Whether you are selling or considering selling online courses, you won't have to go far to find a Teachable review. There are several Teachable reviews available. This is the best because it is incredibly detailed.
I've been keeping a close eye on Teachable as well as other providers which have arose as a new generation of online course platforms in recent years. These are far more user-friendly and far less expensive platforms than other traditional learning management systems, or LMSes. They are a godsend for single edupreneurs as well as small businesses looking to join the online course market. I believe they own the potential to challenge the traditional LMS Companies over time.
So, with everything out of the way, let's get started.
Teachable Review in a Nutshell
Teachable is a basic, reliable platform in general. The interface is simple, and your students will have no difficulty accessing and browsing your courses. Its strength, in my perspective, is video-driven content. Teachable also succeeds when it relates to basic features that aid in the sale of courses, such as its customized sales, checkout, as well as thank you pages.
It's also worth mentioning that Teachable is a major player, if not the dominant one, in its platform category. Given the enormous number of firms that have jumped in the bandwagon to try to offer online course systems, this is a significant argument. Many of them will be gone within a few years.
It's also worth mentioning that Teachable is a major player, if not the dominant one, in its platform category. Given the enormous number of firms that have jumped in to try to offer online course systems, this is a significant argument. Many of them would be gone in just a few years. Teachable, on the other hand, won't.
Now, let's take a closer look at the Teachable experience.
Creating and Marketing Your Online Course Website
My opinion is that an online course platform shouldn't be seen as your primary website. (The only exception is if you utilize an all-in-one platform such as Kajabi.) However, Teachable, like other systems in its class, provides a variety of choices for setting and branding the website where your courses would live.
There are enough alternatives that, if you're just beginning started, you might be able to rely on Teachable for your online presence for the time being. Here's a breakdown of the main areas you have control over.
- Theme
The Teachable managerial panel's "Site" section offers a user-friendly interface for making adjustments key elements of ones course site's branding, such as adding your logo, publishing a background image (or selecting from a wide range of Teachable stock photos), and modifying the fonts and colors utilised across the site. Even with these simple tools, you can build up a nice-looking website, but for more sophisticated users, the “Code Snippets” tab also has the possibility of inputting custom CSS.
- Custom Domain
By default, your school's url would be a sub-domain of Teachable.com – for example, learnition.teachable.com – but with any Teachable premium plan (beginning at $39 per month), you have the opportunity to add a custom domain – for example, eager.learnition.net. At the Professional level and higher, you could also disable Teachable branding, which normally appears as "powered by Teachable" on all your webpages.
- Navigation and Pages
Teachable is provided by a preset navigation links as well as some standard Web pages, but you could change and customized them. You could also quickly add links to Teachable's main navigation as well as footer menus.
These can connect to pages you build, and you can simply decide whether the menu items are visible to logged in users, logged out users, or all users.
These features allow you to add as numerous pages to your website as you want and regulate who sees them, but bear in mind that there really is no drop-down neither side bar navigation. As a result, your menus may begin to appear packed rather soon.
- Blog
Unlike several of its competitors, Teachable allows you to post a blog on your school website. That might not be important if you already blog someplace else, but when you do n't own a blog or simply want a site to publish information that is closely related to your courses, this may be extremely useful. A excellent blog, as I've mentioned before, is among the most important things any edupreneur can develop.
- Custom Text
Teachable provides some of the most comprehensive options for altering the system's default text to your preferred language that I've seen on every platform. Anything from e-commerce urls to course toolbars to error warnings falls under this category. Basically, there appears to be nothing you can't convert to your preferred language.
- Custom Code
As previously said, you could include custom CSS within Teachable's Code Snippets section. This is also the region where you may include HTML and Javascript within your head tag for visitors who know what they're doing. Advanced users holding a Professional or above license could now utilize Teachable's Power Editor to execute substantial changes to your Teachable theme. It's worth noting that Teachable claims that documentation for this functionality is still in the works and that no assistance is available. So, if you choose this path, go with caution.
Review of Teachable: Creating Online Courses
A decent Teachable review – or just about any online course platform evaluation – should include a look at how simple it is to build online courses within the platform.
Setting up a course on Teachable is a simple process.
One of the very first elements that grabbed my attention in the administration panel's Courses section is that Teachable is obviously oriented for selling courses. As key component of the course configuration process, you give the course name and teacher, but you could also explicitly state a search engine optimized (SEO) URL, page title, as well as meta-description for every course you create.
You may also simply submit a thumbnail image, which will appear in the catalog and even on your course interface, and also a promotional video, which will appear on the course's sales page.
Of course, you must have something to offer before you begin selling. Teachable's strategy to course development is, in our opinion, rather simple, and it strongly promotes on-demand, video-based courses. Even so, most online course designers are likely to be satisfied with this.
The course is divided into sections that are loaded with lectures. You title the sections when you create them (for example, Introduction, First Module), and you could utilize the Custom Text option mentioned above to substitute the word "lecture" with anything more appropriate. Lectures can include multimedia assets (video, audio, PDF, and so on), text input directly onto Teachable, quizzes, or any mix of these.
You could also utilize the “Add Code” feature for Lectures to insert live video streams as well as webinars straight into a lecture. This is a wonderful feature, but it's probably too sophisticated for most courses entrepreneurs; it'd be nice to have a more user-friendly choice for streaming video as well as Webinars.
Lastly, there is a "Drip" feature that enables you to post lectures upon a period of time dependent on how many days your students have enrolled. (Requires Basic or higher plan)
Apart from the "Add Code" function, I believe most online course developers will find it quite simple to put up a lesson in Teachable, and the end result will seem appealing and professional.
Take into account that one of Teachable's important features is the ability to establish Authors, who would then have the ability to perform the most of what I've described above - as well as receive a revenue split from course purchases. So, when you want to build up a Teachable website and then have different individuals write several or all of the contents, Teachable makes it quite simple to do so.
Before I conclude this part, I'd want to discuss several topics which Learning Revolution readers frequently ask me about: quizzes, certifications, and the capability to import courses created in course authoring tools such as Articulate as well as Captivate.
Review of Teachable: Designing Quizzes in Teachable
Teachable supports simple, multiple-choice quizzing. For each question you construct, you may designate as many alternative answers as you would like, and questions might have one or several valid answers. You could also select whether or not such a quiz would be graded. If it is, the results will be available in Teachable's reporting section.
That is all there is to it. Making quizzes with Teachable is simple, but please remember that your features are restricted. There is no mechanism, for instance, to supply students with feedback regarding their response options. Furthermore, sophisticated capabilities such as randomizing questions or saving questions inside a question bank to utilize in numerous quizzes are not accessible.
There is really no way to upload quiz questions in bulk. So, when you already have a library of quiz questions that you've been utilizing, you'll have to input them into Teachable one at a time for every course wherein you utilize them.
Teachable Review: Teachable Completion Certificates
Teachable offers strong features for producing certificates that may be issued upon course completion, but you should get a Professional plan or above to access them.
You can generate certificates using one of three templates or, when you have the necessary skills, you can design a totally unique template utilizing HTML and/or the Liquid coding language.
You could insert your logo, alter the colors, insert a signature (as a JPG or PNG file), and edit the pre-set content using the templates. Whenever a student's certificate is created, Teachable automatically includes your school's name, the student's name, and the title of the course. (These elements cannot be removed from the certificate.)
Overall, the certificate capabilities are likely to be enough for the significant number of online course businesses.
To get started distributing online courses quickly, sign up for the free Teachable Quickstart webinar.
Teachable Review: Articulate and Captivate Use
Many course makers will be quite satisfied utilizing Teachable's course development tools, while some may choose to construct their courses utilizing third-party e-learning course design software such as Articulate Storyline as well as Adobe Captivate.
Why?
Essentially, utilizing a third-party tool is really an option to thoroughly contemplate if you (a) already have a substantial variety of courses built out in some of those tools (in which particular instance you likely wouldn't want to get to re-create them utilizing Teachable course creation resources), and/or (b) you foresee designing a significant collection of courses with a reasonably long "shelf life" – in which case you might very well not wish to re-create them utilizing Teachable course creation features.
Teachable does not support importing and customizing courses created using third-party software such as Articulate and Captivate.
It's conceivable that, similarly Thinkific, the company would set up these courses for you when you requested them, but I've seen no evidence that this would be the case.
Bottom line: if you want to get the most out of products like Articulate as well as Captivate, Teachable is perhaps not the solution for you.
Review of Teachable: Marketing and Selling Courses
Teachable is clearly oriented at promoting and selling courses, as I said above, but I just scraped the surface. Other elements related to sales and marketing may be found in the Curriculum section of the administration panel:
- Pricing
You could charge different rates for a course, and there are several sorts of pricing options to choose from, such as free, subscription, one-time purchase, but also payment plan (to allow students to pay for the courses in several installments over time). A wonderful touch: under Settings, students could choose whether or not they want to drop out of their current payment plans (simply, to withdraw from the program). It is set to prevent them from opting out by default.
- Coupons
You may design coupons to give certain consumers discounts. Coupons are available in the form of a fixed sum or a % off for every payment options. (Basic plan or above required)
- Bundling
You could sell many courses through one single transaction by bundling them together.
- Sales Page
Teachable allows you to personalize your course sales pages, which include:
- Personalize the top "hero" header with a picture of your choice
- If relevant, include a coupon banner to highlight any savings you are giving.
- Putting together a course description
- Including a biography of the course author/instructor.
- Displaying the course syllabus or curriculum
- When the course is part of a bundle, it will display all of the bundle's courses
- Page dedicated to the course To help cement the sale, write a closing letter.
- Button for Enrollment
You can delete any of the aforementioned "blocks" and/or replace them with your own original or pre-made blocks, such as:
- Rich Text
- HTML
- Background Image
- Embedded Video
- Embedded Form
- Testimonial
- Featured Courses
Overall, Teachable provides almost everything you'll need to create excellent sales pages for your courses.
Review of Teachable: Checkout Page
Teachable produces a checkout page with the typical e-commerce choices for inputting payment details once a prospect hits the "enroll" button, but you do have the ability to add three components to assist you seal the deal.
Testimonials - You could easily insert up to 2 consumer testimonials.
Bullets for the Value Proposition – identify the key beneficial outcomes that students will receive as a result of taking your course.
Guarantee – You could make use of one of Teachable's 30-day guarantee pictures or submit your own unique image for a 30-day guarantee.
Review of Teachable: Thank You Page
Teachable is committed to enabling you to extract as much profit as possible from the sales process, all the way through thanking your newest student for their purchase.
You could just say "thank you" and include a button for the student to quickly access the courses on this page, or you can include a video with a customized thank you or even other messages from you - a fantastic approach to increase student engagement.
Finally, by putting a "upsell" box on this page, you may urge them to enroll in additional related courses you offer. This allows you to quickly include a buy link for everyone of your courses or bundles, as well as specify the pricing, including the option to set a discount.
As simple as it is to incorporate an upsell item, Teachable has the potential to greatly improve this process. For the time being, the only method to "set-up" the upsell is to include a video block onto the page. While this is a fine strategy, there is no opportunity to provide explanatory text or graphics to assist the student in understanding what the program is and reasons why they must consider it.
Review of Teachable: Affiliates and Authors
Another feature I don't want to overlook in Teachable is the possibility to create Authors and Affiliates.
Authors have previously been mentioned. These are the individuals you provide the ability to develop and administer their own classes in Teachable, as well as a part of the money generated by those courses (as determined by you).
Authors are mentioned again because they may be effective sales partners. They have "skin in the game," as it were, and Teachable gives them ways to monitor their own sales and payments. They may also establish their own course prices, add discounts, and design their courses sales pages when you enable them to (under Settings > General). Furthermore, Teachable provides you, as the website owner, with useful tools for monitoring and engaging with Authors.
In contrast to Authors, you can establish Affiliates who will earn commissions on sales of your courses. Teachable, like Authors, has strong tools for tracking and communicating with Affiliates, and Affiliates can easily monitor their own sales.
Also, if you utilize Teachable to handle every one of your course sales (further on this below), you could have them oversee everyone of your Author as well as Affiliate rewards via their Back Office software. There is an additional 2% charge for every transaction, but for many edupreneurs, this could be totally worth it to save the burden of processing these reimbursements themselves. (This is a link to a post about how to choose excellent affiliates.)
Payment Options in Teachable
Finally, because the majority of Teachable users are keen on selling online training, a decent Teachable assessment would be incomplete without discussing payment methods. When it comes to receiving payments for courses, there are 3 major choices.
The first option is to utilize Teachable Payments (launched in October 2018), which are accessible for all payment packages for US and Canadian citizens. Once you do this, Teachable will guide you through the steps of creating a Stripe Express account (or connect an existent account). This allows you to process credit card payments via Stripe, and you could also choose to accept PayPal purchases.
Teachable does not impose transaction fees upon course sales both Professional as well as Enterprise users that choose this option (despite the fact that PayPal and Stripe fees continue to apply). Users on the Free plan pay a 10% charge + $1 every transaction, while those on the Basic plan are charged a 5% fee.
Teachable's traditional Monthly Payments option is still accessible for users worldwide even those outside North America — but I must admit, the differences amongst this and Teachable Payments aren't particularly obvious to me (and Teachable's documentation is insufficient.).
Finally, you can create a bespoke payment gateway which connects straight to either your PayPal Business but rather Stripe accounts.
The major benefit of doing so that you'll be paid out sooner and with fewer processing fees.
Teachable Review: Teachable Integrations
Most online course systems allow for connectivity with several other platforms (For example: e-mail marketing, consumer relationship management). Teachable is no different.
If the phrase "integration" is unfamiliar to you, it simply implies that one piece of software may "speak" to another by sending data to it via specific code. This is an example of 1-way integration. There is 2-way integration when the other software could transmit data back – i.e., "speak back."
Contrasted to some other platforms, the amount of integrations pre-configured within Teachable is rather restricted. Teachable rather relies highly on Zapier, a prominent connection tool — yet Zapier is offered exclusively under premium subscriptions as an alternative.
You could integrate Google Analytics code as well as link it with the Sumo marketing platform even with a a free teachable account (This, among other things, allows you to build forms on your Teachable website for gathering e-mail addresses). Please keep in mind that Sumo is really only free for the first 200 members. Following that, plans begin at $29 per month.
Any of the premium subscriptions grants you accessibility to integrations with:
- 2 of the most prominent e-mail marketing platforms are Convert Kit and Mailchimp. (Unexpectedly, Teachable doesn't provide an Aweber integration pre-configured.)
- Organize hundreds of analytics services together into single interface (giving you the ability to send Teachable data to all these services). This is something I think only experienced users would be interested in, but it's nice to get it as a possibility.
Aside from such connections, the major option, as previously said, would be to utilize Zapier and/or “Webhooks” built in Teachable.
Zaps for Aweber, Infusionsoft, Drip, as well as Google Sheets are just a few examples. Please note that Zapier is really only free for the first 100 "tasks" each month. Fees begin at $20 each month after that. (For instance, if you enlist 100 students during a month and then use Zapier to import student e-mails onto Aweber, you wil immediately begin paying when student 101 enrolls such a month.)
Webhooks, which you can establish under the administration panel's aptly called "Webhooks" section, can allow you to accomplish the same kind of things like Zapier, but this is a little more complex area that several online course makers may find intimidating.
Review of Teachable: Managing and Interacting with Students
Teachable collects a user's contact information when they join up on the website (e.g., first name, last name, e-mail). Teachable doesn't really give alternatives for gathering more extensive and/or bespoke data on students beyond this basic details (as, for instance, Thinkific does).
Teachable also doesn't allow for the organization of learners into groups, such as a group from Firm A or rather a group from Firm B. This is a potential deal crusher for online course developers that sell to corporations. (Once again, Thinkific provides extra alternatives in this area.)
Teachable, on the other side, allows you to activate MyTeachable profiles on your school, allowing anybody who has previously registered to enroll for courses at another Teachable school to quickly register at yours. According to the firm,
This eliminates the typical student annoyance of having to establish a new account any time they wish to enroll in a different course at a Teachable-powered institution. As a school owner, this implies that prospective students may be able to enroll in your program through a single click, resulting in greater conversion rates and a more seamless user experience.
This appears to be a useful feature, especially considering Teachable's market share.
Teachable provides a number of methods for connecting with your students.
To begin, you could enable Comments within Teachable perhaps on lecture-by-lecture level. (Remember that Lectures are essentially the elements of a Teachable course, and you could change the wording under Site > Custom Text to designate them by something different.) You could also clearly state whether comments would be moderated (— for example, you or perhaps another educator assessments and validates them before they are published) and whether responses would be threaded (— for example, all answers to a comment would then be nested underneath that comment, aiming to make them simpler to find) on a sitewide scale (under Settings > General).
You can choose to be alerted when a fresh comment or reply to a remark is made, or when a comment requires moderation, under Settings > Notifications. You may also choose whether or not you wish to be alerted when a fresh student enlists in your school, enlists in a course, or terminates an enrollment but rather subscription in this section. These e-mails, along with all of Teachable's other automatic e-mails to students, may be customized under the Emails > Template Editor section, however making changes requires basic HTML knowledge.
With any premium subscription, you'll also be able to send emails to your pupils manually. These could be delivered to every one of your site's visitors, particular users, or simply course participants. You may alter the theme for these emails just as you do for any other email (However, you must be familiar with HTML once more).
Finally, Teachable does not yet offer a method for students to post course reviews. So, if you want market intelligence and "social proof" that assessments could give, you'll need to contact students via e-mail, an end-of-course assessment, or another means.
Review of Teachable: Tracking and Reporting
For this type of system, Teachable provides very typical insight into students enrollments, progress, as well as quiz results. Please note that progression reporting doesn't really begin till the Professional level, which might be a disadvantage for serious instructors who aren't quite ready to move forward.
The Video Heatmap is among Teachable reporting's most prominent features. The heatmaps show whether portions of a presentation have been seen (in green), rewatched (in yellow), rewatched several times (in orange), or skipped for every video throughout your courses (in white). Take into account that this functionality is only available for videos which have been directly submitted to Teachable utilizing the file uploader.
The Video Heatmap report excludes any videos which have been embedded utilizing an embed code. Teachable video hosting (integrated with the platform) and the Video Heatmap tool are highly recommended for course creators that rely significantly on video.
Teachable Review: Course Creator Support
The ideal case would be to have a platform which is so simple to use that no assistance is required. The fact is that most of us will want some assistance in learning how to use a platform to get up and running.
Teachable has decent “inline” assistance across the platform, which includes explanations that appear whenever you click on the question mark symbol next to a particular function. However, the usage of the question mark sign across the platform is uneven and incomplete: you might or might not find any when you really need one.
Additionally there ’s essentially a knowledge base with articles on everyone of the system's key features that appears to be kept updated.
Finally, all premium plans include Teachable U, a compilation of online classes, live as well as recorded Webinars, and other tools to assist you in developing, launching, but also expanding your business. Overall, a helpful and vital component of Teachable's product.
Teachable Review: What Features Does Teachable Lack So Far?
Teachable is a strong, comprehensive platform designed for digital course makers who would like to rapidly set up, get up and running professional-looking and user-friendly lessons. However, like with any platform, there are a few areas in which it might fall short for few course creators, and a Teachable assessment that does not address them is meaningless. They are as follows:
No multi-tenancy option
There is no possibility for multi-tenancy.
The ability to build and manage numerous instances of a platform below a single umbrella is referred to as multi-tenancy.
This may be quite useful if, for instance, you are a training business with a large number of corporate clients, each of whom wants their own customized instance of the platform for servicing and handling their users.
Teachable could theoretically accomplish a limited form of multi-tenancy by allowing Authors to upload their own courses and personalize their sale sites. However, if genuine multi-tenancy is required, there are plenty better choices (as are the majority of the platforms featured on this page).
No continuing education credit capabilities
There are no opportunities for continuing education credits.
While Teachable allows you to give a course completion certificate, there really is no way to show the average time spent on the course or perhaps the quantity of continuing education credit which may be available. Although there might be workarounds, Teachable is not really the ideal solution if obtaining continuing education credit is vital to your learners. (When you are serious concerning continuing education, I suggest reading ReviewMyLMS platform reviews.)
No SCORM or xAPI/TinCan support
There is no support for SCORM or xAPI/TinCan.
As previously stated, Teachable does not support importing or customizing courses built in popular authoring tools such as Articulate as well as Captivate.
It doesn't also enable the usage of SCORM, xAPI/TinCan, as well as other e-learning norms for course packaging. Teachable is not the place to go when you have a solid and logical reason to use one of the main e-learning standards. (Learn more about SCORM.)
Very restricted multi-lingual support
There is very little multilingual assistance.
While it is theoretically feasible to develop courses in various languages, it is far from simple. Furthermore, there is no way to show your school navigation through more than a single language. Overall, Teachable is not the greatest option when you are passionate about learning another language.
Teachable Review: Teachable Pricing
Teachable's base subscription starts at $39 per month ($29 when paid annually). Even with the cheapest paid plan, you still have to pay a 5% transaction charge on all purchases. When you advance to the next level, transaction costs vanish. All options feature an unlimited number of courses and students.
Because price and associated features might change on a regular basis, I recommend that you check the Teachable website to evaluate the many plans that are offered.
The Bottom Line of Teachable
Overall, Teachable is a wonderful alternative for edupreneurs with somewhat relatively straightforward course creation needs - particularly those who depend heavily on video. I consider the platform to be incredibly user-friendly, and the final user experience to be excellent. Teachable offers the breadth of capabilities which most solo edupreneurs as well as small companies would require for effectively developing and distributing online courses at about the professional level (presently $99 per month), and the cost is comparable to rival platforms in the field (e.g., Thinkific)
Of course, I still urge that you complete the research to determine your unique goals and priorities before deciding on a platform.
And, if you do choose Teachable, I invite you to provide your own Teachable review in the comments section below.
Teachable's Frequently Asked Questions
Here are a few of questions I frequently receive from readers or see posed elsewhere.
- Is Teachable superior to Thinkific?
In general, Thinkific outperforms the competition in terms of total course website features, bulk sales as well as content management, and quiz/testing features. Teachable comes out on top in terms of student engagement and involvement, simplicity of navigation, selling/conversion features, and customer service. A detailed comparison of Teachable vs. Thinkific could be found here.
- What are the primary Teachable alternatives?
If you're thinking about using Teachable, I'd recommend checking out LearnWorlds, Podia, and Thinkific.
- Is it possible to get teachable for free?
Is there a free Teachable plan? Yes, Teachable has a free plan, however it only allows you to test the site for 14 days. You could build your course but also get just about anything set up, but in order to sell your courses, you'll have to upgrade to a premium plan.
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