Most CRM comparison threads here end up arguing about plan prices, and for a couple of these platforms the plan price is the smallest part of the bill. I got tired of guessing, so I read the pricing pages and help centers for GoHighLevel, HubSpot, ClickFunnels and Kajabi and wrote down what each one actually costs.

Plan prices, the easy part:

GoHighLevel - $97/mo Starter, $297/mo Unlimited, $497/mo Agency Pro.

HubSpot - Marketing Hub Starter $20/mo per seat, capped at 1,000 contacts. Professional is $800/mo for 3 seats, plus a mandatory one-time $3,000 onboarding fee that isn't shown next to the price.

ClickFunnels - $97/mo monthly, $81/mo if you commit annually.

Kajabi - $179/mo Basic, $249/mo Growth, $499/mo Pro.

The part that isn't on any pricing page: GHL meters phone numbers, SMS, calls and email on top of the plan, and those rates only live in the help center. One modest client (1 number, 2,000 texts, 500 call minutes, 10k emails) adds roughly $30/mo. A2P registration to text US numbers is about $23 one time plus a small monthly fee, which is why a first bill usually looks worse than every bill after it.

HubSpot doesn't meter usage that way, but it's seat-priced, and the Starter to Professional jump is the real wall. $800/mo plus $3k onboarding lands exactly when you outgrow one seat or 1,000 contacts.

Worth saying for this sub specifically: ClickFunnels and Kajabi aren't really CRMs. Neither does sub-accounts or proper contact management, so if that's what you're shopping for they're not in the same category, they just get named in the same breath a lot.

Where I landed: if you're managing separate client accounts it's a GHL vs HubSpot question, and it comes down to seat count versus how much SMS and calling you actually do. If you're a single business with a real contact database and no heavy texting, GHL's metering mostly doesn't apply to you and the comparison looks completely different.

If your real bill on any of these looks different from this, I'd rather hear it than keep quoting numbers off a pricing page.