I recommend Canva (to create your graphics for your landing pages and Lesson Modules, your slide decks for your lessons, create your downloadable .pdf guides,get free photos, and even record your course, if you want to)

ScreenFlow (for macs) or Camtasia (for PC) is an easy video recording and editing software to record your course.

I also recommend buying a good microphone for recording your course, like a Yeti or a BluSnoball at Walmart will do just fine!

Other than that, everything you need is inside the all-in-one Kajabi and nothing costs extra:

Course creation platform

Landing pages

Payment processor

Website

Customer Management System

Podcast

Blog

Coaching

Community

Affiliate Program

and so much more...

Yes. This is true of any course platform you might choose. But if you want to put your Kajabi on hold because you're not selling your product for a season, you can contact them for a low Monthly fee to hold it for you.

Automation and Affiliates are part of the upgraded $249/Monthly Plan. However, you CAN tag customers right away in any plan, which is beneficial right from the beginning.  Likely, you won't need automation and affiliate features until you're making significant revenue from your course, coaching, or membership. At that time, the extra money from the standard $179/Monthly Plan doesn't even make you blink to say yes. You'll just be happy it's available.

Remember, you are only paying $33 a month for the first three whole months. That's plenty of time to create your digital course, your membership, your coaching program and offer it to your people. By then, you'll be making money with your offer. Any Kajabi Plan will be a small business operating expense in relation to what you'll sell online. This business model has incredibly high profit margin!

Digital Course Academy included indepth course creation training but also a lot of marketing and launching training, in an incubator-style group and detailed step-by-step course. Amy moved to higher end coaching now, so she's not offering DCA any more (sad news!). I realize that I can still help you create your course, coaching, and/or membership IF you use Kajabi. I know Kajabi and it's all-in-one and it does all of these things well. PLUS, I can teach you this becuase they added CoFounder, an Ai Coach that will walk you step by step thinking through your audience, your course objectives, and even your enrollment page and pricing offers. 

What it doesn't teach you is the launching and marketing part of having a digital course business. But I DO believe that once you have a product (like a course) and you've tested it with a few "warm" people that you already know, you have something to offer the world. Yes, it will take more coaching and training to learn how to scale and market your course, but you will be motivated and there are ways to learn it. So let's CREATE YOUR COURSE FIRST and then you'll figure out the marketing.

The $199/month plan gives you everything you need to host a website, create up to 15 products (courses, memberships, podcast), and 10,000 contacts, great automation for evergreening, an affiliate program you can set up for your courses, and excellent customer help, so you'll stay on this one for awhile!

Just think, if your course is $397, you only need to sell ONE course every other month to break even. If your course is $97, you only need to sell TWO courses each month to break even. You're not out any money. You can definitely do that. There is such a high profit margin in the online course/coaching business that there's very little risk and much reward in choosing the very best TOOL (like Kajabi) to host everything. Think of this like the building you would rent if you were selling physical products. 

Four years later, I now pay $250 a month + $50 for a second Kajabi site for my business in Brazil. That's my operating cost. I'm always operating at a significant profit because my Courses are offered on Evergreen, meaning there's a system I have set up to nurture people (podcast, weekly emails) and invite them into an automated email sequence to enroll in my Courses.