Kajabi's Basic plan is $179 a month, and that's before you've sold anything. There's no permanent free tier — just a 14-day trial, then billing starts whether your course has one student or a hundred.
If you're testing whether a course sells at all, that's a lot to risk on a guess.
Prices checked 6 September 2026. Both platforms change pricing without much notice — check their current pricing pages before you commit either way.
What $179 a month buys before you have a student
The cost isn't really $179. It's $179 multiplied by however many months it takes you to find out whether anyone wants the course — and for most people that's three or four months, because building the thing takes longer than the trial does.
So the realistic figure for validating a first course on Kajabi is several hundred pounds, spent before a single person has paid you anything. That's not a criticism of the software. It's a question about the order of operations.
Systeme.io is the free alternative worth testing first. It's an all-in-one platform — course hosting, email marketing, a checkout with no transaction fees, and a page builder — with a permanent free plan rather than a trial that turns into a bill.
Is there a free alternative to Kajabi?
What systeme.io's free plan actually gives you:
- 1 published course, hosted and sellable, with unlimited students
- 2,000 email contacts, with unlimited emails sent to them
- 3 sales funnels, with pages you build and publish
- A checkout with 0% transaction fees
- 1 blog and 1 custom domain
No credit card to start, no trial clock counting down.
The honest limit
It's one course, not several. If you're already running multiple courses on Kajabi, systeme.io's free plan won't replace your whole setup — and the free tier's automation is basic rather than extensive.
But if you're validating your first course, one is exactly what you need, and it costs nothing to find out whether people will pay for it.
Where Kajabi is genuinely better
Kajabi is the most complete course platform in the category and it isn't close. The student experience is more polished, the analytics are deeper, the community and membership features are properly built rather than bolted on, and its own training on how to sell a course is a real part of what you're paying for.
If you have an audience already and a course that sells, $179 a month is recovered by a couple of enrolments and the extra polish earns its keep. The argument here is about sequence, not quality: pay Kajabi once you know the course sells, not to find out.
How to validate a course before you build it
The expensive mistake isn't picking the wrong platform — it's building six modules for a course nobody wanted.
Cheaper order: write the sales page first, put it up, and see whether anyone gives you their email address for a waitlist. If a hundred people read it and nobody signs up, you've learned something for free. If thirty do, you build the course knowing there are thirty people waiting.
That's the whole reason a free plan matters here — it lets you run that test before committing to anything. If you don't have a list to test against yet, this covers building one from zero.
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Create your free systeme.io accountNo credit card required — free forever plan
Once you're in, the course builder sits under Products. Upload your first module before you do anything else — the sales page, the checkout and the emails all get built around it.
If you outgrow the free plan
Systeme.io's paid plans are $17 for Startup, $47 for Webinar and $97 for Unlimited, checked 6 September 2026. Startup lifts the one-course cap to five and takes contacts to 5,000; Unlimited removes every limit — unlimited courses, contacts and funnels.
Which means the realistic step up from a working free plan is $17 a month, not $97, and even the top tier is a little over half of Kajabi's starting price. Annual billing takes roughly two months off any of them.
Full side-by-side comparison, if you want the detail: systeme.io vs Kajabi. Their own table shows some inconsistency between $149 and $179 for Kajabi's price, so verify against Kajabi's own pricing page rather than either comparison.
Free 30-page setup guide, if you want a walkthrough of the whole build: Systeme.io Beginner's Quickstart Guide.
Common questions
How much does Kajabi cost per month?
The Basic plan is $179 a month, checked 6 September 2026. It rose from $149 in a January 2026 restructure, so older articles still quote the lower figure. There is no free plan — a 14-day trial, then billing begins.
Can you sell an online course for free?
You can host and sell one without paying a platform, on a free tier that includes a course builder and a checkout. You'll still pay card processing of roughly 2.9% plus 30¢ per sale, which applies everywhere.
What's the cheapest platform to sell an online course?
Free, if you only need one course and a list under 2,000. Above that, systeme.io's paid tiers start at $17 a month. Here's what six platforms charge side by side.
Do you need a course platform, or will a PDF do?
For a first product, a PDF or a set of videos delivered by email often sells just as well and takes an afternoon. A course platform earns its place when students need progress tracking, drip release or a community — not before.
How long does it take to launch a first course?
Longer than the trial. That's the practical problem with a 14-day clock: most people are still recording when it expires, which means the first bill arrives before the first sale is even possible.
Related reading: the cheapest all-in-one plan takes 5% of every sale · what you actually need to run an online business