The current 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 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 enabled nearly anyone with an idea to share their knowledge.
Whether you want to teach your hobbies, or something associated with your experience, there are lots of online course platforms (OCP) or learning management systems (LMS) which can help you begin. Some OCPs will offer services from scratch, like making your site, while others focus mainly on helping you reach your target audience. The 1st step is discovering which one can transfer your ideas seamlessly onto the screens of your potential students.
With all these LMS to pick from, there’s 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 is clear why.
Teachable vs Udemy Teachable vs Thinkific Portability
Udemy was among the pioneers of LMS, which explains how and why their audience remains among the largest markets in the industry: they were there first. Udemy and Teachable are now two of the most popular options in selling online courses, but they are extremely distinct in essence and progressiveness.
Differences
Teachable allows users to build their own course website and market their brand, while Udemy is simply a market for class creators that have existing courses. At the surface, this means that Teachable allows you to 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 course, from content editing and building to sales, which are not at all 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 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 courses, 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 overly spammy and unnecessary.
Marketing at a Price
It is Udemy’s cut-throat policies which have turned off several 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 doesn’t market the courses for its own 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 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 earnings may still look sensible to others, especially to those whose courses were previously created for other purposes and were only shared more openly on Udemy, but that hurt many 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 put 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 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 reliable source of primary income.
So while it’s true that Udemy has a large audience that you might want to tap into, the majority of the topics which they offer are really quite 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 answer to many of Udemy’s shortcomings. In the end, nothing is more satisfying than building your own following.
Teachable vs Thinkific
Pricing Teachable vs Thinkific Portability
If you’re searching for an LMS that is comparable to Teachable’s price, Thinkific is another great company that offers a great deal 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 all of its plans; however a closer look at the fine print will show that it costs extra for certain options 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 two.
Beginner-Friendly
But pricing is not all they have in common. Both enable their users to create and sell personalized courses in 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 firms for their easy-to-use interface which allows nearly all formats of content, such as video, audio, PDFs, and other multimedia. The majority of these can be uploaded to the site with a simple drag and drop builder. They can host unlimited videos, create quizzes, send certificates, and track the progress of their pupils.
Teachable vs Thinkific Portability
Convenience
Among the advantages of Teachable over Thinkific is the former’s course 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; and it allows multi-format content in 1 lecture. What’s more is it can be linked to cloud providers, such as Dropbox and Google Drive, for quicker uploads from your PC.
In terms of course delivery, Teachable has an iOS application 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 liberty to sell one-time or recurring goods, offer discounts and packages, or affiliate programs, but Teachable has more choices. The real clincher is Teachable’s 1-step checkout procedure, which reduces customer fallout (which occurs more during obsolete, 2-step processes like Thinkific’s). It also comes with a 1-click upsell upon checkout, increasing transactions per customer. Another significant advantage 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), focusing on 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 Teachable vs Thinkific Portability
One of the online course 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 seller, and on the other, Podia decided 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 that they might not have to dip into, like e-commerce. Its interface is simple, clean, and pretty great for novice instructors. Having said that, this is also why it may not satisfy the needs of creators 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 options for simple uploads of files, texts, and quizzes. Those that dabble in code may also experiment with that within Teachable. Users can easily get the sleek look of a professional website by choosing 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 trickle content attribute 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 innovative control over course compliance, such as keeping tabs on students’ completion of lessons and quizzes. It also has built-in certification that users can make and send to their clients 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 vs Thinkific Portability
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 features that reduce time and effort on backend paperwork, and gives the best value for money. With more updates and user feedback, they’re guaranteed to be a reliable company for many years to come.
