Stan Store vs Kajabi: Which Should Coaches Pick in 2026?

Stan Store vs Kajabi comes down to what you sell and how established you are. Stan Store is a link-in-bio storefront that starts at $29 a month and is built to sell a first offer (a guide, a mini course, a paid call) straight from Instagram or TikTok. Kajabi is a course, community, website and email platform that runs from $179 to $499 a month and is built for creators who already have an audience and a product line. If you want the cheapest way to start selling, Stan Store wins. If you are running a course business with thousands of contacts, Kajabi wins. If you coach clients through programs, neither was designed for that job, and a coaching platform is worth comparing too.

We make Coachful, a coaching platform, so we are not neutral. Every vendor fact below comes from Stan Store's and Kajabi's own pricing pages and help centers as listed in October 2026, and from public review sites. We have not run either business on these tools; where we describe how something works, it is what the vendor documents or what public reviewers report.

What is the short answer for Stan Store vs Kajabi?

Pick Stan Store if you are early, social-first and price-sensitive; pick Kajabi if you are selling courses and memberships at scale and want serious marketing tools in one place. Here is the answer by use case.

• You are launching your first paid offer from social media: Stan Store. The Creator plan at $29 a month includes a mobile storefront, calendar booking, a course builder, subscriptions, lead magnets and AutoDM for Instagram, with no Stan fee on sales.
• You sell several courses and a membership to an established list: Kajabi. Growth at $249 a month covers 50 products and 25,000 contacts, with unlimited funnels, landing pages and marketing emails.
• You need email sequences and upsells on a tight budget: Stan Store's Creator Pro at $99 a month adds email broadcasts and flows, order bumps, funnels and affiliates, which is still well under Kajabi Basic at $179.
• You run multiple brands or need a branded app: Kajabi Pro at $499 a month, with three websites, three communities and the branded mobile app listed on Pro in Kajabi's comparison table.
• You coach clients 1:1 or in groups and deliver multi-week programs: neither fits cleanly. Stan Store lists no contracts, invoices or client records, and Kajabi has no habit tracking or daily client check-ins. A coaching platform such as Coachful covers that work in one login (more on that below).

If you only want one of the two vendors covered in depth, we have separate guides: our Stan Store review and our Kajabi review.

How do Stan Store and Kajabi compare side by side?

Stan Store is the lighter, cheaper storefront; Kajabi is the heavier, more expensive marketing and course system. Both sell digital products, courses, memberships and calls, and neither runs structured coaching programs for individual clients.

How we rank: one login for the whole client journey, delivery between sessions, total stack cost, and setup effort (including a free white-glove build).

Stan Store ranks above Kajabi on our criteria mainly because of total stack cost: a coach can run a working storefront for a fraction of Kajabi's price. Kajabi gives you far more room to grow a content business, but you pay for that room from day one.

Stan Store's pitch is speed. You get one store, unlimited products and customers, and a page designed to look right on a phone, because that is where most link-in-bio traffic lands. On Trustpilot, Stan Store shows 4.7 from 2,205 reviews (seen October 25, 2026).

Kajabi's pitch is breadth. Courses, community, website, funnels, landing pages and email automation live in one account, with plan limits on products, contacts, websites and admin users. On Trustpilot, Kajabi shows 3.4 from 2,347 reviews (seen October 25, 2026).

How much do Stan Store and Kajabi cost?

Stan Store costs $29 or $99 a month; Kajabi costs $179, $249 or $499 a month. Annual billing lowers both, and Kajabi's real cost can rise further through contact add-ons and processor surcharges.

Stan Store does not have a public pricing page; the figures above come from Stan's own pricing article (updated July 22, 2026) and its help center. Kajabi's figures come from its pricing page. Kajabi's entry-level Kickstarter plan is not shown on the public pricing page, so we have left it out.

Transaction and processing fees

Stan Store advertises that you keep 100% of every sale: there is no Stan fee, and you pay standard Stripe or PayPal processing. Creator Pro adds Afterpay and Klarna.

Kajabi is more layered. If you use Kajabi Payments as a US business, processing is 2.9% + $0.30 on Basic, 2.8% + $0.30 on Growth and 2.7% + $0.30 on Pro. PayPal is also supported without a surcharge. If you connect any other processor, Kajabi adds its own fee on top of that provider's charges: 2% on Basic, 1% on Growth and 0.5% on Pro.

Add-ons and hidden ceilings

Kajabi lists extra contacts at $125 a month per 25,000, and an AI credit top-up of $15 for 500 credits (marked as coming). The contact ceiling matters most on Basic: once your list passes 2,500 contacts, you either upgrade to Growth or start paying for headroom. Stan Store lists no add-ons, but its Creator plan leaves out email broadcasts, discount codes, upsells and affiliates, which only arrive on Creator Pro.

A worked cost example

The numbers below are an illustration, not a quote. Picture a coach with 3,000 email contacts, two courses and a monthly membership, taking about $5,000 a month in sales through their existing Stripe account.

• On Stan Store: Creator Pro is needed for email broadcasts and flows, so the platform cost is $99 a month (or $79 billed yearly), plus Stripe processing. No Stan fee on the $5,000.
• On Kajabi: 3,000 contacts is over Basic's 2,500 limit, so Growth at $249 a month (or $199 billed yearly) is the realistic plan. Keeping Stripe instead of switching to Kajabi Payments adds 1% of $5,000, which is $50 a month, on top of Stripe's own fees.

In this example Kajabi costs roughly three times as much before processing. That gap buys real things (a full website, a deeper course builder, more admin seats), but it is worth knowing before you commit. For the full breakdowns, see our Stan Store pricing guide and Kajabi pricing guide.

Trials and guarantees

Both offer a 14-day trial. Stan Store's help center says the first month is charged when the trial ends; it does not state clearly whether a card is required up front. Kajabi says a card is optional during the trial; if you enter one, Kajabi places an authorization hold and charges on the day the trial ends. Some Kajabi features, including bulk contact import, test emails and some automations, stay locked until you activate a paid plan. Kajabi also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on every plan.

How do courses and digital products compare?

Kajabi has the deeper course product; Stan Store has the simpler one. Both let you sell courses, downloads and memberships, but they are built for different volumes.

Stan Store's Creator plan includes an unlimited course builder, digital product sales, recurring subscriptions and lead magnets that collect emails. Everything sits inside your one storefront, so a follower taps your bio link, sees your offers and buys without leaving their phone. That is ideal for a short course, a template pack or a paid workshop recording. It is less suited to a library of long courses with several tiers.

Kajabi treats courses as the center of the business. Plan limits are counted in products (5 on Basic, 50 on Growth, unlimited on Pro), and courses sit alongside a full website, landing pages and a community. If you already have three or four courses and plan to add more, Kajabi's structure fits better. If you have one offer, Basic's five-product limit is not a constraint, but the price is.

Coachful includes a course builder as well, with modules, lessons, drip release and completion tracking, plus downloads, videos, books, AI tools, events and bundles. The difference is where courses land: in the client's branded home and app, next to their coaching program, sessions and community, rather than in a separate course area.

If audio is your main format, we cover that separately in how to deliver audio courses without Kajabi.

Which is better for email, funnels and marketing?

Kajabi is the stronger marketing platform, because unlimited funnels, landing pages and marketing emails are on every plan. Stan Store keeps marketing tools on its $99 Creator Pro plan.

On Stan Store Creator, marketing means your storefront, lead magnets that capture emails, and AutoDM, Stan's automated direct messages for Instagram. That is a genuinely useful growth loop for creators who live on Instagram. Email broadcasts and flows, discount codes, limited-quantity offers, upsells, order bumps, funnels (up to 20 products), contact import, affiliate management and ad pixels for Meta, Google, Pinterest and TikTok all require Creator Pro.

Kajabi includes unlimited funnels, landing pages and marketing emails from Basic upward, and adds automation and an affiliate program at Growth. Kajabi also includes a full website builder (one site on Basic and Growth, three on Pro), which Stan Store does not try to be. Basic includes no AI credits; Growth includes 500 and Pro 1,000.

A common Stan Store setup is to pair the $29 Creator plan with a separate email tool rather than upgrade. As listed in October 2026, Kit's Creator plan starts at $39 a month for up to 1,000 subscribers, which puts that pairing at $68 a month, close to Creator Pro's $79 to $99. Two logins and two bills is the trade-off.

Coachful includes a section-based website builder with a blog, custom domain and 30 designed homepage templates, booking, application, lead-magnet and checkout funnels with pixels and UTM tracking, a link-in-bio page that sells, and email lists, broadcasts and multi-step sequences with triggers, delays, branching and A/B splits. If you are comparing funnel and email depth specifically, our Coachful vs Kajabi funnels and email comparison goes further.

Here is how a coaching website comes together inside Coachful, from template to published pages:

Can you book and run coaching sessions on Stan Store or Kajabi?

You can sell and book calls on Stan Store, and you can sell coaching as a product on Kajabi, but neither gives you the back office a coaching practice needs: contracts, invoices and a record of each client's progress.

Stan Store's Creator plan includes calendar booking, so a follower can buy a paid call and pick a time from your storefront. Stan's own feature lists show no coaching agreements, invoices or client records, and it is not a CRM. For a coach who sells a handful of one-off calls, that is fine. For a coach running 12-week engagements, you will need somewhere else to keep agreements, session notes and payment plans.

Kajabi packages coaching through its products and communities. What it does not offer, based on its published features, is per-client plans: no habit tracking and no daily client check-ins. Its plan limits and pricing page focus on products, contacts and marketing, not session management.

This is where a coaching platform differs most. Coachful's booking pages handle availability rules, buffers, minimum notice and time-zone detection, with two-way Google, Apple/iCloud and Outlook calendar sync, built-in video or auto-created Zoom, Meet and Teams links, email reminders, and SMS and WhatsApp reminders once messaging is enabled. Coaching agreements with e-signature go out before the first call and are stored on the client record. Payments run through your own Stripe Connect or Razorpay account, with one-time payments, subscriptions, payment plans, session credits, order bumps, coupons, refunds and an invoice for every transaction.

For more on the session side, see Coachful's scheduling software and coaching contracts pages.

How do community and memberships compare?

Both include a community. Kajabi pairs it with courses and scales to three communities on Pro; Stan Store's community comes bundled into both storefront plans.

Stan Store lists community and recurring subscriptions on the $29 Creator plan, so you can charge a monthly membership and give members a place to talk without paying for a separate tool. For a small paid group, that is excellent value.

Kajabi includes one community on Basic and Growth and three on Pro, alongside courses, so a membership can bundle course access and a community under one subscription. If memberships are the core of your business, our guide to running coaching memberships without Kajabi and our Kajabi vs Circle comparison cover the trade-offs in depth.

In Coachful, the community includes a feed, group chat, direct messages and video events, and cohort groups are created automatically when a client enrolls in a program. That last part matters for group coaching: each cohort gets its own space without manual setup.

What does the client experience look like on each?

On Stan Store, your customer experiences a quick mobile purchase. On Kajabi, they experience a course and community area. On a coaching platform, they experience an ongoing program with you.

Stan Store is designed around the moment of purchase. A follower taps your link, sees your offers on a mobile-friendly page, pays, and gets what they bought. It is quick and familiar, which is why it works well for impulse-priced offers. What it does not create is a place where a client checks in with you every day.

Kajabi gives buyers a members area for courses and community, connected to the website you build on Kajabi. Kajabi's comparison table lists its branded mobile app on the $499 Pro plan. For a course buyer, this is a strong experience: lessons, progress and community in one place.

A coaching client needs something slightly different: their next session, this week's goals, today's tasks and habits, a check-in prompt, the agreement they signed, and a way to message you. That is what Coachful's client home and app are built around. The client sees your branding inside the Coachful app (it ships under the Coachful listing, not your own App Store account).

Between sessions, clients work through multi-week programs with weekly goals, daily tasks, habits, morning and evening check-ins, goal progress bars and streaks. The coach sees each client's status as thriving, active, quiet or at risk, so it is obvious who needs a message before they drift.

Which should you pick for your kind of coaching?

Match the tool to how you deliver results, not just to how you sell. Here is how we would choose for common coaching situations.

A few notes on those calls:

• New coaches often start on Stan Store because $29 is easy to justify. That is reasonable if the plan is to sell digital products. If the plan is to sign coaching clients, you will outgrow it quickly; our Stan Store alternatives guide and the Coachful page for new coaches cover what comes next.
• Life and mindset coaches who sell calls and short courses face the same split. Our guide to Stan Store alternatives for life coaches walks through the options.
• Fitness coaches need workout builders and logging that neither Stan Store nor Kajabi provides. Coachful's Fitness & Nutrition pack adds a workout builder with an illustrated exercise library, client logging with set history and PRs, nutrition targets, meal plans and form-check video. See also Stan Store alternatives for fitness coaches.
• Course-first creators who rarely coach individually are Kajabi's sweet spot. If price is the sticking point, our Kajabi alternatives for coaches ranking and Kajabi vs Teachable guide cover cheaper routes.

Is there a third option that beats both for coaches?

Yes, if you coach clients rather than only sell content. Coachful puts booking, payments, contracts, program delivery, courses, community, website, funnels and email in one subscription, with one login for you and one branded app for your clients.

What Coachful is and who it is for

Coachful is a coaching platform for coaches who deliver programs, not just sessions: solo coaches growing into a small team, and coaches replacing four to six separate tools. It covers the full client journey, from the first booking and signed agreement to weekly goals, daily habits and check-ins, to courses and community, with a website, funnels and email to bring new clients in. Michelle, the built-in AI assistant, works from your live practice data to build programs, draft emails and content, summarize recorded sessions and brief you before each call; it can also give optional private feedback on your own coaching against ICF Core Competencies 3 to 8. Questions and planning with Michelle are included in your Coachful membership; confirmed builds and changes use AI credits. Coachful also tracks ICF credential hours against ACC, PCC and MCC thresholds.

Here is how a multi-week program is built and delivered to clients:

Where Coachful beats Stan Store and Kajabi

• One login for the whole client journey. Booking, agreements, payments, programs, courses, community and email share one client record, so you do not stitch a storefront to a scheduler to a contract tool.
• Delivery between sessions. Habits, check-ins, weekly goals and streaks are built in. Neither Stan Store nor Kajabi lists them.
• No platform fee on sales. Coachful has charged a 0% platform fee since August 2026; you pay only your Stripe or Razorpay processing, with no surcharge for using your own processor.
• Setup effort. Clients, programs and content are imported for you during onboarding, and the white-glove build service sets up the rest.

Why Coachful stands out: a free white-glove service. On every plan, you can ask the Coachful team to build something for you from Create, then We'll build it for you. Describe what you want (a website, funnel, sales page, program, course outline and written material, email sequence, link in bio, lead quiz, webinar or automation), attach up to 8 reference links and up to 10 files such as logos, photos, brand guides and copy, and the team builds it inside your own account, usually within about 24 hours. Nothing is invented: no fake credentials, testimonials or prices, and gaps are left for you to fill. A somatic coach leaving Kajabi, for example, had their homepage and About page rebuilt and the contact form connected. A business mentor for beauty professionals got a 12-week mentorship sales page, a free start-up-guide funnel and rewritten follow-up emails. The service does not cover recording videos, logo design, ad management or ongoing marketing. Read more about the free white-glove service.

What Coachful does not do

Coachful is not the right tool for everyone, and it is weaker than Stan Store or Kajabi in specific ways:

• No PayPal. Stan Store and Kajabi both support PayPal; Coachful uses Stripe or Razorpay.
• Not a course marketplace and not a general website builder for non-coaching sites. No third-party plugins.
• Its affiliate program is partial: it tracks links, clicks, conversions and revenue, but payouts are recorded manually rather than sent by Coachful. Stan Store's Creator Pro and Kajabi's Growth plan both list affiliate management.
• The client app ships under the Coachful listing with your branding, not under your own App Store account. Kajabi Pro offers an app with your brand.
• Not HIPAA-certified and no BAA, so it is not for clinical record-keeping or insurance billing. No permanent free plan.

How to start

Start a free trial, then request a white-glove build of whatever you need first, whether that is your website, a funnel or your signature program. 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). Monthly plans cancel in one click. For a direct head-to-head with Kajabi, see Coachful vs Kajabi, or browse the Kajabi alternative and coaching software pages.

Pick Stan Store over Coachful if you mainly sell low-priced digital products to an Instagram or TikTok audience, want AutoDM, PayPal or Afterpay and Klarna at checkout, and do not run ongoing client programs.

Pick Kajabi over Coachful if your business is a large course and membership catalog with tens of thousands of contacts, you need several websites or brands under one account, or you want a branded app in your own App Store listing.

How hard is it to switch between Stan Store and Kajabi?

Contacts move easily; content does not. Both let you export customer lists, but courses and community content generally have to be rebuilt by hand.

According to our September 2026 profile data, Stan Store lets you export customers and contacts to CSV, while course and community content must be rebuilt elsewhere. Kajabi offers emailed CSV exports for contacts, subscriptions, sales and members, but course content is downloaded manually asset by asset, and data is removed 90 days after cancellation. If you are leaving Kajabi, export everything before you cancel.

Moving a website is its own project. Our guide to moving a coaching website off Kajabi, Wix or Squarespace covers redirects and page-by-page planning. Coachful exports full client data as a ZIP (roster, notes, check-ins, goals, habits, sessions and form responses), exports courses, and imports your clients, programs and content for you during onboarding.

If you are also weighing Stan Store against another link-in-bio tool, our Stan Store vs Beacons comparison covers that matchup.

Frequently asked questions about Stan Store vs Kajabi

Is Stan Store cheaper than Kajabi?

Yes, by a wide margin. Stan Store costs $29 or $99 a month ($300 or $948 a year), while Kajabi costs $179, $249 or $499 a month ($143, $199 or $399 a month billed yearly), as listed in October 2026. Stan Store's top plan is still cheaper than Kajabi's entry plan.

Does Kajabi charge transaction fees?

Not if you use Kajabi Payments or PayPal, though Kajabi Payments has its own processing rate (2.9% + $0.30 on Basic for US businesses, falling to 2.7% + $0.30 on Pro). If you connect another processor, Kajabi adds 2% on Basic, 1% on Growth or 0.5% on Pro on top of that provider's fees.

Does Stan Store take a cut of my sales?

No. Stan Store advertises a 0% Stan fee on both plans, so you keep every sale apart from standard Stripe or PayPal processing. Afterpay and Klarna are available on Creator Pro.

Which is better for coaches, Stan Store or Kajabi?

For selling a first offer from social media, Stan Store is the better value. For a course business with a large list, Kajabi is more capable. For coaches who run 1:1 or group programs, neither tracks client habits, check-ins or agreements, so a coaching platform like Coachful is usually the better fit.

Can I use Stan Store and Kajabi together?

You can, for example by using a Stan Store link in bio to sell a low-priced offer and sending buyers to a Kajabi course. You would pay for both, manage two customer lists and run two checkouts, which is the kind of stack an all-in-one platform is meant to replace.

Do Stan Store and Kajabi have free trials?

Both offer 14-day trials. Stan Store charges the first month when the trial ends. Kajabi makes the card optional during the trial, places an authorization hold if you add one, and backs every plan with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Can I book coaching calls on Stan Store or Kajabi?

Stan Store includes calendar booking on its Creator plan, so you can sell and schedule paid calls from your storefront. Kajabi sells coaching through its products and communities. Neither lists coaching agreements, per-client notes with check-ins, or habit tracking.

What is Coachful's free white-glove service?

On every Coachful plan, you can ask the team to build a website, funnel, sales page, program, email sequence or other asset inside your account, usually within about 24 hours. You attach reference links and files, and the team builds from what you provide without inventing credentials, testimonials or prices. Video recording, logo design and ad management are not included.

Is Coachful worth it if I only sell digital downloads?

Probably not. If you sell templates or guides and never coach clients directly, Stan Store is simpler and built for that job. Coachful earns its place when you deliver programs, sessions and ongoing support to clients.