Short answer: Kajabi raised monthly prices ~20-25% across every plan, eliminated the $89/month Kickstarter tier entirely, and cut the Basic plan's contact limit from 10,000 to 2,500. New customers got a 50% promotional discount; existing customers face the full hike on their first billing date on or after January 13, 2026 — with no grandfathered pricing.
Want the broader Kajabi picture? See the Kajabi review covering plan limits, fees, and feature trade-offs or our scenario guide on when Kajabi is worth it in 2026.
What Changed: The Full Pricing Comparison
Here's the side-by-side on monthly billing. Annual billing reflects the same percentage change against the prior annual structure.
| Plan | Old monthly | New monthly | Change | Annual cost delta |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kickstarter | $89/mo | Eliminated | Removed entirely | +$1,080/yr if forced to Basic |
| Basic | $149/mo | $179/mo | +20% | +$360/yr |
| Growth | $199/mo | $249/mo | +25% | +$600/yr |
| Pro | $399/mo | $499/mo | +25% | +$1,200/yr |
The headline number is +20-25% per plan, but the bigger structural change is the Kickstarter elimination. The Basic plan also lost 75% of its contact capacity — the cap dropped from 10,000 to 2,500 contacts (counting leads, subscribers, and buyers combined). For a creator whose lead magnet was steadily growing the list under the old plan, the new cap can force a Growth upgrade within months of hitting normal growth, adding another $600/year on top of the Basic hike.
Add-ons moved too. The extra-5,000-contacts pack went from $20 to $25 per month. The Branded Mobile App, previously included on Founder/Beta plans, moved to add-on pricing. Several features that already existed got rebranded as new-plan inclusions (Cohort Courses, Comment-to-DM, Video Translations, API access on certain tiers).
The January 13, 2026 Cliff for Legacy Customers
Per Kajabi's announcement, existing customers face the new pricing on "the first billing date on or after January 13, 2026." The announcement also says "plan migration is not required — the decision is yours." Both can be true. You aren't forced to switch plans. You are forced to pay the new price for whichever plan you stay on.
That's not grandfathering in any meaningful sense. Grandfathering means existing customers keep their old rate. Kajabi's policy lets existing customers keep their old plan — same features, same limits — but at the new price. For most legacy customers, that's the worst of both worlds: paying more for capability they could already use.
Meanwhile, Kajabi's pricing page advertises 50% off for new signups. The structural read is clear: new customers fund acquisition at a discount; existing customers fund the strategy shift at the new full price. The loyalty discount goes in the wrong direction.
What the Price Hike Actually Costs by Plan
For someone on the same plan before and after, here's the annual delta:
| Scenario | Annual cost change | Over 3 years |
|---|---|---|
| Kickstarter customer forced to Basic (monthly) | +$1,080 | +$3,240 |
| Basic customer staying on Basic (monthly) | +$360 | +$1,080 |
| Growth customer staying on Growth (monthly) | +$600 | +$1,800 |
| Pro customer staying on Pro (monthly) | +$1,200 | +$3,600 |
| Basic customer hitting new 2,500 contact cap, forced to Growth | +$1,200 | +$3,600 |
For a 3-year Growth customer, that's $1,800 in additional fees over 3 years that wouldn't have existed under the old pricing. For a former Kickstarter customer who's been with the platform since launch, the forced upgrade to Basic costs an additional $3,240 over 3 years — for the same plan they'd been using.
Why Kickstarter Got Killed (And Where the Old $89 Customers Went)
Kickstarter was Kajabi's entry-level plan for solo creators just starting out. At $89/month with 1 product and 250 contacts, it served a specific segment: first-time course creators testing whether the model worked before committing to a full marketing stack. Killing it wasn't a feature decision. It was a market-positioning decision.
The structural message: Kajabi is no longer competing for first-time creators. The new entry-level is Basic at $143/month annual ($179 monthly) — a price floor that assumes you're already past the experiment phase. Former Kickstarter customers face three options:
- Pay 61-101% more for the same business by moving to Basic ($143 annual / $179 monthly)
- Take the 50% new-customer promo by creating a new account — losing all prior data, payment relationships, and email list history
- Leave Kajabi for a platform priced for the solo-creator segment
For creators in the under-$2K/month MRR range, the math now decisively favors leaving. At $1,000/month in course revenue, Basic ($143/mo annual) consumes 14.3% of revenue before processing fees. At $500/month, it's 28.6%. Those aren't sustainable platform-fee percentages for a small creator business.
What This Signals About Kajabi's Long-Term Trajectory
One pricing change isn't a pattern. Three pricing changes is. The 2025 restructuring is consistent with several earlier signals that compound a single story:
- Trustpilot rating 3.5/5 from 2,308 reviews. 76% are five-star (highest of any major platform), but the negative reviews concentrate around billing rigidity (strict no-refund policy), declining support quality, and dismissive handling of disputes.
- BBB "F" rating with 18 complaints on file as of early 2026. The BBB rating reflects both the volume of unresolved complaints and Kajabi's responsiveness to them.
- Active Change.org petition opposing the 2025 pricing changes, signed by existing Kajabi customers. The Reddit r/kajabi sub regularly surfaces posts like "$1200/year price increase WTF" and "Anyone else looking to get off Kajabi because of the price increases?"
- Feature removals repackaged as upgrades. Customer complaints from early 2026 describe previously-included functionality (manual subtitle uploads, certain admin features) removed and re-sold as paid add-ons (AI subtitles at $90/month extra).
The pattern is "test loyalty until it breaks, then re-acquire at promotional pricing." It's a viable strategy for a company with strong product-market fit and inelastic demand — existing customers absorb the cost; new customers replace anyone who leaves. The question for each individual creator is whether you're comfortable being the funding source for that cycle.
Should You Stay or Leave? A Decision Framework
The pricing change itself isn't the right question. The right question is whether Kajabi produces enough revenue lift to justify whatever you're now paying. Two honest tests:
- Audit your tool usage. Pull the last 90 days of activity. How many email sequences did you launch? How many funnels did you actually build out? How many landing pages did you create? If those numbers are low, you're paying for Kajabi-tier marketing infrastructure to host courses you could host for $30-99/month elsewhere.
- Calculate the alternative stack. A focused course platform ($30-99/mo) + a dedicated email tool ($30-80/mo) + any landing page tool you actually need ($0-60/mo) typically totals $60-240/month. Compare that to your new Kajabi bill. If you'd cover three tools heavily, Kajabi may still win on consolidation. If you'd only use one, you're paying a $70-200/month premium for unused capability.
We wrote a full scenario guide for this exact decision — when Kajabi is worth it in 2026 covers the four specific situations where the new pricing still pays back, and the ones where it doesn't. If you're trying to decide whether the new rate is worth it for your specific business, start there.
The Real Cost of Leaving Kajabi
Switching platforms isn't free. The honest migration costs:
- Time: Most course migrations run 20-40 hours of DIY work for a small-to-medium catalog (3-10 courses), including content transfer, redirect setup, student notification, and rebuilding any custom checkout pages.
- Consultant cost: If you hire help, typical migration consultants charge $1,500-$3,000 for the full transfer. The variance depends on automation complexity and whether you need custom Stripe integration work.
- Subscription relationship loss with Kajabi Payments. If you used Kajabi's built-in payment processing, your subscription customers' card-on-file relationships are owned by Kajabi. Leaving means subscribers must re-enter card details on the new platform, and re-billing flows typically lose 5-20% of subscribers to friction. Using your own Stripe avoids this but adds a 0.5-2% surcharge on every transaction.
- Lost compounding tool integration time. Any custom automations, tagging rules, or funnel flows you built inside Kajabi don't transfer. You rebuild them on the new platform.
For most legacy customers, the migration math pencils out within 6-18 months of switching — the platform-fee savings cover the migration cost. For larger creators with complex Kajabi-specific automations, the breakeven is longer.
Bottom Line
The 2025 Kajabi price increase isn't an isolated event. It's a strategic signal: the platform is repositioning around larger, established creators, and the cost of that repositioning is being absorbed by the existing customer base while new customers onboard at a 50% promotional discount. For customers who actively use the full marketing stack, the new prices may still be worth it. For the substantial portion of Kajabi's user base that uses the platform primarily for course hosting, the math has shifted decisively against staying.
If you're evaluating what to do next, the honest path is to audit your actual tool usage first, calculate the alternative-stack cost second, and decide third. For specific scenarios where Kajabi still earns its new price, see when Kajabi is worth it in 2026. For seven specific alternatives across price points, see our Kajabi alternatives roundup.