Teachable vs Udemy in 2024 – Crucial Differences You Must Know About!

So you’ve decided to publish online courses. That’s a great move on your part. Online courses are investments that require little to no capital. 

However… There’s one big question that you have to answer: Which publishing platform do you go with?

Today, we’ll look at two of the best online course platforms in the market. That’s right — it’s Teachable vs Udemy.

Despite their similarities, Udemy and Teachable have their own set of strengths and weaknesses. This post will point out what they are so you can choose the right platform for you.

Not only are we looking into their main core features, but we’ll also let you know which one delivers the best returns to your investment.

Why don’t we go ahead and talk about everything they have to offer?

Teachable vs Udemy Features

As far as features go, you want to use a platform that gives you the freedom to set your online course the way you see fit. 

You don’t want to become restricted in your options. And at the end of the day, you’d like to have full ownership of the course. Right?

Factors like great user accessibility, payment options, and ease of use are an added bonus. 

Platform Comparison

Udemy

Udemy is different from Teachable in the sense that it’s more of a marketplace or membership site for online courses. You go to Udemy if you want to sell or shop for courses.

That means you’re listing your product alongside other competitors. 

So if your course falls under a popular niche, it can rank below other courses that have better traction and reviews. 

And since you don’t have that much control over your listings, it can affect your bottom line by a lot.

Udemy is a great choice for first-time publishers who just want to get a feel for the market.

Teachable

Teachable is a platform that helps you build your own course hub. Essentially, you’re building your own marketplace that exclusively sells online courses that you create.

That way, you don’t have to worry about competitors stealing business from you.

And because you have complete control over your site, you can optimize and customize it however you want. 

Teachable is the choice for those who plan on selling online courses seriously. It is simply more flexible than Udemy.

Course Device Access

There’s not much difference between both platforms when it comes to user access. Someone can use a desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or mobile device to log into either one.

This means customers can browse, purchase, and access courses while in their homes, offices, or on the go.

Course Creation Dashboard

The dashboard is where you get access to functionality and marketing features. Teachable and Udemy’s dashboard allows users to see all drafted and published courses. You can also create new courses, see revenue reports, and manage your comments.

Here’s a breakdown of their respective dashboards.

Udemy

Udemy is so pleasant to work with. It’s not intimidating to use, which makes it friendly for beginners.

The only problem is that you’re locked into Udemy’s branding. You can’t make custom changes to the layout of your pages.

Another thing you have to be aware of is that Udemy has a set of criteria that you have to meet before you can publish your course. 

Teachable

Teachable has more options you can experiment with. You have full control over what your course will look like.

The expanded options make Teachable more suited for individuals who don’t want to be tied down by restrictions.

Lesson Features

Lesson features refer to the type of content you can upload as part of your course.

Both Teachable and Udemy allow you to include videos, text blocks, files, and code as part of your online courses.

Lesson Comments

The platforms let users post lesson comments for the courses they partake in.

However, Teachable gives you the option of approving comments just before they appear on the lesson being commented on.

With this feature, you’ll have an easier time managing comments that you’ve seen and replied to. Also, you can prevent users from posting unfair, negative comments.

Lesson Quizzes

Adding lesson quizzes not only encourages users to stay active throughout the course, but it also helps them gauge how much information they absorbed.

Teachable and Udemy have this feature.

Course Approval

The course approval process can either be good or bad, depending on your expertise level. If you don’t know what you’re doing, having your course approved can make sure you’re putting the best product out there.

However, it can also lead to frustration, especially if you already know what you’re doing.

Udemy

With Udemy, its staff has to approve your course before it gets published. This can be a challenge, though, as some of the requirements ultimately have little to no impact on user experience.

For example, you can get flagged for not having the right lighting or having poor audio even though you’re confident that your settings are just right.

This can be frustrating, especially for those who are competent when it comes to video and audio production.

Teachable

With Teachable, you don’t have to worry about such things. You can publish your course without the need for approval.

If you’re happy with the course you’ve produced, then you don’t need to seek approval from anyone. You are your own boss.

This is also preferable for those who have no budget for a professional setup. So long as your users can understand and learn from your course, the product quality can come second.

Multiple Course Instructors

With Udemy and Teachable, you can have multiple instructors per course. All instructors can partake in the revenue share. Having a good revenue share system will motivate your partners to continue working with you to create and sell courses.

Creating Pages or a Blog

There are instances wherein you want to add a page or a blog. These are especially useful as support pages, affiliation sign-ups, guides, customer support, and other types of resource pages.

Udemy

Udemy has its own support, terms of service, policy, and FAQ pages. You can’t create specific pages and blog posts. You’re limited to your online course.

Teachable

With Teachable, you can create any support page you need.

You can even publish blog posts, which are ideal for content discovery and page optimization.

=> Start your free Teachable Trial Today.

Drip Content

Having a drip content feature means you can stagger the release of your course content.

Udemy

Unfortunately, Udemy does not have a drip content feature. That means you have to publish the entire course in one go.

Teachable

Teachable lets you schedule the release of your courses.

One use case is when you want to make sure that all of your new students learn at the same time. With drip content, no student can pull ahead of the rest of the class.

Course Hosting

Both tools have free hosting solutions. That means you don’t have to pay for a third-party hosting solution.

The only difference is that Udemy hosts your courses on their site. But with Teachable, you’re building your own site and hosting the courses there. 

Every Teachable plan comes with free web hosting.

SSL Certificate

SSL is responsible for secure transactions over the web. It prevents fraudulent credit card transactions, data transfers, and login attempts.

Teachable and Udemy can grant you SSL certificates. Since Udemy hosts your courses, you automatically get an SSL certificate.

Teachable has an SSL certificate option that you can acquire for free.

Course Completion Certificates

Your new students would love nothing more than to walk away with a certificate that proves they completed the course.

The good news is that both platforms offer certificates.

However, Teachable allows its users to design a custom certificate. That means you can make your certificates however you want.

Custom Branding

You can’t establish an online presence without proper branding. This is another area where Teachable stands out.

Udemy

When you go with Udemy, you’ll be stuck with their branding. When you upload a course in Udemy, it becomes part of their ecosystem. So your courses will carry the Udemy branding. 

This isn’t great for those of you who’d like your courses to be wholly your own.

Teachable

Teachable lets you not only create a course that’s uniquely your own, but you also get to use your own branding on the website that hosts the courses. You can choose whichever logo, color scheme, fonts, and favicons that you want.

Those who can work with CSS can go even further and make changes to the site’s code so they can stand out even more.

Custom Domain

You can’t use a custom domain on Udemy because you’re hosting the online courses on their server.

With Teachable, you can use any domain you own. This is better for content publishers that want full control over their branding.

Coupons/Discounts

Coupons and discounts are a great way of attracting customers. You’d be happy to know that Udemy and Teachable have this feature available. But you should note that there is a difference, especially in how these platforms implement them.

Udemy

You can create discounts, but Udemy chooses when to apply them. This results in everyone pricing their courses higher than they want to.

This is the only way to limit their potential loss from selling courses at a discounted rate.

With Teachable, you can not only create coupons and discounts, but you also get to decide when you want to offer them.

You can also limit how many times a user can use the discount or promo code.

Affiliate Program

You don’t have any control over Udemy’s affiliate program. This is so different from Teachable.

Teachable lets you start your own affiliate program. You have control over the commission rate. And there’s a tool that lets you see reports and manage affiliates straight from the dashboard.

Email Marketing

Email marketing lets you connect with your students and subscribers. That way, you can notify them if you have published new content or simply want to build a relationship with those on your email list.

Udemy

Udemy has a built-in messenger system. However, you’re not allowed to promote your courses or send them links to pages that do.

Teachable

Teachable gives you the tools to send marketing emails to your followers. This is an excellent way of alerting users that you have new content coming. If you have an email list, you’ll have an easier time reaching out to users through Teachable.

=> Start your free Teachable Trial Today.

Third-Party Integrations

Third-party integrations add functionality to your platform. For example, Udemy lets you connect Google Analytics.

But with Udemy, you can integrate Google Analytics and other monitoring tools. You can even use Zapier to add even more.

Facebook Pixel Integration

Facebook Pixel is one of the other third-party tools that you can integrate with Teachable.

Udemy does not support this feature.

You want Facebook Pixel because it lets you make Facebook ads that target people who saw your online course but did not make a purchase. 

Course Analytics

As far as analytics goes, there’s not much difference between Teachable vs Udemy.

But it is worth noting that one can only integrate Google Analytics with Udemy. That’s not the case with Teachable.

Udemy gives you an idea of how your course business is doing. You can see how much you’ve made, the average rating your course gets, and course website information such as your main traffic source.

But if you want to create a more comprehensive report, then you have to go with Teachable. If you’re using the Teachable Affiliate feature, you can track where your students find you. 

You can also learn which of your online courses perform best, what videos are the most popular, and where instructors begin to lose their students.

Again, an instructor can add Google Tags and Facebook Pixel to track their users better.

Customer and Revenue Data Export

If you want to export data from Udemy, then good luck with that. Udemy does not let its users export data because it owns that data.

Teachable lets you see data related to your users. You can even see the IP address they use. This is important, especially if you have plans on exporting a record of your transaction fees for tax purposes.

Customize Sales Page

A sales page is the web page you use to convert users into customers. So, needless to say, it needs to look good. 

If you want to stand out as an instructor, you want to customize your sales page before promoting your course.

Udemy

With Udemy, you’re stuck with whatever this course creator provides you. It’s the same template for all online courses. So you’d have the same sales page as your competitor.

You have no hope of creating a course website that looks and feels different from everything else out in Udemy.

That’s not to say that you don’t have options. You can change the text, sales video, and categories. You can also make changes to the cover image. But that’s about the extent of it.

Teachable

Teachable gives you way more options.

Remember: Teachable lets you create your own course website. That means you can customize it to your heart’s content.

There’s even a backend builder that allows you to make custom sales pages. You don’t even need to learn how to code. You can even go so far as to add reviews and guarantees on the checkout page.

And after a sale is made, you can display a custom thank you page where you can include upsells.

Course Pricing Options

Being able to set the price of your online courses is pretty important. But not everyone is aware that the platform you choose has an impact on your course sales. So even if you price your course at $100, that might not be what you end up taking home.

So the question is: Which platform offers the best return on investment?

Udemy

Udemy lets you sell your courses anywhere between $19.99 to $199.99. But there’s a catch. Udemy has transaction fees. That means it takes a percentage of your course sales. 

And it doesn’t stop at your first course sold. If you sell any course, Udemy gets a cut. 

How much? 50% for every course sold. And that doesn’t even include the discount/promo that Udemy places on top of it.

Teachable

With Teachable, you get 100% of the profits. It does not take money away from you. So even if you worked with another instructor on the course, you’d still profit from the transaction.

International Payments/Currency

Both offer international payments, which are ideal for online courses that appeal to foreign markets.

But with Teachable, even if you sell your course in USD, you’re still able to accept 130 currencies through payment gateways.

Teachable vs Udemy Pricing Plans

In this battle between Udemy vs Teachable, which platform has a better pricing plan?

We already know that Teachable has the advantage as far as features go. Can Udemy compete in pricing with a platform like Teachable?

Udemy Pricing Plans

Udemy is free for anyone who’d like to become an instructor. You only need to sign up to become one. 

But once you do, you’ll give the company permission to take 50% of your revenue. 

This is not ideal if you want to sell your course for a huge profit.

Let’s see what Teachable has to offer.

Teachable Pricing Plans

You can sign up for a free Teachable trial if you just want to test it out. You can publish and sell courses on the internet using a free account. But you’ll have to use the Teachable domain.

Not only that, there’s a $1 transaction fee plus 10% of the course price. This isn’t bad at all — but you can do better—more details in our Teachable pricing breakdown.

To get 100% of the transaction, sign up for one of three plans available.

There’s the Basic plan, which is $39/month. The Pro plan is $199/month, while the Business plan is $299/month. You can save money by opting to get billed annually.

If you’re an instructor who’s just starting out, even the Basic plan would be enough. It lets you use a custom domain, offer coupons, launch an affiliate program, use the built-in marketing tools, and more.

Signing up for a plan saves you money in the long run. If you publish your first course at $50, then sure, you’d only take home what’s left after paying for the Basic fee of $39. But when you make your second sale, you’d get 100% of the profit from that point on.

Which Teachable Plan Is the Best to Make the Best Profit?

While the Basic plan has its upsides, you might want to sign up for Teachable’s Professional plan.

Why?

The Professional plan removes any fee from PayPal or Stripe transactions. The Basic plan charges a 5% transaction fee on all course sales.

That’s 5% that could go directly to your pocket.

So while the Professional plan might cost more, removing the 5% fee for gateway payments will serve you better down the line, especially if you’re selling a lot of courses.

Teachable vs Udemy Marketing

It’s a fact that you need marketing to sell an online course. Both platforms have built-in tools that’ll help your online course business.

Let’s take a closer look at how Teachable and Udemy differentiate themselves when it comes to marketing online courses.

Udemy Marketing

Udemy will promote your courses on your behalf. But it will only do so from within its online course platform. 

It can promote a course by showing your course in the search results if it includes words or phrases that connect to the search query used. Sometimes, Udemy will promote popular courses on Facebook. Or it can rely on its affiliates to promote the course.

As you can see, you don’t get a ton of control over how your course is promoted. You’ll have to rely on Udemy to do a great job of it.

You can try to direct traffic to your sales page and get 100% of the revenue that way. But most Udemy sales only happen when there’s an ongoing promotion. So it’s still unlikely that you’ll end up with 100% of the profit.

Teachable Marketing

Teachable gives you control over how you want to market your online course.

Not only that, Teachable will teach you how to market your online course business.

It’ll show you how to sell your courses by generating traffic to your sales pages, improving your headlines and ad copy, finding out who your target students are, creating marketing content, and understanding your core demographic.

If it’s marketing learning experience you’re after, then you need to use Teachable as your course creation platform of choice.

Unlike Udemy that does not provide you with enough information to go on, you have total control over your data on Teachable.

So not only can you sell your courses and get 100% of the revenue, but you also have absolute say on how you want your product promoted.

Teachable vs Udemy Summary

If you’re serious about your course content, don’t like the idea of the revenue share model, need control over course pricing, want to create your course without the need for approval, and have flexibility on marketing your successful online course business, then there’s no question about it.

You should get started with Teachable right away.

Selling an online course on Udemy is frustrating because of its limitations and revenue share model that grabs 50% of your earnings. There’s also the ceiling on course pricing that you have to deal with. It’s also hard to promote a Udemy course.

Creating your course on Teachable instead of Udemy from the start can save you a headache in the future.

Why You Should Use Teachable

You should use Teachable because it’s more than a just place to sell your courses. It’s a course creator that gives you the one thing you really need — your very own customizable sales page.

Selling online courses can be a viable way of making a living. But you need a course creator that lets you price your course at a rate you’re comfortable with.

Teachable is an online platform that won’t force you to apply for a discount especially when it doesn’t make sense to do so.

You can design your sales page; however you want to. This alone makes it possible to stand out against competitors. Udemy gives you the same template to work with. How can you attract more students with that?

And best of all, Teachable lets you have your own domain. So when students discover your online courses, they won’t see your competitors. You’ll have their undivided attention.

Teachable is the sensible choice for a serious course developer/instructor.

Start Creating Your Course Today!

If you think you’re ready to launch a successful online course, then step up and be an instructor.

Get started with Teachable today! Create a free Teachable account and start selling online courses no matter where you are in the world.