Courses: delivery exists in both; the teaching model decides.
Both vendors support courses and student access. systeme.io's course and membership tools let a seller assemble lessons and connect them to a funnel and email workflow. The free tier's one-course limit makes the first question concrete: is this a single flagship offer, or does the business already sell multiple programs? The platform also supports course quizzes and drip access in its documentation. Do not claim it lacks a teaching feature simply because Kajabi is more education focused.
Kajabi's catalog is built around products such as courses, coaching, communities, newsletters, podcasts, and downloads. Its published Basic allowance of five products and one community can be more useful than a high raw funnel count to a business whose customers return for lessons, coaching, and discussion. Cohort courses and the Kajabi Customer App appear in its feature comparison. A coach running a structured paid community should compare the member journey on a sample offer: login, navigation, lesson progression, mobile viewing, access rules, and support workflow. We infer that Kajabi is the better candidate for a richer education operation from its product model; the best actual experience requires a trial with your content and learners.
Funnels, email, and website: what really gets replaced?
systeme.io combines opt-in and sales pages, order forms, email campaigns, automations, a blog or site, courses, and affiliate management. A new course creator can therefore retire several entry-level subscriptions if those built-in workflows meet the requirement. The saving is not the list price of every overlapping app: count only tools you will actually cancel. If a specialist email provider remains for segmentation or reporting, add it back to the total.
Kajabi also publishes unlimited funnels, landing pages, and marketing emails on its current plans. Its Basic cap is on products, contacts, sites, communities, and admins, rather than the number of funnels. That favors a creator who builds several acquisition paths for a limited catalog of education products. Conversely, a coach with only a handful of subscribers and one offer may have no operational reason to carry a $179 monthly platform before sales are repeatable. Compare one real customer path, not a checklist of theoretically available modules.
Transaction fees: distinguish the platform from the processor.
systeme.io says it charges 0% platform transaction fees and supports payment integrations such as Stripe and PayPal. That statement does not erase payment processor charges. Kajabi says it takes no platform revenue share, but payment processing fees apply. Its current pricing table lists US Kajabi Payments card rates of 2.9% plus $0.30 on Basic, 2.8% plus $0.30 on Growth, and 2.7% plus $0.30 on Pro. For eligible third-party providers other than PayPal or Kajabi Payments, it also lists additional 2%, 1%, and 0.5% fees respectively. Availability and rates vary by region and provider. Model the exact checkout path and country rather than declaring either platform universally fee-free.