Teachable is an online learning management platform designed to aid course creators in creating and selling their content online.
History Of Teachable
Formerly known as Fedora, It was founded in 2013 by Ankur Nagpal. Ankur who is a course creator himself, created the platform to provide solutions to the problems faced by course creators.
In two years, Fedora grew into a team of fifteen. It was eventually named Teachable because, at this point, it had developed into managing coaching services as one of its duties. Staying true to the original intent of creating Teachable (to aid course creators in creating and selling their course content), the services it offers range from hosting to the monitoring of sales and processing of payment.
As recently as 2020, the number of instructors on Teachable surpassed 100,000. They had launched over 183,000 new courses and more than 17,000 coaching products.
Teachable Packages
The goal of teachable is to be accessible to course creators. For this purpose, they offer a variety of packages for course creators to choose from. Some of these packages are listed below;
- Free: Teachable offers a free plan. This plan is perfect for course creators who are just starting out tentatively and just want to get a feel of the platform. This plan only requires that you pay $1 + 10% per transaction and have access to design templates, basic quizzes, and product support.
- Basic: This involves all the features of the free plan. This plan costs $39 per month or a discounted $29 per month with an annual subscription. Additionally, course creators under this plan are expected to pay 5% per transaction. This package gives you the right to create a members-only community, and receive course creation training.
- Pro: This is their most popular plan. This package costs $119 per month or a discounted $99 per month with an annual subscription. In this package, there are no transaction fees involved, so all your earnings are yours to the exact dime. You will be able to produce graded quizzes and generate advanced reports as well as integrate affiliate marketing in this package.
- Business: This package is priced at $299 per month or a discounted $249 per month with an annual subscription. The plan is ideal for large teams of course creators or education-based companies. There are no transaction fees and the account makes allowance for 20 admin-level users, custom user roles, and advanced theme customization options.
Features Of Teachable
Teachable has a lot of features. Below are some of these features and a detailed explanation of what they entail for you and your students.
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Security
On a teaching website, there is always an exchange of personal information. Details of both the teachers and students are shared on Teachable and that’s why extra care is taken to ensure the safety of users.
Teachable has a dedicated fraud team and a 2048-bit SSL certificate to protect its users’ information during login and logout. The team manages outages in a clockwork fashion to ensure constant and hitch-free access to your account and content. Their software is always up-to-date courtesy of the constant upgrades of the platform. To safeguard financial information, they only partner with payment providers that are PCI (Payment Card Industry) level-1 compliant.
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Course Delivery
A variety of courses can be offered on Teachable. All course content is hosted in the Cloud, hence, making it easier for you and your students to have access to course materials without the use of bulky software. Because Teachable hosts your content, a website for your course content is not necessary. If you already have a website, it can be easily linked to your teachable account with a custom domain.
The many built-in features allow course creators to create a basic and graded quiz to track the development of students taking the courses. The Pro and Business plans allow you to offer certificates to make courses more attractive. You can also control the access to certain course contents until students have shown themselves to have mastered previous contents by meeting a criterion. This criterion is most likely passing a graded quiz.
Course content creation may create milestones for a more integrated experience. Also, one-on-one sessions can be set up with students. Teachable also helps students schedule their classes at their convenience.
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Customization
You can incorporate your brand into the design, and “put your signature to things” on Teachable. You can design your domain and courses in a way that reflects your brand persona. Power editor can help you create videos, lectures, quizzes, and coaching sessions. Teachable gives you access to design templates and training to help you customize your domain.
Teachable doesn’t restrict you to their features alone. You can have access to a list of integrations that allow you to connect your account to different scheduling platforms, analytics services, community platforms, and email service providers. Some of these integrations include Google Analytics, ConvertKit, Facebook Pixel, and Zapier.
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Payment Management
Teachable aids you in the creation of a user-friendly sales page that can be customized to suit your needs. Payments can be accepted in over 130 currencies and PayPal or mobile payments are also supported. They also assist in managing payouts. They can help you pay your affiliates, team, and course collaborators accordingly.
In addition, they provide ways to increase your revenue. Coupons or vouchers can be generated or a referral rewards program can be introduced. Subscription and membership plans are also among the ways that Teachable helps you improve your revenue. Teachable has a way of tracking all these so you can keep an eye on how things are progressing.
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Data Tracking
Teachable has structures in place that help you monitor your progress and how much you have earned on the platform. You can track student enrollment, engagement, and course completion rate. With the use of third-party integrations, you can create surveys to get direct student feedback so you will know what areas are successful and the ones that need improvement.
The Pros And Cons Of Teachable
Teachable is a great platform for course creators. However, it is not perfect. To decide if you want to enroll on Teachable, you need to know their strengths and weaknesses. Here are some of them to aid you in making an informed decision;
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The Pros
- Great plan options: For people that just want an idea of what Teachable has to offer, they can create a free account that gives them access to basic features. Each progressive package includes all the features of the previous one along with improved features that allow you to create a better experience for your students. There is also the option to purchase monthly subscriptions or an annual plan at a discounted rate.
- Ease of setting up and management: The easy-to-use design templates, tutorials, and tech support make it easy to set up an account even for people who are not so tech savvy. Most of the processes on Teachable are automated, hence, little time is spent monitoring accounts. Actions like payments, registrations, and bookings all occur without your active involvement. This frees up time for the course creator to focus on creating great content in an appealing manner.
- Supports different content formats: This is among the best Teachable features. There are no restrictions or specifications as to the format of content to be delivered. Teachable accepts a wide range of formats, hence, your audios, videos, images, and PDF files are safe on Teachable. This allows course creators to have more dynamic ways of delivering course content in an interesting manner that will encourage students to learn even faster and better.
- Built-in System of payment: On Teachable, there is no need for third-party payment systems. This gives you the assurance that your payments and earnings are secure. It is however very possible to integrate any other reputable portal. That is left for the user to choose. The system process all incoming and outgoing payments in an automated fashion, hence, there is no need for you to stress yourself trying to keep track of incoming and outgoing transactions.
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The Cons
- Site builder is challenging: This is one of the frequent complaints in Teachable reviews. Building pages could be very challenging. The input boxes are small and the conspicuous absence of the “copy and paste” option makes designing an uphill task. Doing basic things may be okay for people who are not tech savvy. However, if you plan on making advanced changes to the templates offered, you may need to employ the services of a web designer.
- Low Customization Options: Teachable has been created in such a way that course creation is very simple. However, this can be a problem. Because of how simple it is meant to be, Teachable has a templated approach that may not be easily customizable. Creators may be able to diversify their contents but they still have the same page layout. The templated pages only allow limited customization. This makes it hard for course creators to apply their unique style to their pages.
- Transaction Fees: The free and basic plans attract transaction fees. These fees may appear to be low but they begin to add up as time goes by. Avoiding this plan will mean paying for a bigger, more expensive plan which may be way above your earnings and capacity at the time. This is even more true for people who don’t need the additional features of the more expensive packages.
How To Set Up A Course On Teachable.
- The first step is to create an account by clicking the “start for free” option.
- After receiving a confirmation email, you will then have to share some details about the business.
- You can now work on branding, setting up pages, and creating a course.
- To create a course, you select the “create course” option and indicate the name of the course and author.
- Then you can begin to add learning materials.
- You can decide how many sections or subsections your course will be divided into.
- After you are satisfied with the curriculum and course materials, then you can add a price to the course.
This is the final step in settings up a course on Teachable. After this, you may decide to customize your page. However, this is not necessary and can be a little tedious.
Are you wondering if Teachable is right for you? There are many clear benefits of using the Teachable platform. The user-friendly templates, the number of administrative and technical functions they manage, and the safe and secure platform. They also have a lot of drawbacks like the transaction fees and limited options for customization. The final choice is yours. If you are not sure about how suitable Teachable is for you, then a trial might help. Follow this link https://teachable.com/ and register for a free trial.
