Teachable Review 2022 – Why It is The Best Platform for Course Creators?

Are you a newbie looking to enter into online learning market? If yes, you have come to the correct place.

In this article, we will discuss one the most popular and successful platforms you can use to create and sell courses online – Teachable.

With the growth in the number of people selling courses online, the learning management industry has also seen the emergence of many new players specializing in this area.

The choice of platform is dependent on a lot of factors that are dependent on an individual’s circumstances.

In this Teachable review, we will learn about who is behind the successful team of Teachable, its key features, its pricing, suitability, pros and cons of using the platform.

If you are pressed for time, you can quickly read our bottom line upfront and decide on the use of Teachable.

Teachable is a solid platform with support from one of the world’s most reputed LMS – Hotmart. Who bought Teachable in 2020.

Below is a quick snapshot of the reasons why Teachable should be your choice:

• Easy to use platform: The intuitive and easy to use nature of the platform makes it good choice for newbies and experienced people alike
• Quick and easy file upload: with an option to drag and drop files and also bulk upload
• Variety of marketing options: The platform allows you to offer coupon codes, affiliate marketing and email marketing tool to bring greater traction to your courses
• Large number of payment choices to select from: You have the option to choose between digital (Stripe and PayPal) and advanced payment options (such as Visa and Mastercard)
• Host of integration options: Host of integration options with leading e-mail software such as ConvertKit, Mail chimp (with Mailchimp Google Analytics) and Infusionsoft
• Customer support: The live chat option along with a ticketing system and a huge knowledge bank is a great help when you are designing the course and running it successfully
• Chance to build a community using blogs, discussion forums and quizzes

Visit Teachable Now

4.8/5

4.8/5

In hurry? use the following table of content to jump straight to the specific section of this Teachable review.

What is Teachable?

Teachable was founded in 2013 as Fedora by Ankur Nagpal in New York as a marketplace to create and sell courses online.

Teachable is one among the few providers who allows its users to create videos, quizzes, conduct one-on-one live sessions and award course completion certificate to the students. 

In 2020, the company was acquired by Hotmart – a leading provider of online courses operating worldwide, with high penetration in Brazil, Portugal and Spain.

The acquisition underlines the strength of the platform and its capability to help newbies and experienced course developers to successfully sell courses online using Teachable.

The company registered $21 million revenue in 2019 and is expected to have reached $25 million in 2020. According to the company, more than 100,000 instructors are using Teachable and have been able to earn over $500 million till date. 

Teachable works amazingly well if you are a first-time entrepreneur or a small business owner who wants to venture into a rapidly growing e-learning industry.

One doesn’t need to have the technical knowledge to be able to create a course on Teachable, making it an ideal choice for new and old users alike.

We have got another guide where you can compare Teachable with Thinkific.

If your objective is to quickly create and launch a course with minimal tech hassles, Teachable is the right choice for you.

How Does Teachable Work?

Teachable has a clean and intuitive interface that allows its users to comfortably access and navigate the courses hosted.

The platform also provides several options to customize the look and feel of the course. 

Let us understand how you can build a course in 9 simple steps:

Step 1: Start Your School

A school is a website that will host all your course and other material – think of it as a campus. Think of a school name and get started.

Step 2: Create Your Course and Landing Page

Once you have created your school, go to Teachable admin sidebar and hit Courses followed by New Course.

After clicking on New Course, you will reach a new window that prompts you to provide the Course name and Course Subtitle.

Once you have entered the required details click on Create Course

You can also modify the already provided details/adding new information by navigating to Information > Details and providing details such as name, author bio, subtitle and category.

A category will help the students to find the course they want through your school by using the keywords.

When you login to your course, you are provided direct access to the school’s admin area that has the following items:

• Account Menu
• Settings
• Courses
• Help
• Sales
• Email
• Site
• Dashboard
• Users

Step 3: Optimize The Landing Page for SEO

Teachable makes it extremely easy for you to make your course easily searchable by internet crawlers. All you have to do is, go to the SEO section of the page and provide the below details:

• An SEO-optimized URL that contains course relevant keywords
• A well thought of page title as this will form part of the search results, ensure that you use well-ranked words
• Provide an attractive sales pitch for your course in 160 characters

Step 4: Design Your Course Landing Page:

To make the landing page more attractive, add some relevant images. You can also create a promotional video of less than 1.5GB size and upload in AVI, MP4 or MV4 format

Step 5: Create Sections

To create a section, visit the school’s admin area > click Courses > go to the required course > hit Curriculum in the course admin bar> hit New Section on the top right corner.

After entering the section name >create a section, and your section is created.

Step 6: Create a Lecture

To prepare a lecture within a section, hit Add new lecture button.

Once you have created all lectures, you can also rearrange them using the click, and hold the drag button placed near the lecture/section and then drag it to the desired order.

You as a course creator can modify the lecture settings, by following this path – Settings > General > Lectures 

You can turn off/on the following settings:

• Auto-complete lectures: Mark the lectures as complete when the student completes the last video
• Autoplay video: Play the first video automatically as soon as the student enters the lecture
• Recalculate the course completion percentage for the user as and when the published lecture content is changed 

Do you know that you can also make each of your lecture downloadable

Against every lecture, you will find “Make downloadable” toggle. Once enabled,  all files in the lecture will be downloadable. 

The user also has the option of Bulk upload

If you have lectures already created (for instance in videos, pdf and images), the user can bulk upload files using the ‘Bulk Upload’ button on the top right.

Step 7: Delete Sections and Lectures

If you have erroneously created a section or lecture, select the checkbox on the left in the Curriculum section of course admin. One needs to hit the trash icon followed by clicking on OK to confirm the deletion.

Step 8: Upload Lecture Content

The platform allows the user to include quizzes, texts and files, embed functions and reshuffle content. 

Uploading the actual content is also easy. Follow the below steps to upload:

In the curriculum, select a lecture and then choose one of these tabs (file, audio, video etc,.)– Add file, based on the requirement

Select the files you wish to upload directly to your lecture using the Choose Files option

Teachable supports the following file types:

• Video – .avi .mov and .mp4 of less than 2GB, 720p, plus 24 to 30 frames per second is recommended
• PDF – Non-fillable PDF files
• Images – .jpg and .png images
• Audio – mp3 files

Step 9: Price Your Course

Your course’s pricing is dependent on how detailed your course is, the target audience, the topic popularity, your popularity and competitor’s pricing. Teachable supports all the popular pricing mechanisms whether it a free course, a subscription model, one-time payment or instalment-based.

Below is the procedure to set up either of the pricing models:

1. Go to the main school admin area, hit Courses, select the one you want to price 
2. Go to course admin area’s sidebar and pick up one of the 4 available pricing options – Free, Payment plan, One-time purchase or Subscription
3. Customize the framework by clearly highlighting the name, description, and the price
4. Hit Add pricing
5. Come back to the main school admin area >Settings >Payments to set up payment details

Teachable Pricing

One of the best features of Teachable pricing is that hosting is included in all the pricing plans. 

Do you know that Teachable is the only leading platform that allows you to add an unlimited number of students and courses in all the plans?

Free Plan

Their free plan allows you to add up to 10 students in unlimited courses. Additionally, it offers the following features:

• Unlimited hosting
• Unlimited students
• Unlimited courses
• Discussion forums
• Unlimited video
• Integrated payment processing and sales pages
• Basic quizzes

However, it levies a $1 + 10% commission on any course you sell while using the free plan.

We would advise you to take this plan if you are in the middle of starting your course and want to use the free plan till everything is complete and ready to launch.

Basic Plan

The basic plan is priced at $29 per month (billed annually) and comprises all the basic features.

It also includes instant payouts, 2 admin users, training for course creator, custom domain and product support, coupon codes, in-built email marketing, 3^rd party integrations and integrated affiliate marketing, apart from the basic plan features.

The basic plan includes a 5% transaction fees.

Professional Plan

The professional plan is priced at $99 per month (billed annually) and includes 5 admin users, graded quizzes, priority product support, advanced reports and theme customization, apart from all what is included in the basic plan.

You can also award students a certificate upon completion of the course under this plan.

Business Plan

It is priced at $249/month (billed annually) and includes everything that the basic and professional plan includes.

Additionally, it offers zero transaction fees, immediate payouts, 100 admin users, priority product support, bulk student enrolments and custom user roles.

Following features are included in all the paid plans of Teachable:

• Unlimited video
• Unlimited hosting
• Unlimited courses
• Student management
• Integrated payment processing
• Basic quiz
• Lecture comments
• VAT (value-added tax) for EU

The pricing plan you use is dependent on the course depth, your popularity, the topic of your course and competitor pricing.

I would suggest that you explore all these parameters and then choose the pricing plan. 

Best Features of Teachable

Teachable has a lot of features. But here I am listing the features I liked most.

Ease of Use

The dashboard is easy to use and helps the user to create and operate the course in an easy manner.

This makes the key tasks involved in course creation, such as uploading files, reviewing analytics, issuing refunds and communicating with students etc., easy.

The drag and drop functionality and customization helps you to create your course easily in a time-efficient manner. 

Branding

Teachable offers a large option of themes so that you create an attractive landing page for your course.

All you have to do is upload the logos, text, images and choose colour schemes to create the desired landing page. 

Teachable also allows its customers to host their courses on custom domains on all plans from Basic onwards.

Moreover, you can also remove Teachable branding on Professional and high volume plans – isn’t this great!

One can also customize the homepage and landing page using the Power Editor, on the downside – this will require you to have an understanding of HTML or CSS code and is not very user friendly. 

Ease of Uploading Files

While creating a course one typically has to upload many files starting from videos, pdf’s to spreadsheets. The drag and drop functionality and the option to bulk upload make this task easy. 

Additionally, the ability to work effectively with cloud storage, Google Drive and Dropbox is an added advantage.

Strong Monitoring and Analytics Capability

Teachable allows you to monitor your course’s progress by monitoring student enrolment and engagement.

The easy to comprehend reporting with details on student number and revenue figures help you to be at the top of your game. 

The ability to integrate Google Analytics and conversion pixels to monitor where is the traffic originating from and the bits of content that were able to convert interests into students goes a long way in ensuring course success.

Maintaining Communication with Students

It is important to maintain communication with your students.

Teachable allows the students to share comments on the lectures. To enable this functionality, you will have to enable comments on a Lecture-by-Lecture.

To ensure that students engage in meaningful discussions, you can specify on the platform that the comments will be moderated and specify if the responses to a comment will be nested under that comment.

Turning on Settings > Notifications will allow you to receive notifications when anyone writes a comment, joins your course, enrolls to your school, cancels an enrolment or when a comment requires your moderation.

The platform also integrates well with the leading email software, such as ConvertKit, Infusionsoft and Mail chimp. The platform also allows pre-configured integrations such as Zapier

Customer Support

Teachable offers a vast knowledge library including online lessons and recorded and live webinars to help you through your course launch journey.

Teachable offers live chat support and a ticket-based system to log your query. The company also has many blogs with tips to smoothen your Teachable experience. 

The company’s native email marketing tool allows the user to email students as they enroll, complete or redeems a coupon. One can also collect feedback using Google Forms and surveys.

Wide Variety of Payment Options

Teachable allows the customers to pick the payment currency from a wide range of choices and also accept payment from>130 payment options. 

Customers can create coupons and discount codes for students and affiliate codes to work with others to promote their course.

Teachable supports modern payment options like Stripe and PayPal and advanced payment options like Visa and Mastercard.

If you are a Free or Basic plan user, you will have to wait for a month to obtain your earnings.

Upsell and Bundling Support

Teachable provides support for sales features like one-click upsells and bundles, for instance, if you have more than one course, you can provide the second course at a discount to an existing user – thus promoting sales.

Blogs, Forums and Quizzes

Teachable allows you to host discussion forums, blogs and quizzes – helping you to create a community.

If correctly nurtured, these community members become your brand advocates.

If interested, here are quick tips to grow your blog quickly.

Pros and Cons of Teachable

Like any other platform, Teachable has also some advantages and disadvantages.

Here are the things I like about Teachable

• An in-built payment processing system making Stripe or PayPal unnecessary 
• An email marketing tool that allows the course creators to email students, whenever they enroll or complete a course
• The ability to award course completion certificates with the Professional plan
• Teachable allows the customers to offer several payment options such as monthly and subscription
• Ability to handle EU VAT – All online course creators in the EU are expected to charge VAT on courses sold – this is a tedious process. Teachable has built VAT into the pricing. The company also collects and deposits the VAT on the customer’s behalf
• Ability to build a community of users through blogs, that tend to become your product advocates as well
• Customizable thankyou, sales and checkout page
• Ability to offer bundles and discount coupons
• Ability to create an affiliate program

Things that I did not like about Teachable

• There is no phone support. However, live chat support and a solid knowledge bank with blogs, articles and videos drastically reduces the requirement of phone support
• The ‘Free pricing’ plan is limited to only 14 days; nevertheless, the competitively priced basic plan is a good option
• 5% transaction fee on the basic plan. I would suggest that you start with this plan as it has almost all the resources that you need to successfully launch the course

Why should I choose Teachable?

While there are other Teachable alternatives but Teachable is an amazing choice for bloggers, experts in specialized fields and publishers, essentially anyone who is passionate about sharing knowledge and has the course content ready as the interface is very simple to use.

Once your content is ready, you can use the Teachable’s 14-day trial pack for getting to know the platform and then move onto the paid plans to start monetizing the program.

Additionally, what is amazing is that they offer free hosting and can showcase course content in all sorts of formats be it audio, video or pdf.

I strongly believe that the Teachable’s one of its kind marketing capability that includes an in-built email system, the ability to create coupon codes and the built-in affiliate marketing tool makes it a good choice for newbies and professionals alike.

Conclusion

I hope this detailed Teachable review would have helped you realise what a great platform Teachable is. It is a solid platform with lots of features that help you create and market the course easily.

Teachable wins over its competitors when it comes to student engagement and communication, marketing capabilities, navigation ease and customer support.

If interested, you can also read our Thinkific review here.

Another important winning element that Teachable offers its customers is the ability to create and manage a community through the use of blogs.

Blogs are a great way to share your expertise with the larger audience and keep them engaged, thus creating a long-term relationship with the audience and increasing the reach of your course.

So, go ahead and start your teaching journey with Teachable, I am sure it will not disappoint you.

Teachable: FAQs