5 Best Teachable Alternatives that increase course sales & student engagement

Teachable is a well-known and widely used course platform, but progress in the online course world shows that the platform struggles to deliver the best learning experience for students.

There are plenty of other options, so it’s crucial to find the best one, and we want to help you with our in-depth analysis.

Keep reading this article to find out the best way to create, host, and sell courses online!

What Is Teachable?

Teachable is an online learning platform that helps people make online courses and sell them. It was founded in 2013 by Ankur Nagpal and was initially named Fedora.

After two years, Fedora started to grow and expand and eventually got its well-known name: Teachable.

At this point, Teachable included managing coaching services and becoming an all-in-one platform that handles hosting, sales monitoring, and payment processing.

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Advantages of Teachable

Let’s see what people love about Teachable.

Straightforward To Set Up And Manage.

Since design templates and tutorials are available for content creators, it is easy to set up your account without specific tech knowledge.

Built-In Payment System.

Content creators won’t need third-party payment systems, and Teachable assures security. But, they have the option to integrate the popular portals if they want.

Different Plan Options.

Objectively, their plans’ monthly fees are expensive, but it’s an advantage that they offer multiple options.

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Disadvantages of Teachable

The following are the most common reasons why people have decided to stop using Teachable and find a better alternative.

Customer Support

Many people weren’t pleased with customer support, saying their responses were usually robotic, not helpful, or days passed before they got an answer.

Limited Course And Site Customization Options

They wanted to make it easy to create courses, but they ended up making a templated system that is hard to change. The layout of the course content is the same, and there aren’t many ways to change the templated pages. This is a big problem because it makes it almost impossible to be different from other people who create online courses.

Difficult Site Builder And Requires More Technical Knowledge

Another common complaint from Teachable users is the challenge of building pages. Teachable offers one-click upsell pages, but designing them can be problematic as the input boxes are small, and copying and pasting is not simplified with templates.

In addition, most people say they need web designers’ help to make advanced template changes. So, this can be a huge con if you’re not tech-savvy or just don’t want to pay someone with technical skills.

Transaction Fees

Even though it might seem minor, rates increase over time as you have more students. If you want to avoid transaction fees, you have to purchase one of the more expensive plans, which is a significant price surge. In addition, free and basic plans have substantially fewer features than pricier plans.

Mobile Solution Isn’t Great

A native mobile app experience wasn’t Teachable’s priority. Even though it’s built well for the web, most creators and learners who use it on iOS find it glitchy.

No Android app forces people to watch the courses on their browsers. And about 2.5 billion users of Android can’t have an app to access your course from their mobile, which is one of the pivotal drawbacks of Teachable.

No Community Options

This disadvantage is the number one reason to find a Teachable alternative right now! A lack of community is equally unfavorable for both creators and learners.

Without community features, members miss the opportunity to take the course with others, make business connections and friendships, learn from others, see others’ ideas, stories, and experiences, get and give inspiration, and much more. Research in the educational field It has shown that courses (online or in-person) are way more effective in a dynamic In an atmosphere where people share ideas, collaborate in groups, and learn from each other.

So, with Teachable, you, as a course creator, can only set up self-paced courses. A self-paced course enables students to personalize their education at a convenient time. These online courses are more passive learning styles because they require students to work independently and look a lot like the traditional style of learning, which most people don’t want anymore.

However, self-paced online courses are low in learners’ engagement and, therefore, less effective. On the other hand, we have cohort-based courses that are more interactive, helping students to apply, analyze, and evaluate the information they learned.

Thus, if you want to create an incredible experience for your learners (and yourself!), it’s better to go with cohort-based online courses that require community. With a community, you can combine synchronous and asynchronous, passive, and active learning to get better results.

The lack of a community option is the primary reason GroupApp is the best Teachable alternative. GroupApp is a membership community platform that helps you create, sell, and deliver the best online course experience by bringing your online courses and community together. This focus on community is giving a new generation of online course creators faster growth, better results, and the ability to charge more. This is especially important as more people want to start their own online courses.

With GroupApp, you will have everything you need to launch cohort-based courses, which will help you have more engaged and motivated learners, support their network, and use multiple learning tools and techniques. GroupApp and the power of community will give you the best experience for you and your students.

No Email Automation

Content creators can send only one-off emails to their students, and that’s it. Thus, emailing is less efficient, personalized, and relevant.

There is no option to add a lead magnet to collect email addresses. They have to pay the email list provider to have a lead magnet, which is an additional payment.

Too Expensive

When we decide if it is something worth the money or is it too expensive, we don’t look only at the price. Instead, we are looking for the ratio between price and what you get with that money. Also, API access requires a much higher tier in a subscription, which is often inaccessible for smaller businesses.

With that being said, Teachable is too expensive. Many Teachable alternatives have cheaper subscriptions with more features and opportunities.

Video Size Limit

If you love to make video courses or videos for your students that they can re-watch, pause, and save, this can be an enormous problem. Teachable has a limited video size of 2GB, which isn’t enough for most creators.

#1 Alternative to Teachable

The best alternative to Teachable is GroupApp. GroupApp is an online community software that supports content creators to build open, public, private, or paid communities.

So, GroupApp is versatile and allows you to host and sell courses. One of the many significant advantages is that you don’t have to have third-party software.

This course platform is highly functional and affordable. But let’s break down all of the features.

GroupApp Features

As we already said, features make the most significant difference among different platforms. Furthermore, GroupApp has every feature needed for professional-looking courses and for building a learning community.

Channel

In every community, there is a “channel” feature that lets you divide the community into sections based on different topics. For example, you can make a channel for general chat, marketing, motivation, etc.

Channels help creators and students easily navigate the community, find relevant course material, and talk about a particular topic in comments.

Library

The library is a feature that allows you to add your course materials like PDFs, sheets, workbooks, or anything that will help your students.

It’s crucial to have limitless ways to share your knowledge with students.

We all have different learning approaches – some people like to read, others like audio recording, while others pick up information the best if they see pictures, diagrams, and graphs.

Thanks to the library feature, you are able to provide every type of material to help your students improve and learn as much as possible.

Direct Message And Group Chat

GroupApp truly believes that the only way to success is by having a strong community that can be in touch with each other, share their ideas, and ask questions.

That’s why there is an option for direct messages and group chats.

Each community member can connect with another member and talk to them.

Every team needs a chat tool to make better connections, support each other, and see others’ ideas, comments and interests.

Events Calendar

If you want to have your events, you can host them in the events calendar. There is an option for RSVPs.

An events calendar is an organized way to show upcoming events based on calendar dates. Because your students can set up reminders, there is no chance that someone will miss your event, and you won’t need another tool for planning them.

Schedule Post And Emails

Here is a huge difference from Teachable – with GroupApp, you can email all of your different members. You also can make your posts in advance.

By keeping to a regular posting schedule, you’re essentially letting your students know what to expect from you, which builds a consistent experience. This feature can be beneficial in times when you, as a content creator, go on a business trip, or even vacation-your students won’t even notice.

Tracking Progress

There is no point in an online course if you can’t see how your students are doing, what might be tricky for them, and how many people have actually gone through the course.

Drip Schedule

The drip schedule is a unique and special feature that GroupApp offers its course creators.

One of the most effective ways to make an online course is by making a challenge out of it.

A drip schedule allows you to do, for example, a 30-day challenge and drip all of your course content, but only one lesson gets opened each day.

It gives you more control and can be used for any type of course – fitness, language learning, or online business classes.

Of course, you can have resources and courses paid for. This is directly connected to Stripe, so you can take payments for classes or membership subscriptions (or other products). Or, you can build free courses if you want.

Live Stream Courses

GroupApp believes that providing live streaming and chat tools is the best way to communicate with your members. Having an opportunity for face-to-face conversations in real-time and helping students online will make it easier than ever before!

Price And Membership Tier

GroupApp gives you the ability to set up membership tiers for your membership community needs.

That way, you can separate people depending on their needs in a group! The pricing is relevant whether it’s just for fun or if they want to get professional quality work out of it while being affordable no matter what plan they choose.

And we have fantastic news: GroupApp offers 14-day free trials without requiring a credit card, so there’s nothing you can lose if you try! You also have the option to shift to another plan if you find out that it’s more suitable for your needs.

Based on users’ reviews, they say that GroupApp plans are affordable and of fantastic quality when you compare the monthly price with the features you get. The GroupApp platform is everything you need in just one monthly subscription.

GroupApp vs Teachable

The best Teachable alternative is GroupApp, and here are the reasons why we think that.

Unlike Teachable, GroupApp is so straightforward to use! It doesn’t require technical skills, and there is no need to pay additional monthly subscriptions for email marketing features, web designers, or other tools. With GroupApp, you can build landing pages, create courses with a dedicated community area, access analytics, and use other helpful membership tools.

In contrast to Teachable, GroupApp has zero transaction fees in all monthly plans (except free plans). And with GroupApp, you receive 100% of your course sales. Transaction fees in are unreasonably high if you want to have a larger community. And, of course, you want a community with many members; it is the whole point of having an online course!

Speaking of money, overall Teachable costs are way too expensive for what you get. This is incredibly inconvenient for small businesses and people who are just starting.

With Teachable, you will have to pay for additional marketing tools, a custom domain, themes, membership features, website hosting, and any other add-on you need for your business.

On the contrary, GroupApp is highly affordable, and everyone has an option to suit their needs! The difference between plans isn’t that significant in price or features, as it is with Teachable.

One of the most significant disadvantages of Teachable, users point out, is poor customer support. With GroupApp, you won’t have that problem.

There is a channel called #Ask-for-help where you can ask anything and get help within minutes. This solution is impressive because you can see what other people are asking and find an answer without questioning yourself!

GroupApp, unlike Teachable, offers email automation. The leading marketing tools provide an easy way to create emails that reach the right people with a personalized, relevant message.

GroupApp has all the advantages of Teachable but doesn’t have any disadvantages. On top of that, pricing is way more reasonable and affordable.

Community Options

Teachable’s major flaw is that it doesn’t have any community features. This is the main reason why GroupApp is the best alternative to Teachable. Many course creators on Teachable said they needed to start a Facebook Group due to this deficiency.

And we all know how Facebook Groups look-noisy, shortfall of control, distracting, and usually results in cheapening the value of your online course. Many members quit online courses because of Facebook Groups. The overall look of your online course will be unprofessional because of this.

We already talked about the necessity of community in the learning process. GroupApp recognizes this part of online courses and gives you a place to manage your students without having to use a bunch of other tools and platforms.

You and your community members have it all in one place. As a course creator, you can create a community, organize members into different public and private channels, and encourage them to share ideas.

GroupApp puts you in charge of members, statistics, content, and subscriptions. GroupApp also connects through social networks, meaning finding someone with direct access is no issue. Even if that member isn’t online right now, GroupApp software will automatically send them notifications about upcoming events.

You have everything to have good communication with your members. You can teach them what you are best at, they can ask you questions and suggestions about the online course, and they can talk to each other, making solid connections. It’s a win-win situation.

GroupApp is the best and most ideal way to make and sell online courses, so the conclusion is obvious. What about other teachable alternatives? Let’s have a look!

Teachable Alternatives

In the continuation of the text, we will review other platforms that are potential teachable alternatives and compare them to GroupApp.

Thinkific

Thinkific is one of the most popular online course platforms designed to create and sell online courses. Its crucial advantages are its features, affordability, and its integrations.

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Thinkific has no transaction fees and offers a free plan that lets you build your first course with unlimited students. You can start your first course without coding knowledge. But, if you want to host more online courses, you’ll have to sign up for a paid plan.

It also offers course completion certificates, assessments, assignments, and lesson prerequisites. Thinkific offers to create a website and sales pages for your products, make video and content hosting, and sell online courses.

However, the most significant drawback is the lack of a community. To create professional-looking courses, you will need advanced community features that Thinkific doesn’t offer.

On the other hand, we already talk about the importance of community and how GroupApp values it. For an excellent online course, having a community is a must-have.

Another major disadvantage of Thinkific is that it doesn’t offer a live chat support feature. In addition, there is no option for a complete test because the trial has severe limitations.

Kajabi

Kajabi is another all-in-one platform with similar features to GroupApp. Kajabi offers ready-to-use templates and pre-set themes to help you start the new course, and there are no transaction fees as with Teachable.

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With Kajabi, you can host your website, sales pages, online courses, membership site, email marketing, and more. In addition, you can create landing pages, email marketing tools and campaigns, and other digital products. The great advantage of Kajabi is its optimization for desktop and all mobile devices.

There are three pricing plans: Basic, Growth, and Pro. The Basic plan costs $119 per month and allows you to create unlimited landing pages and send unlimited marketing emails, have 10,000 contacts, 1,000 members, one website, and one admin user.

Some users say Kajabi is better at supporting you in creating landing pages and funnels than Teachable. However, GroupApp is still a better Teachable alternative than Kajabi because its prices are lower than Kajabis’. Also, Kajabi doesn’t offer a free plan.

And there is more – even if Kajabi is a well-known platform, it doesn’t support certificate completion, so creators have to use a third-party application. When we compare its email campaign functionality, it is not as good as GroupApps’.

Podia

Podia is a popular option for people who want a marketing platform for business, a place to create online courses, run webinars, and sell membership subscriptions. It is the usual choice for people who want to build an online store and create and sell digital products, courses, and membership sites within one storefront.

The usual complaint of Podia users is a lack of options to customize email notifications. For example, people can’t add the recipient’s name to the letter. Another drawback is the inability to categorize products offered on the storefront.

Podia offers plenty of freedom if you need membership features, but you’ll need the Shaker package, which is way more expensive. In addition, Podia is a little pricey – $79 for the plan with the most features.

Podia is a good platform without transaction fees, but it’s not oriented toward online course creation, which aims to share knowledge and expertise. If you want an online education and not a place for selling digital products, Podia isn’t the best place for you.

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Final Verdict

Is Teachable the best platform for selling online courses and coaching? Due to the lack of crucial features like community options, complex site builders, email automation, and much more, we believe you should pass on Teachable. Some users suggest Kajabi, Podia, and Thinkific as the best Teachable alternatives, but we don’t share their opinion. As we have shown, the best Teachable alternative for course creation is GroupApp.

Teachable alternatives (and Teachable) don’t appreciate the power of community and don’t provide excellent features to improve it. If you’re looking for an online course platform that will help you sell courses and memberships, GroupApp is the best option.

With its easy-to-use interface and helpful community features, you’ll be able to start building a successful online course business in no time.

Sign up for GroupApp today to get started!