Best platform for online courses

TL;DR: Choose your course platform based on revenue volume, student location, and mobile needs, not the headline subscription price. Our Builder plan at $69/month (annual) is the most practical default for creators earning above $533/month who sell internationally and need automated VAT and GST remittance across 45+ countries with native mobile access included on every plan. Thinkific suits US and Canadian sellers who want deep customization and accept 0% fees only on Thinkific Payments, but it leaves UK and EU VAT filing to the creator. Kajabi suits creators who need email funnels built in and can absorb the $143/month entry price. Podia suits creators with large product catalogs who accept no native mobile app at any tier. Udemy suits creators with no existing audience who accept giving up significant revenue share and access to student emails.

Most creators choose a course platform based on the monthly subscription price, only to discover that transaction fees, processing fees, and manual tax filing cost them thousands after their first launch. A $29 plan can quietly become a $150 monthly expense once the 7.5% transaction fee kicks in at scale. The real differentiator is not the video player or the page builder. It is who handles your global tax compliance, whether students can access lessons on their phones, and what you actually take home after every fee stacks up.

This guide breaks down the true cost of ownership, student engagement tools, and mobile delivery across the top five platforms so you can protect your margins before your first sale. We compared our platform against Thinkific, Kajabi, Podia, and Udemy on the metrics that matter most: take-home pay, tax automation, course-delivery depth, and native mobile access.

How we ranked each online course platform

We evaluated each platform on three criteria that directly affect revenue and student outcomes:

1. True take-home pay: The actual revenue you keep after subscription fees, transaction fees, processing fees, and currency conversion fees stack up.
2. Student engagement tools: Course-delivery depth including graded quizzes, compliance settings, watch-time enforcement, and gradebooks.
3. Mobile app access: Native iOS and Android apps with offline playback versus mobile-responsive web wrappers.

These factors determine whether your course business survives past the first launch.

Calculating your true take-home pay

The headline subscription price is the sticker price. Transaction fees, processing fees, and currency conversion are the line items at the bottom of the receipt. A platform with a lower monthly fee can cost significantly more once those line items stack up.

Who handles your tax filing determines how much administrative work lands on you after each sale. We automatically calculate, collect, and remit sales tax, VAT, and GST on our native payment gateways. Thinkific automates US and Canadian sales tax but leaves VAT filing for UK and EU sales to the creator. Kajabi and Podia leave more of the tax filing burden to the creator, which means you may need to handle registration, calculation, and remittance yourself or pay an accountant to do it.

Platform tools for student engagement

A basic video player does not drive course completion. The platforms that keep students engaged offer:

• Graded quizzes with automatic scoring
• Compliance settings that require students to watch at least 90% of a self-hosted video before advancing
• Drip schedules to control content release
• Per-student progress tracking and gradebooks

We include these tools in our course builder. This matters for creators who sell credentialed programs or need to prove that students actually completed the material. The course design resources and student engagement strategies on our blog show how these tools translate into higher completion rates.

Evaluating mobile app student access

Students expect to access courses on their phones. The question is whether they get a real native app or a mobile-responsive web wrapper. Native apps offer offline playback, automatic progress syncing, and push notifications. Web wrappers require a stable internet connection and often lose progress when the browser refreshes.

We include native iOS and Android apps on every plan. Thinkific charges $199/month for its branded mobile app as a separate add-on. Podia has no native app at any tier.

Compare fees and features for course sites

Here is the master comparison across the four direct platforms. We excluded Udemy from this table because its marketplace model operates on a fundamentally different revenue structure.

Platform details

Thinkific: Automates US and Canadian sales tax only. Creators selling to UK, EU, or other regions handle VAT registration, calculation, and remittance themselves or through an accountant. Carries a 1.8/5.0 Trustpilot rating as of September 2026, with recurring complaints about billing, cancellation, and payment access issues documented across 2025 and 2026 reviews.

Kajabi: Kajabi Payments adds a 0.7% surcharge on top of the base card rate for every subscription or payment plan transaction. International sales incur tiered surcharges: 1.5% for EEA (non-UK) cards, 2.5% for UK cards, and 3.25% for cards issued outside the EEA and UK, plus a small fixed fee per transaction. Built-in email funnels and CRM eliminate the need for third-party email tools.

Podia: No native mobile app at any tier, students access courses through a mobile-responsive web wrapper with no offline playback or push notifications. The break-even between Mover ($42/month, 5% fee) and Shaker ($84/month, 0% fee) is $840/month in revenue on annual billing. Offers unlimited products on all plans.

Udemy: Operates as a marketplace, not a direct-to-consumer platform. Udemy reportedly keeps as much as 63% of revenue on organic marketplace sales. The platform cut its subscription revenue share for instructors three times since 2023, from 25% down to 15% by January 2026. Instructors do not receive student email addresses and cannot build a mailing list or take their audience with them if they leave.

Our pricing and fee structure

We offer three plans on annual billing: Starter at $29/month, Builder at $69/month, and Growth at $139/month. The Starter plan carries a 7.5% transaction fee per sale. Builder and Growth carry 0% platform fees. Payment processing fees apply on every plan: US card processing via Teachable Payments is 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, and international cards incur 3.9% + $0.30.

The break-even point between Starter and Builder is approximately $533/month in revenue on annual billing. At that volume, the Starter plan's 7.5% fee equals the $40 monthly price difference between the two plans. Any creator earning above $533/month pays more in fees on Starter than they would on Builder. On monthly billing, where Starter costs $39/month and Builder costs $89/month, the break-even rises to approximately $667/month because the price difference is $50/month instead of $40/month.

Teachable Payments is our native payment gateway that handles tax calculation, collection, and remittance automatically. Creators on this gateway are removed from the tax filing loop for EU and UK VAT plus US sales tax. Tax-inclusive pricing, which shows one price regardless of buyer location, is exclusive to this gateway.

Our pricing: Clear costs for growing creators

We are the most practical path from expertise to income for creators who sell to a global audience and cannot afford a tax compliance mistake or a prolonged technical setup. Here is what that looks like in practice.

Predicting your take home pay

The Teachable Payments dashboard displays transaction details and payout breakdowns. It automatically calculates, collects, and remits sales tax, VAT, and GST across 45+ countries. You see the full cost stack: subscription, transaction fee, processing fee, and currency conversion, in one view once you understand the complete fee structure.

Building courses for better outcomes

Our Course Builder includes compliance settings, graded quizzes, and student progress tracking. You can require students to watch at least 90% of a self-hosted video before advancing, set drip schedules, and track completion rates per lesson. These tools matter for creators who sell credentialed programs or need to prove learning outcomes.

Supporting students on the go

The native iOS and Android student apps are included on every plan. Students download our app and access your courses. Both the iOS and Android apps support offline playback, letting students download lessons and keep learning without a data connection. Progress syncs across devices, so a student who starts a lesson on their phone can continue it on their laptop.

What creators actually take home

Creators who sell internationally remove VAT filing from their workflow entirely with Teachable Payments. One verified Teachable user on G2 put it directly:

"I looked at many online course platforms before deciding on teachable. It's intuative and they offer excellent support." - Verified user on G2

We've processed $10B+ in cumulative creator earnings in partnership with Hotmart, and 150,000+ active creators across 180 countries use our platform to sell courses, coaching, and digital downloads. The Made on Teachable and Success Stories collections document real creator outcomes, while the Why I Love Using Teachable walks through the platform from a creator's perspective.

Calculating your true net revenue

The math of course hosting comes down to three cost layers: the fixed monthly subscription, the per-transaction processing fees, and the hidden currency conversion fees. Here is how to model your real take-home pay.

Hidden per-transaction platform costs

Payment processing fees apply on every plan, regardless of platform. US card processing via Teachable Payments is 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. International cards incur 3.9% + $0.30. Non-USD transactions processed through Stripe where currency conversion is required incur a 0.95% currency conversion fee. A US business accepting a European card in euros could pay 3.9% + $0.30 (international card rate) plus 0.95% (currency conversion), for a total of 4.85% + $0.30.

Real net take home after fees

The break-even logic is simple: model your expected monthly revenue against each platform's total cost stack. On our Starter plan, the 7.5% transaction fee costs $150/month at $2,000 in revenue, which is over five times the $29 plan cost. Upgrading to Builder at $69/month removes that fee entirely and saves $110/month in net savings at that volume. The grow your business resources include additional fee modeling examples.

Real take-home pay per revenue tier

Here is the total cost of ownership at three revenue tiers, combining subscription, transaction, and processing fees. Processing assumes 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction on US cards with 30 transactions per tier.

*All figures assume 2.9% + $0.30 per US card transaction and 30 transactions/month, the same base rate each platform publishes for its native payment gateway: Teachable Payments, Thinkific Payments, Kajabi, and Podia's processor (Stripe or PayPal) all state this rate directly. Kajabi's total is a floor: it adds a further 0.7% surcharge on subscription and payment-plan transactions and steeper international-card surcharges not modeled here. Thinkific's total assumes payment via Thinkific Payments, connecting a third-party processor instead adds a 5% surcharge at the Basic tier.

Thinkific appears cheapest on subscription alone, but it automates sales tax only for US and Canadian sales and leaves UK and EU VAT filing to the creator. If you sell to students in other regions like Australia, the administrative cost of tax compliance may erode that subscription savings. The business operations resources cover tax compliance workflows in more depth.

Addressing creator doubts about course hosting

Creators evaluating platforms carry specific doubts: hidden fees, tax compliance errors, launch failures, and platform lock-in. Here is how each concern resolves.

Comparing total costs for creators

See the comparison table above for full platform detail on pricing, tax automation coverage, and mobile app access across all four platforms.

Evaluating mobile access requirements

Students expect native mobile access. See the comparison table above for full mobile app details across all platforms.

Can I export my student data?

Data portability varies by platform. We allow CSV exports of student data. Migration effort scales with how much content and infrastructure you're moving, and bulk student import into our platform is available on the Growth plan and up.

Expected setup time for new courses

On our platform, you can go from signup to a live, purchasable course quickly using this checklist:

1. Sign up for the 7-day free trial
2. Upload your course content using the no-code builder
3. Configure pricing and checkout (built-in, no third-party tools)
4. Enable Teachable Payments for automated tax handling
5. Publish and share your course link

No Zapier chains, external payment configuration, or tax plugin setup required. The launch strategy resources provide a full pre-launch checklist for first-time creators.

Compare the full cost stack across our plans, including processing fees, on the pricing page. Start a 7-day trial and build your first course before committing to a plan.

FAQs

Which platform is cheapest for a creator earning $2,000/month?

Our Builder plan at $69/month with 0% platform fees has lower total monthly costs at $2,000 in revenue when factoring in processing fees. Thinkific Basic at $40/month costs less on subscription alone, but it automates sales tax only for US and Canadian sales and leaves UK and EU VAT to the creator, which may require additional accounting costs for international sellers.

Do my students need a native app to access my course?

Students can access courses through a mobile-responsive web wrapper on any platform, but native apps offer offline playback, push notifications, and automatic progress syncing. We include native iOS and Android apps on every plan, both with offline playback, while Thinkific charges $199/month extra and Podia has no app at all.

What happens if I want to leave my platform?

You can export your student data, but the process varies by platform and plan tier. We allow CSV exports of student data, and the effort scales with how much content and infrastructure you're migrating.

How long does it take to go from signup to my first sale?

On our platform, you can go from signup to a live, purchasable course quickly. The no-code builder with built-in checkout, payments, and tax handling requires no third-party configuration.

Key terms glossary

Tax remittance: The process of calculating, collecting, and paying sales tax, VAT, and GST to the relevant tax authority on behalf of the seller. We automatically handle remittance across 45+ countries on our native payment gateways, removing that filing obligation from the creator entirely.

Teachable Payments: Our native payment gateway that automatically calculates, collects, and remits sales tax, VAT, and GST across 45+ countries.

Tax nexus: A legal connection between a seller and a tax jurisdiction that creates a tax filing obligation. Selling to students in multiple countries can trigger tax nexus in each jurisdiction.

Transaction fee: A percentage of each sale charged by the platform on top of the subscription price. Our Starter plan charges 7.5%, while Builder and Growth charge 0%.

Processing fee: The fee charged by the payment processor for each transaction. US card processing via Teachable Payments is 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

Currency conversion fee: A fee charged by Stripe when a payment currency differs from your settlement currency. Non-USD transactions incur a 0.95% currency conversion fee.

Break-even point: The revenue threshold where upgrading from a transaction-fee plan to a 0% fee plan saves more than the subscription price difference. The break-even between our Starter and Builder plans is $533/month on annual billing.

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