The Online Course Platform Comparison

The platform that introduced most creators to selling courses online. Reliable, simple, and the easiest place to start — but the pricing structure has become unfriendly to anyone trying to grow.

Teachable is the legacy player. It's what your favourite course creator was probably using in 2018, and it's still the most beginner-friendly way to publish a single course online. The interface is clean. The course builder is intuitive. The student experience is solid, with a native iOS and Android app included on every paid plan.

But Teachable's June 2025 pricing restructure was rough. The free plan disappeared, the entry tier dropped to one published product with a 7.5% transaction fee, and longtime users found themselves forced to upgrade or migrate. Some Trustpilot reviewers report their annual cost went from roughly $350 to over $1,600 in three years. That's not the trajectory you want under a platform you're building a business on.

The bigger structural issue is that Teachable doesn't do email marketing well. You can send basic broadcast emails, but you can't run automation, segment your list properly, or build a real nurture sequence. So most Teachable users end up paying for ConvertKit or Mailchimp on top — adding $30 to $100/mo before they've sent a single newsletter.

Teachable's longtime rival, and a better choice for serious course builders who don't need much beyond the course itself. No transaction fees, generous student caps, and a course builder that holds its own at every tier.

Where Teachable feels like it's been retrofitted for a business it didn't originally serve, Thinkific feels like it's been quietly improved year over year. The course builder is excellent. The student experience is clean. And critically, there are no transaction fees on any paid plan — every dollar your students pay goes through to you, minus only Stripe's standard processing.

The Basic plan at $36/mo (annual) is genuinely usable for a working course business. Unlimited courses, unlimited students, and most of the features you actually need. The catch — and this is the catch with every course-first platform — is that Thinkific isn't built to do anything else.

Email marketing is barely there. You can send basic transactional and one-off emails, but real automation, segmentation and broadcasts mean you'll need ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign or similar on top. The mobile app for students costs an additional $199/month. Custom domains and memberships are gated behind the $74/mo Start plan. By the time you've added what's missing, you've often crossed the price of a more complete platform.

The friendly underdog. Podia is what you choose when you want one tool that handles courses, downloads, coaching, memberships and email — and you don't need it to do any of them at the highest level.

Podia is the most under-discussed platform on this list, and arguably the best fit for a specific kind of solo business: the consultant, coach or expert selling a small mix of digital products without massive volume. Unlimited products, unlimited students, and built-in email marketing on every plan. That last point matters more than it sounds — Podia is the only platform on this list (other than Kajabi) where email is a real native feature, not an afterthought.

The interface is the cleanest on this list. Setting up a product takes minutes. The community feature works. There's a built-in blog. And at $33/mo on the entry plan, it's genuinely affordable. The Mover plan does carry a 5% transaction fee, which adds up fast as you scale, but the Shaker plan ($75/mo) drops that to zero and unlocks affiliates and full email automation.

The trade-off is feature depth. Email marketing exists but is basic. Funnels are basic. Reporting is basic. There's no dedicated mobile app for students. Podia knows what it is — a clean, all-in-one tool for small operators — and doesn't try to be more. Which is fine, until your business outgrows it.

A different beast. Mighty Networks isn't really a course platform — it's a community platform that happens to also run courses. If your business is the community, Mighty is the strongest option here. If your business is a course, it's the wrong tool.

Mighty Networks has carved out a real niche, and it's worth understanding. It's built on the assumption that the gathering — the daily interaction between members, the conversations, the relationships — is the actual product. Courses are a secondary use case. Memberships, group programs and ongoing communities are where Mighty shines.

The native iOS and Android apps are excellent. Members get a real social experience: feeds, profiles, direct messages, live events, structured spaces. For coaches running mastermind-style programs or experts running ongoing communities, this is hard to beat with anything else on this list.

But you'll feel the limitations the moment you try to use it as a course platform. The course builder is fine but not great. Funnels and email marketing are weak. Sales and checkout customisation is limited. The pricing also climbs quickly — the Business plan at $119/mo is where most serious operators land, and the Path-to-Pro tier at $179/mo crosses into Kajabi territory without offering Kajabi's marketing depth.

The most expensive option on this list, and — for the right kind of business — the only one that actually replaces six other tools. Kajabi is the all-in-one platform other platforms market themselves as.

Let's be honest about the price first. At $179/mo for Basic, Kajabi costs roughly five times what Teachable's entry plan does. That's a real gap, and for someone publishing their first $50 course, it's the wrong starting point. We'll come back to this.

What you actually get for $179 is a fully-integrated platform with no transaction fees, no product cap surprises, real email marketing with full automations and broadcasts, real sales funnels (called Pipelines) that work the way ClickFunnels works, a website builder that produces actual professional websites, a community feature, native mobile apps for students, and as of 2026 — Cofounder, an AI assistant that helps you build the actual business inside the platform.

The economics flip the moment you'd otherwise be paying for ConvertKit ($29-99/mo), ClickFunnels ($147-297/mo), Calendly ($10-20/mo), Circle ($89-199/mo), and a website host. Stack those subscriptions up and you're easily at $250-500/mo for a setup that doesn't talk to itself. Kajabi consolidates all of that, with the added benefit that everything actually integrates.

It's not for everyone. If you're publishing your first course and don't have an audience yet, Kajabi will feel like overkill — you'll pay for features you're not using. But if you're an established expert with an audience to monetise, or someone serious about building a real business rather than just selling a single product, the math usually works in Kajabi's favour within months. Kajabi creators have generated over $8 billion in customer revenue, which is the strongest signal that the platform doesn't hold scale back.