Teachable

Teachable suits a solo creator or small team selling a handful of courses, coaching packages or downloads to buyers in many countries. Its most useful mechanism is tax: Teachable collects and remits sales tax, VAT and GST in more than 45 countries, a job that otherwise falls to the seller. Course Compliance can also hold students to lesson order, 90% watch time on uploaded videos and a passing quiz score, which suits courses that end in a credential.

The plans ration features. Products are capped at 5 on Starter, 10 on Builder and 50 on Growth, although only published courses, coaching offerings and downloads count; memberships, bundles and drafts don't. Certificates, bulk student imports, branding removal, Zapier and the public API all wait for Growth, and third-party integrations are capped at 1, 3 or 5 by plan. There's no SCORM support, so courses built in authoring tools can't be uploaded, and no branded app to put the school's own name in the app stores.

Starter costs $39 a month, or $29 a month billed yearly, and takes a 7.5% transaction fee on every sale on top of card processing. At $2,000 of monthly sales that fee is $150, so Starter costs $189 that month, more than twice Builder's $89. Builder, at $89 a month or $69 billed yearly, charges a 0% transaction fee on sales through teachable:pay or the Monthly Payment Gateway and adds a custom domain, built-in email marketing and an affiliate program, which makes it the plan most sellers need. Growth costs $189 a month, or $139 billed yearly, and Custom is quoted. Processing applies on every plan: 2.9% + 30¢ for US cards, 3.9% + 30¢ for international ones and $15 per chargeback.

Choose Teachable when buyers are spread across countries and you'd rather not handle sales tax yourself, and budget for Builder from the start. If completion certificates matter, Thinkific's Start plan includes them at $109 a month, or $82 billed yearly, where Teachable needs Growth. Courses that arrive as SCORM packages are better served by LearnWorlds, which accepts up to 20 on Pro Trainer at $99 a month or $79 billed yearly.