What Membership Platform Should You Use? An Overview of MemberPress, Thinkific, and Kajabi

No matter what industry you are in, there are always opportunities to teach your clients and audience more about what you provide. You can do this through your blog posts, newsletters, and social media posts, but each of those mediums can only provide so much information. And while blog posts like this one can be a great way to provide information, if you have a lot of content to provide, you may want to consider creating your very own online course.

Now, where to start? There are multiple online course makers out there, including MemberPress, Thinkific, and Kajabi. In this article we will be comparing these three membership platforms and discussing their pros and cons. Of course, there are other platforms that offer online communities and course building, including Teachable and Mighty, but we will only be discussing the platforms we have worked directly with.

MemberPress

An Overview of MemberPress

If you already own and operate a WordPress website, then you should highly consider using MemberPress. MemberPress is a WordPress plugin that allows anyone to build an online course using your existing theme and website design. This means that an online course built with MemberPress can utilize your existing brand colors, fonts, images, and more. This makes it easy to build an online course without needing to start from scratch. It makes implementing the course and promoting it much easier, since your audience will already be familiar with your website. Also, with MemberPress, you will be able to lock your new and existing content so it can only be viewed by those that are members of your site.

One of the downsides in building your online course using wordpress pages is it can be a lot of work to create the page structure needed for your online course, as you would need to create and link together each individual lesson and module.That’s why MemberPress also offers their own built in course structure to allow you to easily set up the structure. However, if done this way, you will have less control over the look and feel of your online course.

Since MemberPress plugs right into WordPress, you will have the ability to utilize your WordPress media library, so all the images, videos, PDFs, and other documents needed for your course can be added directly to the media library. However, when it comes to video, we always recommend uploading videos to Vimeo or YouTube, as storing large videos on your server can slow down your website.

MemberPress also offers multiple ways to charge your clients and students. You can set up a one-time charge, or offer subscriptions that renew on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis. You can also offer a trial period to allow people to test out your course before fully diving in.

While there are other plugins for wordpress that also offer memberships and online courses, such as LearnDash and BuddyPress, we believe that MemberPress is one of the best WordPress-based membership platforms available. Even those at WP Beginner rank MemberPress as their top choice when it comes to LMS (learning management system) plugins. 

Like most LMS plugins, MemberPress is not free. They offer three payment tiers – Basic, Plus, and Pro. Each tier is charged annually and they offer a 14-day window to request a refund if you decide MemberPress is not for you. Seeing as prices are always subject to change, we will not be listing the prices in this article, but you can visit their pricing page by clicking here. 

See an example of what a memberpress course looks like below. Thank you to BRANDISH legal for allowing us to use this screenshot!

Why Should You Use MemberPress

If you already use WordPress for your website, trying out MemberPress is a no-brainer. MemberPress is great for those just starting to build out online courses. It is a great way to decide how you want to offer your online course and is easy to build if you already are familiar with WordPress. MemberPress is also good for those whose online courses are more on the simpler side. If your online course is more complicated and contains a lot of lessons and modules, you may want to consider another platform, such as Kajabi or Thinkific.

MemberPress Pros:

• As a WordPress plugin, allows you to use your existing website’s branding (colors, fonts, images), media library, and existing website structure
• Easy to work with for those already familiar with WordPress
• Integrates with popular email marketing platforms, including MailChimp, AWeber, Mailster, and ActiveCampaign (Plus version only)
• Unlimited membership levels
• Offers a variety of payment processing and pricing options, including PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net
• All plans include professional support via an email ticketing system

MemberPress Cons:

• Limited built-in quiz and certificate offerings
• No built-in video hosting – must use your existing WordPress media library
• If your MemberPress license expires, you are locked out from accessing your courses and prohibited from managing users until you pay again
• Limited ability to for upsells and promotions
• Cannot offer multiple pricing levels for the same membership

Thinkific

An Overview of Thinkific

If you are ready to start an online course and want to build it on a separate platform, Thinkific is a great choice. Whether or not your existing website is built using WordPress, Thinkific has the ability to set up a subdomain on your existing domain, such as learn.mywebsite.com. This means that your site can be completely separate, but visitors will still recognize your existing brand. 

Overall, Thinkific offers a lot of great tools for someone to build an online course and community. Its course builder is quite robust. Rather than just offering the basic text, video, or audio options for modules, Thinkific includes quizzes, surveys, assignments, PDFs, Live Zoom calls, and more. This allows you to create a more interactive and engaging course that is not solely based on reading content and watching videos. Another great feature of Thinkific’s courses is that content can be dripped out to members. This allows your members to work through your course at a natural pace, rather than letting them go through the course all in one sitting.

Aside from the basic courses and memberships, Thinkific also offers the ability to create online communities. Their communities allow members to message and get to know each other. This is a great feature for people who like to be part of a larger community. It can also serve as an accountability system, so people don’t need to feel as if they need to do everything on their own – they can lean on their community for support and motivation.

Thinkific also has a built in video library, which makes it easy for you to upload and host your videos directly with Thinkific. Finally, they offer digital downloads that can be offered to your members or sold separately, allowing you to provide PDFs and other documents to your audience as supplemental coursework and information.

We already mentioned how Thinkific integrates with Zoom to offer live video calls. Thinkific offers a whole library of tools that can be integrated into its platform, including Quickbooks, Instagram, ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, Google Analytics, Whatsapp, Zapier, and more. While many of these integrations are free, some include monthly costs to use the full range of features, such as the Quickbooks integration. However, these integrations allow you to make your thinkific course work exactly how you need it to by connecting to your email marketing platforms, social media accounts, and payment processors. This makes Thinkific quite powerful and versatile.

In our opinion, the biggest downside to Thinkific is the website builder. Their website builder is clunky and you are forced to use their pre-built modules that are not customizable. This makes it difficult to create a well-designed website. It also creates challenges if you want to match your Thinkific website to look like your existing brand and website. It also takes some time to figure out how to build a webpage with the options they provide.

As with all of the platforms we are discussing, Thinkific requires monthly or yearly payments to use their system. If you choose to pay annually, you save 25% in total costs. Even with the discount, the most basic tier of Thinkific is still more expensive than MemberPress. Visit the Thinkific pricing page by clicking here. No matter what payment option you choose, you can always start with a free trial to decide if the platform is right for you. 

See an example of what a Thinkific course looks like below. This screenshot comes from Blue Zenith’s very own membership platform, Get Found & Thrive!

Why Should You Use Thinkific

Thinkific is a great platform to use for those with established brands that are looking to reach new audiences. While their website builder could be better, their offerings make it easy to build a robust online course, hold live Zoom calls, and create an online community. Of course, with the higher pricing, you’ll need to ensure you attract a loyal following to make the costs worth it. However, Thinkific is great for those in almost any industry that want to educate their audience.

Thinkific Pros:

• They offer free 30-day trial to test out all the features
• Their Video Library makes it easy to upload videos and use them across the platform on webpages, courses, etc.
• The integration with Zoom to allow live Zoom calls
• In addition to Zoom, Thinkific offers a large library of third-party integrations to add even more functionality
• The course creation tools are very robust, allowing you to create a unique online course
• A variety of payment options and pricing plans to monetize your offerings and courses
• Thinkific Communities are a great place to meet people and build meaningful connections

Thinkific Cons:

• Their website builder is clunky and it is difficult customize the design
• No native email marketing platform – you must integrate with a third-party platform to send out emails and create automations
• Integrations can be fairly tricky to set up for the first time
• If you need to use Zapier, that may incur additional fees
• Some integrations cost extra
• The website structure can be difficult to figure out (courses, landing pages, etc)
• Premium plans can get quite costly
• No way to sell physical products
• No native blogging tools
• No media library; you’ll need to upload each image you want to use every time you want to use it

Kajabi

An overview of Kajabi

Founded in 2010 Kajabi is slightly more established in the online course builder arena than Thinkific, which debuted in 2012. In October of 2024, Kajabi went through a major rebrand, moving away from their old blue tones to now embrace mercury orange as their main brand color. The goal of this rebrand was to better celebrate the diversity of the creators within their community and to refresh their look for the ever-changing digital landscape.

Like the other platforms we already discussed, Kajabi offers a built-in online course builder. Their course builder makes it easy to create the structure of the course. When adding content, you are presented with multiple choices, including creating a module, a submodule, a lesson or a quiz. You can also upload multiple videos at a time (up to 20 videos), so you don’t need to upload only one single video at a time.

Modules can have multiple submodules, and each of those submodules can contain multiple lessons. Or you can add lessons directly to a module. This gives you several options when deciding how to structure your online course. Kajabi also includes a built-in media library, so you don’t need to reupload each image every time you want to use it. 

Once you set up your online course, you can even assign an automation to each lesson. So, when someone completes a lesson, an automation can be triggered, such as sending them an email, registering for an event, granting an offer, sending a ‘course completed’ certificate, and more. This makes it easy to design an interactive course that, once set up, means little management on your end.

Aside from online courses, Kajabi also offers a coaching program, where you can share your expert knowledge through goal-driven sessions. When creating a new coaching program, you can choose between a single session or a bigger coaching package. You can provide these individual coaching sessions as upsells or as a way to give clients additional information when they feel stuck or unsure of what to do next. On the other hand, coaching packages allow you to offer a full coaching series of multiple lessons that go more in depth than individual sessions.  

Like Thinkific, Kajabi also offers a way to build out an online community. These communities allow members to chat and learn from each other, which provides more value along with accountability. Communities can be bundled with products, so you can offer a community as a bonus feature for those that purchase your online course or coaching session. Furthermore, members of your community can only see content that is assigned to their Access Group, so you can personalize content to your members according to their access group. Each Access Group can feature online or offline meetups, challenges (such as assignments and activities), and announcements. 

One feature unique to Kajabi that the other two platforms do not include is the ability to create a podcast. Using Kajabi, you can easily start your very own podcast series. Kajabi even helps to distribute the podcast episodes to all major listening apps and can help you monetize it as well. This is a powerful additional feature that will appeal to many people. So, this means you can turn your online courses into a podcast series to reach even more people. Giving your audience choices on how they can consume your content is always helpful, as some people may prefer to listen to podcasts instead of going through an online course.

Once you create a course, community, or other offering, you can market your offerings with Kajabi’s built-in newsletter creator. Unlike Thinkific, you can design and send newsletters directly to your members, without needing to use a third-party email marketing platform. This makes it easy to communicate directly with your members and to keep them up-to-date with the latest changes to your online courses and memberships. Kajabi even offers users to utilize dark mode, which gives your users the freedom to view the platform as they choose. 

Another feature that is unique to Kajabi is the option to create a branded mobile app. Through a branded app, your users can take courses, engage with their online community, schedule individual coaching sessions, purchase additional offerings, and more. The app is designed to use your branding and design to create a seamless experience for your customers. The app is built by Kajabi’s team, meaning you do not need to be part of the development process, aside from filling out the onboard form and joining in on the onboarding calls. An additional monthly fee is required to create and operate the app.

Even if you decide to not build out an app, you are still provided with Kajabi’s website builder so you can design your online course’s website. You will need to choose a template from their store in order to get started. Their website builder is not the easiest to work with, but it does provide more layout options and customization than Thinkific does. Their templates are built with the liquid templating language, which can make it difficult to do any customization to the theme itself. 

As with Thinkific, Kajabi offers third-party integrations, including Stripe, Zapier, MailChimp, Google Analytics, ConvertKit, and more. For other integrations you will need to use Zapier, which requires a Zapier account and additional time to set up. One downside about using Zapier is that it can cost an additional monthly fee to operate. 

Of course, Kajabi is not free to use. You can pay either monthly or annually, however, annual payments are discounted off of the monthly price. They offer several payment tiers, including a basic tier, a growth tier, and a pro tier. Click here to learn more about Kajabi’s pricing structure. 

See an example of what a Kajabi course looks like below. Thank you to NATIONAL Crisis Response Canines for allowing us to use this screenshot!

Why Should You Use Kajabi

It’s no secret that Kajabi is the most expensive of all the platforms we discussed. Kajabi is great for those that are truly serious about creating an online course and community. If you know that your online course will provide amazing value to your audience, and if you have an audience that is willing to pay your prices, Kajabi would be the right choice for you. Also, with the ability to host your own podcast and create an online app, Kajabi offers many more features than the competition, which means more value for your community. 

Kajabi Pros:

• Online support is responsive and provides quick responses
• Built-in media library allows you to store your images on Kajabi’s servers (limited to only the most recent uploads)
• Their video hosting is powerful and easy to use
• Built-in email marketing
• The ability to assign automations to individual lessons
• Easy to create coupons and discounts
• The ability to copy webpages to create new pages
• It is easy to merge student accounts together
• Built-in blogging platform

Kajabi Cons:

• Can be quite expensive, especially for those with smaller audiences and cheaper offerings
• Mobile app requires additional monthly fee
• Assignments and quizzes can only be attached to a course
• Website builder and templates have limited customization options
• 24/7 support is not available for all subscription levels
• Webhooks are only available to the growth and pro subscription levels
• Course builder is not as robust as Thinkific’s 
• Can be overwhelming for those new to Kajabi
• Cannot export all your content if you want to move to a new platform
• No staging platform to test major changes
• Cannot sell physical products

What Membership Platform Should You Choose?

When it comes down to it, you need to choose the membership platform that works best for where your business is at right now, and where you want it to go. You can always start with MemberPress and then grow into Thinkific or Kajabi as your membership platform expands. Just make sure that the membership platform you choose does everything you need it to do.

If you want to learn more about how you can start your very own membership website, feel free to reach out to us! We’re always happy to chat about how we can help your business thrive!