Teachable is one of the more popular and user-friendly online course platforms that are available.
It even offers a free plan, but is it worth upgrading to one of their paid plans?
What are
In this article, I’ll outline the different plans that
It can be quite challenging to find on their website. In fact, it doesn’t appear or get mentioned on their pricing page at all. But yes, Teachable does have a free plan available.
The plan has some pretty generous offerings. Including unlimited hosting and courses, basic quizzes, integrated payment processing, and even discussion forums.
Whether
And you’re also only limited to having 10 students on this plan. So it’s really just a way to test out the platform more than anything else.
If you’re selling more than a couple of courses per month, you’ll want to upgrade to one of
Since
One of the most significant drawbacks of the Basic plan for me is that you’ll be charged a 5% transaction fee on all of your course sales.
It’s quite rare to see an online course platform that charges transaction fees on a paid plan nowadays. But I suppose it’s how
For the price, this plan does have a lot to offer. You can have an unlimited number of students and courses, plus you get an unlimited amount of storage for all of your videos and other content.
You’ll be able to take advantage of integrated email marketing, drip course content to students, basic quizzes, and you can even offer coupon codes.
Teachable also has an extensive library of course creator training available, which they call TeachableU.
For payments taken through
On the Basic plan you get access to a few standard third-party integrations like Facebook, Google Analytics, Sumo, MailChimp, ConvertKit, and Zapier. Some others are locked behind higher pricing tiers.
Choosing the basic plan can be a great way to get started with selling online courses. Still, you’ll probably want to upgrade pretty soon if you’re seeing any level of success.
Depending on the price you’re selling your course for, it’s probably more cost-effective to upgrade to
At $99 per month,
That can quickly offset the extra cost, especially if you’re selling a lot of courses each month. So it’s no surprise that this is the most popular option that
The Professional plan allows you to give permissions to up to 5 admin-level users. That includes a primary owner, owners, and authors.
So if you have other instructors or assistants working with you, they can access the platform without having to give them the password to your main account.
This mid-tier plan also unlocks a significant amount of extra features compared to the Basic plan.
You can have an unbranded website, which means that you’ll no longer have
However, it’s worth noting there are some limitations to this. You’ll still have
The Professional plan gives you priority product support, so you’ll be likely to get quicker responses from
You’ll also be able to make use of graded quizzes, instead of just basic ones. And you can offer your students course certificates upon completion.
Advanced reporting becomes available on this plan, which can show you valuable information about your courses, students, upsells, and videos.
Lastly, you get a powerful integrated affiliate marketing tool. So you can recruit your students and others to help drive sales to you, in exchange for a commission.
This plan costs $249 per month. So it’s probably more than you can afford if you’re just getting started selling courses, but that’s also not really who it’s meant for.
The business plan lets you have up to 20 admin-level users, and you can assign custom user roles.
So this plan is really for those who are looking to create an entire online school with multiple instructors and staff, as opposed to just selling a few courses.
It’s also an option if you want to use
On top of priority product support, you’ll also be able to take advantage of group coaching calls with
Most of the features that
You also get advanced theme customization on the Business plan, so you can really make your pages look exactly how you want them to.
All of the prices that I’ve quoted above assume that you’re paying for
If you decide to pay monthly instead of annually:
If you’re serious about selling online courses, then I’d highly recommend signing up for a full year of
You really limit your chances of success in your business by only signing up for a month or two. Plus the discount is the equivalent of getting about 2 or 3 months for free, depending on what plan you’re using.
Teachable makes it easy to get in touch with them in a few different ways.
You can use the email ticketing system to send in any questions or concerns that you have.
Or if you’re on a plan that supports priority product support, you can use their live chat tool to get a response in as little as a few minutes.
Unfortunately
There is also a large knowledge base of articles available that can help to walk you through how to do most things on the platform.
The Teachable blog is also quite helpful and full of tips for marketing your courses, so it’s definitely worth checking out.
Teachable is a cost-effective online course platform that will give you the basic tools that you need to start selling your course.
Although there’s a free plan available, it’s so restrictive that it’s not really worth it in my opinion. You’ll be charged a 10% + $1 transaction fee, and you can only have 10 students.
Even the Basic plan is only worth it if you’re trying to sell your first course, since the 5% transaction fees on each sale will start to add up.
The Professional plan is where you’ll get the most value for money. It unlocks graded quizzes, an affiliate program, advanced reports, and a bunch of other features you’ll want to have.
And the Business plan is always an option if you need extra admin-level users and are dealing with a particularly large number of students.
If you’re still weighing up different online course platforms then be sure to check out my posts comparing:
For an overview of these options and more, read my guide to the 7 best Teachable alternatives.
Jacob has a background in finance and engineering. Outside of his day job, he is a lifelong learner, who enjoys reading, taking online courses, and writing about what he's learned.
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