You want to make money selling courses online. Perhaps you are an Adobe Illustrator expert or love the idea of teaching photography to others. The best thing about the internet is the ability to look at your existing skills and make money online as an instructor. How do you build a website? And how can you sell these online courses? There are many online courses building platforms available. We’re going to compare the two most popular platforms, so we’ll be comparing Udemy and Teachable.
Both of these platforms can be very useful and popular, depending on your circumstances. One teacher may find Udemy more lucrative (read our Udemy review), while another teacher may prefer Teachable’s customization and marketing tools.
Udemy vs Teachable – Pros and Cons
There are many course creators available, each with its own pros and cons. It all depends on your goals for how you use your educational resources. To help you make an informed decision, let’s take a look at the pros and cons for Udemy and Teachable.
Teachable Pros
- It is easy to create courses with no technical skills
- There are many student interaction options
- If you decide to leave, export your student list
- Get guidance from top educational summits
- Bundle products and courses to create unique deals
- Sell services, eBooks or workshops.
- Hosting and design are not your concern
- One-click upselling
- You can create as many courses and as many as you like
- Automately pay your affiliates
- Simple sales funnels can be created without the need for additional services
Teachable Cons
- Transaction fees can be more expensive for your business.
- Basic integrations mean that there are not many extension options.
- Caching problems can lead to slower loading times
- No live workshops or office hours.
- Some issues with stored payment details
- These templates are not the best.
Udemy is a different platform than Teachable, and allows you to distribute content to your students. You get instant traffic and the ability to reach a large number of students. Udemy may not be able to provide you with the branding potential that you desire.
Udemy Pros
- Affordable pricing for course creators, with a free plan
- Access to many students already enrolled in the program is easy
- It is easy to modify and personalize your course structure
- There is no need to look for additional hosting services
- Students can reach them via mobile app
- Excellent SEO rankings
- It is easy to make passive income
- Stripe and PayPal integrated payment processing
- Great community to gain word-of-mouth referrals
Udemy Cons
- Udemy retains a large percentage of your sales
- There are only so many ways to price your courts
- To become a premium instructor, you must apply
- Not all courses are accepted
- There are no branding options available for your business
- Limitless customization
Easy of Use
You need an easy-to-use system to get the most from your course creation experience. Not all course creators are the same. Teachable and Udemy both offer easy access to online teaching opportunities, but how simple is each service to use?
Udemy is a great option for entrepreneurs who want to offer online education. The company has pre-designed templates that can be used to create courses in a variety of industries and topics. It is free to become an instructor, and it is also easy to get started.
Udemy puts your course along with other learning opportunities in a pre-existing market. This means that there is no need for marketing or branding to get attention for your services. Instead, you instantly have access to thousands of students.
Udemy’s video-based courses are easy to upload. This platform has limited customization options, which is both a blessing as well as a curse. While you can’t really make your brand stand apart online, you don’t need to code or make complicated changes.
Udemy is essentially a one-stop shop for online education. You even get a full-quality review to make sure your course is ready to go.
Teachable allows you to create more courses, but it can also be argued that it is more difficult to use. Experts agree that the solution to this problem is simple. Teachable is an all-in-1 platform that handles everything for you. You can then focus on your courses.
All paid plans include the Teachable Training session. This allows you to get help in choosing a topic, how to launch your course, and how to market yourself. You can skip the training sessions entirely and get right into the product. If you have any questions, there are knowledgebase articles that can help.
Teachable offers a complete platform that allows you to connect with students. Simply choose the product type you wish to create (e.g. membership or online course) and then add the content to suit your needs.
You can set up coaching sessions, design thank you pages and checkout pages and use Kajabi to build courses. You can choose whether you are building a course, or a coaching program.
Teachable’s comprehensive page editor is superior to other market leaders like Thinkific. It gives you complete access to all customization options to make your course stand apart. This is more like creating a WordPress website, than adding products to an existing market.
Teachable’s extra functionality means that you may need to spend more time getting used to it.
Udemy vs Teachable Pricing/Fees
It’s obvious that Udemy and Teachable have very different pricing models when comparing them.
Let’s begin with Udemy.
Udemy pays 97% of the revenue if you convince someone else to enroll in your Udemy course. This is a great deal.
You only get half of the revenue if your course is discovered by a student through Udemy.
You are incentivized, in short, to bring in customers. Udemy makes this a bit more complicated because they offer similar courses to yours. Since you have no control over marketing and Udemy has a large audience, I expect the majority of sales to come from Udemy.
However, 50% is a good cut, especially for teachers who are just starting out.
Teachable has a different pricing system. Instead of giving up half of your sales to cover what is most likely a substantial portion of your sales, you will be asked to pay a monthly fee and some transaction fees.
As long as you are selling enough courses, you should technically make close to 100% on every sale.
These pricing plans look like this:
- Basic: $29 per Month and 5% transaction fees
- Professionals – $79 per Month and No Transaction Fees
- For businesses, $399 per month with no transaction fees
These are the pricing plans for Teachable:
Basic:
Basic, the cheapest plan, is $29 per month if you pay annually or $39 monthly. Transaction fees for paid courses are 5% and there are processing charges. You’ll be charged 2.9% plus 30cs for US sales and 3.9% plus 30cs for international sales. International PayPal sales can be even more expensive.
Unlimited courses, coaching, students and hosting are included in the Basic package. You also have access to email support but not live chat. You can access 2 administrators, integrated payment processing and student management. Basic quizzes are also available.
Pro
The most popular plan for Teachable is Pro. This package is for those who want more features such as Zapier integrations and affiliate marketing. It’s slightly more expensive than Basic, at $99 per month if you bill annually or $119 per monthly.
Transaction fees are not charged with the Pro package. However, processing fees remain the same. Pro includes live chat and email support, accounts for up 5 admin users, and access to both email support as well as live chat. You get all the basic features, as well as integrated payment processing. Zapier integration, email marketing, affiliate programs and graded quizzes are also available. Certificates of completion can be issued to you. Unbranded websites can be created, as well as advanced reports and upsell possibilities.
Business
You may be interested in a complete solution to marketing and selling your courses, such as ConvertKit. Upgrade your course sales with Business. For $249 per year, the Business package from Teachable provides you with the most functionality for your course website. It’s only $299 per month if you pay monthly for your site.
Business offers support for email lists, Google analytics and better course sales. While there are no transaction fees at all, processing fees apply. You can access your payments on a daily basis, create unlimited coaching and courses, and advertise on social media.
This platform is unlike other channels such as Skillshare. It allows you to build a brand and attract customers. There are many marketing features that will help you get a quick payout for your profitable online course. Up to 20 admin accounts are available, as well as advanced reports, custom roles, bulk import, and many other features. You can also have access to the member’s-only community. You can also use plugins to track Facebook pixels data.
Pricing is an important factor when comparing Teachable and Udemy. It makes more sense for businesses to pay monthly fees for Teachable than giving away 50% of your revenue through Udemy. Udemy might be useful if you want to increase your user base, or get your courses out to a larger audience.
Overall Feature-set
Udemy has a great feature-set, all in one package that is easy to use for new users. Anyone who wishes to become an instructor can sign up on the website and upload courses to the pre-set interface. You have the option to create audio, video, or text lectures. Closed captioning is also possible.
Here is a list with some of the most popular Udemy features:
- Udemy’s most popular marketplace to find and enroll in courses.
- There are many categories that allow you to easily classify your courses, and make it easier to locate them.
- Tools to send direct messages between students.
- Support for promotional videos
- A place to display instructor announcements.
- An integrated customer review section.
- Save your courses to bookmarks with your students
- Questions and answers tools.
- There are options to issue certificates of completion.
- Downloadable lectures.
- Additional resources include worksheets and class exercises.
- Use Quizzes to see how your users do.
- A mobile interface.
Udemy is a less customizable platform that allows you to immediately access your courses online. Teachable, on the other hand, offers greater control since you can build your website yourself, with built-in tools like page building and hosting.
Let’s take a look at some of the most popular features in Teachable:
- Multimedia support, including audio, images and videos.
- A drag-and-drop page builder for constructing your entire website.
- A mobile interface.
- Built-in payment processor accepting Udemy credit, PayPal and all major credit cards.
- To show potential students, create sales pages.
- You have the option of owning your domain.
- Quizzes, and certificates of completion.
- You can use messaging and discussion tools to allow your students to communicate with each other, the teacher, and you.
- Student feedback form that includes surveys and Google Forms.
- Integrations are available for customer support and email marketing.
- Great marketing options include coupons, promotions, and advanced pricing.
- You can use this program to persuade bloggers and users to share your courses.
- You can connect to Stripe for credit card payments, or you can connect through PayPal. You can also accept payments in over 130 currencies.
- Beautiful dashboard that provides student insight and detailed data about your revenue.
- Complete website builder interface, including hosting, data ownership, SSL certificate, and SSL certificate.
Design
Let’s begin with the design. We’ll then discuss how simple it is to create your own course pages.
Udemy users are welcomed with a well-designed marketplace that allows them to search for courses and browse through categories. Once they have chosen a category or landed on a course, everything will be displayed from the course title up to what they can expect. It takes only a few seconds to add a course into their cart. You can also view all course reviews to see the full description of each course and how long each one takes.
Udemy users can view the course material and jump forward and backwards after they have completed it.
This interface is the same for all courses on Udemy. This ensures a consistent experience for all users. It is a great benefit for people who come back to Udemy regularly to learn.
Teachable students, on the other hand will notice differences in the overall interface depending upon how their instructor set it up. One course might be focused on audio files or PDF files while another may focus more on image learning.
This is a great advantage for course builders. Teachable allows you to either use an existing website or create new pages. This allows you to customize your branding and students will see your logo instead of the one Udemy has created for them.
Teachable comes with templates for your course pages. You can also use a drag-and drop editor that almost everyone can use. You don’t have to create everything from scratch for things like forums, quizzes and sales pages.
Teachable is the clear winner in the design field due to its extensive customization options and easy-to-use templates. Udemy is great if you are a complete designer, but it doesn’t seem to be beneficial for those who want to start their own business.
Marketing and sales
Teachable excels in marketing and sales. Udemy seems to care most about bringing current and new customers back to its website. Udemy sees this as a good business model, but it also means there are hundreds of thousands of courses being promoted alongside yours.
You have no control over the Udemy marketing emails that you receive. Your courses may not be featured in these emails. If they are, then you must compete with the courses next to them. This competition can be fierce for new instructors to Udemy, as all classes on Udemy have ratings and reviews.
Udemy does not have any sales pages that can be customized to allow you to direct people towards your courses. You could send students directly to the course page. That page also features Udemy’s branding and marketing tool. You don’t have the option to design a highly optimized landing page like you would with Teachable.
Udemy is well-known for offering discounts on large numbers of courses in order to increase its user base. You will often see promotions that all courses on Udemy are selling for $10 or less. Udemy users have the ability to control individual promotions but it can be frustrating when you realize that your courses are being sold for almost nothing.
Teachable on the other hand gives you total control over your marketing process. You can even create your own coupon and promotion codes to manage pricing. You can choose to create a percentage-off coupon, or to simply reduce the enrollment by a dollar amount. Coupons and promotions have expiration dates.
Advanced pricing options allow you to sell a subscription or make a one time payment for your course. You can even offer a payment plan, a bundle, or even a payment plan.
The affiliate program is one of the most valuable features of Teachable’s marketing tools. It is fully integrated so you can reward users who share your courses with family members, friends, and blog readers.
The customizable sales pages are great for increasing conversions. These landing pages are what you link to via Facebook, Google ads, or your email marketing.
Teachable is compatible with almost every major email marketing platform, including Mixpanel, MailChimp and AWeber.
Udemy is a better marketing platform than Teachable. Udemy is a vibrant marketplace that can help you get your courses noticed. Teachable is a better option for those who want to create a brand. We like the idea that people can go to your website.
Customer Support
Teachable offers a wealth of knowledge to help you learn more about selling and grow your business. To speak with a representative, you can also email them. It doesn’t appear that there is any chat or phone support.
Udemy offers a stronger support system with a vast knowledgebase, teaching center, FAQs and ticketing system. Although you can chat with customer service representatives, there isn’t a phone number that allows you to call one of their experts directly.
Which online course platform is right for you?
Which one is better for your business, Udemy or Teachable?
We love Udemy, for those who wish to take advantage the popular market. This is a great place to find more students and you don’t have to do all the marketing yourself.
Teachable is the best option if you are building your own business, and want to control everything from branding to marketing.
We’d love to hear from you about your questions regarding this Udemy vs Teachable Comparison.
