Finding a Kajabi Alternative: Pricing, Fees, and Member Experience
Kajabi's 2026 price hike pushed many coaches to look elsewhere. A direct comparison of Kajabi and Hopper on pricing, hidden fees, setup complexity, and member experience.
By the Hopper team
Choosing software is a critical decision for online coaches. Many creators search for a Kajabi alternative because of high fees and complicated technology. Running an online business should be about delivering transformation, not managing tools. Yet many coaches spend hours troubleshooting integrations instead of working with clients. When technology becomes a barrier, it is time to look at alternative platforms. For a broader side-by-side of Kajabi, Skool, Circle, and others, see our full platform comparison.
Why are coaches leaving Kajabi?
In January 2026, Kajabi restructured its pricing model. Long-tenured customers saw bills increase by $480 to $1,200 per year for the same plan, with no grandfathering. On Reddit, threads in the r/kajabi community appeared with titles such as “$1200/year price increase WTF,” and a petition was circulated.
Trustpilot reviews reflect this, with users writing “after 7 years, I’ve clicked the cancel button,” describing “a 25% increase for the same exact plan,” or stating it was “no longer practical for me to continue.”
For many creators, the real issue was what the price hike signaled: loyalty was priced against rather than rewarded. Long-term users felt punished instead of protected, and the strategy created a feeling of being trapped. Many feared that leaving Kajabi would mean losing subscription income. One coach noted that having 90% of income tied to one platform was “far too risky.”
Beyond pricing, setup complexity remains a consistent hurdle. A Trustpilot review notes that “the set up is horrendous and takes weeks if not months,” and another warned that “you will need a coder or at least some help.” Andrea Chiu wrote on Substack that she had “five different tools for one simple task,” adding: “It wasn’t the coaching that was exhausting me. It was the tech.”
Customer support has also shifted from human assistance to automated systems. One reviewer noted: “AI didn’t fix my problem and pretended like there was someone working.” Another called it “a big time suck,” and a user who lost $400 on an unused product under a strict refund policy cited “zero empathy.”
The member experience can feel fragmented, too. Students juggle up to four separate apps with no unified login. One coach described the Kajabi Community experience as “below expectations… just very basic. And feels unsexy,” calling it “non-intuitive” and full of friction.
These challenges create a strong incentive to migrate, but the fear of the process prevents action. Creators worry about losing members and rebuilding their entire business infrastructure on a new platform.
Is Kajabi worth the price increase?
It helps to look at the numbers side by side. Kajabi tiers its pricing on the number of contacts you have and the number of products you create, so your monthly fee increases as your audience grows, even if you do not need any additional features.
Hopper takes a different approach: two flat-rate plans with no contact caps, so your business can scale without penalty. Here is a direct comparison of pricing, contact limits, and fee structures.
| Feature | Kajabi Basic | Kajabi Growth | Kajabi Pro | Hopper Base | Hopper Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $179/mo | $249/mo | $499/mo | $58/mo | $108/mo |
| Contact cap | 2,500 | 25,000 | 100,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Products | 5 | 50 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Transaction fee | 0% | 0% | 0% | 1% | 0% |
| Mobile app | Native app | Native app | Native app | Native app | Native app |
Under Kajabi’s structure, reaching 2,501 contacts forces an automatic upgrade to Growth ($249/mo), and 25,001 contacts forces an upgrade to Pro ($499/mo), even if you still sell a single product. Kajabi Payments fees in the US run 2.9% + $0.30 (Basic), 2.8% + $0.30 (Growth), or 2.7% + $0.30 (Pro), and using a third-party processor adds 2% (Basic), 1% (Growth), or 0.5% (Pro) on top.
Hopper eliminates these tiered upgrades. Both plans support unlimited members, products, moderators, and team seats, and you can run unlimited independent hubs for separate businesses under one subscription. The $58 Base plan carries a 1% transaction fee; on the $108 Pro plan, that transaction fee drops to 0%.
One note on processing: every platform, Hopper included, passes through standard Stripe fees of about 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction. The difference is that Kajabi adds a 0.5% to 2% surcharge on top when you use an outside processor, while Hopper adds none.
Can a high-volume business run on a lower-priced platform?
Daniel ran a $1.7M coaching practice on a stack of Kajabi, Kinsta, LearnDash, MemberPress, BuddyBoss, and Vimeo, plus a freelance developer. It cost $510/month in licenses alone, on top of developer fees and management time. He called the setup “a clobbered-together Frankenstein” and saw “a real gap in the market.”
He migrated to Hopper for $58/month, reducing software spend by 89% and saving $6,000/year while serving the same members with the same content. As of August 2026, three coaches have migrated from Kajabi to Hopper.
The shift helps early-stage coaches too. One creator struggled with a Shopify setup for months, paying for a full year of tools without ever launching. She switched to Hopper, was onboarded personally by founder Cedrik Lim, and was live and selling within 30 to 45 minutes.
What makes Hopper structurally different?
Hopper is not a slightly cheaper clone of existing software. It is built on a different product philosophy by a bootstrapped, three-person team operating out of Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City, and Semarang, led by founder Cedrik Lim.
The team believes software should feel like a physical place rather than a tool. Most platforms are built around the administrator dashboard, optimizing for management and leaving the student experience as an afterthought. Hopper optimizes for both coach and member. If members find the community hard or unengaging, they stop logging in, churn rises, and the coaching business cannot sustain itself.
This shows up in how Hopper answers the primary pain points of standard industry platforms:
No price hikes. Hopper charges a predictable flat rate of $58 per month. The pricing is public, transparent, and stable.
No contact limits. There are no tiered contact limits or subscriber caps. You are not charged more simply because your audience grows.
Human-to-human support. Instead of interacting with automated AI bots, early customers receive personal onboarding from the founder.
Consolidated stack architecture. Hopper replaces the entire stack of separate tools, combining a community hub, content library, async coaching, storefront, and landing pages inside a single login. That means no separate checkout or landing-page software to pay for and wire together.
No gated mobile access. A native iOS and Android app is included for your members at the flat base price, rather than locked behind a premium tier.
Audience migration support. Hopper includes subscriber migration assistance on the Pro plan, helping move your existing members without losing your audience.
By combining community, courses, coaching, and payments, Hopper eliminates stack sprawl. It keeps the member experience unified while giving coaches a simpler, more stable platform.
Ready to leave Kajabi?
See Hopper’s flat pricing, or let us move your existing members for you, free.
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