Your Pre-Launch Checklist: 10 Things to Check Before You Hit Publish on Kajabi

There's a particular kind of nervous energy that shows up in the hour before you hit publish. Your course is built, your sales page is written, your emails are queued, and yet you find yourself hovering over that button wondering what you've forgotten.

I feel it every single time, and I've been doing this since 2014. So rather than pretend the nerves go away, I've put together the checklist I actually run through with my own clients before their Kajabi sites go live. Print it, screenshot it, keep it open in a tab. Whatever gets you through launch day with a bit more calm and a bit less panic.

The technical checks

1. Test every link, every button, twice. Click through your entire funnel as if you were a brand new visitor. Sales page to checkout, checkout to thank you page, thank you page to the course itself. It's astonishing how often one small link gets left pointing at a placeholder page.

2. Check the mobile view. More than half your visitors will land on a phone, and Kajabi's builder can look completely different on mobile than it does on your desktop screen. Scroll through every page on your own phone before you publish anything.

3. Confirm your payment gateway is properly connected. Run a genuine test purchase if you can, using a real card for a small amount you can refund afterwards, or check with Kajabi support on how to simulate one. Nothing derails a launch faster than a broken checkout.

4. Check your email automations are actually triggering. Sign up for your own opt-in or make your own test purchase and watch what lands in your inbox. Automations that looked perfect in the builder sometimes fail to fire in the real world.

The content checks

5. Read your sales page out loud. This sounds simple, and it catches almost everything. Clunky sentences, missing words, and unclear instructions all reveal themselves the moment you say them aloud rather than just scanning them on screen.

6. Check your FAQ section for the questions people will actually ask. Not the questions you wish they'd ask. The awkward ones about refunds, about time commitment, about whether this is right for someone at their particular stage. Answering these honestly builds trust before anyone even messages you.

7. Make sure your pricing is consistent everywhere it appears. Sales page, checkout, email sequence, any PDF or download that mentions the price. One mismatched figure and you'll spend your launch week fielding confused messages instead of celebrating.

The client experience checks

8. Walk through the actual course or membership as a student would. Not just the sales page, the inside. Are the modules in the right order? Do the videos play? Is anything still labelled "placeholder" from when you were building it?

9. Set expectations clearly for what happens next. After someone buys, do they know when they'll hear from you, what the first step is, and where to go if something isn't working? A short, warm welcome email covers a lot of first-day anxiety, theirs and yours.

10. Give yourself a genuine buffer before you tell anyone it's live. Publish quietly first. Sit with it for a few hours, or overnight if you can bear to wait. Small things have a habit of surfacing once the adrenaline settles, and it's far easier to fix them before an audience is watching.

You don't have to do this alone

If working through a list like this makes your stomach drop a little, that's completely normal, and it's also exactly the kind of thing I help with inside The Nest. You'll find launch templates, checklists like this one built out in more detail, and a place to ask questions when something on your site isn't behaving the way it should.

The free taster, Start Here: Welcome Home, is open right now if you'd like a look inside before launch day arrives.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long before launch should I run through a pre-launch checklist? Ideally a few days before you plan to go live, so you have time to fix anything you find without rushing. A final quick pass on the morning of launch is also worth doing, just to catch anything that's changed since.

What's the most commonly missed item on a Kajabi pre-launch checklist? Mobile view is the one that catches people out most often. A page that looks polished on a desktop screen can have overlapping text or oddly placed buttons on a phone, and phones are where most of your visitors will actually see it.

Do I need to test my payment gateway before every launch, or just the first time? Every time you make changes to your checkout, pricing, or payment settings, it's worth a quick test. Gateways and integrations can shift slightly with platform updates, so a fresh test before each launch is the safer habit.

What should I do if I find a problem after I've already told people I'm live? Fix it quietly and quickly if you can, and don't panic. Most clients never notice a small glitch fixed within the hour. If it's something more significant, a short, honest note acknowledging it goes a long way, people generally respond well to transparency.