There’s plenty of ways you can launch your own online course.
In this article, we’ll look at Teachable vs Skillshare and see which is the best for course creators.
Don’t Want to Wait? Here’s Our Verdict
If you’re not interested in reading the whole article, we have Teachable coming out on top here. You can start creating your courses on Teachable by clicking here, or you can read how we came to our conclusion below.
Breaking It Down
There are a number of reasons you might want to create a course. If you are a teacher, you might want to get into some type of private tutoring, or you might want to share your knowledge of a certain subject with students who are not located in your area. You also might be creating a course for the summer or for some other reason. There are platforms that easily allow you to do this, including those like Teachable and Skillshare.
Both Teachable and Skillshare provide a wide range of options to help you create your online courses. However, each one has unique aspects that make it stand out more than the other. The most common differences can be seen in the interface, course creation, pricing plans, and sales.
Pricing For Course Creators
Teachable Offers Better Value for Money
Teachable offers four pricing plans. Each of them provides additional features that can help you create your online course more smoothly. First is the Free Plan. This is the low-tier plan. It costs $1 + 10% of transaction fees. A downside of this plan is that it only allows a maximum of 10 students per course, which is not recommended if you want a bigger reach for your course.
There is also a Basic Plan. This plan costs $39 a month + 5% transaction fees. This is one of the most used plans by users since it allows you to have unlimited students and courses as well as basic course creation tools. This plan allows you to use a custom domain, email your students, and create coupon codes.
You also might consider the Professional Plan: This is the most popular plan on the platform. It costs $119 a month, and it doesn’t ask for transaction fees. It provides a lot of extra features such as quiz grading, certifications, affiliate marketing, and others.
Finally, we have a Business Plan. This plan is great for schools and people with an online course marketplace. It costs $299 a month, and it allows you to have custom user roles, bulk import of students, and a power editor.
Skillshare has three pricing plans. It has a free plan, a premium plan, and a team plan.
The Free Plan gives access to any ‘Free’ class in the Skillshare site. However, it only applies to view classes; to create a class, you have to upgrade to the ‘Premium Plan.’
The Premium Plan costs $15 per month. It allows you to use the platform’s complete resources for your course making process. This includes creating, publishing, and promoting your classes while ensuring that you get a portion of Skillshare’s monthly profits, based on how many users watched your classes.
Finally, we have the Team Plan. This plan is priced per student. It starts at $99 per student, billed annually. It comes with the same benefits as the premium plan, with the added benefits of admin management for your school or brand.
Winner: Teachable
Course Creation
Teachable for Course Creators
Teachable provides one of the most intuitive and user-friendly interfaces for course creation. Every single plan provides the tools necessary to make your course stand out in the community.
You can implement audiovisual content to support your class, as well as quizzes, surveys, and other materials to give to your students. This is a great option for people who don’t have a lot of technical knowledge, since the Teachable system pretty much does this for you.
Teachable also offers a bulk course modification system; it allows you to make changes to your entire course without having to go over every single module, which is a great feature for people who don’t have a ton of time.
Skillshare provides a simple but effective ‘Create a Class’ tool, as well as a guide to use it if you are not familiar with creating online courses. However, you can only use video-format classes for Skillshare with no way of getting feedback via quizzes or surveys.
With this, we aren’t sure how you are supposed to measure the success of your students, and ultimately, the success of your course.
Winner: Teachable
Sales Pages
Teachable Sales Pages are Customizable
The ‘Sales’ page in Teachable is pre-made using page blocks; however, you can customize it using custom HTLM codes. To add pre-made blocks, the site provides you a ‘Drag and Drop’ feature that makes adding the information easier for you.
If you don’t know how to set up your sales page, Teachable offers you a complete guide to do it without any problems. Again, this makes it very convenient for people who don’t have a ton of experience with computers or web design.
Skillshare doesn’t provide you the option to get a personalized ‘Sales’ page. To promote your course, you get a referral link that you can share with your potential students.
When you upload your course, you’re allowed to use a title, subtitle, and class description to grab the attention of your students. That’s it. If you can use that and bring in a ton of students, you are ahead of the game.
Winner: Teachable
Final Recount
Teachable: 3/3
Skillshare: 0/3
Pros and Cons
Teachable
Pros
- Intuitive Interface
- Better value for money
- Offers more customization
Cons
- The free plan isn’t very good if your goal is to create courses for many students.
Pros
- It’s more affordable than Teachable.
- It offers an easy-to-use platform to upload courses.
- Skillshare has a ready-built audience.
Cons
- You can only make video lessons.
- There’s not much customization available.
Final Verdict
While both course types offer their own pros and cons, we thing Teachable is the best option for course creators.
