Your search for a Teachable alternative ends with this comprehensive guide.
Teachable is one of the best online course platforms and stands out for its ease of use, course creation, and flexible pricing.
However, it isn’t the right solution for everyone. Some common reasons why people look for an alternative to Teachable include:
- Teachable’s learning and engagement tools aren’t the most powerful.
- Its site-building and customization capabilities are pretty basic.
- You can’t use your own Stripe/Paypal accounts to process payments.
- Teachable isn’t an all-in-one platform, so you’ll have to work with multiple apps.
- You can’t enhance the core functionality of the platform.
So, let’s look at some of the top Teachable alternatives in 2024. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of each platform and help you pick the right one based on your requirements.
Best Teachable Alternatives
- Thinkific – Best for learning and engagement
- Kajabi – Best all-in-one online course platform
- New Zenler – Most affordable all-in-one course platform
- Mighty Networks – Best for creating community-based courses
- LearnWorlds – Best alternative for interactive learning
- Podia – Simpler, more affordable Teachable alternative
- LearnDash – Most powerful WordPress LMS plugin
- AccessAlly – Best all-inclusive WordPress LMS plugin
- Udemy – Most popular online course marketplace
- Gumroad – Best for selling digital products
1. Thinkific
Thinkific is one of the most popular alternatives to Teachable. Broadly, both platforms have similar capabilities.
Like Teachable, Thinkific lets you host your course content, build your curriculum, deliver your content, build a website, and sell your courses.
However, there are a few areas where Thinkific performs a better job:
- Learning and Engagement: Thinkific has much more to offer with support for live lessons through Zoom, advanced quizzing tools, assignments, community, and surveys.
- Website Builder: It has better website building tools, including multiple site themes and a more flexible page builder.
- Groups: You can create batches of students and manage them separately.
Another significant difference between the two platforms is the Thinkific App Store. Here you can find numerous third-party apps to extend the functionality of your course platform.
The only area where Thinkific isn’t as good is sales and marketing. Its checkout process isn’t well optimized, and you can’t handle taxes natively. Just to compare, with Teachable there is still a way to track your cart abandonment but you’ll need Google Tag Manager for that.
Talking about the pricing, Thinkific also has a free plan. The paid plans start from $49/month, while the most popular plan costs $99/month.
The good thing about its pricing is that, unlike Teachable, it doesn’t charge any transaction fees on any of the plans.
Overall, if you want better learning and engagement tools or site-building capabilities, Thinkific will be a great Teachable alternative. Moreover, you can extend the functionality using Thinkific apps.
If you’d like to see a detailed comparison between the two platforms, check out this Thinkific vs Teachable guide.
2. Kajabi
Kajabi is the most popular all-in-one course platform that offers tools for everything from creating courses to building funnels and email marketing. Therefore, it reduces your dependency on other apps.
To start with, the platform offers the essential features for content hosting, curriculum building, course delivery, member engagement, selling your products, etc.
However, as an all-in-one platform, Kajabi offers some additional capabilities compared to Teachable:
- Website Builder: Kajabi gives you a library of website themes and a much more powerful page builder, allowing you to create a full-fledged website.
- Blog and Podcasts: You can also build a fully-functional blog and create podcasts.
- Sales Pipeline Builder: You can quickly create a sales funnel using predefined blueprints and drag-n-drop builder.
- Automations: You can create email marketing sequences and automate them as well.
Even when it comes to course creation, Kajabi has the edge over Teachable. It has better quizzing tools, mode design options for the course player, and a native community builder.
Moreover, Kajabi offers iOS and Android mobile apps, resulting in a better mobile learning experience for students.
Regarding pricing, Kajabi’s Basic plan costs $149/month while the Growth plan costs $199/month. The pricing isn’t beginner-friendly and will make more sense when you use it as an all-in-one platform.
Overall, Kajabi is a great all-in-one alternative to Teachable. You can build, manage, and run your entire knowledge business through one platform, which means you won’t need to learn and use multiple tools.
If you want to explore the two platforms in more detail, check out this Kajabi vs Teachable comparison.
3. New Zenler
New Zenler is another all-in-one platform that offers the necessary tools for creating, marketing, and selling online courses.
New Zenler has all the course creation and engagement features that Teachable offers. Moreover, it outperforms by providing better learning and engagement tools such as:
- Advanced quizzing features
- Assignments
- Live classes
- Community
Moving to site-building tools, New Zenler has a more flexible page builder and native blogging features so that you can have a full-fledged brand website on the platform.
New Zenler also gives you all the selling tools – pricing options, checkout pages, coupons, EU VAT, 1-click upsells, etc.
In addition, it has a marketing funnel builder, which allows you to create workflows easily. You also get inbuilt email marketing and automation features.
While New Zenler does a decent job as an all-in-one platform, it can’t match Kajabi’s features. However, it has much more affordable pricing.
Its entry plan costs $67/month and offers all its features, which is fantastic for an all-in-one platform.
So, if you’re looking for a more reasonably priced all-in-one alternative to Teachable, New Zenler will be a good option.
Keep in mind that the platform is in beta. However, we didn’t find any significant issues in our testing. Read our New Zenler review to learn more.
4. Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks is a unique Teachable alternative geared primarily towards online community building. The platform offers robust tools for creating an engaged community on your website:
- You can create posts, articles, polls, etc., inside your community.
- You can create events and do live streams.
- You can organize discussions in your community with topics and sub-groups.
- Members can message each other, and you can organize group chats.
- Your members can access your community and content using the web and mobile apps.
Apart from these, Mighty Networks also lets you create online courses inside your community. For this, you get a drag-and-drop course builder, inbuilt video hosting, and features like content dripping and content locking.
However, a few important learning tools are missing from the course builder – quizzes, assignments, and certificates.
Finally, you can charge a one-time or recurring fee for the main community, sub-groups, and courses. You can even bundle community and courses and sell them together.
Another factor to consider is Mighty Networks pricing. The Community plan costs $39/month (+3% transaction fee), while the Business plan costs $119/month (+2% transaction fee). If you want to sell online courses, you’ll need to be on the Business plan.
Overall, Mighty Networks is perfect for building an engaged community and selling courses along with it. It is also an excellent option for creating a community-based membership site.
If you want to see a detailed breakdown of the platform, you should read our Mighty Networks review.
5. LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds isn’t a run-of-the-mill hosted course platform. So, it doesn’t stop at offering popular course creation features like content hosting, quizzes, content dripping, certificates, etc.
Instead, the platform offers a variety of features for creating interactive learning experiences:
- Adding interactive videos inside your course
- Creating interactive ebooks
- Conducting live sessions via Zoom
- Building an engaged learning community
There is no hosted course platform with this sort of capability, which makes LearnWorlds a stand-out option for creating interactive online courses.
I also admire LearnWorld’s website building and customization features — definitely better than Teachable.
One major drawback of the platform and a major one is LearnWorlds’ user interface. It’s complicated, and you may have difficulty learning and using it.
Speaking of pricing, it supports the ‘pay as you grow’ model by offering multiple plans. The Basic plan costs $29/month, with all essential models.
However, if you want all the stand-out features, such as interactive video, you need to choose the Learning Center Plan ($299/month), making it pretty expensive.
Overall, Learnworlds is a good option for creators looking to design interactive learning experiences in their online programs.
Are you interested in learning more about the platform? Read this in-depth LearnWorlds review.
6. Podia
Podia is the most easy-to-use course platform in the market. It has an intuitive interface, and all the tools have been designed to be straightforward to use.
Like Teachable, Podia is a standalone platform. It lets you create online courses, build a website, and sell your courses. In addition, you can create memberships, digital downloads, webinars, coaching, community, etc.
While Podia has a lot to offer on paper, many of these features are incomplete. For example, Podia’s quizzing tool, community builder, coaching tool, email marketing features, etc., are all very basic.
So, Teachable has a more flexible course builder and better learning and engagement tools while their website-building and sales and marketing capabilities are similar.
About Podia pricing, its paid plans are more affordable than Teachable pricing plans.
The entry-level plan comes for $39/month and has no transaction fees. It offers most of the platform’s course creation features, and if they are sufficient for you, Podia will be more cost-effective.
Overall, Podia doesn’t stand out compared to Teachable in features. However, if you just need basic features, it will be a simpler and more affordable option.
Moreover, Podia will be better for creating membership sites. It allows you to define multiple plans by choosing courses, webinars, community, and coaching and charge your members monthly or annually.
If you want to evaluate the two platforms, you should go through this Podia vs Teachable comparison.
7. LearnDash
LearnDash is a popular learning management system (LMS) plugin that allows you to create and sell courses through your WordPress site.
The core plugin offers robust course creation features, including:
- Drag-n-drop course builder
- Advanced quizzing tools
- Assignments
- Badges and certificates
- Content dripping
- Engagement triggers
Plus, you can add even more features to your online courses using add-ons. LearnDash has a massive ecosystem of third-party plugins, which means unlimited extendability for your LMS.
For instance, LearnDash doesn’t offer inbuilt note-taking features, but you can integrate with Notes for LearnDash to add this functionality.
Flexibility and extendability are the biggest benefits of using WordPress LMS vs Teachable.
However, note that creating a course using LeanDash and WordPress requires greater technical knowledge. You’ll need to manage hosting, security, updates, maintenance, etc., for your training platform, which can be overwhelming for non-techie course creators.
Overall, LearnDash is best for course creators who wish to primarily work through WordPress and want unlimited flexibility in adding features to their course platform.
8. AccessAlly
AccessAlly is another WordPress LMS plugin for creating online courses and membership sites. It takes a different approach than LearnDash, though.
It has more features built into the plugin, and the idea is to reduce dependency on other WordPress plugins and add-ons.
AccessAlly offers a drag-n-drop course builder, quizzes, assignments, content dripping, private notes, video bookmarking, and gamification.
The feature I like the most is point-based gamification. You can reward points to users for watching specific videos, completing assignments, and passing quizzes. These points can be exchanged for courses, unlocking content, etc.
In terms of sales and marketing, AccessAlly offers a lot:
- Charge a one-time fee and recurring fee and create a free trial.
- Create multiple membership tiers and manage members.
- Full-fledged affiliate features include multiple affiliate tiers, 2-level affiliates, cookie expiration, and payout window.
- Other features include 1-click upsells, order bumps, coupons, discounts, and abandoned cart tracking.
About pricing, AccessAlly offers three plans – Essentials, Pro, and In-house Training. However, AccessAlly Pro is their most popular plan and costs $129/month.
Overall, AccessAlly is a good WordPress-based alternative to Teachable. If you wish to work in the WordPress environment but want to keep things simpler, it will serve you well.
9. Udemy
Udemy is an online courses marketplace where course creators can list their courses and receive a payment for each student enrollment.
Like Teachable, it allows you to host your course content, build your curriculum, sell your courses, deliver them, and engage your students.
However, the Udemy business model is entirely different.
In this case, you don’t build your own website or brand. Instead, you sell through the marketplace. Here the idea is to tap into the huge audience base of Udemy, reducing the marketing efforts on your part.
Moreover, instead of paying a fixed periodic payment, you pay a revenue share (63% in most cases) to the platform.
However, keep in mind that when you sell on Udemy, you aren’t building your brand or an audience. You’ll be guided by the platform policies on everything, including revenue share, promotions, pricing, etc.
So, Udemy is a good alternative to Teachable only for beginner course creators who want to test waters or do this whole online course thing as a side hustle.
If you want to understand the difference between the two platforms in more detail, you should go through our Udemy vs Teachable guide.
10. Gumroad
Gumroad is entirely different from Teachable as it’s not an online course platform. It’s basically an online selling platform for digital products.
So, it gives you mainly the eCommerce tools. You can create unlimited products and price them the way you want. You also get a storefront and individual landing pages for all your products.
Moreover, Gumroad will process the payments on your behalf, handle taxes, and run your affiliate program.
However, Gumroad doesn’t have any learning management system. It just lets you upload downloadable files, which your customers can access after purchase. So, it’s not suitable for selling proper online courses.
Now, Gumroad differs from Teachable significantly in terms of pricing. There is no monthly cost, and it only charges a transaction fee, which is between 2.9% – 9% depending on your lifetime sales volume.
On the whole, Gumroad works the best for creators who want to sell digital products like downloadable videos, eBooks, etc.
Best Teachable Alternatives – Final Verdict
In this guide, we’ve discussed in detail various Teachable alternatives. Each platform has distinct advantages and disadvantages, making them suitable for different scenarios.
While I provided a conclusion for every platform regarding when to pick it, let me share my recommendations again:
If you are looking for a standalone course platform with better learning tools and more extendability, you should check out Thinkific.
However, If you’re looking for an all-in-one platform to run your entire business under one roof, try out Kajabi.
Lastly, if you want to build a community-based online course or membership site, you should go with Mighty Networks.
I hope you were able to pick the right Teachable alternative. If you have any questions, drop a comment, and we’ll respond ASAP. Or, if you’re considering a platform that’s not on our list, let us know that too.