The current trend of consumer behaviour moving into online media is fast becoming the new normal for many industries. It’s not surprising that the exact same is true for unconventional education via the multitude of online courses now available online. It has opened more avenues of learning beyond the classroom setting, and has empowered nearly anyone with an idea to share their knowledge.
Whether you want to teach your hobbies, or something associated with your expertise, there are many online course platforms (OCP) or learning management systems (LMS) that may help you get started. Some OCPs will offer services from scratch, like creating your website, while others focus mainly on assisting you to reach your target audience. The 1st step is finding which one can transfer your ideas seamlessly onto the screens of your potential students.
With so many LMS to pick from, there’s one company that has stood out for its balance of reasonable pricing, customizability, ease of use, and marketing control. Teachable is the top choice of instructors, and after pitting it against its rivals, it is clear why.
Teachable vs Udemy Finding Courses On Teachable
Udemy was one of the pioneers of LMS, which explains how and why their audience is still among the largest markets in the industry: they were there first. Udemy and Teachable are currently two of the most popular choices in selling online classes, but they’re extremely different in nature and progressiveness.
Differences
Teachable allows users to construct their own course website and market their brand, while Udemy is simply a marketplace for course creators that have existing courses. At the very surface, this means that Teachable lets you use your custom domain while Udemy will have your clients keep coming back to Udemy.com. On another level, Teachable gives you tools to create and customize the entirety of your site, from content editing and building 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 once you’re on Udemy’s platform, your students’ data is theirs alone for whatever other purpose it might serve them. And in line with that, Udemy seems to care about selling classes, period; therefore it is not just your classes, but every other class in their list. There have been testimonials that said this, when even competitor’s classes are promoted to clients that the instructor brought in. Sure, that may work in favor of newer users who might need the advertising, but from the viewpoint of a loyal user, that business sense could seem too self-serving and unnecessary.
Marketing at a Price
It’s Udemy’s cut-throat policies which have turned off several former or possible users. They seem to be aware of 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 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 huge chunk of control and revenue.
Udemy began with a 90% creator 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 revenues may still seem sensible to others, particularly to those whose courses were previously created for other purposes and were merely shared more publicly on Udemy, but that hurt a number of the instructors who were selling solely from the corporation’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 prices, and all classes on the system needed to be within the $20-$50 range. That is regardless of the uniqueness or skillfulness of a course, and it is natural for some to turn away and look for better outlets for their ideas. If you combine both of these policies, and have a course priced at $20 and a 50% instructor revenue, selling on Udemy becomes nearly impossible as a reliable source of primary income.
So while it is true that Udemy has a massive audience which you might choose to tap into, most of the topics which they offer are really very limited to largely Technology and Personal Development. Consider that and their dog-eat-dog marketing strategies and absorption of your brand’s identity, I would say Teachable is the response to many of Udemy’s shortcomings. In the end, there is nothing more satisfying than creating your own following.
Teachable vs Thinkific
Pricing Finding Courses On Teachable
If you’re looking for an LMS that is comparable to Teachable’s price, Thinkific is another great company that offers a lot for less. Both provide their first tier plans for free, and start charging for each higher tier thereafter. Many beginners choose Thinkific because of its generous waiving of transaction fees on any of its plans; but a closer look at the fine print will reveal that it charges extra for certain options which are already included in Teachable’s monthly flat rates. However, those deviations are somewhat negligible, and with a range from $0-$499 per month, you can’t go wrong with either of these two.
Beginner-Friendly
But pricing isn’t all that they have in common. Both enable their users to create and sell personalized classes in their hosted platforms, without the bother of handling the technical aspects like site maintenance, hosting, and security.
Newbies to the biz have a tendency to gravitate toward these companies for their easy-to-use interface that allows nearly all formats of content, such as audio, video, PDFs, and other multimedia. Most of these can be uploaded into the site by a simple drag and drop builder. They can host unlimited videos, create quizzes, send certificates, and track the progress of their pupils.
Finding Courses On Teachable
Convenience
Among the advantages of Teachable over Thinkific is the former’s class builder: it allows bulk changes to classes, which may be an enormous time-saver, especially for those that have built quite a few on their system; also it allows multi-format content in 1 lecture. What’s more is it can be linked to cloud services, like Dropbox and Google Drive, for quicker uploads from your devices.
Concerning course delivery, Teachable has an iOS application that permits pupils to learn on their mobile devices, which is something which Thinkific does not have.
Sales and Marketing
Following the content production comes the selling and promotion of your classes. This is where Teachable wins by a landslide. Both give the freedom to sell one time or recurring products, offer discounts and packages, or add affiliate programs, but Teachable has more options. The real clincher is Teachable’s 1-step checkout process, which decreases customer fallout (which happens more during outdated, 2-step procedures like Thinkific’s). Additionally, it comes with a 1-click upsell upon checkout, increasing transactions per customer. Another major benefit is Teachable’s payment gateway that accepts credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay payments. Another service included is the automatic 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 prices. That definitely gives you more value to your content. Click here to check out pricing for Teachable.
Teachable vs Podia Finding Courses On 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 a result of the vastly different things they each offer. On the one hand, Teachable is a fully customizable class creator and seller, and on the other, Podia chose to focus on Online Course Hosting, Membership or Email Marketing, and Digital Downloads. Those will instantly help you narrow down your choice to what is best suited for you.
Podia’s streamlined 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 why it may not satisfy the needs of creators who want to do more with their site. Since the variety is not much, more advanced users may find it lacking.
Course Creation and Control
Teachable defeats Podia in design and personalization tools, with choices for easy uploads of files, texts, and quizzes. The ones that dabble in code may also explore that within Teachable. Users can easily get the slick look of a professional website by choosing from default themes which can be customized to liking. Teachable’s editor makes it effortless 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 provided to their students, and avoid cramming modules in one go. What is unique to Teachable is advanced control over course compliance, such as keeping tabs on students’ completion of quizzes and lessons. It also has built-in certificates that users can make and send to their clients at the conclusion of the course. Concerning integrations, Teachable has improved autoresponders and analytics, both of which are very important to marketing and sales.
Recommendation Finding Courses On Teachable
To summarize, Teachable‘s interface is approachable even to the most inexperienced users, has exceptional creation and builder resources for designing a sleek course site, gives you control over your advertising and sales, has attributes that cut time and effort on backend paperwork, and provides the best value for money. With more updates and user feedback, they are certain to be a trusted company for years to come.
