10 Excellent Teachable Alternatives to Build Your Online Course

Teachable is undoubtedly one of the most well-known online course platforms around. But, although it’s super user-friendly, it does lack some of the more advanced features. It also has quite high transaction fees on the free and Basic plans, which can affect your earnings. So, in this guide, we’re sharing the best Teachable alternatives for building and selling courses online.

Each of the online course platforms on this list has unique features, so keep reading to find the perfect online course platform for your business.

The Best Teachable Alternatives

In the search for powerful online course platforms, while Teachable is a strong contender, several viable alternatives offer unique features and capabilities.

1. Thinkific: Best Teachable Alternative Overall

Thinkific is a robust platform that enables you to build unlimited courses, communities, and memberships. Building your online course is easy, thanks to the ‘drag-and-drop’ interface. It’s also highly customizable, so you can create a beautiful course that perfectly matches your existing branding with ease.

Its main features include:

• Unlimited courses
• Unlimited students
• Community spaces
• Live events in communities
• Student course reviews
• 90+ Integrations
• Automated tax collection

The fact that Thinkific allows you to have unlimited students on every plan (even the free one!) means you can rest assured knowing that no matter how many students sign up for your courses, your fees won’t be any higher, allowing you to keep every penny you earn.

It also allows you to sell your courses and products through affiliates on all paid plans. This is a great way to scale your business without taking on additional team members!

If you’re looking for a Teachable alternative that is highly customizable and easy to use, Thinkific is a great option to consider.

Thinkific’s Pricing

Thinkific offers a completely free plan. This plan allows you to create one course and one community, with two spaces per community. There are no transaction fees on the free plan, so you keep everything you earn.

Paid plans start from just $36 per month.

2. Podia: Runner Up

Podia is an online platform that provides everything you need to create and sell online courses, membership sites, and digital downloads.

You can also use Podia to build your website, host webinars, and even for your email marketing, which means you can run your entire online business from one place. This makes it the perfect platform for creators looking for a ‘one-stop-shop’ that really does it all.

The platform itself is very easy to use, with a great range of templates to choose from. This means you can have a sleek-looking course up and running in a matter of hours with no coding or design skills needed.

One of the best things about Podia is that the email marketing is integrated, making it one of the best Teachable alternatives around. This means you won’t need to connect with any third-party tools. Unless you want to, of course.

The integrated email marketing software also has fantastic analytics, which connects directly to your courses and products, allowing you to work out your exact ROI from every email you send!

Overall, Podia is a great alternative to Teachable if you want to be able to run your entire business from one place.

Podia’s Pricing

Podia has a completely free plan available, which allows you to sell one coaching product and one digital download.

Paid plans start from just $33 per month, with zero transaction fees. If you want to take advantage of integrated email marketing, you simply pay for the number of subscribers on your list.

3. Kajabi: Best for Online Coaches

Used and loved by experts around the world, Kajabi is one of the best Teachable alternatives around. This popular online course platform has a huge range of features on offer, including:

• Online courses
• Memberships
• Coaching products
• Communities
• Podcasts

It’s the only platform on this list that includes Podcasts, so if you’re planning to create a Podcast as part of your marketing strategy, you will be able to manage everything in one place with Kajabi.

It also offers a wide range of customization options that allow you to perfectly tailor every element of your online course website. The only downside is that it’s a lot more expensive than Teachable. But as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.

Kajabi Pricing

Kajabi doesn’t offer a free plan. However, you can take advantage of the 14-day free trial if you want to test the waters.

Paid plans range from $119/month to $319/month, depending on how many features you need.

4. Lifter LMS: Best for WordPress Users

Lifter LMS turns your WordPress website into a powerful online course platform.

Some of its key features include:

• Course creator with multimedia lessons and quizzes
• Memberships
• Certificates and achievement badges
• 1:1 coaching
• Communities
• CRM

It’s easy to get started, and once you’ve installed Lifter LMS, the setup wizard will guide you through every step of creating your first online course.

It works well with all good WordPress themes, with customization options that will allow you to tailor the look of your course to match the rest of your branding perfectly.

Lifter LMS Pricing

A yearly license starts at $199 for the ‘Earth’ Bundle. If you want all the bells and whistles, the ‘Universe’ bundle will set you back $360.

5. LearnDash

LearnDash is a learning management system (LMS) designed specifically for WordPress. If you already use WordPress for your own website, you can use LearnDash to create professional online courses that work seamlessly alongside your existing website.

It has plenty of advanced features that allow you to make your courses as engaging as possible, including:

• Drag and drop course builder
• Course creation wizard
• Student badges and certificates
• Automated notifications
• AI quiz builder
• Dynamic Course builder
• Sell and manage memberships with the MemberDash plugin

You won’t need any coding or design skills to build your course either. You can choose from a wide range of professionally designed course templates from Kadence and Astra that are available through your LearnDash subscription. Simply add your course content to the templates, and you are ready to go.

LearnDash also works alongside any other WordPress-verified theme, so if you are already using a theme that you love, it should work nicely with Learndash.

LearnDash Pricing

A yearly license for LearnDash costs $199. This includes updates and support for one year.

6. Udemy

Hosting your online course with Udemy has many benefits, the biggest of which is that you have instant access to millions of learners around the world who already trust and use Udemy to learn new skills.

Yes, you do have to share your revenue with Udemy. But, because Udemy is primarily the source referring your students to your courses, this is entirely justified and well deserved.

It’s undoubtedly one of the best Teachable alternatives for course creators who don’t already have a large following or existing audience to promote their courses to.

And perhaps best of all, it’s completely free to create a course on Udemy. This makes it a great choice for anyone looking for a low cost business idea with high profit margins—all you will need to invest upfront is your time.

Udemy is easy to get to grips with, so you can start uploading video lectures and tutorials as soon as you have been approved.

Udemy Pricing

It’s free to create and sell courses on Udemy, but you will share a substantial amount of your revenue with Udemy if they have referred the sale.

If the sale comes directly from you via your unique course creator code, you will receive 97% of the revenue.

If the sale comes from Udemy’s marketplace or through one of Udemy’s ads, you will receive 37% of the revenue.

7. Skillshare

Skillshare works in a similar way to Udemy in that, as a course creator, you will have access to a ready-made pool of eager online learners in the Skillshare marketplace.

The main difference is that Skillshare itself is a membership community where members pay a monthly fee for access to all courses. Creators then earn a share of the royalties from courses depending on the watch time of their courses. According to Skillshare, the average earnings per teacher are $3000 per year, with top teachers earning $100,000+ per year!

You can also earn a flat fee of $10 for every student who signs up for a Skillshare membership through your unique teacher referral link.

You have to apply if you want to be a teacher on Skillshare. The application process is short and involves some questions about the first course you want to create. You will also need to upload a short sample video of you teaching your subject.

This helps ensure that only high-quality teachers are accepted to Skillshare to provide the best possible learning experience for paying members. If you’re new to teaching online, there are plenty of great free resources for teachers on Skillshare to help you grow.

Skillshare Pricing

There is no fee to join Skillshare as a teacher. You will earn a share of the royalties, which depends on your videos' watch time.

8. LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds is a powerful online course platform that enables you to create, build, and sell online courses and memberships.

It’s fairly easy to get to grips with and offers an excellent learning experience, making it a popular option for corporate trainers as well as creatives and other online educators. It also includes some powerful marketing tools and offers the option of adding a completely white-label mobile app for your course.

Although it’s not quite as intuitive to use as Teachable, it far outshines Teachable when it comes to course creation and customization features, earning it a well-deserved spot on our list of Teachable alternatives.

So, if you’re looking for an online course platform that goes further than just a basic online course with more interactive and engaging features, LearnWorlds could be the platform for you.

LearnWorlds Pricing

LearnWorlds plans range from $24/month to $249/month, depending on how many features you need.

There is no free plan, but you can take advantage of the 30-day free trial to see if you like the platform before committing to a paid plan.

9. Gumroad

Gumroad is famed for its ability to make selling digital products like ebooks effortless. But did you know that you can also sell online courses with Gumroad?

And it gives Teachable quite a good run for its money!

Unlike Teachable, Gumroad doesn’t charge a monthly fee. It simply takes a flat 10% cut of whatever you sell, which gives you access to all features. This means if you don’t sell any products at first, you won’t be out of pocket with hefty monthly fees.

The only downside is that the 10% cut can work out quite a lot if you’re selling high-ticket courses. It also doesn’t offer some of the interactive features you get with other online course platforms, such as built-in quizzes and certificates, so if you need more advanced features, you might want to consider one of the other Teachable alternatives on this list.

That being said if you’re selling simple tutorial video courses alongside other digital products like ebooks and digital files, then it’s a fantastic alternative to Teachable.

Gumroad Pricing

Gumroad is free to use, but they take a 10% cut of whatever you sell.

10. FreshLearn

FreshLearn is one of the most affordable Teachable alternatives, with a completely free plan available for your first 25 sales, and very affordable paid plans with all the bells and whistles.

The all-in-one platform enables you to build and sell online courses, cohorts, masterclasses, digital downloads, and communities that your audience will love.

Aside from the features mentioned above, FreshLearn also includes:

• Email Marketing
• Website Builder
• Gamification
• Integrated payments
• Course completion certificates
• Mandatory watch time (course compliance)
• Advanced assessments
• Mobile apps

Freshlearn uses a "LEGO"-style page builder with blocks that you can click and drop wherever you want them to be. This makes building your website or online course super easy!

The customer support on offer is great, too. If you have any issues or questions, you can expect a fast response from a real person who will solve your problem quickly.

FreshLearn Pricing

FreshLearn has a free plan available, which allows you to sell up to 25 items. After that, you will need to sign up for one of the paid plans.

The ‘Pro’ plan for $39/month, and the ‘No Brainer’ plan costs just $69/month.

The Verdict: Which is The Best Teachable Alternative Overall?

As you can see, there are loads of great Teachable alternatives to choose from. But which is the best overall?

Drumroll...

The winner is Thinkific!

Not only does Thinkific offer better value for money than Teachable with its offer of unlimited courses, but it also has WAY more customization options.

It also has the best free plan around! This allows you to test the waters and see if you like how the platform works (spoiler - you will!!) before moving to one of the paid plans.

We have some runners up too…

If you’re an online coach, you will love Kajabi. It makes selling online courses and delivering coaching products alongside easy. And you can even use it to host your podcast! It’s more expensive than Teachable, but you will find some useful features for coaches that you won’t get anywhere else.

And finally, for WordPress users who want to add a course to their existing WordPress site, the winner is Lifter LMS. It’s affordable, easy to use, and works well with pretty much any WordPress theme.

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