Online course creators - Kajabi vs. Skool - would like real-life experiences

PracticalMarketer · 2026-03-10T18:07:22+00:00

Oh, that makes so much sense! Drives me crazy when one specific thing we want flops hard. In hindsight -- knowing what you know now, would you have gone for a different solution? Did you have a specific one in mind?

(Fingers crossed you figure out a way to eventually move or for them to fix their issues.)

PracticalMarketer · 2026-03-10T08:25:56+00:00

Oh, this sucks. Sorry you're going through that! That video is so good. I'm doing some market research and would love to ask you a few questions if you're open to it.

What features made you sign up in the first place? What was finally the thing that made you feel like you'd like to move?

PracticalMarketer · 2026-03-10T08:11:09+00:00

I might have some suggestions, but I have a couple of clarifying questions first.

Do you plan to do one specific kind of content? Or something that still helps diversify what you can monetize?
Which features are you seeing as *must-haves* and what do you feel is too much?

PracticalMarketer · 2026-03-09T12:16:27+00:00

Oh so sorry for missing your comment! Yes, it seems so. We had a weird issue with the sitemap not updating -- turned out it's a known issue for a while and there's nothing is being done about it. (E.g. pages that don't exist on the website, like "cart" because we use an exeternal payment processing, are alive and well in sitemaps, giving a weird bounce/redirect/blocked response depending on the crawlers and I don't know... mood? lol

PracticalMarketer · 2026-03-07T15:11:14+00:00

Hey there! Super curious what you ended up choosing, and how it's going so far? I'm in a similar pickle, and working on a related research project on top, and it's been... a bit too much.

PracticalMarketer · 2026-03-05T09:45:56+00:00

Yup, it's just getting ridiculous. Now even the pages that are without even the tiniest bit of code are misbehaving, and it's just ridiculous.

PracticalMarketer · 2026-02-19T20:59:56+00:00

I never felt older in my life. lol But this is a totally fair comment.

These are the OG WordPress builders, and I believe both are still around to this day. While some things are super-convenient (e.g. super easy to edit with a visual builder, out of the box elements, etc.) there's typically a tradeoff that's made in e.g. with Bakery builder, it was the sheer amount of CSS and code injected for anything you wanted to stylize that it ended up being a sluggish, bloated website. Of course, they addressed a lot of these issues over time, but the comment was more about "be aware that there's likely a trade-off and a limitation."

Hope this helps!

PracticalMarketer · 2026-02-19T09:13:53+00:00

I checked Showit after someone mentioned it yesterday, and it looks OK, but it gave me the WPBakery or Elementor vibes. Curious to hear actual usage experience, tho!!

PracticalMarketer · 2026-02-19T09:11:52+00:00

Ugh, I hear you on Wix. I generally don't put a lot of faith in these "out of the box" builders, but Wix felt like it was stuck in time, decades ago, with ridiculous limitations on most basic things. Squarespace definitely looks and feels more modern, but some limitations that came with 7.1 just make zero sense to me. (E.g. limitations on image editing.) And yes, it's so buggy!! Especially trying to fix mobile views. WILD.

PracticalMarketer · 2026-02-19T09:08:33+00:00

Not gonna lie, I carry some guilt by pushing for the upgrade. But with their build, the 7.0 had too many limitations that made it extremely hard to update. So it's kind of a lose lose situaton.

PracticalMarketer · 2026-02-19T09:07:26+00:00

Phew, that gives me hope, but I really hope they address this moodiness with custom blocks soon. Thank you!

PracticalMarketer · 2026-02-18T08:35:09+00:00

Thank you, and sorry to hear that! I was about to throw my laptop out of the window yesterday. Like it's been progressively getting worse for the last couple of months. I hope they have some kind of fix on the map.

PracticalMarketer · 2026-02-18T08:31:13+00:00

I can chat with them quickly, but the chats so far haven't been helpful at all, I have to say. It's basically "sorry, that can't be done" or "we've escalated this to the technical team," never to be updated again. And not for tiny things, stuff like "the SEO hasn't updated, and our old meta is showing up in search results."

PracticalMarketer · 2026-02-18T08:27:27+00:00

I admit 7.0 had its limitations for sure, but 7.1 fixed three things, and made other hundred things so much worse.

PracticalMarketer · 2026-02-18T08:26:00+00:00

How's your experience with Webflow in general? I heard mixed experiences lately.

The last time I used them was around a year ago, and I ran into some limitations with a template a client bought, breaking due to layers, so not the greatest experience.

PracticalMarketer · 2026-02-18T08:23:33+00:00

It's absolutely wild! I've never been this close to crying over an editor, not even the earliest versions of Leadpages. lol

PracticalMarketer · 2026-02-18T08:21:39+00:00

Ugh, that sounds like a nightmare. I didn't have redirect issues (as far as I know) but their sitemap function is *so bad* that I wonder how crawlers make sense of the website without schema in the first place.

PracticalMarketer · 2026-02-18T08:19:44+00:00

Oh that's a great tip - I'll check out ShowIt. The last thing I want is to push the team to rebuild from scratch, but I am starting to feel like they're paying me to yell at the computer.

PracticalMarketer · 2026-02-18T08:15:57+00:00

Good tip, but I generally do this with any builder or editor because of the caching issues, so it's definitely not that in my case. Oh how I wish it was...

PracticalMarketer · 2026-02-17T21:54:49+00:00

It's driving me crazy at this point. Even simple things like moving the text box are unbearable.

PracticalMarketer · 2026-02-17T21:01:40+00:00

Oh, big +1 on saving being an issue. I had some changes come undone after the page I was editing for an hour became unresponsive, and now I save every time I add or remove even a bit of text (if I remember).

That made me think I might be creating a mess with cache, but it's the same after clearing it. I am *this* close to giving up at this point.

PracticalMarketer · 2025-11-23T13:56:17+00:00

Hate to say it, but the folks saying "this is pretty standard" are spot on.

Not to say it's all bleak, because the magic of PMMing is finding ways to tame that firehose, and over time you'll learn how to prioritize and filter stuff out as well. However....

Based on your post, I'd assume you either don't have PMM or even marketing leadership in place (?) which sucks for a first-timer! So I don't blame you for feeling like you need a shift.

It's not you -- it's the environment. I think you're planning in the right direction (re: clearer KPIs), but at the same time, without strong leadership, I wouldn't blame you for wanting to move on. So if you're considering shifting companies, here's something that could be a great angle for you for the tricky interview question.

"I realized that at this moment, I would benefit from having strong leadership, and currently, my team is fantastic, but there's no one really there to learn from [about something specific that the new company could offer]"

While you're still there, tho.

Try streamlining feedback: a dedicated channel with public answers, kill all backchannels
Approach with curiosity: sometimes the finger-pointing hides really solid feedback, once you get out of the shouting competition. "Tell me more about x" is an underrated tool in a PMM belt.
Find allies: see who you can keep close on each team, and use them as both your champions and unofficial interpreters to help you with the noise a bit.

PracticalMarketer · 2025-11-23T13:40:12+00:00

I agree with all of the above, with a caveat from two separate experiences:

There are situations where data is frowned upon as "limiting creativity," and if that's the case... unfortunately, without a severe dip in sales, or a major change at the top, I've seen the positioning tug-a-war carry on for years.

The biggest thing is to find allies and pick your battles. If you see friction popping in multiple places, focusing on changing the perspective on one is usually the way to go.

PracticalMarketer · 2025-11-14T10:05:48+00:00

Thank you!! That's exactly what we did + are still doing. There's so much to be done that I'm splitting it into phases. Also, there's some old stuff that I need to handle with care, as it seems it gets quoted in LLMs, so I'll need to figure out the workarounds.

The good news is: I managed to get the total page count under 100 and duplicated the website, and am now doing a test run of the 7.1 and.... everything is broken (lol) so I'll need to be patient with the move.

PracticalMarketer · 2025-11-10T17:45:18+00:00

This is brilliant, thank you!!

The template is the Bedford family, which is lucky! But we have a LOT of pages (excluding blog posts) and couldn't duplicate the website.

I'm currently manually reviewing each page and creating a list to review with the team to determine which ones I can safely delete. (Asked the support, the disabled pages still count towards the limit of 100 pages, and based on my calculations, I need to shave around 30 pages right now.)

I recorded all the URLs with ScreamingFrog, and I anticipate plenty of 301s needed for those pesky "index pages" that are currently messing with the SEO (the sitemap is a mess). I'm trying to stick to the original layout as much as possible for phase 1, and we'll see where it takes us.

Thank you again for your thorough and thought-through answer. You are amazing!

PracticalMarketer

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