Online courses and digital platforms became an integral part of our daily lives. With remote work on the rise, easily accessible knowledge is almost mandatory. This is where Teachable fits in perfectly as one of the most popular online course hosting platforms. This Teachable review covers features, pricing, courses, and other aspects to help you decide if this is the right platform for you.
Pros & Cons
Pricing Plans
Basic Plan
$29 annual price
Unlimited number of students
Only 5% transaction fees
Create two admin users
Course creator training available
Members-only community entry
Custom domain
Coupon code usage availability
Email marketing integration
Professional Plan
$99 annual price
Unlimited number of students
Affiliate marketing program
No transaction fees
Create five admin users
Unique student quizzes creation
Advanced design themes available
Members-only community entry
Student certificate award option
Business Plan
$249 annual price
Unlimited number of students
No transaction fees
Create up to 20 admin users
Unlimited courses setups
Unlimited hosting setups
Group coaching calls availability
Advanced design themes available
Members-only community entry
With a wide range of features, tutorials, tips, and classes, Teachable becomes an ideal platform for people with a desire to create and sell their online courses.
Ankur Nagpal founded Teachable in 2013, and more than 100,000 instructors had become a part of the big family by 2020. If you’re looking for a simple way to create an online course, this platform can be a great stepping stone.
Features, Courses, and Materials
One of the Teachable features that stand out is high-quality courses that don’t require technical knowledge about designing or coding. The technical stuff is eliminated, so you don’t have to bother with plugins or hosting. The easy to understand analytics will show you the list of students taking your courses, and you’ll be able to see how much money you’re earning.
What’s more, this platform supports every file type that you need. Just use the drag and drop option, and you’re done.
If you don’t want to start from scratch, you can work on an existing website, and add course pages.
Teachable Courses List
Teachable offers many categories and numerous courses. You can choose a course about design, food and drink, or health and fitness. If you’re an artist, classes like art, music, photography, and social media videos should be first on your list. On top of that, there are classes about interior design, lifestyle and hobbies, business, careers, marketing, travel, languages, and writing.
You can brush up on your old skills, or take the risk of learning new ones, with the help of online classes conducted by professional instructors.
The Teachable mobile app makes things even more convenient. To make courses accessible on the mobile app, you need to enable myTeachable. Students can access the app through their account.
Best courses to try on Teachable:
- Email Marketing Magic, by Pat Flynn (this interesting class will teach you what tools play a part in email marketing success)
- How To Crush It on Twitter, by David Perell (if you ever wondered how to curate your Twitter feed or build an audience, give this class a go)
- The Habits Academy, by James Clear (this class contains 40 high-quality video lessons, broken down into eight modules with downloadable audio and video options)
How Do You Create a Teachable Course?
To create a new course, you’ll have to enter the Teachable admin area and click on the “Courses” tab. It will take you to the “New Course” area where you’ll have to fill out all the necessary information about your course (course title and subtitle, course author, etc.). After completing this step, click on the “Create Course” button, and you’re done.
The initial information you entered can be modified and updated anytime. To improve your course, you might want to create different categories. This will make it easier for students to find a specific course.
When creating courses, don’t hesitate. Let your imagination run wild, be whimsical, and create a quiz section for your students with multiple answers and viewable scores (you can even grade their scores).
How Do You Find a Course on Teachable?
If you’re a student who wants to find a specific course on Teachable, decide which pricing plan you want to purchase. For a single pricing plan, the price will be shown on the enroll button. For multiple pricing plans, you have to choose which one you’d like to purchase.
You’ll also see a table of possible pricing plans, where you’ll have to choose the plan you wish to purchase. When you click on the enroll button, you’ll see the checkout page. You can add coupons, a VAT ID (if applicable), and select a payment method you want to use to purchase a course.
Teachable Mobile App Review
Every student who downloads the app will see your school (or a course). They only need to use the “My Courses” area.
Things you can do inside the app:
- Access all your courses
- Stream videos and view worksheets
- Pick up where you left off
- Take numerous quizzes
- Track your progress as a student or a teacher
You can test Teachable and its services with a 14-day free trial. Just click the button below to start the trial and enter information like Full Name, Email Address, and Password.
Ease of Use
The website is user-friendly, and teachers can view all the important information about their students, sales, and classes in their dashboard section. As an admin, you can use various filters to help you keep track of your users. Just add specific filters like haven’t completed the course, used the coupon (or haven’t used the coupon), author, owner, etc.
Users are generally satisfied with the features this platform offers.
Teachable Pricing and Plans
Teachable offers three pricing options: Basic, Professional, and Business plan.
1. The Basic plan: $29 annual price
Includes all basic features as following:
- An unlimited number of students
- Only 5% transaction fees
- You can create two admin users
- You get the course creator training to help you build your course
- Teachable gives you a custom domain you can use for your school
- You become a part of the members-only community
- You are permitted to use coupon codes that can help you promote your courses
- Email marketing is important, and it’s integrated into the basic plan
2. The Professional plan: $99 annual price
It has everything that a Basic plan has, plus the additional features:
- An unlimited number of students
- You can use the Teachable affiliate marketing program
- There aren’t any transaction fees to pay
- You can create five admin users
- You can create unique quizzes for your students that you can grade
- If you don’t like the design of your page (school), this plan grants you advanced themes you can use to customize your page
- You are part of the members-only community
- If you want to reward your students for their work, you can give them a certificate of course completion.
3. The Business plan: $249 annual price
Includes Professional plan features with the addition of:
- You get an unlimited number of students
- There is no Teachable transaction fee
- With the Business plan, you can create 20 admin users; for a large company with more than 200 employees, this can be a helpful asset
- Like in other plans, you become a part of the members-only community
- You can set unlimited courses and hosting
- Unlike the Basic and the Professional plan, the Business plan lets you use group coaching calls
- You can import all your students manually
- The Professional plan allows you to choose the custom theme design for a unique look
If you wonder how much Teachable is per month, it’s $39 for the Basic, $119 for the Professional, and $299 for the Business plan. You can switch between plans if you’re paying every month, but signing up for an annual plan might be worth considering if you want to save more money.
If you are new to this platform, you might want to check the free courses. The following are currently available: “One Month Programming for Non-Programmers,” “How to Write a Non-Fiction Book,” “The Small Business Survival Guide,” “Writing the Short,” “Show Me Your Drills: Calligraphy course,” etc.
For more information about Teachable free courses, check the official website.
The free plan is great because you can get familiar with the platform before you decide to buy anything. Some courses are free for a limited time and serve as a preview of what you’ll get.
That said, the most significant drawback of Teachable is a high transaction fee. When using the Free plan, you’ll have to pay a $1 + 10% commission on any course you sell. This is not helpful if you’re planning to sell more than a few courses each month. In that case, consider upgrading your Teachable plan.
Teachable Review – Alternatives
Teachable has an active student base of 3 million learners who can choose among 20,000 available courses and 7,500 instructors. But if this is not your cup of tea, what are the best alternatives you can find online?
Udemy
Udemy is an online educational platform made for professionals and students. It’s home to 50 million students and numerous instructors. It offers courses in business, design, photography, marketing, IT, etc.
In addition to learning new skills, you can become an instructor at Udemy. In case you’re interested, you can find more info in this Udemy review.
Thinkific
Another one of the Teachable competitors we need to mention is Thinkific.
This online educational platform, based in Canada, counts more than 6,000 companies and instructors. Many people use Thinkific to host and sell courses because it offers easy customization and a free plan.
You can create up to three courses with an unlimited number of quizzes and surveys, provided by the instant access to your funds and hosting.
Podia
Podia is an online platform where you can sell online memberships, courses, and digital downloads. Coding knowledge is not mandatory to build a professional website.
Teachable reviews often praise the platform’s course builder for creating online courses, same as Podia. Additionally, you can host webinars and sell or give them away for free to build your email list on this platform.
Teachery
This free platform is best for beginners because of its simplicity and user-friendly interface. You can create as many courses as you like, Teachery doesn’t charge any transaction fees.
This platform is ideal for individuals who are into easy and straightforward course building, without having to deal with complex WordPress plugins or coding. Like Teachable, it uses an affiliate program.
You can’t create quizzes for students or use multiple payments.
Thinkific vs. Teachable
When it comes to these two relatively similar platforms, there are a couple of things that can be compared, without one diminishing the value of the other. For example, Thinkific can create a standalone community area. It has more flexible pricing options for subscriptions and no transaction fees, regardless of the plan you choose.
Unlike Udemy, Thinkific and Teachable aren’t course marketplaces. Simply put, you’ll have complete control over pricing, student data, refunds, discounts, etc.
The main goal of both platforms is to provide a user-friendly place where you can create unique courses, without the involvement of tricky plugins or codes.
This simple interface will help you start quickly and focus on creating and selling your courses.
Teachable vs. Udemy
Teachable is a platform that offers you to sell your courses without having to market yourself. You alone are in charge of selling and promoting your courses. This is an outstanding feature because you get complete control over every aspect of creating and selling your classes.
Udemy primarily focuses on selling online courses. It will promote your courses to its audience, but this will come at a price. When you sell a course, you’ll have to share a percentage (50%) of your profit.
You should still browse a bunch of other online learning platforms featuring thousands of courses in various fields.
Teachable Payment Options for Students
Students have a few payment options: credit card, debit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. All they need to do is select a card from the dropdown menu and enter the payment details on the checkout page.
If you want your students to have PayPal as a payment option, you have to enable BackOffice. That way, you will be able to select or deselect Teachable PayPal Monthly Payment Gateway. On top of that, if you purchase the Professional plan (or the Business plan) you’ll have the option to create your own PayPal custom payment gateway.
If possible, students can choose to pay for a course using Apple Pay or Google Pay. Take into consideration that those payment options are for one-time purchases only and schools that use Teachable Payments or the Monthly Payment Gateway.
According to many Teachable reviews, you have to pay the fee for each transaction that is processed by the Monthly Payment Gateway. If your account charges in the same currency as your customer’s card, you can avoid paying the initial fee. Take into account that you’ll still have to pay a foreign transaction fee if your business is located in another country.
Refund Policy
As a student, you can ask for a refund by contacting the school owner within 30 days of payment. The school owner can issue a refund through Teachable within those 30 days. However, after that period, the refund can only be issued through third-party services (e.g., PayPal).
Issuing a refund is quick and easy—all it takes is a few simple steps.
Online Ratings
Overall, Teachable customer service is mediocre. It offers a live chat on the website, and there is a ticketing system for submitting questions. For more information, you can check the blog.
There are many useful tips and tricks that can help you fix the problems. Teachable uses a community to answer your questions. In short, you can share ideas or strategies and get help from other users. The downside of their service is that there’s no support over the phone.
Capterra gave the platform a 4.4/5 rating, based on 114 user reviews.
Teachable Pros and Cons in a Nutshell
Pros:
- No tech knowledge required. Teachable takes care of the technical stuff instead of you, so you can concentrate on creating unique courses.
- It’s easy to upload any content (use drag and drop), and you’ll be ready to launch your class in a matter of hours or sell your course on the same day you started.
- With the help of analytics, you’ll see how much students work, what they bought, and how many students have completed your courses.
- When it comes to teachable payment options, you can earn money if you join the free affiliate program. To do that, you need to grow a large group of affiliates (they can help you launch and promote your course).
- You can create courses with affiliates and offer them a discount.
- You can sell numerous things, and not only your courses, like e-books, workshops, services, and conference tickets.
- If you leave Teachable, you can bring your students and courses with you.
Cons:
- You need to pay $1 + 10% for the Free plan and 5% transaction fee for the Basic plan.
- You’ll have to market yourself if you want to sell your courses.
- Additional upgrades can be expensive.
- You can’t do live workshops.
- When it comes to Teachable integrations, they are only available for the Basic plan (and up). The only exceptions are Google Analytics and SumoMe for the Free plan. Also, Teachable often recommends using Zapier.
- Zapier will help you set up only two integrations for free. If you have more integrations, that will cost you $20 a month. As we mentioned before, integrations that are available to use if you choose the Free plan are Google Analytics and SumoMe. Other plans include Zapier, Mailchimp, Segment, and ConvertKit.
Teachable Review – Conclusion
Teachable has over 7,500 online tutors, 20,000 programs, and 4 million students. It offers quality courses, without the technical stuff, numerous tutorials, tips, and classes.
So is Teachable the right option for you?
According to Teachable reviews, if you’re just getting started with online courses, and you’re not tech-savvy, this platform is the thing you need. If you get over the drawbacks and the annoying transaction fee you have to pay even if you opt for the Free plan, this could be a good place to start your online career.
Hopefully, this comprehensive guide gave you the right idea about how to proceed with your teaching career.