What is Teachable and how does it work?

Everything below comes from Teachable's own site, read on the day this was written. If you want to build and sell a course, Teachable is made for that, and Stakk does not host courses. If you mostly sell files, like templates or ebooks, read the sections on products and payments closely, because that is where a course platform can cost more than the job needs.

What is Teachable used for?

Teachable is used to build and run a course business from one account. Courses are the core of it, and around them sit coaching products, digital downloads, sales pages and a student site where buyers log in.

In practice, creators, coaches and educators use Teachable to:

• host a course with lessons, modules and student progress
• sell a coaching program, one to one or in a group
• sell digital downloads like guides, templates or workbooks
• build a checkout and sales pages for each product
• give each buyer a login where their purchases live

There is no free plan. On Teachable's pricing page the paid tiers are Starter at $39 a month, Builder at $89, Growth at $189, and a Custom plan you book a call for. The catch on the cheapest plan is a transaction fee: Starter adds 7.5% of each sale, while Builder and Growth drop that to 0%. Our breakdown of what each Teachable plan costs covers how that fee changes the real price as you grow.

The trial is worth a word, because Teachable's own page is not consistent about it. The plan cards show a 7-day free trial and a 30-day guarantee, while a popup on the same page says the trial runs 30 days. Treat the 7-day trial on the plan cards as the figure to confirm inside your own account.

How does Teachable work?

You build a product, set its price, and share the page. The product is what the buyer gets, a course, a coaching package or a download. The page is where they pay. Here is how a sale moves through Teachable.

1. The product. In your admin, you pick a product type, add a title, a description and the content, whether that is lessons or a file.
2. The price. You set a price, and Teachable builds a checkout and a sales page for it.
3. The checkout. The buyer pays by card. An order bump can sit here on the checkout.
4. The upsell. If you have set one up, a follow-on offer can show around the purchase.
5. Access. The buyer logs in to your Teachable school, where their course or download waits.

So the buyer ends up logged in to your Teachable school to reach what they bought, rather than just getting a file by email.

What can you sell on Teachable?

Teachable sells three kinds of thing, all inside the same course platform.

• Courses: lessons in modules, with student progress and completion.
• Coaching: a program delivered one to one or in a group.
• Digital downloads: files like templates, ebooks, presets or workbooks.

As with any course-first platform, even a single download is sold through, and reached inside, the same school that a full course uses. That is a good fit if you plan to add courses later, and heavier than you need if a file and a receipt is the whole job. If you are comparing the course platforms, our walkthroughs of how Thinkific works and how Kajabi works follow the same shape as this one.

How do you get paid on Teachable?

Through card processing connected to your Teachable account. For a US business, card processing runs about 2.9% + 30c per sale, charged separately from your plan fee. On the Starter plan, remember the extra 7.5% transaction fee that Teachable takes on top of processing, which Builder and Growth remove.

The pattern to understand is that the payment runs through Teachable's own flow rather than landing straight in a Stripe account you alone control. Whether a platform pays you directly or holds the money first is worth checking before you commit, and our guide to which platforms hold your money and which pay you directly sets that out side by side.

The short version: on Starter you are paying a monthly fee, a 7.5% platform cut and card processing on every sale, so the true cost of a sale there is higher than the sticker price suggests. Moving up removes the 7.5%, which is the main reason sellers climb the plans.

Does Teachable have order bumps and upsells?

Yes, both. Teachable's own feature list names "Coupons, upsells, order bumps" together, so an order bump on the checkout and an upsell around the purchase are both part of the product.

The order bump is an extra offer the buyer can take on the checkout page, charged with the main product. The upsell is a follow-on offer that gives the buyer a chance to add more. Together they are the two usual ways to raise the size of an order, one at the checkout and one around it.

What Teachable does not do is hand you these for free. They come with a paid plan, so the monthly fee, and on Starter the 7.5% cut, are the price of having them. On a checkout tool with no monthly fee, the same two moves cost a per-sale fee instead, which is the trade to weigh.

When is Teachable the wrong choice?

If you sell courses or coaching and you want lessons, student progress and a school to log in to, Teachable is the better pick and Stakk is the wrong choice. Courses are Teachable's job, and they are not Stakk's. Stakk has no course hosting, no communities, no call booking, no email marketing and no subscriptions or recurring billing. It sells in US dollars only and caps prices at $999. It also does not store your files: you paste a link to where your file lives, and Stakk emails that link to the buyer once they pay.

And if the cost of each sale is what decides it, use Systeme.io or Whop instead. Systeme.io has a free plan with 0% transaction fees, and Whop charges 2.7% + $0.30 on a transaction with no monthly fee. Both take less per sale than our 10% + $0.50. If you sell downloads rather than courses, though, you may not need a school or a monthly fee at all. A plain checkout that takes a payment and sends the file can be the whole tool.

Want a checkout built just for downloads?

Stakk is the checkout for people who sell digital files. You connect your own Stripe account, paste the link to your file, and add an order bump and a one-click upsell to any product. It is 10% + $0.50 a sale with card processing included, there is no monthly fee, and a month with no sales costs nothing. The upsell is a second charge, so our fee applies to it again.

Start selling on Stakk, free