ThriveCart vs Kajabi: Definitive Comparison (April 2025)

Starting an online store can feel like a big leap, but don’t worry—I’ve been there! I recently tested out ThriveCart and Kajabi, and here’s what I found. 

ThriveCart really impressed me with its intuitive funnel builder and streamlined checkout process, making it easy to convert visitors and implement advanced sales strategies. The platform perfectly balances simplicity and power, allowing for seamless upsells and optimized funnels. 

Kajabi is known for its online course capabilities, so if that’s what you’re selling, Kajabi is definitely worth considering. You can build out full course funnels, drip content, and even host webinars. The downside? It’s a little pricier and better suited for established businesses, especially if you’re selling mainly digital products. But if you’re looking to build a robust digital ecosystem, Kajabi has everything you need.

To give you a well-rounded comparison, I also included Sellfy—a platform I found intriguing as an all-in-one solution. It offers a fully customizable storefront, built-in email campaigns, and support for both digital and physical products—definitely worth a look for creators and small businesses.

What is ThriveCart?

Boost sales with ease, no monthly fees! 💰🚀

ThriveCart is a high-converting shopping cart and checkout platform designed to help businesses sell products and services online. Launched in 2016 by Jason Bartlett, it provides an intuitive sales funnel builder, customizable checkout pages, and tools like one-click upsells, downsells, and bump offers to maximize revenue. ThriveCart supports both digital and physical products, offering flexible payment options, including subscriptions and split-pay. Its built-in analytics, A/B testing, and prediction engine help optimize sales performance. ThriveCart offers seamless integrations and embeddable checkout options, which simplify online transactions. 

What is Kajabi?

Scale your digital business effortlessly. 📊🔥

Kajabi is an all-in-one platform designed for entrepreneurs, course creators, and coaches looking to monetize their expertise. It provides everything needed to build and scale an online business, including website hosting, course creation, membership sites, email marketing, sales funnels, and payment processing. With its drag-and-drop website builder and built-in automation tools, users can streamline operations without relying on multiple software solutions. While Kajabi offers advanced features for marketing and audience engagement, its premium pricing may not suit beginners or small-budget businesses. However, for those seeking a professional, scalable solution, Kajabi eliminates the hassle of managing separate platforms.

What is Sellfy?

Your eCommerce, simplified. 🛒👌

Sellfy is an intuitive eCommerce platform tailored for creators, artists, and small businesses looking to sell digital products, physical goods, subscriptions, and print-on-demand items. Launched in 2011, it offers a hassle-free setup with a fully customizable storefront, secure payment processing via PayPal and Stripe, and mobile-friendly transactions. Its built-in marketing tools—email campaigns, discount codes, and upsells—help drive sales, while automatic file delivery and digital product protection ensure a seamless customer experience. With integrated print-on-demand services and analytics, Sellfy provides a powerful yet simple solution for entrepreneurs who want full control over their online store without technical complexities.

ThriveCart vs Kajabi vs Sellfy: Marketing tools & funnel building

ThriveCart, Kajabi, and Sellfy each offer unique marketing tools and funnel-building options. ThriveCart is best for simple upsells, Kajabi provides advanced customization and email automation, and Sellfy offers easy-to-use, built-in email marketing for smaller stores.

ThriveCart and Kajabi both offer advanced funnel-building, while Sellfy handles promotions without heavy funnel set-ups

ThriveCart focuses on upsells and downsells. Once someone checks out, you can offer them additional products with a click; however, it’s a bit limited in terms of what it can do beyond that. You can only tie one product to each funnel, and there’s no conditional logic or advanced automation. But if you are looking for a straightforward funnel to boost your average order value, ThriveCart is a reliable choice.

I found this particularly helpful when I wanted to boost sales for specific products. The process is simple: after your customer buys the first item, you offer them an upsell or a down-sell. If they decline, they might be offered a cheaper option. It’s straightforward and pretty effective for smaller shops, especially if you just want a quick way to present additional offers.

Kajabi offers a whole different experience. It’s not just about upselling but also about creating a full journey for your customers. You can link together landing pages, email campaigns, and offers into one cohesive process. What I love about Kajabi is how customizable everything is. You get to design your funnel from the ground up and even add animations or transitions to make it look and feel professional.

However, Kajabi is not super quick to set up, especially if you want something custom. You’ll need to invest some time upfront to get everything working the way you want. One of the coolest things, though, is that you don’t even need a product to start a funnel. You can base everything around emails, landing pages, webinars, or even special promotions.

Kajabi is ideal if you’ve got a larger store or a complex product suite and want to automate a lot of the sales process. For example, I’ve used Kajabi when I wanted to launch a new product and create a complete email drip campaign alongside it. It worked really well for nurturing leads and converting them into buyers.

If you’re running a smaller store or just don’t need over-complicated features, Sellfy is a reliable choice. It has everything you need to handle promotions without all the complicated funnel setup. You can create discount codes, upsells, and even send cart abandonment emails. And since it’s all integrated into one platform, it’s pretty easy to set up and manage.

When I used Sellfy, I appreciated how easy it was to get started. It’s perfect for people who want to focus on sales without diving deep into funnel-building.

Kajabi and Sellfy offer built-in email marketing, while ThriveCart relies on third-party integrations.

If you want an all-in-one setup, both Sellfy and Kajabi have built-in email marketing tools, so you don’t have to manage third-party software. Kajabi offers extensive customization options, letting you create visually appealing emails with images, videos, countdown timers, and other advanced features. You can also set up automated email sequences based on customer actions, which is great for welcome series or follow-up offers.

Sellfy keeps things simple and built-in. You can collect subscribers, send emails, and even import an existing list. It may not be as visually dynamic as Kajabi, but it gets the job done without having to pay for integrations.

ThriveCart, on the other hand, doesn’t come with its own email marketing features. You’ll definitely need a third-party email tool, such as ConvertKit or Klaviyo, if you want to stay in touch with customers. Keep in mind that this means an extra step (and possibly an extra subscription fee).

Kajabi’s robust email marketing is perfect for course funnels, Sellfy’s built-in marketing tool is enough for general purposes

Kajabi allows you to segment lists, create automated drip sequences, and run webinar funnels. It’s great for advanced automation and deep integrations, but it can feel overwhelming for beginners or smaller operations.

Sellfy offers a simpler, more straightforward approach. It includes essential email features like newsletters and product updates, which are easy to set up without technical know-how. If you want basic email marketing without the complexity, Sellfy is a solid choice.

ThriveCart doesn’t have built-in email marketing, so you need to integrate it with external tools like ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign. 

ThriveCart vs Kajabi vs Sellfy: Analytics and insights

Kajabi and Sellfy offer built-in analytics, while ThriveCart requires third-party integrations. However, ThriveCart stands out with its AI-driven prediction engine, which helps forecast future revenue and trends.

Kajabi and Sellfy offer built-in analytics, while ThriveCart asks for integrations

Kajabi’s built-in analytics give you a clear overview of your business performance, such as revenue, subscription metrics, opt-ins, and more. It’s a one-stop dashboard to track your sales and customer activity. You can see your total revenue, purchases, refunds, and other vital stats over different timeframes. Kajabi even shows you data like how your affiliates are performing or which pages are getting the most views. It’s simple, but you get solid insights to guide your decisions. 

With Sellfy’s built-in analytics, you can track your sales, visits, conversions, revenue, and even which products are top sellers. It also gives you traffic breakdowns so you know where your visitors are coming from and what’s driving them to buy. Plus, Sellfy makes it easy to use UTM parameters to track campaigns and see exactly how different traffic sources are performing. 

ThriveCart doesn’t have built-in analytics, but it integrates well with Google Analytics. You’ll need to set up Google Analytics (or Tag Manager) to track your performance. Once that’s done, you can get detailed reports on conversions, sales, and traffic sources. This process is often complicated and may add more costs.

Kajabi and Sellfy provide an analytics dashboard, but ThriveCart includes a prediction engine.

ThriveCart goes beyond just showing you past performance—it predicts where your business is headed. When you log in, you’re greeted with a dashboard that tracks net revenue, refunds, product performance, and customer engagement. But here’s where it gets interesting: You can compare multiple data points to see trends and even project future revenue based on past patterns.

And if you want to further customize your experience, ThriveCart lets you rearrange the dashboard to show the metrics that matter most to you. Want to check last month’s best-selling product against this month’s numbers? A few clicks, and you’ve got the data in front of you. Need to see your expected revenue next quarter? ThriveCart’s prediction engine has you covered.

ThriveCart has built-in A/B testing; Kajabi and Sellfy don’t have this option

If you’re serious about making more sales, A/B testing is a game changer. It’s like running a little experiment to see what actually works instead of just guessing. Maybe a different headline gets more people to click, or a new checkout page layout makes them feel more confident about buying. The only way to know for sure? Test it.

ThriveCart makes A/B testing super easy. You can test different versions of your product pages, checkout pages, and even cart layouts. Once the test is done, ThriveCart automatically applies the winning version across the board—so you don’t have to go back and update every single link manually. It’s a huge time-saver.

Kajabi and Sellfy, on the other hand, don’t have built-in A/B testing, which means you’ll need third-party apps to analyze what’s working. Another option is to manually track how different versions perform, but that can get messy and time-consuming. 

ThriveCart vs Kajabi vs Sellfy: Ease of use & store builder

Sellfy is the easiest for creators who want a quick store setup, ThriveCart excels at funnel-building but is limited to sales pages, and Kajabi is the best all-in-one platform for online courses and memberships.

Sellfy’s “launch in minutes” approach is ideal for creators, while ThriveCart is straightforward for funnel-building

If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to start selling online, Sellfy is perfect for creators who want to skip the complicated setup and start selling. Whether you’re offering digital products, physical items, or print-on-demand goods, Sellfy takes care of hosting, checkout, and product delivery. The store designs are customizable without needing coding skills, and you can easily embed your store or product links on your own website, giving you flexibility in how you sell.

 

If you’re looking to enhance your sales strategy with funnels, ThriveCart is an excellent choice. It’s designed for creators and businesses that want to optimize revenue through upsells, downsells, and strategic product offers. The drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to set up, and you can create personalized customer journeys to boost conversions. It’s not quite as simple as Sellfy, but if you’re familiar with funnels, ThriveCart is a great choice for driving more sales and optimizing your offers.

Kajabi is a bit more complex to set up, but if you want to create online courses, coaching programs, or a membership community, Kajabi offers everything you need in one platform.

Kajabi and Sellfy offer a fully-featured website, while ThriveCart can only create landing pages.

I tried ThriveCart when I was setting up a quick sales funnel, and it worked fine for that. But if you’re hoping to build a full-fledged online store or a content hub, you’ll probably feel boxed in. ThriveCart only lets you create sales pages and checkout pages, which are customizable but still pretty limited. If all you need is a landing page to capture leads or push a specific product, ThriveCart is totally fine. 

Kajabi, on the other hand, is an all-in-one platform where you can build a legit website, not just a couple of landing pages. Whether you need a blog, an about page, or a members-only section, you can customize everything with Kajabi. And the best part is, you don’t need extra plugins or external services to do that.

Kajabi’s landing pages are way more flexible. You can use them for lead magnets, upsells, product showcases, and even personalized thank-you pages. You can also set them to appear at different points in the customer journey—before purchase, after purchase, or even as pop-ups while they’re browsing.

Sellfy takes a different approach. Instead of just providing landing pages, it offers a highly customizable storefront tailored to your brand. With sleek themes, customizable product pages, and mobile-friendly checkout, Sellfy ensures your store looks polished and professional. Unlike Kajabi, which leans heavily on course creation and memberships, Sellfy is built with selling digital, physical, subscription, and print-on-demand products in mind. It’s user-friendly, allowing you to set up a store in minutes while still offering plenty of customization options.

I really liked that I could tweak the layout, customize the store and its pages, and even add my own domain. You can choose from six pre-designed store themes, customize built-in pages like checkout and purchase confirmation, and even highlight bestsellers with category-based filtering. With advanced SEO settings and the ability to feature products in your store’s hero section, Sellfy gives you full control over your store’s look and feel without needing any coding skills.

ThriveCart and Kajabi are keen on brand consistency, while Sellfy meets most creators’ needs

Kajabi lets you tweak everything—colors, fonts, button styles, and even error messages—so your brand’s personality stays consistent. You can change your primary color to match your brand, adjust button styles to make CTAs stand out, and even customize the appearance of your checkout pages. It’s great if you want a polished, professional look that reflects your brand everywhere.

ThriveCart is also great at keeping things visually appealing while giving you the flexibility to optimize for conversions. You can adjust layouts, colors, and branding elements to make sure your cart looks just as good as the rest of your site. Plus, it has built-in tools to help you maximize sales—like bump offers and upsells that fit seamlessly into the checkout process.

Sellfy, on the other hand, keeps things simple. It gives you just enough customization without overwhelming you. You can personalize your store to match your aesthetic, but it’s designed more for creators who want to start selling fast rather than spend hours perfecting every detail. If you’re a YouTuber, designer, or musician looking for a quick and easy way to sell digital products, Sellfy does the job without a steep learning curve.

ThriveCart vs Kajabi vs Sellfy: eCommerce functionality & course hosting

Kajabi is the best choice if you want to build and host online courses with interactive features and structured learning. ThriveCart is great for selling courses but requires an external platform for hosting. Sellfy keeps it simple, offering a hassle-free way to sell digital downloads like eBooks, music, and templates.

Kajabi shines in course creation, ThriveCart integrates externally, Sellfy focuses on flawless digital product access

If you’re serious about building an online course and turning your knowledge into income, Kajabi is your go-to. With Kajabi, you can build everything from mini-courses to full-blown programs with customizable templates. One of my favorite things? Kajabi’s AI tools. They’ll suggest the best structure for your course and even offer content ideas so you don’t waste time figuring out the logistics. Plus, it helps you manage your content and track your students’ progress. You keep 100% of your profits, and there’s no extra charge for hosting your courses. 

ThriveCart doesn’t come with a built-in learning management system (LMS) like Kajabi does, but it integrates easily with other tools like Thinkific or Teachable. It’s more of a course sales platform, letting you sell online courses with ease. You can create flexible pricing models, build custom landing pages, and manage sales funnels. However, you’ll need to host your content elsewhere, like YouTube or Vimeo, because ThriveCart doesn’t offer hosting. Still, it’s a solid choice if you already have a course platform in place and just need a tool to sell it.

If you’re selling straightforward digital products, like eBooks, music, digital art, or printable templates, Sellfy provides a hassle-free experience without the complexities of course structures.

Sellfy allows you to upload files up to 15 GB per product, which is more than enough for high-quality video content, large design files, or detailed digital guides. This is particularly useful for photographers, videographers, and artists who need to sell high-resolution images or long-format videos.

Sellfy also includes built-in anti-piracy features, ensuring your content stays protected. You can set PDF stamping (adding the buyer’s email to your digital files) to deter unauthorized sharing, and downloads can be restricted by setting a maximum number of downloads per purchase—ensuring that only the buyer can access the files.

Additionally, Sellfy’s instant delivery system gets your products into buyers’ hands immediately after purchase, removing friction from the buying process. 

Kajabi’s drip content is a plus for educators, while Sellfy’s quick file delivery suits creators selling stand-alone assets

If you’re planning to build an online course with multiple lessons, interactive quizzes, and a structured learning path, Kajabi is an excellent choice. It lets you schedule drip content, so students don’t get overwhelmed with everything at once. 

Plus, Kajabi gives you tools like quizzes (with auto-grading), multimedia embedding (videos, PDFs, and audio), and even AI-powered content suggestions to help you organize and create lessons more efficiently. If you want to track student progress and provide certificates of completion, Kajabi has you covered.

If you’re selling digital downloads, like eBooks, stock photos, music, or templates, Sellfy makes it super simple. As soon as someone buys your product, they get a secure download link instantly. Sellfy handles all the email confirmations for you, but keep in mind that you can’t customize the sender email address—it’ll come from Sellfy’s system. Customers get five download attempts per file, which helps prevent piracy while still allowing flexibility if they need to download on multiple devices.

ThriveCart is primarily a checkout tool, but it does have a free add-on called ThriveCart Learn, which lets you host and drip courses. It’s not as robust as Kajabi, but it works if you just need a simple setup. However, if you’re looking for a full-featured learning platform, you’ll likely need to integrate it with another tool.

In many cases, Sellfy beats the complexity of Kajabi’s course features

If you’re just selling digital files like eBooks, music tracks, or design templates, you might find Kajabi’s whole suite of courses and membership tools a bit much. In my experience, when you don’t really need interactive lessons, quizzes, or drip content, a simpler solution like Sellfy is the best way to go. Sellfy keeps things straightforward and eliminates the extra features you won’t use so you can focus on delivering your digital products. 

Ultimately, it all comes down to your specific needs. For many creators who just want a simple, hassle-free way to sell their digital files, Sellfy offers an attractive, less complicated alternative to Kajabi’s all-in-one approach.

ThriveCart vs Kajabi vs Sellfy: Product offering

ThriveCart is the best option for selling physical products with built-in shipping and upsell features. Kajabi excels in digital product sales, offering a full course-building suite and hosting. Sellfy provides the best balance, supporting digital, physical, and print-on-demand sales in one platform.

ThriveCart is optimized for selling physical products.

ThriveCart makes selling physical products easy with built-in shipping options (local and international) and a structured product creation process. After listing, you can adjust product types and add upsells, downsells, and bump offers to maximize sales.

Kajabi technically supports physical products, but it lacks a built-in system. You’ll need to embed a Shopify Buy button or integrate a third-party cart via Zapier.

For digital products, Kajabi is the better choice. It offers built-in hosting, flexible pricing, and tools for selling courses, memberships, and downloadable content. ThriveCart focuses on checkout optimization but lacks Kajabi’s course and membership features.

Kajabi offers a better selection of online courses and digital goods

Kajabi gives you a full suite of tools for building and selling online courses, including a robust course builder, coaching features, and community tools.

ThriveCart’s free Learn add-on lets you create unlimited courses, drip content, and bundle courses together. But it doesn’t match Kajabi’s depth.

With Kajabi, you can build courses with text, video, audio, and interactive assessments while tracking student progress. It also includes an AI-powered tool to structure lessons for you and automation options like unlocking modules or sending emails based on student activity.

Kajabi hosts all your course content for free, while ThriveCart requires third-party hosting for videos and downloads. If course creation is a priority, Kajabi is a more complete solution.

Sellfy provides the best balance for digital and physical products.

Sellfy is the only platform that combines a full storefront, print-on-demand, and subscriptions in one place. You can sell digital downloads, physical products, and custom merch without relying on third-party integrations.

Print-on-demand lets you sell custom T-shirts, hoodies, and mugs without holding inventory—Sellfy handles production and shipping. Subscriptions allow you to charge recurring payments for exclusive content or services. Everything runs from a single dashboard, making it easy to manage your business without extra tools.

If you need a simple, all-in-one solution for selling different types of products, Sellfy is the most practical choice.

ThriveCart vs Kajabi vs Sellfy: Transaction fees & pricing

ThriveCart offers a lifetime deal with no monthly fees, making it a great one-time investment for checkout-focused businesses. Kajabi is a premium all-in-one platform for course creators, with high pricing but no transaction fees. Sellfy is the most affordable option, with unlimited product sales and no transaction fees.

Not everyone will be able to afford ThriveCart or Kajabi, and not everyone should

ThriveCart is a one-time payment platform priced at $495 for a lifetime plan. The Pro Upgrade is an additional $195 and adds features like affiliate management and sales tax functionality. With ThriveCart, you pay once and own it forever, with no subscriptions or monthly fees. It offers a checkout system designed to boost conversions, including one-click upsells, bump offers, and an affiliate management center (if you go Pro). However, there’s no free trial, and the lifetime deal may not last forever. But if you’re in it for the long haul, this could save you a lot compared to subscription-based alternatives.

Kajabi is an all-in-one platform designed for course creators and membership sites. Pricing starts at $69 per month (Kickstarter plan) and can go up to $399 per month (Pro plan). Kajabi offers a free 14-day trial, but you’ll need to enter your credit card details. It’s a single system to host your content, build your website, send marketing emails, and run automations. Plus, there are no transaction fees on sales, only the usual payment processor fees. The downside is that Kajabi is expensive, and the cheaper plans come with limits on products and funnels. If you’re serious about scaling, you’ll likely need the Growth ($199/month) or Pro ($399/month) plan.

So, which one is right for you? Choose ThriveCart if you mainly need a powerful checkout system and want to avoid monthly fees. Choose Kajabi if you need an all-in-one course and membership platform with built-in marketing tools. 

Sellfy offers the best value for money

Sellfy is the ideal choice for creators looking for simplicity and affordability. Starting at just $29/month, the platform allows you to sell unlimited products with no transaction fees, making it perfect for creators with annual sales under $200K. As your business grows, you can upgrade to the $79/month Business plan, which includes upselling, cart abandonment recovery, and affiliate marketing—features that help increase sales. 

For those who need even more customization and support, the $159/month Premium plan offers advanced design options, priority support, and product migration, ensuring scalability while maintaining low costs.

Kajabi vs ThriveCart vs Sellfy: Pros & Cons

ThriveCart 

Kajabi 

Sellfy 

ThriveCart vs Kajabi vs Sellfy: Final verdict

Use ThriveCart if:

• You want to sell physical products.
• You need to run A/B tests on your campaigns.
• You already have an existing website and tech stack.

Use Kajabi if:

• You need advanced tools to scale your business or create premium digital products.
• You’re willing to invest in a comprehensive solution for complex operations and marketing strategies.

Use Sellfy if:

• You’re looking for an easy-to-use, budget-friendly eCommerce platform.
• You want a solution with no transaction fees and essential marketing tools to grow your business.