systeme.io vs Kajabi (2026): What Counts as a Product

Here's a catalog I made up for this page, so the numbers have something to land on: one flagship course, a group coaching program, a private podcast for buyers, a paid weekly newsletter, a folder of 12 worksheets and a free community, with 2,200 people on the list.

Kajabi counts that as five products. Its help center counts each course, coaching program, podcast and newsletter as one. Then it adds two rules that change the total: "All Downloads Products combined count as a single Product slot," and "Community doesn't count against the Product count." Five is exactly what Kajabi's Basic plan allows, so the catalog fits Basic at $179 a month, or $143 a month billed annually.

systeme.io doesn't count products. It counts courses, communities, booking-calendar events and contacts, each on its own row of the plan table, and the 2,200 contacts push this catalog off the Free plan onto Startup at $17. Two items on the list have no row at all, though. The plan table has no podcast line and no paid-newsletter product. For those two, systeme.io's price isn't lower. There isn't one.

That's the whole comparison at small scale. Kajabi runs a single meter for everything you sell and bills the total. systeme.io runs a separate meter for each format and leaves some formats off. Which one costs less depends on the mix in your catalog more than on its size, and the first question isn't price. It's whether everything you sell has somewhere to live.

The one-paragraph version: If you sell courses and a community and nothing else, systeme.io costs less in every catalog I priced; seven courses run $47 a month there against $229 on Kajabi. If a podcast or a paid newsletter is part of what you sell, Kajabi is the one of the two that sells both as products. Kajabi's Basic plan stops at 5 products and 2,500 contacts, and its help center sells 10 more products for $50 a month, which at annual billing leaves Basic plus the add-on only $6 a month under Growth. All prices come from the two vendors' pages on October 8, 2026.

Two price lists, October 2026

systeme.io, as listed on its pricing page:

Kajabi, as listed on its pricing page:

Kajabi has no free plan. Its page offers a 14-day trial and, in its FAQ, says "every plan has a 30-day money-back guarantee." Annual billing saves $432 a year on Basic, $600 on Growth and $1,200 on Pro by Kajabi's own figures, which match the gap between the two columns. systeme.io bills a year at ten months' price.

Both vendors put no cap on some rows: Kajabi for funnels, landing pages and marketing emails, systeme.io for emails sent. Those are their words. The rows with numbers in them are the ones that set your tier.

How Kajabi counts a product

Kajabi's help article on products, marked as updated over a week before I read it, sets out the rule:

• A Course, a Coaching program, a Podcast or a Newsletter is one product each.
• Downloads are pooled: "All Downloads Products combined count as a single Product slot." A store with 40 worksheet bundles spends one slot, and a store with none spends zero.
• A Community spends nothing. The Communities section repeats it: "Community doesn't count against your product limit." It is capped separately, at one on Basic and Growth and three on Pro.
• Backstage, a beta feature that gives each one-to-one client a private space, is priced per seat. Extra seats cost $49 a month each, and they don't count against the product limit either.

When you reach the cap, the help article says the create button disappears: "If you do not see the + New product button, you may have reached the Product limit for your current Kajabi plan." From there you upgrade, delete a product, or buy more room. That third route is the one comparisons leave out. Kajabi's help article on managing a subscription lists "Feature limit increase pricing": 10 more products for $50 a month, 5,000 more contacts for $25, one more website for $49, one admin user for $5 and 10 funnels for $10. The option appears once you reach 80% of a limit, and on an annual plan the increase is billed annually.

That cap shows up in why people leave. On Capterra, trinidad C., a CEO in professional training and coaching, gave this reason in June 2025 for switching from Kajabi to systeme.io: "it was too expensive and i had limits in how many products i could sell." The next section shows what systeme.io meters in place of a product count.

Third-party guides get parts of this wrong. One pricing guide says download bundles are counted one by one: "Each one counts separately toward your plan's limit." Another, published in August, says hitting the 5-product cap "pushes you to Growth at $249/month," with no mention of the $50 add-on. Kajabi's own pages contradict both.

The count can also be sidestepped, by one user's account. Tim Peakman, a Kajabi partner who calls it "the only platform I rely on for my online business," wrote in January 2025 about what he calls ghost offers: "Create offers without attaching any products," then deliver the content on a members-only website page linked from the purchase email. That predates the current plans, and Kajabi's help center doesn't present it as a product alternative. A page also isn't a Course product, so whatever Kajabi lists under Courses (modules, quizzes, certificates, drip scheduling) isn't on it. I'd treat it as a stopgap for a single replay, not a way to run a catalog past the limit.

The meter itself changed recently. In Kajabi's pricing page as archived in July 2025, Basic listed 3 products and 10,000 contacts, and an $89 Kickstarter plan sat below it with 250 contacts. By the November 2025 copy, Basic showed 5 products and 2,500 contacts. The January 13, 2026 copy has no Kickstarter plan and shows today's $143 and $179 prices. Basic gained two product slots and lost three-quarters of its contacts. Old figures still circulate; one post on X in September put it this way: "Most comparison guides for ClickFunnels vs Kajabi quote prices from January 2026 or earlier." systeme.io's own Kajabi page still carries the 2025 figures, as a later section shows.

So the catalog gets counted first, by each help center's rule, before either price: a price means nothing until you know which tier the catalog lands on.

How systeme.io meters the same catalog

systeme.io's plan table has no product line. Each format sits on its own row, with its own cap:

• Courses: 1, 5 or 20 by plan, with no cap on Unlimited. The Free plan also caps students at 500; the paid plans show no student cap. Each student also sits in the contact list, which is why I'd pick a systeme.io plan for a course business by headcount.
• Communities: 1, 5 or 20, none capped on Unlimited, and no member cap on any plan in the table.
• Coaching: there's no coaching product. There's a booking calendar, with 1, 5 or 20 events by plan and no cap on Unlimited. systeme.io's help center describes an individual event as "Perfect for 1-on-1 coaching, consultations, and discovery calls," and says "To offer paid bookings, you must add your calendar to an order form/payment page." That sells sessions. It isn't the program Kajabi describes, with "built-in tools for scheduling, coaching delivery, setting up agenda items, organizing materials, and managing client progress."
• Downloads: sold as a "Digital Product" offer on a funnel's payment page, then delivered by email attachment, by a link in an email, or from the thank-you page. Attachments top out at 5 MB. Nothing here spends a product slot; what it spends is funnels and automation rules, and the Free plan has 3 funnels and 1 automation rule.
• Video: systeme.io's help article on hosting says you can upload video files of up to 2GB each and that it offers "unlimited storage for your media, including your videos."
• Podcasts and paid newsletters: no row. The "Email newsletters" line in the plan table is about sending newsletters by email, with no cap on any plan; it isn't a paywalled publication with subscriber-only posts. I found no help article describing either format.

Two further rules shape the systeme.io column. Every plan can open sub-accounts, and each one carries the main account's limits for no added charge, which matters for anyone running more than one brand; the systeme.io pricing breakdown covers that rule in detail. And on a paid plan, going over a limit triggers an upgrade rather than a lockout, which the contacts section below returns to.

Four catalogs, priced

These four catalogs are hypothetical. Prices are each vendor's published rates on October 8, 2026, and Kajabi add-ons are priced at its help center's monthly rates. The annual column assumes an add-on costs twelve times its monthly price, because the help center says the increase is billed annually but lists only a monthly figure.

A. Seven courses. Seven products is two past Basic. The add-on makes Basic $229 a month, $20 under Growth; at annual rates it's $193 against $199, or $2,316 a year against $2,388. That $72 a year buys a lot on the Growth side: ten times the contacts, plus affiliate programs, cohort courses, advanced automations, webhooks and the option to remove Kajabi branding, all crossed out for Basic in Kajabi's comparison table. At a $6 monthly gap I'd take Growth over the add-on unless the list will stay small. On systeme.io, seven courses are two past Startup's five, so the catalog lands on Webinar at $470 a year.

B. The mixed catalog from the top of this page. Kajabi's count is exactly five, so Basic covers it. One more course, coaching program, podcast or newsletter would mean the $50 add-on or Growth; one more worksheet bundle would cost nothing. systeme.io carries four of the six items for $170 a year: the course, the community, coaching sessions through the booking calendar, and the worksheets as a digital product. The podcast and the paid newsletter would need another service, and I haven't priced one. This is the catalog where Kajabi's pooled count earns its price: one bill covers six formats.

C. One course, a big list. Contacts drive this one. Kajabi Basic includes 2,500, so 9,000 needs 6,500 more. At the help center's rate, that's two blocks of 5,000 for $50 a month. Kajabi's pricing page tells it differently: "Contacts come in blocks of 25,000 for $125 a month, at any size." Under that version Basic becomes $304 a month, or $268 at the annual rate, and Growth at $199 is cheaper by $828 a year. Both versions work out to $5 per 1,000 contacts; only the block size differs, and for a list this size the block size decides the plan. systeme.io's Webinar plan holds 10,000 contacts for $47 a month. At contact 10,001 the next step is Unlimited at $97.

D. Two brands. Kajabi's add-on table has no line for a second community, so two communities point to Pro and its three, at $399 a month billed annually, or $4,788 a year. If the two brands can share one community, Growth plus a second website comes to $298 a month, or $248 at the annual rate. On systeme.io, one login on Startup with a sub-account for the second brand gives each brand Startup's limits, so the bill stays at $17 a month. Kept in a single account, six courses would need Webinar at $47.

Contacts: the other meter

Products decide the tier in catalogs A and B. Contacts decide it in C, and the two vendors handle the overrun differently.

Kajabi warns at 90% and again at 100%. Its help article on contact limits says: "You will be given 30 days to update or remove your contacts before your account is locked." After that you can log in only to upgrade, though "Your customers' user experience will not change."

systeme.io doesn't lock a paid account. Its help article on restrictions says that when a paid account is left above one of its caps, systeme.io moves it up a plan on its own; a Free account is restricted instead. My GetResponse-versus-systeme.io piece walks through that sequence day by day.

Going back down has a catch on both sides. Kajabi: "You cannot downgrade to a lower plan if your current usage exceeds that plan's limits." systeme.io asks you to remove the excess and contact support. Kajabi adds two rules worth knowing before an annual commitment. A legacy plan is forfeited for good once you switch off it, and "Kajabi does not offer price locks or renewal discounts to offset price increases."

Fees, in one table

This is a hypothetical seller taking $2,000 a month in subscription payments from US cards. The card processor's own fee applies on top in every column.

Kajabi's FAQ is right that it takes no revenue share "as a platform." The 0.7% is billed as a processing fee instead. Kajabi's US fee schedule says it "applies to every transaction in the series, including the first one." International cards add 1.5% on Kajabi Payments. On another processor the surcharge falls to 1% on Growth ($240 a year in this example) and 0.5% on Pro ($120); the pricing page's footnote exempts PayPal. systeme.io charges 0% on every plan, with payments running through a Stripe or PayPal account in your name; the systeme.io vs Kit comparison works through what that does to a fee bill. Teachable's Standard bundle charges the same 0.7% on recurring payments, and its separate tax-handling fee, and what it buys, is the subject of the Teachable comparison. For a subscription business on Kajabi Payments, I'd put the 0.7% in the budget from the first sale, because the fee schedule applies it from the first payment. On systeme.io, that same processor account also sets how long a buyer gets when an installment fails, which I lay out in the payment-plan recovery guide.

Three claims on systeme.io's Kajabi page

systeme.io publishes a page pitching itself as a Kajabi alternative, stamped "Last updated: May 2026." Three of its claims don't match the pages they describe:

1. "It costs $149 per month to sell 3 digital products with Kajabi." That matches Kajabi's pricing page as archived in July 2025. Since the January 2026 copy, Basic has been $143 a month on annual billing or $179 monthly, for 5 products.
2. "Kajabi locks affiliate management behind its $399/month plan." Kajabi's current comparison table ticks Affiliate Programs for Growth as well as Pro.
3. "systeme.io does not host video natively." systeme.io's own help article, last updated June 3, 2026, explains how to upload video files.

Its headline, "Save up to $1,224 per year," pairs Kajabi Growth's annual rate ($199) with systeme.io Unlimited's monthly price ($97). Like for like, the gap is wider: $1,418 a year on annual billing ($2,388 against $970) and $1,824 on monthly. The same company posted on X in April that "@Kajabi alone makes up almost a third of all migrations" to systeme.io. That's systeme.io's own figure, and nothing I read lets me check it. I'd read the page as marketing that happens to be out of date in both directions.

What Kajabi sells that systeme.io doesn't

The price gap is real, and so is the list of things systeme.io's table doesn't carry:

• Podcasts, public or private for buyers, imported by RSS and sent to Apple Podcasts and Spotify, with listener analytics.
• Paid newsletters, with subscriber-only and paywall breaks inside posts.
• Coaching programs with agenda items, materials, client progress, the Kajabi Scheduler and built-in live video.
• Cohort courses, on Growth and Pro.
• Its own payments, including bank debit and buy-now-pay-later options in the US.
• A branded mobile app on Pro, which the comparison table marks "Included ($199/mo value)."

Two Kajabi users on Reddit, both posting in r/kajabi threads about its price increase, said what keeps them there. One wrote, "Not having to duct-tape a bunch of separate tools together is why I went with Kajabi about 2 years ago. I'm happy, but damn it sure is expensive." The other was angry about the increase and still said, "I use Kajabi for my courses because, in my opinion, it has the best user interface." One bill and a polished product are what those users say they pay for.

systeme.io's list runs the other way: a free plan, physical products, sub-accounts, a booking calendar on every plan and 0% transaction fees. If your catalog is only courses and a community, Kajabi's extra formats are capacity you pay for and don't use. One creator put the price side plainly on X in April: "I love Kajabi, but it costs too much. I know so many creators who want to use it, but can't afford $179/m for the lowest tier." Another, writing in September about the plan questions coaches ask, said they need "a clean funnel and one product live." Neither post is a measurement. The second describes a catalog that fits inside Kajabi Basic's five products, and inside systeme.io's Free plan too.

Rules I couldn't pin down

1. Kajabi's contact block size. The help center sells 5,000 contacts for $25 a month; the pricing page says blocks of 25,000 for $125. Catalog C changes plan depending on which is current. I'd plan on the 25,000 block until Kajabi support confirms the smaller one in writing.
2. Kajabi's funnel limit. The pricing page lists no funnel cap on any plan, while the limit-increase table sells 10 funnels for $10. The help center may mean legacy plans; it doesn't say.
3. Annual add-on pricing. The help center says a limit increase on an annual plan is billed annually but gives only a monthly price, so I priced it at twelve times that.
4. Podcasts on systeme.io. I found no help article on hosting a podcast feed there. Someone may run one through blog pages; I haven't seen it documented, so I haven't counted it.
5. Everything hands-on. I haven't opened either account or started Kajabi's trial. Every figure here comes from published pages as they read on October 8, 2026.

Which meter your catalog fits

• Courses and a community, under 10,000 contacts: systeme.io. Startup holds 5 courses and 5,000 contacts for $17; Webinar holds 20 and 10,000 for $47.
• A podcast or paid newsletter among your products, on one bill: Kajabi. Basic's five products cover one course, coaching program, podcast, newsletter and downloads store for $143 a month billed annually.
• More than five products on Kajabi: price Growth before the add-on; at annual rates the difference is $6 a month.
• A big list and few products: systeme.io by a wide margin. On Kajabi, check which contact block applies before choosing between Basic and Growth.
• Two or more brands: systeme.io's sub-accounts keep each brand on your plan's limits. On Kajabi, separate communities mean Pro.

If systeme.io fits your catalog, take the plan your count calls for on systeme.io's pricing page: Startup for up to 5 courses and 5,000 contacts, Webinar for 20 and 10,000. Its free tier holds one course, one community, one booking event and 2,000 contacts, enough to set up catalog B's course, community, sessions and worksheet offer before paying anything, as long as the list stays at 2,000 or fewer. If Kajabi fits, its pricing page starts the 14-day trial. Whichever you test, count your products by that vendor's rule first, and keep the systeme.io email marketing review handy if email is the part you're replacing.

FAQ

Does a Kajabi community count as a product?

No. Kajabi's help center says "Community doesn't count against the Product count." Communities have their own cap: one on Basic and Growth, three on Pro.

Do Kajabi downloads each use a product slot?

No. All Downloads products together count as one slot, however many you create, and zero if you have none.

Can systeme.io sell coaching?

It sells sessions. The booking calendar takes paid bookings through an order form; Free allows 1 event, Startup 5, Webinar 20, and Unlimited has no cap. It doesn't offer a coaching program with agendas and client progress the way Kajabi's Coaching product does.

What happens if I pass 2,500 contacts on Kajabi Basic?

You get an email and a banner, then 30 days to remove contacts before the account locks, or you upgrade or buy more contacts. Your customers keep access throughout, according to the help center.

Is Kajabi's Kickstarter plan still available?

Not to new accounts. It's missing from the January 13, 2026 archived copy of Kajabi's pricing page and from the live page. One pricing guide says it "kept its price for existing accounts but is no longer offered to new creators."

Does systeme.io charge transaction fees?

No. Its plan table lists 0% on every plan, Free included. Your payment processor's own fees still apply.