Kajabi The Non Affiliate Truthful Review

Hosted services:

- Nanacast
- Premium Web Cart
- Business Catalyst

Installed services:

- Digital Access Pass
- Viral Membership System
- Login Frequency Marketing

All of these are basically "remove the spaces and add .com" for the domain names. Viral Membership System in particular is on sale for under $100 as part of the benefit for Bev Clement, at least for the next 12 hours or so.

rather than Kajabi, I prefer Nigiri, with wasabi sauce, or maybe a little soy.

:-)

@CDarklock thanks for the resources sir
@snapcontent LOL

Keep them coming please

As usual the gurus are going to make it over hype. Let's see.

no need to hype it. the thing is bad as hell.

you could rig other stuff to kinda do the same thing, but do you know what needs to get done? do you have the ability/time/money to do it?

There's always a tradeoff. the alternatives out there look cool, but you're still gonna have to hack some stuff together.

kern used it for list control and as a customer, it was easy to use, looked slick and was packed with cool features. it made things easy... for him and for us.

and the thing is pretty cheap.

Darren I sent a message out to my list about a great alternative (one time payment) if you DON'T require the CMS/Membership aspect of Kajabi and just want the video landing page.

Easy Video Player 2 has a lot of the social media functionality built into the new software, and some great features, check it out:

EasyVideoPlayer » ALIEN TECHNOLOGY!! (We Have It, Check It Out!) (non aff link)

I plan to get both (just purchased an upgrade from EVP1 to EVP2) because I will use Kajabi for delivering my upcoming training courses, HOWEVER Kajabi also has a MAXIMUM to the amount of projects you can create for each level (30 / $299 per month!) , which doesn't make it very practical for dealing with my offline clients (unless I want to pass on the expense of multiple monthly fees)

EVP2 is a one time fee with the ability to REMOVE branding (i.e. no "powered by Kajabi" everywhere)

Foor for thought =)

~Dexx

Darren,

Thank you.

I really appreciate your honesty and candor.

While Kajabi looks absolutely amazing for people already firmly established in IM, I am definitely subject to Challenge #1, Challenge #2 and Challenge #3!

I have found myself subject to information overload ever since the beginning of my exploration of IM. There are so many differing opinions, so many methods, so many empty promises and all of it makes one salivate at the thought of online success.

Thanks for delivering a "voice of reason" in this wilderness of information.

@CDarklock - DUDE you are on a whole nother level LOL I wish my list (35+ women entreprneurs beginner to intermiediates) would have done that.

@YOUniversityLife - I agree with your comparison chart. But looking at the "way" you wrote that...is this andy Jenkins?? LOL HAHAHA!!

@Bill - thanks man I corrected. And yes you "get" that too huh? >> "It's fun to believe that you can buy this and you'll look like a rock star, but the truth is it will just sit there costing you money every month unless you have an overwhelming need for something like this."

@dipenb- Time tells ALL tales

@Dave- "but do you know what needs to get done? do you have the ability/time/money to do it?" Well newbies wouldnt Dave butack to that counting with my grandma comment. Knowing how to solve problems outside of Kajabi is essential.Its like the person who uses GoDaddy. Not because they like GoDaddy but thats all they know. CDarklock had a point if you think its awesome go with it but my point is think it is awesome AFTER you know your options or at least research alternatives.

@Dexx Thanks for sharing this! The question is how much is it? Plus I love Joshes response. But again how mush is it?

@jrodriguez315- thanks I more than understand if you ever have any questions reach out to me. I have a knack for telling people what works and surprise surprise I even tell people that I don't know. LOL UI am confident in what I know and even more confident and what i don't LOL

I believe you are loking at around $100 - $125 for a one-time payment with free upgrades (within Version 2...version 3 would be require another upgrade in a a couple years)

I believe the buy buttons still would since you are just associating a link URL to the button.

COOL!

Anyone have any suggestions (or old links from the forum) for landing page creation/management applications/ software?

@jminkler - thanks for chiming in on this could you please leave links and educate good ole Darren on the Karma list issue and how the whistle was blown on social engine? Social engine is how they are building this huh? Interesting.

@Ken - thanks Ken I will )posting) .

@Glen - AMEN Glen AMEN

Plus here is the thing. A lot of the people they are marketing (Kajabi) are people who are brand spanking new know next to nothing about the internet. Or they are just non tech writers / professionals new online.

Here's the email I sent to my list about this, I think it sums it up fairly well:
-------------
Hey {firstname_fix}

Look, I know what's 'in' right now, and the thing I'm about to say
is potentially going to make you not like being on this list. That's
for you to choose of course.

The 'in' thing right now is Kajabi and promoting it. My opinion on it?
Meh. Been there, seen that, moving on.

Look, Kajabi is NOT wordpress. While there are many reasons to
CONSIDER Kajabi (consider, not buy), there are many more to just
say no.

Here're a few:
1. You are limited in how much you can manage and edit your stuff.
2. All of YOUR data is hosted on THEIR server. Let me tell you
something from experience - BAD IDEA!
3. All of YOUR data can be used by the marketers behind Kajabi...umm..
yeah doesn't sound so good now. This could be a Paydotcom all over again
where tens of marketers end up with your data!
4. Kajabi is an organization tool. Unless you have WAY too many profitable
sites and sales funnels and lists to manage, it's useless to you.
It's like a file cabinet without any files. Most people don't even
understand proper sales funnels, forget having too many of them.

As opposed to this, wordpress is:
1. Flexible.
2. In YOUR control.
3. It's on YOUR server, and you have freedom to do what you want
with it. That's right, FREEDOM (imagine Mel Gibson screaming that...
yes, it's THAT much cooler than Kajabi).

So what the heck am I doing? Am I seriously telling you NOT to buy
this?
No, I'm simply saying there are alternatives. In my opinion, much
better alternatives, but that's for you to decide, not me.

This thing (like all IM stuff that comes from the big guys) is being
peddled as 'what you NEED'. I can tell you this much - you don't.
Now whether you want it or not, is up to you.

Without a doubt some of you will say to me:
- Why so negative?
- Why so discouraging?
- Why so serious? (sorry, couldn't resist)

My answer : I'm not being negative, and I'm not discouraging you.
And you should know by now I'm not very serious at all
I just feel it's my responsibility to make sure you're not spending
your money on things that won't help you. Isn't that one of the reasons
you're on this list?

Hope this helps all of you who've been writing me asking about it!

Sincerely,
~Hitesh

-------------

And yes like I covered above, I think between Wordpress and a good membership software, you're set. For list management, you can go with Pommo or PHPList, which are both open source.

Jason,

I reviewed your posts and it's perfectly clear to me that all you are trying to do is to push your affiliate link. We don't allow anybody to do that here.

If you want to post a review here, containing both positive and negative points and free from any affiliate link, then you are welcome to do so.

Pearson

So the support desk was kind enough to post their support link for kajabi (support.kajabi.com), which "Customer Support Software by Zendesk"

Decent plan there runs $30 a month per agent with all the community features, I wonder if this is what's going to power all these customer relation sites, and how that will get paid for? Or, one may want to go directly to zendesk to get the community support features like Kajabi if they are only interested in that ?


Edit: Just got in to see the pricing. Also says additional 0.48c / GB if you go over.
Don't see how that is in alignment with Amazon's prices at all

Data Transfer Out ** US & EU Regions APAC Region First 1 GB per Month $0.00 per GB $0.00 per GB Up to 10 TB per Month $0.15 per GB $0.19 per GB Next 40 TB per Month $0.11 per GB $0.15 per GB Next 100 TB per Month $0.09 per GB $0.13 per GB Over 150 TB per Month $0.08 per GB $0.12 per GB

So basically they are giving you a few GB for free with your monthly plan but if you go over, that's on your bill as well.

Can someone who has used it answer these two specific questions

1 - Do they allow you to export data and host yourself?
2 - Do they allow you to remove the footer link (Powered by...)

I need to know these practical answers.

Just signed up for Kajabi trial and heh - man this is far from the idea you got from watching the videos. The marketing for it was way better than the product itself.

I'll stick with Traindom which has way more intuitive and better interface. Heh.

http://traindom.com

It's amazing how much one can succeed without all these hyped up products, and yes, that means you Mr. Kujanga or whatever your name is. Isn't that a game with little logs? ;-)

Ok ok..in all seriousness...

All you need is a hungry market (demand), the right product to fit that market (supply), some basic internet marketing/traffic skills (marketing), a simple platform (Wordpress), and a payment system (Paypal, 1SC, Clickbank, etc). Oh yeah...and not giving up and working hard.

KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) is my motto. No need to always get caught up in these big hyped "guru" products which it seems many people are doing here.

Just my two cents

Very Good review, good common sense approach, thanks for the MP3 player, it allowed me to go on about my business and still listen to your review, nice.

In fact, I like the idea so much I might "borrow" it,)

I remember back in the old days, they used to have "hosting" setup fees, in fact back in 1995 you could easily pay a one time 250.00 "setup" fee.

Even Cell phone companies back in the old days used to have this "setup" fee, it sort of suggests that a company may not really be all that professional, that is why I believe that the large companies, like ATT and the other large Cell phone carriers, stopped, charging the "setup" fee mostly for the very valid reason that its not a consumer friendly way to generate revenue.

I mean what is a "setup" fee, what exactly is involved in a setup.

If this software is so great, and so expansive, why have a setup fee?

Sort of seems like a downer I personally think this will back fire in their faces, but hey who knows for sure.

Like you said in your review, which I think is right on, unless you already have a direction and probably a list of at least 4000 perhaps 10,000 minimum I would think that the thing is sort of over kill.

They definitely did a great marketing job, but the way they did it, and the methods they use, continuity, "free" trial, just seems like something that may not be appealing to a large number of people, perhaps they only want a few to sign up, who knows, but one thing is for sure, the cost to use AWS< is way lower, you can DIY, and save a chunk of cash.

But hey thats just me I like to do things my own way, like you I agree, I dont hate it but I really dont see it as a solution for the average marketer either, sadly they could have done that but for what ever reason choose not to.

They could have made it so easy that even a cave man could get on board but they choose not to do that, for what ever reason, just looking at AWS cost, and how the billing works over there, I rather suspect that an AMI instance runs around 35 bucks, a month, so there making a real killing on this deal, and they have that right, charge what ever you want, but to me I think I like value over fluff.

More power to em, I guess, but its one "free" trial I will not be joining in on.

I disagree with all those who suggest Kajabi is a risk whilst a DIY solution is safe. Unless you own your own ISP and can get guaranteed turn-around on your open source software you're hardly in total control of your own destiny. I've had an ISP shut me down on a single bogus complaint that was easy to verify as spurious but which they wouldn't even look into because their "first duty was to their other customers". There's nothing to say Kajabi wouldn't be a more robust solution as you'd be part of a large revenue stream rather than a less valuable individual, from an ISPs point of view.

I also take on-board the concerns that have been raised after Andy Jenkins was "exposed" by Salty Droid. Unfortunately for the droid this expose was about as explosive as a repeating curry and lager. Jenkins might have come across as naive and his breathing may have been on the heavy side but I didn't hear anything that would suggest he intends to take your money and run or sell your data to the highest bidder. As expensive as it was, Video Boss was a masterpiece of over-delivery. Compare Jenkins to the crooks on Wall Street or in the City of London and you are left wondering why Salty spends all his time trying to blow out a match as the house burns down around his head.

In the end though, for what it is Kajabi is just too damn expensive. All it is is a delivery system and one which falls in the middle of two potential markets without hitting either. For beginners, I doubt they understand what half the features provide anyway and have they got a product ready to put Kajabi to work and earn its fee? The more experienced marketer has likely already secured various alternative solutions, partially without cost. So what advantages does Kajabi offer other than the ability to mimic the look and feel of the guru launches?

I ran down the feature list and a lot of it is pretty standard stuff that could be knocked together pretty quickly if you know what you are doing. Granted, not everybody has the required technical skills but it isn't that difficult to install WordPress and then start reading up on the myriad of plugins. Neither is it hard to find or design a theme to make your offering look like a Jeff Walker reload, if that;s the sort of thing you want to do.

$99 for a single project, $299 at the top end. Per month? Crazy. And that's before you start getting hit with all the, "must have", add-ons. Not for me, not at that price.

Kajabi..

Frank Kern said before that 75% of his customers (2000$+++!) never do anything with the knowledge they get, never make a single dollar.

So yeah, I'm pretty sure that 75% of all the "omg I can't wait for this!!!" facebook comments don't need Kajabi at all.

Also.. simple question. Who here really wants the Syndicate to host 100% of their online business and have access to all their data and statistics?

Kajabi looks good and fun to play with, but it's just good old over-hype and people thinking it's going to cure cancer and make them millionaires..

I have to say Darren, after reading your review and watching the pitch video, I'm sort of happy that I'm not "that" deeply involved in IM. It is definitely information overload, and you are SPOT ON sir.
I could see it being a potentially useful tool IF you are already converting using some of those methods, understand those methods, already implement those methods, and are LOOKING for something to tie those methods together.
BUT, I believe the user sacrifices greatly if they lose content from cancellations; I would almost call this vapor-ware...
The thing about the 14-day trial for a "serious" business... I think in the proper context, a 14 day trial would help to skeptic confirm that it will be helpful for their already active, serious business, but I really do not feel this is a product intended to help launch a NEW business in the slightest (my viewpoint). The wise purchase decision is determined on "Does this make what I am already doing anyway, easier?", not on "WOOT, this go'n make me rich, b*t&*!!! Ya'll get on board!"

jvpress.com
optimizepress.com
fusionhq.com
traindom.com

Nice footprint: inurl:/funnel_events/

I have been trying Kajabi for almost 2 days now and its no where near ready.

Errors every where, you cant load a squeeze page or a sales page, takes longer than 12 hours to upload a video.

It's a beautiful box but there's nothing but frustration inside it.

Here's an example of how people are thinking:

seriously underwhelmed it just dont work
500 errors
no paypal integration'
random errors
video encoding taking hours
waste of time
moral
dont launch something thats not ready


And it just keeps getting worse.... Absolutely no feedback from admin or support.

It's a disaster waiting to happen, if it hasn't happened already.

Such a shame, some reputations are going to get very damaged over this I feel.

Cheers, I'm going back to what is under control

As a beta tester, Kajabi is GREAT if you have a digital product to deliver that you are SURE you can sell. Not for member sites, but courses and the such. It's one of many systems and possibilities, but a great one. Especially it's funnel system. It's brilliant. If you are trained in Walker style product launches it is a dream come true. AND it's buggy still. So, you have to have some techie skills and an s3 account to make up for the bugs. If you NEED it for course delivery, you can make a lot of cash from this. It's for people who have digital courses they want to deliver. If you want a membership site, look elsewhere. I think that was not a smart marketing move on their part for being such marketing geniuses. That said, I am going to make A LOT of money using this.

Excellent discussion here, fors and against, but mostly about assessing your own needs rather than being taken in by the uber-promises. Dan Brock, Amazon man, has a great post about this topic as well Why you will NEVER find the internet marketing magic bullet… | Dan The Internet Man

What is DAP?

WordPress Membership Plugin - Membership Script For WordPress Blogs And Regular Web Sites, Haven't used it but know some people who think its great

I was considering Kajabi for my product launch but now I am not so sure. I want to get it because of all the features but with all the problems people say they are having, I am afraid I will lose money. I think I need to investigate this a little more.

Adobe's Business Catalyst is cheaper and it's Adobe so I would use that over Kajabi.

Adobe Business Catalyst

I'm using a combo of Optimize Press to create Wordpress squeeze pages, sales pages, etc. It's a Wordpress Theme and it makes it really easy to create those video sales pages like Kajabi. Price $97.

I use DAP for my membership sites. Price varies on license. I got the unlimited domain license. I think price has gone up for it now to $300 for unlimited license.

Easy Video Player for managing the videos. I just upgraded from EVP1 to EVP2.

If you don't have any of those software programs you're looking at around $500 but that is a one-time fee vs. the $100+ per month for Kajabi. And the best part is that Optimize Press, DAP, and EVP sit on my servers. Plus you can easily make that back by creating a video product to sell. I made back my DAP cost from just one WSO in a day or two.

There are also free/open source alternatives like someone posted. I used Joomla for awhile but I find these other software programs easier to use and you could do more. Since I'm not a techie it was hard to get Joomla to do things I wanted to do without digging deep into code and stuff. That was like 3-4 years ago though so maybe they've made it user-friendlier like Wordpress.

Anyway that's my take on things.

Ouch this video looks horrible ...

Kajabi is one of the least user-friendly programs I've used to date. It's all hype and fails to deliver - just try switching themes if you don't believe me (that's right, you can't ...because there aren't any). Got a problem? Don't bother calling Tech Support for your PAID service ...there isn't a Tech Support.

P.S. Wordpress kills everything else I've seen ...I was actually looking forward to Kajabi until I got to use it...WP is the way to go.

I have gone with DAP as well as it is far superior to other plugins like Wishlist Member and Magic Members, plus the additional features it has that Kajabi does not. I have added JVPress to this as well and it seems like I have the complete package now.

Mike

Has anyone used FusionHQ? Suppose to be competitor to Kajabi but not launching until Nov? Looks like you have control of your hosting.

I think that the way that Darren's view of hosted services was expressed on his blog is not a good perspective for every business model...

So I'd like to post here a rebuttal or opposing view in regards to the wisdom of using or not using hosted services... of which I happen to operate more than one.

Early in my business I took the approach of cobbling together various content delivery and membership management solutions because there was not a lot of all in one hosted solutions... closer to none available when I was first starting out.

But one thing that I always used that made the biggest difference was a centralized ecommerce automation and affiliate management system where all my sales were processed and where all my affiliates were managed...

Over the years I used many of the popular solutions both hosted and self hosted... I was even a member of the Warrior Alliance which was a killer group brought together by Allen (before the War Room) which cooperatively worked on and funded development of several ecommerce platforms most with the name EA and variations.

Ultimately even though I used EA pro for a long time I was left with the same issues that I would have with a hosted service... even though I controlled everything... I had to migrate because I eventually outgrew what I originally thought was my dream self hosted solution ;-)

A skeptical view of things is healthy… but if you are too skeptical you fail to see the benefits of truly powerful solutions that are out there just because they are "hosted…"

Frankly many hosted solutions will make you more money, provide you better features, and are more qualified to manage and automate portions of business than most business owners are…. especially in the IM niche... and I am not just referring to ecommerce, membership etc. solutions.

Imagine if you could hire a team of ecommerce, affiliate management, content delivery, and sales funnel automation experts to build you a system that would automate your entire business…

And imagine if you could do it for just $100 a month and start tomorrow and you did not have to learn everything about ecommerce and affiliate management IT development management your self to do it.

When high end 6 and 7 figure businesses hit these cross roads the cost of developing what they need is usually quoted out in the $30-$50k range... just to get off the ground with basic automation features they are looking at $10k and sometimes they spend that just integrating with other systems.

So if you spent $100 a month or $1200 a year it could take you nearly a decade to get close to the expense of paying someone to develop it for you and you would not have to spend the months or even years hiring, pouring money into and managing the development of a platform that you had no expertise in developing in the first place.

Some warriors do have the expertise... but not most. Most would quickly get lost or long down the road discover mistakes they or the unqualified outsourced self taught programmers they hired made that they can not turn around and correct.

You see… nearly everyone who goes with a pieced together solution and becomes successful eventually runs into walls like integration, scaling, bug management, software update issues and has to go out and look for some programmer to hire or a team of programmers to hire to hack their scrapped together system to try and make it do what they want and never quite succeeds.

Those that do succeed generally have a team of developers that they work with, or are programmers, or don’t have very complicated needs so their needs are more easily met…

But once you get into the stuff that really matters in affiliate management, upsell automation, and multiformat content delivery like the kind of stuff we handle such as combined rss, podcast, membership, digital, on demand print, and physical product delivery…

And you are trying to do all that using a pile of scripts by various authors of various levels of experience… that is when the real nightmares start…

Then you don’t have one team or one programmer to turn to and the costs begin to skyrocket into the thousands of dollars and the days and weeks of hacking without a solution mount up and in the end…

You still don’t have the solution of your dreams.

There are trade-offs and you do need to be wise when making these decisions and I am not saying that the suggestions you have made are not viable… some are and some are not.

What I am saying is that anyone who believes that hosted solutions are simply designed to make you a slave needs to have a reality check.

Hosted solutions can actually be far more reliable because you eliminate problems like server compatibility, having to deal with patches, and a lack of expertise when trying to manage IT you have no experience with.

I have been on both sides of the boat…. and now my business and the demands I have for truly scalable advanced technology make me seek out many hosted services for various aspects of automation. Remote APIs are incredible and being able to tap into the resources of innovative hosted solutions for various technologies is now greater than ever… whether its SMS, Merchant Account Gateways, Third party SMTP services, RSS tools etc…

Hosted services with APIs make it far easier for companies to tap into new tech than ever before.

If all you are doing is a little blog with a small membership then you will be fine with scripts… and there are lots of cool scripts mentioned in various discussions on the WF and around the net.

But if you intend to really kill it and grow and scale and tap into various advanced premium content and product delivery, CRMs, sales funnel automation, and affiliate management technologies that you do not feel qualified to be developing, hacking, and managing your self and do not have the desire to become an expert in and spend every day perfecting with the feedback of thousand of users testing every angle of your business automation system over years of use…

That is what people turn to hosted services for.

I am doing the trial and this probably isn't for newbies.

Traindom's most expensive package is $99 - like Kajabi's cheapest. And you have total control over the design. Designs like this WordPress 101 is the default template, but one can change it any way they like.

You can upload any format video and not just mp4 (unlike Kajabi), video conversion and playback are superfast, html5 support comes with every package.

And Traindom is unbeatable in usability. It's just so easy.

Anyone actually using it at all?
The trade off's I am looking at are easy for the "non techie" to set up. Some of the suggestions to hire things done for you, still leaves you beholding to someone. I think I'd rather trust Andy and his team who have a reputation to uphold in the community, than someone out of the country I might not be able to have change something I want changed later.

I'm just say'n

I'd love to hear JaMo's stuff (with out the aff links...) just to have a seasoned marketer's "hands on" review too.

@Andy
Don't forget your operating expenses with this, paying nearly 4x what amazon would charge you. Problem with hosted services is in the long run you end up chewing up all your profits for the benefit of the hosting provider.

Where are you getting numbers like that for automation .. seriously most of anything you do online right now there is already a script for..

$10k? Geeze sign me up!

The problem REALLY is most people starting out online or moving their brick and mortar online have ZERO business doing so. Do your homework! I'm not saying get an IT degree or anything but at least be familiar with common terms, common services being used, and software available (for free even!).

If you progress to a 6-7 figure business online and you are still hosting your entire business through a hosted provider, you have some serious issues - mostly revolving around your monthly bills.

With Kajabi your way to dependent on them. No control of your properties and I think it is overpriced.

One other thing Im tired of all these launches lately that send one video for you to watch but only leads you on and on for weeks before you know the price then if you do buy your hit with all these upsales, downsales, sidewaysales.

Get OptimizePress along with EasyVideoPlayer2.0 and your better off. I think FusionHQ also looks better then Kajabi

I've noticed the reviews for Kajabi seem to be very split... it either kicks ass, or its a pain in the ass...

I haven't purchased it yet myself, but I may be leaning towards it, just because of the "all in one" aspect and the clean look. I say if it costs $300/month and you're not at least pulling that much in already per month, either through any other form of marketing or with the Kajabi system, you probably should go with an alternative that's cheaper. But it doesn't sound like something that was necessarily built for newbies either. That's just my opinion...

C.W

Wow...no one has mentioned Delavo in this thread. I have delavo and have been looking at Kajabi $300 solution for a few hours today...am already racing to the refund button...especially after reading about the data backup issues.

I'm with everyone else on WordPress. There's nothing faster that doesn't require an advanced degree in PHP to do 99% of what you want on any website in less time that it takes to figure out how to SPELL kajabi!

I used it - hated it - didn't work and had p-poor documentation. So I quickly canceled.

Maybe if they get the bugs out of it - then it would be good. However, it was ALREADY SUPPOSED TO BE BUG FREE (1 year of testing under its belt)...

So... use caution.

Yeah JP actually I would flip it and do something just the opposite if I was them and site the issues and make it one time charge free to test for a month just to gain the credibility back somehow. That way people could see for free for themselves and if they like it buy one time.

It is a great idea and concept, and I could really use it. But I think the honest reviews in this thread speak for themselves... this is why it is great being on WF

Using DAP. Would highly recommend it if you intended on using K as a membership site.