The simple answer to the question “Does teachable market my course?” is : No, teachable does not market your course. You will have to market and drive traffic to your course by yourself. They only provide you the platform and tools to create and host your courses. There are 2 great platforms that will host your courses and also market them for you, skillshare and udemy.
What are the features available with teachable?
You have the option to create sales pages and quizzes easily. You have the option to give your students a certificate at the end of the course, by generating a certificate of completion. With the course compliance feature, you can enforce a lecture completion so students cannot jump to another course until they watch a video or until they complete a task.
You can set a passing grade for quizzes and the number of retakes allow for quizzes. So if you put the number of retake allowed to eight, after they try eight times, it will block them and they would have to contact support.
You can provide Google forms, surveys, and other tools so that you can get the feedback needed to be able to help your course grow. And to understand exactly what your students are going through when taking your courses.
They integrate with all the major tools that you can find on the market. They also integrate with all or most of the support tools, including Zendesk. You also have that option to segment your list. This will allow you to send a different email to different segments of your students. So you don’t need to have third-party software to be able to do that.
Like all auto major platforms, you have the option to create coupons to be able to incentivize enrolments.
You have the option to create advance pricing options. You can provide your students with multiple payment options like one-time pricing, prepaid plan, or an upfront cost.
You have the option to add affiliates to promote your products for you. But the affiliate option is only available with their professional up to business plans that they have.
Teachable pricing
They have the Basic plan at $39 per month, the pro package at $199 per month, and the business package at $299 per month. If you go on an annual plan, you get some discounts, but regular pricing on the monthly plans are from $39 to $299 a month. If you are using the platform for hosting online courses, you need to have at least the pro plan. The basic plan is just not worth it because they don’t offer you enough tools to be able to have an online course.
The pros
They give you the option to generate personalized certificates at the end of your course: I truly liked the option to provide a certificate when someone completes your courses. The students have a certificate that is generated for them that they can use as a proof of completion of your course.
The dashboard is pretty neat: It’s easy to use. You are able to go from different places within the dashboard to be able to access different features easily. I like the workflow especially when you are new to the platform.
They give you all the options you need to create an online course: quizzes, course compliance, progress follow up, feedback generation, email segmentation …
TeachableU : It is basically a course that will teach you everything that you needed to know about online course creation. Typically on most platforms, they only give you the service. They don’t really provide you a course to help you get the most out of online course creation. So the fact that they provide you with the knowledge to succeed is a plus overall.
Website and page builder: The course creation process is as easy as it can be compared to other platforms. You can edit your sales page, your checkout page and thank you page so they can look the way you want them to.
The cons
Support options: So one of the drawbacks that I found is the support option or how to contact them. I truly don’t know why they don’t make it as easy as possible or why they don’t have a live chat for example for such a big company that gets a lot of web traffic.
If you go on their website and if you have presale questions, it’s really not easy to get in touch with them. You can still send an email but if you want to talk to the sales team you actually have to fill out a whole form.
It’s not a big deal, but it’s just annoying to me. And also the support option after you become a member, you only have an option for live chat support if you have a pro or a business plan. But it does not mention really what how the live chat function (hours of operation for example ) before you purchase the plan.
Website theme option: They only also have one theme that you can update as much as you want to, but they’re not flexible as far as what they can offer you. Just 1 template that you will have to work with.
There is no AB testing for your landing pages: There is no testing option. But I guess I’m asking all those questions because I’m a marketer myself and I like to be able to try different landing pages and all that stuff. You can create a landing page, but it’s just one static page. You can go in and tweak it if you want to, but you have to be someone that understands how to build landing pages that convert.
Who teachable platform is best for?
This is for you If you already have a following(small or big) and you want to create membership sites or an online course with the option to have quizzes and offer personalized certificates. This is also for organizations or businesses that want to host some training or education for their staff online.
Who this is not for?
My personal opinion, this is not for you if you are a new marketer with no following and a low starting budget.
The raison why I said that, is because if you do not already have a following who knows and love your content, your landing pages were you send people to matters. Your need to have the option to tweak your page and understand what is working and not.
Teachable does not offer you those options unfortunately.