Udemy vs Teachable – Which One is Right for You? Detailed Comparison

When you start out, it’s a good idea to publish your course onto an online course platform rather than your own website. 

This can be confusing though as there are tons of them out there with varying business models and features. 

In this post, we’ll compare two very popular course platforms: Udemy and Teachable, to determine which one is more suitable for new online course creators.

Features	Udemy	Teachable
Potential Income	4 and a half stars	4 and a half stars stars
Time Commitment	Low to Medium	Low to Medium
Marketing Efforts	High	High
Risk of Failure	High	High
Eligibility Criteria	Low	Low

Now that you have a little idea of what each platform is like, let’s delve deeper to find the most suitable one among the two. 

Udemy Review – Free and Easy to Use

First up is Udemy. You will most likely have heard of Udemy before as it’s one of the most popular online learning platforms out there. 

It boasts over 32,000 courses that cater to more than 35 million students that use the platform. 

Naturally, having that big of an audience at your fingertips can be a great advantage as no matter what your niche is, you’ll most likely find students who want exactly what you’re teaching. 

Typically, courses on Udemy cost between $20 – $100. This means that if you want to create brief courses that don’t delve too deep into your subject matter, you can publish them on Udemy. 

This makes Udemy the ideal starting ground for course creators that are new to the business. 

One more great thing about Udemy is that it costs nothing to join the platform and you also don’t have to pay any fees to publish courses on it. 

Pros	Cons
• You can create discount codes and coupons to market your courses • Vast community of 30+ million students • Extensive control over course content • Wide variety of niches to choose from • Costs nothing to publish courses	• High amount of competition

Benefits of Udemy

The first and most obvious benefit that plays a major role in why Udemy is so popular is the fact that it’s free to join.

Not only that but it also costs you nothing to publish courses onto the platform. You can publish as many courses as you want free of cost. 

In addition to this, you also don’t need to be a proven professional in your field to be able to publish courses on the platform. Unlike platforms like Udacity which requires you to prove your authority, anyone can publish courses on Udemy. 

We mentioned how the platform hosts over 30+ million students. This can be a great advantage to you as you will open your product up to an extremely large community; Sections of which will more than likely be interested in the subject matter of your courses. 

Udemy also gives you tools to create discount codes and coupons for your courses. You can use these coupons in social media and email marketing campaigns to generate hype and direct traffic to your courses. 

Udemy courses can be free or paid. This can play a huge role in gathering potential customers by first providing value through your free courses and then, promising to provide further value through paid courses. 

Since Udemy is such a large platform, it hosts a wide variety of different course categories and niches. This means that if you create a course about an obscure topic, you’ll most likely be able to find a category for it.

Not only that but you’ll also most likely be able to find potential students for it as well. 

Lastly, we have to mention how incredibly easy to use Udemy is. It’s very simple to upload and organize different assets of your course such as video lectures, lecture slides, images, etc. 

Furthermore, Udemy also provides you with the tools you’ll need to create compelling landing pages for your course(s). 

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Udemy

Potential Income

Udemy attracts a ton of course creators thanks to the fact that you don’t need to pay to join or publish courses on it. 

That being said, you have to take into account the fact that Udemy keeps 50% of all revenue you make through sales. 

Thus, no matter how popular your courses become, 50% of your revenue will always go towards Udemy. 

It’s definitely something to keep in mind. 

As your online courses start to gain traction, you’ll start to pay more and more towards Udemy in terms of commission through sales.

Time Commitment

The time commitment for Udemy is substantial but temporary. 

This is due to the fact that once you commit the time and publish your online course on the platform, the rest of your time will be spent on marketing.

Marketing and promotion will definitely take up a lot of your time but it’s important to note that once you’ve amassed a loyal customer base, you won’t have to spend as much time on marketing anymore. 

This is because once a substantial number of students have taken your course and provided you with positive reviews, these reviews will do the job of marketing your course for you. 

So, while you will definitely have to spend a significant amount of time publishing and marketing your course initially. Once you’ve gathered a loyal customer base, you’ll be able to sit back, relax and watch the passive income roll in. 

Marketing Efforts

Udemy does promote your online courses to an extent but that is not nearly enough for your course to be successful. 

In order to gain worthwhile profits from your online course(s), you will need to take marketing into your own hands. 

This will typically include: 

• Email campaigns 
• Social media campaigns 
• Webinars
• Podcasts
• Blogs 

And much more. 

Thus, do not go for Udemy if you need an online course platform that does the marketing of your courses for you. 

Risk of Failure

The risk of failure is fairly high when you opt for Udemy as your online course platform of choice. 

This is because it’s an extremely popular platform. 

That means that unless you create a course about a super obscure niche, you’ll most likely compete with a ton of already established competitors. 

In this case, you’ll need a ton of marketing as well as a little bit of luck in order to be successful. 

It can be devastating when you put months of effort to publish your course onto a platform only for it to not sell at all. 

Thus, do your research well and put extra effort into your marketing if you intend to succeed on Udemy. 

Eligibility Criteria

Absolutely anyone can publish online courses on Udemy. 

You don’t need to be a professional in your field or have a university degree to be eligible to publish courses on the platform. 

Hence, this is not something you have to worry about at all. 

What Do the Customers Think?

People love Udemy’s ease of use and how it facilitates course creators by allowing them to post courses free of charge. 

The ability to generate discount codes and coupons is also super appreciated as they can play a huge role in gathering startup traffic that you need to get initial sales off the ground. 

Here are some reviews we came across online: 

Best Free Online Course Platform 

The best free online course platform is Udemy as it does not cost anything to join it or to publish courses on it. It’s very easy to use and there are no eligibility criteria for course creators either. 

Teachable Review – Intuitive to Use with a Huge Community

Teachable is also an extremely large platform with over 15 million students, 154,000 courses, and almost 62,000 instructors. 

This can be both a good thing and a bad thing because, on the one hand, you have a ton of students to market your courses to. On the other hand, you’re in competition with thousands of other creators. 

When you choose to publish your courses on Teachable, you are required to build your “school” which can be thought of as your own personalized website. 

Teachable gives you all the tools you need to build this personalized website and you don’t need to have coding knowledge to develop a compelling page to attract students. 

Not only can you build your own personalized website but Teachable also gives you the tools necessary to stay in touch with your students (a comment and email system). 

This will play a huge role in you creating a loyal customer base which is essential to maintain course sales in the long run. 

Lastly, Teachable also provides the tools necessary to manage payments and enrollments. 

Pros	Cons
• Option to create an affiliate program • Create as many courses as you want for free • One-click upselling feature • Option to create product bundles • Student data is available to you for running ad campaigns • Simple to use	• Sizable transaction fees

Benefits of Teachable

Similar to Udemy, it does not cost you anything to publish courses on the platform. You can publish as many courses as you want free of cost. 

That being said, Teachable does have a subscription fee that you can pay either monthly or annually in order to be a member of the platform. 

The great thing about Teachable is that it allows you to focus on your products (i.e., your online courses) while it handles other externalities such as payment handling, etc. 

You can easily build the landing page for your brand through Teachable’s tools without any coding expertise or technical web development skills. 

It features a drag-and-drop builder to create your website which is super easy to use even for non-technical users. 

Once you have your own website, you’ll be able to showcase all courses that you have to offer in one place. 

In addition to this, Teachable provides you with a ton of options to market your course as well. 

It should be noted that you have to handle the marketing for your course yourself but Teachable definitely provides you with many tools that make the job easier. 

These include:

• Email segmentation to create email marketing campaigns 
• First touch and last touch attribution to analyze customer behaviors 
• Language modification to accommodate students from other countries
• Integration with third-party marketing tools such as Mailchimp 
• Options to create different pricing models including subscriptions, one-time payments, payment plans and course bundles
• Integration with customer support tools such as Zapier and Zendesk 

All of these features make your potential to sell online courses much higher. 

In addition to helping you create your own personalized website, Teachable also hosts all your content and provides backups to your website so your data is always secure. 

If you run into any issues, you can contact their support team which is highly responsive. 

They also have a sizable knowledge base that you can check out to solve any common issues you may face on the platform. 

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Teachable

Potential Income

While Teachable only takes 5% of all course sales you make, it should be noted that its membership is not free as Udemy’s is. 

You will have to pay either monthly or annually for its membership. 

Teachable has different plans:

In our opinion, the Basic yearly plan is definitely the one you should go for if you’re an online course creator that’s new.

Since Teachable has both a subscription fee as well as transaction fees, this means you’ll pay a static fee as well as an ever-increasing fee that will become higher as your business becomes more popular. 

This doesn’t mean that your online course business won’t be profitable but it’s definitely something to keep into account. 

Time Commitment

Teachable does not require you to commit time to its platform but you’ll definitely have to do so if you want your courses to be successful. 

In the beginning, you’ll spend your time and efforts to publish your course and create your personalized “school” or website using the platform’s tools. 

As we mentioned earlier, their tools are super simple to use which means you’ll be able to pick them up and get used to them instantly. 

Furthermore, while marketing is something you’ll have to do on your own, we mentioned above how Teachable provides several tools to make marketing easier. 

This will also save you a lot of time. 

Once your online courses become popular and have gathered a sizable customer base, you can sit back and enjoy your courses as a source of passive income. 

Marketing Efforts

Teachable does not market your courses for you. 

We’ve mentioned time and time again how marketing is paramount to effectively selling online courses so, it’s definitely not something you can skip. 

So, you’ll definitely have to spend a sizable amount of time and effort to promote and market your online courses through blogs, social media, emails, etc. 

However, as we mentioned above, Teachable does provide you with several tools and features that make marketing easier. 

Not only does this include access to data for potential customers but also integration with several third-party marketing tools. 

Risk of Failure

We mentioned how there are over 62,000 creators and over 154,000 courses on the platform. 

This means that there’s a lot of competition on the platform that you’ll have to beat in order to be successful. 

It’s not impossible but it’s definitely difficult. 

This means that the risk of failure if you choose Teachable for selling online courses is pretty high. 

You’ll have to do your research and carve out a niche for yourself as well as create effective marketing campaigns for your business to succeed on the platform.

Eligibility Criteria

Similar to Udemy, there are no real eligibility criteria for you to publish and sell online courses on the platform.

Absolutely anyone can do it which makes it a great starting ground to publish your first online course. 

What Do the Customers Think?

Teachable’s ease of use is what seems to be its main selling point from what we’ve seen of user reviews online. 

People love the complete control it provides and how easy it is to build elegant websites to attract potential customers. 

Here are some reviews we came across online: 

Best User-Friendly Platform to Sell Online Courses

The best user-friendly platform to sell online courses is Teachable thanks to its drag-and-drop builder and easy-to-navigate interface. You don’t need to have any technical knowledge to start selling courses on it and it even provides tools to make marketing easier.

Udemy vs Teachable – Buyers’ Guide

It can be extremely daunting to choose an online course platform since there are just simply so many to choose from. 

Many of them have confusing pricing models while others have extremely similar features. 

You don’t want to be stuck on a platform that does not provide all the tools you need to get your online course off the ground. 

Hence, we have rounded up some of the most important factors you should think about when you choose an online course platform. 

These factors are: 

Potential Income 

The first thing to think about is the online learning platform’s pricing model. 

Some have monthly (or yearly) subscriptions while others are free but take a percentage of all the sales that you make. 

You’ll need to think a bit about which model is more suitable for you. 

The former model scales better because no matter how popular your courses get, you’ll still only pay just the subscription fee and nothing else. You’ll get to keep all the profits to yourself. 

The latter model is better when you’re a new course creator because you don’t have to spend any money to publish your course(s). 

That being said, it can be harmful once your business becomes popular because as you make more sales, you’ll pay more to the course platform in the form of commissions. 

Time Commitment 

Some course platforms don’t require much participation from online course creators. 

This means that they can just publish their online courses and that’s it. 

They can choose to market it on their own terms if they want but that’s up to them. 

On the other hand, other learning platforms require creators to provide hands-on training and additional sessions to students as long as the course stays up on the platform. 

If you want to sell online courses as a means of passive income, this is something you’ll have to take into consideration. 

You don’t want to end up with a learning platform like Udacity, for example, that requires creators to spend at least 7 to 10 hours a week with students. 

Thus, keep in mind whether you want this to be a full-time job or a source of passive income and choose an online learning platform accordingly. 

Marketing Efforts 

Some online learning platforms such as Udacity handle the marketing and promotion of your course for you. 

This means you won’t have to spend any effort on research on how to develop campaigns and you also won’t have to spend any money on marketing tools. 

On the other hand, a majority of online learning platforms don’t provide marketing services for your courses as part of their package. 

Marketing is not something you can just skip. It’s essential to the success of your online course business and if you’re serious about this, it’s important to take this into consideration. 

Be sure to research whether or not the online learning platform you intend to choose provides marketing services or not. 

If it doesn’t, then be prepared to develop your own marketing campaigns and invest in marketing tools as they are essential for the success of your online course business.

Risk of Failure 

It’s important to analyze the competition you’re up against when you research different online learning platforms. 

Platforms with large communities will tend to have already established creators who provide courses related to your field. 

In this case, you will either have to provide unique value or market your courses like crazy. 

Naturally, this can be difficult. It can be discouraging if you spend weeks or even months on marketing only to find you’re not making any sales. 

Hence, ensure that you will be able to generate some sort of unique value or will have low competition in your field in whatever online learning platform you choose. This will lower your risk of failure by a lot. 

Eligibility Criteria

Some online learning platforms let anyone publish online courses on them. 

On the other hand, other learning platforms require you to be an authority in your field or have some credentials that prove you have some expertise regarding your course topic. 

When you look for an online learning platform, be sure to check out its eligibility criteria to see if you fit them or not. 

You don’t want to waste days or even weeks publishing your online course onto a platform only to find out you’re not eligible to do so. 

Udemy vs Teachable – Final Verdict

This brings us to the conclusion of our comparison post for Udemy vs Teachable. 

In the end, we have to go with Teachable for a number of reasons: 

Firstly, while it does charge transaction fees with a subscription fee, the overall chunk they take out of you based on your course’s popularity is far lower than that of Udemy’s. 

Furthermore, it’s extremely simple to use. While you have to do marketing for selling courses yourself, it does provide tools that make marketing a breeze. 

Which platform do you think is better? Let us know in the comments below.