Teachable vs. Udemy: Which is The Best Online Course

One very popular comparison is Teachable vs. Udemy, as they are two great and very popular online course building platforms. It is possible that you might like to teach people different things online and also make a few bucks while doing what you like.

A very amazing thing about the internet is that using your skillset, you can make money with it by becoming an online instructor. However, you might be wondering how to build and sell your courses online. Luckily, there are online course building platforms like Udemy and Teachable to help you out. It is important to note that these two platforms can be useful in their own way, depending on your needs.

One person may find marketing tools and customization of Teachable preferable, while another may find that Udemy is more profitable. In this article, we will be comparing these two platforms fully to help you find the right one for you to sell your online courses.

Teachable provides you with superb control since you build your own website. However, it still comes with in-built tools for things like page building and hosting. These are the top features you are provided with by teachable;

• A complete website building interface with an SSL certificate, data ownership, and hosting.
• A sleek dashboard with student insights and extensive data on your revenue.
• A connection to the Stripe payment processor for credit cards. You can also choose to connect through PayPal.
• A complete affiliate program to persuade bloggers and users to share their courses.
• Fantastic marketing options like advanced pricing, promotions, and coupons.
• Integrations for things like email marketing and customer support.
• A student feedback form to include Google forms and surveys.
• Discussion forums and messaging tools to enable communication between you and your students. Also, students can communicate with themselves.
• Completion certificates and quizzes.
• You can choose to use your own domain.
• A mobile interface
• A drag and drop page builder to help you construct your entire website.
• It supports a variety of multimedia options like PDF files, videos, images, and audio.

On the other hand, Udemy boasts of a wide range of amazing features that are packed into a sublime package for new users. So, all you need to do is sign up and start uploading your courses. You can make text, audio, and video lectures, as well as options for closed captioning. These are the top features of Udemy;

•  A mobile interface.
• Quizzes to know how well your students are doing.
• Supplemental resources, which includes worksheets and class exercises.
• Downloadable lectures.
• Option to give out certificates of completion.
• Question and answer tools.
• Bookmarks so your students can save your courses for later.
• An in-built customer review section.
• An area to show instructor announcements.
• Support for promotional videos.
• Tools for sending direct messages back and forth between students.
• Different categories ensure you can easily classify your courses, and your users can find them without any hassle.
• A popular marketplace for users to search for and enroll in your courses.

This is an area where Teachable performs excellently. This is because Udemy is more focused on bringing current and new customers to its website. While it is a good business model for Udemy, it would mean that a lot of courses would be marketed along with yours. So, if a Udemy marketing email is sent out, you do not get to choose if your own course will be present in the emails or not. If you are lucky enough to have your course in the emails, you would still need to compete with the other courses there. Due to the fact that there are reviews and ratings on all Udemy classes, it would be a rather fierce competition for new instructors on Udemy.

Also, Udemy does not have a customizable sales page that enables the teacher to direct people to the courses. It is possible to send a potential student to the main page of the course. However, that page still contains Udemy’s marketing and branding tool. In addition to that, it also lacks the option to make an extremely optimized landing page. To wrap it all up, Udemy tends to boost its user count by discounting a large group of courses. It is rather common to see regular promotions that have all courses on Udemy sold for about 10$. While you have control over your individual promotions, it can be quite frustrating when Udemy decides to have a site-wide sale.

On the other hand, Teachable gives you full control over your marketing process. To begin with, you can control the pricing yourself by creating your coupons and promotions. You can either choose to take a particular dollar amount off enrollment or generate a percentage-off coupon. It is important to note that promotions and coupons also have expiration dates. You also get flexible advanced pricing options as you are able to offer a payment plan for a bundle, make a one-time fee for your course, and also sell a subscription. A very enticing feature is the affiliate program. It is fully in-built, and it gives you the chance to reward people for sharing your link with others.

Also, you will enjoy the optimized and customizable sale pages that enable you to have better conversions. They are the landing pages that you will link to from your email marketing or from Google and Facebook ads. When it comes to email marketing, almost all the top email marketing platforms are integrated by Teachable. These platforms include AWeber, Mixpanel, and MailChimp.

Teachable is the obvious choice for people that want to actually build a business that is well-branded. This is because people will be directed to your own website. Udemy has an advantage because of its large user base. You should utilize Udemy if you are looking to get your courses to reach a larger audience.

For the design of these platforms, we are first going to be looking at how the users see the courses. Then, we will look at the simplicity of designing your own course page.

Depending on how you set up your course, your students will see differences in the overall interface. This means that one might focus on providing image and video learning, while the other focuses on audio and PDF files. This is definitely a huge boost for those looking to build courses. You can choose to create totally new pages through Teachable, or you can opt to work with an already existing website. This would definitely help your branding as users will be able to see your customized webpage and logo.

With teachable, you get templates to be used on the course pages, and you also get to use a very easy to understand drag and drop editor. That said, you do not have to start from scratch when designing things like sales pages, forums, and quizzes as they already have their templates.

On the other hand, Udemy users are welcomed with a clever marketplace where they can browse through categories and search for courses. When a course is selected, everything about the course is displayed, from the title to what you are going to learn. It would take only a moment for you to add the course to your cart. Users also have the option to browse through the reviews of the course and view a complete description showing how long each module takes along with course content.

When enrolled in a course, users would have a large video module that allows for jumping forward and backward. Also, they can switch on closed captions and have access to all the course materials offered. It is also important to note that this interface is very similar to all other courses on Udemy. This gives users a harmonized experience, which is a nice advantage for people that return to learn on Udemy.

Udemy is great for design beginners, but it does not offer much for people that want to start their own business. Teachable excels in the design area because of its wide range of easy to use templates and also its complete customization options.

When it comes to the pricing aspect of Teachable and Udemy, it is without a doubt that they have business models that are not similar in any way.

On teachable, you will be required to pay a monthly fee in addition to other small transaction fees, and that will cover all expenses you are to make. Any other profit that is made from selling your courses will be directed to you. So, this means that if you are able to sell a significant amount of courses, you would be making almost 100 percent of the revenue with every sale.

This is how Teachable set up their pricing plans;

• Basic - $29 monthly and 5% transaction fees.
• Professional - $79 monthly with no transaction fee.
• Business- $399 monthly with no transaction fee.

You might feel that this monthly rate is a bit expensive, especially if you just newly launched your online course business and you do not have a lot of marketing processes in place. But, keep in mind that to breakeven, you only need to sell a course each month at $29. When that is done, you can decide to keep paying the 5% transaction fee and keep 95% of your income or opt to upgrade to the professional plan that doesn’t come with any transaction fee.

On the other hand, Udemy has a different pricing process. If you are able to persuade someone to enroll in your course, you will be given 97% of the revenue by Udemy. However, if your course is discovered by a student from the marketplace, you will get only 50 percent of the revenue by the time the sale is over. What this means is that you are better off bringing in your own students. Bear in mind that it will be trickier than normal since different kinds of courses that are similar to yours are also marketed as well. Also, a lot of sales usually come from the Udemy marketplace as the Udemy website has a vast following, and teachers do not have a lot of control over the marketing. If you are just getting started, 50% of the revenue is not a bad deal.

Looking at it from a business perspective, giving up 50% of your revenue on Udemy seems to fall short when you consider that you have to pay a monthly fee on Teachable. With that in mind, Udemy helps you reach out more. So, it is a great idea if you are trying to get the word about your courses to a large audience or you want to expand your user base.

Udemy has a very robust support operation that has a gargantuan knowledge base, a ticketing system, FAQs, and a teaching center. You are provided with the option to speak have a chat with their customer support reps, but you cannot have a direct call with any of their experts as there aren’t any phone numbers listed.

Teachable also has a high-quality knowledge base that would help you learn how to grow your business and how to sell your courses effectively. If you wish to speak to a rep, you would have to send an email. It doesn’t look like there is anything when it comes to phone or chat support.

After taking an extensive look at this full comparison between Teachable and Udemy, it is down to you to choose which one best suits your needs. Both of these online course building platforms are exceptional and will surely meet your expectations. However, you have to make sure the one you opt for is the right choice for you.

Udemy is great for people that want to utilize the popular marketplace and get more students without going through all the hassles of marketing.

Teachable is ideal for people that plan to build their own business and control all aspects, including branding and email marketing.