Best Teachable Alternatives for 2021
Teachable is a pretty well known course hosting platform. Although a lot of course creators swear by the platform, I have found a bunch of teachable alternatives that provide either better and more robust features or are much more price efficient.
Update: Teachable was recently acquired by Hotmart. You can read the acquisition story on Techcrunch.
I am sharing a list of some of our favorite platforms and how they compare with Teachable.
1. Membervault as a free teachable alternative
Membervault is a comparatively new course hosting platform.
There are 3 things that I absolutely love about Membervault:
a. The Warm and Hot Leads
When you host your courses on Membervault, if a user clicks around on the pages of the courses they haven’t purchased yet, they are added to either the warm or hot leads section ( depending on how many times they click). You can reach out to these users using a discount code, given they are much more likely to convert as compared to the other users.
b. Gamification
Membervault also has a feature called engagement points.
You can assign engagement points to users as they progress through your course, and these engagement points can then be used to unlock bonuses or even some other products.
This helps keep users engaged and accountable, which is very important since online course completion rates are only at about 20%.
c. The community
Membervault is owned by a husband-wife pair ( Erin and Michael Kelly), and they have built an amazing community of Membervault users on Facebook.
The team is very responsive and is constantly looking for feedback to improve their platform.
Check out this complete Membervault set-up video.
Membervault is free for your first 100 users, what’s more, you can access ALL Membervault features on the free plan. Teachable also has a free plan which is very limited by the number of products you can create or users you can enrol. Teachable also adds a huge transaction fee for each sale on the free plan, and free plan users do not have access to all Teachable features.
2.Podia as a Teachable alternative
Podia started out as a course hosting platform but has now evolved into an all-in-one marketing tool.
At a price point that is comparable to Teachable, Podia offers way more features, and has a great customer support team.
Some of Podia’s features that are not available on Teachable are messaging, email marketing, and a Zoom integration to host webinars.
Podia starts at $39/ month and does not offer a free plan.
Even at $39/ month, Podia offers more features than Teachable’s $39/month plan.
Podia also offers free migration if you decide to go with the annual plan.
It is a great platform for those looking for an affordable all-in-one marketing platform.
A lot of users also find Podia more easy to use when compared to Teachable.
The $79/month plan, which is the highest plan on Podia is still comparatively affordable, given the wide variety of features available.
You can test out the platform with the 14-day free trial and see if it fits your needs.
Check out my Podia review to learn more about the platform.
3. Thinkific as a Teachable alternative
Thinkific is probably the biggest Teachable competitor.
When compared to Teachable, Thinkifc is relatively easier to use and provides a better user experience.
Thinkific offers a free plan that is much better than that of Teachable.
Teachable’s free plan is very limited in the sense that it allows only 10 enrolled students, whereas Thinikic’s free plan allowed unlimited students. Teachable also charges a 10% transaction fee on its free plan, whereas Thinkific charges a 0% transaction fee.
Teachable also doesn’t advertise it’s free plan on the website.
If you would like to go with a traditional course hosting platform, I would recommend Thinkific over Teachable.
4. Kajabi
Kajabi is an all-in-one marketing platform and provides more advanced features than Teachable.
Due to this, Kajabi is also comparatively expensive, starting at $149/month for the base plan.
The biggest difference between Kajabi and Teachable is that Teachable does not offer much functionality when it comes to building sales funnels, checkout forms and customizing your course platform.
Kajabi offers a lot of customization when it comes to building sales funnels as well as course backend platforms.
Kajabi has a mobile app, which helps your users to access courses on the go.
It also offers hosting, which means you don’t need Youtube or Vimeo to host your videos.
It does not offer the email automation feature on the base plan, and I would recommend investing in an email automation platform like Activecampaign for email marketing campaigns.
But if you are looking for a robust platform for building sales funnels, hosting your membership and courses, I think Kajabi is a great option.
Learnworlds is an enterprise solution for online course hosting.
One of the things that stands out is Learnworlds’ built-in social network functionality.
With the recent Facebook algorithm changes, you might want to build a community of your paid users outside of Facebook groups. Learnworlds provides that option.
As part of the community, both admins and users can create posts and comment on posts. You can also create polls which can be super helpful for user feedback.
Learnworlds also has in-built gamification, which although limited, can still help to boost engagement.
For example, they offer badges to students, but the badges and their functionality cannot be customized.
My Recommendation for a Teachable Alternative:
No matter which Teachable alternative you choose, I recommend you use a robust email marketing platform like Activecampaign or Convertkit since most all-in-one marketing platforms don’t provide enough sophistication as part of their email marketing functionality.
If you are looking to choose a course hosting platform, I would recommend Membervault because of the amazing community, continuous improvement, and the in-built gamification.
If you are looking to choose an all-in-one marketing platform and are okay with spending a little more money, I would recommend Kajabi for their robust platform and customer-centric approach.
Which platform do you use? Let me know in the comments.
