As you've landed on this Teachable alternatives roundup, there's a good chance there's an area of expertise you're particularly passionate about. If you're nodding as you read, you'll be pleased to hear you can easily harness your industry know-how to generate a healthy income.
All you need is an online platform where you can create and market your own online course. Traditionally, this is where Teachable came into its own. However, with the growth of digital learning, there are now tons of viable Teachable alternatives to consider – and we're going to explore seven of them here in this review.
Let's dive in!
What are the Best Teachable Alternatives in 2023?
1. Thinkific
Thinkific is a Canadian-based company. Their all-in-one solution's fantastic for entrepreneurs wanting to create and launch beautiful online courses.
To date, thousands of people use Thinkific to host and sell their courses. From consultants to teachers to coaches– and everyone else in between, Thinkific provides an easy-to-use platform to share your knowledge with the web.
Pricing
- There's a free plan. You can create up to three courses, have an unlimited number of students, create student quizzes and surveys, as well as instant access to your funds, and hosting.
- The cheapest paid-for plan is the ‘Basic' package; $49 per month. You get everything in the free plan as well as: an unlimited number of courses, coupons, e-mail marketing, drip scheduled content, affiliate reporting, a custom domain, email integrations, Zapier triggers, and manual student enrollment and exports.
- The ‘Pro' plan, Thinkific's most popular package is $99 a month. You get everything in the previous two plans, plus: two site admin accounts and five-course admins/authors. You can also create private courses, memberships, bundles, and set advanced pricing options, as well as benefitting from student certificates, advanced customization, priority customer support, and you can set students assignments.
- The ‘Premier' plan; $499 per month. In addition to everything listed in the other bundles, you'll get five site admin accounts, 50 Course admins/authors, single sign-on, and an onboarding package.
Pros
- Thinkific handles all stages of the customer journey: from the initial landing page to receiving your product, and then becoming a fan of your course!
- Top-notch customer support: Users report time and again that Thinkific does an amazing job at answering questions. They even reach to their users to see if there's anything they can do to help!
- It's incredibly easy to create and edit your course.
- Their flat-rate monthly subscription fee is exactly what it is – there aren't any hidden costs.
- You get paid right away – even when you're using Thinkific's free plan! Your money is never held for a long period, which is awesome for managing your cash flow.
- You can design your online school so that it reflects the aesthetic of your brand.
- Thinkific has a fabulous Facebook group where instructors can post questions and get answers from other users.
- Thinkific hosts tons of webinars covering everything from advice on course creation to marketing your digital product.
- You have a couple of payment processing options.
- If communicating with students is important to you, there are loads of integrations you can utilize.
- Users love Thinkific's free plan. Here you can upload and create a good deal of your course without paying a penny!
- You can add virtually anything to your course: quizzes, pdf docs, presentations, rich text, etc
- It's mobile friendly for students.
- You can easily see how students are progressing, which gives you an idea of where people get stuck.
Cons
- You're limited by size and file type when you upload videos.
- Some users report that certain videos wouldn't play and that occasionally they'd get a few minutes into the content and crash.
- Not all students can purchase courses in their own currency, and not all instructors can pay for their subscriptions in their own currency — it all depends on where you're located.
- Some users say Thinkific's built-in discussion forum is awkward to use – for example, there isn't the option to search through posts, edit comments, or manage posts.
- Unfortunately, it isn't possible for course developers to copy, paste, and edit quizzes. This feature would save authors a ton of time and effort.
- Apparently, Thinkific's reporting leaves much to be desired, so there's a good chance you'll need a third-party app to help you with that.
👉 Read our Thinkific review.
2. Podia
Podia provides a platform where you can sell online memberships, courses, and digital downloads. You can craft a beautiful looking storefront in just a matter of minutes. You don't need to write any code or possess any technical know-how to get up and running.
Podia has everything you need to create and publish your course content, send e-mail marketing campaigns, and securely process payments — all from the convenience of one platform.
Best of all, if you're using another platform to host your course, they'll migrate everything to their interface…for free.
Pricing
- The ‘Mover' package: a 14-day free trial, after that it's $39 per month. This entitles you to: the creation of unlimited online courses and digital downloads, email marketing features, 0% transaction fees, an unlimited number of students, emails sent, sales and files hosted, and around the clock customer support.
- The ‘Shaker' package: a 14-day free trial, after that it's $79 per month. You get everything in the ‘Mover' package, plus you can create membership subscriptions and embed ‘buy buttons' onto your site (or any other web page) that take shoppers to your courses sales page. You can also manage an affiliate program, install snippets of third-party code like Facebook Pixel, Sumo, and last but not least; Podia will transfer all your course content to their interface — for free.
Pros
- The quality of their customer support is superb.
- Podia is incredibly easy to set up and use.
- Podia customers love that they're always adding new features to extend its functionality.
- Podia doesn't take a penny from your earnings; you just pay your monthly fee.
- There aren't any restrictions put on your content.
- Podia takes care of invoicing and VAT.
- You can have your own URL linking to your businesses site so you can manage all your digital products from the convenience of one place.
- Podia hosts weekly live webinars for those who haven't signed up with them yet. This is an excellent place to get the answers to your burning questions before you part with your hard-earned cash.
- Podia empowers you to create beautiful-looking courses that exude the aesthetic of your brand.
- You own your data, content, and customer list. So, if you want to move onto pastures green — it's easy to do so.
- They pay your earnings daily. You don't have to wait for 30 days to get paid, unlike other platforms.
Cons
- Some Podia users struggle to personalize their email marketing campaigns — like addressing the student by name. However, Podia's apparently working on this feature.
- There isn't built-in analytics for users to monitor their course landing pages.
- Although Podia supports an array of coupons, users would like a coupon that's both user-specific and time-specific — as at the time of writing, this isn't possible.
- There are complaints that Podia's text editor is pretty basic.
- Podia only accepts card payments via Stripe. So, if you can't access Stripe from the country your business is located, then Podia's no good for you.
👉 Read our Podia review.
3. Udemy
Udemy gives you all the tools you need to launch a digital course. Not only do they provide a platform for course creation, but they also offer tons of tutorials on how to create online courses. They even kit you with an ‘instructor dashboard' and ‘curriculum pages.' These handy resources help you to stay on track as you craft your digital product.
Then once you're done, you can publish your finished course onto Udemy's marketplace, and get access to a whole host of tools to help promote your course.
Pricing
You'll be pleased to hear, Udemy is free for instructors. You can publish limitless courses without spending a penny!
So, how do they make their money?
If a student purchases your course via an instructor coupon, you'll receive 97% of the revenue, and the remaining 3% is given to Udemy.
Alternatively, the revenue is split 50-50 if you make an organic sale, i.e., no instructor coupon was used.
Pros
- Udemy has an active community of students looking to purchase courses. As such, Udemy's marketplace presents a great opportunity to get your course in front of people who might be interested in what you have to offer.
- It's easy to use – Udemy comes with a ready-to-use course template. So, just upload your content, and you're good to go.
- Udemy is SEO-friendly – Udemy courses rank highly on Google's search results. Period.
- You can offer students both offline and mobile access to your classes.
- Excellent customer support: The FAQ section has plenty of in-depth articles and guides. There's also the ‘global instructor community' where you're encouraged to ask questions to other teachers. If all else fails, and you don't get the help you need using these ‘DIY' options; you can submit an e-mail ticket to Udemy's customer support team.
Cons
- The rating system can make it tough to make sales, i.e., It's a challenge to secure customers when you only have a few (if any) ratings when similar courses boast five-star reviews.
- Udemy has a habit of slashing course prices: They regularly host sitewide sales, so it's not uncommon for $250 courses to be cut down to as low as $10!
- Branding: It's hard to brand yourself. Not just in terms of uploading a colored logo, but the majority of your marketing will have Udemy's brand plastered on them.
👉 Read our Udemy review.
4. Teachery
Teachery is excellent for entrepreneurs who want to get their course up and running as quickly as possible. It doesn't boast the same number of bells and whistles as their competitors – but they get the job done.
It's a straightforward solution, ideal for course developers who don't want to face tons of options and features to choose from.
Pricing
- The ‘Monthly' plan – $49 per month
- The ‘Annual' plan – $470 per year (you'll save 20%)
Both these plans come with a two-week free trial, as well as the following features:
- Unlimited courses, students, landing and sales pages
- An affiliate program
- Customer support
- Custom domains
- Email integrations
- Customer analytics
- An intuitive course editor
- Promo codes and discounts
- Recurring payment pages
- Drip scheduling
- Export customer data
- Custom HTML support
- Zero transaction fees
Pros
- If you want to set up your digital product super quickly, this might just be the platform for you!
- It's wallet-friendly, making it ideal for entrepreneurs on a tight budget.
- Teachery's customer support is allegedly second to none. Founders of the company make it a priority to interact and reply to their users. Customers report timely responses to e-mail tickets (in some cases, less than half an hour).
Cons
- This isn't an ideal solution if you want more than the basics. Here are a few of the features some Teachery users find lacking:
- You can only integrate with Mailchimp and ConvertKit if you want to link your e-mail marketing campaigns to your Teachery account.
- There isn't a course schedule for students
- Teachery doesn't host the majority of your content — images, video, audio, etc.
- You can’t upload content to your lessons. Instead, you have to embed it using code.
- Their design options are limited (unless you use a third-party app).
- You can’t create student quizzes
- Students can’t upload materials
- It's complicated to accept customer payments that don't come through Stripe.
- Finding your course login page is a challenge.
- There aren't any affiliate management options
- You can't provide students with certificates
👉 Read our Teachery review.
5. Academy of Mine
Academy of Mine is a holistic learning management platform, where entrepreneurs can craft, sell, and market their digital courses. It doesn't matter what size enterprise you're running; there's a good chance Academy of Mine has the tools you need to launch your venture.
Pricing
- The ‘Essentials' plan — a 30-day free trial, then it's $499 per month
- The ‘Professional' plan — a 30-day free trial, then it's $9,500 a year
- The ‘Enterprise' plan — a 30-day free trial, then it's $14,500+ per annum
Pros
- You can insert: custom text, pdf docs, audio, video, powerpoints, and quizzes (and much more) very quickly – They even permit you to upload SCORM files (without tracking) built using tools like Articulate, Lectora, etc. Not many of their competitors have this option!
- Academy of Mine makes it straightforward to manage your course, so much so, you can virtually ‘set and forget' the majority of your content and leave things to run themselves.
- It's easy to navigate and manage your student population — including their grades. Academy of Mine's assignment functionality is nothing short of robust. Plus, students can upload assignments for you to peruse in either a text or zip file.
- There's an e-commerce function.
- Although students can register, enroll, and pay directly by themselves, you can still enroll students manually (should you need to).
- You can “package” individual courses together. This works wonders if you want to run a promotion.
- Course developers can set coupons to encourage sales.
- Academy of Mine's support team is impeccable. They're incredibly accommodating.
- Academy of Mine is very flexible. They're happy to customize each and every account to meet the needs of their customers.
- You can enroll an unlimited number of students.
- They don't take a dime from your sales; instead, you just pay a fixed subscription.
- You can use your own payment gateways to accept funds from customers which can be directly transferred into your account automatically. You won't have to wait months on end to access your money.
- You can create an award students with a certificate once they've completed your course.
- Academy of Mine is always adding new features and making improvements.
- You get access to a huge community of course developers and third-party widgets to help enhance your course.
Cons
- Historically, Academy of Mine didn't provide many video guides explaining how their platform works — however, they've since increased their library of video tutorials.
- Many users report it taking a while for them to get to grips with Academy of Mine's interface.
6. Kajabi
Kajabi is a comprehensive content marketing platform. They provide everything you could possibly need to launch and manage an online course. You can design and run landing pages, launch email marketing campaigns, edit your digital products, and much much more.
Pricing
- The ‘Basic' plan: $119 per month. This entitles you to create three products, three pipelines, one website, an unlimited number of landing pages, and marketing emails. You can also register and communicate with 10,000 contacts and 1,000 active members. You'll get one admin user, Kajabi's ‘Hero University,' 0% transaction fees; you can run live webinars and events, get access to ready-to-use templates, set student quizzes and surveys, and benefit from live chat support.
- The ‘Growth' plan: $159 per month. You'll get everything in the ‘Basic' plan, plus: 15 products, 15 pipelines, 25,000 contacts, 10,000 active members, ten admin users, the removal of Kajabi's branding, automation features, and an affiliate program.
- The ‘Pro' plan: $319 per month. You'll get access to everything listed in the previous two bundles, plus: 100 products, 100 pipelines, 2,000,000, marketing emails, 100,000 contacts, 20,000 active members, three websites, 25 admin users, access to Kajabi's ‘Experts Academy,' and a theme editor.
Pros
- If you wanted to, you could run the entirety of your online business using Kajabi: your e-mail marketing, landing pages, sales pages, shopping cart, website, blog, marketing funnels, online courses. You name it — Kajabi has a tool for it.
- Kajabi's always improving their features and adding more to increase their functionality.
- Kajabi offers excellent live customer support, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Users report never waiting more than five minutes to connect with a customer support agent. They always provide top-notch advice, troubleshoot your issues, and in some cases, go as far as to edit code to provide a customized solution.
- Kajabi makes it easy to create professional-looking online courses.
- Kajabi is well-renowned for listening to customer feedback and taking action.
- You can customize virtually everything.
Cons
- Although Kajabi does everything, it's not always the best at everything. For example, when it comes to e-mail marketing, it's easier to do certain things in MailChimp than it is in Kajabi — for example accessing e-mail stats.
- It doesn't offer students completion certificates.
- It takes a while to get to grips with Kajabi's interface — some patience is certainly required when you first start out.
- Some users report that both Kajabi's affiliate program and upsell features could use some improvement.
👉 Read our Kajabi review.
7. Ruzuku
Ruzuku is best known for making it “ridiculously easy” for entrepreneurs to develop a course. So, if user-friendliness is a big deal for you, this could be the ideal solution. Ruzuku allows you to create a course quickly, and develop the design of your online school as you gradually get to grips with Ruzuku's software.
Pricing
- The ‘Bootstrapper' plan: $74.75 a month. Create an unlimited number of courses without restriction on the number of students, videos, audio files, and data hosting you need. That's in addition to 0% transaction fees; customers can pay you directly via coupons, Paypal or Stripe, coupons and you'll receive comprehensive customer support.
- The ‘Up-and-Comer' plan: $83.08 a month. You'll get everything in the ‘Bootstrapper' package, as well as: unlimited webinars, polls, and quizzes. You can also offer students subscription and payment plans.
- The ‘University' plan: $125 per month. You'll get everything in the previous two packages, plus: your own domain, multiple instructors and site managers, as well as a dedicated account manager.
Pros
- Ruzuku's interface is incredibly simple and flexible.
- If you have design experience, you can create a more customized look.
- Ruzuku integrates with plenty of third-party apps which permit you to create quizzes, infographics, audio files, and enhance your images.
- There's an option to drip feed content to your students.
- You can copy your course and split test various elements until you find a winning combination. Course developers typically want to test: price points, coupon codes, and content formats.
- You can encourage students to engage with your content by hosting live webinars inside of Ruzuku's dashboard and adding community forums to your content pages. These are attractive and inviting discussion boards, not the ugly kind indicative of the '90s.
- When students sign up to your course, they're given the option of uploading a photo of themselves and a bio so that they can make the most out of these discussion forums.
Cons
- Ruzuku's sales pages aren't great. Users report wanting more flexibility to customize and design these pages — like being able to modify the size of the cover photo, move elements around on the page, and the option of uploading videos.
- You’re subject to Ruzuku's terms and conditions. On the whole, this isn't a big deal. However, some courses have been shut down as a result of violating the small print (however this is a tiny minority).
8. Uscreen
Uscreen is a video-based CMS designed to help you launch and manage video courses. You can create beautiful and professional storefronts with no-coding theme customization. You can arrange content by collection, category, and price. Then order videos into playlists, episodes, or chapters, depending on the course type you're offering. Finally, you can also add your logo and brand colors for a more personalized touch.
Users can subscribe to your content, rent it, or pay a one-off fee. In addition, you can add extras such as workbooks and pdfs to accompany your content.
Thanks to its 100% no buffering guarantee, Uscreen is perfect for scheduling streams across multiple devices. But, most importantly, your audience can engage with your content via in-video live chat and commenting features.
Pricing
All the plans are billed monthly, but you can choose annual billing for a 20% discount. On top of that, Uscreen charges an additional $0.50 per subscriber per month.
- The Basic plan is priced at $99 a month. This includes 50GB of video storage. You also get access to your own dashboard for one user, one-on-one onboarding from the Uscreen team, and email support.
- A step up from this, you have the Growth plan at $159 a month. You get everything in the Basic plan, plus: integrations like Zapier, Mailchimp, and LinkedIn. In addition, you can migrate existing content to your new site, access 50GB of video storage space, and register three admin users, each entitled to one-on-one onboarding. It also includes live chat support.
- Lastly, there's a custom Uscreen Plus plan. You'll have to contact Uscreen directly for a quote. It covers everything in the Growth plan, but you'll also receive a dedicated account manager and integration support. Plus, you can host live streams, TV streams, and launch your course as a mobile app. Not to mention, it includes custom white-label branding for all your products.
Pros
- Uscreen offers one-on-one onboarding to help you get up and running.
- Uscreen provides an extensive library of self-help resources.
- You control your earnings and subscriber list, so you can get paid as soon as a customer checks out.
- Uscreen lets you distribute content across various media, including apps, TV, and live streams.
- You can upload content in bulk.
- You choose how you monetize your content, such as pay-per-view, bundles, one-off fees, rentals, and subscriptions.
- Customers can engage with you during live streams via in-video chats
- Customers can set up their own profiles.
- Uscreen accepts payments from PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, and more and supports 130 different currencies.
Cons
- On top of their subscription plans, you have to pay extra for each active subscriber.
- The live streaming, app, and TV distribution are only available on the highest tier plan.
- As Uscreen isn't a marketplace, you have to build your own audience.
- Uscreen doesn't offer in-built quizzing or survey functionality
- Students can't upload material.
- You can't provide students with certificates.
- You can only use Uscreen's integrations from the Growth plan onwards.
👉 Read our Uscreen review.
9. Courses by Architechpro OÜ
Courses by Achitechpro OÜ is a Shopify app designed to empower you to add online courses to your eCommerce store. Courses by Achitechpro OÜ makes it easy to create a comprehensive and customizable learning platform with easy installation and a user-friendly interface for your audience.
You can monetize your knowledge by creating and selling various subscriptions, membership bundles, and digital e-learning products. Users can create accounts with you, log in to take your courses, sign up for webinars, access guides, etc.
Courses by Achitechpro OÜ offers easy progress tracking where users can see their grades and course information. In addition, you can create course certificates and offer users feedback to encourage and add value to their learning journey.
The app also gives you the option for social media integration, where learners can share their progress with friends and other community members.
Pricing
- The free plan is $0 a month – This provides a demo of Architchpro OÜ's services. You can create up to five lessons per store for an unlimited number of students. It also comes with course tracking and course branding.
- The basic plan is $29.99 a month – With this plan, you can launch up to 20 lessons per store and create limited-time course access and timetabled lesson releases.
- The professional plan – $49.99 a month – This package allows you to run up to 100 lessons per store. Again you get all the features in the basic plan, plus quiz creation and progress tracking.
- The enterprise plan is $199.99 a month – This comes with extensive features for creating course memberships and bundles. It includes everything in the professional plan, plus you can create unlimited lessons and create custom certificates.
Pros
- Generate revenue – Courses by Achitechpro OÜ offers a great way to drive revenue to an already existing store.
- Use with Shopify – The app is compatible with Shopify eCommerce stores.
- Easy to use – It comes with an intuitive and easily navigable interface.
- Quick to set up: The app is designed to be installed and used almost instantly.
- Focus on the learner’s journey – with tools to monitor progress, create certificates and offer grades, it’s a great way to optimize your learning platform.
- Decent free plan – The Architchpro OÜ free plan is an excellent demo of the product. You can find out exactly what you’re getting before you buy.
Cons
- No course rating – Unlike some of the other alternatives on this list, learners don’t have the option to rate and review your course.
- There are no membership options on the low-tier plans- You can only add memberships and bundles to the enterprise plan.
- No eCommerce tools – Since Courses by Achitechpro OÜ relies on a pre-existing Shopify store, it doesn’t come with ecommerce tools.
» Try Courses by Achitechpro OÜ «
Which of These Teachable Alternatives is the Best?
Each and every one of these solutions are viable Teachable alternatives. Your choice largely comes down to your budget and the number of features you want access to. If you're struggling to make a decision, we encourage you to make the most of solutions that come with free trials. That way, you can get to grips with the software before parting with your precious cash.
Have you got any experience with the above Teachable alternatives? If so, we'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions in the comments box below!
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