Teachable Review: The Smartest Pick for New Course Creators?

Tired of wrestling with clunky course platforms that eat into your profits with sky-high transaction fees? I’ve been there. As someone who’s built multiple six-figure online courses, I spent years bouncing between platforms that promised the moon but delivered headaches instead.

Then I stumbled upon Teachable, and it completely shifted how I approach online course selling. Unlike other platforms that focus on flashy features you’ll never use, Teachable nails the essentials: intuitive course building, powerful student management, and pricing that actually makes sense for serious course creators.

What sets Teachable apart isn’t just its clean interface or reliable hosting – it’s how the platform handles everything from course marketing to student engagement without requiring a computer science degree to figure out.

This Teachable review will walk you through exactly why it has become my primary e-learning platform for hosting and selling digital courses. I’ll show you the features that matter, the pricing breakdown, and honest feedback from someone who’s actually used it to generate real revenue.

What is Teachable? 🎓

Teachable is a course creation platform that lets you build, market, and sell online courses, coaching programmes, digital downloads, and membership sites without needing any technical wizardry. Think of it as your digital classroom where you’re the headmaster, and your students can learn at their own pace.

The platform has been around since 2014 and currently powers over 20,000 online course websites with more than 7 million students learning from 22+ million instructors. These numbers aren’t just for show – they tell you that Teachable has serious staying power in the e-learning market.

Key Aspect	Details
🗓️ Founded	2014 by Ankur Nagpal
🏛️Company Type	Online course platform & LMS
🎁 Main Offerings	Online Courses, Coaching, Digital Downloads, Communities
💰 Starting Price	$39/month (billed annually for Basic Plan)
💸 Transaction Fees	7.5% on the Starter plan; 0% on paid plans
✨ Key Features	Course builder, payment processing, student management
📢 Marketing Tools	Coupons, upsells, affiliate program, email marketing
🔗 Integrations	Zapier, Google Analytics, Mailchimp, and more

What caught my attention initially was their promise of letting creators maintain complete control over their branding, student data, and messaging – something that’s absolutely crucial when you’re building a proper affiliate business around educational content.

Teachable Offerings – What Can You Actually Sell? 🛍️

Online Courses 📖

The bread and butter of Teachable. You can create video-based courses, text lessons, downloadable resources, and interactive quizzes. The drip content feature lets you release lessons on a schedule, keeping students engaged over time. Course certificates add credibility, and progress tracking helps students stay motivated.

Coaching Programs 👥

This is where Teachable really shines for service-based businesses. You can structure one-on-one coaching, group programmes, or hybrid models combining self-paced content with scheduled sessions. Client intake forms, milestone tracking, and integrated scheduling make managing coaching clients much easier.

Digital Downloads 📄

Perfect for affiliate marketers creating lead magnets or low-ticket offers. You can sell PDF guides, templates, audio files, spreadsheets, and even external links to Google Docs or Canva designs. The file type support is extensive, and setup takes literally minutes.

Memberships 🔄

Recurring revenue is the holy grail of online business, and Teachable’s membership features make it achievable. You can create tiered access levels, offer free trials, and bundle courses with community access. Subscription management is handled automatically.

Community 💬

Discussion spaces tied to your courses keep students engaged beyond just consuming content. You can create topic-specific forums, Q&A sections, or mastermind groups. It’s not as advanced as Circle or Discord, but it’s integrated and functional.

Teachable Dashboard and User Experience 💻

Right, let’s talk about the actual experience of using Teachable’s admin dashboard – because if it’s a pain to navigate, you’ll hate every minute of course creation.

The dashboard layout is surprisingly clean and intuitive. When you first log in, you’re greeted with a performance overview showing your total revenue, student enrollments, and course completion rates at a glance. No hunting around for basic metrics – it’s all there on the homepage.

Course creation happens through their drag-and-drop builder, and I’ve got to say, it’s one of the smoother experiences I’ve had. You can organise content into sections and lessons, upload videos, PDFs, audio files, and text content without any technical hiccups. 

The student management section lets you see who’s enrolled, track their progress, and send targeted messages to specific groups. You can also set up automated email sequences for course completion, milestone achievements, or re-engagement campaigns.

What impressed me most was the mobile responsiveness. Everything works seamlessly whether you’re managing courses on your laptop or checking sales data on your phone. The iOS student app is equally polished, with offline downloading and progress syncing that actually works properly.

Teachable AI Tools: Your New Best Friend 🤖

Let’s be real, creating a course from scratch can be a daunting task. The content creation process can be long and tedious. This is where Teachable’s AI tools come in to save the day. These features are designed to help you create better content in less time, and they are seriously impressive.

Here’s a look at the AI tools at your disposal:

• AI Quiz Generator: Creating engaging quizzes to test your students’ knowledge can be time-consuming. With the AI Quiz Generator, you just provide the learning objectives, and it will create a quiz for you. This is a great way to add an interactive element to your courses.

• AI Summary Generator: This tool can automatically generate summaries of your lessons, making it easier for your students to review the key takeaways.

• AI Subtitles and Translations: Making your courses accessible to a wider audience is crucial. Teachable’s AI can automatically generate subtitles for your videos and even translate them into different languages. This is a huge win for reaching a global market.

• AI Lesson Writing Assistant: If you’re struggling to write the content for your lessons, the AI assistant can help. It can flesh out your ideas, help you with phrasing, and ensure your content is clear and engaging.

These AI tools are not just gimmicks; they are genuinely useful features that can make a real difference in your workflow. By taking care of some of the heavy lifting, they free you up to focus on delivering high-quality content to your students.

Teachable Pricing: What’s the Damage? 💰

Now for the big question: how much does Teachable cost? Teachable has recently updated its pricing plans in June 2025, so it’s important to be aware of the new structure . 

They offer four main plans, each with different features and limitations. Here’s a breakdown of the new pricing:

Feature	Starter	Builder	Growth	Advanced
Monthly Price	$39/month	$89/month	$189/month	$399/month
Annual Price	$29/month	$69/month	$139/month	$309/month
Transaction Fee	7.5%	0%	0%	0%
Published Products	1	5	25	100
Students	100	1,000	Unlimited	Unlimited
Community	Included	Included	Included	Included
Affiliate Marketing	No	Yes	Yes	Yes

Which Plan is Right for You?

It’s worth noting that all plans come with unlimited draft products, so you can work on as many courses as you like behind the scenes . The limits only apply to published products that are available for sale.

The new pricing structure is a bit of a mixed bag. The lower entry price for the Starter plan is great for new creators, but the product and student limits on the lower-tier plans might feel restrictive for those who are growing quickly . The 0% transaction fee on the Builder plan and above is a major plus, though.

✅ Pros and Cons – The Honest Truth

Teachable vs. The Competition

So, how does Teachable stack up against its main rivals, Thinkific and Kajabi? This is a question I get asked all the time. Here’s a quick comparison to help you decide.

Feature	Teachable	Thinkific	Kajabi
Best For	Beginners & Ease of Use	Course Structure Control	All-in-One Marketing
Pricing	Starts at $39/month	Starts at $36/month	Starts at $149/month
Transaction Fees	7.5% on Starter, 0% on others	0% on all paid plans	0% on all plans
Ease of Use	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐
Course Creation	Excellent, very intuitive	More advanced options	Good, but part of a larger system
Marketing Tools	Good (upsells, affiliate)	Basic	Advanced (email, funnels)

Teachable is your best bet if you prioritise speed and simplicity. You can get a professional-looking course online faster than with almost any other platform .

Thinkific is a strong competitor that offers more control over how students progress through your course and has the major benefit of 0% transaction fees on all its paid plans . It’s a great choice if you’re creating more formal or structured educational content.

Kajabi is a different beast altogether. It’s an all-in-one platform that includes a website builder, email marketing, sales funnels, and more. It’s incredibly powerful but also more complex and significantly more expensive . It’s for creators who want every tool under one roof and have the budget for it.

The Final Verdict: Is Teachable Worth Your Time and Money in 2026?

So, after all that, what’s my final take?

I believe Teachable is absolutely worth it for a huge portion of creators, especially those who are just starting or who value a clean, hassle-free user experience above all else . The platform makes it ridiculously easy to turn your knowledge into a polished product and start earning money from it.

The built-in tools for payments, taxes, and affiliate management remove so many of the headaches that come with running an online business .

However, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. If you’re planning to build a massive school with hundreds of products, or if you need sophisticated marketing automation built-in, you might feel constrained by its limitations . The 7.5% transaction fee on the Starter plan is also a sting in the tail that you need to be prepared for.

For me, it comes down to this: if your main goal is to create and sell online courses and coaching with a platform that is simple, reliable, and professional, then Teachable is one of the best choices on the market today. It lets you focus on what you do best—teaching.