What: Teachable is an online platform that helps you design, develop and teach a class online.
Expected pay: variable
Husl$core: $$$$
Commissions & fees: $0 to $399 per month, plus commissions (which vary based on plan)
Where: Nationwide
Requirements: Be over the age of 18, or over the age of 13, with parental permission;
Review:
Teachable helps you create and sell classes on everything from sewing to stocks. The site offers an easily navigatable process by which you create and upload your classes, decide on the length and number of sessions per class and direct people to the site. You also price your classes and determine if you’ll offer promotional discounts.
You own your content. Teachable simply licenses it for limited use so that people can buy your online class. Instructors are paid for their classes 30 days after the date of sale to accommodate the site’s 30-day money-back guarantee.
Users pay for the service either through a monthly fee, a transaction fee or a combination of both. The free plan, for instance, charges nothing monthly, but levies a 10% commission on sales; The $29 per month plan charges a 5% commission on sales; higher-cost plans have no transaction fees.
The idea is that you can get started cheaply, but if your class becomes highly popular, you might be better off paying the monthly fees, rather than higher commissions. Payments are processed through Stripe, which also takes a 3% fee.
The format and pricing is much like Teachable’s top competitor, Thinkific. However, Thinkific offers a few more bells and whistles and also allows you to connect directly to your own PayPal account. (Teachable requires you to go through their payment system, unless you’re paying for a premium plan. That payment system costs you another 3% on each transaction.)
They are both great platforms. But the slightly higher costs and fewer bells and whistles gets Teachable a slightly lower Husl$core than Thinkific.
BTW, neither of these platforms do much to market your class. Getting people to find your course is up to you. If you need help marketing your course, you can host a class through Udemy. However, Udemy largely dictates the price of your class, so its our least-favorite choice.
What their users say:
SideHustleAcademy, which uses and is an affiliate for both sites, did a nice side-by-side comparison here, coming to much the same conclusion as SideHusl.
Question and answer site Quora also has a whole string of answers to the question of whether Thinkific or Teachable is the better platform.