AXL compared with eight platforms
Every competitor number includes its source and review date. The final table also shows four areas where AXL is not the right fit.
Start free
“AXL or that one?”
Two products, side by side, with a winner named where there is one.
“I am leaving this. What else is there?”
The whole field rather than a duel. The alternatives hub →
Nine products, fourteen questions, three tables
Platform cost only.
Card processing (roughly 2.9% + $0.30) goes to Stripe or PayPal on every platform here, AXL included, and is excluded throughout. “Revenue cut” is what the platform takes on top.
“Not verified” means we could not confirm it, not that it is missing.
When a vendor's documentation does not confirm a feature, the table says “Not verified.” We corrected earlier entries after finding GoHighLevel documentation for graded tests and certificates.
Price and fees
| Platform | Entry price a month | What the bill is metered on | Cut the platform takes of your sales | Surcharge for bringing your own Stripe or PayPal | Contact or student ceiling on the entry plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AXL | Starter $49; all features included | Eight published allowances, then fixed overage rates. | 0%. All money you get is yours. | None. There is no AXL gateway to protect. | 5,000 included, then $0.002 per contact |
| Kajabi | $179 Basic. A cheaper Starter is listed with no price. | Contacts, products, admin seats | 0% on Kajabi Payments; own processor, next column. | 5% Starter, 2% Basic, 1% Growth, 0.5% Pro | 2,500 on Basic; 25,000 on Growth at $249 |
| Teachable | $39 Starter | Active students and products | 7.5% Starter; 0% Builder and above | None published | 100 active students |
| Thinkific | $54 Basic, $40 when billed annually | Feature tier and admin seats | 0% on Thinkific Payments | 5% / 2% / 1% / 0.5% / 0% by tier where applicable | 10,000 current students |
| GoHighLevel | $97 Starter, plus metered usage | Sub-accounts, plus metered usage | 0% | None published | Unlimited contacts |
| ClickFunnels | $97 Launch | Contacts, workspaces, courses | 0% | None published | 10,000 email contacts on Launch |
| Kartra | $59 Essentials | Contacts | 5% Essentials; 0% above | None published | 500 contacts on Essentials |
| Skool | $9 Hobby | Flat. The two plans differ only by rake | 10% Hobby, 2.9% Pro; whether card processing sits inside is unstated | n/a (Stripe only) | No member limit published |
| Circle | $89 Professional | Admins, spaces, storage | 2% Professional, 1% Business, 0.5% Circle Plus; same unanswered question | n/a (Stripe only) | Unlimited members; 3 admins, 20 spaces |
Compare payment fees in context. Kajabi's 5% without its 0% on Kajabi Payments, or Teachable's 7.5% without the 0% above Starter, is a half-truth. Model your bill →
Five of the nine ship a first-party MCP server. What separates them is what an agent may finish, and which plan unlocks it. The MCP scoreboard →
What each one is for
| Platform | Site, funnel and landing-page builder | CRM record, segmentation and deal pipelines | Messaging channels and outbound SMS | Auto-graded tests and certificates | Community forum and engagement |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AXL | Yes: 16 elements, tablet and desktop breakpoints | Unlimited typed fields, one filter grammar of 74 types across CRM, email and automations, kanban pipelines with money totals | WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Viber, LINE and SMS in one inbox; SMS through your own Twilio or RingCentral account, billed per message | 6 question types, point or percentage scoring, pass thresholds; certificate designer, numbering series, released registry | Yes: access written as CRM filters, plus points and a leaderboard |
| Kajabi | Yes | Contacts and tags; pipelines not verified. Reviewers report a 100-tag ceiling, undocumented by Kajabi. | Not verified | Not verified | 1 community, 3 on Pro |
| Teachable | A course site builder, not a funnel builder | Not verified | Not verified | Quizzes and certificates | Not verified |
| Thinkific | Yes | Not verified | Not verified | Quizzes on Basic; certificates from Start | 1 community on Basic and Start; 3 on Grow |
| GoHighLevel | Yes | Yes, with opportunities | SMS, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp; numbers resold, metered and rebillable at your markup | Yes to both: auto-scored choice questions with a settable pass grade and retakes; certificates issued by a workflow action | Not verified |
| ClickFunnels | Yes. The category is named after it | Yes, with opportunities | Partial: Message Hub, 2 to 20 agents by plan | Not verified | Not verified |
| Kartra | Yes | Yes; pipelines not verified in depth | Not verified | Not verified | Not verified |
| Skool | None on its pricing page | Member tagging is a top open request on community trackers | Not verified | Not verified | Yes. Community is their strength, and their gamification is better than ours |
| Circle | Limited to the community; not verified | Not verified | Not verified | Reviewers describe no advanced assessment and cite certificates as missing | Yes. Community is their strength |
On SMS the distinction is commercial, not technical: AXL sends through your provider account and resells nothing, while GoHighLevel resells the numbers and lets an agency rebill at a margin. This is a real reason to choose them. How the CRM record is built →
A column is one capability, not a product. See every AXL feature → For ongoing vendor checks, visit the comparisons research hub →
What we read, and when
| Platform | Pages read | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Kajabi | kajabi.com/pricing · kajabi.com/product/mcp | Vendor's own pages. The 100-tag ceiling is a reviewer claim. |
| Teachable | teachable.com/pricing | Vendor's own page. |
| Thinkific | thinkific.com/pricing · 2026 pricing update · Thinkific MCP guide | Vendor's own pages, checked 21 August 2026. MCP is Plus only, read-only and still rolling out. |
| GoHighLevel | gohighlevel.com/pricing · marketplace.gohighlevel.com/docs/other/mcp · two help.gohighlevel.com articles on quizzes and certificates | Vendor's own pages. The MCP plan gate is unstated. |
| ClickFunnels | clickfunnels.com/pricing · support.myclickfunnels.com | Vendor's own pages, plus their MCP documentation. |
| Kartra | kartra.com/plans-and-pricing · kartra.com/integrations-and-apis | Vendor's own pages. |
| Skool | skool.com/pricing for plans and fees; API, email and tagging gaps from tools4skool.com | Vendor's page for pricing, trackers for the rest. Card processing inclusion unstated. |
| Circle | circle.so/pricing · api.circle.so/mcp | Vendor's own pages. The fee-to-tier pairing is load-bearing. |
| AXL | axl.tech/pricing | Our own page: Starter is $49 a month, every feature is included, and all eight overage rates are public. |
A figure whose read-date passes six months is treated as unpublished until somebody opens the page again.
Eight head-to-head pages
Each one names who should choose the other product.
- Kajabi: $179 Basic, priced by contacts; MCP on every plan, writes land as drafts.
- Teachable: $39 Starter takes 7.5% of sales; the REST API begins at $189.
- Thinkific: a ~10% rise for renewals, and SCORM on Plus.
- GoHighLevel: the best product here at the one job AXL does not do: reselling the platform as your own.
- ClickFunnels: the best funnel builder; $97 Launch caps three courses, the fourth costs $197.
- Kartra: the widest bundle at the low end, metered by contacts: 500 to 25,000.
- Skool: $9 plus 10%, or $99 plus 2.9%; the fee never reaches zero, and their engagement beats ours.
- Circle: the most polished community product: 2% at $89, 1% at $199, plus a $99 Email Hub.
- Which platforms ship an MCP server: not a comparison but a scoreboard of all nine. We built one of the servers on it.
Check the table against your own account.
Start by moving your contacts across, then rebuild one funnel and see the bill at your volume. Starter is $49 a month.
Competitor pricing is verified against each vendor's own page and re-checked quarterly. Spot an error and we will fix it within a week.