The Down and Dirty of All-In-Ones

In this episode of the BizMagic Podcast, I’m diving headfirst into the sparkly, chaotic world of all-in-one business platforms (lookin’ at you Kajabi, Kartra, GoHighLevel, etc.).

Are they unicorns that solve all your biz tech woes? Or shiny, overpriced distractions that leave you screaming into your coffee? Buckle up, 'cause I’ve got thoughts.

In this episode, we’re talkin’:

• What all-in-ones actually are and what they promise (spoiler: it’s a lot)
• The real pros that make them a legit choice for some folks
• The dark side of these platforms that nobody brags about on sales pages
• When they make total sense—and when to run far, far away
• Why affiliate deals muddy the waters (yeah, I said it)
• The right way to choose your tools without falling for the hype

This isn't about bashing platforms or preaching “my way or the highway.” It’s a real, practical breakdown so you can make the best decision for your biz without the tech regret hangover.

✨ Wanna rant or rave about your favorite all-in-one? Email me at patti@bizmagic.co or slide into my DMs on Instagram @bizmagicco. I’m always down for a nerdy tech chat.

💫 And don’t forget to share this episode with your fellow business nerds, leave a review, and subscribe on your favorite podcast app. Word of mouth is pure magic ✨

Learn more about BizMagic or the BizMagic Podcast.

Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of the Biz Magic Podcast, your place for all things tech in your online business with solid. So General Biz Chat two. My name is Patty Meyer and I am the CEO and founder of Biz Magic, where my team and I support entrepreneurs who are overwhelmed by the backend tech of their business.

We create, implement, and teach the tweaks that help our clients make a bigger impact with less stress. Today we are diving into a topic that gets a lot of love and a lot of hate, and a whole lot of debate. All in one business platforms we're talking about Kajabi, Kartra, Ontraport, go high level, and all their friends in the world of one-stop shop.

Business solutions, are they the magical unicorn that will solve all your business problems or are they overpriced? Overhyped platforms that promise you the world, but leave you frustrated. Well, I have some opinions and so let's talk about 'em. Let's break it down a little bit. Alright. First things first.

What even are all in one platforms? If you're new to this world, all in one platforms are designed to give you everything you need to run your online business in one place. Think email marketing funnels, websites, membership areas, landing pages, course hosting automation, CRM payments. You name it, they probably at least claim that they can do it.

The big selling point with all of this is convenience. Instead of piecing together 10 different tools to build out a tech stack for yourself, you can have one login, one dashboard, and supposedly one seamless experience. In theory, this sounds amazing, right? Like, uh, amazing. But let's talk about the reality of it.

So I'm not here, and I wanna be clear about this. I'm not here to dunk on these platforms. They do have a lot of benefits, and for the right person, they can be a super fantastic choice. So because of that, I wanna start by talking about their pros. So first of all. They're simple and centralized. Instead of playing tech Tetris and trying to connect 10 different platforms with duct tape, Zapier, and a prayer, everything is in one place.

You don't have to worry about integrations breaking or. Data syncing in some sort of weird way, right? Um, and then there's ease of use. A lot of these platforms are built to be user friendly, especially for people who are not tech savvy. So you don't always have to hire a developer just to launch a sales page.

However, a lot of them do have some deep learning curves, which isn't really in the pro column, but once you kind of get 'em down, they're easier to use. And then they save time. Instead of jumping between different tools, logging in and out, dealing with multiple customer support teams, you can streamline your workflow all in one place.

And all of that means that there's some potential cost saving options, right? If you're paying for an email service provider, for example, let's say a funnel builder. A membership site, course platform, a CRM and a booking system separately, those costs can start to really add up. Not only are you, again, losing time by logging in and out of these, but you're paying for each one of these and, and all in one might actually save you money.

Though might be the key word here. Um, but also it's good for beginners. If you're new to the online business world and you don't know what tools you need yet, these platforms can kind of give you this al in one place that you can play, right? You can test things out without committing to a whole complex tech stack where you have to learn all these different things.

It gives you one place. So overall, there's a lot of really great things that they have to offer. But I also obviously wanna talk about the less exciting side of this, and this is the stuff that when people come to me and they've signed up for Kajabi or go high level or some all in one tool, and they're excited about it, but they're also overwhelmed.

There's a lot of things to consider when you're looking at an all in one. And this is sort of the dark side of it, if you will, that I think so. I tend to look at them as. They are good at a lot of things, but they're not usually great at any one thing, right? Jack of all trades, master of none. These platforms, they try to do everything, but they're usually not the best at any one thing.

Because of that, they're email marketing is usually not as powerful as dedicated ESPs or email service providers. Also known as email marketing platforms. So we're talking like active campaign or kit, which used to be ConvertKit or flow desks or something like that. Their funnel builders aren't as flexible as something like ClickFunnels.

Their website design is. Maybe, let's just say you won't be winning any web design awards. Um, they don't really have a lot of that design customization, which brings me into the second one. Limited customization. If you want something that perfectly matches your brand, then you might be frustrated by the limitations that a lot of these almond ones have.

They tend to have really basic templates, limited fonts and clunky drag and drop builders, which make. Creating layouts for any pages really difficult and not super pretty. Um, they also can tend to be. Pretty expensive as fuck, if I'm honest. These platforms, they sound cost effective at first, but a lot of them start at a hundred dollars per month and they go up really quickly.

So like a hundred plus per month is a base level, but when you add in some of the additional features that you're not sure whether or not you need, it really goes up. If you're not using all the features, you're probably overpaying for a bunch of stuff that you don't need. And you're stuck inside of their ecosystem.

So if you wanna switch to another platform, at some point, you have to be ready for kind of a nightmare migration process. Once you've built everything inside an all in one, it's very difficult to move to another system without a major tech headache. It's not impossible. It's never impossible. It's just quite a bit more challenging.

And then their features tend to be limited compared to standalone tools. So let's say for example, you need like an advanced email automation. Something that has some conditions and some deeper funnels and things like that to make sure that you're talking to the right people on your email list. A dedicated email marketing platform is gonna be better for you in most cases than an all-in-one.

You want a high converting beautiful funnel, you might wanna try a different funnel builder. Need a CRM that's super robust. A standalone CRM is probably gonna have better features than an all-in-one, not to mention integrations. Right, so then the integrations can also be a little clunky with other places.

Uh, a lot of people I hear will want to build their entire website inside of an all-in-one, and that to me is a nightmare. Um, mostly because it's not very customizable, and I just don't ever find them looking very dynamic and beautiful when they're built in an all in one. Okay, so now we've talked a little bit about the pros and the cons.

Let's discuss who actually benefits from using these platforms, because there are some people that these are right for. So here are the people that I think really can make the most out of an all-in-one solution. Beginners who don't yet want to piece together a tech stack. Coaches, consultants, and course creators who want a simple way to build and sell digital products.

Businesses that prioritize ease over deep customization, which is okay. People who don't wanna spend time learning 10 different platforms also. Okay. Those who like the idea of the kind of set it and forget it, simplicity, those are all kind of people who. This might make sense for if you don't need a lot of in-depth features, then the price of the platform probably won't get too out of hand, but you can probably expect a hundred to $150 a month.

Right? So who are the people who maybe this isn't the best fit for, I think advanced marketers who want more control over their tech stack. Who want to have a high level of automation segmentation in their email marketing features brand conscious businesses that really want and need custom design flexibility because they really want their brand to be cohesive across everything that they're using as much as humanly possible.

So I don't think that they're a great fit for it. And businesses that don't need all the features that you can get with a few strong standalone. Tools because sometimes if all you need is one or two tools, why would you spend money on an all in one? It can sound enticing. A lot of the marketing, you know, looking at, you know, you'll, one day you'll wanna scale your business and so this will be really helpful and that might be true.

But it's not necessarily true, right? Um, you might not need all of the fancy features. Uh, in most cases, very few businesses use all of the fancy features, so why pay for them if ultimately, when you really think about your needs, you only need about one or two platforms? The question I think, becomes our all in one platforms, a game changer or a money pit when it comes to your business.

And that answer is. Like everything else that I'm gonna tell you is it depends, right? If you're just starting out and want a simple way to get up and running an all-in-one, could be a super solid option. But if you want deep customization, best in class tools, long-term scalability, you might be better off building out your own tech stack.

At the end of the day, it's all about what works for you. Don't just go with an all-in-one because it sounds easier, because it's been enticing. Really think about what you need, what you'll actually use, and whether the benefits outweigh the limitations for your specific business. And remember, I. Just because you can have an all-in-one, doesn't mean you won't or can't have any other platforms.

You could choose an all-in-one like Kajabi, but decide that you need a stronger ESP or email service provider, email marketing platform, and add kit into the mix just for your email marketing while using Kajabi for everything else. That may make more sense to you. Ultimately, you always know what's best for your business and so you can try different things, right?

You know what is the best path for you. And I wanna say one other thing. Some of these platforms can be challenging to get to know and to set up. There are a lot of people out there who claim to be experts in building all-in-ones. There's also a lot of affiliate stuff out there with all-in-ones. And what that means is that people.

Who are tech people like me might have deals with some all-in-one platforms and they can make a fair amount of money. If they get somebody to sign up to an all-in-one platform, not only do they make affiliate money off of that, but then they can also say, well, it's best if I set it up for you and then they're making money from that.

In some cases, that is necessary, right? But I say this not because everybody is doing it, but there are people that do it. I'm gonna be super honest with you and say that I have had so many clients or potential clients. Talk to me about an all-in-one that some consultant told them that they should have and gave them all the exciting details of why it was gonna be the best thing for their business.

And then when they got in there, they found it more clunky than they were told it was gonna be. It wasn't. Everything that was promised, they were missing features that they really wanted or liked in other places. And then they had spent all this time and money because whoever this consultant was also set them up in it and did it in whatever way and didn't always give them proper training material.

So they didn't know how to manage this new platform that they've just signed up for on their own. So here they are stuck in this platform that they don't know, they dunno how to use that isn't functioning for them the way that they needed. And they're like, what do I do? I don't wanna spend all this money to move again, back to my old platforms or to another platform, but also I can't seem to make this work.

So just really take the time and do the research and talk to help desks, talk to somebody who's not trying to sell things to you, um, to get some ideas about whether or not going that direction is right for you. There are sadly people out there who profit off of just getting people to sign up for a platform without really thinking about, or even considering whether or not the platform is right for that person.

Like for real, right? For them. So, um, that's just a friendly reminder that. Uh, it's okay to take your time before deciding and ask different people, get advice from different people. I'm always happy to chat with people about this stuff because I have a lot of opinions about it, and I just feel like there's almost this underlying MLM thing that can happen, um, with this whole all in one world.

Um, again, some of them are not like that. Some of them are great and it makes sense for a lot of people, but I just want to kind of warn you about what I've seen over the years repeatedly so that you just make those choices, uh, with an open. Uh, mind and open eyes, uh, but we're always here. You know, biz magic tech Magic is here.

For that, you can find us on biz magic.co. And if you wanna send me a message about your favorite all in one platform, or why you do like or why you don't like them, I'm super down to chat about that. Um, and of course if you need help, you can reach out to us as well. You can find me at patty@bizmagic.co on Instagram at biz magic Co, and of course, at our website@bizmagic.co.

And I'll talk to you soon.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Biz Magic Podcast. Like most small businesses and podcasts, we rely heavily on word of mouth. So if you like what you heard today or in any episode, please share with your friends and colleagues. And rate, subscribe and comment on your favorite podcast platform.

Till next time, cheers to your magical biz success.