Kajabi

Kajabi's affiliate program is the easiest to switch on of any platform in this directory, and it's one of only two built-ins that will pay your affiliates without you lifting a finger. Both of those are on the Growth plan at $249 a month. On Basic at $179, the affiliate column on the pricing table is an X.

So the real question isn't "is Kajabi's affiliate feature any good." It's "is it worth $70 a month more than Basic," and that's a number you can compare to a standalone tool.

I haven't run a program on Kajabi. This is a research listing, from kajabi.com's pricing page and the Kajabi help centre, plus a couple of public posts from course creators. Third-party claims are marked.

The history

Kajabi started in 2010 in Irvine, California, founded by Kenny Rueter and Travis Rosser, and spent its first decade bootstrapped, which was unusual for a software company that size. In 2021 it took its first outside money, reported at a $2 billion valuation from TPG and Tiger Global (third-party). It's the platform a lot of the biggest course businesses were built on, and the affiliate program has been there, in roughly its current shape, for years.

The pricing structure tells you how Kajabi thinks about affiliates. They're not sold as a product; they're the thing that separates Basic from Growth. That's good-better-best pricing, the model Sears used in its catalogue a century ago, where the middle tier exists to make the upgrade feel like the reasonable choice. Here the middle tier is where the affiliates live, and the $70 step is the price of the feature.

Who it's for

Course creators and coaches already on Kajabi Growth or Pro who want to turn students into affiliates without adding a second tool. If you're paying $249 anyway, the affiliate feature is free, it's live in an afternoon, and it pays people on a schedule.

Creators who want affiliate coupon codes. An affiliate's code works at checkout with no cookie and no link, which is the right tool for podcasts, video and anywhere a link is awkward.

Who should skip it

Anyone on Basic who'd be upgrading only for affiliates. $70 a month buys Rewardful at $49 or FirstPromoter at $49, both of which integrate with Kajabi and do more.

Anyone who needs tiers, per-product rates for one affiliate, or an export with history. More below.

Anyone selling outside Kajabi's checkout. The program tracks Kajabi Offers and nothing else.

Anyone whose business lives on partial refunds. A partial refund on Kajabi zeroes the whole commission, not the refunded part.

Pricing, decoded

• Basic: $179 a month. No affiliates.
• Growth: $249 a month, or $199 on annual. Affiliates included, 0% revenue share.
• Pro: $499 a month, or $399 on annual. Same affiliate feature.

"No hidden fees. No revenue sharing," which is true of Kajabi's cut; your payment processor still takes its percentage.

Worked example. You're on Basic and want affiliates. The upgrade is $70 a month on monthly billing, $840 a year. Against that, Rewardful at $49 a month is $588 a year and gives you an export with referral history, which Kajabi doesn't; Kajabi gives you scheduled payouts, which Rewardful doesn't at that price. On annual billing the gap between Basic and Growth shrinks (Growth is $199 a month paid yearly; check what Basic's annual rate is on the day you look, because Kajabi moves these), and at a gap of $20 to $30 the built-in is the cheapest affiliate program you can run on the platform short of free.

If you're already on Growth for the other reasons (more products, more contacts, removing Kajabi branding), the affiliate program costs nothing and the comparison is moot.

What it does well

Setup. Turn on the program, set a commission per Offer, share the sign-up link. Two out of five on the setup scale, and that's being cautious.

Payouts. Kajabi runs PayPal mass pay for you on a weekly or monthly schedule, after a commission-due delay you set from 2 to 365 days. That's a real managed payout, which ThriveCart matches and Kartra, ClickFunnels, Teachable and Systeme.io don't. You need a PayPal Business account; if you'd rather not, there's a CSV mass-payout report and a manual confirm.

Commission options are enough for most creators: percentage or fixed per Offer, recurring on subscriptions and payment plans by default with a first-payment-only checkbox, a per-affiliate override that applies to everything they sell, and coupon-code attribution. Cookie is 30 days by default, 60 or 90 selectable, last-click, refreshed on every click.

Lock-in: 4 out of 5

What gets you out: an Affiliates report that exports to CSV with name, email, revenue, commission, clicks, override percentage and PayPal email. Transaction exports. No contract beyond the billing period.

What keeps you in: everything else. Links and codes only work on Kajabi checkouts. Drop from Growth to Basic and the program disappears. There's no referral-history export, so the "who referred whom" record stays in Kajabi. Single tier only, so there's no structure to migrate, but also nothing to migrate it to if you've built on per-affiliate overrides. And a public post from a course creator in September 2026 (Colin Landforce on X, third-party) says Kajabi's affiliate tracking "misses purchases" badly enough that he built his own system, which is the kind of thing you'd want to know before trusting the history you can't export.

Four. The affiliate list comes out; the program doesn't.

Gotchas

• Growth or nothing. $249 a month, or $199 on annual. Basic has no affiliates.
• Partial refunds zero the whole commission. Refund $10 of a $100 sale and the affiliate's $30 becomes $0. Explain that to your affiliates before it happens, not after.
• One rate per affiliate across all Offers. You can set a rate per Offer, or a rate per affiliate that overrides every Offer, but not a special rate for one affiliate on one product.
• No tiers. Single level. If you want affiliates recruiting affiliates, this isn't it.
• No tax forms. No W-9 collection, no 1099. Your accountant's problem.
• Same-browser purchase required. A click on a phone and a purchase on a laptop doesn't attribute.
• Fixed-amount commissions can't be bulk-applied, and expired or unconfirmed affiliates are deleted one row at a time.
• "Misses purchases", per one creator's public account (third-party, September 2026). Spot-check attribution against your orders for the first month.
• PayPal Business required for automatic payouts.

Integrations

Kajabi's own checkout, Offers, coupons and email. Affiliate tracking: Kajabi's own only. If you want more, FirstPromoter and Tapfiliate both have Kajabi integrations, and Rewardful works through Stripe if your Kajabi payments run on it.

Not supported: any checkout other than Kajabi's; multi-tier; tax forms.

If you're leaving

Export the Affiliates report first, because it has the PayPal emails and the override rates, and that's the list you'll rebuild from. Pull transaction exports for the period you need to reconcile commissions. Settle every pending commission before you downgrade or cancel, because the moment the program is off, so is your view of what's owed. Then rebuild on the new tool and email affiliates their new links and codes before the old ones stop working.

Or skip the evenings in export CSVs: I run migrations as a service.

Verdict

My opinion, labelled as such: if you're on Kajabi Growth or Pro already, turn the affiliate program on. It's the easiest setup in the directory, the payouts run themselves, and the coupon-code attribution is the right design for creators. The limits (one tier, no history export, partial refunds that wipe the commission) are real, but for a course business with a few dozen affiliates they're livable.

If you're on Basic and affiliates are the only reason to upgrade, do the arithmetic above. On annual billing the gap is small enough that the built-in wins. On monthly it's $70, and a standalone tool with a Kajabi integration gives you a real export and tiers for less.

If you're not on Kajabi yet and the affiliate program is a factor in choosing, ThriveCart has a more capable built-in for $87 a month, Systeme.io has a simpler one for free, and either of them plus FirstPromoter or Rewardful still costs less than Kajabi Growth. Kajabi's affiliate feature is a good reason to stay. It's not a reason to arrive.

Last verified November 4, 2026. Plan prices from kajabi.com/pricing. Commission, cookie, payout, refund and export behaviour from the Kajabi help centre. Founding and funding details are third-party. The "misses purchases" claim is from a public post on X by a course creator, September 2026, and is third-party. The author has not used Kajabi. Some links on this page are affiliate links.