The Kajabi alternative for academies that serve organisations.
You started by selling a course. Now a client company wants its own branded academy with its own administrator, a school wants parent access, and somebody in compliance wants to see how a grade was reached. That is a different product.
Should you move from Kajabi to Lurno?
Move from Kajabi to Lurno when your buyer stops being a person and starts being an organisation. Kajabi is an all-in-one business platform for creators — courses, coaching, communities, a website, email marketing and checkout in one subscription — and it is very good at that job. Lurno is a multi-tenant learning platform for institutions and training businesses: nested sub-organisations, custom roles from a permission catalogue, white-label branding on each organisation's own domain, guardian access, competency frameworks, rubric grading and certificates with a public verification page. The trade is explicit. Lurno's payments and checkout are in development — designed, not built — so if selling directly to consumers is the job today, stay on Kajabi. If your revenue comes from contracts with companies, schools or awarding bodies, and the platform has to hold up in front of their administrators, Lurno is the better fit.
- Multi-tenancy
- One installation that keeps many organisations apart. Each tenant has its own members, content, branding, domain and data, and the separation is enforced underneath the platform, not by a screen remembering to filter. In Lurno a tenant can contain sub-organisations, and those can contain more — a training provider's client companies, a publisher's schools — and a role granted at one branch cascades down it.
The dimensions that decide this one
Both host courses. They part company on who the customer is.
| Capability | Lurno | Kajabi |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Institutions, academies and training businesses serving other organisations | One creator business selling to consumers |
| Nested sub-organisations | A tree, not a flat list — unlimited sub-organisations on the Scale tier | Designed around a single business rather than an organisation tree |
| A separate branded academy per client or campus | White-label branding and a custom domain with automatic TLS, per organisation | Designed around one branded site |
| Roles and permissions | Custom roles from a permission catalogue; a role granted at a branch cascades down it | Designed around one business's own team |
| Guardian or parent access | A guardian portal, scoped by data category | No |
| Competency frameworks | Frameworks with evidence from real submissions and auto-mastery | No |
| Assessment and grading | 19 question types, 7 assessment types, rubric grading, peer review, one grading queue | Not an accreditation-grade assessment or grading workflow |
| Certificates | Issued against a policy, with a public verification page anyone can check | Designed around delivering and selling the course rather than credentialing it |
| Payments and checkout | In development — designed, not built | Included, with a 0% transaction fee |
| Marketing site, email marketing and funnels | Not part of Lurno — bring your own | The core of the product |
| Separation between client organisations | separation enforced underneath the platform — enforced in the database | Not the shape it is built for |
| Pricing | Published tiers from $119 / month; the institution tier is quoted | From $71 / month billed annually; published tiers $143 / $199 / $399 per month |
Kajabi figures from kajabi.com/pricing, checked 24 August 2026. Lurno figures on the pricing page.
What actually changes
Each client company gets its own academy, from one account
A tenant in Lurno holds sub-organisations, and those hold more. Each carries its own name, branding, terminology and domain, so a client company's staff sign in to something that reads as theirs. One content library sits behind them all, and a programme is shared into as many organisations as you need rather than copied into each.
- A corporate academy runs training for 15 client companies from one tenant. A K-12 publisher runs 114 schools the same way.
- Custom domains come with automatic TLS, and notifications can be sent from the organisation's own domain rather than ours.
- A client's own administrator manages their own people, and sees nobody else's.
A completion becomes something a third party will accept
Assessment in Lurno is built for the moment somebody audits it. Rubrics are analytic, holistic or single-point, peer review and portfolios are first-class, and all the marking lands in one queue. Competency frameworks collect evidence from real submissions and mark mastery when it supports them.
- 19 question types, 7 assessment types, and adaptive psychometric testing (IRT/CAT) where the stakes justify it.
- Certificates carry a public verification page, so an employer can check one without ringing you.
- AI drafts items and proposes rubric scores from your own documents. An instructor confirms and releases every grade.
Selling is the part you keep somewhere else for now
Lurno has no checkout. Payments are designed and being built. Until they ship, organisations contract outside the platform and learners are enrolled by an administrator or by invitation. For an academy invoicing 15 client companies, that is already how the money moves. For a creator selling to strangers off an email list it is a real loss — which is why the honest answer on that job is Kajabi.
- Self-serve signup and trials are in development too. Accounts are created by invitation today.
- SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, xAPI and LTI 1.3 are modelled in the product and the runtime is being built — talk to us if standards conformance gates your rollout.
Where Kajabi is the better choice.
Kajabi is the better choice for independent creators and coaches selling their own courses, who want marketing, checkout and content in one subscription. If one person or a small team owns the audience, the offer and the funnel, Kajabi puts the landing page, the email sequence, the community, the course and the payment in one place with a 0% transaction fee — and there is no organisation tree to configure because there is only one organisation. Lurno has nothing to offer that reader: no checkout, no email marketing, no funnels, and tiers priced for a tenant with thousands of members rather than for one business.
Stay on Kajabi if selling to consumers is the job. Moving a working funnel onto a platform that cannot take a payment is a bad trade, and we will say so on the call.
The calculation changes when the buyer changes. A client company asks for its own branded space. A school asks for parent access. An awarding body asks how a grade was reached and who signed it off. You notice you are running one programme from fifteen copies.
Plenty of businesses run both for a while — Kajabi for the public catalogue, Lurno for the contracted academies. The two are not integrated; they point at different buyers.
What Lurno adds when the customer is an institution
Available today unless a badge says otherwise.
Sub-organisations that nest
Client companies, campuses or schools inside one tenant, each with its own members, content and branding, plus an internal branch tree for departments and cohorts.
Roles that cascade
Custom roles built from a permission catalogue, plus groups. Grant a role at a branch and it applies down that branch, so a growing client is not a morning of clicking.
Your brand, on your domain
Per-organisation branding, terminology and a custom domain with automatic TLS. A sub-organisation inherits its parent's brand until it sets its own.
Assessment you can defend
19 question types, 7 assessment types, three kinds of rubric, peer review, portfolios, and one queue where the marking waits.
Certificates that verify
Issued against a policy you set, rendered with your branding, and checkable on a public verification page on your own domain.
Payments and checkout
In developmentDesigned, not built. Contracts and invoicing happen outside Lurno today, and learners are enrolled by an administrator or by invitation.
How Lurno stacks up against the rest
Before you move anything
Bring the client that broke your current setup.
Describe the academy you are being asked to run — the client companies, the roles, the certificate someone has to verify — and we will build it in front of you.