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On Thinkific, the features you need always seem to live one plan up. Extra admin seats and mass email each unlock at a higher tier, and even then, email only reaches students you already have. Schoolyland is the other path: one complete platform, every system included from day one, built for you in 2 business days, that you own.
Founding launch: $1,990 setup + first year (reg. $3,500) · renewal locked at $790/yr · no feature tiers, ever
Basic runs $54/month, but the things a growing business needs (more admin seats, mass email) unlock at Start ($109) and Grow ($219). Your growth raises your rent, tier by tier.
Thinkific’s mass email arrives at the Grow tier, and reaches only students you already have. Winning new audiences means Mailchimp or Kit on a separate subscription, wired up with integrations.
Whatever you build lives in an account you subscribe to. Years of courses, students and sales history sit on a platform that was never yours.
Thinkific is a solid course tool. But it isn’t your platform, and the ladder never ends.
Thinkific is a course tool with a feature ladder, and Kajabi is the pricier full rental. Schoolyland is not a rental at all.
| Schoolyland | Thinkific | Kajabi | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | A complete platform built for you, that you own | Course SaaS with tiered features | All-in-one SaaS you subscribe to |
| Who owns the platform | You: your domain, your data, your files | Thinkific | Kajabi |
| If you walk away | You keep everything. Host it anywhere | The platform stays theirs | Access ends |
| Feature tiers | None: everything included from day one | Admin seats and mass email unlock by plan | Contact and product limits by plan |
| Email marketing & CRM | Built in: full CRM, 12,000 sends/mo included; or connect any email provider via API | Student-only mass email on Grow; real marketing external | Included, within plan caps |
| Automations | Built in, across every system | Via integrations / Zapier | Built in: a fixed menu of triggers and actions; no custom code |
| Courses & LMS | Full LMS: quizzes, certificates, drip, cohorts | Strong course builder | Strong native builder |
| Community · affiliates · video | All included | Higher tiers / partial | Higher tiers / partial |
| Run it with AI | Built in: AI runs every department of the business, and builds new features on request | Read-only MCP (Plus, beta). AI can build display widgets (Plus only, capped at 10) and cannot change how the platform behaves | MCP connector on all plans (builds inside Kajabi only) |
| Extend & customize | Open WordPress: add plugins, build features, change anything. What you build lives in your database, and leaves with you | Footer JS and theme code, unsupported, erased on theme update, and what you build stays in Thinkific | Custom code allowed but unsupported; the code editor is Pro-only ($499/mo), and what you build stays in Kajabi |
| Setup | Done for you in 2 business days | DIY | DIY |
| Year 1 | $1,990 founding (reg. $3,500) | $480 to $1,968 + email tool | $1,716 to $2,388 |
| 3 years | $3,570 (yours from day one) | $1,440 to $5,904 + tools (you own nothing) | $5,148 to $7,164 (you own nothing) |
Sources: Thinkific pricing · Kajabi pricing (annual billing where available). Last verified: August 10, 2026. Thinkific’s mass email is available on the Grow plan and reaches existing students; broader email marketing requires an external tool. Schoolyland founding pricing is limited to 10 founding seats; regular pricing $3,500 + $990/yr.
Thinkific and Kajabi are trademarks of their respective owners. Schoolyland is an independent company, not affiliated with or endorsed by either. If anything here is out of date, tell us and we’ll correct it.
Price the plan Thinkific expects a growing business to use (Start, plus the email tool the ladder doesn’t include), and the numbers land above ours. The endings differ too.
$1,990 setup + first year, then $790/yr, locked and optional. Email, automations, community, affiliates and video are all included, with no tiers. The platform is yours from day one.
$2,952 in plans + the email marketing subscription the ladder doesn’t include. That is more than the cost of owning, and at the end you own nothing.
$164/month on annual billing, before the external email tool. Mass email included at this tier, but it reaches only students you already have.
On Thinkific Start or Grow, three years of renting cost more than owning.
The platform runs on your domain, under your name. Move it to any host, any time. It’s a standard, portable website, not an account on someone’s servers.
Students, subscribers, orders, emails and content all sit in databases you control and can export whole. There are no “request your data” forms, because the data never left your hands.
Everything is included from day one: communities, automations, affiliates and unlimited admins. There are no plan tiers to climb.
Stop working with us and you lose exactly nothing: the site, the data and the customer relationships stay with you. We think that’s the only honest way to sell infrastructure.
A SaaS hands you a fixed menu of features, checkout and page builder, and your business adapts to the tool. Schoolyland is open WordPress: the world’s largest ecosystem of plugins and integrations, plus an AI layer that builds custom pieces on request.
Thousands of proven WordPress plugins: booking, podcasts, multilingual, memberships, marketplaces. If your business needs it, it exists, and it plugs into your platform.
Layouts, flows, checkout fields and member areas are all open to change, because nothing is locked. Ask the AI, or bring in any WordPress professional in the world; no proprietary platform gatekeeps the work.
Custom features, calculators, client portals and niche integrations can be developed for your exact workflow, on your platform, and they stay yours. There is no SaaS roadmap to send feature requests to.
Your platform connects directly to AI across every system and every department, rather than through a chatbot bolted on the side. Marketing, sales, content, design, SEO, email campaigns, community and reporting: the daily work of an entire team happens in a conversation. Because the platform is open, the AI can also build on it: new landing pages, automations, design changes and custom features.
The departments this covers, in practice
The savings span every department on this list. The hours, and the monthly retainers you’d pay service providers for each of these, become a conversation with your own platform.
Claim a founding seat. You choose the domain; we take it from there.
Your complete platform goes live with courses, checkout through your own PayPal or Stripe, email marketing, community and affiliates, all connected and ready to sell.
Whatever you can get out of Thinkific comes across, videos re-upload, your email list imports via CSV. Importers, step-by-step guides, the AI layer and our support carry you through it.
One exception: recurring subscriptions don’t transfer between platforms, which is true of every switch. Your subscribers re-subscribe once through your own checkout. From that day the billing relationship is yours, permanently, with no platform between you and your customers.
Ten founding seats. $1,990 for the platform and your first year (regular $3,500), with renewal locked at $790/yr for as long as you stay. Built and live in 2 business days, every feature included from day one.
2 business days delivery · you own everything · 650+ sites built by this team since 2020