Business Strategy
Kajabi Raised Prices 25%. Here's What Wellness Teachers Should Know.
If you're a wellness teacher on Kajabi, you may have noticed something on your last billing statement.
In January 2026, Kajabi raised the price of its Growth plan from $159/month to $199/month (billed annually). That's a 25% increase. Legacy customers were moved to new pricing tiers with little warning, and the backlash in creator communities was significant.
It's worth talking about — not to pile on, but because pricing decisions reveal something important about a platform's relationship with the people who use it.
What Kajabi Changed
Here's what the January 2026 change included:
Growth plan: $159/mo to $199/mo (billed annually). A $480/year increase.
Legacy customers: Migrated to new pricing tiers, not grandfathered in.
Kickstarter plan: Removed from public pricing. Existing users kept the plan as a legacy tier, but new customers can't access it.
Payment surcharge: Kajabi added a fee for users not using Kajabi Payments (their proprietary processor), creating pressure to use their ecosystem.
The result: creators who built their business on Kajabi suddenly found themselves paying significantly more — or navigating a payment processor switch they didn't plan for.
Why This Matters for Wellness Teachers
Most wellness teachers don't run high-volume e-commerce businesses. They run small, personal practices — yoga classes, wellness memberships, coaching programs — where every dollar of overhead matters.
A $40/month platform fee increase sounds modest. Over a year, that's $480 more you're paying before a single student signs up. For a teacher on a $79/month (or $66/month billed annually) Essentials plan at Marvelous, that $480 covers more than six months of their entire platform cost.
More importantly: the pattern matters. When a platform raises prices sharply and removes legacy plans, it signals something about how they think about the relationship with existing customers. It's not necessarily malicious — SaaS businesses have real cost pressures — but it's worth factoring in when you're choosing where to build.
What Stable Pricing Actually Looks Like
Marvelous has three plans — Essentials ($66/mo annually), Solo ($104/mo annually), and Pro ($149/mo annually) — and has kept pricing consistent since the current plan structure launched.
No payment surcharges. No processor lock-in. No grandfathering clauses that quietly become upgrade pressure.
That's not a marketing line. It's a business decision that reflects what we think a platform should be: a stable foundation you can plan around, not a variable you have to manage.
Our pricing may not be the lowest on the market. But it's what it is, and it doesn't change quietly.
If You're Evaluating Platforms Right Now
Whether you're a current Kajabi user reconsidering, or a wellness teacher shopping for your first platform, here are a few things to check before committing:
1. What's the all-in cost? Platform fee, transaction fees, and payment processing fees are different numbers. Add them all together, including what you'd pay for any required integrations. Some platforms advertise low base prices but require $50-$100/month of add-ons to get basic functionality.
2. What's the pricing history? A quick search for "[platform name] price increase" tells you a lot. Has this happened before? How did they handle it?
3. What's the lock-in? Kajabi's payment surcharge for external processors is a form of lock-in. The more a platform incentivizes you to use their proprietary tools, the harder it is to leave when pricing changes again.
4. What does their creator retention tell you? Platforms with high creator retention don't need to constantly acquire new customers — which means they're less likely to squeeze existing ones. We see our teachers stay for years. Some have been with us since 2014.
What 12 Years in Wellness SaaS Has Taught Us
We've been building Marvelous since 2014 — back when it was called Namastream and yoga teachers were just starting to move online. We've seen platforms come and go, and we've seen pricing structures that looked like deals turn into financial surprises.
The lesson we've internalized: wellness teachers don't need the most feature-rich platform. They need the most reliable one. Reliable uptime, reliable support, reliable pricing.
We've helped over 560,000 students take classes, courses, and memberships through creators who built on our platform. Many of them started small and are still here — not because they couldn't find a cheaper option, but because stability is worth something.
If you're considering a switch — or building from scratch — we're happy to show you around. No pressure, no hard sell. Just a 14-day free trial and a product that does what it says.
Try Marvelous free for 14 days — no credit card required.
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