As you may already know, it’s not exactly an “Apples to Apples” comparison. Shopify and Teachable are designed to serve two very different groups of business owners.
While they both support ecommerce, Shopify takes a broad approach to online sales, where Teachable focuses on sales.
Since you can sell digital products and subscriptions on both platforms, deciding which solution to use can be challenging.
After years of experimenting with website builders and SaaS platforms like these two, I created this comparison guide, to help you make the right choice.
Here, you’ll access all the insights of myself, and the Ecommerce Platforms team, into the features, benefits, pricing, and potential of both Shopify and Teachable.
In this article:
Quick Verdict
When to Choose Shopify over Teachable
Shopify is the best choice if you want more freedom to sell a variety of products across a range of platforms. As an omnichannel commerce platform, Shopify allows companies to sell across marketplaces, their own online store, social media platforms and even in brick-and-mortar stores. Plus, it empowers companies to sell anything, from subscriptions to physical products.
When to Choose Teachable over Shopify
Teachable is the obvious choice if you’re building a business focused solely on e-learning and online education. It offers a robust course builder, access to powerful ecommerce tools, its own site builder, and a fantastic variety of community tools. Plus, it’s extremely easy to use, with simple design tools that require virtually no training.
- Full solution from $29/month
- Limited time offer: first 3 months for $1/month
- SEO Friendly
- Offline Store
- App Store
- 24/7 Support
- Beautiful Templates
- Easy to use interface
- Customizable sales
- Over 130 payments options
- Free Plan Available
- No code website builder
Shopify Pros and Cons
Pros 👍
- Support for selling any kind of product or service
- Powerful website builder with unique themes
- Excellent marketing features and engagement tools
- Reliable and secure payment processing
- Omnichannel and international sales options
- Easy-to-use environment for beginners
- In-depth reporting and analytical features
Cons 👎
- No native course creation
- Transaction fees on all plans
Teachable Pros and Cons
Pros 👍
- Excellent course creation tools with AI features
- Options for selling all kinds of eLearning services
- Fantastic reporting and analytics
- Secure payment processing with automatic tax calculation
- Lots of integrations and add-ons with leading tools
- Reliable features for student engagement
Cons 👎
- Only supports the sale of digital products
- High transaction fees on the free plan
Comparison Table
| Shopify | Teachable | |
|---|---|---|
| Core features | Features range from comprehensive website-building and page-building tools, to business management apps, reports and analytics, integrated payment processing, blogging, and SEO. There’s also a host of integrations to choose from. | Extensive course creation tools with integrated AI support, as well as payment processing, sales and marketing tools, analytics and reporting features, and student experience tools. Plus, there’s an app hub for integrations. |
| Pricing | Shopify Starter plan for $5 per month, or full website builder plans starting at $39 per month, with full access to Shopify features. | Free plan with high transaction fees ($1 plus 10%), or various paid plans starting at $39 per month for up to 5 products. |
| Web design and templates | Comprehensive and easy-to-use website builder, with tons of customization options. Plus, dozens of free and premium themes to choose from. | Numerous free themes to experiment with, a drag-and-drop website editor, and lots of customization tools for branding your site. |
| Ecommerce | Support for sales of any product or service on any channel, with virtually any payment method, via Shopify payments. Shopify POS is also available for in-store selling. | Comprehensive payment processing tools for all forms of common payment methods, as well as automatic tax calculation, and fraud and chargeback protections. |
| Course builder | No integrated course builder. You can sell subscriptions to gated content on Shopify, or use an integration to sell courses through your store. | Powerful course creation tool with support for multiple forms of media, quizzes, assignments, and certificates. You can also use AI tools to create quizzes or course outlines. |
| Apps and Integrations | Hundreds of integrations with common business tools, as well as direct integrations with social media channels, Google analytics, and online marketplaces like Amazon. | Integrations with various sales, marketing, and business intelligence tools, ranging from Mailchimp to Google Analytics. |
| Customer support | Extensive self-help resources such as guides, videos, FAQs and blogs, as well as community support, live chat and email guidance, and options to hire a Shopify expert. | Powerful self-help resources, including guides, FAQs, blogs and videos, as well as a robust online community. You can also contact the team via chat or email, and hire a Teachable expert for help creating course content. |
Shopify vs Teachable: The Overall Features
Quick Verdict: Unsurprisingly, Shopify is the clear winner in terms of overall features, thanks to its versatility. It allows companies to create virtually any kind of website or store, access a host of solutions for business management, and even implement marketing campaigns in an all-in-one environment. It’s one of the most comprehensive site builders around.
Though Shopify and Teachable target different types of entrepreneurs with their software, they do offer some of the same features.
Both tools allow users to build websites with convenient templates and themes. They also both offer payment processing, subscription options, analytics and reporting tools, and a fantastic app hub for integrations.
Shopify Core Features
Shopify is an all-in-one commerce platform, supporting omnichannel sales solutions for physical and digital products.
You can use Shopify to sell your own products, or integrate with dropshipping and POD platforms. There’s even a POS solution available for in-store selling.
Some of the key features of Shopify include:
- The website builder: An easy-to-use website builder with endless themes and templates to choose from, as well as powerful customization options.
- Online and offline selling: With Shopify, you can sell through social media, your own website, marketplaces, and even in brick-and-mortar stores.
- Payment processing: Shopify supports all common payment methods, from online credit and debit card transactions, to mobile wallets, subscriptions, and buy-now-pay-later options.
- Content management: There’s an integrated blog, with SEO features already built-in. Plus, you can align your store with email, social media, and paid advertising campaigns.
- Analytics and reporting: In-depth reporting tools for insights into sales, tax, product performance, inventory, and business growth.
- Customer engagement: Connect with customers through live chat, email, and even automated bots through integrations.
- App market: The Shopify app market is packed with add-ons for your website, from bookkeeping and accounting tools, to marketing integrations.
Teachable Core Features
Teachable is a course creation platform, designed to help educators monetize their knowledge.
The platform allows users to sell digital downloads, coaching, and online courses, with integrated payment processing tools. Plus, there are countless features available for increasing sales, enhancing your marketing efforts, and interacting with students.
Some of the key features of Teachable include:
- Course creation: Build powerful courses with all types of media, offer live coaching sessions, or sell digital downloads, all from the same convenient environment.
- Website builder: Build a simple website where you can showcase your courses and capture leads, with simple templates and a drag-and-drop editor.
- Payment processing: Boost sales with flexible payment options, like buy-now-pay-later. Automate tax filing, and leverage fraud protection and chargeback support.
- Sales and marketing: Create lead magnets and build landing pages to increase sales. Use tracking pixels for insights, and design affiliate marketing campaigns.
- AI content creation: Generate course outlines in seconds with artificial intelligence, add subtitles or translations to videos, or create quizzes based on lesson content.
- Analytics and reporting: Access behind-the-scenes insights into student engagement, course completion, and marketing results.
- Student experience: Upgrade the student experience with communication tools, graded quizzes, and other engagement tools.
- App hub: Connect Teachable with dozens of third-party apps, such as website builder platforms, marketing tools, and business intelligence plugins.
Pricing Plans
Quick Verdict: Teachable wins this round thanks to its free plan, which allows users to create a single “digital product”, and access a no-code course and website builder. However, there is a $1 plus 10% transaction fee to consider on this plan.
Both Teachable and Shopify offer access to a range of plans and packages to suit different business needs. While both tools are reasonably affordable, Teachable is the only one to offer a free plan.
Teachable Pricing
The Teachable free plan allows users to create 1 course, coaching service, or download. You can also access student referrals, payment processing, and the no-code course and website builder.
It’s worth remembering the free plan includes a transaction fee of $1 plus 10%, which is pretty high. Paid plans on Teachable include:
- Basic: $39 per month for 5 published products, 1 membership tier, integrated email marketing, coupons and order bumps, live group coaching, accelerator challenge access and all the features of the Free plan. There’s also a 5% transaction fee.
- Pro: $119 per month for all the features of the Basic plan, with no transaction fee, support for 50 published products, unlimited membership tiers, affiliate marketing, live chat support, upsell options, public API access, and 5 admins. You also get to remove Teachable branding.
- Pro+: $199 per month for the features of the Pro plan, plus 200 courses, coaching products, digital downloads, and product bundles, plus custom user roles.
There’s also an “Enterprise level” business plan, with all the Pro+ plan features, plus advanced theme customizations, custom user roles, bulk student enrollment, and unlimited products. Business plans start at $499 per month.
Shopify Pricing
Shopify offers no free plan, though you can get started for $1 per month for the first 3 months. There’s also the Starter plan, for $5 per month, which allows you to sell through messenger and social media sites, but doesn’t include access to the website builder. Other plans include:
The core plans from Shopify include:
- Basic: $39 per month with 1,000 inventory locations, unlimited products, SSL certificates, 2 staff accounts, basic reports, full access to the website builder, apps, integrations, marketing tools, SEO, and a range of other features.
- Shopify: $105 per month for all the features of the Basic plan, plus multi-channel global selling, shipping discounts, 5 staff accounts, professional reports, and more advanced business management tools.
- Advanced: $399 per month for all the features of Shopify, plus 15 staff accounts, import tax automation tools, gift cards, a custom report builder and more.
There’s also an enterprise plan, “Shopify Plus”, which includes all the features in the Advanced package, plus more customization options, uptime guarantees, API access, and advanced security features. All of Shopify’s plans do have transaction fees to consider too.
Website Design and Templates
Quick Verdict: Shopify offers more advanced website design tools, with advanced solutions for customization. There are also dozens of free and premium themes to choose from, so you can start building with no coding knowledge.
As mentioned above, both Shopify and Teachable will allow you to build and design your own online presence, but the tools offered are very different.
Teachable
Teachable’s site builder is a relatively straightforward tool, promising powerful customization. It comes with access to a range of responsive templates and themes, and a handy drag-and-drop editing tool.
You can manage all of your domains and subdomains in one place with Teachable, and create a range of different types of pages, from “About” pages, to landing pages. Plus, the solution offers valuable features for SEO, like meta descriptions. As an added bonus, you can use code snippets to make advanced changes to templates.
Shopify
Though Teachable’s website building tools and templates are impressive (and easy to use), they can’t quite compare with the solutions offered by Shopify. Shopify’s website builder is one of the best on the market, with everything you need already included, including free and premium themes.
You can customize every part of your website, creating your own domain, adding your own color palettes, and even designing your own logo with Shopify’s free tool. Plus, you can build any kind of page, from product pages, to landing pages.
Shopify also benefits from an integrated blog and content management solution, with SEO-ready features to help you rank online. Like Teachable, Shopify also allows users to dive into their website code and make granular changes to the user interface.
Ecommerce Features
Quick Verdict: Shopify is by far the better ecommerce platform. It doesn’t just support digital sales, but physical product sales, subscriptions, and other transaction types too. Plus, with Shopify, you can sell on any channel, offline or online, and accept virtually any payment method.
Teachable
Both Shopify and Teachable are ideal for launching an ecommerce brand. While teachable isn’t a dedicated ecommerce platform, it does support online sales. You can sell subscriptions or memberships for your online courses and platforms, or allow customers to buy one-off courses.
You also have the freedom to choose between selling full courses, digital downloads, or coaching sessions. The robust payment processing tools ensure you can accept virtually any kind of payment method, and keep track of all of your transactions in one convenient place. Teachable supports buy-now-pay-later options, Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, and credit and debit cards.
Plus, there’s a “BackOffice” tool for automated tax form creation and access to advanced payment options. As an added bonus, Teachable comes with fraud protection and chargeback solutions to help defend your business against scams.
Shopify
Shopify doesn’t just offer all the same features as Teachable for ecommerce, it also comes with some unique capabilities too. Like with Teachable, you can use Shopify to accept virtually any payment method through Shopify Payments. Companies can automatically calculate tax and VAT, convert prices into different currencies for global selling, and more.
Plus, you can sell subscriptions, memberships, digital products, and physical products, all at the same time. Shopify makes it easy to track all of your transactions in a unified backend. Plus, the Shopify POS solution means you can explore the realm of in-store sales too.
What’s more, to help ecommerce companies sell physical products, Shopify offers access to dedicated shipping tools, and the Shopify Fulfillment network.
Course Creation
Quick Verdict: Teachable is the clear option to choose if you’re looking for course creation. You can design comprehensive courses, engage customers with quizzes and assignments, and even sell coaching sessions and digital downloads worldwide.
Teachable
While Shopify has an edge in terms of overall ecommerce functionality, Teachable takes the crown for course creation tools. The no-code course builder on the Teachable platform is just as straightforward as its website builder, with drag-and-drop tools and pre-built templates.
You can upload virtually any kind of content into your courses, from videos to audio, and even engage students with quizzes and assignments. Plus, Teachable actively helps educators get started with access to intuitive AI tools that can build course outlines, translate text, or create quizzes on your behalf. There’s also plenty of ways to connect with your student audience.
You can allow customers to leave comments on your courses, and create certificates of completion to send to successful graduates.
Shopify
Shopify doesn’t have any specific course creation tools for online educators, but it doesn’t prevent you from selling courses either. You can create gated content and sell it to your customers on a subscription basis, using Shopify subscriptions.
It’s also worth noting that Shopify integrates with a huge range of tools that can help you to design and publish course content, such as Thinkific. Most of the apps you can access for course creation will incur an additional fee on top of your Shopify subscription.
Apps & Integrations
Quick Verdict: Shopify has one of the largest app marketplaces around, with dozens of tools to choose from, ranging from course builders to marketing and sales tools. Plus, you can automatically connect your site to Google analytics, social media channels, and online marketplaces.
As mentioned above, both Teachable and Shopify have their own “app marketplaces,” where you can find add-ons and integrations to enhance your online presence. Teachable’s app hub includes native integrations for a variety of tools, such as MailChimp, Google Analytics, TikTok, and Dropbox.
Alternatively, Shopify’s app market is brimming with thousands of potential integrations to explore. You can connect your site to LMS platforms, marketing tools, sales solutions, and accounting or bookkeeping apps. Plus, Shopify integrates with a range of social media platforms, Google Analytics, and marketplaces like Amazon.
Customer Support
Quick Verdict: It’s a tie, both Shopify and Teachable offer chat and email support, as well as access to a variety of self-help resources. You can access guides, FAQs, blog posts, and even community support with both platforms too.
Both Teachable and Shopify benefit from being relatively easy to use, but there’s still a chance you might need a little extra support from time to time. Fortunately, both of these platforms take a similar approach to support.
On both platforms, you can access powerful educational tools and resources, such as guides, FAQs, videos, and blogs to help answer any questions you might have. Both companies have an active community, so you can seek help from other like-minded professionals.
Additionally, they both offer live chat and email support, with relatively quick response rates. What’s more, both companies allow companies to hire “experts” for an extra fee.
Teachable vs Shopify: The Verdict
Teachable and Shopify are two excellent platforms for entrepreneurs looking to develop and grow their online business. They both offer website building tools, powerful integrations, and payment processing options. However, there are some major differences between the two solutions.
Teachable is definitely the way to go if you’re looking to build a career as an online educator, with its excellent course creation tools, and solutions for student engagement. In our opinion, Shopify is by far the better choice if you’re looking for more flexibility.
With Shopify you can sell anything, from physical products to digital downloads, and even online courses with the help of integrations.
FAQ
Teachable isn’t available on the Shopify app store, but you can integrate the two platforms using Zapier, or another integration service. Fortunately, you can create your own online website with Teachable, without using Shopify.
You can sell courses on Shopify, but there’s no native course builder. You can create premium gated content and sell it with Shopify subscriptions, or you can use an integration with a tool like Thinkific or Easy Digital Downloads.
Starting a Shopify store is definitely worthwhile if you want to get started in the ecommerce world. Shopify is feature-rich, easy to use, and ideal for selling all kinds of products and services. You can even choose to sell in-person with Shopify POS.
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