The current 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 non-traditional education through the multitude of online courses now available online. This has opened more avenues of learning outside 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) which can help you get started. Some OCPs will offer services from scratch, like making your website, while others focus mainly on helping you 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 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 instructors, and after pitting it against its competitors, it’s clear why.
Teachable vs Udemy Teachable Free Plan
Udemy was one of the leaders of LMS, which explains why and how their audience is still among the biggest 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 are 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 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 personalize the entirety of your site, from content building and editing to sales, which are not in any way possible on Udemy. Among 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 exclusively for whatever other purpose it may serve them. And in accordance with that, Udemy seems to care about selling courses, period; so it is not only your classes, but every other class in their list. There have been testimonials that said this, when even competitor’s classes have been promoted to clients that the instructor brought in. Sure, that may work in favor of newer users who could 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 that have turned off many former or potential users. They appear 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 manner, Udemy markets their user’s courses aggressively, but with a significant price. That price is a huge chunk of control and earnings.
Udemy started 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 different purposes and were merely shared more openly on Udemy, but that hurt many of the instructors that were selling solely from the corporation’s site. In addition to this, 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 had to be within the $20-$50 range. This is regardless of the uniqueness or skillfulness of a course, 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% instructor revenue, selling on Udemy becomes almost impossible as a dependable source of primary income.
So while it is true that Udemy has a massive audience which you may want to tap into, the majority of the topics which they offer are actually very limited to largely Technology and Personal Development. Consider that and their dog-eat-dog advertising strategies and absorption of your brand’s identity, I’d say Teachable is the answer to many of Udemy’s shortcomings. In the long run, nothing is more satisfying than building your own following.
Teachable vs Thinkific
Pricing Teachable Free Plan
If you’re searching for an LMS that is comparable to Teachable’s price, Thinkific is another great company that offers a lot for less. Both offer their first tier programs at no cost, and start charging for each higher tier thereafter. Many beginners choose Thinkific because of its generous waiving of transaction fees on all of its plans; however a closer look at the fine print will reveal that it costs extra for certain options that are already included in Teachable’s monthly flat prices. But, 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 courses on their hosted platforms, without the hassle 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 which allows nearly all formats of content, such as audio, video, PDFs, and other multimedia. The majority of these can be uploaded into the site with a simple drag and drop builder. They can host unlimited videos, create quizzes, send certificates, and track the progress of their students.
Teachable Free Plan
Convenience
Among the advantages of Teachable over Thinkific is the former’s class builder: it allows bulk changes to classes, which may be a huge time-saver, especially for those that have built quite a few on their system; also 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 devices.
Concerning course delivery, Teachable has an iOS app that enables pupils to learn on their mobile devices, which is something which Thinkific doesn’t 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 bundles, or add affiliate programs, but Teachable has more options. The real clincher is Teachable’s 1-step checkout procedure, which decreases customer fallout (which occurs more during obsolete, 2-step processes like Thinkific’s). It also includes 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 writers (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 for your content. Click here to check out pricing for Teachable.
Teachable vs Podia Teachable Free Plan
One of the online course platforms with the most affordable 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 could 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 instantly help you narrow down your choice to what’s best suited to your needs.
Podia’s compact 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 fairly good for novice instructors. Having said that, this is also why it may not satisfy 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 defeats Podia in design and personalization tools, with choices for easy 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 satisfaction. 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 offered to their students, and prevent cramming modules in 1 go. What is unique to Teachable is innovative control over course compliance, like keeping tabs on students’ completion of quizzes and lessons. It also has built-in certificates that users can make and send to their students at the end of the lessons. Concerning integrations, Teachable has better autoresponders and analytics, both of which are very important to marketing and sales.
Recommendation Teachable Free Plan
To summarize, Teachable‘s interface is approachable even to the most inexperienced users, has exceptional creation and builder tools for designing a sleek course site, gives you control over your marketing 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’re guaranteed to be a reliable choice for many years to come.
