The current trend of consumer behaviour moving into online media is fast becoming the new normal for many businesses. It’s not surprising that the same is true for non-traditional education through the multitude of online courses now available online. This has opened more avenues of learning beyond the classroom setting, and has empowered nearly anyone with an idea to talk about their knowledge.
Whether you want to teach your hobbies, or something associated with your expertise, there are lots of online course platforms (OCP) or learning management systems (LMS) that can help you get started. Some OCPs will offer services from scratch, like creating your website, while others focus mainly on helping you achieve your target audience. The 1st step is finding which one can move your ideas seamlessly onto the screens of your prospective students.
With all these LMS to choose from, there is one firm that has stood out for its balance of reasonable pricing, customizability, ease of use, and marketing control. Teachable is the top choice of creative entrpreneurs, and after pitting it against its competitors, it’s clear why.
Teachable vs Udemy Danielle Leslie Teachable
Udemy was one of the pioneers of LMS, which explains why and how their audience remains among the largest markets in the industry: they were there first. Udemy and Teachable are now two of the most popular choices in selling online classes, but they’re very different in nature and progressiveness.
Differences
Teachable allows users to construct their own course site and market their brand, while Udemy is merely a market for course creators that have existing classes. At the surface, this means that Teachable lets you use your custom domain while Udemy will have your customers keep coming back to Udemy.com. On another level, Teachable gives you tools to create and customize the entirety of your site, from content building and editing to sales, which aren’t in any way possible on Udemy. One of the more immediate consequences of this is that Teachable lets you communicate more directly with your clientele, by providing you with access to student’s data and information; but as soon as you’re on Udemy’s platform, your students’ data is theirs alone for whatever other purpose it may serve them. And in accordance with that, Udemy seems to care most about selling classes, period; so it is not just your classes, but every other class in their list. There have been testimonials that mentioned this, when even competitor’s classes have been promoted to students that the user brought in. Sure, that may work in favor of newer users who might need the marketing, but from the point of view of a loyal user, that business sense could seem too self-serving and unnecessary.
Marketing at a Price
It is Udemy’s cut-throat policies which have turned off many former or possible users. They seem to know the very value of their following, and have taken advantage of it, much to the detriment of the lecturer. True, Teachable does not market the courses for its own users, that responsibility is left entirely to them. In an extreme fashion, Udemy markets their consumer’s courses aggressively, but with a significant price. That price is a massive chunk of control and earnings.
Udemy began with a 90% instructor revenue share, but they slashed those percentages to 70%, and then again quite suddenly to 50% throughout the years. A 50% share of the course earnings may still seem reasonable to others, especially to those whose courses were previously created for other purposes and were only shared more openly on Udemy, but that hurt a number of the instructors that were selling solely from the company’s site. In addition to that, what have driven people over the edge are the restrictions on pricing. In 2016, Udemy set a cap on its costs, and all courses on the system had to be within the $20-$50 range. This is regardless of the uniqueness or skillfulness of a program, and it’s natural for some to turn away and look for better outlets for their ideas. If you combine both of these policies, and have a class priced at $20 and a 50% creator revenue, selling on Udemy becomes nearly impossible as a dependable source of primary income.
So while it is true that Udemy has a massive audience that you might want to tap into, the majority of the topics that they offer are actually very limited to largely Technology and Personal Development. Consider their dog-eat-dog marketing strategies and absorption of your brand’s identity, I would say Teachable is the answer to many of Udemy’s shortcomings. In the end, nothing is more satisfying than creating your own following.
Teachable vs Thinkific
Pricing Danielle Leslie Teachable
If you’re looking for an LMS that is comparable to Teachable’s cost, Thinkific is another terrific company that offers a lot for less. Both provide their first tier programs at no cost, and start charging for every higher tier thereafter. Many beginners choose Thinkific for its generous waiving of transaction fees on any of its plans; however a closer look at the fine print will reveal that it charges extra for certain features which are already included in Teachable’s monthly flat prices. However, those deviations are somewhat negligible, and with a range from $0-$499 per month, you really can’t go wrong with either of these.
Beginner-Friendly
But pricing is not all that they have in common. Both enable their users to create and sell personalized courses in their hosted platforms, without the bother of handling the technical aspects like website maintenance, hosting, and security.
Newbies to the biz have a tendency to gravitate toward these companies for their easy-to-use interface which allows nearly all formats of content, such as audio, video, PDFs, and other multimedia. Most of these can be uploaded to the courses by a simple drag and drop builder. They can host unlimited videos, create quizzes, send certificates, and track the progress of their students.
Danielle Leslie Teachable
Convenience
Among the benefits of Teachable over Thinkific is the former’s course builder: it allows bulk changes to courses, which can be an enormous time-saver, especially for those that have built quite a few on their system; and it allows multi-format content in one lecture. What’s more is it can be linked to cloud providers, like Dropbox and Google Drive, for faster uploads from your computer.
In terms of course delivery, Teachable has an iOS app that enables students to learn on their mobile devices, which is something that Thinkific doesn’t have.
Sales and Marketing
After the content creation comes the selling and marketing of your courses. This is where Teachable wins by a landslide. Both give the freedom to sell one-time or recurring products, offer discounts and packages, or affiliate programs, but Teachable has more options. The real clincher is Teachable’s 1-step checkout process, which reduces customer fallout (which occurs more during obsolete, 2-step procedures like Thinkific’s). It also comes with a 1-click upsell upon checkout, raising transactions per client. Another major benefit is Teachable’s payment gateway which accepts credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay payments. Another service included is the automated payout to affiliates and authors (when applicable), taking care of tax forms and similar documentation. If you have users from the EU, it even goes as far as including EU VAT on top of course rates. That definitely gives you more value for your own content. Click here to check out pricing for Teachable.
Teachable vs Podia Danielle Leslie Teachable
One of the online class platforms with the most affordable top tier is Podia. Though it doesn’t have a free plan, and its basic plan comes at $39/month (with Teachable at $29/month), its top and only remaining plan is offered at $79 (with Teachable at $399). This price gap can be due to the vastly different things they each offer. On the one hand, Teachable is a fully customizable course creator and seller, and on the other, Podia chose to concentrate on Online Course Hosting, Membership or Email Marketing, and Digital Downloads. Those will immediately help you narrow down your choice to what is best suited to your needs.
Podia’s compact classes lets users filter out other aspects which they may not have to dip into, such as e-commerce. Its interface is simple, clean, and fairly good for novice instructors. That said, this is also why it may not satisfy the needs of instructors who wish to do more with their site. Since the variety isn’t much, more advanced users may find it lacking.
Course Creation and Control
Teachable beats Podia in design and customization tools, with choices for simple uploads of files, texts, and quizzes. Those that dabble in code may also explore that within Teachable. Users can easily get the slick look of a professional site by choosing from default themes that can be customized to satisfaction. Teachable’s editor makes it easy to create changes and push upsells, maximizing both user’s time and profitability.
Both have a trickle content attribute for the ones that would like to space the lessons offered to their clients, and prevent cramming modules in 1 go. What is unique to Teachable is innovative control over course compliance, such as keeping tabs on students’ completion of lessons and quizzes. Additionally, it has built-in certificates that users can make and send to their students at the conclusion of the lessons. Concerning integrations, Teachable has improved autoresponders and analytics, both of which are extremely important to marketing and sales.
Recommendation Danielle Leslie Teachable
To summarize, Teachable‘s interface is approachable even to the most inexperienced users, has excellent creation and builder resources for designing a slick course site, gives you control over your marketing and sales, has attributes that cut time and effort on backend paperwork, and gives the best value for money. With more upgrades and user feedback, they’re guaranteed to be a reliable choice for many years to come.
