Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi is the question every course creator asks before picking a home for their content.
All three platforms help you build, market, and sell online courses, but they take very different paths to get there. Picking the wrong one can cost you months of work and thousands in lost revenue, so let's break down what really matters.
This guide compares pricing, features, ease of use, marketing tools, and who each platform suits best. By the end, you'll know which course builder fits your goals and budget.
Feature
Teachable
Thinkific
Kajabi
Starting price (monthly)
$39
$49
$89
Free plan
Yes (with fees)
Yes (1 course)
No (14-day trial)
Transaction fees on paid plans
0% (Pro and above)
0%
0%
Built-in email marketing
Limited
Limited
Yes (full suite)
Sales funnels
Basic
Basic
Advanced
Communities
Yes
Yes
Yes
Mobile app for students
Yes
Yes
Yes
Coaching products
Yes
Yes
Yes
AI course tools
Yes
Yes
Yes
Best for
Beginners and solo creators
Course-focused teachers
All-in-one businesses
Teachable launched in 2014 and now hosts over 100,000 creators selling courses, coaching, and digital downloads. It earned its reputation as the friendliest tool for first-time course makers.
The platform shines because of its simple drag-and-drop course builder. You can upload videos, quizzes, PDFs, and audio without any tech headaches.
New creators love that the dashboard feels less like rocket science and more like setting up a social media profile.
Key Teachable features include:
An AI Curriculum Generator that drafts lesson outlines from a topic prompt
Coaching products with built-in scheduling and Zoom integration
Digital downloads for ebooks, templates, and printables
Native payment processing with support for PayPal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay
Affiliate program so other people can sell your course for a cut
Tax handling for EU VAT, US sales tax, and Canadian tax automatically
Pricing starts at $39 per month on the Basic plan when billed yearly. The Pro plan at $119 per month removes the 5% transaction fee that Basic users pay.
There's also a free plan, though it comes with a $1 + 10% fee per sale, so it works better as a test drive than a permanent home.
If you are planning to build and scale your course business on Teachable, you can claim the 33% Teachable discount deal on annual plans to lower your overall yearly cost.
Teachable suits you if: You're a solo creator, coach, or small business owner who wants to launch fast without learning ten new tools.
Thinkific started in Vancouver in 2012 and serves more than 50,000 active creators. The Canadian platform built its name around giving teachers full control over the learning experience.
The course builder feels more flexible than most. You get drip content, prerequisites, completion certificates, assignments, and live lessons inside one tidy interface. Thinkific also opens up deeper site customization through HTML, CSS, and Liquid code, so designers and developers can really make a site their own.
Thinkific's standout features:
Communities with spaces, discussion threads, and live events
Thinkific App Store with over 100 third-party integrations
Branded mobile app option for higher-tier plans
Built-in quiz and assignment tools with grading
Memberships and bundles to package multiple courses together
Multi-instructor support for team-based course businesses
Pricing kicks off at $49 per month for the Basic plan, billed yearly. The Start plan jumps to $99 per month and adds advanced course features like assignments and live lessons.
The Grow plan at $199 per month unlocks communities and removes student caps.
Thinkific also offers a forever-free plan that lets you build one course with up to 50 students, which beats Kajabi's trial-only setup.
Thinkific suits you if: You care most about the learning experience, want strong design control, and plan to scale into a full course catalog.
Kajabi launched in 2010 and positions itself as the all-in-one business platform for knowledge entrepreneurs.
Over 100,000 creators have generated more than $8 billion in sales through Kajabi, according to the company's published numbers.
The big idea behind Kajabi is replacement. Instead of paying for separate tools like ConvertKit, Calendly, WordPress, Stripe, and ClickFunnels, you get all of it baked into one subscription. That's powerful, but it also explains why prices start higher.
Kajabi's core features:
Full email marketing suite with broadcasts, sequences, and automations
Website builder with templates and a blog feature
Sales pipelines and funnels with upsells, downsells, and order bumps
Communities powered by the rebuilt Kajabi Communities platform
Kajabi AI for course outlines, email copy, landing pages, and pipeline building
Podcast hosting with private and public feeds
Coaching and event scheduling without third-party calendar tools
Plans start at $89 per month for the Kickstarter plan, billed yearly, which covers one product and 250 contacts.
The Basic plan at $149 per month gives you three products and 10,000 contacts. The Growth and Pro plans climb to $199 and $399 per month, respectively.
Kajabi suits you if: You run a full digital product business, sell coaching, courses plus memberships, and want everything under one roof.
Let's talk real numbers because this is where most creators make their choice.
Cheapest entry point: At $39 per month, Teachable offers the most budget-friendly starting price among the three platforms.
If it feels like the right platform for your budget, you can use the $70 off Teachable discount deal on annual plans to reduce the cost of upgrading to the Pro plan and save more compared to monthly billing.
Best free option: Thinkific's free plan beats both rivals since Teachable charges fees on free-plan sales, and Kajabi only offers a trial.
Best value at scale: Kajabi looks expensive until you add up what it replaces. If you'd otherwise pay for email software ($30+), funnel software ($97+), scheduling tools ($15+), and a website host ($25+), the $149 Basic plan saves money.
Hidden costs to watch:
Teachable Basic plan charges a 5% transaction fee on each sale
The Thinkific Basic plan limits you to courses only, no communities
Kajabi has contact limits that bite as your email list grows
Course Building Experience Compared
All three platforms use a similar lesson structure: courses contain sections, and sections contain lessons. The differences show up in the small details.
Teachable keeps things minimal. You drag lesson types into a curriculum tree, fill in the content, and publish. The trade-off is fewer learning features, like advanced assignments or branching scenarios.
Thinkific offers the richest course-building tools. You get text lessons, video, audio, PDFs, surveys, quizzes, assignments, live lessons, and presentations. Drip schedules and prerequisites work beautifully here.
Kajabi sits in the middle for course features but pulls ahead in product variety. You build "products" that can be courses, coaching programs, podcasts, communities, or membership sites. Each follows a similar setup flow.
Selling courses needs more than a pretty player. You need landing pages, email follow-up, checkout pages, upsells, and analytics.
Email marketing comparison:
Teachable sends basic broadcasts but expects you to connect to Mailchimp or ConvertKit for real campaigns
Thinkific offers basic email tools and integrates with most major email services
Kajabi includes a full email platform with visual automation builder, segmentation, and A/B testing
Sales funnel comparison:
Teachable has simple order bumps and basic upsells
Thinkific keeps funnels light and relies on integrations
Kajabi Pipelines offer pre-built funnel templates with email sequences, landing pages, and offer pages tied together
If marketing automation matters more to you than course depth, Kajabi makes life easier. If you already use ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign, Teachable or Thinkific works fine alongside them.
All three platforms now include community tools, which became table-stakes after Circle and Skool raised the bar.
Kajabi communities feel the most polished, with spaces, live rooms, leaderboards, and gamification through challenges and points.
Thinkific communities offer spaces, events, and threaded discussions with a clean interface. Teachable communities work for basic Q&A and student interaction, but lack the depth of the other two.
All three platforms offer 24/7 email support, with chat and phone help on higher plans. Kajabi's support gets the strongest reviews on G2 and Capterra, while Teachable and Thinkific score well but trail slightly.
Each platform offers a free student mobile app on iOS and Android. Kajabi and Thinkific let you upgrade to a fully branded app on their highest tiers, which costs extra but adds polish to your brand.
Here's the short version after weighing every angle:
Pick Teachable if you're starting, want low monthly costs, and care most about getting a course live this week
Pick Thinkific if your priority is the learning experience, design freedom, and a strong free plan to test things
Pick Kajabi if you run a full business with coaching, courses, emails, and memberships, and want one tool to handle it all
The best platform is the one you actually use. Sign up for the free trials, build a sample course on each, and trust your gut on which interface clicks with you.
Once you pick, focus on creating great content because that's what students pay for, not fancy software.