Thinking about creating and selling courses online?
Skool and Teachable are two big names.
They’ve made waves in e-learning.
But they’re different
This blog post will be about Skool vs Teachable.
Overview
Skool was founded by Sam Ovens, a well-known name in consultancy (founder of Consulting.com)!
What sets Skool apart is its emphasis on community engagement, incorporating discussion forums, group activities, and social feeds to encourage interaction among learners.
Also it has discovery feature, with it, you get more organic leads similar to Facebook!
On the flip side, Teachable was started by Ankur Nagpal in 2013 with the goal of helping entrepreneurs and experts monetize their knowledge through online courses.
It is like a specialized course hosting platform that provides advanced course creation features, student analytics, and built-in payment processing.
However, since its acquisition by Hotmart, Teachable has faced significant challenges including pricing increases, feature limitations, and declining customer support quality.
👉 In a nutshell, Skool focuses on building community engagement and organic growth (think Facebook Groups), while Teachable provides specialized tools for traditional course hosting with advanced student tracking and compliance features.
Quick decision
👍 What I like about Skool compared to Teachable?
- Intuitive UI and UX: Skool’s UI and UX are the best. You feel right at home. And according to my experience, Skool offers the best engagement rates compared to Teachable and even traditional course platforms.
- Gamification: Skool provides engaging features like points, levels, and leaderboards, allowing people to earn points and unlock exclusive courses and access to events.
- Community discover feature: This is similar to Facebook’s community search engine where people can search for keywords and join the communities they are interested in, leading to many organic leads.
- More popular platform: Skool is becoming a more popular platform than Teachable as it is backed by Alex Hormozi, and they are making use of network effect and growth flywheels to make it a one-stop destination for all online community building and joining needs.
- More affordable: Skool offers much better value with unlimited members and courses on both plans ($9/month and $99/month), while Teachable at $39/month imposes significant limitations on products and comes with 7.5% transaction fees.
- No acquisition drama: Unlike Teachable’s troubled acquisition story with Hotmart, Skool remains focused on innovation and user experience.
👍 What I like about Teachable compared to Skool
- Advanced course creation features (BIG): Teachable provides specialized course creation tools with support for quizzes, graded assessments, course compliance, enforced lesson order, and detailed student-level analytics that Skool currently lacks.
- Advanced marketing features: Offers coupons, order bumps, upsells, sales pages, and basic email marketing, suitable for running promotions and direct course sales. Skool doesn’t have any of these
- Course compliance options: You can control how content is delivered to students, force them to complete courses in a specific order, and ensure video watching completion before progression.
- Student-level analytics: Teachable offers robust analytics including individual student performance tracking, video engagement heat maps, retention graphs, and quiz performance reports.
- Bulk operations: Support for bulk file uploads, bulk student enrollment, and advanced team management features.
Upfront bottom line✨
Let me give you the verdict of this comparison.
I firmly believe Skool is the better choice for the future of online education.
Here’s why:
Community-centric learning is the future.
In my experience, static courses just don’t cut it anymore in this AI-driven world.
Things change too rapidly!
I’ve personally seen how community-driven coaching deliver far better results.
Skool is perfectly positioned for this shift with its organic discovery feature that creates network effects (similar to Facebook Groups) that traditional platforms can’t match.
👉 My personal choice: I went with Skool because my target audience is already active in other Skool communities. The organic discovery feature gives me leads I’d never get on a traditional course platform. Community-centric coaching drives better results than static courses.
However, if you’re overwhelmed by community management and prefer focusing purely on course creation with advanced tracking, Teachable’s specialized features might serve you better.
For more details about my hands-on experience with Skool, check out this comprehensive review.
To learn more about why people are switching away from Teachable, read my detailed Teachable review.
Decision aspect #1 – Want to focus purely on course creation?
Some course creators prefer to keep things simple and focused.
You know.
👉 Maybe for you, running a community can feel overwhelming if you’re just starting out or prefer a more traditional approach to online education.
Teachable excels in this department.
Think about it:
With Teachable, you get specialized course creation tools that let you focus entirely on content delivery without the complexity of community management.
Here’s what makes Teachable shine for course-centric creators:
- Advanced course features: Support for quizzes, graded assessments, course compliance, and enforced lesson order
- Detailed student analytics: Track individual student performance, video engagement heat maps, and retention graphs
- Course compliance options: Control how content is delivered and ensure students complete lessons in order
Teachable’s student-level reports give you granular insights into how each student is progressing through your courses.
You can see exactly where students are getting stuck, which videos they’re rewatching, and how they’re performing on assessments.
And you have certification features as well!
Now about Skool:
Skool, while fantastic for community engagement, takes a different approach.
With Skool, courses are designed to support community interaction rather than stand alone as comprehensive educational products.
The trade-off is clear: if you want to focus purely on creating and selling courses without the overhead of community management, Teachable provides the specialized tools you need.
👉 The question is: “Do you want to focus entirely on course creation and delivery, or are you ready to embrace community-driven learning?“
Decision aspect #2 – Want community-centric learning?
Community-centered learning is the future in the age of AI 🤖
You know this.
I know this.
Traditional pre-recorded courses won’t cut it anymore – things change too fast.
Skool nails this balance perfectly.
💪 I strongly believe in putting community first, with courses simply supporting members on their journey to transformation.
If you share this vision, here’s why Skool makes sense. The more popular Skool becomes, the more organic leads you’ll get.
Skool’s discovery feature lets people search for keywords and join communities they’re interested in – just like Facebook groups, but with higher-quality members focused on transformation.
Plus, Skool’s gamification system boosts engagement dramatically.
Here’s how Skool’s gamification works: members earn 1 point for every like they receive on their contributions.
As they accumulate points, they level up, unlocking special perks you can customize – like exclusive courses, private chat access, or special events.
The system creates healthy competition through leaderboards while encouraging daily participation with activity streaks.
Now.
Teachable focuses on traditional course delivery with advanced tracking features.
But in the age of AI, static courses aren’t enough.
The future belongs to community-driven coaching and learning environments.
And.
Traditional course platforms like Teachable deliver pre-recorded content with detailed analytics, but they miss the power of communities and network effect that drives organic growth.
As Teachable doesn’t have any organic discovery features, you won’t get those organic leads – you’ll need to market yourself heavily.
👉 The question is: “Do you want to build a community-centric learning environment where people can organically discover your community, or do you prefer the traditional approach of selling individual courses?“
In one line: Skool offers community-driven approach (which is the future) with greater engagement, and affordability, while Teachable excels at specialized course delivery with advanced specialized features.
