Why Kajabi moved from Harness and returned to CircleCI after one year
The challenge: When a cost-saving and consolidation initiative becomes a productivity nightmare
Kajabi, a leading platform empowering entrepreneurs to build and scale their online businesses, found themselves at a critical crossroads with their CI/CD infrastructure. After being a CircleCI customer for a few years, they had decided to move from CircleCI to Harness in an effort to consolidate their toolchain. They quickly realized that ‘all-in-one platforms’ sacrifice the specialized performance that high-velocity teams require and they returned to CircleCI just a year later.
“The migration took three times longer than expected,” recalls Paul Simpson, a platform engineering manager at Kajabi. Paul recalls the difficulty the team had transitioning from a proof of concept to the platform. The previous vendor had, “allowed too much hand-waving during the proof of concept to the point where it felt like we were learning the platform together, which really set a rocky tone.”
What started as a cost-saving initiative quickly transformed into a productivity nightmare. Kajabi’s heavy workloads, such as running 45 test suites in parallel, pushed their previous CI/CD platform to its technical limits. Their runners behaved erratically and the more parallel processes they ran, the more likely something would fail. Due to this, Kajabi’s success rates plummeted to the low-to-mid 80s, compared to the mid-to-high 90s they had experienced with CircleCI. The platform that had performed adequately during their limited POC testing crumbled under the full weight of Kajabi’s software development lifecycle.
The turning point: Returning to CircleCI with new priorities
For a platform where every minute of downtime directly impacts both Kajabi’s and their customers’ revenues, these stability issues were unacceptable. “We think of MTTR as ‘mean cost,’” Paul explains. “When we’re down, our customer checkouts are down too, which costs everyone money.”
Kajabi’s developer experience also suffered. Their development teams struggled with their previous platform’s complex interface that proved unintuitive for end users. Kajabi burned through credits faster than anticipated and the performance of Kajabi’s full test suite suffered, increasing build times from under 10 minutes with CircleCI to 15-20 minutes on their previous platform. Despite the competitor’s efforts to rectify issues, challenges continued to mount.
Recognizing the need for change, Kajabi made the strategic decision to evaluate and return to CircleCI with a clearer vision of what “great CI/CD” looked like for them. They sought a solution that would act as a true safety net: present but invisible, supportive but not intrusive.
“Momentum in business is key,” Paul notes. “When you can create internal momentum, you get a lot done and drive more satisfaction. We needed a platform that was as transparent as possible while still supporting a flow state.”
“We think of MTTR as 'mean cost.' When we're down, our customer checkouts are down too, which costs everyone money.”
Paul Simpson | Platform Engineering Manager at Kajabi
The solution: AI-powered efficiency meets rock-solid reliability
CircleCI delivered on multiple fronts that directly addressed Kajabi’s CI/CD needs:
Stability and performance
Kajabi’s success rates returned to the mid-to-high 90s while build times dropped back to the 10 minute mark they had come to expect with CircleCI. The platform handled their 45x parallelism requirement, scaling to 80 concurrent containers and 250 parallel tests across multiple pipelines without any issues. This enabled their developers to maintain their flow state while minimizing interruptions from failed builds.
AI-driven productivity
CircleCI’s future-facing AI capabilities from Chunk promise to remove repetitive work from both platform and development teams. “As a fast-moving, product-driven company, it’s always challenging to balance customer delight with technical debt and operational excellence,” Paul explains. “AI drives the small daily improvements that build momentum internally to make major shifts in the business.”
Transparent operations
CircleCI provided intuitive interfaces that developers could navigate effortlessly. Kajabi realized that CircleCI’s platform was what Kajabi wanted: a safety net that developers didn’t have to think about but could depend on.
Dedicated advisory services
CircleCI’s advisory services helped Kajabi with configuration, implementation, and ongoing platform maintenance and ensured a smooth migration process. These services helped Kajabi see quick time to value and their developers could hit the ground running without disrupting productivity.
The results: Measurable impact across the organization
Kajabi’s decision to migrate back to CircleCI delivered immediate and quantifiable benefits:
Success rates jumped from the low-80s with the competitor back to the mid- to high-90s, dramatically reducing developer frustration and repetitive work
Lower MTTR led to quicker incident resolution and reduced revenue impact
Higher developer satisfaction scores in quarterly internal CSAT surveys
Improved budget planning and resource allocation due to more predictable credit consumption
Perhaps most importantly, the stability and efficiency gains allowed the engineering team to focus less on firefighting and more on innovation. “If we’re spending all our time managing stability issues, we wouldn’t be able to adapt or figure out how to support the new wave of a higher volume of AI generated code,” Paul reflects.
Looking forward: Building momentum for the future
With CircleCI, Kajabi’s executives can understand the ROI on their technology investments while Kajabi’s developers enjoy a frictionless experience that enhances their productivity all from one platform.
Kajabi’s journey offers two valuable lessons:
The true cost of a solution isn’t just in license costs and credits consumed, but is truly calculated by developer productivity, system reliability, and the ability to maintain business momentum.
When every minute of downtime impacts your customers’ ability to do business, having a reliable and transparent CI/CD platform isn’t a nice to have - it’s essential for survival and growth.
Ready to transform your CI/CD pipeline like Kajabi did? Contact CircleCI to learn how our AI-powered platform can help you achieve higher success rates, reduce MTTR, and give your developers the frictionless experience they deserve.
