Are you looking for Teachable alternatives?

Are the limitations letting you down?

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.

Existing customers? Held for ransom!

But don't worry, we've got you covered.

In this blog post, we'll introduce you some reliable and trustworthy Teachable alternatives that you can use to host and sell your online courses without compromising on the quality of features.

Here are some of the factors on which we selected the alternatives to Teachable:

• The best alternatives should not have the downsides of Teachable.
• They should be affordable or have similar pricing to that of Teachable.
• They should come with more or the same amount of features as Teachable.

Ready to dive in? Let's go.

Upfront bottomline:

• Podia and Thinkific are recommended Teachable alternatives for those on a budget. If you want an all-in-one platform, go with Podia. If you want the closest alternative to Teachable, go with Thinkific.
• Kajabi is for you if you want an all-in-one platform with real good depth to features, so that you can save a lot on integrations.
• Pick LearnDash if you want a really flexible WordPress-based course platform. It plugs in nicely with the WordPress ecosystem with various add-ons and integrations with other popular plugins.

#1. 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: Similar to Teachable it comes with drip functionality, bundles, upselling, quizzes, Zapier integration, and much more.
• Digital downloads: If you’re looking to upsell, this feature comes handy to make more out of your products.
• Webinars: Use your favourite tools like Zoom or YouTube Live to host workshops and webinars on Podia.
• Coachings: Sell your expertise by conducting coaching sessions with your customers.

Podia has a superior email Marketing platform allowing you to send broadcast emails as well as drip campaigns.

Pricing

Podia has three plans for you to play with: Free ($0/month), Mover ($39/month), and Shaker ($89/month).

You can refer to my complete review on Podia if you want more information.

If you are in a dilemma choosing between Podia and Teachable, read my complete comparison to make a better buying decision.

It is one of the most affordable online course creation platforms available today.

Pros

• All-in-one platform
• User-friendly interface with attention to detail
• Unlimited courses and products with unlimited storage and bandwidth
• Ability to sell digital products
• Podia does not charge you any transaction fee on the course sales you make.
• Podia’s embedded checkout options are super-flexible to use with your website.

Cons

• Doesn't have a mobile app
• Limited depth of features
• The free plan comes with an 8% fee
• Additional features like webinars and affiliate programs require a higher-priced plan

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 community, digital product selling, and superior drip email marketing features, you cannot go wrong with Podia.

Explore Podia

#2. Thinkific — Superior customization and design options

Thinkific is another great alternative to Teachable for those who are interested only in a course platform but not an all-in-one platform.

I can treat this as a much closer alternative to Teachable, although it costs quite a lot.

Similar to Teachable, you can create your online courses and also create membership sites with Thinkific.

Here are a few notable things about Thinkific:

• It has superior design and customization options to Teachable, as it offers presets and themes.
• It has a good site builder that allows you to build great designs without touching a line of code.
• It has an inbuilt survey mechanism, whereas, in Teachable, you may need to use other tools and embed them.
• Thinkific offers you to get rid of their branding, unlike Teachable which still has branding in login and sales page URLs.

Nevertheless, Thinkific lacks a lot of functionalities like native certification features, fewer course compliance features, and a lack of one-step checkout (a lot of friction).

Similar to Podia and Teachable, Thinkific also comes with an affiliate marketing feature.

Pricing

As you can see in the above screenshot, 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.

If you need almost all the best features of Thinkific, I suggest you go with their ‘Grow’ plan.

Basic plan lacks private & hidden courses, flexible pricing options for your courses (subscriptions, free, one-time, payment plans, or additional course prices), Memberships and bundles, certificates, advanced customization, communities, assignments, etc.

Pros

• Has a mobile app for Android & iOS users.
• Has a good straightforward and simple UI/UX
• It has the best free plan without any transaction fee
• Their premium pricing is quite affordable than Teachable
• Thinkific has narrated presentation or voiceover presentation features

Cons

• It lacks many course compliance features that Teachable comes with
• It lacks some detailed analytics that Teachable comes with to dive deep into per-student performance, video timeline watch trends, and much more

Bottomline: Thinkific is a great tool for you if you want superior customization and design options and are fed up with Teachable’s lack of layout and customization options. It comes with a totally free plan too without any transaction fee. But lack of native certification features and course compliance features are some things you need to consider.

Explore Thinkific

#3. Kajabi – All-in-one platform with automation

Kajabi is yet another all-in-one online learning platform. It comes with features like:

1. Online courses
2. Memberships
3. Digital products
4. Email marketing
5. Marketing automation

It is marketed as a complete online marketing platform as opposed to a course platform.

It has been endorsed and used by big names in the expert industry like Brendon Burchard and Amy Porterfield. It is a premium platform with a much higher price tag.

If you are looking for an all-in-one platform and Podia is lacking in some features, then Kajabi is the way to go.

Kajabi is really superior to any tool in this list when it comes to marketing and automation. It has so many features that you may need to make use of their Assistant for discovering all the features effectively and quickly.

Kajabi’s user interface also feels very polished and premium.

Pricing

Their basic plan is very limited and comes with support for creating only 3 Products and Pipelines. For a decent online creator, the “Growth” plan is a must.

Along with the above features, their Growth plan also unlocks – 24/7 chat support, advanced automations, the ability to remove Kajabi branding, an affiliate program, etc.

Kajabi has really good premium customer support. They have good live chat support and are very quick to respond to the queries of their users.

With Kajabi you sometimes may feel that you are shelling some money for the brand and the premium experience. It is undoubtedly better than Podia if you don’t consider the price.

If you think not having the ability to sell digital products is a major downside of Teachable, you may consider getting Kajabi over Teachable or Podia.

One greatest strengths of Kajabi over Teachable is the automation builder. If you want to know more about the advanced features of Kajabi, you can read my complete review.

Pros

• Kajabi is a marketing-centric all-in-one platform with advanced features like complete marketing automation and pipelines.
• Kajabi has advanced marketing automation features that none of the platforms I’ve featured in this blog post comes with. Slash down your Zapier bill
• It has dedicated memberships and digital product-selling platforms.
• It has a dedicated community-building feature with gamification features. As a sidenote, Teachable lacks this.
• It has superior email marketing features like event-triggers and drip emails that are tightly integrated with the platform so you don’t need to necessarily use a 3rd party email marketing software.
• Kajabi offers really good upsell and order bump features as profit maximizer features.
• It has digital product selling capabilities to allow you to sell information products as well along with courses.
• On its page builder, it has the option to delay the display of the buy now button on the sales page so that people will have to watch your entire sales video.

Cons

• Even Kajabi’s Basic plan (even at $149/mo) comes with the limitation of 3 products and pipelines.
• Kajabi is one of the costliest platforms compared to other platforms which could be a deal breaker if you’re looking for cheaper options.

Bottomline: Kajabi is the best all-in-one platform I can recommend. It’s even better than Podia when it comes to features. It has almost all the features of Podia – plus additional features like superior marketing features and community builder that are truly valuable. But the features of Kajabi come at a premium price and it has some restrictions like the ability to create only 3 products even in their beginner plan.

Explore Kajabi

#4. FreshLearn — Best freemium platform

With FreshLearn, you can either create on-demand or cohort courses. You need to build everything from scratch, as it doesn’t offer any templates, unlike tools like Thinkific or Kajabi.

It supports various content types –

• Text
• Images
• Audio/video
• Attachments
• Quizzes & assessments

As part of the course compliance, you can create graded assessments. With this, you can evaluate them and make sure students are properly consuming the course content. Furthermore, there are some advanced features available like – negative scores, randomizing questions & answers, passing percentages, etc. If you want students to take course completion tests/entrance tests, you can utilize them.

Similar to other Teachable alternatives on this list, FreshLearn also supports course completion certificates and content drip schedules.

Few other notable features about FreshLearn:

• Gamification: FreshLearn helps in increasing members’ engagement with gamification features like – points, rewards, quizzes, and challenges. Points can be awarded for adding posts, liking posts, commenting on others’ posts, taking quizzes, etc. As of now, it lacks leaderboards and badges (you can expect them to come soon).
• Marketing Features: FreshLearn supports coupons and affiliates. You can create single-use coupons and bulk coupon codes (to offer during special campaigns).
• Mobile Apps: The best thing, FreshLearn has mobile apps for both iOS and Android users. Students can access their courses, get certificates, and purchase the courses all within the apps.

When it comes to affiliates, you can set up your own affiliate program. You have the flexibility to create product-specific commissions and limit the number of affiliates you work with to ensure quality leads.

To analyze affiliates’ performance, FreshLearn gives detailed insights on – sales, leads, and commissions. For payouts, you can use their own payment gateway (Stripe, PayPal, and RazorPay).

Pricing

FreshLearn is a freemium platform. Its Pro plan starts at $39/mo. This plan supports communities, certificates, assessments, live classes, etc. Unlike Teachable, it doesn’t charge transaction fees on any of its plans.

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.

To explore the tool, you can get started with its 14 days free trial.

Pros

• It doesn’t charge any transaction fees on any of its plans.
• Has a forever-free plan. You can get started with it and switch over to the paid plans once you start selling.
• Its live classes feature helps you connect with your students in real time and increase their engagement. This really helps students to connect with other members and build relationships with them.
• It supports completely white-labelled domains. You can sell your products, create communities, and offer memberships under your own brand. This helps in increased conversions.
• Its gamification features make students’ journey fun and help in improved course completion rates, community engagement, and encourage them to proactively participate in all the activities.

Cons

• As of now, it has very limited native integrations. It just integrates with a few payment gateways. You have to use Zapier for external integrations.
• Unlike tools like Kajabi, it doesn’t have sales funnels and automation features. (for funnels you can use ClickFunnels and use Zapier triggers for automation).

Bottomline: FreshLearn is the best choice if you need an affordable digital product-selling platform. It offers really good LMS and student engagement features (like question banks, gamification, randomized QnAs, live classes, community, etc). It is an affordable alternative to Teachable.

Explore FreshLearn

#5. 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.

There are a lot of WordPress LMS plugins like LifterLMS, LearnPress, etc.

But as per my experience, LearnDash beats them all out of the water with superior integrations, reliability, and add-ons. There are a lot of free, premium, and 3rd party addons for LearnDash.

For example…

The most notable feature is that they recently introduced a membership feature dubbed “groups” which allows you to restrict the content based on the different levels people are subscribed to.

Fits in your workflow if you’re already familiar with WordPress. It is very flexible as it’s a WordPress plugin, you can get your development team really get the most out of the plugin. You can bring your creative ideas to life as you have room for custom development.

Pricing

Despite the limitations mentioned above, 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.

Pros

• It comes with unlimited flexibility and features due to add-ons and it has room for custom PHP development.
• If you’re already using WordPress, LearnDash has a relatively good learning curve.
• It comes with a “groups” feature that can be used for memberships. If the name bothers you – rename it as “memberships” using their term editor.
• I really liked the way in which they offer extra features as add-ons, thus making the core plugin lightweight.
• It also offers LearnDash Cloud, which starts at $29 per month, which is a fully hosted solution so that you don't need to worry about the WordPress technicalities to get the best of Learndash.

Cons

• The main downside of WordPress LMS plugins is that along with the plugins, you may need to also host your videos or use platforms like Vimeo or Wistia for video protection.
• LearnDash can be difficult to set up and customize for non-techies
• It does not come with superior design and customization options without HTML/CSS knowledge or without using premium add-ons.

Bottomline: LearnDash is a suitable option if you are already using WordPress and are comfortable with the technical knowledge needed to set it up initially. Its flexibility is unmatched as it integrates with the rest of the WordPress ecosystem. However, you need to tolerate the slugginess of WordPress and potential plugin conflicts! For example, every time I update my plugins, I hold my breath, and pray that nothing breaks!

Explore LearnDash

#6. LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds is a really good newer alternative to Teachable.

It really goes a mile ahead in offering some unique features like interactive videos, transcripts, SCORM, HTML5 support, a powerful website builder, a custom mobile app, etc.

LearnWorlds integrates with a lot of apps, but it lacks native integrations with some apps like GetResponse, MailerLite, and other email marketing software. You may end up making use of Zapier.

1. One of the standout features of LearnWorlds is its interactive video player. It allows you to create engaging video content with interactive elements like quizzes, pop-ups, and hotspots. This feature can help increase student engagement and retention.
2. When it comes to marketing you have powerful upselling, cross-selling, coupon, and affiliate marketing features with LearnWorlds. But unlike Podia or Kajabi it lacks superior email marketing features.
3. Unlike Teachable they offer you to create your own community or social network with all the features like likes, comments, etc. Every person will have their private inboxes, profile pages, and also you can create private groups for discussions. This feature is quite similar to Facebook.

Pricing

Most of their features are available in their Pro Trainer plan. You get really good features like memberships, custom certificates, affiliate management, etc.

In their highest “Learning Center” plan you get additional features like bulk student upload, complete white-label features, auto-subtitling, advanced affiliate management, etc.

Pros

• It has some really good features like memberships, community building, etc.
• It has an option to completely white-label your course platform in its higher plans.
• It offers good marketing features like upsells, cross-sells, coupons, promotions, bundling, and affiliate marketing.

Cons

• Their Starter plan lacks a lot of crucial features like integrations, certificates, memberships, subscriptions, etc.
• It lacks inbuilt email marketing features but has integrations.
• Even their Starter plan comes with a course fee of $5 for every sale. But still better than Teachable’s fee
• It comes with a lot of features, but it has a really poor UI and UX. You may feel quite overwhelmed by their cluttered interface.

Bottomline: LearnWorlds is really a great course platform with a lot of features matchable to software like Podia or Thinkific. But the lack of native integrations with some of the popular email marketing software is quite a deal-breaker. Along with that, their Starter plan is just very restrictive. The real experience of LearnWorlds lies in their “Pro Trainer” plan as it unlocks so many features.

Explore LearnWorlds

#7. Teachery

Teachery is another good course platform.

The main difference is that Teachery doesn’t handle video hosting. You need to make use of services like YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia.

It has pretty serious limitations when compared to Teachable. 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:

1. 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.
2. Unlimited Courses, Lessons, and Students. You can create an unlimited number of courses, lessons, and manage any number of students on this platform.

Pricing

Teachery’s annual plan costs you $39/month and is lower than Teachable’s pricing that costs you $59/month. However, the price is really high considering that they don’t support video hosting and you need to shell out money for hosting your videos as well.

Pros

• No transaction fee.
• It has 2 site themes vs only 1 that Teachable comes with.

Cons

• Lack of membership functionality.
• They do not come with video hosting – you need to use Vimeo or Wistia.
• Lacks a lot of advanced course compliance, customization functionalities, quizzes, and certificates, that Teachable comes with.

Bottomline: You can treat Teachery as a “Lite” version of Teachable. It doesn’t come with memberships, in-depth reporting, course compliance, and some other marketing features, unlike Teachable. But if you want an affordable solution that does the job well Teachery doesn’t disappoint you.

Explore Teachery

Bottomline

I would strongly recommend you to go for Podia (memberships and digital product selling) or Thinkific as a Teachable alternative if budget is a constraint for you.

On the other hand, Kajabi is more for you if you want almost all the features of Podia with additional features like marketing automation and a superior community builder. It has good depth in its features.