Top 6 Teachable Alternatives to Run Your Learning Business (2024)

Selecting the optimal learning management system to host your own online courses, virtual bootcamps, or online academies is a significant undertaking for founders, given the multitude of options available in the market.

If you're considering Teachable to manage your learning business, we recommend exploring Teachable alternatives initially to ensure they align seamlessly with your specific needs and objectives.

What we'll discover together:

• Explore the core features of Teachable, understanding its role as an online course platform.
• Dive into the meticulously hand-picked and comprehensively reviewed alternatives to Teachable.
• Discover Disco, the top-tier Learning Management System (LMS), is positioned as the ideal alternative to Teachable. Uncover its features and the transformative impact it can have on your learning business.
• Gain insights into pricing plans, empowering you to proactively set your budget for the learning platform, ensuring financial clarity from the outset.

What is Teachable?

Teachable, established 7 years ago, serves as a noteworthy option for hosting and selling online courses. However, effective learning transcends the confines of individual courses. Restricting members to solitary learning experiences without providing avenues for asynchronous or group learning, such as events, limits the depth and richness of their educational journey.

Teachable's Core Features to Enjoy:

Knowledge Monetization Excellence

Teachable empowers creators to share their expertise effectively by offering a platform for creating and monetizing courses, coaching services, and downloadable content, fostering engaging and profitable interactions with their online audience.

Content Ownership Assurance

As a no-code platform, Teachable prioritizes content ownership and ensures creators have control over their content and students' experiences. This feature enables creators to build impactful businesses without being confined by external algorithms.

Versatile Selling Options

Teachable goes beyond traditional course creation by providing a multifaceted approach to selling. Creators can leverage the platform to sell online courses, digital downloads, and coaching programs, offering flexibility to cater to diverse business models.

Accessible Starting Point

It welcomes creators with a free plan equipped with essential features, providing an accessible starting point for those entering the world of online teaching. For those seeking additional resources, various paid plans are available to accommodate evolving needs.

Advanced Business Support

The platform distinguishes itself by offering a range of advanced features, including automated tax filings, fraud monitoring, chargeback support, and e-commerce optimization tools. These features contribute to a secure and efficient business environment for creators.

Holistic Support Ecosystem

Paid plan subscribers benefit from a robust support ecosystem, gaining access to weekly group coaching sessions, specialized business training courses, and membership in a thriving online community. This comprehensive support network enhances creators' skills and fosters a sense of community.

Tailored Integrations

Teachable stands out with its API and integrations that emphasize customizability. This capability enables seamless communication between Teachable products and other essential marketing and analytics tools, providing creators with a tailored and integrated ecosystem for their educational ventures.

While Teachable offers a range of benefits for selling and creating an online course, it's essential to recognize that a comprehensive learning management platform should extend beyond a course creation tool. It should seamlessly support diverse learning experiences and contribute to the well-rounded development of members by addressing administrative, operational, and marketing aspects.

To ensure your learning business thrives on all fronts, it's worthwhile to explore these five alternatives to Teachable. Each of these alternatives is uniquely tailored to meet the evolving needs of a growing learning business. Dive into the details to find the online course platform that aligns best with the expansive growth of your educational ecosystem.

• Disco: The Top-Tier LMS for Learning Business
• Kajabi: Transform Your Knowledge Into Income
• Thinkific: Highly Customizable Online Course Platform
• Podia: The Ideal Content Management Platform
• Teachfloor: An Excellent Cohort-Based Platform
• Mighty Networks: The Trailblazer of Online Learning Platform

The 6 Best Teachable Alternatives to Create & Sell Online Courses

Disco: The Top-Tier LMS for Learning Business

Disco, which means "to learn" in Latin, is a purpose-driven all-in-one platform designed to power a variety of learning experiences with community and scale at the center. Unlike Teachable, which primarily focuses on online course creation and sales, Disco provides a comprehensive suite of tools for building, operating, monetizing, and scaling your learning businesses.

It's more than just a dance style that brings your learners together for fun, it's a comprehensive suite of tools that supports the learning business plans and goals, in an all-in-one space.

Disco's 7 Best Features: Discover Why Disco is the Top-Tier LMS for Learning Business and the Best Teachable Alternative

1. Modern Operating System for Learning Businesses

Disco's meticulous design is dedicated to accelerating revenue growth and offering transformative learning experiences. It seamlessly adapts to various learning business models, including accelerators, paid memberships, and academies, ensuring a versatile and efficient platform.

Indeed, the Disco platform encompasses everything essential for a robust learning management system due to its potent modern OS for educational products. Trusted by the world's top-performing learning businesses like YSpace, AllWomen, WeAreNoCode, BioMimicry, and others, Disco is more than a mere platform—it's the catalyst for genuine success stories in the realm of learning businesses, enabling them to scale with remarkable achievements.

2. Powerful Automation

The intelligent automation streamlines community management, boosting operator productivity. Automated actions, member subgroups, course duplication, and actionable insights simplify operations, allowing community managers to focus on strategic tasks and enhance overall efficiency.

3. Deep Slack Integration

The deep integration with Slack sets Disco apart by automating direct messages, reminders, and member engagement. This integration extends to premium customization, automation, and AI solutions, providing a cohesive and feature-rich communication experience within Slack communities.

4. Comprehensive Learning Products

Disco offers a rich array of learning formats, from cohort-based courses to events. The Advanced Learning Suite empowers operators with tools for personalized learning journeys, including custom onboarding, progress reports, course completion certificates, and an intuitive course builder to cater to diverse learner needs.

5. Robust AI Co-Pilot and Multiple Integrations

The AI Co-Pilot transforms community management with efficient solutions, utilizing historical data for curated responses. Seamless integration with third-party tools such as Stripe, Zapier, Zoom, and Slack centralizes operations, providing operators with a comprehensive management toolkit.

6. Intuitive, Modular, and Customizable Design

Disco's design philosophy balances learner accessibility with operator customization. The platform is intuitively designed for learners while offering operators an effortlessly customizable and aesthetically pleasing interface, including a white-labeling solution for branding flexibility.

7. Learning Business Focus and Community Flywheel

As a thought leader, Disco provides valuable resources like a free ebook on building vibrant learning communities. The Learning Community Flywheel, Blueprint, and other insights guide operators in creating a thriving learning ecosystem, emphasizing the importance of community engagement.

8. Join Thrive Learning Community by Disco

The Disco team understands the challenges of initiating and developing a learning business without a supportive online community. Leveraging Disco's resources, including the learning platform, the team fosters a community comprising founders, instructors, educators, and learning business operators.

The Thrive learning community is collaborative space that facilitates learning, sharing insights, and building meaningful relationships. Best of all, it's free for everyone.

9. Seamless Migration Support

Disco recognizes the challenges of platform migration and is committed to simplifying the process. Whether through informative blog resources or personalized live demos, Disco aims to ease the transition for every learning business contemplating a move to their platform.

Read more on how you can migrate your content seamlessly to the Disco platform!

Whether you're a small startup or a large enterprise, Disco has a solution that can meet your needs. Experience the transformative power of Disco's comprehensive learning community platform with a free 14-day trial.

Kajabi: Transform Your Knowledge Into Income

Kajabi positions itself as the top Teachable alternative, emphasizing the transformation of knowledge into income. While revenue generation is crucial for fostering learning communities, Kajabi focuses primarily on empowering course creators to profit from sharing their expertise.

Beyond community support, Kajabi prioritizes creating online courses, nurturing, and scalability of courses, making it a comprehensive platform for those aiming to monetize their knowledge globally.

Pros: Kajabi

• Offers multiple ways to monetize knowledge, including courses, memberships, podcasts, community, and coaching.
• Provides tools to unify the brand, course content, and audience in one place with customizable templates.

• Leverage digital marketing features to launch landing pages, sales funnels, and email marketing campaigns for finding new members and fostering current ones

Cons: Kajabi

• Less support for fostering and growing your community — more focus on generating income by selling online courses

Pricing for Kajabi

Basic - $149 a month

This plan is tailored for those looking to get their ventures up and running efficiently. With key features such as 0 transaction fees, the ability to create and manage three products and funnels, unlimited landing pages, marketing emails, and contact management for up to 10,000 contacts, the Basic plan provides a solid foundation for entrepreneurs.

Growth  - $199 a month

The Growth plan stands as the most popular choice for those seeking to expand their offerings and grow their audience. Building upon the features of the Basic plan, the Growth plan provides a more robust foundation, allowing users to manage 15 products and funnels. With capabilities such as unlimited landing pages, marketing emails, and contact management for up to 25,000 contacts, this plan accommodates 10,000 active customers.

Pro - $399 a month

The Pro plan, priced at $319 per month when billed annually or $399 per month, is designed for businesses aiming to scale both their operations and teams by leveraging advanced features. In addition to all the features offered in the Growth plan, the Pro plan provides even greater capacity, allowing management of up to 100 products and funnels. With unlimited landing pages, marketing emails, and contact management for up to 100,000 contacts, it accommodates 20,000 active customers.

At Disco, we care deeply about the intersection of learning and community. Kajabi also cares about those things, too, but their offerings and ethos show that they care even more about helping creators make money via course sales.

Thinkific: Highly Customizable Online Course Platform

Thinkific is a customizable learning platform for online course creators who want to design a custom website for launching, marketing, and hosting their courses.

Their website builder lets you design and sell unlimited courses, but a few reviewers note some of those features are less interactive than they could be. Thinkific also offers built-in community features that foster conversation and connection.

Pros: Thinkific

• Thinkific is designed to grow with businesses, offering flexible pricing plans and features that cater to expanding needs.
• Users have the ability to customize every touchpoint, from learning products to marketing pages, ensuring a consistent brand experience.
• Emphasizes the power of offering various products, from courses to communities to memberships.

Cons: Thinkific

• Reviewers have pointed out significant limitations in the marketing features, such as the inability to send push notifications to members and the absence of bulk email capabilities within the platform until reaching the highest pricing tier.
• Additionally, for beginners, the platform might pose some challenges with a steep learning curve, requiring more guidance, especially for users who are not tech-savvy.

Pricing for Thinkific

Free - $0 a month

Thinkific's free plan really lets you build out most of your community's features and functionality — more so than many of the other courses we've noted in this piece.

Their free pricing tier supports one course, one administrator, and one community and allows you to fully own your course content. You have the option to use some integrations, widgets, and features from their app store like quizzes and surveys, and receive email support from the Thinkific team.

Basic - $36 a month

Take complete ownership over all of your learning content plus your own website and custom domain with Thinkific's Start Plan.

The Thinkific Basic plan provides a sturdy foundation for launching and overseeing your online learning business. With access to essential tools and core features, this plan includes unlimited courses, allowing for diverse content creation. It extends to a community with up to 5 spaces, encouraging interaction. Administrators enjoy a custom domain, coupons, and discounts, enhancing branding. Enroll unlimited students with no transaction fees, and receive email and live chat support.

Start - $74 a month 

The Thinkific Start plan boosts student engagement with advanced features. Enjoy unlimited courses, 10 community spaces, assignments, bundles, memberships, live lessons, and advanced course-building options for an enriched learning experience.

Grow - $149 a month

This plan empowers your online business with advanced tools. Explore unlimited courses, three communities, and 20 spaces per community in an all-in-one platform. Remove Thinkific branding, utilize bulk student emailer, enrollments, and access API for a seamless, branded, and scalable learning experience.

Thinkific Plus - Custom

For enterprise-level customers or massive communities, Thinkific offers custom pricing and dedicated customer support addressing every need at any time.

Overall, Thinkific excels with customization, allowing business owners to create a tailored course. However, it falls behind in marketing capabilities compared to Disco and other similar options.

Thinkific has created a name for itself in the space and is a good course platform. The ability to customize options within the platform allows communities to feel like they're creating a platform of their own, but they lack of integrations and marketing capabilities of Disco and other platforms.

Having to start from scratch rather than migrating and integrating your current LMS seamlessly takes far too much time, effort, and money that could be spent on course-building email marketing features and community cultivation.

Want to know what are the key differences between Disco and Thinkific? Here's a good comparison of Disco vs Thinkific!

Podia: The Ideal Content Management Platform

A content management system rather than a learning platform, Podia is a neat platform for creating video hosting and marketing digital learning products like online courses and community membership.

It cannot, however, support the curation of your learning community and multiple learning experiences. Folks typically use it to support endeavors like coaching, digital asynchronous courses, and workshops selling courses. If you don't need all the features and additional functionality that a LMS provides, Podia may be worth exploring.

Podia: Pros

• Podia's use cases are broad, and creators of all kinds may find the platform to be conducive for their many learning businesses
• It can be more affordable than a learning management system
• Clean UX and UI, making the customization very easily

Podia: Cons

• Podia is not a learning management system — you can't foster the progress and journey of your learners by understanding their unique challenges

Pricing for Podia

Free - $0 a month

Podia collects an 8% fee plus a transaction fee from Stripe (their preferred payment processor), so these free trials aren't "technically" free. Podia gives you a subdomain under which to sell online courses and start inviting your community into the platform. Draft courses for when you're ready to upgrade and sell them.

Mover - $39 a month

Podia removes the transaction fees and allows you to link your own domain name, if you choose, with the Mover plan. You can unlock the ability to also sell courses online and coaching, but not video hosting.

Shaker -  $89 a month

Podia's Shaker plan unlocks affiliate generation and lets you sell community access to unlimited webinars, unlimited courses, coaching, and downloads.

For founders and operators of learning communities who want to move the industry forward and create meaningful experiences for members, there is better support from other services, like Disco or one of these other Teachable alternatives, rather than a content management system like Podia.

Teachfloor: An Excellent Cohort-Based Platform

Teachfloor is a great end-to-end option for onboarding members, conducting online course creation, running live classes, supporting their journey, direct messaging, and collecting payments for cohort-based courses.

Cohort-based courses are wonderful learning experiences, but they're only one kind of learning experience. Self-paced courses, masterminds, and only add to the learning enrichment. Disco supports all types of learning experiences while fostering your community to gather and collaborate.

Teachfloor supports integrations with Zapier, Zoom, and Stripe so you have the marketing tools you need to host and monetize your cohort-based course. It's another really comprehensive tool, but it doesn't support all types of learning.

Teachfloor: Pros

• Host cohort-based courses with comprehensive student support with peer and instructor review, chat function, white labeling, and email automation
• Offers a free trial

Teachfloor: Cons

• No free plan
• Lack of tiered pricing options — makes you jump from one low price point to a high price point

Pricing for Teachfloor

Pro - $89 a month

Teachfloor doesn't offer a free plan. Teachfloor's Pro plan lets you run unlimited courses and invite up to four instructors.

Business - $349 a month

Teachfloor doesn't offer a mid-tier price package. For over 5x the price, Teachfloor lets you add up to 15 instructors, create a custom domain, and customize your platform with your logo and brand identity. 

Enterprise - Custom

Teachfloor then jumps right into Enterprise-level custom pricing where you have more of a tailor-made plan fit for your business.

Learn more about Teachfloor Alternatives!

Mighty Networks: The Trailblazer of Online Learning Platform

For over five years, Mighty Networks has been a trailblazer in the realm of learning platforms, shaping collaborative spaces and enhancing learning experiences. In a league similar to Disco, Mighty Networks outshines other Teachable alternatives with its robust membership capabilities.

Presently, Mighty Networks is expanding its reach, supporting communities to elevate online course management and ensuring comprehensive backing for diverse learning journeys. Embark on an unparalleled adventure in online learning innovation with Mighty Networks!

Pros of Mighty Networks:

• Affordability: Offers some of the most budget-friendly pricing options suitable for communities of all sizes.
• Tenure: Enjoys strong name and brand recognition, standing as an original platform for online communities.
• Community Aspects: Provides robust features and integrations to foster community curation and growth.

Cons of Mighty Networks:

• Navigation Challenges: Some members have reported difficulties navigating the platform, impacting the overall learning environment.
• Setup Complexity: Administrators may encounter challenges setting up the platform for optimal community and supplementary experiences.
• Limited LMS Functionality: While Mighty Networks excels in community features, it may fall short for creators seeking a comprehensive Learning Management System (LMS) with customization options for a truly tailor-made learning experience.

Despite its strengths, Mighty Networks may require learning business operators to explore additional platforms or use multiple ones to create a well-rounded member experience. This gap is effectively addressed by platforms like Disco, where community enrichment and learning exposure seamlessly coexist.

Pricing for Mighty Networks:

Community Plan - $33/month

This plan offers members their dedicated Mighty Networks website with native video, live streaming, group chat functionality, and integration options like Zoom for events.

Business Plan - $99/month

Unlock access to hosting and creating live or online courses, along with community analytics, member data tracking, and Zapier API integration for further customization.

Mighty Pro - Custom

Tailored pricing for existing branded apps looking to leverage Mighty Networks' functionality for community and learning-based experiences, available on major app stores.

Our Final Note

In conclusion, when choosing a platform to host your online courses, it's crucial to consider alternatives to Teachable that provide a comprehensive approach to learning and community building.

Disco emerges as the perfect alternative, offering a purpose-driven, all-in-one solution that prioritizes community and scale. Unlike Teachable, Disco supports various learning business models, including accelerators, paid memberships, and academies, ensuring a versatile and efficient platform.

With features like powerful automation, deep Slack integration, comprehensive learning products, robust AI co-pilot, and an intuitive, customizable design, Disco stands out as the top-tier LMS for learning businesses. To experience the transformative power of Disco, book a live demo and join our Thrive learning community to start your successful journey in launching or scaling your learning business!