CTCan I Code This?

HEAD TO HEAD

Teachable vs Kajabi: could you build either?

Teachable is course hosting with checkout. Kajabi bundles the email tool, the funnel builder and the site builder too — at $149/mo, which is the real argument for rebuilding it.

TeachableBorderlineKajabiJust pay

Side by side

TeachableKajabi
verdictBorderlineJust pay
vibe score84/10075/100
time to codea weekendnot worth starting
their price$39/mo$149/mo
per year$468/yr$1788/yr
agent cost to build$43–$86$86–$172
hosting after$8–$16/mo$8–$16/mo
categoryeducationeducation
last checked2026-082026-08

These two split: Teachable is the more realistic rebuild, Kajabi the one to think twice about. Teachable is a weekend of work against a rebuild that isn’t worth starting for Kajabi. Kajabi lists at $149/mo against $39/mo for Teachable — 3.8× the price, a difference of $1320 a year.

Why Teachable gets Borderline

  • Video lessons organized into modules, gated behind a Stripe purchase, is a well-understood access-control pattern
  • Marking lessons complete and showing a progress bar is straightforward CRUD
  • A course landing page with a curriculum outline is standard content rendering

Why Kajabi gets Just pay

  • Modules, video lessons, and Stripe-gated access are the same buildable core as any course platform on this register
  • For just the course itself, this register's own course-platform build spec covers the real need
  • A simple landing page and checkout flow is standard, bounded work

Where the builds overlap

Both rebuilds are made of parts from the Vibe Codeability Database. The shared ones are work you'd do once either way — the split ones are what actually separates these two.

SHARED — 5 parts

Landing page99
CRUD database95
User login92
Stripe checkout88
Video processing45

ONLY TEACHABLE

Nothing — every part of this rebuild is also in Kajabi.

ONLY KAJABI

  • Third-party integration ecosystem 30

What you lose leaving Teachable

  • Video hosting and delivery at reasonable quality shares Vimeo/Loom's real infrastructure concerns, not just a feature
  • Drip content (release lesson 2 a week after purchase) and quizzes with grading are real additional features
  • Their affiliate program and course marketplace for discovery doesn't come with a self-hosted build

What you lose leaving Kajabi

  • Bundling course delivery, email marketing automation, funnel building, and a website builder into one connected system is years of integration work, not a feature list
  • Their marketing automation (behavioral email triggers based on course progress) compounds two already-real problems into one
  • The pitch is specifically 'replace five tools with one' — that's an ecosystem moat, not a technical one

Read the full verdicts

Can I code Teachable? →Full reasoning, build spec, cost breakdown and free alternatives.BorderlineCan I code Kajabi? →Full reasoning, build spec, cost breakdown and free alternatives.Just pay

Questions

Is Teachable or Kajabi easier to build yourself?

These two split: Teachable is the more realistic rebuild, Kajabi the one to think twice about. Teachable is a weekend of work against a rebuild that isn’t worth starting for Kajabi. Kajabi lists at $149/mo against $39/mo for Teachable — 3.8× the price, a difference of $1320 a year.

Can I build Teachable?

Borderline. A course of video lessons behind a paywall, with progress tracking, is a real but bounded build — video hosting, a Stripe checkout, and a completion checklist. The polish that makes a course feel professional (drip scheduling, quizzes, certificates) adds up past a weekend.

Can I build Kajabi?

Just pay. The course-and-paywall core shares Teachable's buildable shape. Kajabi's actual pitch is bundling that with email marketing, funnels, and a website builder — the same integration-ecosystem moat that makes HubSpot a JUST PAY, not any single hard feature.

What do Teachable and Kajabi have in common technically?

Both rebuilds need landing page, crud database, user login, stripe checkout, video processing. That shared foundation is why they score similarly on the parts they overlap on — the difference comes from what each one adds on top.

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