Teachable — Simple & Solid

If you’ve ever bought an online course, there’s a good chance it was hosted on Teachable. It’s one of the most widely used course platforms in the world, and for good reason: it’s focused on doing one thing well — hosting courses — and making that process as simple as possible.

What Teachable Does Well

Simplicity. Teachable’s interface is clean and intuitive. You can create a course, upload videos, set a price, and start selling within a few hours. No coding. No complex setup. The drag-and-drop curriculum builder lets you arrange modules and lessons without thinking about it.

The student experience. Teachable’s course player is one of the best. It’s clean, fast, and works well on mobile. Students can track their progress, skip between lessons, and download supplementary materials easily. Video playback is reliable — Teachable handles the hosting and streaming for you.

Payment handling. Teachable handles payment processing through their own system (Teachable:pay) or via Stripe/PayPal integration. You don’t need to set up your own payment gateway. They also handle VAT/tax collection for international sales, which saves you a compliance headache.

Free plan available. You can publish a course on Teachable for $0. The free plan limits you to 1 course and includes a transaction fee, but it’s enough to validate your idea and make your first sales before upgrading.

Pricing

Plan	Monthly	Annual	Transaction Fee
Free	$0	$0	$1 + 10% per sale
Starter	$39/mo	$29/mo	5% per sale
Builder	$89/mo	$69/mo	0% (no fees)
Growth	$189/mo	$139/mo	0% (no fees)

Key limits: Starter gives you 5 courses. Builder gives you 50 courses + graded quizzes + completion certificates. Growth adds advanced analytics, bulk student enrollment, and priority support.

The transaction fee question: On the Free and Starter plans, Teachable takes a cut of every sale. On a $97 course, that’s $4.85 to $10.70 per sale. If you’re selling at volume, those fees add up fast — which is why most serious creators upgrade to Builder.

Where Teachable Falls Short

No email marketing. Teachable doesn’t include an email platform. You’ll need ConvertKit, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, or another tool for email sequences, newsletters, and student communication. That’s an extra $15–$50/month.

No funnel builder. Want a lead magnet opt-in page? A webinar registration page? A multi-step sales funnel? Teachable doesn’t build those. You’ll need a separate landing page tool (Carrd, Leadpages, ClickFunnels, or GHL).

Limited community features. Teachable added basic community functionality, but it’s not on par with dedicated community platforms. If your course relies on peer interaction, you’ll likely need a Facebook group or Discord server alongside Teachable.

No CRM. Student data lives in Teachable, but there’s no solid CRM for managing leads, pipeline stages, or sales call booking. You’ll need a separate tool for that.

Who Should Choose Teachable

• First-time course creators who want the simplest possible setup
• Creators building 1–5 courses who don’t need complex funnels or marketing automation
• Creators who already have email and funnel tools and just need a clean course host
• Budget-conscious creators who want to start free and upgrade as revenue grows

Who Should Skip Teachable

• Creators building a full marketing stack — if you need email, funnels, CRM, and courses, GHL or Kajabi is more efficient
• Creators who hate transaction fees — the 5% and 10% fees on lower plans eat into margins at scale
• Creators running memberships — Teachable can do memberships, but it’s not its strength

The Bottom Line

Teachable is the “it just works” platform. If you want to focus on creating course content and not think about technology, Teachable gets out of your way. Just know that you’ll need separate tools for email marketing, landing pages, and sales funnels — which means managing multiple subscriptions and logins.