# Teachable

> Teachable is a course and digital product platform, owned by the Brazilian creator commerce company Hotmart since 2020, that lets a creator sell courses, coaching, downloads, and memberships under their own brand and custom domain with branded iOS and Android apps on every plan; paid plans run from $39 to $189 per month, communities are included from the $89 Builder tier upward, and the entry Starter plan takes a 7.5 percent transaction fee on every sale that disappears on higher tiers when you use teachable:pay.

- Category: Community Platforms (https://saastracker.org/categories/community-platforms)
- Website: https://teachable.com
- Starting price: $39 per month (Starter), or $29 per month billed annually
- Free plan: No
- Free trial: 7 days, plus a 30 day guarantee
- Founded: 2013, HQ: New York, New York, United States, Ownership: Owned by Hotmart, a Brazilian creator commerce company
- Profile last reviewed: 2026-08-22
- Canonical profile: https://saastracker.org/products/teachable

## Overview

Teachable is the platform that made selling an online course a normal thing for a person rather than an institution. Ankur Nagpal founded it in New York in 2013 as Fedora, on the thesis that a course creator should not need a developer or a designer, and by the time Hotmart acquired it in March 2020 for a reported $250M it had been used by more than 50,000 creators teaching around 30 million students. It is now part of a Brazilian creator commerce group rather than an independent venture company, which makes its trajectory quieter and its roadmap less dramatic than Kajabi's.

The product is a school. You get courses with lessons, quizzes, and completion tracking, coaching products, digital downloads, memberships with recurring billing, a site builder with sales pages, a checkout with order bumps and upsells, affiliate tracking, and, from the Builder plan, a community. Everything is served from your own custom domain on every paid plan, and Teachable includes branded iOS and Android apps at every tier, which is unusual and genuinely valuable at this price point.

The community itself is honest about what it is: a forum inside your school. You create discussion spaces around products or topics, members post and reply, moderators are visibly badged with a shield icon, and you can tier access so gold and silver members see different areas or so admins get a private back room. It is not trying to be Circle. There are no leaderboards, no native live event product of any depth, and no chat culture. What it does is stop your students from having to leave to talk to each other.

Two structural details decide whether Teachable is cheap. The first is the Starter plan's 7.5 percent transaction fee, which on a business doing real revenue costs far more than upgrading would. The second is the student caps: 100 active students on Starter, 1,000 on Builder, and 5,000 on Growth, plus much tighter caps on imported students. Those caps lift once you pass $10,000 in cumulative sales made directly on the platform, which is a fair mechanism, but it means a creator migrating an existing audience in cannot simply pay $39 and bring 3,000 people with them.

## How it works

1. You start a 7 day free trial, name your school, and connect a custom domain, which is available on every paid plan. Teachable serves the site, the course player, the checkout, and the community from that domain under your branding.

2. You create products. A product is a course, a coaching program, a digital download, or a membership. Plan limits count products, so the five product cap on Starter and ten on Builder is the constraint most creators meet before any other.

3. You build the course as sections and lectures with video, text, audio, PDFs, quizzes, and downloads, with drip scheduling and completion tracking. Teachable hosts and streams the video.

4. You add a community from the Builder plan upward. Communities are discussion spaces attached to your school; you create channels for topics or products, set who can see each one, and moderate from the same admin area. Moderators appear with a shield icon next to their name so members can tell official answers from peer ones.

5. You sell through teachable:pay, the native payment layer, or a monthly payment gateway. On Builder, Growth, and Custom the Teachable transaction fee is zero when you use those; on Starter it is 7.5 percent on top of card processing. Memberships handle recurring billing, dunning, and cancellation.

6. Members reach everything through the web or through your branded iOS and Android apps, which are included on every plan. Affiliates, coupons, upsells, and order bumps sit around the checkout, and email tools, CRMs, and analytics connect through native integrations and Zapier.

## Best for

Individual creators and very small businesses launching a first or second paid course who want a branded school on their own domain with branded mobile apps included, at the lowest credible monthly price, and who need a discussion area for students rather than a community as the product itself.

## Not the right fit for

- Anyone whose community is the product. Teachable's community is a quiet forum with no gamification, no meaningful events layer, and no chat culture; Circle, Skool, and Heartbeat all beat it badly and it is not close.
- Creators migrating a large existing audience. Imported student caps of 5, 50, and 1,000 by tier mean you cannot bring 3,000 people in on a cheap plan, and the caps only lift after $10,000 of sales made on Teachable itself.
- Businesses that would stay on the Starter plan while selling seriously. The 7.5 percent fee costs $375 a month on $5,000 of sales, which is four times the price of upgrading to Builder.
- Teams that need more than one admin below $189 a month. Starter and Builder both allow a single admin user, which is a hard stop the moment you hire a course manager or a moderator.
- Anyone who wants email marketing, funnels, or serious automation included. Teachable expects you to bring Kit, Mailchimp, or ConvertKit and integrate, so the true monthly cost is higher than the sticker.

## Features

### Communities

A functional forum for students, included from Builder upward, and deliberately unambitious.

- **Discussion spaces**: Create channels around a product, a cohort, or a topic, where students post, reply, and engage. Every community lives inside your school on your own domain rather than on a separate platform.
- **Tiered access by membership level**: Gate spaces to specific membership tiers, so a gold tier and a silver tier see different areas from a single purchase without you running two products.
- **Private admin spaces**: A back room for admins and moderators to coordinate inside the same tool, rather than in a separate Slack that students cannot see.
- **Moderator badging**: Moderators display a shield icon next to their name so students can immediately tell an official answer from a peer opinion, which measurably reduces misinformation in support threads.
- **Learner and moderator roles**: Learner is the base role, allowing posts and comments; moderator adds removal, pinning, and management rights without full school admin access.
- **Community bundled with purchase**: Buying a course or membership grants community access automatically, so entitlement and discussion share one system.
- **Sellable community memberships**: Community access can itself be the product, sold as a recurring membership with Teachable handling billing, which is how creators run paid mastermind style groups here.

### Courses and products

The original job, done simply and reliably.

- **Course builder**: Sections and lectures with video, text, audio, PDF, and downloadable files, with unlimited video hosting handled by Teachable.
- **Quizzes and completion tracking**: Graded quizzes and per student completion reporting, adequate for consumer education though lighter than Thinkific's assignments and prerequisites.
- **Drip scheduling**: Release lectures on a schedule or on prior completion, which is how cohort style programs are run here.
- **Coaching products**: Native one to one and group coaching with scheduling, intake questions, and session management as a first class product type.
- **Digital downloads**: Sell files directly, from templates to ebooks, using the same checkout and entitlement layer.
- **Memberships**: Recurring access products with tiered levels, which is what most paid communities on Teachable are actually sold as.
- **Completion certificates**: Issue certificates when a student finishes, which is table stakes for professional training buyers.

### Selling and payments

Zero platform fee above Starter, and a 7.5 percent wall if you stay on it.

- **teachable:pay**: The native payment layer. Using it, or the Monthly Payment Gateway, means Teachable takes 0 percent on Builder, Growth, and Custom. On Starter the fee is 7.5 percent regardless.
- **Order bumps and upsells**: Checkout add ons and post purchase one click upsells, which are funnel mechanics that most community platforms do not ship at all.
- **Affiliate program**: Native affiliate tracking and payouts so students and partners can resell your courses without a third party tool.
- **Coupons and payment plans**: Discount codes, instalment plans, subscriptions, and one time purchases, covering the full range of creator pricing patterns.
- **Global tax handling**: Sales tax and VAT collection handled through the native payment layer, which removes a genuine cross border headache for solo creators.

### Branding, apps, and administration

Branded apps on every plan is the standout, and the single admin seat is the trap.

- **Branded iOS and Android apps on all plans**: Teachable includes branded mobile apps at every tier including the $39 Starter, which Thinkific charges $199 a month for and Circle offers only on a custom quote. This is the strongest thing on the price list.
- **Custom domain on all paid plans**: Your school, checkout, and community serve from your own domain from the entry tier upward.
- **Site and sales page builder**: Themes and page templates for a homepage, sales pages, and thank you pages, editable without code.
- **Admin user limits**: One admin on Starter and Builder, five on Growth, negotiated on Custom. A second person on your team means $189 a month.
- **Student and product caps**: Five, ten, and fifty products, and 100, 1,000, and 5,000 active students by tier. Caps are removed once you reach $10,000 in cumulative sales made directly on Teachable.
- **Teachable AI**: Generative assistance for course outlines, lesson drafts, quizzes, and sales copy, included rather than metered separately.

## Use cases

- **First time course creator with an audience**: A newsletter of a few thousand people and one course to sell, with no budget for a $179 a month platform and no desire to hire a developer. Outcome: Builder at $89 gives a branded school on a custom domain with branded mobile apps, ten products, a community for students, and zero Teachable transaction fee through teachable:pay.
- **Coach running a paid mastermind**: Monthly recurring access to group calls and a private discussion area, sold as a membership rather than a course. Outcome: A membership product with tiered levels gates community spaces by tier, Teachable handles recurring billing and dunning, and coaching sessions are a native product type rather than a Calendly link.
- **Creator who wants an app in the app stores**: Students consume lessons on their phones, and a mobile browser experience feels amateur next to a real app, but the branded app quotes elsewhere start at $199 a month. Outcome: Teachable includes branded iOS and Android apps on every plan including the $39 Starter, so the app is a setup task rather than a budget decision.
- **Small training business adding student discussion**: Support questions arrive as duplicate emails because students have nowhere to ask each other, and the same answer is written twenty times. Outcome: A community space per course lets students answer each other, moderators are visibly badged so official answers stand out, and the archive becomes the support documentation.

## Pricing

Flat monthly subscription across three published tiers plus a custom tier, with caps on products, admins, active students, and imported students, and a transaction fee that applies only on the entry plan.

- **Starter**: $39 per month, or $29 billed annually. 5 products, 1 admin user; 100 active students, 5 imported students; Custom domain and branded mobile apps; Courses, coaching, and digital downloads; No community. Carries a 7.5 percent transaction fee on every sale, and does not include communities. On any real revenue this is the most expensive plan Teachable sells.
- **Builder**: $89 per month, or $69 billed annually. 10 products, 1 admin user; 1,000 active students, 50 imported students; Communities included; 0 percent Teachable transaction fee with teachable:pay; Affiliate program and upsells. The first tier with a community, and the tier at which the 7.5 percent fee disappears. For most buyers this is the actual entry price.
- **Growth**: $189 per month, or $139 billed annually. 50 products, 5 admin users; 5,000 active students, 1,000 imported students; 0 percent Teachable transaction fee with teachable:pay; Advanced reporting; Priority support. The first tier with more than one admin seat, which is what forces most teams here rather than any feature.
- **Custom**: Custom quoted by sales. Negotiated product, student, and admin limits; 0 percent Teachable transaction fee; Dedicated support; Enterprise administration. The only sales gated tier.

Billing notes:

- Prices reviewed in August 2026. Annual billing saves roughly 25 percent across all tiers.
- There is no free plan. The 7 day trial plus a 30 day guarantee is the evaluation path, which is the shortest trial among the course platforms in this category.
- The Starter fee is the number that decides the plan. At $5,000 a month in sales, the 7.5 percent fee costs $375 plus $39 subscription, about $414. The same $5,000 on Builder costs $89 with a 0 percent Teachable fee, so upgrading saves roughly $325 a month. Anyone selling more than about $700 a month should never be on Starter.
- Model it at scale. On Builder at $5,000 a month in member revenue with 100 transactions you pay $89 plus card processing of roughly 2.9 percent plus 30 cents, about $175, so around $264 all in, or 5.3 percent. At $50,000 a month on Growth with 1,000 transactions you pay $189 plus roughly $1,750, about $1,939, or 3.9 percent. Because the platform fee is zero above Starter, Teachable is one of the cheapest options in this category at high revenue.
- Active student caps of 100, 1,000, and 5,000 are lifted once you reach $10,000 in cumulative sales made directly on Teachable, which protects the platform from being used as free hosting but penalizes anyone migrating an existing audience in.
- Imported student caps are far tighter than active student caps: 5, 50, and 1,000 by tier. Migration planning has to start here.

Value assessment: Builder at $89 a month with a 0 percent platform fee, a custom domain, branded iOS and Android apps, and a community is one of the best value packages in this category, and at high revenue Teachable is cheaper than almost everything else here because it takes no cut at all above Starter. The value collapses in two places. Starter at $39 is a trap for anyone with real sales, since 7.5 percent on $5,000 costs more than four Builder subscriptions and it has no community anyway. And the single admin seat on both Starter and Builder means a two person team pays $189, at which point Kajabi's much larger bundle is only slightly more. The community you get for the money is functional rather than good: no gamification, no real events layer, no chat. Judged as a course platform with a student forum, this is excellent value. Judged as a community platform, you are paying for something else and getting the forum as a bonus.

## Strengths

- Branded iOS and Android apps included on every plan including the $39 entry tier, which no other course or community platform matches at that price.
- Zero platform transaction fee on Builder and above with teachable:pay, so the effective cost falls to card processing plus a flat subscription as revenue grows.
- Custom domain on every paid plan with a genuinely branded member experience.
- The simplest course builder in the category, which is why it remains the usual recommendation for a first course.
- Coaching is a native product type with scheduling and intake, not a bolt on, which suits the coach plus community business model well.
- Owned by Hotmart since 2020, a profitable creator commerce group, so the vendor is not dependent on raising another round.
- Native affiliate tracking, order bumps, and upsells give it real commerce depth that community first platforms lack.

## Limitations

- The community is the weakest of any product in this category that charges for one: no leaderboards, no gamification, no serious events layer, no chat, and limited discovery within the discussion itself.
- Starter at $39 has no community at all and takes 7.5 percent of every sale, which makes it misleading as a headline price.
- One admin user on both Starter and Builder. The second team member costs $100 a month more.
- Imported student caps of 5, 50, and 1,000 make bringing an existing audience onto a cheap plan effectively impossible.
- No email marketing platform, no funnel builder, and thin automation, so the real stack cost includes at least one more vendor.
- A 7 day trial is short for evaluating a platform you will build a business on, and there is no free plan.
- Roadmap velocity has been visibly slower than Kajabi's or Circle's since the Hotmart acquisition, and the community product in particular has changed little.

## Comparisons

- **Teachable vs Thinkific**: Thinkific starts at $54 against Teachable's $39, allows 10,000 students from the entry tier, and has materially deeper teaching tooling with assignments, prerequisites, and cohorts. Teachable counters with branded mobile apps on every plan and a 0 percent platform fee above Starter, where Thinkific penalizes you 1 to 5 percent for using your own gateway. Teachable for a small creator who wants an app; Thinkific for a training business with real students.
- **Teachable vs Kajabi**: Kajabi at $179 includes email marketing, funnels, affiliates, a website builder, and a stronger community with challenges and leaderboards. Teachable at $89 does the course and the checkout well and leaves the marketing to you. Both include branded apps. If you would otherwise buy Kit or Mailchimp anyway, the real gap narrows to about $60 a month, and Kajabi's community is clearly better.
- **Teachable vs Podia**: Podia at $42 includes community, courses, downloads, coaching, a website, and email marketing in one plan, with no student caps of Teachable's kind, but its entry plan takes 5 percent and its email limits are tiny. Teachable has branded mobile apps and a 0 percent fee above Starter, which Podia does not. Podia for the simplest single subscription; Teachable when the app and the fee structure matter.
- **Teachable vs Circle**: Not really the same product. Circle at $89 is a community platform with courses attached, with far better spaces, member directory, events, and discussion design, but takes 2 percent of paid memberships. Teachable at $89 is a course platform with a forum attached and takes nothing. If members are paying to talk to each other, Circle wins outright. If they are paying for the course and the forum is a support channel, Teachable is the cheaper honest answer.
- **Teachable vs Skool**: Skool at $9 a month per group runs a better community than Teachable does at $89, because it is designed around a single feed, a leaderboard, and daily habit. Teachable does everything Skool cannot: multiple products, coaching, affiliates, upsells, certificates, and branded apps. Plenty of creators run Skool for the community and Teachable for the course, which is a fair reading of both products' limits.
- **Teachable vs Heartbeat**: Heartbeat is a community platform with courses and events attached, built around chat that feels familiar to anyone coming off Slack, and its discussion product is far better than Teachable's. Teachable is the better commerce engine, with unlimited video hosting, order bumps, upsells, affiliates, certificates, and branded mobile apps at every tier. If the members are there for each other, Heartbeat; if they are there for the course and the forum is a support channel, Teachable.

## Implementation

- Setup time: Hours, not days. Teachable is the fastest platform in this category to get from signup to a live sales page, which is exactly why it remains the standard first course recommendation.
- Learning curve: Low. Products, sections, lectures, and pricing plans are the only concepts, and the community adds two more (spaces and roles). There is no funnel or automation model to learn because there is no funnel builder.
- Onboarding: Fully self serve on all published tiers with a 7 day trial. There is a large template and training library, and priority support arrives on Growth.
- Migration: Migrating in is constrained by hard imported student caps of 5 on Starter, 50 on Builder, and 1,000 on Growth, so plan the tier around your existing list rather than your revenue. Course content and student data can be uploaded in bulk within those limits. Migrating out is partial: students and orders export as CSV and video files can be downloaded, but community post history has no clean export and active subscriptions taken through teachable:pay will generally require members to re-enter card details elsewhere.

## Platform, API & security

- Platforms: Web, Branded iOS and Android apps included on every plan
- API: A public API and webhooks covering users, enrollments, and orders, plus Zapier and native connectors. Adequate for syncing outward rather than for building custom front ends.
- Compliance: GDPR, PCI DSS handled through teachable:pay and its processors
- Data residency: US hosted, with no published regional residency options.
- SSO: No customer facing SSO on published plans; member authentication uses Teachable accounts with social login options.
- Security notes: Payments and tax handling run through teachable:pay, so card data does not touch your account. Admin permissions are role based but limited by the plan's admin seat count, which is one on Starter and Builder.

## Support

- Channels: Email support on all plans, Live chat on higher tiers, Priority support on Growth and Custom
- Documentation: A comprehensive knowledge base covering school setup, communities, payments, and migration, plus Teachable's own free training content.
- Community: An official creator community plus one of the largest third party ecosystems of course launch consultants, given how long Teachable has been the default recommendation.

## Company

- Founded: 2013
- Founders: Ankur Nagpal
- Headquarters: New York, New York, United States
- Ownership: Owned by Hotmart, a Brazilian creator commerce company
- Employees: Not separately disclosed since the Hotmart acquisition
- Funding: Raised roughly $12.5M in venture funding as Fedora and then Teachable, before being acquired by Hotmart in March 2020 for a reported $250M.

Funding history:

- Seed and Series A (2015 to 2018): Approximately $12.5M. Backed by investors including Accomplice and Learn Capital.
- Acquisition (2020): Reported at $250M. Acquired by Hotmart Technology of Brazil in March 2020; founder Ankur Nagpal initially stayed on as CEO.

Timeline:

- 2013: Founded in New York by Ankur Nagpal as Fedora, on the thesis that a course creator should not need a developer or a designer.
- 2015: Rebrands to Teachable and becomes the default recommendation for independent course creators.
- 2019: Reports more than 50,000 creators and around 30 million students on the platform.
- 2020: Acquired by Hotmart Technology of Brazil in March for a reported $250M, ending its run as an independent venture backed company.
- 2022: Adds coaching as a native product type and expands the checkout with order bumps and upsells.
- 2023: Launches communities, giving schools an in platform discussion layer instead of pushing students to Facebook groups.
- 2026: Pricing settles at $39, $89, and $189, with a 7.5 percent fee retained only on Starter and branded mobile apps included on every tier.

## Integrations

teachable:pay (native payments and tax), Stripe and PayPal, Kit, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and ConvertKit, Zapier, Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, and Segment, Calendly and scheduling tools for coaching, Zoom, Circle and Discord via Zapier for hybrid community setups, Public API and webhooks

## FAQ

### What is Teachable and what job does it do here?

Teachable is a platform for selling and delivering online courses, coaching, downloads, and memberships under your own brand. In this category its job is course and membership business. The community is a discussion forum inside your school, included from the $89 Builder plan upward, and it exists to support students rather than to be the thing you sell.

### How much does Teachable cost?

Starter is $39 per month or $29 billed annually, Builder is $89 or $69, and Growth is $189 or $139, with a custom tier above. There is a 7 day free trial, a 30 day guarantee, and no free plan. Communities require Builder or above, so $69 a month billed annually is the real entry price for a community buyer.

### What transaction fee does Teachable take?

Starter takes 7.5 percent of every sale. Builder, Growth, and Custom take 0 percent when you use teachable:pay or the Monthly Payment Gateway, leaving only card processing. That makes the fee question binary: at $5,000 a month in sales, Starter costs about $414 all in while Builder costs about $264, so upgrading is cheaper than staying. At $50,000 a month on Growth you pay roughly $1,939 all in, about 3.9 percent of revenue, which is among the cheapest in this category.

### How many members and admins does each plan allow?

Active students are capped at 100 on Starter, 1,000 on Builder, and 5,000 on Growth, and those caps are removed once you reach $10,000 in cumulative sales made directly on Teachable. Imported students are capped much lower at 5, 50, and 1,000. Admin users are one on Starter, one on Builder, and five on Growth, which is the limit most growing teams hit first.

### Do I get a custom domain and branded apps?

Yes to both, on every paid plan. Custom domain is included from Starter, and Teachable includes branded iOS and Android apps at every tier. That is the most generous app policy in this category: Thinkific charges $199 a month for the equivalent and Circle only offers branded apps on a custom quote.

### Are courses and events first class features or bolt ons?

Courses are the core of the product and are first class, with sections, lectures, quizzes, drip scheduling, and certificates. Coaching is also a native product type with scheduling. Events are the weak spot: there is no native live event and streaming layer of the kind Circle or Kajabi ship, so live sessions mean linking out to Zoom.

### Is Teachable community content indexed by search engines?

No. Communities sit behind login, so discussion contributes nothing to acquisition. Your sales pages are indexable, but Teachable has no blog or content marketing surface of Kajabi's depth either. If you want discussion itself to bring people in, you need a public forum such as Discourse or Flarum alongside it.

### How good is the moderation and spam tooling?

Basic but adequate for a gated student forum. There are learner and moderator roles, moderators are visibly badged with a shield icon, and posts can be removed and pinned. Because everyone is an authenticated student tied to a purchase, spam is rarely the problem it is on an open forum. There is no automated spam classification and no post approval queue of the kind Thinkific and Discourse offer.

### Can I get my data out if I leave?

Students, enrollments, and orders export as CSV and your video files can be downloaded. Community post history has no clean export path, so treat it as non portable. Subscriptions taken through teachable:pay generally cannot be moved to another platform without members re-entering payment details. Migrating in has its own constraint: imported student caps of 5, 50, and 1,000 by tier.

### Should I just run a free Discord or Slack instead?

If your community is free and conversational, yes. Discord costs nothing and is better at discussion than Teachable's forum. The case for paying starts when access needs to follow a purchase automatically, when you want the discussion permanently searchable rather than 90 days deep as on free Slack, and when you want the whole thing inside your own branded app. Teachable does all three for $69 a month billed annually. A common and sensible setup is a public free Discord as the front door with paid students in Teachable.

## Editorial verdict

Teachable is the cheapest credible way to run a branded course business, and its community is a fair bonus rather than a reason to buy. Builder at $89 a month, or $69 annually, gets you a custom domain, branded iOS and Android apps, ten products, coaching, an affiliate program, a discussion forum, and a 0 percent platform fee, which at $50,000 a month in revenue makes it one of the cheapest platforms in this category on total cost. The Starter plan should be treated as a demo rather than a plan, because 7.5 percent on real sales costs more than upgrading and it has no community anyway. The genuine reservations are the single admin seat below $189, the very tight imported student caps that punish anyone bringing an existing audience, the absence of any email marketing, and a community product that has barely moved in three years and is comfortably beaten by Circle, Skool, and Heartbeat. Buy Teachable for the course, the checkout, and the branded app. Do not buy it because you want people to talk.

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Source: SaaSTracker (https://saastracker.org), an independent editorial project. This profile is compiled from public information, carries no peer reviews or paid placement, and was last reviewed 2026-08-22. Awards are judged on published criteria: https://saastracker.org/methodology