LearnDash vs HighLevel vs Kajabi: Which One’s Best for Your Online Courses and Memberships?

If you’re an expert, coach, or consultant and you want to turn the material you use in your one-on-one engagements into recurring revenue, choosing the right platform for your online courses and memberships is critical.

I recently published an article series called What Online Course Platform Is Right for You? It discusses the different platforms providing a good starting point for making a decision for your business.

This article gets specific discussing two SAAS solutions, HighLevel and Kajabi. The goal is to compare and contrast them with LearnDash / Wordpress platform to provide you with some insight.

Each of these platforms has its sweet spot.  I’ll break them down without going all tech jargon on you giving you practical info you can use to make the right call for your business.

Quick Platform Overview

LearnDash

This is a WordPress plugin built specifically for creating online courses. It is Wordpress-based and recognized among trainers and course creates want full control of their platforms.

HighLevel

HIghLevel doesn’t show up prominently when you search for online course platforms. It was originally built and is marketed as a marketing automation tool. The have added membership and online courses features to the platform and they are good ones.

Kajabi

A premium, all-in-one platform tailored for course creators and coaches. It handles everything—site building, email marketing, course hosting, and more—with a pretty polished UI.

Detailed Feature-by-Feature Breakdown

 Course & Membership Creation

• LearnDash: Super robust. Great for quizzes, certifications, prerequisites, and gamification
• HighLevel: Drag-and-drop builder, unlimited courses, and flexible modules. Not quite as refined as Kajabi or LearnDash, but solid for most needs.
• Kajabi: Polished and intuitive. Clean UI, beautiful course player, easy for beginners to launch fast.

Customization & Branding

• LearnDash: 100% customizable. Wordpress is a website building platform. You can build learning sites with it or any site you would want including ones with LearnDash for teaching.
• HighLevel: Allows custom branding, but it’s definitely limited in its design flexibility compared to WordPress.
• Kajabi: Gorgeous templates, but less flexible than WordPress. You have some controls, but not complete control like you get with Wordpress.

Drip Content & Progress Tracking

• LearnDash: Full-featured drip scheduling, user progress tracking, and advanced course locking.
• HighLevel: Drip lessons, mark-as-complete buttons, and membership access levels.
• Kajabi: Smooth drip release, intuitive progress bar, auto-complete lessons.

⚙️ Automation & CRM

• LearnDash: Requires add-ons or integrations with CRMs like ActiveCampaign or FluentCRM. My team and I specialize in integrating LearnDash with Keap, ActiveCampaign and, yes, with HighLevel. It gets you all the learning benefits provide by LearnDash with the CRM attachment. Part 3 of the series I reference earlier in the article, discusses integrating LearnDash with CRMs.
• HighLevel: This is where HIGHLEVEL shines. It has built-in automation, SMS/email triggers, and full CRM functionality. Given that they are included with their learning feature, this upgrades your ability to marketing your course with built-in CRM features.
• Kajabi: Built-in email campaigns and basic automations, not as powerful or flexible as HighLevel or other solutions integrated with a CRM.

Payments & Offers

• LearnDash: Integrates with WooCommerce, Stripe, and PayPal—lots of flexibility, but setup can get complex. Read my article, LearnDash & WooCommerce: Should I Use the LD E-Commerce or WooCommerce? for a full update on this.
• HighLevel: Stripe integration. It has upsell and some good e-commerce features offering with different access levels, and order forms.
• Kajabi: Seamless payment setup with Stripe and PayPal. Built-in upsells, order bumps, and coupon codes.

Pricing Overview

Best For…

• LearnDash: Ideal for educators, trainers, and course-heavy businesses that want control, flexibility and to leave all their options available. These folks accept the higher WordPress learning curve.
• HighLevel: It’s definitely perfect if you're already using HighLevel for your marketing/CRM. Using it for your courses gives you want everything in one place with killer automation.
• Kajabi: Great for personal brands, coaches, and creators who want a “just works” platform with beautiful design and integrated tools.

Pros & Cons Summary

Our Take at LarryJacob.com

We work with a lot of course creators—some are just getting started, others are scaling like pros. Here’s the bottom line:

• If you love the power of WordPress and want total control over your course experience along with the ultimate flexibility, LearnDash is your playground.
• If you’re already in the HighLevel ecosystem, or need heavy automation and marketing workflows, HighLevel is one to definitely consider.
• And if you’re building a personal brand and want a sleek, simplified, easy to work on solution, Kajabi makes you look good without the tech headache.

Not sure which one’s right for your next move? Let’s talk. We help experts package their brilliance into profitable, scalable online programs every day.