If you run live cohorts with a hard seat cap and an application step before anyone gets in, you've probably already searched "Kajabi waitlist" or "Thinkific enrollment cap" and come up short. Neither company markets those two features by name. Here's what their pricing pages actually say, and where you'd need to stop guessing and go test the platform yourself.
What Kajabi's pricing page confirms
Kajabi lists "Cohorts Courses" as a named feature in its plan comparison table, sitting alongside things like Video Transcriptions and the Branded Mobile App. That's a real signal: Kajabi treats cohort-style courses as a distinct product type, not something bolted onto a generic course builder.
What the page doesn't make clear from what's visible is which tier that feature turns on. The comparison table lists the row, but the fetched content doesn't show me a tier-by-tier breakdown for that specific line the way it does for clearer specs like Products, Contacts, or Communities. So I can't tell you with confidence whether Cohorts Courses is a Basic-plan feature or something reserved for Growth or Pro. Don't take a guess here as fact, check the live comparison table on Kajabi's pricing page before you commit to a plan based on cohort functionality alone.
Communities are more concrete. Kajabi's three tiers break down like this:
- Basic ($143/mo annual): 1 community, 2,500 contacts, 5 products
- Growth ($199/mo annual): 1 community, 25,000 contacts, 50 products
- Pro ($399/mo annual): 3 communities, 100,000 contacts, unlimited products
Communities and Access Groups are two different things on Kajabi. Access Groups, which control who can see or buy what, are unlimited on every tier. Communities, the actual discussion-space feature, are capped at 1 until you hit Pro. Access Groups could plausibly be part of how you'd build a manual waitlist or gated cohort structure, but the fetched page doesn't describe a purpose-built waitlist or seat-cap tool. Nothing on this page uses the words "waitlist," "capacity," or "application" in connection with any feature.
What Thinkific's pricing page confirms
Thinkific is more specific about cohorts in its plan copy. The Start plan ($82/mo annual), one tier up from Basic, adds "Live cohorts and coaching" explicitly, described as unlimited Zoom sessions, bookable calendars, and attendance tracking. That's a clearer, named commitment than anything on Kajabi's page.
Thinkific's community tiers:
- Basic ($40/mo annual): 1 community
- Start ($82/mo annual): 1 community, plus live cohorts and coaching
- Grow ($164/mo annual): 3 communities, plus B2B group orders, invoicing, and student engagement reports
So if what you want is the live-cohort mechanics, bookable sessions and attendance tracking, Thinkific tells you outright that Start is the entry point. If you also want more than one separate community (useful if you're running multiple cohort cycles or segmenting by tier), you're looking at Grow.
Same gap as Kajabi, though: no mention of waitlists, seat caps, or an application-based enrollment gate anywhere in what Thinkific's pricing page shows. "Group orders and B2B sales" on Grow lets you sell bulk seats to a company, which is adjacent to capacity management but isn't the same as a public-facing waitlist for individual applicants.
Where that leaves you
Based on what's actually on these two pages, Thinkific gives you a more specific, named commitment: live cohort tools land at the Start tier, $82/mo billed annually. Kajabi confirms a "Cohorts Courses" feature exists somewhere in its lineup but the fetched comparison table doesn't specify the tier clearly enough to repeat as fact.
On neither platform did the pricing page describe a native waitlist feature or an enrollment cap you can set from the dashboard. That doesn't mean the feature doesn't exist. Course platforms often bury capacity settings inside the product editor rather than the marketing pricing page, and neither Kajabi nor Thinkific's public-facing pricing copy is going to spell out an app-level toggle like "max 40 seats, waitlist overflow." If enrollment caps and application review are the actual deciding factor for your cohort model, the next step is a free trial on each and checking the product-creation flow directly, not the pricing page.
A few things worth confirming yourself before you buy:
- Whether Kajabi's Cohorts Courses feature includes a seat limit setting, and which tier unlocks it
- Whether Thinkific's Start-tier cohort tools let you cap registrants per session or per cohort
- Whether either platform's community feature (not the course feature) supports a request-to-join or application step, since that's often where "application-based enrollment" actually lives on these platforms
If neither platform's native tools cover seat caps and applications the way you need, that's usually where a third-party form tool (Typeform, Tally) feeding into a manual approval step becomes the practical workaround, regardless of which course platform you're on.
The plan-tier bottom line
If cohort tooling is the deciding factor and you want the platform to spell it out in its own pricing copy, Thinkific's Start plan at $82/mo (annual) is the more clearly documented option based on what's shown here. Kajabi likely has comparable functionality given that Cohorts Courses is a named line item in its comparison table, but you'll want to check which tier includes it before assuming Basic covers you. Neither company's pricing page, as fetched, confirms native waitlist or enrollment-cap tools, so treat that part of your decision as still open until you've tested the actual product editor on a trial account.