Top 10 Kajabi Alternatives for Executive Coaches in 2026
The best Kajabi alternatives for executive coaches are the platforms built around a six-month engagement with one leader, not around selling a course to thousands of strangers. Kajabi is a strong product shop: courses, a community, a website, funnels and email. An executive coach's week looks different. You book sessions across time zones, send an agreement before the first call, invoice a sponsor's finance team, keep confidential notes, track the commitments a VP made on Tuesday, and maybe run a leadership cohort on the side. So the deciding question is simple: which tool runs that whole engagement in one place, at a cost that makes sense for 5 to 40 clients?
Our pick is Coachful, ranked first below because it puts booking, agreements, payments, between-session goals and check-ins, programs, a community, a website and an AI assistant behind one login, with one branded app for your clients. We make Coachful, so weigh that, and read the "Pick it over Coachful if..." line at the end of every entry. Nine other tools follow, each matched to a specific executive coaching situation where it genuinely wins.
If you coach across every niche, our broader guide to Kajabi alternatives for coaches covers the general case. This article is only about leadership and executive work.
What do executive coaches actually need from a Kajabi alternative?
They need a system for a small number of high-value, long engagements, plus a light layer for thought leadership and group programs. The course-and-funnel stack is the secondary job, not the primary one.
Look at how a typical engagement runs. A head of people or an L&D manager asks you to coach a newly promoted director. There is a chemistry call, a scoping conversation with the sponsor, an agreement, perhaps an assessment debrief, then fortnightly sessions for six months with a midpoint and final review. Between sessions the director is supposed to practise something specific: delegating a decision, running a skip-level meeting, giving direct feedback. Your value shows up in whether those commitments happen.
That workflow creates five requirements Kajabi was never designed around:
- Per-client plans, not products. Each executive has their own goals and commitments. Kajabi treats coaching as products and communities, with no habit tracking or daily client check-ins.
- Agreements and invoices that fit corporate buying. Sponsors want a signed agreement and an invoice their finance team can process. A checkout page alone does not cover it.
- Scheduling that handles senior calendars. Executives reschedule. You need buffers, minimum notice, time-zone detection and two-way calendar sync so a moved board meeting does not produce a double booking.
- A private, professional client space. Leaders do not want to log into a public-feeling course portal. They want their sessions, notes, goals and documents in one quiet place.
- Credential evidence. Many corporate buyers ask for an ICF credential. Logging hours and distinct clients for the ICF's ACC, PCC and MCC paths is ongoing admin, and spreadsheets drift.
Then there is the secondary layer: a leadership cohort or mastermind, a short course on difficult conversations, a newsletter, a website that reads well to a procurement team. Kajabi does this layer well. The question is whether you want to pay its prices for the secondary job and still bolt on tools for the primary one. Kajabi Basic was listed at $179 a month in October 2026 ($143 billed annually), capped at 5 products and 2,500 contacts with 0 AI credits, and using a payment processor other than Kajabi Payments or PayPal adds a 2% Kajabi fee on Basic. Our Kajabi pricing breakdown and Kajabi review cover the details.
Which tool wins in which situation? Quick picks
Coachful is the best overall fit; the others win narrower situations that some executive coaches really are in.
Ranking criteria: one login for the whole client journey, between-session delivery, total stack cost at 5 to 40 clients, and setup effort (including Coachful's free white-glove build).
| Situation | Pick | Why it wins here | Entry price (monthly) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coachful | Best overall for executive coaching engagements | Booking, agreements, invoices, goals, check-ins, programs, cohorts and website in one login | Lite: $29/month for up to 5 clients |
| LearnWorlds | Building a leadership academy for a corporate client | SCORM packages and client groups for company-specific learning | $29 Starter; $299 Learning Center |
| Circle | Running a paid executive peer community | Community-first design with events and paid memberships | $89 Professional (annual) |
| Thinkific | Selling a leadership course to large audiences | Course platform with 10,000 current students on Start | $109 Start |
| GoHighLevel | A coaching firm with an active business development pipeline | CRM, calendars, contracts and invoicing, unlimited users | $97 Starter |
| Kartra | Marketing-heavy practice with helpdesk needs | Pages, email, SMS, calendars and helpdesk in one suite | $59 Essentials |
| Podia | A solo coach selling a handful of digital products | Simple storefront for downloads, webinars and sessions | $49 Mover |
| Mighty Networks | An alumni network for past cohorts | Community, courses and events in Mighty-branded apps | $95 Launch |
| Teachable | A low-cost course on the side of a referral-led practice | Cheap entry for one or two courses | $39 Starter |
| ClickFunnels | Webinar-led launches of a group leadership program | Funnel builder with 0% ClickFunnels commission | $97 Launch |
How did we choose and rank these tools?
We started from what executive coaches sell (long 1:1 engagements, sponsor-funded packages, cohorts and some content) and scored each platform on four criteria in this order.
- One login for the whole client journey. Can a leader go from booking a chemistry call to signing, paying, meeting and doing between-session work without you stitching tools together?
- Between-session delivery. Can you set per-client goals, tasks, habits and check-ins, and see who is drifting?
- Total stack cost. What do you actually pay each month at 5, 15 and 40 clients once you add the tools a platform lacks?
- Setup effort. How long until a polished, procurement-ready site and a working engagement flow exist?
Vendor prices and limits are as listed on each vendor's pricing page in October 2026. Ratings are what public reviewers report on Trustpilot. We did not test the tools hands-on for this article; we describe what each vendor documents. We left out direct coaching-practice tools here because we cover them in our Paperbell alternatives for executive coaches and CoachAccountable alternatives for executive coaches guides. This list focuses on platforms people compare against Kajabi.
1. Coachful: best overall for executive coaching engagements
Coachful wins when your business is mostly 1:1 and small-group engagements with leaders, and you want the client side, the business side and the marketing side in one place. It is a coaching platform rather than a course store, which is the core difference from Kajabi.
What Coachful is, and who it is for. One membership covers booking, payments, coaching agreements, program delivery with goals, habits and check-ins, courses, a community, a website with funnels and email, and an AI assistant called Michelle. You have one login; each client gets one app with your branding. It is built for coaches who deliver programs, not just sessions, for solo coaches growing into a small team, and for coaches replacing four to six tools. The company is based in Tallinn, Estonia, and has a 4.5 Trustpilot score from 21 reviews.
The engagement, end to end. A prospective client books a chemistry call from your booking page, which handles availability rules, buffers, minimum notice and time-zone detection, and can ask intake questions. Two-way sync with Google, Apple/iCloud and Outlook calendars means an executive's moved meeting does not double-book you. Sessions run on built-in video or auto-created Zoom, Meet or Teams links, with email reminders, plus SMS 24 hours before and WhatsApp 1 hour before once messaging is enabled. Before the first session, Coachful sends the coaching agreement for e-signature and stores it on the client record. See coaching contracts in Coachful.
Payments run through your own Stripe Connect or Razorpay account: one-time packages, subscriptions, payment plans, coupons and refunds, with Apple Pay, Google Pay and Stripe Tax. Every transaction gets an invoice, and you can raise manual invoices, which is what a sponsor's accounts-payable team usually asks for. Coachful has charged no platform fee since August 2026; you pay only Stripe or Razorpay processing.
Between sessions, where executive coaching earns its fee. Each client record holds goals, check-ins, habits, notes, intake answers, tags, payments and sessions, with a status of thriving, active, quiet or at risk. You can turn a leader's commitments into weekly goals and daily tasks, add a habit such as "one delegation conversation a day", and run morning and evening check-ins. Goals show progress bars and streaks. When a director goes quiet three weeks into a six-month engagement, you see it before the next session rather than during it.
Michelle works from your live practice data. She briefs you before each session, summarizes recorded sessions, drafts follow-up emails and content, and can build programs. She can also give you optional private feedback on your own coaching against ICF Core Competencies 3 to 8, which suits coaches working toward PCC or MCC. Questions and planning are included in your Coachful membership; confirmed builds and changes use AI credits. If you want leaders to have support between sessions, the AI Coach is an AI version of you that selected clients can chat with; you configure what it knows. More on the AI coaching assistant.
Credential tracking. Coachful counts coaching hours and distinct clients against ACC, PCC and MCC thresholds and exports an ICF client coaching log with paid and pro bono hours. Details on ICF hour tracking.
Cohorts, content and marketing. When you run a leadership cohort, enrolling clients into a program creates a cohort group automatically, with a community feed, group chat, direct messages, video events, group calls and webinars (see group coaching software). Courses support modules, lessons, drip and completion tracking. The section-based website builder includes a blog, custom domain, SEO settings and 30 designed homepage templates, several of them in a restrained business style that reads well to HR buyers. Booking, application, lead-magnet and checkout funnels carry pixels and UTM tracking, and email covers lists, broadcasts and multi-step sequences with branching and A/B splits. Team plans (Studio and Agency) add coach seats with per-coach availability and staff permissions, plus round-robin or least-busy assignment for shared session types, which matters once you bring in associate coaches. See Coachful for teams.
Here is a short walkthrough of the client view and records:
Why Coachful stands out: a free white-glove service. On every plan, you can open Create, choose "We'll build it for you", and describe what you need: a website, a sales page for a six-month leadership engagement, an application funnel, a program, a course outline, an email sequence, a form or worksheet, and more. Attach up to 8 reference links and up to 10 files, such as your logo, bio, brand guide or existing copy. The Coachful team builds it inside your account, usually within about 24 hours. Nothing is invented: no fake credentials, testimonials or prices; gaps are left for you to fill. One recent example: a leadership coach with a Squarespace renewal days away got one clean homepage with a repeated "talk with me" button. Another coach leaving Kajabi had the homepage and About page rebuilt and the contact form connected. The service does not cover recording videos, logo design, ad management or ongoing marketing. Read more about the white-glove build service.
What Coachful does not do. It has no multi-stage sales deal board for large teams and no Salesforce or HubSpot integration, which matters if you sell into enterprise with a formal pipeline. There are no routing forms that pick a host from form answers. It is not HIPAA-certified, has no PayPal and no permanent free plan. Your clients use the Coachful app with your branding, not an app under your own App Store account. It is not a course marketplace or a general website builder for non-coaching sites, and the affiliate program records payouts manually. Clients, programs and content are imported for you during onboarding, and you can export all client data as a ZIP at any time.
Price. Plans are flat and monthly; lower plans cap the number of clients and Pro is unlimited (current plans: Lite: $29/month for up to 5 clients; Solo: $49/month for up to 20 clients; Pro: $99/month with unlimited clients; Studio: $199/month with unlimited clients). There is a free trial, and monthly plans cancel in one click. Compare directly on our Coachful vs Kajabi page or see Coachful for executive coaches.
2. LearnWorlds: for coaches building a leadership academy for one company
Some executive coaches end up delivering a structured leadership curriculum for a single client company: a first-time manager track, say, that the company's HR team wants inside a learning system. LearnWorlds is the strongest fit for that situation in this list.
LearnWorlds is a course and learning platform with a website builder, page funnels, SCORM support and interactive video. SCORM is the format many corporate learning systems use, so if an L&D team asks whether your content can sit in their system, a SCORM-capable platform is a practical answer. The Learning Center plan lists up to 10 client groups, which lets you separate cohorts from different companies.
Price as listed in October 2026: Starter $29 a month ($24 annual) with 1 admin, 1,000 active learners a month and a $5 fee per paid enrollment; Pro Trainer $99 ($79 annual) with 5 admins, 2,000 active learners, 20 SCORM packages and no LearnWorlds transaction fee; Learning Center $299 ($249 annual) with 25 admins and up to 10 client groups; Corporate is custom. A 30-day free trial is offered, and LearnWorlds's pages say no card is required. Public reviewers rate it 4.8 on Trustpilot from 423 reviews.
Limits for executive coaches. LearnWorlds is not built for 1:1 client management, habits or check-ins, so your engagements still need scheduling, agreements and client records elsewhere. The branded mobile app is priced separately, and the active-learner caps on self-serve plans are monthly.
Pick it over Coachful if a corporate client needs SCORM content or a branded learning academy, and your 1:1 work is small enough to run in a separate tool.
3. Circle: the choice for a paid executive peer community
A peer circle of CEOs or senior leaders who meet monthly and talk between meetings is a common executive coaching product. Circle is a community platform first, which is exactly what that product needs.
Circle combines community spaces, courses, events, live streams and paid memberships. For a mastermind, that means a members-only space per cohort, event scheduling for monthly calls and a library for recordings and frameworks. It tends to look calm and professional, which matters to senior members who would not join a busy social-style feed.
October 2026 listing: Professional $89 a month on annual billing with 3 admins; Business $199 annual with 5 admins; Scale $419 annual with 10 admins; Circle Plus custom. Circle takes a fee on payments of 2% on Professional, 1% on Business and Scale, and 0.5% on Circle Plus, plus Stripe processing. There is a 14-day free trial with no card. Trustpilot shows 4.1 from 129 reviews.
Where it stops. Circle has no 1:1 scheduling or client-management back office, and no per-client habits, check-ins or coaching plans. Branded mobile apps come only on the custom-priced Circle Plus. Your private engagements still need another home.
Pick it over Coachful if your main product is a large paid peer community and 1:1 coaching is a minor add-on you are happy to run elsewhere.
4. Thinkific: when a leadership course must reach a big audience
The scenario Thinkific wins is scale: you have a book or a large LinkedIn following and want to sell a self-paced leadership course to thousands of managers.
Thinkific is a course platform with communities, memberships, coaching and webinar products. Its Start plan covers 10,000 current students, and Thinkific Payments carries no Thinkific transaction fee. Group sizes for live events scale from 50 on Start to unlimited on Expand.
Pricing as listed in October 2026: Start $109 a month ($82 annual), Grow $219 ($164 annual), Expand $499 ($374 annual), Plus custom. Prices rose about 10% on August 13, 2026. A 30-day free trial is offered. Third-party Stripe or PayPal gateways carry an extra per-plan fee that the page does not quantify. On Trustpilot, Thinkific shows 1.8 from 868 reviews.
For executive coaches the gaps are the same as Kajabi's. Thinkific has no built-in 1:1 scheduling (coaching products rely on external booking links), no client habits, daily check-ins or per-client plans, and the branded mobile app is a $199 a month add-on. If you are weighing the two head to head, see Kajabi vs Thinkific.
Pick it over Coachful if a mass-market self-paced course is your main revenue line and 1:1 executive work is secondary.
5. GoHighLevel: built for a coaching firm chasing corporate deals
If you run a boutique firm with associate coaches and someone whose job is business development, GoHighLevel's CRM depth is the reason to look at it.
HighLevel is an agency-first marketing CRM: funnels, websites, calendars, SMS and email, invoicing, contracts, courses and communities, organized around sub-accounts. Every plan lists unlimited users and contacts, which suits a firm where several people touch each lead.
The vendor's October 2026 prices: Starter $97 a month ($80.83 annual) with 3 sub-accounts, Unlimited $297 ($247.50 annual), Agency Pro $497 ($414.17 annual), Enterprise custom. There is no HighLevel fee on sales, but SMS, email, phone and AI usage are metered and billed separately. A 14-day trial bills automatically at the end unless cancelled. Trustpilot reports 4.9 from 15,250 reviews.
The trade-off is the coaching itself. HighLevel has no habit tracking, client check-ins or structured coaching-program engine; you would simulate that with workflows and forms. It has no built-in video rooms, only Zoom and Google Meet links. Setup is substantial, and the interface is designed for marketing agencies rather than coaches.
Pick it over Coachful if a multi-stage sales pipeline with many users matters more to your firm than delivering between-session work to leaders.
6. Kartra: a fit for marketing-led practices that want a helpdesk
Kartra suits the executive coach who markets aggressively (webinars, email and SMS sequences, multiple sales pages) and wants calendars and a helpdesk in the same suite.
Kartra is an all-in-one marketing platform with pages, funnels, email and SMS, memberships, calendars and helpdesk. From Starter upward, pages, products and memberships are unlimited, and team members start at 5.
Kartra listed these prices in October 2026: Essentials $59 a month ($52 annual) with 500 contacts, 1 product and a 5% transaction fee; Starter $119 ($99 annual) with 2,500 contacts and 0% fee; Growth $229 ($189 annual) with 12,500 contacts; Professional $549 ($429 annual) with 25,000 contacts. There is a 14-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Trustpilot shows 3.2 from 129 reviews.
Executive coaches should know three things. There are no client habits, check-ins or per-client coaching plans. There is no mobile app for students or admins. And funnels and memberships are not portable to other platforms if you leave.
Pick it over Coachful if you want Kartra's helpdesk and SMS marketing in one suite and do not need structured between-session work.
7. Podia: the simple storefront for a few products
Podia wins for a solo executive coach whose online offer is small: a downloadable 1:1 meeting template, a recorded workshop on giving feedback, a few paid sessions.
Podia is a straightforward storefront for courses, downloads, webinars, coaching sessions and community. Its appeal is simplicity; you can stand up a clean page and start selling quickly. See also our Kajabi vs Podia comparison.
Plans in October 2026: Mover $49 a month ($42 annual) with a 5% Podia fee; Shaker $99 ($84 annual) with 0%; Earthquaker $179 ($150 annual) with 0%. The 14-day trial needs no card. Trustpilot lists 4.1 from 153 reviews.
The constraints are real for this niche. Email subscriber allowances are small (100, 500 and 1,000 included), so a newsletter for HR leaders outgrows them fast. There is no mobile app and no native video calls, and no client habits, check-ins or per-client plans.
Pick it over Coachful if you only want to sell a few digital products and handle every engagement by email and calendar link.
8. Mighty Networks: for alumni of past cohorts
After a few years of leadership cohorts, some coaches want a place where alumni stay connected and buy the next program. That alumni-network scenario is Mighty Networks's strength.
Mighty Networks combines community, courses and events, with member apps under the Mighty brand. Livestream allowances grow with the plan, from 20 hours a month for 100 attendees on Launch to 40 hours for 1,000 on Growth.
As listed in October 2026: Launch $95 a month ($79 annual), Scale $215 ($179 annual), Growth $354 annual, Mighty Pro custom. Mighty takes a platform fee of 2% on Launch, 1% on Scale and 0.5% on Growth and Pro, plus Stripe processing. A 14-day trial needs no card. Trustpilot gives 3.3 from 219 reviews.
Mighty has no 1:1 scheduling, invoicing or contracts, and no per-client habits, check-ins or private coaching plans. Your own branded apps arrive only on custom-priced Mighty Pro.
Pick it over Coachful if a large alumni community with livestreams is the centre of your business and 1:1 coaching lives elsewhere.
9. Teachable: the low-cost way to add one course
Teachable fits the referral-led executive coach who never markets online but wants one course, perhaps a pre-work module for new clients, without paying Kajabi prices.
Teachable is a course and digital-product platform with student mobile apps. Its entry price is low, and students are listed as unlimited on Starter.
Prices listed in October 2026: Starter $39 a month ($29 annual) with 5 products and a 7.5% platform fee; Builder $89 ($69 annual) with 0%; Growth $189 ($139 annual) with 5 admins; Custom on request. A 7-day trial and a 30-day guarantee appear on plan cards. Trustpilot shows 3.3 from 1,110 reviews.
Teachable has no native scheduling or calendar sync; coaching calls rely on separate booking and video tools. It has no client habits, daily check-ins or per-client plans, and Starter's 7.5% fee is steep if you sell a high-ticket program through it.
Pick it over Coachful if you need only a cheap home for one course and already run your engagements somewhere else.
10. ClickFunnels: when a webinar launch fills your group program
ClickFunnels is the right tool for one scenario: you fill a group leadership program through webinar funnels and paid traffic, and the funnel is the business.
ClickFunnels is a funnel and sales-page builder with email, courses, community, store and appointments apps. It takes 0% commission on sales, and contact allowances are generous for a marketing-led practice. Our ClickFunnels vs Kajabi comparison covers the overlap.
October 2026 pricing: Launch $97 a month ($81 annual) with 10,000 contacts and 3 courses; Scale $197 ($164 annual); Optimize $297 ($248 annual); Dominate $499.75 a month on annual billing. There is a 14-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Trustpilot shows 4.7 from 2,512 reviews.
For executive coaching it offers no client habits, check-ins or structured 1:1 programs, and funnels are proprietary and not portable. Senior buyers who come through referrals rarely meet a funnel at all.
Pick it over Coachful if paid-traffic webinar funnels drive most of your revenue and you want the deepest funnel tooling available.
How do the features compare side by side?
Only Coachful covers every executive-coaching job in this matrix in one login. The others cover the content and marketing layer to different degrees.
| Platform | 1:1 booking with calendar sync | Agreements with e-signature | Per-client goals, habits, check-ins | Courses | Community and cohorts | ICF hour log |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coachful | Yes, two-way Google, Apple, Outlook | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes, cohort groups auto-created | Yes |
| Kajabi | Not documented | Not documented | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| LearnWorlds | No (not built for 1:1) | Not documented | No | Yes, with SCORM | Client groups on Learning Center | No |
| Circle | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Thinkific | No, external links | Not documented | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| GoHighLevel | Yes, calendars | Yes, contracts | No, simulated with workflows | Yes | Yes | No |
| Kartra | Yes, calendars | Not documented | No | Yes, memberships | Memberships | No |
| Podia | Sells sessions | Not documented | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Mighty Networks | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Teachable | No | Not documented | No | Yes | Not documented | No |
| ClickFunnels | Appointments app | Not documented | No | Yes, 3 on Launch | Yes, 3 on Launch | No |
"Not documented" means the vendor facts we verified do not mention the feature; check with the vendor before assuming it is missing.
What does a realistic stack cost each month?
A single platform usually costs less than a course platform plus the coaching tools it lacks. Here are three example executive-coaching stacks using October 2026 list prices. These are illustrative combinations, not quotes; add payment processing in every case.
Stack A: a solo executive coach with about 5 engagements. The work is 1:1, sponsor-invoiced, with a simple website. On Kajabi Basic you would pay $179 a month and still need a separate approach for per-client check-ins. Podia Shaker at $99 covers a storefront but not engagements.
Stack B: an established coach with about 15 clients and one leadership cohort. A course-and-community combination such as LearnWorlds Pro Trainer ($99) plus Circle Professional ($89 annual) comes to $188 a month, with 1:1 booking and agreements still unsolved.
Stack C: a boutique firm with about 40 clients and a few associate coaches. GoHighLevel Starter ($97) plus Thinkific Grow ($219) comes to $316 a month before HighLevel's metered SMS, email and AI usage, and neither tool runs structured between-session work.
| Stack | About 5 clients | About 15 clients | About 40 clients |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coachful (one login) | Lite: $29/month for up to 5 clients | Solo: $49/month for up to 20 clients | Pro: $99/month with unlimited clients |
| Kajabi alone | $179 (Basic) | $179 (Basic) | $249 (Growth, for more products) |
| Podia Shaker | $99 | $99 | $99 |
| LearnWorlds Pro Trainer + Circle Professional | $188 | $188 | $188 |
| GoHighLevel Starter + Thinkific Grow | $316 plus usage | $316 plus usage | $316 plus usage |
The Kajabi Growth figure at 40 clients is an example assumption for a coach who has outgrown Basic's 5-product cap, not a requirement.
How would an executive coach set this up in Coachful, step by step?
Here is a worked example for a hypothetical coach, Dana, who runs six-month leadership engagements sponsored by employers and one cohort a year. The steps use only documented Coachful features.
- Request the website build. Dana opens Create, picks "We'll build it for you", and asks for a five-page site: Home, About, Executive Coaching, Leadership Cohort, Contact. She attaches her bio, logo, a reference site she likes and her existing engagement description. She leaves credentials and client names for herself to add, since nothing gets invented.
- Connect calendars and payments. She connects Outlook two-way and her Stripe account, then sets buffers of 15 minutes, 24 hours' minimum notice and auto-created Teams links for clients whose companies use Teams.
- Create two session types. A free 30-minute chemistry call with intake questions (role, sponsor, what success looks like in six months) and a paid 60-minute coaching session tied to session credits.
- Write the agreement. She adds her coaching agreement covering confidentiality, what the sponsor receives (for example, only agreed progress themes), cancellation and the end date. Coachful sends it for e-signature before the first call and stores it on the record. Where a company's procurement team issues its own contract, she keeps that alongside.
- Build the engagement as a program. A 26-week program with a weekly goal, a reflection check-in each Friday, and space for each leader's own commitments. She can ask Michelle to draft the program structure from her notes and then edit it.
- Set invoicing. Sponsor-funded engagements get a manual invoice; self-funded clients pay through a payment plan.
- Run the cohort. Her annual leadership cohort is a program too; enrolling participants creates the cohort group, community feed and group chat automatically, and she schedules group calls as video events.
- Track credential hours. Sessions feed the ICF hour tracker, and she exports her coaching log when she applies for PCC.
The worked example is illustrative; Dana is not a real customer.
What mistakes do executive coaches make when leaving Kajabi?
The common mistakes come from choosing for the marketing layer and forgetting the engagement layer.
- Replacing Kajabi with another course platform. Thinkific, Teachable and LearnWorlds are good at courses, and that is exactly Kajabi's job. You end up paying for the same layer and still running engagements by email.
- Ignoring the sponsor. If your invoicing tool only produces checkout receipts, the finance team at a client company will ask for something else. Check manual invoicing before you move.
- Treating notes casually. Executive clients share sensitive information about colleagues and strategy. Keep notes on the client record, not in a shared document, and decide in your agreement what the sponsor sees.
- Forgetting the exports. Kajabi provides CSV exports for contacts, subscriptions, sales and members, but course content is downloaded manually per asset, and older documentation says data is removed 90 days after cancellation. Export before you cancel.
- Overbuilding the funnel. Most executive coaching sells through referrals and conversations. A clean site with one clear "book a conversation" button often does more than a five-step funnel.
- Paying for unused contacts. Kajabi's extra contacts cost $125 a month per 25,000. Executive coaches rarely need that list size; size the plan to the clients you actually serve.
If you want help moving, Coachful imports clients, programs and content for you during onboarding. Our Kajabi alternative page lays out the switch.
What is our verdict?
For most executive coaches, Coachful is the best Kajabi alternative because it runs the engagement itself: booking across time zones, agreements, sponsor invoices, between-session goals and check-ins, cohorts, ICF hour tracking and a professional website, in one login with one branded client app. The free white-glove build removes most of the setup effort.
The others win narrower cases. Choose LearnWorlds for a SCORM-ready corporate academy, Circle or Mighty Networks for a large peer or alumni community, Thinkific or Teachable for a mass-market course, GoHighLevel for a firm with a formal sales pipeline, and ClickFunnels or Kartra if paid funnels drive your revenue. Business coaches with a broader mix may also find our Kajabi alternatives for business coaches useful. Background on how executive coaching sits within the wider field is on Wikipedia's coaching article.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best Kajabi alternative for executive coaches?
Coachful is our pick, because it handles the whole engagement (booking, agreements, payments, per-client goals and check-ins, cohorts and a website) in one login. If your main product is a mass-market course or a large community, a course or community platform may fit better. We make Coachful, so compare the "Pick it over Coachful if" lines above.
Can I invoice a client's employer instead of the executive?
In Coachful you can raise manual invoices in addition to the invoice created for each transaction, which is how most coaches bill a sponsor. Payments go through your own Stripe or Razorpay account. If the company requires its own procurement contract, keep it alongside your coaching agreement.
Does Coachful integrate with Salesforce or HubSpot?
No. Coachful has no Salesforce or HubSpot integration and no multi-stage sales deal board for large teams. It does connect to Zapier, Google Calendar, Outlook, Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Stripe, Meta Pixel and GA4. A firm that lives in a formal CRM pipeline may prefer GoHighLevel for business development.
Can Coachful track my ICF coaching hours?
Yes. It counts coaching hours and distinct clients against ACC, PCC and MCC thresholds and exports an ICF client coaching log with paid and pro bono hours. Check the current requirements on the ICF's own site before you apply.
What is Coachful's free white-glove service?
On every plan, you can ask the Coachful team to build a website, funnel, sales page, program, course outline, email sequence and more inside your account, usually within about 24 hours. You describe what you want and attach up to 8 links and 10 files. Nothing is invented, and it does not include video recording, logo design, ads or ongoing marketing.
Is Kajabi worth it for executive coaches?
Kajabi is worth it if courses, a community and email marketing are your main business. For 1:1 engagements it lacks habit tracking, daily check-ins and per-client plans, and Basic was listed at $179 a month in October 2026 with a 5-product cap. Many executive coaches pay for capacity they do not use.
Can I run a leadership cohort and 1:1 clients in the same platform?
Yes in Coachful: enrolling clients in a program creates a cohort group with a feed, group chat and video events, while 1:1 clients keep their own goals and sessions. Most course platforms in this list handle the cohort side but not the 1:1 side.
Is Coachful suitable for confidential executive coaching notes?
Notes live on each client record alongside sessions, goals and agreements, and Coachful is GDPR-ready. It is not HIPAA-certified, so it is not for clinical records. Decide in your coaching agreement what, if anything, the sponsor receives.
Do my executive clients get an app?
Yes. Clients use the Coachful app with your branding, where they see sessions, programs, progress and documents. It is published under the Coachful listing, not your own App Store account.
How do I start with Coachful?
Start a free trial, connect your calendar and Stripe, then request a white-glove build for your site or first program. Your clients, programs and content are imported during onboarding.
