The present trend of consumer behavior moving into online media is quickly becoming the new standard for many industries. It’s no surprise that the same is true for unconventional education via the multitude of online courses now available on the Internet. This 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 experience, there are many online course platforms (OCP) or learning management systems (LMS) that can help you begin. Some OCPs will offer services from scratch, like creating your site, while others focus mainly on helping you reach your target audience. The 1st step is discovering which one can move your ideas seamlessly onto the screens of your potential students.
With all these LMS to pick from, there is 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 Learnpress vs Teachable
Udemy was one of the pioneers of LMS, which explains how and why their audience is still among the biggest markets in the business: they were there . Udemy and Teachable are currently two of the most popular options in selling online classes, but they’re extremely distinct in essence and progressiveness.
Differences
Teachable allows users to build their own course website and sell their brand, while Udemy is simply a marketplace for class creators that have existing courses. 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 at all possible on Udemy. One of the more immediate consequences of this is that Teachable allows you to communicate more directly with your clientele, by giving you access to student’s data and information; but as soon as you’re on Udemy’s platform, your students’ information is theirs exclusively for whatever other purpose it might serve them. And in line with this, Udemy seems to care about selling classes, period; so it’s 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 students that the instructor brought in. Sure, that may work in favor of newer users who could need the advertising, but from the viewpoint of a loyal user, that business sense could seem overly spammy and unnecessary.
Marketing at a Price
It’s Udemy’s cut-throat policies that have turned off several former or potential 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 promote the courses for its users, that responsibility is left entirely to them. In an extreme manner, Udemy markets their consumer’s courses aggressively, but with a substantial price. That price is a massive chunk of control and revenue.
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 look reasonable to others, particularly to those whose courses were previously created for other purposes and were only shared more publicly on Udemy, but that hurt many of the instructors that were selling solely from the company’s site. In addition to this, what have driven people over the edge are the limitations on pricing. In 2016, Udemy set a cap on its costs, and all courses 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 these two policies, and have a class priced at $20 and a 50% instructor revenue, selling on Udemy becomes almost impossible as a reliable source of primary income.
So while it’s true that Udemy has a massive audience that you might choose to tap into, the majority of the topics that they offer are actually quite limited to mostly Technology and Personal Development. Consider that and their dog-eat-dog marketing strategies and absorption of your brand’s identity, I’d say Teachable is the response to many of Udemy’s shortcomings. In the long run, nothing is more satisfying than creating your own following.
Teachable vs Thinkific
Pricing Learnpress vs Teachable
If you’re looking for an LMS that is comparable to Teachable’s cost, Thinkific is another terrific company that offers a great deal for less. Both provide their first tier plans 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; but a closer look at the fine print will show that it costs extra for certain options that 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 two.
Beginner-Friendly
But pricing is not all that they have in common. Both enable their users to create and sell personalized classes on their hosted platforms, without the hassle of handling the technical aspects like site maintenance, hosting, and security.
Newbies to the biz tend 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 site by a simple drag and drop builder. They can host unlimited videos, create quizzes, send certificates, and track the progress of their pupils.
Learnpress vs Teachable
Convenience
Among the advantages of Teachable over Thinkific is the former’s class builder: it allows bulk changes to courses, which may be a huge time-saver, especially for the ones 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 computer.
Concerning course delivery, Teachable has an iOS application that permits students to learn on their mobile devices, which is something that Thinkific doesn’t have.
Sales and Marketing
Following the content creation comes the selling and marketing of your classes. This is where Teachable wins by a landslide. Both give the liberty to sell one time or recurring products, offer discounts and bundles, or affiliate programs, but Teachable has more choices. The real clincher is Teachable’s 1-step checkout process, which reduces customer fallout (which happens more during outdated, 2-step procedures like Thinkific’s). Additionally, it includes a 1-click upsell upon checkout, raising transactions per client. Another significant 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. For those who 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 to your own content. Click here to check out pricing for Teachable.
Teachable vs Podia Learnpress vs Teachable
One of the online class platforms with the cheapest top tier is Podia. Though it does not 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 course creator and vendor, 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’s best suited for you.
Podia’s streamlined classes lets users filter out other aspects which they might not have to dip into, such as e-commerce. Its interface is easy, clean, and pretty great for novice instructors. Having said that, this is why it may not meet the needs of instructors who want to do more with their website. Since the variety is not much, more advanced users may find it lacking.
Course Creation and Control
Teachable beats Podia in design and personalization tools, with choices for simple uploads of files, texts, and quizzes. The ones that dabble in code can also experiment with that within Teachable. Users can easily get the sleek look of a professional website by selecting from default themes which can be customized to liking. Teachable’s editor makes it easy to create changes and push upsells, maximizing both user’s time and profitability.
Both have a drip content feature for the ones that would like to space the lessons provided to their clients, and prevent cramming modules in 1 go. What is unique to Teachable is advanced control over course compliance, like keeping tabs on students’ completion of quizzes and lessons. Additionally, it has built-in certification 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 Learnpress vs 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 website, gives you control over your marketing and sales, has features that cut time and effort on backend paperwork, and provides the best value for money. With more upgrades and user feedback, they are guaranteed to be a reliable company for many years to come.
