogg. You own the site, the member list and the content. The catch is that Kajabi is one product and this is several, so you assemble it yourself or hire someone to. This guide maps each Kajabi piece to a WordPress equivalent, says what is harder, and says who should stay put.
Kajabi details were read from kajabi.com and Kajabi’s help centre in October 2026. Kajabi changes its plans and features often, so confirm anything that affects your decision on kajabi.com. We make Reign, BuddyNext and Learnomy, and we say so where it matters.
In this guide
- Why people look for a Kajabi alternative
- What Kajabi actually includes
- Kajabi features and their WordPress equivalents, in one table
- Courses, community, email, funnels, payments, app and AI, one at a time
- What is harder on WordPress
- How to move your videos, students and payments
- Who should stay on Kajabi
- Questions people ask
Why do people look for a Kajabi alternative?
People leave Kajabi for ownership, flexibility or cost structure, not because it is broken. Kajabi is a hosted all-in-one, which means the courses, the pages, the email list and the checkout all live on Kajabi’s platform and follow its rules. That is convenient on day one. It gets tight when you want a layout Kajabi does not offer, a feature it does not have, or a say in where your data lives.
The questions we hear most are about three things. Can I keep my students and my content if I leave? Can I put courses and a community on my own domain? What happens to my email automations? This guide answers each one honestly, including the parts where WordPress is the harder route.
If your worry is mainly the fees you pay to teach, read Online Course Platform Fees: What You Pay to Teach, and What Owning It Looks Like first. It covers that angle in depth, and this post does not repeat it. If you are weighing community platforms rather than all-in-one suites, our guides to a Skool alternative and a Circle alternative cover those.
What does Kajabi actually include?
Kajabi bundles courses, community, coaching, memberships, email, landing pages, payments, a mobile app and AI tools in one subscription. Here is what its own pages say, so you know what you are replacing.
- Courses. Kajabi’s features page lists courses with modules, lessons, assessments and drip schedules.
- Community. Kajabi Communities has topic spaces called Channels, which can be public, private or read-only. It also lists meetups with a built-in live room, challenges, a leaderboard and gamification settings, and paid or tiered access tied to an Offer.
- Coaching. Kajabi describes structured programs with scheduling and payments built in, for one-to-one and group work.
- Memberships, newsletters and podcasts. Recurring access to content, community or coaching; email plus web publishing; and podcast hosting without a third-party feed.
- Email and automation. Email broadcasts, automated sequences, audience segmentation and behaviour-triggered automations.
- Landing pages. Landing and sales pages with a visual builder and conversion-focused templates.
- Payments. Checkout with one-time payments, subscriptions and payment plans, plus coupons, upsells, downsells and order bumps. Kajabi also lists automated tax calculation.
- Branded app. A mobile app with your logo, icon and accent colour, built and maintained by Kajabi and published to the Apple App Store and Google Play.
- AI. Kajabi lists Cofounder, an AI business partner inside Kajabi; Expert Agents, AI teammates trained on your content; and MCP, which lets you run Kajabi from other AI tools.
That is a wide list. No single WordPress plugin covers all of it, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What you can do is cover each line with a tool you choose, on a site you own.
Which Kajabi features have a WordPress equivalent?
Most Kajabi features have a counterpart you can run yourself, and a few need a separate tool. The table pairs each Kajabi feature with the option we would reach for, and says how close the match is.
| On Kajabi | On WordPress | How close is it? |
|---|---|---|
| Courses, lessons, assessments | Learnomy: courses, lessons, quizzes, student progress, certificates | Close for core delivery. Check drip content, assignments and grading against your needs. |
| Drip schedules | Learnomy drip content | Exists. Check the product page for which licence includes it. |
| Community Channels | BuddyNext Spaces (open, private or secret), activity feed, profiles, member directory | Close. Different structure, same job. |
| Community leaderboard and challenges | WB Gamification: points, badges, ranks, rewards from activity | Close in idea. You set the rules. |
| Meetups and live events | Eventonomy for event pages and RSVPs, plus your own video tool for the live room | Partial. There is no built-in live room. |
| Email broadcasts and sequences | A separate tool such as FluentCRM or Groundhogg | Close, but it is a second product to install and learn. |
| Automations and funnels | Groundhogg flows or FluentCRM automations | Capable, with more setup than Kajabi’s built-in pipelines. |
| Landing pages | The WordPress editor styled by Reign, or a page builder | Flexible, but you do not get Kajabi’s ready conversion templates in one click. |
| Checkout and subscriptions | Learnomy and BuddyNext membership features, payment gateways of your choice | Works. Tax handling and upsell flows need checking. |
| Branded app | BuddyNext installs as a progressive web app | Not the same. A native app is in development. |
| AI tools | Your choice of AI plugins or outside tools | Not bundled the way Kajabi’s are. |
| Site design | Reign: five header layouts, colour tokens, dark mode, no code | Far wider range than a hosted theme. |
Reign also takes the same look across a blog, a shop, a job board or a directory, because those plugins share one theme. Our guide to what you can build with Reign shows the range.
How do you replace Kajabi courses on WordPress?
Use a WordPress course plugin. Our pick is Learnomy, which we make. It covers courses, lessons, quizzes, student progress and certificates, and its site lists drip content, assignments, grading and instructor payouts as well. Which of those need a paid licence is something to check on the Learnomy page before you commit, because the split matters for your budget.
A course plugin is software that adds lessons, progress tracking and quizzes to a WordPress site. Learnomy is one of several. If you want a wider field, our list of self-hosted course platforms and the guide to WordPress LMS plugins for course creators compare the options fairly, and our coaching-focused LMS guide helps if you sell programmes rather than self-paced courses.
One point deserves care. Learnomy’s page says protected video playback needs a separate plugin called MediaShield. If you currently rely on Kajabi to host and protect your videos, plan for where the files will live and who stops a paying student sharing a link. That is a real new job on WordPress.
How do you replace Kajabi Communities?
Use a community plugin that gives you a feed, spaces and member profiles. BuddyNext, which we also make, provides an activity feed, Spaces that are open, private or secret, profiles with custom fields, a member directory, direct messages, polls, moderation tools and email digests. Reign styles all of it so the community and the courses look like one site.
Be aware that Kajabi’s community is tightly tied to its offers. Access to a Channel follows what a person bought. On WordPress you connect that yourself, through membership tiers in BuddyNext or through Learnomy’s access rules. It works, but you decide how, and you test it.
FluentCommunity is a real alternative to BuddyNext. Its site lists a feed, members, spaces, discussions, a leaderboard and courses on one dashboard, private messaging, and lesson-level discussions. It states that shared hosting is not recommended and suggests a VPS or cloud server. If you want to look at an alternative engine, start there. Our self-hosted community platforms guide compares the field in full.
If you used Kajabi’s challenges and leaderboard to keep people active, our guide to points, badges and leaderboards on a Reign site shows the equivalent. And if you are choosing between running a community inside your course site or as its own thing, How to Create a Paid Online Course Community with WordPress walks through it.
What replaces Kajabi’s email marketing and funnels?
Nothing in Reign, BuddyNext or Learnomy replaces a full email marketing tool, so you add one. Two WordPress options we checked are FluentCRM and Groundhogg. Both run inside your own WordPress install, so your contact data stays on your server.
Groundhogg describes itself as a CRM and marketing automation plugin for WordPress. Its site lists contact records with custom fields, tags and segments, a drag-and-drop email editor, scheduled broadcasts, timed drip sequences, and a drag-and-drop flow builder with templates. It says it integrates with other WordPress plugins such as WooCommerce and LearnDash. It lets you send through your own SMTP service. Its site says conditional logic is in its paid plan.
FluentCRM calls itself marketing automation for WordPress. Its documentation lists email campaigns that can be scheduled, email sequences with delays between messages, recurring campaigns, and an automation action that sends an email when something happens, such as a purchase. It sends through the WordPress mail system, and its documentation names FluentSMTP as one way to connect a sending service. Check the product’s page for what each licence includes.
Either one covers the heart of what Kajabi calls email and automations: broadcasts, drips, segments and triggered emails. Neither is a drop-in replacement for Kajabi’s pipelines, which package a whole funnel as a template. You build the funnel yourself from emails, tags, a landing page and a checkout.
Whichever tool you pick, send through a proper email delivery service rather than your host’s default mail. Notification emails from a community and a course site are part of daily use, and they fail quietly when they land in spam. We have not tested every email-and-community pairing, so test the sign-up, welcome and password-reset emails before launch.
How do you build landing pages and a checkout without Kajabi?
Build landing pages in the WordPress editor or a page builder, then connect a checkout from your course or membership tool. This is where WordPress asks more of you than Kajabi does, because Kajabi gives you conversion-focused templates and a funnel that already knows about your products.
Reign controls the look: header layouts, colours and dark mode, with no code edits. Our guide to designing a Reign site without code using Elementor shows how people build pages on top of it. A sales page is just a page. What you add is the offer, the proof and a clear button.
For payments, Kajabi lists one-time payments, subscriptions, payment plans, coupons, upsells, downsells and order bumps. On WordPress, Learnomy lists built-in checkout, coupons and membership plans, and BuddyNext has membership tiers. Check each product page for the gateways supported and which parts need a paid licence, since Wbcom pages differ on some of this and we would rather you read the current one. Order bumps and upsells in particular are things to test on your chosen setup before you promise them to a launch. Automated tax calculation is another Kajabi line that you should not assume exists elsewhere. Look at tax tools for WordPress and check your local rules.
What about the branded app and AI?
This is where Kajabi is plainly ahead. Kajabi’s help centre describes a branded app with your logo, icon and accent colour, published to the Apple App Store and Google Play, with push notifications, in-app purchases and access to courses, coaching, podcasts and community. Kajabi builds and maintains it.
BuddyNext offers a progressive web app, which members add to their home screen from the browser. A native BuddyNext app is in development. That is a real difference. If an app store listing with push notifications matters to your students, test the progressive web app with a handful of them before you decide.
On AI, Kajabi’s Cofounder, Expert Agents and MCP are built into the product. WordPress has no single equivalent. Learnomy’s site lists AI features, and you can add AI tools to WordPress yourself, but you pick, connect and pay for them separately. Treat this as a build-it-yourself area.
What is harder on WordPress than on Kajabi?
Five things are harder: setup, integration, hosting, video protection and support. Each is a cost, so count it.
Setup
Kajabi is one sign-up. WordPress is a host, a theme, a course plugin, a community plugin, an email tool and a payment connection. Each piece is simple. Making them work as one experience takes time, or a person who has done it before.
Integration
On Kajabi, buying a product opens the course, the community Channel and the email tag automatically. On WordPress, you wire those together. It is doable and well worth it for many sites, but it is your job to test it.
Hosting and upkeep
Updates, backups, security and speed are yours. A managed WordPress host covers a lot of it. It is still work Kajabi does for you now.
Video
Kajabi hosts your video. On WordPress you choose a video host or your own storage, and protect the files if the content is paid. Plan this before you move a single lesson.
Support
Kajabi has one support team for the whole suite. On WordPress each plugin has its own support, which is faster for specific questions and slower when you cannot tell which part is at fault.
How do you move from Kajabi to WordPress, step by step?
Export what Kajabi lets you export, build the new site on staging, move content in layers, then invite students and switch payments. Keep Kajabi running until the new site works. Kajabi has no single export that gives you everything, so expect to collect the pieces by hand.
Step 1: List what you have
Write down every course, lesson, community Channel, email sequence, landing page, offer and automation. This inventory is the plan. To confirm it is complete, check it against Kajabi’s Products, Contacts, Marketing and Website tabs.
Step 2: Export your contacts
In Kajabi, open Contacts, filter or segment the people you want, select them, then choose Export from Bulk Actions. Kajabi emails you a CSV link to the address on your account, and the link expires after three days, so download it promptly. Kajabi’s help page says the export is capped at your plan’s contact limit and does not list the columns. To confirm it worked, open the CSV and check that names, emails and any tags you need are present. If a field is missing, ask Kajabi support before you cancel anything.
Step 3: Download your videos
Kajabi’s help centre describes downloading a video from a lesson through the Video Actions menu under the player, then Download Video, and the same menu works on landing page video blocks. The article does not mention a bulk option, so assume you will do this lesson by lesson. Name each file after its course and lesson as you go. To confirm it worked, play each downloaded file before you delete anything.
Step 4: Save your course structure and written content
Kajabi lets you export a Course Template, but its help pages say the template does not capture your media, and they recommend keeping your own offline copy of lesson material. Kajabi also says blog posts cannot be exported directly, so copy the text and images by hand. Treat the new Learnomy course as a rebuild, using the template and your inventory as a map. To confirm it worked, open each rebuilt lesson next to the original.
Step 5: Build the new site on staging
Install WordPress, activate Reign, import a demo layout with the Reign Demo Installer if you want a head start, then add Learnomy, BuddyNext and your email tool. Finish each plugin’s setup before judging the design. If you are moving a community off another platform too, our Facebook group migration guide covers the member communication side, and Keep Your Reign Site, Upgrade the Community helps if you already run BuddyPress. To confirm it worked, sign up as a new test student and walk through a lesson.
Step 6: Move your students
Import the contact list into your email tool and create student accounts on WordPress. Passwords do not move, so each student sets a new one through a link you send. Course progress lives inside Kajabi, so decide whether to start everyone at lesson one or mark early lessons complete by hand for people who finished them. Say which in your announcement. Only email people who agreed to hear from you, and check your local rules on consent.
Step 7: Move your payments
This is the step to plan most carefully. Kajabi supports Kajabi Payments, Stripe and PayPal, and its help pages say existing Stripe subscriptions keep billing on Stripe until you move them. A recurring student paying you today is a Stripe or PayPal record, and the card details belong to that processor, not to Kajabi or to WordPress.
If you use your own Stripe account, ask Stripe how to carry saved payment methods to a new setup, since Kajabi’s help centre does not cover moving them out. If students pay through Kajabi Payments or PayPal, assume they will need to enter payment details again on the new site. Kajabi’s own help pages say PayPal subscriptions cannot be migrated within Kajabi at this time, which hints at how hard recurring PayPal billing is to move anywhere.
The safest plan is to let existing subscriptions run out on Kajabi, sell all new sign-ups on WordPress, and invite the rest to re-subscribe with a clear reason. Do not cancel Kajabi while paying students are still billed through it. To confirm it worked, make a small test purchase on the new site and check it reaches your payment processor and opens the course.
Step 8: Recreate your email automations
Rebuild your welcome sequence first, then abandoned-cart or follow-up emails. Use tags in FluentCRM or Groundhogg to mirror the tags you had on Kajabi. To confirm it worked, subscribe a test address and watch every email arrive, with links that land on the right pages.
Step 9: Announce, run both, then close Kajabi
Give students two to four weeks of notice, say what is better for them, and keep Kajabi open and read-only after most have moved. Cancel when nobody uses it. Update any links you shared in emails, social profiles and old pages.
Should you build a membership on WordPress or keep Kajabi for it?
If memberships are your main revenue, WordPress is a strong home for them, but design the tiers before you pick tools. Decide what each tier gives access to: a Space, a set of courses, the whole site, or a live session. Then check that your chosen plugins can enforce that rule, and test a downgrade and a cancellation as well as a purchase.
Our guides to running a paid membership community for coaches and consultants and WordPress LMS plugins with membership features go deeper. For a view on what you keep across platforms, What You Actually Keep on Patreon, Substack and Circle is worth reading.
Who should stay on Kajabi?
Stay on Kajabi if you want one product that handles courses, community, email, pages, payments and a branded app, and you do not want to run a website. That is a legitimate choice, and for many creators it is the right one.
Stay if your students rely on a native branded app with push notifications, because a progressive web app is not the same thing. Stay if you value one support team for everything. Stay if you do not have the time or a helper to wire plugins together, since the cost of a messy migration can exceed years of the convenience you give up. And stay if you make money from Kajabi’s own tools, like its AI features or its Amplify network, which have no WordPress equivalent.
Move when ownership, design freedom, a wider set of features or the shape of your costs matters more than that convenience. A reasonable middle path is to build the WordPress site alongside Kajabi, launch your next course there, and judge the experience before moving the rest.
How do you decide, in practice?
Score each Kajabi feature you actually use as essential, nice to have or unused, then check whether WordPress covers the essential ones. Most creators find they use half of what Kajabi offers.
Take a sheet of paper. List the ten things your business does inside Kajabi each month: publish a lesson, send a broadcast, sell an offer, answer a community post, run a live call. Beside each, write the WordPress tool that would do it. If you can fill the whole column, a move is practical. If three or four lines are blank, solve those first or stay put.
Then add up the work, not just the money. What does the first month of building cost in hours, and what does each month of upkeep cost after that? If you can hire that out, the sums change. If it all falls on you, be honest about whether you want that job.
Questions people ask
What is the best Kajabi alternative?
It depends on what you want to keep. If you want the all-in-one experience hosted for you, other hosted suites compete with Kajabi. If you want ownership and design freedom, a WordPress build with Reign, Learnomy and BuddyNext plus an email tool such as FluentCRM or Groundhogg is the route this guide describes.
Is there a self-hosted Kajabi alternative?
Yes, but not as a single product. WordPress lets you assemble courses, community, email and pages yourself. You get ownership and control and take on setup and upkeep. Our list of self-hosted course platforms compares the course side.
Can I export everything from Kajabi?
Not in one click. Kajabi lets you export contacts as a CSV, download videos one at a time, and export a course template, but its help pages say blog posts cannot be exported and templates do not include your media. Plan to gather the pieces and rebuild the structure by hand.
What happens to my students’ subscriptions if I leave?
Their billing stays with the processor that charges them, so existing Stripe subscriptions keep billing there unless you manage them elsewhere. Saved cards and PayPal agreements are tied to those processors. The safest path is to run existing subscriptions to their end, sell new ones on the new site, and ask Stripe or PayPal about any move you want to make.
Do I need a developer to leave Kajabi?
Not for a standard build, since Reign, Learnomy and BuddyNext are set up through settings screens. A developer or a done-for-you service helps with wiring access rules, payments and email together, and with migrating a large video library.
Reign is the theme behind every setup in this guide. It gives the courses, the community and the pages one consistent look, on a site that belongs to you. See the Reign theme page for features and demos, look at Learnomy for the course side, or try the BuddyNext live demo to click around a working community first.