Founded in 2014, Teachable is a course platform with a lot of name recognition. It lets you create and your course with an intuitive course builder, and it also gives you landing pages to help sell it.
But despite being a legacy platform, Teachable is missing some of the features of newer course platforms. It doesn't do live engagement or communities well, it primarily works for asynchronous learning, and it’s only available on an iOS app (not Android).
In this article, we'll introduce you to the best Teachable alternatives.
There are lots of great software options for building your online course that give you more, in some cases for less money. These 6 alternatives to Teachable have something for everyone.
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Advantages to Teachable
- Quick to get started and set up a course
- Good LMS for asynchronous courses with certification options
- Intuitive landing page builder
- Integrated email and customer tracking
- Payment processing for one-time sales, bundles, or subscriptions
Where Teachable Struggles
We mentioned a few of the disadvantages of Teachable in the intro. Here are where most creators get stuck, and why they look for a Teachable alternative.
- No tools for running an online course community; it's missing livestreaming, events, discussions, and more. (Some creators try to integrate a Facebook Group, but that's seriously limited.)
- Although it has a "free" option, the 10% transaction fee is steep. The more you succeed, the more it costs you.
- It's almost unthinkable that Teachable doesn't have an Android app, and shows no interest in creating one anytime soon. There are 2.5 billion Android users who can't access your course on their phones.
- Even the iOS app is glitchy and poorly reviewed.
The 6 Best Teachable Alternatives
1. Mighty Networks
Best Teachable Alternative for live courses & community
If you’re ready to energize your online courses by connecting your members to each other for better results, Mighty is the best Teachable alternative for a robust, engaged community of learners.
Mighty Networks is:
- The ultimate live-teaching platform.
- With powerful pre-recorded courses built-in (an LMS).
Mighty comes with flexible course Spaces for mixing in live events, livestreaming, forums, messaging, and member profiles.
- Add any kind of content: video, audio, text, PDFs, and a course discussion under each module.
- Communication tools: polls and questions, rich media articles, chat & messaging, as well as online events with RSVPs.
- Bundle and sell courses with exclusive forums, mastermind groups, premium memberships, virtual events, and more.
- Build instant landing pages, sell in 135 different currencies, and use the built-in ConvertKit integration.
- An awesome app included for every device: iOS AND Android. Over 65% of Mighty’s rapidly growing community engagement happens on its native mobile apps.
A Mighty Network is the only alternative to Teachable where you can get the full power of a sophisticated online course platform and a community together in one place, and branded for you.
Mighty also has a ton of useful AI tools built in to boost--not replace--human creativity: think question generators, instant course outlines, the "make it better" text editor, and instant member profiles.
And when you’re ready, you can upgrade to offer your entire package of courses, community, and memberships on your own native mobile apps available directly in the Apple App and Google Play Stores.
2. Kajabi
Kajabi is a well-known platform for running paid memberships and online courses. If you’re looking for an alternative to Teachable that will give you a complex course-marketing platform and delivery together in one place on the web, Kajabi is an option.
Marketing and sales tools are where Kajabi makes its mark. With Kajabi, you get powerful marketing tools to deliver email campaigns, welcome flows, weekly updates, and more. They have optimized marketing landing pages to create email waitlists or sell exclusive “windows” for purchase, and they have checkout and payments that support multiple currencies around the world.
The main downside to Kajabi is that it’s the most expensive platform on the market--there are lots of alternatives that give you comparable features for less.
Unfortunately, Kajabi doesn't work well for live courses or communities. It recently replaced its limited forum feature with "Kajabi 2.0" which creates more discussion, livestreaming, and event options. But Kajabi 2.0 requires a separate log-on and a separate app from Kajabi's main course app.
Kajabi's biggest strength is as a pre-recorded course platform with marketing built-in.
3. Thinkific
If you’re looking for an alternative to Teachable to deliver just your online courses, Thinkific is a similar course-only platform that also offers a free tier.
Thinkific offers two things that Teachable doesn’t. First, it has more advanced quizzes, with question banks and randomization, as well as surveys you can use to communicate with people who take your courses. Results from your surveys and course feedback can be embedded in marketing pages offered in the paid tiers, which is a nice way of closing the loop.
The other thing that Thinkific offers is a closer connection to your website. Like Mighty Networks and Kajabi, Thinkific will also link back to your website. With a little technical know-how, you can integrate your website with your Thinkific online courses for a more seamless brand experience. This is a long way from putting your courses, your site, your community, and your marketing under one umbrella, but it’s a step.
Unfortunately, Thinkific is missing live course features as well as community options. It's missing native livestreaming and its Android apps were plagued by bad reviews. This makes Thinkific a decent alternative to Teachable, but not the best.
4. Skillshare
Skillshare is a well-known online learning platform for people looking to learn and teach others new skills. It’s a good alternative to Teachable because it offers a similar marketplace vibe on their platform, but with a more approachable interface.
One reason that the Skillshare platform has grown so much in popularity is that it’s attracted a wide range of content creators to offer courses. This is great for instructors because it means they will have diversity in potential customers coming to the platform compared to some other Teachable alternatives.
On Skillshare, creators and entrepreneurs can create online courses as well as promote them using built-in tools. The main form of content you’ll be creating on Skillshare is videos. The prerecorded nature of the platform will be approachable for those who might be scared of public speaking, but it can also lead to less dynamic courses.
Marketplace solutions for online courses can prove to be very valuable; you never know who might come across your course through searching certain keywords.
But the downside to Skillshare is in how competitive it is to get your course seen.
And even worse, it’s hard to make much money. Skillshare has a 25 student minimum for monetizing your course. Basically, until you have 25 students, you can’t actually make money off your content. After you reach that goal, Skillshare divides up a piece of their revenue pie among course creators according to hours watched. As you can imagine, new creators get a very very small slice of this pie until they get some serious eyes on their course.
5. Udemy
Udemy is another marketplace Teachable alternative that you should have on your radar. Their platform offers over 130,000 courses every month and they’ve built software that allows creators and entrepreneurs to automate their courses easily. Because of this, Udemy has become a popular Teachable alternative for entrepreneurs and people working in tech-related fields.
Compared to Teachable, Udemy is less restrictive about the kinds of content instructors can offer. They allow video, text, and audio lectures, as well as robust quizzes, Q&As, reviews, and more.
All of the content you create can be downloaded for offline use by your members. Additionally, Udemy has some basic community building tools, like giving creators the ability to send new students a welcome message.
One downside to the platform, however, is that similar to Skillshare, Udemy utilizes a marketplace solution for hosting your online courses. If you sell a course to someone who comes through your own link, you keep 97% of your revenue. But if you sell to someone from their platform, you only keep 37%. That’s a lot to give up. You also don’t get access to your students’ email addresses; they’re Udemy’s customers, not yours.
And the lack of a real community makes it tough to build great relationships.
6. Podia
Our final alternative to Teachable is Podia, an online course, membership, and digital product platform. It’s sort of like a cheaper version of Kajabi, but its platform is much more basic.
On Podia, you can create a wide range of content that exists within one digital storefront. This is convenient because their user interface is easy to navigate and customize to fit your business needs. Some examples of what you can build on Podia are online courses, digital memberships, one-off webinars, and digital downloads.
The downside to Podia is that it's missing community-building and live teaching tools. And it doesn't have mobile apps at all.
Ready to build?
When you choose a Mighty Network as a Teachable alternative, you’ve got the newest and easiest way to launch or grow online courses faster, more efficiently, and with more energy. It’s a powerful platform that’s easy to learn and is perfect for someone “low tech” just starting out or a sophisticated course creator ready to take their business to the next level.
