Are you looking for Teachable alternatives?
I know, Teachable recently they increased their subscription costs and replaced their unlimited courses feature with only upto 3+ courses on their beginner plan, that too with 5% transaction fee.
Ans what about existing customers?
Held for ransom!
But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
As someone who is into online course creation and has experimented with all the major LMS and community platforms, in this blog post I will introduce you some reliable and trustworthy alternatives to Teachable.
On a run?
Here’s a quick overview:
| All-in-one Platform | Community feature | Mobile apps | Cost | |
| Thinkific | No | Limited | Yes (iOS & Android) | $49/month (Basic Plan) |
| Kajabi | Yes | Yes | Yes (iOS & Android) | $149/month (Basic Plan) |
| Podia | Yes | Yes (Limited) | No | $33/month (Mover Plan) |
| Circle | No | Yes | Yes (iOS & Android) | $49/month (Basic Plan) |
| LearnDash | No | Yes (with plugins) | No | $199/year (1 website) |
| LearnWorlds | No | Yes | No | $24/month (Starter Plan) |
Thinkific — Superior customization and design options
Thinkific is a great alternative to Teachable for those who are interested only in a course platform but not an all-in-one platform.
Similar to Teachable, you can create your online courses and also create membership sites with Thinkific.
While traditionally Thinkific was more limited in terms of features, they have recently rolled out a lot of advanced functionalities such as student-level analytics, video retention reports, and coaching features.
I have tried and tested Thinkific, and in fact, I have published a detailed review on my blog previously. You can refer to that individual review, or if you are interested in how Teachable and Thinkific compare, you can refer to this blog post right here.
There are 4 different plans with Thinkific.
They have their free plan which does not come with any transaction fee except for their 1 course restriction.
For most beginners, I recommend their Basic plan at $49 per month. However, note that this plan lacks certain features like assignments, memberships, live lessons, and some advanced options for course and design customization.
Considering this, you may also want to ideally consider the Start plan.
👍 Pros
- Has a mobile app for both Android & iOS users (Teachable only has iOS).
- Thinkific has better design and customization options than Teachable, with presets and themes.
- Its site builder allows you to create great designs without coding.
- It comes with a community feature (but limited).
- It has the best free plan without any transaction fee and their premium pricing is quite affordable than Teachable
- Unlike Teachable, Thinkific allows you to remove their branding from login and sales page URLs.
👎 Cons
- In my opinion, their user interface needs improvement. They should pay more attention to aspects such as padding and spacing of different elements on the screen.
- As it’s not an all-in-one platform, email marketing fearure is not included (unlike Podia and Kajabi).
🏆 Bottomline: Thinkific offers all the features of Teachable, along with mobile apps for both Android and iOS. If you like Teachable but shying away due to their recent issues, Thinkific may be the perfect choice for you.
Kajabi – All-in-one platform with automation
Kajabi is an all-in-one digital selling platform.
It comes with features like:
- Online courses
- Memberships
- Digital products
- Email marketing
- Marketing automation
- Kajabi Events (Webinars)
The best part is that all these features work in tight integration with each other, with an automation layer on top giving rise to a lot of creative marketing use cases.
For instance, above you can see how their course feature integrates with their email marketing feature. Whenever a lesson is completed, you can trigger a specific email, or even register them for an event or a webinar, as you can see.
Although it is an all-in-one platform, it’s features has real good depth.
For instance:
- Their course functionality includes course compliance, student-level video retention reports, heat maps, advanced quizzes, and assessment abilities.
- The community feature incorporates gamification features and advanced automation abilities.
- It has a funnel builder that seamlessly integrates the benefits of click funnels into the platform.
- The automation builder is comprehensive, allowing for easy integration and the ability to set various triggers and actions within the platform.
As of now, Kajabi is valued at around $2 billion and has raised a lot of funds in multiple rounds.
Speed of implementation of features is commendable on their end.
However, Kajabi is a premium platform.
Its Basic plan starts at $149/month, it may initially appear more expensive.
However, it replaces tools like:
- Community platforms like Circle.so ($99/month)
- Email marketing tools like ConvertKit (approximately $200/month for a 25k Kajabi plan)
- Website hosts (around $20/month for decent hosting)
- Webinar platforms like Zoom Webinars or Demio (starting at $59/month)
👍 Pros
- Advanced automation to integrate features like courses, funnels, and communities.
- Includes a feature-rich community features with gamification elements (they recently acquired Vibely)
- Its email marketing features eliminate the need for a separate email marketing software.
- Allows digital product selling.
- Feature-rich website builder with conversion-friendly blocks.
- Both iOS and Android apps that have exceptional UI/UX.
👎 Cons
- Kajabi’s Basic plan (even at $149/month) has the limitation of 3 Products so you are forced to choose their $197/month plan.
- It is relatively expensive compared to other platforms, which could be a deal breaker if you are seeking more affordable options.
If you want to know more about the advanced features of Kajabi, you can read my complete review.
🏆 Bottomline: Kajabi is the best all-in-one platform I can recommend. They offer a range of features that tightly integrate with each other and their features has good depth.
Podia – Affordable all-in-one platform
Podia is an excellent option if you are looking for an all-in-one platform like Kajabi but without the premium fee.
It is best known for its minimal and neat user interface.
It comes with the ability for you to sell:
- Online courses: Features like drip functionality, bundles, upselling, quizzes, and Zapier integration.
- Coachings: Conduct and sell coaching sessions with integrations with calendar apps.
- Digital downloads: Sell digital downloads for upselling.
- Webinars: Host webinars via Zoom or YouTube Live.
- Community: Lightweight community feature for topic creation and post restriction.
- Email marketing: Feature-rich email marketing platform with broadcast emails, drip campaigns, templates, and light automation.
Additionally, although it has a website builder, its functionality is limited. It lacks modules for implementing modern web design practices, and even simple features like the ability to add custom CSS are missing.
Although it comes with a wide range of features, it lacks depth to its features.
For instance:
- The website builder is basic (more of a storefront builder), again you may want to use WordPress.
- Community feature is limited, more like a forum.
- Lacks advanced reporting and student retention reports, unlock the above top 3. platforms..
Now about pricing.
Podia has four plans for you to play with: Free ($0/month), Starter ($4/month), Mover ($33/month), and Shaker ($59/month).
Unlike previously, even their Mover plan now comes with a 5% transaction fee. So, most people, if they want to get rid of the transaction fee, end up choosing the Shaker plan (but it costs $57/mo from second year).
👍 Pros
- All-in-one platform but feature lack depth
- User-friendly interface with attention to detail
- Unlimited courses and products with unlimited storage and bandwidth
- Ability to sell digital products and you can embed checkouts! (Good alternative to Gumroad)
- Podia does not charge you any transaction fee on the course sales you make.
👎 Cons
- Doesn’t have a mobile app
- Lack of depth in features
- The free plan comes with an 10% fee
You can refer to my complete review on Podia if you want more information.
🏆 Bottomline: Although Podia is an all-in-one platform, it lacks depth. You may feel like it’s a jack of all trades. It does not offer features such as superior course compliance and in-depth reporting. However, if you need access to a light-weight community, digital product selling, and superior email marketing features, you cannot go wrong with Podia.
Circle – Community-centric alternative
Circle is one of the newest community-centric course platforms out there.
It was launched in 2019 by Sid Yadav, who is Teachable’s first designer, and later backed by Ankur Nagpal (invested 90% of his liquid net-worth), the founder of Teachable.
Circle really shines with their intuitive UI and UX, it’s as if they’ve taken lessons from successful startups like Slack and Notion.
Just like Notion, their dream is to give you the building blocks to craft your online community exactly how you want it.
Right now, they’re focusing more on communities and courses.
Also they have mobile apps, built-in live streaming, and automation workflows to allow you to automate tasks and perform actions. Imagine having Zapier for your community – pretty cool, right?
Plus, they have “Community AI”, which is a huge help when it comes to managing your community and adding elements of gamification.
Please note that the basic plan allows you to host only up to 100 members and includes a 4% transaction fee. Even their professional plan includes a 2% transaction fee, which is subtly mentioned at the bottom of their pricing page.
Most individuals choose the $99 per month plan for access to unlimited courses, live streaming features, and unlimited members.
However, if you require automation workflows and also customizable fields, you’ll need to select the Business Plan, which costs $199 per month.
Ideally, it would be great if they included automation workflows functionality in their $99 per month Professional Plan.
👍 Pros
- Intuitive UI and UX
- Good speed of implementation of features
- Automation workflows (like say Zapier)
- Community AI features
👎 Cons
- Lack of some specialist course features (as of now)
- Premium pricing
🏆 Bottomline: If you are looking for a food community centric platform with really good flexibility, then you need to go with Circle. It is backed by the former team of Teachable!
LearnDash — Best WordPress LMS
LearnDash is quite different as it is a WordPress-based solution. If you are already fairly knowledgeable with WordPress, you need to strongly consider LearnDash.
It’s features are:
- Online courses
- Quizzes
- Memberships
- Propanel – Student level analytics
There are a lot of free, premium, and 3rd party addons for LearnDash. Also it integrates with almost all the popular WordPress plugins like WooCommerce, Elementor, Gamipress and whatnot.
I have couple of my old courses, still hosted on LearnDash. Please do read my previous review here
As per my experience, LearnDash beats all other WordPress LMS plugins out of the water with superior integrations, reliability, and add-ons.
If you’re already familiar with WordPress, LearnDash is a flexible option that allows you to leverage your development team and bring your creative ideas to life. It’s a WordPress plugin that offers customization and the ability to create unique experiences through custom development.
However, you need to be thoroughly knowledgeable about WordPress and unless you have a developer, setting up LearnDash can be quite challenging.
🏆 Bottomline: Despite this, LearnDash is a cost-effective and flexible solution if you’re into online courses. Its pricing starts at $199/year for 1 site license, and its technical support is good.
LearnWorlds – Best for academics
LearnWorlds is a quite solid alternative to Teachable especially for academic use cases.
It has some unique features like:
- Interactive videos
- Transcripts
- SCORM and HTML5 support
- Powerful website builder
It has many features, but its interface and UI feel very cluttered. The user experience requires significant attention.
They have introduced numerous features like a pop-up builder, advanced page builder, and even an ebook builder. However, in my opinion, they need to focus more on the quality of the user experience rather than on introducing shiny new features.
If you are someone who cannot tolerate poor user experience, LearnWorlds may disappoint you.
Moreover, if you are a marketing-friendly course creator who doesn’t need features like interactive videos, SCORM, and HTML5 support, then you might need to reconsider using LearnWorlds.
Added on top of this, most of their unique features like interactive videos, advanced assessments , automatic transcripts, and also the ability to remove LearnWorld’s brand is only available in their “Learning center” plan at $249 per month.
🏆 Bottomline: If you’re into academic courses, then LearnWorlds’ unique features like interactive videos, advanced assessments, and features like SCORMs and HTML5 may be useful for you.
FreshLearn — Best freemium platform
With FreshLearn, you can either create on-demand or cohort courses.
When creating course lessons, it supports various content types:
- Text
- Images
- Audio/video
- Attachments
- Quizzes & assessments
Also, similar to Teachable and Thinkific, it supports course completion certificates and content dripping.
One unique feature of FreshLearn is that it includes gamification features, such as the ability to assign points, rewards, and host challenges based on actions taken within the community. However, as of now, it lacks leaderboards and badges.
The best part is that FreshLearn has mobile apps for both iOS and Android users, which is quite impressive.
FreshLearn is a freemium platform. Its Pro plan starts at $39/mo. This plan supports communities, certificates, assessments, live classes, etc.
If you need advanced theme customization options, mobile apps, randomized QAs, question banks, custom themes, etc. you have to go with its No Brainer plan which costs $69/mo.
🏆 Bottomline: Freshlearn is a good alternative to Teachable and is quite affordable with unique gamification features.
Teachery
Teachery is another good course platform.
The main thing to note is that Teachery doesn’t handle video hosting. You need to make use of services like YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia.
Also it has pretty serious limitations when compared to Teachable or Thinkific.
It doesn’t have features like superior course compliance, quizzes, certificates, discussions, a native payment gateway, and much more.
Few things that we noticed where Teachery stands out:
- Simple pricing. They have only one pricing (divided into monthly and yearly plans) and it comes with all the features so you don’t have to rack your brains to choose one or the other.
- Unlimited courses, lessons, and students. You can create an unlimited number of courses, lessons, and manage any number of students on this platform.
Teachery’s annual plan is $39/month, less than Teachable’s $59/month. However, it’s still costly considering it doesn’t support video hosting.
🏆 Bottomline: Teachery, a “Lite” version of Teachable, but it lacks memberships, in-depth reporting, and certain marketing features, but offers an affordable, satisfactory solution.
Bottomline
In summary, if you’re seeking a robust Teachable alternative without its downsides, consider Thinkific.
If you prefer an all-in-one platform to avoid purchasing separate products for your online business, Kajabi is a good choice. Despite being an all-in-one platform, it offers many specialized features.
If Kajabi’s $199 per month is too steep, consider Podia. It’s also an all-in-one platform but is quite affordable without product creation limits, but while its features lack depth, it still offers nearly everything you need.
These are my top three picks.
