The world we are living in is one that is increasingly expanding in its field of knowledge and skill sets of the people, and being in full control of your own career is super achievable. That’s why more people are turning to coaching services like Teachable because it allows individuals to launch their own courses to teach.
The concept of traditional teaching in which students have to physically attend classes is fast becoming obsolete, especially in the post-COVID era. During COVID-19, when many people were left stranded in their homes due to government-imposed restrictions, people even in most developing countries had no other choice but to switch to online mode of classes i.e., learning online courses and coaching. The majority of people realized that being physically present in the classroom is not the only option to gather knowledge and information.
Nowadays, you can access any course you want through online classes, as long as you have an access to the internet to own online course; a fact that has surely revolutionized the education system. Unlimited students around the globe have benefitted from an online education system through unlimited courses or an affiliate program during the COVID era
The online education system has many advantages. The first aspect which really gathered attention was the system’s flexibility. Depending on the working schedules and ability to afford a certain program, the timings and fee structures can be flexible, even for each course and online lessons. In addition, people have a vast majority of programs and subjects to choose from. They just have to get online and take the online course. If a student is really interested in researching the right course material and content, there is a major probability that they may be able to get their hands on a free course. Above all, it gives a chance to both the teacher and the student to have more interaction as compared to the physical classes.
In this Teachable review, we’ll be looking at Teachable as a course-creating website and how its service works. We will also briefly compare it to some of its biggest competition, whilst looking at benefits and flaws the service may have.
The teachable platform is an online course creation software that came into being originally in year 2013, with the first instance of fedora. The CEO and founder of teachable Mr. Ankur Nagpal were using another teaching platform for teaching an affiliate marketing program. Since his experience was not so memorable, he decided to go all in and created his own online platform for the creation of courses i.e., teachable.
Since its inception, the teachable platform has successfully helped more than 100,000 course instructors in creating online courses as well as selling courses, which resulted in a revenue of more than $500million. As per the latest rankings of online tools published by Capterra, a free online marketplace vendor, teachable achieved a popularity score of 31/50 and rating score of 45/50 through many teachable reviews which are quite impressive, considering it is quite new as compared to most of its counterparts.
Some teaching online schools in teachable also offer free courses and coaching services. The offering of free courses not only serves as a great opportunity for people to learn skills online free of cost but also gives a chance to instructors to publicize their own online school by advertising their own courses. Teachable is also a very good platform, especially for a technically inclined person or a tech-savvy who intends to learn a course through distance learning.
In this Teachable software review, we’ll be looking at Teachable as a course-creating website and how its service works for selling online courses. In this teachable review, we will also briefly compare it to some of its biggest competition, whilst looking at the benefits and flaws the service may have.
This Teachable review should edge you closer in the right direction as to whether or not selling a Teachable course is for you and your aspirations.
How Does Teachable Work?
Teachable is a great online course platform that essentially allows members of the platform to create online courses and sell online courses. You can sign up for a free trial to get a feel for the site or choose between a Basic, Professional, or Business plan in order to sell courses.
It is basically an online courses creation, online learning, and courses selling platform that allows instructors, creators, businesses, and entrepreneurs of all sizes to create and sell their own personalized, engaging, and informative online coaching courses, contents, and coaching products. The tool allows them to complete their course production of multiple courses with the help of lectures, quizzes, assignments, and videos.
A major attractive aspect of teachable is that the instructors or entrepreneurs can collect their teachable payments directly from the platform, rather than having to go through the hassle of value-added taxes (VAT) and author payments. Authors also have a console through which they not only can track their teachable sales of multiple courses but also gain insights into the sold courses. A facility of unified dashboard is provided through which student feedback regarding a particular course is collected through surveys.
Once signing up with your name and email address, course creators have full control over their own professional plan and the online training courses they wish to execute. Once you have signed up with Teachable, you can get started on building a course. A wide range of features are available to make this happen but will vary slightly depending on your chosen plan. Teachable also allows memberships and has options like course marketplace as well.
Teachable has been developed based on the ideology that anyone who is interested in transforming knowledge through small passive income can benefit from this particular platform.
This easy-to-use platform helps online course creators get their courses up and running, and ready to engage students. Through launching these courses and sharing knowledge, you can expect to see some revenue coming in through your sales page, which makes Teachable legit a great option for aspiring multiple teachers.
Key Features
It’s important to review key teachable features for any platform that works around selling online courses. Teachable gives personal customization on all plans from the basic plan to the business plan. Teachable understand the importance of making your course individual to you and achieving the style and format that you want. During your free plan, you should be able to explore Teachable course options and third-party teachable features.
The fundamental step in teachable is to create and sell your own product i.e., teachable courses. By clicking a “+” sign, teachable courses or coaching product types can be selected. A course product is based on a specific curriculum and you may include quizzes, assignments, videos, and tutorials. A coaching product is one in which an instructor can interact one on one with the client and offer coaching based on the client’s requirements. Once the type of product is selected, then the instructor has to fill out basic information forms to complete the data. Once the data is finalized and pricing is mentioned by the instructor, the course can be successfully published.
All the features offered by teachable are very convenient for new course creators and can be categorized into three main categories.
- Content Management
- User Management
- Learning Management
Content Management
Content management can be categorized into four categories i.e., Blended learning, tests/assessments, Quizzes and Built-in course authoring. Tests and assessments are made by the instructor in order to assess the student’s retention of particular course contents through systematic course building. Blended learning as the name implies explores paths that can combine the physical mode of classes with the virtual ones. Built-in course tutoring is the set of tools that allows instructors to create courses and publish them in an appropriate manner. Quizzes are designed to assess the students based on their reactive knowledge on a lecture by lecture basis.
User Management
User management can be categorized into four sub-categories i.e., course tracking of one or more than one course, asynchronous learning, training administration, and activity dashboard. Teachable allows asynchronous learning in which people or a group of people can access the contents of the course and curriculum at different times. By course tracking in teachable, the instructor can easily assess and track the progress of each student in their course as well as how many students have enrolled and record of bulk student enrolments. Through training administration, one can keep back-office tasks.
The back-office tasks include course registrations, course certifications, schedule of courses, email reminders and organization of courses. The activity dashboard gives a sneak peak of all the activities that can be performed on this platform.
Learning Management
Learning management can also be categorized into four sub-categories i.e., e-commerce management, course publishing, progress tracking, and synchronous learning.
E-commerce management is the set of affiliate marketing tools available in teachable that lets the instructors sell their course online in an effective manner. The progress tracking in teachable allows you to track the progress of each task i.e., how much the course has progressed in terms of different factors such as registrations, the progress of students, etc.
Synchronous learning means that the students are attending the lectures at the same time and interacting with each other as well. Course publishing is to publish a course on the platform, once all requirements are successfully met.
All Plans Include
Before getting into further detail in this teachable reviews about the features of the Teachable platform, let’s have a look at what is included in all plans when using Teachable
- Unlimited courses
- No transaction fee on courses that are free
- Lecture comments enabled
- Integrated payment processing
- Unlimited video
- Unlimited hosting
- Teachable App
- Student management
- Basic quizzes
All teachable paid plans also have a members-only community, instant payouts of transaction fees, and some form of email marketing features. Starting at the Basic plan you can expect a wide variety of useful features for course creation, including course creator training. Your perks do increase on a Pro plan, Teachable’s most popular plan, which allows up to 5 admin teachable users and a custom domain. Admin users increase up to 20 and other teachable users can utilize group coaching calls with the Business plan.
Other Features
Teachable supports just about any third-party integration you may need to use when running your course. Whether you want to use Asana, great for scheduling projects and due dates, Facebook Scheduler, to keep your socials relevant, or Smart Receipts, Teachable encourages this for your learning management system.
Technical Features
Teachable possesses many operational features which are quite user-friendly and help the instructor in not only creating and publishing the profile but also keeping track of the progress of their course. The features are very user-friendly for instructors who are publishing their first course or looking to get paid for their first paid course. Some of the features are mentioned below.
Dash Board
Teachable has included the most important and most frequently used features in the dashboard. The features are all very useful to launch the course. The dashboard board features are a blend of tabs and educational content, that can be used to kick-start the launching of the course in a quick time.
The dashboard also lets you register for a free awareness webinar regarding how to access and accept teachable payments, how to cover and initiate the first course, and how to customize it based on a specific theme.
Accessing Users
The “users” tab allows you to gather all the information pertaining to the people registered in a course. The users on a teachable platform may include authors, online business owners, and students. Teachable has also customized the user section by providing a search bar and filters, which let you access a bunch of users fulfilling a specific criterion. Typically, there are 33 filters to fine-tune your search for a particular filter. However, the common filters being used are signing up by people before and after the event, user information based on the email address or name, user information based on country code, etc. The real use of the filters is to identify a specific set of people that are interested in your marketing campaigns or courses.
SITE Features
Similar to the creation of the courses, it is very important to customize the look of the overall site. Most of the users are willing to register for a course that not only fulfills the academic criterion, but also the main course site looks pleasing to the eye as well. The site tab offers the following options:
Theme customization
The theme customization allows you to pick a color of your choice for the body text, navigation bars, videos, buttons, and navigation links as well. It also allows you to pick a particular font for the text that appeared throughout your site. It also allows a user to pick a brand logo as well as a thumbnail.
Pages
The teachable course pages section of the site has two margins. On the right-hand margin of the screen, updates are shown. On the left-hand margin, page blocks are mentioned. The left-hand margin is further divided into two tabs. The first is used to edit the text and images. The second tab is used for customization i.e., alignment and adjustment of text, adjustment of image opacity, background color change, and adjustment, etc.
Domains
One of the trickiest aspects related to launching courses on your own platform is to deal with web hosting. Launching your own course through teachable relieves you of such worries. Teachable offers free hosting to instructors who are interested in launching their courses. Three custom domain options are available in teachable.
- Teachable sub-domain: It comes with all the online schools under teachable. A teaching subdomain under teachable comes naturally with a teachable.com at the end like myschool.teachable.com
- Custom domain: Using a custom sub-domain can only be used by first purchasing it through a domain registrar. This option is most viable for the entrepreneurs running their online business and own website and intends to integrate teachable with their own main website e.g., (mydomain.com).
- Custom sub-domain: It involves creating a sub-domain under an already purchased domain by the instructor. This is also beneficial for owners of already successful businesses as well as school owners e.g., (courses.mydomain.com).
Navigation
This tab allows you to set up a login page for the students as well as your own webpage. You can also determine the URLs in the navigation tab which are linked with your own webpage.
Bios
Bios consists of all the information that you need your learners to know about you. All the details related to your area of expertise and how it is linked with a particular course are narrated in this section. A comprehensive and precise bio automatically increases the probability of higher registrations in a course.
Comments
An area where instructors can see all the comments of the learners who have registered for their course. Teachable allows the instructor to reply to a certain comment, which not allows clarifying the ambiguity but also increases the interaction between the instructor and the learner.
Code snippets
While teachable possesses all the effective tools to launch a course, it allows the user to add a CSS code. The written code will be applied across all the pages.
Sales
The sales feature is related to everything that lets you access everything related to finances pertaining to your course. The sales tab offers the following options:
Transactions
As soon as the course is up for sale, a collection of data starts filling up. The data can be assessed through the transactions tab in teachable and it shows entries such as date of purchase, purchased courses price, student details, etc. Different filters can also be applied to the transactions in order to access particular data. You can filter the data based on date, price, subject, student name etc.
Statements
Statements let you details about all the transactions made in your account. The statements can be accessed on an online school level and individual level.
Breakdown
This contains images of the daily and monthly sales. It is very convenient and helpful for the users to understand and access the transactions.
E-mails
The emails in the teachable platform allow an instructor to interact personally with a particular student, all the students enrolled in a particular course, or all the students in the online school. The emails tab offers the following options:
Compose
Similar to the other emailing platforms, you can compose an email in this tab to message students.. Just enter the subject and proceed towards writing the body of the email before sending it to the intended recipient.
History
This section shows the collection of all the emails that were sent or received since the creation of the account. Filters can be used to access specific emails based on date, user, subject, etc.
Settings
This particular section allows custom notifications to be sent to the students. Custom notifications may be sent on the successful completion of the course, pending assessments, etc.
Teachable integrations
Teachable supports just about any third-party integration you may need to use when running your course. Whether you want to use Asana, great for scheduling projects and due dates, Facebook Scheduler, to keep your socials relevant, or Smart Receipts, Teachable encourages this for your learning management system through teachable integrations.
Zapier
This is a third-party tool that is integrated within Teachable. It works by connecting your favorite tools so they can work together seamlessly. If you want to use Zapier, Teachable has a How-To guide within their customer support pages.
Teachable can be integrated with zappier using the following easy steps:
- Authenticate both apps.
- Select one of the apps as the trigger. The other app will generate a resulting action
- Data is selected which is intended to be sent from one app to the other
GOOGLE AnALytics
It is a web analytics service which can be used to assess the website traffic of your teachable school. It can also be integrated with teachable using couple of easy steps
Multimedia…
…is encouraged when selling online courses. Videos, multimedia lectures, and coaching sessions are all features you can work with to engage your students in the best way possible.
Connect Your Website…
…through your Teachable account to one of their own custom domains. As an entrepreneur, there are chances that you have a well-established businesses pertaining to which you already have a website, and now you want to link your online courses to your website in order to expand your business. Teachable offers extensions that can efficiently link the instructor’s profile with their official webpage. This is done by adding the URL of your website in the navigation menu which falls under the site tab.
Sales Features
You can use a variety of sales features with Teachable with their flexible page editor. For your students, you can create discount codes, promotions, and vouchers, to make your course more accessible to everyone. Teachable offers advanced pricing options, which can be found on the Thank You page. This includes a payment plan for teachable payments, one-time transaction fee, and a subscription. A money-back guarantee on the checkout page helps boost course sales by providing reassurance to students.
Engage with Students
Once teaching has begun, through your Teachable course, you can talk to your students live for valuable one-to-one sessions. You can also create quizzes to keep learning interesting allowing students to choose as many potential answers to a particular question as possible, create course certificates, and send welcome emails to add to a rich course experience.
Teachable Pricing
As previously mentioned, Teachable offers three kinds of pricing options, they are Basic, Professional, and Business. Below you can see the teachable pricing per month, billed annually. All of these can be paid with a credit card, Stripe, or Paypal.
You can also pay for your Teachable subscription monthly, see below.
➡️ Does Teachable offer a free plan?
Basic
The basic plan is a fairly basic plan that will cost you $39 per month. It’s ideal for people creating an online course for the first time as it’s the most affordable, and will help you learn the ropes before moving to something more advanced. There is a 5 transaction fee with this plan.
Professional
The professional plan is a paid plan that costs $119 a month. There are some features with this plan that you won’t get with Basic. It’s ideal for those who have already sold an online course, and are making money through it that overrides the monthly transaction fee.
Business
The Business plan is a paid plan that costs $299 per month transaction fee. It is suited to businesses where multiple educators are creating and selling a variety of courses.
Teachable Support
In order to run a successful online business or teach an online course, support is of paramount importance. The teachable support team can reach out to their customers via live chat and emails in professional and business plans, while email support is available in the basic plan only. The teachable support system is categorized into two main categories.
HELP
In order to help its customers, teachable provides a comprehensive knowledge base. Plenty of images and GIFs are available to support new customers. However, very few video tutorials are available for assistance. The provided material is very conveniently categorized task-wise, which makes it very easy for customers to get the job done.
Teachable U
It is an online training teachable school for course instructors and course creators. This module includes step-by-step procedures for creating an online course, publish it and then sell it. Teachable U is only accessible with the paid teachable plans.
Unsure?
If you are uncertain which Teachable pricing is right for you, you can contact sales where you will answer a few questions, or use live chat.
➡️ Check out our reader’s exclusive Teachable coupon codes here.
Building Your First Online Course
You may want to start with a table of contents to work around. In the same way with an essay or book, you may outline sections first to give yourself an idea of where the work is heading.
Starting with this online course platform and the plethora of user-friendly customization tools, you can start uploading your course content for students to get the best learning experience possible. Through a drag-and-drop course builder, course creators can upload presentations, PDF documents, and videos. Teachable allows for use with Google Drive, Dropbox, and One Drive for your online course.
You as a course creator will know the kind of learning you want to provide for students, with Teachable you can offer all course content at once or offer it bit by bit. You can design checklists, quizzes, and course completion certificates for unlimited students should you desire, and if your subscription plan allows.
Another thing worth mentioning in this review is that all your materials imported to the Teachable platform will be backed up automatically. If you want to create and sell courses, ensuring everything runs smoothly is a big must.
If you’re stuck for ideas, you can browse through popular themes to ensure your online course is appropriate for what it is selling. Course examples will help you with design ideas also, as this is key in making your online course appealing.
Can You Make Money with Teachable?
If you’re reading this Teachable review, it’s likely this question is a the top of your list. The team at Teachable knows that most people don’t just create and sell courses for fun. Besides passing on the baton of knowledge, one of the key reasons people use these online course platforms is to help them make a living.
Teachable offers multiple sales page templates that are designed to optimize course sales. Potential students can find this via the website, buy directly from a tutor’s sales page, or course creators can design a landing page that will link visitors to a checkout cart for the course.
A feature within Teachable allows users to see who has signed up for their course and how much revenue has come in through this. Testimonials on their website claim that some people earn almost all of their wages through Teachable. Other reviews such as those on Capterra say the easy-to-use platform is great for teachers looking to sell courses online.
The variety of plans, including a free plan, means profit is more likely than more expensive options. Certain features such as email marketing also help drive unlimited students to buy an online course. This online course platform does state that its instructors collectively have earned over $100 million on Teachable com. So, that is some reassurance if nothing else.
Pros and Cons
Providing pros and cons list for Teachable helps enable an unbiased review.
Pros
- Teachable as an online course creator has received kudos for its ease of use, especially the drag and drop technology, and the platforms ability to handle files without extra coding
- The customer phone support is award-winning, with live chat options
- A collection of powerful tools both integrated with Teachable and third-party extensions help strengthen users learning management system
- Variety of payment options e g a custom payment gateway that links your account to your business credit card or Paypal business account
- Teachable takes care of VAT
- A choice of professional designs for your Teachable course helps act as an effective marketing tool to attract students
- You can measure your course analytics effortlessly when you use Teachable by accessing easy-to-read data. You can also use third-party Google Analytics which helps identify where traffic to sales pages comes from
- Offers advanced coding options
- It offers a free trial period of 14 days i.e., a free plan which is noncredit card based
- Provision of course completion certificate
- Option to learn courses through a teachable mobile friendly app available on IOS store
Cons
- There is a delay when receiving payment for subscribers to the free plan and basic plan. Due to a thirty delay payout, this could mean those who are starting out using teachable may struggle initially
- Customer support has not always kept up with platform growth, at peak times of sign-ups, customer support is not always quick to respond
- There does not seem to be a channel where students can submit assignments or coursework
- Only one theme is available which is customizable. On the contrary, Thinkific offers four themes in addition to multiple layout options, while Kajabi has seven theme options.
The Competitors: Teachable vs Thinkific
Both of these educational platforms are very similar. Thinkific has similar payment options and plans, landing page builders, email marketing, payment getaway, and so on. Thinkific doesn’t charge transaction fees, which makes it a great Teachable alternative. Course creators will also be deposited instantly which you don’t get with Teachable.
Teachable does have a closer focus on marketing tools for course creation and has a higher learning curve compared to Thinkific. The landing pages and course page design is also lacking in comparison with Teachable.
In this Teachable review, it seems that Teachable’s ease of use, along with effective marketing strategies, focus on features and tasteful designs make it a winner over Thinkific. The presented teachable review also helps a user understand the more advanced features of teachable, which allows them to earn money through course tutoring and freelancing.
The Bottom Line
You may be asking yourself, is Teachable legit? In this Teachable review, we can safely yes. The team behind this online course platform knows their stuff and due to a high sign-up rate, whether that’s the free plan or professional plan, they must be doing something continuously right.
All in all, teachable is an all-in-one platform that is affordable, user-friendly, and an effective course creation software. It consists of the right blend of features and settings to help the instructors start their campaigns. Although currently it only has one theme to offer, every element can be customized using customization tools.
User features are also very convenient to use as compared to the other platforms and assist greatly in managing the students. The reporting functionality of the teachable is very efficient and robust. It can be used to track the progress of the course in terms of completion and revenue generated.
As a course instructor, teachable is a very good and affordable platform to launch your courses and earn income. As a student, it lets you gain knowledge and acquire course completion certificates. The course completion certifications not only officially add credit to a student’s name, but these course certifications act as a motivating factor for them as well
There’s a simplicity about Teachable’s platform, but in no way is it, amateur. There are tutorials and step-by-step guides to help instructors when get started. Members are also spoiled for choice with a range of third-party applications.
Earning money with Teachable is possible, their statistics speak for themselves. For any online course creators, the prospect may seem overwhelming which is why customer support is one of Teachable’s biggest assets. Overall, Teachable is great for creating and selling courses, time, and time again.
