Kajabi Alternatives for Therapists in 2026

The usual sequence goes like this. A therapist spends six months building a course on anxiety — the one they've effectively been teaching one client at a time for years. They sign up for Kajabi because that's what everyone recommends, pay $149 a month, launch it, and it works. Then a course buyer emails asking whether they can book an actual session.

And there's nowhere in Kajabi to send them. That's the moment most therapists start looking for something else, and it isn't a small gap — it's the whole practice sitting outside the platform they're paying for.

Why do therapists end up on Kajabi in the first place?

Because Kajabi markets to course creators, and a therapist building their first course is, for about three weeks, a course creator. The recommendation is genuinely good if that's all you're doing: the builder is polished, the checkout works, and the email tools are stronger than anything a practice-focused tool offers.

The mismatch shows up the moment the course stops being a side project and starts feeding your actual practice. Course buyers ask about sessions. Group program members want a consultation first. Your existing clients want the course at a reduced rate. All of that lives outside Kajabi, which means it lives in your inbox.

What does Kajabi not do for a therapy practice?

Four things, and each of them is load-bearing for private practice:

• Appointment scheduling. Kajabi's Coaching product sells session access, but there's no availability calendar, no timezone handling worth the name, and no reminder sequence at 24 and 2 hours.
• Cancellation enforcement. You can publish a 24-hour policy. You cannot make the platform apply it, which means you apply it — by hand, to a client you have a therapeutic relationship with.
• Intake. No forms attached to a booking, no way to require them before the first appointment.
• A BAA. Kajabi doesn't sign one, so nothing that counts as protected health information belongs in it.

The cancellation gap is the expensive one. A private practice with a 10% late-cancel rate and a $120 session fee is losing somewhere between $250 and $500 a month, and the tool that could stop it is the one you're already paying $149 for. Our breakdown of why cancellation policies fail covers why writing the policy more firmly never fixes this.

SimplePractice — the right answer if you're clinical

SimplePractice is a full EHR: clinical notes, treatment plans, insurance billing, HIPAA-compliant telehealth, and a client portal, from roughly $49 to $99 a month depending on tier and features. If you bill insurance or keep clinical documentation, this is the category you should be shopping in, and Kajabi was never a competitor to it.

What it won't do is sell your course. There's no course builder, no digital product checkout, no public storefront for a self-paced program. Therapists running both usually end up with SimplePractice for clients and something else for content — which is a defensible split, but it is still two systems. Our SimplePractice comparison goes through when the EHR weight is worth carrying.

Practice Better — programs, but wellness-shaped

Practice Better sits between an EHR and a coaching platform, and it's popular with nutritionists, functional medicine practitioners, and integrative therapists. It handles scheduling, notes, protocols, packages, and group programs, with HIPAA and PIPEDA options on the higher plans, from around $29 to $89 a month.

Its program feature is closer to a structured protocol than a course — good for eight-week guided plans, weaker for a polished self-paced product you sell to strangers. The interface also assumes a clinical workflow, so if you're a private-pay therapist who doesn't chart, you'll navigate around a lot of things you don't use.

Teachable and Thinkific — cheaper, and still only half

Both are dedicated course platforms and both are meaningfully cheaper than Kajabi. Teachable runs $29/month with a 7.5% transaction fee up to $139/month with none; Thinkific starts around $74/month annually and charges no transaction fee. The course experience on either is at least as good as Kajabi's.

Neither has booking, cancellation policies, intake, or client records — so switching to them fixes your bill and not your problem. You'd still run Calendly or Acuity alongside, and your course buyers and your therapy clients would still be two separate lists. If courses genuinely are your whole business, these are the sensible choice; the Teachable comparison covers that case in more detail.

Podia — simpler and cheaper, same shape as Kajabi

Podia is the closest thing to a lighter Kajabi: courses, digital downloads, memberships, email, and a simple storefront from around $49/month with a 5% fee, or $99/month without. Setup takes an afternoon instead of a fortnight, which is a real advantage over Kajabi.

The limitation is identical, though. Podia's coaching offering sells a session; it doesn't schedule one, enforce a cancellation window, or track how many sessions a client has left in a package. It's a better creator platform than Kajabi at the price. It is not a practice platform.

Merkora — built around the practice, with courses attached

Merkora inverts the assumption every platform above makes. Instead of a content product with a session bolted on, it starts from bookings, payments, packages, and client history, and adds courses, digital products, and live programs to the same account.

In practice that means a client books a consultation, fills in your intake form as part of booking, pays, cancels inside your window and is charged automatically, buys a six-session package that draws down as they use it, and enrols in your course — all on one profile you can read in ten seconds. The session credit system and automatic cancellation enforcement are the two things nothing else on this list has.

Merkora starts free, which matters more than it sounds for this decision: you can put a real booking flow and a real course in front of clients before committing to anything.

Which alternative fits your practice?

One question separates these faster than any feature list: what share of your income comes from sessions? Above roughly half, you're a practice that also teaches, and you should choose the tool that runs the practice. Below it, you're a content business and Kajabi's category is the right one — just probably not Kajabi's price.

For private-pay therapists in the first group, therapist software that keeps bookings, cancellation enforcement, packages, and courses on one client record removes the split entirely — see what a private practice actually needs before you shortlist. Merkora was built for that model, and it's free to start.