There are many platforms available when it comes to building and running online classes. WordPress and Teachable are the two most preferred ones; nevertheless, which should you pick?
A survey has predicted that the e-learning market will be worth more than 275 billion dollars by 2023. Given such a profitable industry, opting for the best platform for your online course can make all the difference. Nevertheless, both WordPress and Teachable are popular, but they do differ in terms of offered functionality.
In this post, we will be comparing Teachable and WordPress to help you decide on a suitable platform that will enable you to launch your courses online. This shall involve a look at their main attributes: usability, modifiability, price, and customer service. In the end, you will be in a position to tell what is good or bad about every platform, thus picking the most suitable option. Therefore, let’s delve into the distinction between WordPress and Teachable.
In addition, there are many course-selling platforms. They can include two of the famous ones, such as WordPress or Teachable. Therefore, in this article, we shall review these platforms against each other concerning their features, ease of usage, limitations and users’ opinions so that we can better make a choice.
A CMS known as WordPress has more than 43% of global websites under its belt. It is a flexible and tailorable framework for developing web pages and course sites. You have full control of your website’s appearance, features, and content with WordPress.
You can build your online course on WordPress. The website offers users a chance to select from over 40,000 WordPress themes and plugins, which allow customization based on individual necessities.
In WordPress, you own your content and data. Your website can be placed on a personal server, and you can select a preferred hosting provider.
WordPress integrates seamlessly with various third-party tools and services, such as email marketing platforms, payment gateways, and analytics tools.
Setting up and managing a WordPress website is also not a walk in the park since it involves some level of technical expertise. In case you do not know website development, you might have to hire a developer or take time to learn the same.
Essentially, you are left on your own as a self-hosting platform to look after your security, backup and improve your website’s performance.
Learning through WordPress is somewhat more challenging than in other instances. This may require some time for one to understand its interface as well as its features.
According to user reviews, WordPress is praised for its flexibility and customization options. Users appreciate the vast ecosystem of plugins and themes available, allowing them to create unique and engaging online course platforms. However, some users find the initial setup and maintenance of WordPress websites challenging, especially for beginners.
Teachable is a purpose-built online courseware which enables you to develop, market, and sell your courses through it. It has a friendly interface and contains specific functions that were specially created for course authors. This allows you to focus all your attention on creating content while Teachable takes care of them in the background.
The user interface of this platform makes it suitable even for those who have little or no technical background. It is easy to develop your courses, design your site and handle students.
You can promote and sell your courses through the built-in marketing tools on teachable like email marketing, affiliate programs and coupon codes.
Reliable customer support and security, hosting and backup are done by Teachable, so you have no worries with the technicalities.
While Teachable allows some customization options, it may not offer the same level of flexibility as WordPress. You may be limited in terms of design and functionality.
Teachable charges transaction fees on its lower-priced plans, which can impact your revenue. However, higher-priced plans offer lower or no transaction fees.
Teachable is a hosted platform, which means you don’t have complete ownership and control over your content. If the platform shuts down or changes its policies, it could impact your business.
Users appreciate Teachable’s intuitive interface and ease of use. They find it convenient to create and manage their courses without technical expertise. However, some users feel limited by the platform’s customization options and transaction fees, especially for smaller course creators.
| Factors | WordPress | Teachable |
| Pricing | Free | Paid |
| Design Flexibility | High | Limited |
| Setup and Ease of Use | Very Easy | Moderate |
| Features | Extensive | Limited |
| Scalability | Highly | Limited |
| Support and Security | Community | Excellent |
| Maintenance and Updates | Self | Automatic |
| Blogging | Yes | No |
| Overall User Experience | Custom and User Friendly | User-friendly |
Choosing between the two is not so easy because each has its special features and advantages. This article compares Teachable vs WordPress.
Teachable has a simple and laid-out pricing plan when considering the prices. They have three different plans – Basic, Professional, and Business which are available in a monthly subscription or annually. For example, the basic plan costs $29 a month, and the business one goes for $249 monthly. Some of these plans have unlimited courses, payment processors, course compliance, and LMS.
However, WordPress is freeware. It has no copyright and can be used for free. You should also keep in mind extra expenses such as web hosting, domain registration, and some paid outlines and templates. WordPress might prove to have lower expenses over the long term but is usually technically complex and expensive initially.
Using Teachable, you can choose from various professionally designed website templates as well as themes for creating an attractive and easy-to-use course website. These templates are partly customizable, and you can customize the look of your site in terms of your logos and brands. On the other hand, the level of flexibility in designing with teachables is low compared to WordPress.
However, while WP goes at it in a whole new style, its competitor provides the best design flexibility. You needn’t worry about it since you have numerous free and premium templates to use to make your unique and highly customized site. For this reason, WordPress is at your service as one that provides a total power of design and arrangement for every new user or professional.
That’s why Teachable is famous because of the straightforward interface and effortless setup procedure. Setting up your course website only takes a few easily followed-steps. Teachable automates all the technical aspects of putting out your classes, like posting online and safety measures, enabling you to devote time to the creation process per se.
Initially, WordPress is a bit hard to set up, but it provides numerous plugins and templates that ease the whole process. However, it does require a learning curve, especially if you’re new to website development. WordPress provides extensive documentation and support forums to help you navigate through the setup process.
Teachable offers a comprehensive set of features specifically designed for online course creators. These include integrated payment processing, student analytics, drip content, quizzes, and certificates. Teachable also provides marketing tools like email marketing integration and affiliate program management.
WordPress, being a highly customizable platform, offers a vast array of features through plugins and themes. You can choose from various learning management system (LMS) plugins like LearnDash and LifterLMS to add course management functionality to your WordPress site. Additionally, you can leverage the extensive WordPress plugin library to enhance your course platform with features like forums, gamification, and multimedia integration.
Teachable is designed to handle the growth of your online course business. As your student base expands, Teachable can handle the increased traffic and course enrollments without any issues. They also offer advanced plans with additional features for larger businesses.
WordPress, being a self-hosted platform, provides unlimited scalability. Consider selecting a hosting provider that would serve a huge number of users quickly. It is all in your hands when using WordPress for your site, so it can be improved with time for your growing business.
Teachable has 24 hours a day, seven days a week, customer support through email. Moreover, they offer comprehensive documentation as well as a knowledge base that guides you on how to solve recurring issues. Security measures such as SSL certificates and regular backups are taken by Teachable to make sure that your course materials and your students’ data are safe.
This is because WordPress is a popular CMS that has hundreds of thousands of developers and users who can be contacted via online forums, instruction guides or other forms of online communities. Nevertheless, the degree of backing may change depending on the selected theme or plugin. As with WordPress, you are called upon to undertake protective measures such as updates, backups, and implementing security plugins.
With teachable, technical maintenance and updates on your course platform are handled for you. This means it keeps your site current, secure and operating at an optimal level. This enables you to concentrate mainly on the contents and course selling.
With WordPress, you have to make efforts to ensure that your website is up-to-date all the time. Update the WordPress core regularly, as well as the themes and plugins. It may involve some work on your end, but at the same time, you will have full jurisdiction for the upkeep as well as customization of the online learning portal.
Blogs are very useful when it comes to marketing your online courses as well as generating organic hits on your website. Bloggers consider WordPress to be a reliable platform. It is equipped with many different kinds of themes & plugins, which are specially made for blogging. It is possible to incorporate blogging with an online course using WordPress, thus making it quite simple to produce interesting articles relevant to your target audience.
Teachable, on the other hand, does not provide native blogging capabilities. However, you can still create blog posts and integrate them into your Teachable site using custom pages. While this requires a bit more effort, Teachable’s strong marketing features can help you promote your blog posts to a targeted audience.
Now let’s look at the difference in terms of how to sell the course using both the different platforms.
Selling a course with Teachable is a straightforward process. Once you have created your course content, you can set up a sales page on Teachable. The platform provides customizable templates and allows you to add multimedia elements to make your sales page visually appealing. Teachable also offers built-in payment processing, allowing you to accept payments from your students directly.
Teachable provides marketing tools such as email campaigns, coupon codes, and affiliate programs to help you promote and sell your course. It also integrates with popular email marketing platforms like Mailchimp and ConvertKit, enabling you to automate your marketing efforts.
Selling a course with WordPress requires a bit more technical knowledge, but it offers more flexibility and customization options. You can choose from various plugins like LearnDash, LifterLMS, or Sensei to create and manage your online course. These plugins provide features like course progress tracking, quizzes, and certificates.
To sell your course on WordPress, you can set up a dedicated sales page using a page builder plugin like Elementor or Beaver Builder. You can also integrate payment gateways like PayPal or Stripe to accept payments. Additionally, WordPress allows you to leverage SEO features and plugins to optimize your course sales page for search engines.
So, WordPress is better than Teachable because of its flexibility, diverse customization options, and vast plugin library. Teachable is a widely used tool when it comes to making and marketing online learning content, but WordPress allows its users more customization when talking about the aesthetics and performance of a webpage.
For example, one has thousands of themes and plugins that can easily improve the design and functionality of a website like WordPress. There are vast choices available in the form of e-commerce plugins, membership plugins and learning management system plugins for designing an elaborate online course platform.
It also has an open-source and popular operating system in its form, called WordPress. This has an impressive user base whose members develop new programs for further development all the time. In this regard, it is easy for users to get support, tutorials, and other resources they can use to enhance their experience on the online course platform.
Therefore, one can say that although Teachable might be a good choice for people seeking an easy-to-use online course platform, WordPress is more flexible and has greater customization options and support; hence, it wins in the match between WordPress and Teachable.
With regard to this particular point, it should be mentioned that Teachable is an ideal platform for developing online lessons, whereas WordPress is a universal content managing system that can be used for a variety of purposes, including online course designing.
There are website-building features at Teachable, but the major focus is on designing, developing, and running e-courses. Teachable offers less sophisticated website-building options than WordPress’s wide range of customization choices.
Yes, this is possible. As such, WordPress supports software that is in the form of plugins and embeds teachable course content into a WordPress page. Such users can now merge several properties of those sites to come up with a holistic course experience that is far better than what the two individual sites provided.
A Technical Architect, proficient in WordPress, Drupal, Laravel, and DevOps tasks, crafts robust IT solutions with a blend of expertise and versatility in web development and infrastructure management.
Browse some of our latest articles...
Subscribe to our newsletter and learn about the latest digital trends.
