When you think of self-hosted online courses, Teachable is the first platform that comes to your mind. However, there are many more out there that deserve your time and attention. In this post, let me present to you some of the Teachable alternatives for hosting your online courses.

We all know Teachable is marketed to be an online education platform for edupreneurs with great marketing features, but there are some cons I’m sure you’re aware of.

Here are some cons of Teachable:

Transaction fee is whopping high . At least 5% excluding their payment processor fees of up to 3%.

. At least 5% excluding their payment processor fees of up to 3%. Course creation features are very limited

Rigid Teachable branding in all of their login and sales pages

in all of their login and sales pages Lack of affiliate and e-mail marketing, and certification in their basic plan

If you’re like me, some of these downsides are not fun for an edupreneur and an alternative is necessary.

The really good Teachable alternatives

We know your time matters and so we have compiled a list of really good Teachable alternatives for you. Here are some of the reasons why we selected the alternatives to Teachable:

The better alternatives should not have as many cons as that of Teachable

have as many cons as that of Teachable They should be value for money or have similar pricing if not lower pricing than that of Teachable

or have similar pricing if not lower pricing than that of Teachable The alternatives should offer the same if not more amount of features

To give you a better idea of why the alternative is better in comparison, we’ve also included a scorecard to show why they are better than Teachable so that you can make a well-informed choice.

LearnDash – WordPress choice

The first one on the list is LearnDash.

If you own a WordPress site before or currently have one, you might want to consider adding LearnDash. LearnDash is quite different from Teachable as it is a WordPress-based solution.

An example of a white label LearnDash

What’s so special about LearnDash?

It allows you to have your blogging and teaching (course materials) all in one location (your WordPress blog that is). What’s not good however is, you may need to worry about hosting your videos on platforms like YouTube, Wistia or Vimeo for video encoding and storage.

LearnDash’s pricing is much cheaper compared to other platforms with a one-time fee and annual update fee. It allows you a lot more flexibility because as everything’s on WordPress, when you need to find a web development team to work on your site, you can easily find one to work on LearnDash due to the compatibility with WordPress’s core features.

We also really liked the fact that LearnDash is a very lightweight plugin. That means, you’re not going to be adding a lot of bloat to your WordPress site. In addition, you also have overall design flexibility, where you can control the web UI through your own implementation.

As for payment options, it also has native payment integrations so you really do not need to worry about using other plugins for it (everything’s included). A single site license of LearnDash will set you back $159 for one year of updates and support.

Thinkific – An advanced version of Teachable

Thinkific is a well established alternative to Teachable. It is a course platform that provides everything course creation.

Like Teachable, you can create your online courses and membership plans with Thinkific.

Thinkific’s course creation process

Why is Thinkific better than Teachable?

Thinkific has pricing plans that include no transaction fee The platform has advanced design and customization options like presets and themes It has a good course and site builder that allows you to build great website design and course UI without knowing how to code. It includes surveys you can send to your students You are able to white label the platform, allowing you to ditch away with any type of branding (People will think you code up the website all by yourself!)

The cost of Thinkific starts at $39/month, which is a tad more expensive than Teachable $29/month but think about it for a second, there’s no transaction fees and so in the long run, you’ll benefit tremendously from that.

Teachery – An acceptable newcomer

Teachery is a course platform that may be appealing to some. It has some good and some really bad.

Let’s go to the really good first because there’s not many. First advantage of Teachery is its zero transaction fees. The other is the ability to customize your site via their live editor per your requirements without knowing how to code.

Unfortunately, Teachery doesn’t have cool features like upsells, quizes, certificates or discussions. It also sucks that Teachery doesn’t include video hosting and storage and you have to make use of services like YouTube, Wistia or Vimeo.

In addition to that, Teachery’s annual plan sets you back $49/month, and it’s may not be worth it when compared to Thinkific and many others out there. The price is really expensive considering that you have to figure out a way to pay for video hosting.

Kajabi – Choice for marketing focused edupreneurs

Kajabi is an all-in-one online learning platform. It comes with features like online courses, membership plans, e-mail marketing, digital products, marketing automation. It is a complete online marketing platform unlike Teachable which is pretty much just a course creation site.

Kajabi’s platform makes it easy for beginners

As an advanced platform, it has been endorsed and used by big names in the edupreneur industry. Edupreneurs like Brendon Burchard and Any Porterfield tout the site to be revolutionary. It is a premium offering, with a much higher price tag.

If you are looking for an all-in-one platform and don’t mind the cost, Kajabi is the one for you. Kajabi has advanced e-mail marketing features like drip feed emails. It also has marketing automation features that is way better than many of its competitors. Every plan also allows you to sell digital products on top of your courses

That said, Kajabi has some limitations like you can create up to 3 digital products with the basic plan which costs $149/month and 15 products with the growth plan which costs $199/month. I tried Kajabi once and you sometimes may feel that you are overpaying if you’re just creating courses to sell. If you would like to sell digital products like your creative art for instance, you may want to consider getting Kajabi over Teachable.

To conclude

The best Teachable alternative award goes to… Thinkific!

Let’s get real, Teachable is a great online course creation platform with features like easy-to-use course creation, one-step checkout, upsells and other marketing features but Thinkific makes it even greater. It also has the best in-class course creation process and payment onboarding. You can never go wrong with a good payment system that makes it easy for your potential students/customers!