Teachable alternative: Thinkific, Kajabi, or your own course platform?

The best Teachable alternative isn't always another subscription. Thinkific and Kajabi rent you the same kind of furnished flat at different prices. If what's pushing you away is the monthly bill, the fee on every sale or a feature your plan doesn't have, the other option is your own course platform: built once, on your server, with your payment methods and your rules.

Why course creators look for a Teachable alternative#

Month six. Sales are fine, and you open the dashboard to check the numbers. There's the subscription, there's the fee on each sale, and there's the feature you need, one plan higher. Nothing is broken; it just keeps costing a little more than you planned.

The reasons usually come down to four:

• The fee on each sale. Teachable's Starter plan takes 7.5% of every sale, on top of the subscription. Higher plans remove it, for a higher subscription.
• The plan ladder. The feature you need is often one plan up, so the bill grows with your ambitions rather than with your sales.
• Payments. Hosted platforms work best with their own payment processor. If your students pay by local card, bank transfer or mobile money, you work around it.
• Control. Your students, your content and your site live inside someone else's product, on their terms.

Teachable, Thinkific or Kajabi: what they cost#

Here are the entry plans, as listed on each company's pricing page on 25 September 2026. Prices change, so check the current page before you decide:

Higher plans cost more: Thinkific Start is $82 a month billed yearly, and Kajabi Growth $199. And you pay it every year, for as long as you sell. For comparison, CCL paid LearnWorlds $254.15 a month before it built its own platform.

Is Thinkific or Kajabi a better Teachable alternative?#

If you want to keep renting, pick by what you sell, not by the logo:

• Thinkific if your business is courses and you want a course-first platform with a lower entry price than Kajabi.
• Kajabi if you sell a mix of courses, coaching, memberships and emails, and want the marketing tools in the same place. It costs the most to start.
• Staying on Teachable can make sense if your only problem is the 7.5% fee: moving up one plan may cost less than moving everything.

All three are good products. The question is whether renting still fits your business.

When your own platform is the better Teachable alternative#

A furnished flat is great until you want to move a wall. Your own platform makes sense when:

• You sell in a way the platforms don't support: cohorts with seats, admissions, parents paying for children, bank transfers approved by your team.
• Your students pay locally. Moroccan cards through CMI, foreign cards through Stripe, transfers and mobile money, all in one checkout.
• You teach live. A video room inside the platform, with recordings that come back to the student's space, instead of a meeting link.
• The platform is your business, not a side tool, and you'd rather own it than rent it forever.

With your own platform, you pay card fees to the processor (Stripe, for example, is 2.9% + $0.30 per card payment in the US) and no platform fee on top.

These are four platforms I built and run. Why CCL left LearnWorlds for its own platform tells the full story, and how to sell courses online in Morocco covers local payments.

When you should keep renting#

Be honest with yourself here. A hosted platform is the better choice when:

• You're still testing whether people will buy your course.
• You sell a few video courses with a standard checkout, and the platform does everything you need.
• Nobody on your side wants to think about hosting, even with someone else running it.

There's no shame in renting while you grow. CCL rented LearnWorlds first, and built its own platform when it needed live programmes, video capsules and a back office to run the company.

How much does your own course platform cost?#

A focused first version with only your must-haves starts from about $1,000, and each module (live classes, local payments, a mobile app, several languages) is priced separately. After launch, you pay running costs instead of a subscription: a server, video storage, email and payment fees. The details are in what an e-learning platform costs.

Moving your content out of a rented platform takes planning; here is the step-by-step plan I used for LearnWorlds, and it works the same way for Teachable, Thinkific or Kajabi.

Outgrowing your course platform?#

Tell me what you sell, how your students pay, and what your current plan won't let you do. I'll tell you honestly whether to switch platforms or build your own, with a scope and a price if it's the second: get in touch. You can also see the platforms I've built.