Teachable Review 2026: Pricing, Pros, Cons and Verdict

This Teachable review gives coaches a straight answer: Teachable is a capable, mature platform for selling self-paced courses, digital downloads and memberships, and it can sell coaching as a product, but it was not built to run a coaching practice. If your income comes mostly from recorded courses sold to a wide audience, it is worth a trial. If your income comes from clients you see every week, you will end up adding a scheduler, a contract tool and a way to track habits and check-ins around it.

Below we cover what Teachable is, what it does for each part of your business, what it costs as listed in October 2026, what public reviewers praise and complain about, who it suits, and which alternatives fit coaches better. We make Coachful, a coaching platform, so we name our own product among the alternatives and say plainly where Teachable is the better pick. Everything about Teachable comes from its own pages and from public review sites; we have not run a paid Teachable school for this article.

What is the short verdict in this Teachable review?

Teachable is a good fit for course creators and a partial fit for coaches. Here is the verdict in one box.

• Who it suits: educators and coaches whose main product is a recorded course, a library of downloads or a membership, who want student apps, PayPal at checkout and built-in tax handling without assembling their own stack.
• Who should skip it: coaches who sell 1:1 or small-group programs, need two-way calendar sync and booking rules, send contracts before the first call, or want clients to log habits and daily check-ins between sessions.
• Public rating: 3.3 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 1,110 reviews, seen on October 25, 2026. In our September 2026 research, G2 showed 3.9 from 49 reviews and Capterra 4.3 from 180 reviews.
• Price: Starter $39 a month ($29 billed annually) with a 7.5% transaction fee; Builder $89 ($69 annually) and Growth $189 ($139 annually) with 0% transaction fees, as listed in October 2026.
• Our pick for coaches instead: Coachful, if your work is programs and clients rather than courses alone. Teachable stays the better choice for large self-paced catalogues.

What is Teachable?

Teachable is an online school platform: you build a branded school, upload courses and other digital products, and sell them through Teachable's own checkout. It has been one of the best-known names in the course category for years and was acquired by Hotmart in 2020; its coaching page in October 2026 states that Teachable and Hotmart creators have earned more than $10 billion and that Teachable has served more than 100 million students in 180 countries.

Teachable sells four product types: online courses, digital downloads, memberships and coaching. Around them sit a site builder, sales and marketing tools, payments through Teachable Payments, student mobile apps, AI creation tools, analytics and a list of integrations that includes Zapier, Zoom, Calendly, Mailchimp, Kit, Google Analytics and Meta. The center of gravity is the course: most of the platform's depth lives in lessons, checkout and student access.

That matters for a coaching buyer. A course platform answers the question "how do I sell knowledge to many people at once?" A coaching platform answers "how do I run a relationship with each client over twelve weeks?" Teachable has added coaching features to bridge the two, and the rest of this review is about how far that bridge reaches. For the background on the category, our guides on delivering online courses without Teachable and delivering coaching video courses without Teachable go deeper.

What does Teachable do for each part of a coaching business?

Teachable is strongest at selling and delivering courses, adequate at marketing, and thin at the client side of coaching. Here is how it maps to the five jobs a coach's software has to do.

Marketing: site builder, sales pages and AI tools

Teachable includes a drag-and-drop site builder with customizable templates for your school's homepage and sales pages, and its coaching page describes a customizable sales page for each coaching product. The pricing page lists AI creation tools on every plan, including Starter. For email, Teachable leans on integrations such as Mailchimp, Kit and AWeber, alongside Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Meta, TikTok and Pinterest tracking.

Honest note: the site builder is built around a school, so it suits a creator whose website is mostly a course storefront. If you want a full practice website with a blog, lead-magnet funnels and multi-step email sequences in the same tool, plan for at least one more subscription. Our coach website builder page explains what a coaching site usually needs.

Selling: checkout, upsells and fees

This is where Teachable is most complete. Teachable Payments handles checkout, global currency conversion, tax-inclusive pricing and automatic payouts, and the pricing page lists global payments and taxes, upsells, order bumps and cart recovery from Starter upward. PayPal is supported, which some buyers expect. Builder adds an affiliate program, so other people can sell your courses for a commission.

Honest note: Starter charges a 7.5% transaction fee on top of processing. Processing through Teachable Payments is 2.9% + 30¢ for US cards and 3.9% + 30¢ for international cards; PayPal is 3.49% + 49¢ in the US and 4.99% + 49¢ internationally; there is a $15 chargeback fee and an optional BackOffice service at 2% to 2.8% of sales. We break the totals down in the pricing section below and in our full Teachable pricing guide.

Delivery: courses, downloads, memberships and coaching products

Teachable's course builder is the core of the product: modules, lessons, video hosting (up to 1TB on Starter), quizzes and, on Growth, certificates of completion. Digital downloads and memberships sit alongside courses. The coaching product type lets you, in Teachable's words, "create milestones, schedule meetings, set-up video calls, send messages and files," and add an intake block so you control who you onboard.

Honest note: our September 2026 research found no native scheduling engine or two-way calendar sync; coaching calls rely on integrations such as Calendly and Zoom, both of which appear on Teachable's integrations list. There are no client habits, daily check-ins or per-client programs with weekly goals and tasks. A coaching product in Teachable is closer to a private course with milestones and messaging than to a client record you manage over months. If scheduling is central to your offer, read our scheduling software page first.

Client experience: student apps and branding

Students get iOS and Android apps, which the pricing page now lists from Starter upward, and the course player is familiar to anyone who has taken an online class. Teachable branding stays on your school until the Growth plan, which removes it.

Honest note: the student experience is built around consuming lessons. There is no client home that combines the next session, today's tasks, a habit streak, a check-in and the coach's notes in one place, because Teachable does not hold those things. Clients who also book with you will move between Teachable, your scheduler and your email.

Admin: seats, reports and exports

Starter and Builder include one admin; Growth includes five, with custom admin permissions. Custom plans add a success manager, flexible seats, a sandbox school, a priority support agreement and migration assistance. Builder adds real-time support. Analytics and reporting cover sales and student progress, and students, course data and sales reports export to CSV.

Honest note: in our September 2026 research, video content had to be downloaded manually, with no bulk course export. If you ever leave, budget time to pull your videos down one by one. There is no contract or e-signature tool and no coaching-hour log for ICF credentials.

How much does Teachable cost in October 2026?

Teachable costs $39 to $189 a month on its self-serve plans, or $29 to $139 a month billed annually, as listed in October 2026. Starter adds a 7.5% fee on every sale; the higher plans do not. There is no free plan; the plan cards offer a 7-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee, and a pop-up on the pricing page offered a 30-day trial on Builder monthly when we checked.

The table compares Teachable's plans with Coachful's, since that is the comparison most coaches reading this are making.

Teachable shows annual savings of $120, $240 and $600 a year on Starter, Builder and Growth. One change since our September research: the page no longer shows the active-student caps (100, 1,000 and 5,000) and now lists students as unlimited on every self-serve plan. Products and admins are still capped.

When does Builder pay for itself? Builder costs $50 a month more than Starter. The 7.5% fee on Starter equals $50 once you sell about $667 a month. As an example, a coach selling $2,000 a month of courses would pay $150 in Starter fees, so Builder at $89 is cheaper than Starter at $39 plus $150. Processing fees apply on every plan either way. Check the current rates on Teachable's pricing page before deciding, since fees are the part most likely to change.

The real cost for a coach is the stack, not the plan. If you add a scheduler, a contract tool and an email platform to Teachable, each is another monthly bill and another login for your clients. Coachful includes booking, contracts, programs, courses, community, website and email in one membership (current plans: Lite: $29/month for up to 5 clients; Solo: $49/month for up to 20 clients; Pro: $99/month with unlimited clients; Studio: $199/month with unlimited clients).

What do public reviewers praise and complain about?

Public reviews of Teachable are mixed: Trustpilot sits at 3.3 from 1,110 reviews (seen October 25, 2026), while Capterra showed a friendlier 4.3 from 180 reviews and G2 showed 3.9 from 49 in our September 2026 research.

What reviewers praise

The higher Capterra score shows that most reviewers there are satisfied overall, though our research recorded the complaint themes in more detail than the praise. Teachable's own materials stress a familiar course builder, a checkout that handles tax and currency for you, and an established brand. Its coaching page features a creator crediting Teachable's uptime and built-in tax handling. Treat vendor-selected testimonials as marketing, but they do show where Teachable puts its effort.

What reviewers complain about

The complaint themes were consistent in our September 2026 research. Around 41% of Trustpilot reviews were one-star, and the recurring topics were:

• Costs that rise as you grow. Reviewers described the plan steps and the old active-student caps as per-learner pricing in practice.
• The 7.5% Starter fee. Capterra reviewers said Teachable takes too big a cut on the entry plan.
• Slow support and unresolved bugs. Several reviewers reported waiting on support, and some said onboarding help was poor.

One reviewer summed up the cost complaint this way:

The more successful your business becomes, the more additional costs you can face.

Since then, Teachable has removed the active-student caps from the pricing page, which answers part of the first complaint. The Starter fee is unchanged, and real-time support is listed from Builder upward. For more on how we read review scores across tools, see our software reviews hub.

What are Teachable's pros and cons?

Teachable's strengths are in course delivery and checkout; its weaknesses are fees on the entry plan and the missing tools for ongoing client work.

Who is Teachable best for, and who should skip it?

Teachable is best for creators whose business is a catalogue of self-paced products. It is a weaker fit for coaches whose business is a calendar of clients.

Teachable fits well if you:

• sell one or more recorded courses to hundreds or thousands of students, with coaching as an occasional upsell;
• want certificates of completion and a course player your students already recognize;
• need PayPal at checkout or have a large international audience and want tax handling done for you;
• want affiliates selling your courses, and you are happy on Builder or above to avoid the 7.5% fee.

Skip Teachable if you:

• sell 1:1 or group coaching programs where the weekly session is the product;
• want clients to log habits, complete daily tasks and answer check-ins between calls;
• need booking pages with availability rules, buffers and two-way calendar sync without another subscription;
• send a coaching agreement before the first call and want it stored on the client record;
• are working toward an ICF credential and want coaching hours logged as you go. Our ICF hour tracking page explains how that works in Coachful.

What are the best Teachable alternatives for coaches?

The best Teachable alternative for most coaches is Coachful, because it covers the client work Teachable leaves out while still delivering courses. Kajabi, Thinkific, Podia and Stan Store are worth a look if you want to stay closer to the course or creator model.

Ranked on one login for the whole client journey, delivery between sessions, total stack cost, and setup effort:

Prices for other tools are as listed in October 2026. Our Teachable alternative page and the comparison hub carry more side-by-side detail.

1. Coachful

Coachful is a coaching platform where one subscription covers booking, payments, contracts, program delivery with habits and check-ins, courses, a community, a website with funnels and email, and an AI assistant. The coach has one login and the client has one branded app. It is built for coaches who deliver programs rather than only sessions, solo coaches growing into a small team, and coaches replacing four to six tools. It is not a course marketplace, not HIPAA-certified, has no PayPal and no permanent free plan. You can start with a free trial and ask the Coachful team to build your setup for you.

Where Teachable sells a course, Coachful runs the client relationship around it. You build multi-week programs with weekly goals, daily tasks, habits, morning and evening check-ins, goals with progress bars and streaks. Booking pages handle availability rules, buffers, minimum notice and time-zone detection, with two-way Google, Apple and Outlook calendar sync and built-in video or auto-created Zoom, Meet and Teams links. Clients sign a coaching agreement before the first call, and it is stored on their record.

Each client record holds goals, check-ins, habits, notes, intake answers, tags, payments and sessions, with a status of thriving, active, quiet or at risk, so you can see who needs attention before the next call. Michelle, the built-in AI assistant, works from that live data to brief you before sessions, draft emails and summarize recorded sessions. The ICF credential tracker counts coaching hours and distinct clients against ACC, PCC and MCC thresholds.

Courses are included too, with modules, lessons, drip and completion tracking, delivered into the client's branded home and app next to their program and sessions. Here is a walkthrough of how programs are built:

Payments run through your own Stripe Connect or Razorpay account with one-time payments, subscriptions, payment plans, order bumps, coupons, Apple Pay and Google Pay, and Stripe Tax. Coachful has taken a 0% platform fee since August 2026; you pay only Stripe or Razorpay processing. Plans are flat monthly, lower plans cap the number of clients, Pro is unlimited, and monthly plans cancel in one click (current plans: Lite: $29/month for up to 5 clients; Solo: $49/month for up to 20 clients; Pro: $99/month with unlimited clients; Studio: $199/month with unlimited clients).

Why Coachful stands out: a free white-glove service. On every plan, you can open Create, choose "We'll build it for you · FREE", describe what you want, and attach up to 8 reference links and up to 10 files such as logos, photos, brand guides and copy. The Coachful team builds it inside your own account, usually within about 24 hours: a website, a funnel, a sales page, a program, a course outline, an email sequence and more. Nothing gets invented, so there are no fake credentials, testimonials or prices; gaps are left for you to fill. A somatic coach leaving Kajabi, for example, had their homepage and About page rebuilt and the contact form connected. It does not include recording videos, logo design or ad management. Read more about the free white-glove service.

What Coachful does not do: it has no PayPal, no Salesforce or HubSpot integration, no third-party plugins, and its affiliate tracking records payouts manually rather than sending them. The client app ships under the Coachful listing with your branding, not under your own App Store account. For a fuller look, read our Coachful review.

Pick Teachable over Coachful if you sell mostly self-paced courses to a large audience, need PayPal at checkout, or want certificates of completion as a headline feature.

2. Kajabi

Kajabi combines courses, community, a website, funnels and email in one platform for selling knowledge products. It starts at $179 a month ($143 billed annually) for Basic, with 5 products, 2,500 contacts, one community and no AI credits; Growth is $249 ($199 annually) and Pro $499 ($399 annually), as listed in October 2026. Kajabi Payments carries no extra Kajabi fee, but other processors except PayPal add 0.5% to 2%. Trustpilot shows 3.4 from 2,347 reviews (seen October 25, 2026). Coaching on Kajabi is built from products and communities, with no habit tracking, daily check-ins or per-client plans. Our Kajabi vs. Teachable guide compares the two in detail.

Pick it over Coachful if you want an established all-in-one course and email platform with a large ecosystem, and your coaching is mostly group products rather than individual client plans.

3. Podia

Podia is a simple storefront for courses, downloads, webinars, coaching sessions and a community. Mover is $49 a month ($42 annually) with a 5% Podia fee; Shaker is $99 ($84 annually) and Earthquaker $179 ($150 annually), both with 0% fees, as listed in October 2026. The email allowances are small (100, 500 and 1,000 subscribers included), and our older profile found no mobile app and no native video calls. The 14-day trial needs no card. Trustpilot shows 4.1 from 153 reviews (seen October 25, 2026).

Pick it over Coachful if you want the simplest possible shop for a few digital products and occasional paid sessions, and you do not need client programs or check-ins.

4. Thinkific

Thinkific is a course platform with communities, memberships and coaching or webinar products. Start is $109 a month ($82 annually), Grow $219 ($164 annually) and Expand $499 ($374 annually), after a price rise of about 10% on August 13, 2026. There is no Thinkific fee with Thinkific Payments, a 30-day free trial on every self-serve plan, and the branded mobile app is a $199-a-month add-on. Our older profile found no built-in 1:1 scheduling. Trustpilot shows 1.8 from 868 reviews (seen October 25, 2026).

Pick it over Coachful if you run a large course business with several admins and want a dedicated course platform with more room for growth than Teachable's Starter and Builder plans.

5. Stan Store

Stan Store is a link-in-bio storefront for selling digital products, courses, memberships and paid calls. Creator is $29 a month ($25 annually) and Creator Pro $99 ($79 annually), with a 0% Stan fee, as listed in October 2026. Email marketing, upsells, discount codes and affiliates are only on Creator Pro. There are no contracts, invoices or client records, and no programs with tasks, habits or check-ins. Trustpilot shows 4.7 from 2,205 reviews (seen October 25, 2026). See our Stan Store review.

Pick it over Coachful if your audience lives on social media and you mainly want to sell a few products and calls from a link in bio.

How do Teachable and Coachful compare for coaching work?

Teachable is the stronger course store; Coachful is the stronger coaching practice. The table lines them up on the jobs a coach does every week.

For a coach with a signature course and a 12-week program, the practical difference is where the client lives. On Teachable, the course lives in the school while bookings, agreements and accountability live elsewhere. On Coachful, the course, program, next session, habits and messages sit in the same branded home. Our online course platform for coaches page shows how courses fit alongside programs.

How do you move off Teachable without losing students?

Export your students and reports first, then download your videos, then rebuild the course on the new platform before you cancel. Teachable lets you export students to CSV and course and sales reports to CSV; in our September 2026 research there was no bulk course export, so videos are downloaded manually.

1. Export your data. Download the student list and sales reports as CSV files, and save any quiz or completion data you want to keep.
2. Download your video and files. Work through each lesson and keep the folder structure matching your modules, which makes the rebuild faster.
3. Rebuild and test. On Coachful, clients, programs and content are imported for you during onboarding, and the white-glove team can rebuild a sales page or course outline from your references.
4. Tell students where to go. Send one email with the new login link and a date when the old school closes.
5. Cancel last. Cancel from the school plan page only after your exports are saved. Teachable's 30-day refund window covers new plans and upgrades only, not ongoing renewals.

If you are also replacing a scheduler or contract tool, see our coaching contracts page and the broader coaching software overview.

Is Teachable worth it in 2026? Our final verdict

Teachable is worth it for creators whose business is self-paced courses, and on Builder or above the fees are fair for what you get. For coaches, it solves the course half of the business and leaves the client half to other tools.

Its strengths are real: a mature course builder, a checkout that handles tax, currency, upsells and PayPal, student apps from the entry plan, and unlimited students on every self-serve plan as listed in October 2026. Its weak spots are the 7.5% Starter fee, branding until Growth, a 3.3 Trustpilot score with complaints about support and rising costs, and no scheduling engine, contracts, habits or check-ins of its own.

If you coach clients week to week and want courses as part of the program, Coachful is the better fit: one login, between-session delivery, a 0% platform fee and a free white-glove build to get you set up. If you mostly sell recorded courses at volume, Teachable remains a sensible choice, and our Teachable pricing breakdown will help you pick the plan.

Frequently asked questions about Teachable

Is Teachable good for coaches?

Teachable is good for coaches who mainly sell recorded courses and add coaching as an upsell. Its coaching product supports milestones, meetings, messages and an intake block, but there is no native scheduling with two-way calendar sync, no contracts and no habit or check-in tracking. Coaches who run ongoing client programs usually need more than Teachable alone.

How much does Teachable cost?

As listed in October 2026, Teachable Starter is $39 a month ($29 billed annually), Builder $89 ($69 annually) and Growth $189 ($139 annually). Custom plans require contacting sales. Starter charges a 7.5% transaction fee, and every plan pays processing fees such as 2.9% + 30¢ for US cards.

Does Teachable have a free plan?

No. Teachable has no free plan in October 2026. The plan cards offer a 7-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee, and a pop-up offered a 30-day trial on Builder monthly when we checked.

What is Teachable's rating on review sites?

Teachable showed 3.3 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 1,110 reviews on October 25, 2026. In our September 2026 research it showed 3.9 from 49 reviews on G2 and 4.3 from 180 reviews on Capterra. Complaints focus on rising costs, the Starter fee and slow support.

Does Teachable limit the number of students?

Not on the October 2026 pricing page, which lists students as unlimited on Starter, Builder and Growth. Earlier versions of the page showed active-student caps of 100, 1,000 and 5,000. Products and admins are still capped per plan.

Can I schedule coaching calls in Teachable?

Teachable's coaching product lets you schedule meetings and set up video calls, and its integrations include Calendly and Zoom. Our September 2026 research found no native scheduling engine or two-way calendar sync, so availability rules and reminders depend on those tools.

What is the best Teachable alternative for coaches?

For coaches who run programs and 1:1 or group sessions, Coachful is the strongest alternative because booking, contracts, programs with habits and check-ins, courses and payments sit in one login. For creators staying with the course model, Kajabi, Podia and Thinkific are the closest substitutes.

What is Coachful's free white-glove service?

On every Coachful plan, you can ask the Coachful team to build something for you, such as a website, funnel, program, course outline or email sequence. You describe it and attach up to 8 links and 10 files, and the team builds it inside your account, usually within about 24 hours. It does not include recording videos, logo design or ad management.

Can I export my content from Teachable?

You can export students, course data and sales reports to CSV. In our September 2026 research there was no bulk course export, so video lessons have to be downloaded manually. Export everything before you cancel your plan.