SamCart is a powerful e-commerce platform that started as a shopping cart. Among the many features, they offer now, there’s selling digital products like online courses.
However, does it compare to platforms specially dedicated to the e-learning industry?
Today we’re going to find out with a SamCart vs. Kajabi comparison.
SamCart vs. Kajabi
SamCart
SamCart is an e-commerce platform that lets you sell physical and digital products. These include online courses and coaching sessions.
As an all-in-one solution, they don’t only help you deliver your online courses but also convert your potential customers and know where your sales are coming from, among other things.
And the thing is you can even use Kajabi inside SamCart.
Kajabi
Kajabi is a platform designed to create and sell online courses as well as coaching and memberships. It was created when its founder, Kenny Router, couldn’t find an easy way to sell courses online.
According to their website, since launching in 2010, Kajabi has empowered over 50,000 knowledge entrepreneurs in 120 countries to serve 60 million students and make over $4 billion in sales!
What can you sell
With Kajabi and SamCart, you can sell digital products and services such as online courses, coaching sessions and even podcasts.
They are great for building your community on your terms, so your product can also be an online community that’s free from the whims and algorithms of social media platforms.
SamCart also lets you sell music and other forms of art, as well as all the physical products you want.
Builder
SamCart and Kajabi have drag-and-drop page builders that let you create unlimited pages. They both have pre-design templates but only SamCart lets you save designs as templates.
Both SamCart and Kajabi offer multiple-choice quizzes and assessments with open-text responses.
A while back, as a new course builder, SamCart didn’t include video hosting, which was its main difference to the competence. However, since June that’s no longer the case and they have built-in video hosting.
You can get a sense of how your course can look with Kajabi by clicking through their sample site. This demo is available on their website to any visitor and no account is required.
Conversions
Websites
When your potential buyer lands on your website, they need to be struck with an impeccable user experience so they decide to stay longer.
To do this, SamCart provides you a straightforward sales page, so people can learn about your course and purchase it.
If you already have a website, however, this can be a huge problem. You may end up with inconsistencies between your website and checkout page, confusing users.
Kajabi goes the extra mile by giving you a full website. This includes a home page, navigation menu, storefront, blog and contact forms. So if you want to provide users with information about your business and other pages to navigate, Kajabi is really great.
It also doesn’t require users to create an account and log in to make a purchase, making the buyer’s journey really smooth.
Email marketing
Keeping students engaged is a big part of e-learning.
Kajabi has built-in email marketing services so you can send beautiful emails right from its platform. They provide you with marketing templates, an intuitive visual editor and subject line validation to help your emails succeed, all included in its plans.
SamCart doesn’t offer any of this. They do have tons of third-party integrations —we’ll talk about them in a minute — but you’ll have to pay a monthly fee for their service. And it can be quite expensive.
CRM
Customer relationship management lets you know where your customers are in the sales funnels and allows you to tailor your emails accordingly.
Kajabi’s CRM is aimed at small businesses and with it, you can have up to 100 custom fields to store lead and contact information that’s relevant to your industry. You can also automate emails and grant offers based on your contacts’ actions.
SamCart, on the other hand, has a basic Student management area where course creators can enroll students in their courses. If you wish to access to more advanced CRM features, you can integrate with HubSpot, Keap or other powerful third-party options.
Maximizing Average Order Value
While Kajabi has Post-Purchase 1-Click Upsells, it doesn’t compete with SamCart at all.
You’ll find that SamCart has multiple upsells, payment options on upsell pages and post-purchase 1-click downsells, amongst several other helpful features.
Check out
Kajabi and SamCart have simple and effective checkout forms.
SamCart lets you provide multiple payment options. Amongst them, you’ll find a Pay What You Want option.
They support PayPal, Stripe, Apple and Google Pay, Authorize.net and Braintree.
Kajabi only lets you collect payments from PayPal and Stripe. But they do have helpful automation that makes it super easy to streamline your workflow.
Another aspect of checkout that’s important is taxes and VAT. Kajabi does not add sales tax to your offers natively, which forces you to A. include the tax percentage in your overall offer price or B. integrate your Stripe account with Quaderno.
SamCart, on the contrary, lets you set up a percentage or flat value from your settings. That way, Samcart will add the tax value during the checkout.
Billing
Whichever platform you choose, you’ll be able to offer free and paid tiers to your courses. You can have one-time payments, recurring subscriptions and limited payment plans.
But SamCart will also let you offer weekly, monthly and quarterly billing.
Analytics
SamCart has tons of marketing optimization techniques like split testing, all-time statistics designed to give you a high-level view of how your subscriptions are performing and a charges report.
They also let you collect UTM tracking parameters on your SamCart checkout pages to pinpoint exactly where your sales are coming from.
Kajabi has in-depth reports on student progress, subscription churn rate and more to help you see the areas where your products can improve.
Integrations
SamCart and Kajabi integrate with popular tools like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and Zapier.
However, SamCart beats Kajabi in this field: they seamlessly sync up with more than 750 integrations, integrating with ActiveCampaign, Get Response, Constant Contact and others.
Support and resources
Kajabi has powerful support and resources. First, they give you a Welcome Call with an onboarding specialist and a Check-in Call as well in all plans. They also run webinars and events and offer a knowledge economy newsletter, a blog, a podcast and the Kajabi University with over 350 training videos!
SamCart has a knowledge base, a blog, the SamCart University and free training videos to help you start selling in a heartbeat. If you need help, you can reach out via chat or email.
They also offer an add-on plan called Access that gets you one-on-one calls with a Customer Success Manager.
Pricing
The cool thing about SamCart and Kajabi is none of them take a percentage of your sales. You’re free to grow with no punishments and keep more of your money.
All of SamCart’s plans include a 14-free trial.
- Launch: $59 per month. Standard integrations for one user.
- Grow: $119 per month. On-demand executive reports and built-in SEO engine.
- Scale: $299 per month. Custom CRM and API integrations.
- Enterprise: contact sales. Multiple subaccounts and product roadmap prioritization.
Kajabi also has a 14-day free trial, but their plans start at a higher rate:
- Basic: $149 per month. Sell to up to 1,000 customers and get 3 funnels.
- Growth: $199 per month. Includes 10 admin users and 10,000 customers.
- Pro: $399 per month. Includes 25 admin users and 20,000 Customers.
Kajabi also has a mobile app, so your customers can progress on the go without having to remember passwords. SamCart doesn’t have an app at the moment.
SamCart Pros and Cons
Pros
- Sell unlimited products.
- Multiple integrations.
- Great support.
Cons
- Requires tons of integrations.
Kajabi Pros and Cons
Pros
- Built-in email marketing.
- Mobile app so your students learn on the fly.
- Amazing support and resources.
Cons
- High prices.
Verdict
We explored how these two platforms compare in multiple areas.
Naturally, SamCart has more sales features, being a full e-commerce platform. They also have more affordable pricing, although you will inevitably have to use third-party integrations, leading to more expenses.
When it comes to choosing your online course builder, you need to consider all its features. And although SamCart is indeed a great builder, Kajabi is a better choice.
They know what you need and they focus on providing just that, as has been proven in its built-in email marketing and its mobile app for learners.
So what are you waiting for to give it a try?
If you already have, tell us your thoughts in the comments!
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