The Teachable Review: Does it Pass With Flying Colors?

Launch Your Online Business in Just 7 Days

The eLearning market is expected to grow to $240 billion by 2022 — a market that you and your unique skills should be tapping into.

Using an online course creator, like Teachable, gives you the power to turn your expertise into business opportunities.

Are you ready to transform your skillset into a salary with your own courses?

Keep reading to find out if Teachable is the tool for you.

1. What is Teachable?

Teachable’s logo

Teachable, or teach:able as they’re branded, is a cloud-hosted platform for creating online courses and coaching.

They contain a variety of online courses produced by more than 80,000 instructors.

Course creators can use Teachable to upload, sell, and promote their courses.

Payment processing is also taken care of — so you’re free to focus on delivering amazing content.

2. Teachable features

Teachable’s dashboard of features

Teachable boasts several new features to help you create, customize, teach, and monetize your courses — and your business.

They promise to help you create a thriving knowledge business, but do they have enough business knowledge to achieve this?

Check out Teachable’s features and see for yourself.

2.1. Customization

Teachable’s analytics

An online business’ continued success relies on the nature of their users’ experience (UX) — this remains true if you’re selling online courses.

With Teachable, you can customize your online learning offer by:

Creating multimedia lectures
Publishing videos
Building coaching sessions
Using the multiple integrations available

Teachable gives you the ability to track your sales and students — giving you important insights into your business.

There’s limited ability to build sales pages that promote your courses, as well as adding and paying multiple contributors.

Integration with email marketing is available on all paid plans, but there’s no indication of email list hosting or the limits of their capabilities.

Teachable offers no funnel-building capabilities — an oversight that can have you wasting your time and effort.

These tools are moving Teachable in the right direction, but they still require you to integrate a lot of other costly tools to flesh out your business’ marketing suite, so you can really grow your business.

2.2. Learning tools

Teachable’s coaching calendar planner

Continued education is key to personal and professional development — it can improve your productivity by up to 25%.

Teachable offers you unlimited capabilities in the following areas:

Video bandwidth
Courses
Coaching services
Students

The only catch is that this freedom comes at a price — you have to pay to use their plans, and advanced features are costly.

You can interact with your students live, via 1-on-1 coaching sessions and live calls, hosted by Teachable.

They offer integration with Calendly to support your course and coaching schedule.

The learning features include useful tools like:

Quizzes — Test your students' knowledge retention
Course completion certificates — Reward students who complete courses
Course compliance controls — Prevent students from continuing modules until previous ones are completed
3rd party forms and surveys — Get important student feedback
Zapier integration — Connect on an instantaneous level with your student groups

These educational tools can take your online courses to the next level — but their range and customization depend on how much you’re willing to pay.

2.3. Monetization

Teachable’s payment solutions

If you’re running online courses and coaching services, you probably don’t have time to chase after the money — you’re focused on your clients.

Teachable promises to make monetizing your educational services easier with the following support:

Coupons — Offer discounts to incentivize repeat customers
Flexible pricing options — Offer memberships, subscriptions, bundles, and one-off payments
Affiliate marketing — Create an affiliate program and pay them automatically
International payments — PayPal integration and mobile payments for over 130 currencies
Us and EU tax support — EU VAT is automatically applied through their payment gateways

With Teachable payments, a third-party app isn’t necessary — you get paid directly to your bank account — but you may need other apps to support any sales analytics.

But remember, monthly and custom payment gateways require Paypal integration, and Teachable offers no automation.

2.4. Hosting

Owning your domain helps build trust with your clients, and it can also improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

If you have a course set up on another site, you can still use Teachable to sell it — sign up for a paid plan and connect the course under a custom domain.

If you’re creating your course from scratch, you’ll first have to subscribe to one of Teachable’s paid plans and then construct a domain for your coursework — either way you’re going to have to pay up to get started.

Teachable does offer the following hosting and security support:

24/7 site monitoring — Don’t let outages take you out
Immediate upgrades — Don’t wait for new features
2048-bit SSL certification — Secure students’ information
PC1 level 1 payment providers — Keep students’ data safe

These payment options are sufficient but limited to Paypal and their short list of approved payment providers.

3. Teachable pricing

The best things in life are free — but not with Teachable.

Teachable offers no Free plan, but they do offer a 14-day free trial of their Pro plan.

All plans do come standard with the following features:

Unlimited students, video, courses, and hosting
Integrated payment processing
Student management
Lecture comments
Basic quizzes
EU VAT calculated and included

You get 3 price options with Teachable, depending on your needs and the size of your audience.

Let’s break them down to see exactly what’s on offer.

3.1. Basic plan

For $39/month (or $29/month if billed annually), you get:

5% transaction fees
Course product
Coaching product
Members-only community
Instant payouts
2 admin-level users
Product support
Course creator training
Custom domain support
Coupon codes
Drip course content
Integrated email marketing (very basic)
Third-party integrations

The Basic plan comes with a 5% transaction fee for every course you sell — a huge hole in your pocket if you sell lots of courses.

Despite being the cheapest of the three plans, it could end up costing you the most.

You can receive instant payouts but only via the Teachable payment gateway — money gets deposited into your bank account via Stripe Express.

This plan also allows integration with email marketing services such as Mailchimp.

Email campaigns are a great (and necessary) way to promote your courses and get more students.

But it also means additional fees — Check out Mailchimp’s prices.

3.2. Pro plan

The Pro plan is the most popular option for good reason — it’s a major upgrade from the Basic plan, offering several added features.

For $119/month (or $99/month if billed annually), you get everything on the Basic plan as well as:

5-admin level users
Priority product support
Graded quizzes
Advanced reports
Unbranded website
Course completion certificates
Course compliance
Integrated affiliate marketing

The Pro plan has no transaction fees, making it an attractive option in spite of the price.

It includes affiliate tools that help you sell your course — Teachable also pays your affiliates (with your money of course).

This plan offers more detailed reports on students, courses, and upsells — tracking and analyzing your audience’s behavior.

The completion certificates and graded quizzes give your online course an authentic feel.

3.3. Business plan

The Business plan is more than double the price of the Professional plan with no significant improvements.

For $299/month (or $249/month if billed annually), you get everything on the Pro plan, plus:

20 admin-level users
Manual and bulk student imports
Custom user roles
Advanced theme customization
Group coaching calls — Customer success managers

The main focus of this plan is customer support and product training.

Transaction fees and payment options are the same as the Professional plan.

These features are nice to have.

But you won’t need them unless you’re building a course that requires multiple course authors.

4. Is Teachable worth it?

Teachable provides good service, but they’re not the only (or the cheapest) option out there.

Here are some of the pros and cons of why you may or may not want to use Teachable:

Pros

Don’t need a payment app — The Teachable payment gateway allows direct payment to your bank account

Certificates — Award certificates to your students after course completion

Mobile-friendly app — Students can access your courses from anywhere

Handles EU VAT — Teachable collects VAT on all purchases made in the EU ensuring that all taxes are settled

Cons

Few customization options — Templates are very limited

Too many extra costs — From transaction fees to integrations

Need a 3rd party app to build sales funnels

No email marketing services — You need to integrate with other apps to promote your course

No telephonic support

No course marketplace

Teachable has a lot of useful tools, but the costs can eat away at your bottom line.

5. Teachable alternatives

Maybe you’re looking to save some money or get access to extensive features.

Either way, we’ve put together a list of great Teachable alternatives.

5.1. Systeme.io

systeme.io's logo

Systeme.io provides an all-in-one digital marketing service for your online business, course, or blog.

With us, you can create, sell, and promote your online courses without needing third-party apps.

5.1.1. Features and pricing

Online course builder — No need for developers
Built-in email marketing services — Integrate your list with your website and funnels
Sales funnel builder — Easily build and automate your students’ sales journeys
Zero transaction fees on all plans
Website builder — Build beautiful sites in minutes, no coding needed
Marketing automation — Capture leads, trigger emails, and set email sequences automatically
Affiliate marketing support — Track, manage and pay your affiliates
Much cheaper — Systeme.io’s price plans start at $0/month reaching only $97/month with our all-inclusive Enterprise plan
Excellent customer support that’s available 24/7

Try systeme.io’s features for free by signing up for our Freemium plan (no credit card needed).

5.2. Thinkific

Thinkific's logo

Thinkific is a major competitor to Teachable as it provides similar features — at almost identical prices.

The major difference is that Thinkific offers a 30-day free trial.

5.2.1. Features and pricing

Zero transaction fees on plans
Website builder
Pre-sell your course
Advanced customization
Priority support
More templates for your courses
30-day free trial
4 plans ranging from $0/month to $499/month

5.3. Kajabi

Kajabi's logo

Kajabi is an easy-to-use course builder that provides many visually pleasing themes.

With Kajabi you get an all-in-one marketing and creation tool.

Their prices are quite high — higher than Teachable, but they do offer more features and a free 14-day trial (but you’ll have to enter your credit card details to get access).