How to Migrate From Kajabi to Thinkific Without Losing Students, Sales or SEO

Pricing checked: October 2026

If you're reading this, you're probably not deciding whether Kajabi or Thinkific is the better platform anymore. You've made that call. What you need to know is how much work moving involves, and where it can go wrong.

I'll be straight about both: this is doable without losing students or sales, but it isn't a weekend project, and the biggest risk isn't the one most people worry about.

When migrating makes sense, and when it doesn't

Migrate when Kajabi's price no longer matches what you're using it for, when you've outgrown its course-building limitations, or when your actual marketing stack has moved elsewhere and you're paying for Kajabi's email and funnel tools without using them.

Don't migrate just because a comparison post convinced you the other platform looks better. If your current setup converts and your students aren't complaining, the migration cost (both money and the downtime risk) usually isn't worth it for a marginal improvement. I've talked more than one prospect out of migrating once we looked at what was broken versus what simply felt outdated.

A pre-migration audit checklist

Before touching anything, document what you're currently running:

• Every active course, including unpublished or archived ones
• Full student list with enrollment dates and progress data
• Every offer and price point, including any no-longer-sold legacy pricing
• Active email sequences and automations tied to course events
• Active subscriptions and payment plans, separated from one-time purchases
• Every public-facing URL for your course pages, sales pages, and login
• Any active affiliate or partner arrangements tied to Kajabi's system

Skipping this step is the single most common reason migrations run over timeline. You find a forgotten automation or a legacy price point halfway through and have to backtrack.

Moving the video content

Export your videos from Kajabi and re-upload them to Thinkific rather than relying on an automated transfer tool, since most of these tools handle metadata (titles, descriptions, chapter markers) inconsistently. For a course with 20 to 40 lessons, budget 4 to 8 hours of re-uploading and re-attaching videos to the right lesson structure.

Exporting and importing students without new logins

This is the part Kajabi and Thinkific make hardest, and most migration guides gloss over it. Neither platform offers a clean one-click student transfer to the other. You're exporting a student list (name, email, enrollment data) from Kajabi and importing it into Thinkific, which creates new accounts.

Students will need to set a new password on first login to Thinkific. You can't avoid this entirely, but you can minimize friction: send a clear email before the migration explaining exactly what to expect, with a direct link to the new login. A vague "we're upgrading our platform" email generates far more support tickets than a specific one that tells students exactly what button to click.

Moving active subscriptions, where most migrations go wrong

This is the real risk, more than the video re-uploads or the login friction. If you have students on active recurring subscriptions in Kajabi, you can't cancel those and recreate them in Thinkific without the student re-entering payment information, and a meaningful percentage of students won't complete that step, which means lost recurring revenue.

The safer approach: keep Kajabi's billing active for existing subscribers until their current billing cycle ends or they naturally churn, while running new signups entirely through Thinkific. This means running both platforms in parallel for a period, typically one to three months depending on your subscription terms, which adds real cost and complexity but protects the recurring revenue you've already earned.

I've seen a migration where a previous developer skipped this step entirely, promised a one-month turnaround, and five months later the new platform still wasn't live, existing subscribers' billing status was unclear, and communication from the developer had gone quiet. Whatever platform you're moving to, the subscription handling is the part to get a second opinion on before anyone touches your account.

Email list and automations

Export your full contact list from Kajabi's email tool before you begin anything else, independent of the platform migration itself. Rebuild your core automations (welcome sequence, course-completion follow-up, abandoned cart if you use one) in whatever email tool you're pairing with Thinkific. Budget this as its own project, not a side task you'll handle "after" the platform move. Automations are easy to forget and costly to lose.

Redirecting old Kajabi URLs

Every Kajabi URL that's been indexed by Google, course pages, sales pages, your login page, needs a 301 redirect to its Thinkific equivalent once the new site is live. Skipping this loses the SEO equity those pages have built, sometimes permanently if the old URLs go dead long enough for Google to drop them from its index entirely. Build the full URL map before launch day, not after.

A launch-day checklist

• New platform fully populated and tested by a real (non-admin) test account
• All 301 redirects live and verified working
• Student migration email sent with clear login instructions
• Old platform's new-signup flow disabled to avoid split registrations
• Payment processor confirmed working on a real test transaction
• Support inbox monitored closely for the first 48 hours

A realistic timeline

Two to four weeks for a straightforward course business under a few hundred students with no complex subscription structure. Add two to four weeks on top of that if you're running active subscriptions that need the parallel-billing approach, since that period alone often takes a month or more depending on your billing cycle length.

Want it done for you?

Migration is an add-on inside Lumon Launch and Lumon Scale, handled as part of a broader platform rebuild rather than a standalone move. If you want a second opinion on your specific setup before you start, book a 20-minute platform call and I'll tell you straight what the migration involves for your situation, and what it would cost to have it done rather than doing it yourself.