Teachable Review, Pricing & Features

What is Teachable?

Teachable is a course creation software with over 120,000 instructors. Teachable helps customers create and market their online courses. Features like a course and website builder, affiliate management, a sales tracker, and integrations with key software like Mailchimp, Shopify and Zoom allow entrepreneurs and small companies to build online businesses faster and more cost effectively.

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Table of Contents

Teachable Review Summary

Teachable was founded in 2014 by Ankur Nagpal. Teachable’s mission is to enable the transformative power of knowledge in our world. Teachable believes that shared knowledge has the power to transform lives, perspective, and self worth. Today, Teachable has over 200 employees and is based in New York, New York.

Teachable is a course creation platform that helps you build your courses, your brand, and your business. Teachable includes important features such as a course and website builder, lesson scheduling, live webinars, student feedback, affiliate management, a sales tracker, and key interactions with solutions like Mailchimp, Shopify, Zapier, and Zoom.

Most customers pay $119 per month for Teachable. There are both more expensive and more affordable course creation software tools in the market. Overall, Teachable offers a strong set of features at a reasonable price.

We found that Teachable is best for course creators who need a high-quality, mid-tier solution. At times, we found the application a little confusing to navigate, but overall it is intuitive and better for beginners than alternatives like Kajabi and LearnWorlds.

  • If you’re on a budget and only require a simple solution, then you should consider Podia.
  • If you prefer a more advanced solution that allows you to really customize your courses and websites, then you should consider Kajabi and LearnWorlds.
  • Finally, we recommend that all course creators compare Teachable to Thinkific.

Teachable Pricing & Cost

Teachable’s pricing ranges from $39 to $299 a month. Teachable also offers a free trial of its Professional plan for 14 days.

  • Basic: $39 per month
  • Pro: $119 per month
  • Business: $299 per month
Teachable Pricing

Teachable Features

Below, we will discuss the key features of Teachable. We will also include screenshots of the product to give you an idea of its design and architecture.

Course Builder

The key feature of course creation software is the course builder. Each course is made up of a series of content blocks that are organized into lectures. These lectures are then grouped into chapters. Overall, we found building courses in Teachable to be slightly confusing at first, but intuitive once we understood that courses are edited in the “Curriculum" section.

Teachable Course Builder

For each course, you can upload different forms of multimedia – for example, video, audio, and PDF. Teachable also lets you add text, a quiz, and coding to your lectures.

Teachable Course Builder2

As you can see above through the preview, elements on each slide are automatically layered top to bottom. Customizing the individual pages of your courses in Teachable is very limited. Elements are automatically centered on each slide, and only text can be aligned to the left or right.

Teachable Course Preview

One disadvantage of Teachable is that once you upload your multimedia files, you cannot edit them within the platform. Therefore we recommend making any edits to your files before you upload them.

Quizzes

In Teachable, you can create and include multiple choice quizzes in your lectures. As the course creator, quizzes help you to monitor how well your students are learning. For students, quizzes provide useful feedback that indicate areas of improvement. While effective, quizzes in Teachable are not very customizable.

Teachable Quiz

Teachable only lets you create quizzes with text-based questions and answers, as shown above. You can choose to instantly share quiz results with students, including the specific questions they got wrong. Teachable only lets students take each quiz four times.

In many course creation platforms, you can set a passing grade that unlocks subsequent content. However, in Teachable, this is not an option.

Custom Branding

Teachable lets you include custom branding in your courses and website. You can also remove Teachable branding starting with the Pro plan. Teachable’s custom branding options include:

  • Uploading a logo
  • Uploading a school thumbnail
  • Uploading a favicon
  • Choosing a font family to use sitewide
  • Choosing a color scheme to use sitewide

Course Delivery

The next step after creating your course is delivering it to your students. Teachable includes features that help schedule your course content, teach live classes, and support student interactions.

Drip Schedule

Drip schedules are used by instructors to publish certain sections of their courses at specific times. With Teachable, you can choose to deliver your course content based on student enrollment date or on a specific date. Teachable also lets you write an email announcement that is sent when course material is released.

In Teachable, you can choose different drip methods for different sections of your courses. For example, you can choose to publish one chapter on a specific date, and choose to publish a second chapter based on the number of days that have passed from a student’s enrollment date.

Live Classes

Live classes are a great way to create an engaging learning environment. Teachable does let you live stream your classes, but you have to use a third-party platform. To live stream, you have to embed code into your Teachable curriculum from platforms such as YouTube Live, Twitch, and LiveStream. This method is not the most intuitive, and requires you to have basic coding knowledge.

Student Discussions

Teachable supports student discussions in the form of commenting. Students and instructors can comment and reply to one another. This feature improves student engagement and encourages a sense of community.

Teachable Student Discussion

As an instructor, you can also choose whether students can attach images to comments, whether comments need moderation from you before being uploaded, and allow multi-threaded commenting. You can also edit your comments after they are posted.

Certificates

You can award your students with certificates once they’ve finished a course. Certificates help motivate students to complete your course, and provide proof of completion.

Teachable Certificate

You can create your own certificates or use Teachable’s certificate templates. You can add your signature, edit the text, and change the background & text color on all certificates.

Marketing

Once your courses are ready, you need to find the best methods to market them. Teachable offers a website builder, and additional marketing tools including coupons, bundles, affiliate marketing and a sales tracker.

Site Builder

Teachable lets you build your website from scratch, and host it on your custom domain. Overall, we found the website builder to be simple and effective. While, it's not the most design-forward platform, it does allow for slightly more customization than most other platforms.

Teachable Site Builder

Web pages are edited in Teachable using content blocks – these can be images, html, videos, and text. Teachable lets you align the elements within a block to the left, center, or right of the block. However, in order to view any changes, you have to preview each block that you've edited – Teachable does not show you updates in real time.

In addition, Teachable’s site builder does not let you preview how your site will look on mobile. Therefore, building a website that works well on desktop and mobile can be very time-consuming.

Coupons

Teachable’s platform comes with a coupon tool that you can use to increase your sales. Teachable lets you create coupons for specific courses or ones that apply to all courses. When creating one, Teachable lets you:

  • Name your coupon
  • Set the discount amount as a percentage or as dollars
  • Set the coupon code
  • Set an expiration date
  • Set the number of coupons available

Course Bundles

Teachable lets bundle your courses into packages and sell them at a discounted price. These course bundles have two primary benefits – they entice customers to purchase, and they increase your average order price.

Creating and pricing course bundles in Teachable is doable, but time-consuming. Students who have purchased the bundle will automatically have access to future courses added to the bundle, and be removed from courses that are removed from the bundle.

Affiliate Management

Teachable lets you add affiliate partners to your courses. These affiliate receive payment in return for bringing you new customers. Having affiliates is a great way to promote your courses to a wider network of potential customers.

In Teachable, you can add affiliates manually or import them in bulk. Affiliates in Teachable can only receive a percentage of the sales they generate, as opposed to a fixed dollar amount per-sale.

Sales Tracker

Teachable lets you track your sales and revenue made from your courses and school. With this tool, you can monitor how well your courses are performing, and how factors such as coupons and affiliates have affected your sales.

Teachable Sales Tracker

Below is a table of the information each of Teachable’s sales sections provide:

Sales SectionInformation Each Provides
Transactions
  • Total sales
  • Your earnings after transactions fees and affiliate payouts
  • Affiliate earnings
  • Refunds
  • Chargebacks, which are disputes issued by students
School Statements
  • Time period payee was paid
  • Payee
  • Payout Status (Failed, Pending, Fully Paid)
  • Payee earnings
School Transaction Breakdowns
  • Number of Sales
  • Total amount charged to purchaser
  • Affiliate Fees
  • Instructor Fees
  • Earnings of owner of school

Payments

Teachable lets you process payments through its own solution known as Teachable Payments. You simply link your bank account to receive direct deposits in the currency you choose. Depending on your plan, there is a processing fee of up to 5% associated with Teachable Payments.

Teachable lets students pay by credit card, debit card, PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay. You can charge for your courses as one-time purchases, monthly payments, and as a subscription.

Teachable Payments

Legal & Security

Course creation software requires sensitive information like login and payment credentials. Therefore, it is important that your software complies with certain legal and security standards to protect sensitive information.

FeatureOffered by Teachable
Secure StorageYes (AWS)
SSL EncryptionYes
PCI CompliantNo
International Law CompliantYes (GDPR)

Mobile Application

Teachable offers an iOS mobile app that lets students take your courses on the go. Unlike the rest of the Teachable platform, the mobile app is not white-labeled – your students will have to download Teachable’s branded app and navigate past other courses to reach your content.

Overall, we found Teachable’s mobile app to be inefficient and best for viewing courses that are not content heavy. It does offer basic navigation and video settings. However, users of the app have noted that course content is sometimes missing, the video settings are not optimal for viewing, and overall the platform is buggy.

Teachable Mobile

Teachable Customer Support

Overall, we found Teachable’s customer support to be slightly above average. For example, Teachable does allow you to search for self-help articles, and does show related articles. However, it does not allow you to easily look up how-to guides that explain how to use each feature in the platform.

Teachable’s help articles are organized and understandable. They include images and GIFs that help readers visualize the steps they need to take, and bolded key words to make the text easier to read. However, Teachable does not include videos in their articles, which most alternatives do.

Customer Support ChannelsLive Chat (Professional Plan & Up), Support tickets
Customer Support AvailabilityMonday-Friday from 10-5 PM EST
Other Support ResourcesBlog, Knowledge Base, Podcast
Platform Update NotificationsYes
Application Status PageYes

Teachable Integrations & Website Builder Compatibilities

Teachable offers key integrations and website builder compatibilities that allow you maximize your course and site efforts. These include integrations that support the creation, marketing, selling and delivering of your online courses. Teachable integrations include:

  • Mailchimp
  • Google Analytics
  • SamCart
  • Shopify
  • Zapier
  • Zoom

Teachable is also compatible with various website builders. These include:

  • WordPress
  • Weebly
  • WIX
  • Squarespace

Teachable vs. Competitors

The top Teachable competitors are listed below. It competes most directly with Thinkific. The best option for you will depend on the features you need and your budget.

You can also check out our articles that directly compare Teachable against its competitors:

For a full breakdown, read our analysis of Teachable Competitors & Alternatives.

Is Teachable Right for You?

With over 120,000 instructors, Teachable is one of the most popular course creation tools in the market. It helps its customers create and market their online courses. We found that Teachable is best for course creators who need a higher quality, mid-tier solution.

At times, we found the application a little confusing to navigate, but overall, it is intuitive and better for beginners than solutions like Kajabi and LearnWorlds.

  • If you’re on a budget and only require a simple solution, then you should consider Podia.
  • If you prefer a more advanced solution that allows you to really customize your courses and websites, then you should consider LearnWorlds and Kajabi.
  • Finally, we recommend that all course creators compare Teachable to Thinkific.

To learn more about Teachable, try it for free today.

Amy Yang

Amy Yang is a Junior Research Analyst at SoftwarePundit, where she conducts in-depth analyses on software markets and products. Amy has expertise in content production and managing digital and social platforms. She has a Bachelor of Science in Communication & Media, and a Minor in Web Programming and Applications from NYU. You can connect with Amy on LinkedIn.

Amy is an expert in several software categories including:

  • Course creation software
  • Electronic signature software
  • Social media software
  • Website builder software