Kajabi Price Increase: Switch Platforms or Fix Your Stack First?

The email lands, you see the new number, and your stomach drops a little. Then the tabs start opening: alternatives, comparison posts, Reddit threads about the Kajabi price increase. I get it. When a tool you built your business on suddenly costs more, it feels like the floor moved.

Here's the honest version. A Kajabi price hike is a real cost, and it deserves a real decision. But the worst time to choose a new platform is the week you feel cornered. So before you shop, run the numbers on your whole stack, not just one invoice. Then decide calmly whether to stay, simplify or switch platforms.

What Changed With the Kajabi Price Increase

Kajabi announced its new pricing in late 2025. Its own update page says it was the first time the company had changed prices in 10 years, and it points to rising platform costs and the features added along the way. For existing customers, the new pricing took effect on January 13, 2026, on the first billing date on or after that day.

A few details matter more than the headline:

• Staying on your old plan doesn't protect your price. Kajabi says plan migration isn't required, but a legacy plan moves to the new price point anyway. You keep your current features and limits, you just pay more for them.
• Founder and Beta Invite plans are the exception. Kajabi says those prices stay the same.
• The current list prices are public. As of October 2026, Kajabi's pricing page lists Basic at $179, Growth at $249 and Pro at $499 a month on monthly billing, or $143, $199 and $399 a month billed annually (checked October 2026).
• Limits still drive the bill. Basic includes 2,500 contacts, Growth 25,000 and Pro 100,000. Kajabi sells extra contacts in blocks of 25,000 for $125 a month.

You can read Kajabi's own explanation on its pricing update page. I'm not going to argue with the reasoning. Software costs money to run, and plenty of coaches still get great value from Kajabi. The question for you is narrower: does the new number still make sense for the business you actually run?

What a Reprice Email Is Really Telling You

A price change is information. It tells you what this tool costs now. It doesn't tell you whether your setup is healthy.

Most coaches I talk to don't feel the pain from one price. They feel it from the pile. Kajabi, plus a separate email tool, plus a community app, plus a scheduler, plus Zapier holding the handoffs together. When one line on that pile goes up, the whole pile suddenly gets looked at, and it hurts.

That's useful, honestly. A reprice email is one of the few moments when you have a good reason to stop and look at the whole thing. If you use it to rush into a new platform, you'll probably bring the same pile with you. If you use it to see the pile clearly, you make a better call either way.

So treat the email as a prompt to audit, not a deadline to leave.

Run the 60-Minute Stack Math Before You Shop

Block one hour. Open your bank statement, your card statements and your Kajabi billing page. You're building one number: what it really costs per month to run the business you have today.

1. List every bill. Every tool that touches a lead, a sale, a student or a member. Include the small ones. Small ones add up quietly.
2. Add the Kajabi plan at the new price. Use the plan you're actually on, and check your contact count against the plan limit. If you're close to the cap, price the next contact block or the next plan too.
3. Add payment fees. Kajabi lists card processing rates for Kajabi Payments (2.9% + $0.30 on Basic for US entities), and, in regions where Kajabi Payments is offered, an extra fee of 2%, 1% or 0.5% by plan when you use a third-party payment provider other than PayPal (checked October 2026). Use your real monthly sales, not a guess.
4. Add the helpers. Separate email tool, community app, scheduler, quiz or form tool, automation tool. Write down what each one does that Kajabi doesn't.
5. Add your glue hours. Count the time you spend fixing tags, chasing failed zaps, answering "I can't log in" emails and copying data between tools. Put a fair hourly value on it.

Now you have a real monthly number. If you want a guided version, my coaching tech stack audit walks through the same idea with a worksheet mindset: list every login, score the real monthly cost, then find the duplicates.

One thing this post won't do is re-argue whether Kajabi pays off overall. If that's the question on your mind, read is Kajabi worth it, which covers what it really includes and what the whole stack costs.

Stay, Downgrade, Bridge or Leave: A Simple Decision Matrix

Once you have the number, the options get much clearer. Here's how I'd sort them.

A few notes on each:

Stay. Kajabi's own pricing FAQ makes a fair point: if you use it as your email tool, website, community and checkout, pricing those pieces separately can cost more. If that's you, the increase stings, but switching may cost you more in time than it saves in money.

Downgrade or trim. Lots of coaches are on a bigger plan because of a contact count that includes years of cold leads. Cleaning that list can be the fastest saving available. The same goes for helper tools you signed up for during a launch and never cancelled.

Bridge. This is the calm middle path. You stay on Kajabi for a few more billing cycles while you export your data, test a destination and move one piece at a time. It costs a little more in the short term and saves you from a rushed migration.

Leave. Leaving makes sense when the stack math shows you're paying for Kajabi plus a pile of tools that do the jobs Kajabi was supposed to do. Then a cheaper copy of the same setup won't help. You need a different structure. My Kajabi alternative guide covers how to compare options on ownership, total cost and business shape, so you don't trade one landlord for another.

If You Leave: Export First, Then Run a Parallel Cutover

If the math says leave, the order matters more than the destination.

1. Export everything first. Contacts, member lists, purchase history, course content, videos you host there, email templates and automation notes. Do it before you cancel, while you still have full access.
2. Treat payments as their own project. Active subscriptions are the hardest part of any move. Don't assume they transfer on their own. Check Kajabi's current help docs and your payment provider before you touch billing.
3. Rebuild in parallel. Set up the new home while Kajabi is still running. Move one offer or one cohort first, check that logins, access and emails work, then move the next.
4. Check what imports trigger. Importing contacts into a new platform can fire welcome emails and automations. On ESTAGE, for example, the CSV contact import needs an email column, and any active automation triggered by a new contact or list subscription runs for every imported contact, so the contacts guide says to pause those flows first. Most platforms have a similar gotcha somewhere.
5. Tell members what's happening. Short, clear emails before, during and after. In my experience, members rarely leave over a platform change. They leave over confusion.

I wrote a full playbook for this: migrate from Kajabi without losing members. It goes deeper on exports, subscriptions and the parallel cutover sequence.

If You Stay: Cut the Glue Tools That No Longer Earn Their Keep

Staying is a perfectly good decision. Just make it an active one.

Go back to your list of helpers and ask one question about each: does this tool still do something Kajabi can't do well enough for my business? Some will pass. A specialist email tool might genuinely run your best launches. A community app might be where your members actually show up. Keep those, and keep them on purpose.

Others won't pass. The scheduler you could replace with a simpler setup. The second form tool. The automation recipe that only exists because two tools don't talk to each other. Each one you remove is one less bill and one less seam where things break.

Then look at the plan itself:

• Annual billing. Kajabi's pricing page shows lower monthly rates on annual billing. If you're staying for at least a year anyway, that's an easy saving.
• Contact hygiene. Remove long-cold contacts before they push you into the next tier or the next 25,000-contact block.
• Payment fees. If you use a third-party provider, compare its total cost with Kajabi Payments for your real sales volume.

None of this is exciting. It's just the boring work that makes the next price change hurt less.

Prove Ownership Before the Next Landlord

Here's the part most comparison posts skip. Whatever you choose, ask how much of your business you'd own after the move.

Price changes will keep happening, on every platform. You can't control that. What you can control is how much it costs you to respond the next time. So before you commit anywhere new, run a simple ownership test:

• Can you export your members, contacts and purchase history in a usable format?
• Does your community and content live on your own domain?
• Do you control the payment relationship, or is it locked to one platform?
• If this tool doubled its price tomorrow, how long would it take you to leave?

If the honest answers are "no" and "months," you haven't fixed the problem. You've found a tidier rental. I wrote more about that trap in owned hub vs tidier rental.

This is why I build on a hub-centric setup. Disclosure: I work at ESTAGE and build my own business on it, and there are no commission links in this post. ESTAGE holds the website, community, courses, blog, funnels, checkout, email and CRM in one hub, and the community can sit on your own domain (for example community.yoursite.com). That doesn't make it the right answer for everyone. It means the ownership test is the bar I hold every platform to, including the one I use.

If you'd like help running these numbers with other coaches who are done being the glue, Join The Community.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Kajabi raise prices?

Kajabi says it was the first price change in 10 years, and it points to the rising cost of running the platform and the features it has added since its early days. The new pricing took effect for existing customers on January 13, 2026. You can read its reasoning on the official pricing update page.

Why is Kajabi so expensive?

Kajabi prices itself as your email tool, website, community and checkout in one plan, and its plans scale with contacts and products. As of October 2026, monthly billing runs from $179 on Basic to $499 on Pro. It can feel expensive when you still pay for other tools on top, because then you're paying for the plan and the stack.

When did the Kajabi price increase take effect?

For existing customers, the new prices applied from January 13, 2026, on the first billing date on or after that day. Kajabi says Founder and Beta Invite plans kept their prices. Legacy plans moved to the new price point even if you didn't switch plans.

Should I leave Kajabi after a price increase?

Not automatically. Add up your whole stack first: plan, contact add-ons, payment fees, helper tools and your own time. If Kajabi does most of the work, trimming the stack is usually the better move. If you're paying for Kajabi plus several tools that cover the same jobs, the increase is a good reason to plan a calm, parallel move.

What are the best options if Kajabi got too expensive?

Start with the cheapest fixes: annual billing, cleaning cold contacts and cancelling idle helper tools. If that isn't enough, compare platforms on ownership, total monthly cost and how well they fit your business shape, not on feature lists alone. A cheaper copy of the same scattered setup rarely solves the problem.

How do I switch platforms without losing members?

Export everything before you cancel, rebuild the new home while Kajabi is still running, move one offer or cohort at a time, and email members clearly before, during and after the move. In my experience, most member loss comes from confusing logins and access, not from the platform change itself.

Will my Kajabi Payments subscriptions transfer?

Don't assume they will. Active subscriptions need their own plan in any migration. Check Kajabi's current help docs and your payment provider before you cancel anything, and keep billing running until each member has a working home on the new platform.