For creators considering leaving Kajabi after its January 2026 price increase, the migration math favors switching for most established sellers — but the subscription transition is the part to plan carefully, according to a migration guide from Ruzuku and pricing analysis from Pro Funnel Builder.

The platform-fee comparison is straightforward. At representative usage, Ruzuku Core on annual billing ($997/year) plus a $29/month email tool like Kit totals $1,345/year — versus $1,716/year for Kajabi Basic, $2,388 for Growth and $4,788 for Pro. Annual savings range from $371 on Basic to $3,443 on Pro, compounding from year two onward.

The one-time cost is subscription migration. If you used your own Stripe account with Kajabi instead of Kajabi Payments, you are in a much better position: the subscriptions live in your Stripe account and keep billing regardless of which platform delivers the content — you only need to update the access link customers use. That is a notification problem, not a re-subscription problem. Creators on Kajabi Payments face a harder handoff.

Ruzuku’s guide frames the decision correctly: set the subscription-transition risk aside as a one-time cost during the handoff window, and compare the recurring platform-fee math year over year. The churn risk is first-year drag; the savings compound from year two.

For creators, the deeper lesson is about payment ownership. Whoever holds the Stripe account holds the customer billing relationship — and that determines how painful any future platform switch will be.

The takeaway for creators: always connect your own Stripe account, never the platform’s native payments, when the option exists. It is the single decision that keeps every future migration cheap — and it costs nothing extra today.