The present trend of consumer behaviour moving into online media is quickly becoming the new standard for many businesses. 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 begin. 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 discovering which one can move your ideas seamlessly onto the screens of your prospective students.
With so many LMS to pick from, there’s one firm that has stood out because of 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 is clear why.
Teachable vs Udemy Teachable Help
Udemy was one of the pioneers of LMS, which explains why and how their audience remains among the largest markets in the business: they were there first. Udemy and Teachable are currently two of the most popular choices in selling online classes, but they’re very distinct in essence and progressiveness.
Differences
Teachable allows users to construct their own course site and market their brand, while Udemy is simply a market for class creators that have existing classes. At the very surface, this means that Teachable lets you use your custom domain while Udemy will have your customers return to Udemy.com. On another level, Teachable gives you tools to create and personalize 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 pupil’s data and information; but as soon as you’re on Udemy’s platform, your students’ information 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 only your classes, but every other class in their listing. There have been testimonials that said this, when even competitor’s courses have been promoted to students that the instructor brought in. Sure, that may work in favor of newer users who could use the advertising, but from the point of view of a user, that business sense could seem too self-serving and unnecessary.
Marketing at a Price
It’s 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 own users, that responsibility is left entirely to them. In an extreme fashion, Udemy markets their consumer’s courses aggressively, but with a substantial price. That price is a huge chunk of control and earnings.
Udemy started 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, especially to those whose classes were previously created for different purposes and were merely shared more publicly on Udemy, but that hurt a number of the instructors who 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 prices, and all courses on the system had to be within the $20-$50 range. That 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 course priced at $20 and a 50% instructor revenue, selling on Udemy becomes almost impossible as a dependable source of primary income.
So while it’s true that Udemy has a massive audience that you may choose to tap into, most of the topics that they offer are really very limited to mostly Technology and Personal Development. Consider their dog-eat-dog advertising strategies and absorption of your brand’s identity, I would say Teachable is the response to many of Udemy’s shortcomings. In the long run, nothing is more satisfying than building your own following.
Teachable vs Thinkific
Pricing Teachable Help
If you’re searching for an LMS that’s comparable to Teachable’s price, Thinkific is another great company that offers a great deal for less. Both offer their first tier plans for free, and start charging for every higher tier thereafter. Many beginners choose Thinkific for its generous waiving of transaction fees on all of its plans; but 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. But, 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 isn’t all they have in common. Both allow their users to create and sell personalized courses on their hosted platforms, without the hassle 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 with a simple drag and drop builder. They can host unlimited videos, create quizzes, send certificates, and track the progress of their pupils.
Teachable Help
Convenience
Among the benefits of Teachable over Thinkific is the former’s course builder: it allows bulk changes to courses, which can 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 connected to cloud services, such as Dropbox and Google Drive, for faster uploads from your PC.
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 production comes the selling and promotion of your courses. 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 options. The real clincher is Teachable’s 1-step checkout process, which reduces 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 client. 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), focusing on 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 for your own content. Click here to check out pricing for Teachable.
Teachable vs Podia Teachable Help
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 could be a result of the vastly different things they each offer. On the one hand, Teachable is a fully customizable class 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 compact categories lets users filter out other aspects that they might not have to dip into, like e-commerce. Its interface is easy, clean, and pretty good for novice instructors. Having said that, this is also why it may not meet the needs of instructors who wish 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. Those that dabble in code can also experiment with that within Teachable. Users can easily get the slick look of a professional site by choosing from default themes that 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 want to space the lessons offered to their students, and avoid cramming modules in 1 go. What’s unique to Teachable is innovative control over course compliance, such as keeping tabs on students’ completion of quizzes and lessons. Additionally, it has built-in certificates that users can create and send to their clients at the conclusion of the course. Concerning integrations, Teachable has better autoresponders and analytics, both of which are very important to sales and marketing.
Recommendation Teachable Help
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 marketing and sales, has attributes that cut time and effort on backend paperwork, and provides the best value for money. With more upgrades and user feedback, they’re certain to be a trusted company for years to come.
