If you‘re looking to create and sell an online course in 2024, there‘s a good chance Teachable is on your shortlist of platforms to consider. As one of the most popular online course solutions, Teachable now powers over 100,000 creators and has helped them generate more than $1 billion in sales.
But with increasing competition in the online course platform space, is Teachable still the best choice? In this in-depth Teachable review, I‘ll take you through my experience using the platform to help you decide if it‘s right for your needs and goals.
We‘ll cover what Teachable does and how it works, break down the key features, discuss pricing, look at the major pros and cons, and compare it to top alternatives. By the end of this review, you‘ll have all the information you need to determine if Teachable is the best platform for building your online course business.
What is Teachable?
At its core, Teachable is an all-in-one platform that allows you to create and sell online courses under your own brand. It provides you with all the tools needed to build a beautiful course website, create multimedia lessons, engage your students, process payments, and run your education-based business.
The goal of Teachable is to make it as easy as possible for anyone to get into the booming online course industry. You don‘t need any design or technical skills to use it. The drag-and-drop course builder and site builder allow you to create professional courses and websites without any coding.
Additionally, Teachable handles all the complex aspects of running an online course business like payment processing, hosting, security, and VAT tax collection. This allows creators to focus solely on creating awesome course content and marketing their offerings.
Over 100,000 course creators, bloggers, authors, and businesses use Teachable to build and sell online courses and coaching products on their own branded websites. To date, Teachable customers have enrolled over 23 million students worldwide in courses ranging from programming to marketing to watercolor painting.
Teachable Features
Let‘s take a closer look at the key features Teachable provides for building a successful online course business:
Course Builder
Teachable‘s intuitive drag-and-drop course builder allows you to easily structure your course from scratch. Start by outlining your sections (modules) and lessons, then populate the lessons with videos, text, quizzes, and other content.
One really cool feature is the AI-powered Course Outline Generator. Just describe your course topic and Teachable will automatically generate a suggested course outline for you, saving a ton of time in planning your curriculum.
Multimedia Lessons
To create your lesson content, Teachable supports a wide variety of multimedia and file types. You can upload videos, audio files, images, PDFs, presentations, and more to create engaging multimedia lectures. Everything is organized in a sidebar for easy navigation by students.
Teachable also has a built-in video streaming tool with unlimited hosting via Wistia. This is great for creating professional video lessons that don‘t take forever to load. You can also easily embed YouTube and Vimeo videos.
Quizzes & Assignments
To assess student learning, Teachable allows you to add quizzes to any lesson. These can be basic multiple choice quizzes, true/false, short answer, and more. The platform also recently added an AI quiz generator that can instantly create a quiz for you based on your lesson content.
For more in-depth student assessments, you can create assignments that ask students to submit their work. Teachable supports file uploads so students can submit papers, spreadsheets, images, etc. You can then grade their work or provide personalized feedback.
Course Player & Student Experience
When a student enrolls in your Teachable course, they‘ll get access to an intuitive course player. The curriculum is laid out in an expandable sidebar and there are clear buttons to navigate between lessons.
As students progress through the course, Teachable automatically tracks their completion rate. Students can also take notes directly inside the course player which are saved for future reference.
To further customize the learning experience, you can use Teachable‘s course compliance features. For example, you can set lessons to be completed in sequential order or require students to pass quizzes to move forward. This is great for ensuring students don‘t skip ahead without mastering the material.
Other Notable Features
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Website builder – Teachable includes a drag-and-drop site builder for creating a branded course website with no coding required. You can build a homepage, sales pages, course pages, and more.
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Payment processing – Teachable has a built-in payment gateway that allows you to accept credit cards and PayPal. They handle all payment processing and security for you.
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Affiliate marketing – Teachable has a full-featured affiliate management system. Recruit affiliates to promote your courses for a revenue share to boost your sales.
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Email marketing – The platform has built-in email marketing tools for sending one-off newsletters or automated sequences to students.
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Membership subscriptions – In addition to one-time course purchases, you can also sell recurring memberships to your school or bundle of courses.
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Course certificates – Reward students with a professional certificate of completion when they finish your course. Teachable provides attractive certificate templates that are fully customizable.
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Coaching products – In addition to courses, Teachable allows you to sell coaching packages that include milestones, messaging, scheduling and more for delivering 1-on-1 services.
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Tax collection – Teachable can automatically calculate and collect VAT and sales tax on your courses to keep you compliant. A huge time-saver, especially for EU sellers.
Teachable Pricing
Teachable offers a free plan as well as three paid plans starting at $39/month. Here‘s a quick overview of the pricing tiers:
- Free Plan – $0/month + 10% transaction fee
- Basic Plan – $39/month + 5% transaction fee
- Pro Plan – $119/month + 0% transaction fee
- Business Plan – $299/month + 0% transaction fee
The free plan supports one course and 10 students maximum. It‘s a good way to test out the platform but the 10% transaction fee on all sales really eats into your revenue.
Upgrading to the Basic plan removes most feature limits but still has a 5% transaction fee. To get rid of transaction fees completely, you need to be on the Pro plan or above.
The Pro plan also unlocks features like graded quizzes, advanced reports, course completion certificates, an unbranded website, and more. For most solo course creators, the Pro plan provides everything you need.
The Business plan is designed for larger organizations with multiple courses and instructors. It‘s the only plan that allows you to create multiple schools under one account, bulk import students, and access advanced code editing.
All plans (except the Free plan) come with a 14-day free trial so you can test out all the features before committing. Overall, while not the cheapest course platform, Teachable‘s pricing is reasonable considering the extensive feature set you get access to.
Teachable Pros and Cons
To summarize, here are the key advantages and disadvantages I‘ve found with Teachable:
Teachable Pros
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All-in-one solution. Teachable provides everything you need to create, market, and sell an online course under one roof.
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Easy to use. The intuitive drag-and-drop builders make it simple to create courses and websites without any technical knowledge.
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Flexible content options. Embed video, audio, text, PDFs, quizzes and more into your multimedia lectures.
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Handles payments for you. Teachable‘s payment gateway takes care of all payment processing, including automatic VAT tax collection.
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Marketing tools included. Get access to built-in email marketing, affiliate management, coupon codes, order bumps, and more.
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Attractive course player. The course player is professional, mobile-friendly, and delivers a great student experience.
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Free plan available. The limited free plan is a good way to try out Teachable with no financial commitment.
Teachable Cons
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Transaction fees. Unless you‘re on the Pro plan or above, Teachable takes a cut of your revenue via transaction fees which can really add up.
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Pricing on the high side. Teachable plans are more expensive compared to some other popular online course platforms. You‘ll need a sizable budget to get the most out of it.
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Lacks some marketing features. While it does include helpful selling tools, Teachable is missing features like a sales funnel builder that other platforms provide.
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No mobile app. Teachable does not currently offer native mobile apps for iOS or Android, although the responsive website works fine on mobile devices.
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Limited community features. If you want to build an online community around your course, Teachable‘s options are pretty basic compared to alternatives like Mighty Networks.
Alternatives to Teachable
While Teachable is an excellent course platform, it‘s not the only option out there. Here are a few top alternatives to consider:
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Thinkific – Another all-in-one course platform with a generous free plan and more advanced quiz and student assessment options.
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Podia – A feature-rich platform that bundles courses, digital downloads, and membership sites together under one roof.
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Kajabi – A powerful course platform with more advanced site building and marketing automation features built-in.
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LearnDash – A WordPress LMS plugin that allows you to build a course site on your own hosting for more control and customization.
Is Teachable Right For You?
Now for the big question – is Teachable the right online course platform for you?
If you‘re a beginner looking to create your first course with no technical headaches, Teachable is an excellent choice. The intuitive course builder and helpful AI tools allow you to get up and running quickly.
Teachable is also a good fit for experienced course creators who want an all-in-one solution. The platform can scale to support large student numbers and the feature set is comprehensive enough to run your entire business.
However, Teachable may not be ideal if you‘re on a very tight budget, as the transaction fees can take a big chunk out of your revenue. The pricing is also on the high side compared to some other popular platforms.
Additionally, if you want to build a vibrant community around your course, Teachable‘s community features are fairly limited. You may want to use a dedicated community platform like Circle or Mighty Networks in addition to Teachable.
Overall though, Teachable is one of the best online course platforms on the market today and I highly recommend giving it a try. With the free plan and 14-day trial of paid plans, you‘ve got nothing to lose.
Check out Teachable today and start building your online course empire!
