Teachable vs Skillshare vs MemberPress: Which is the Best?
Choosing between Teachable, Skillshare, and MemberPress to sell your online courses can feel overwhelming, especially as they’re quite different.
On the one hand, Teachable and Skillshare offer easy platforms for directly uploading, selling, and marketing your courses, but you won’t have full control. On the other hand, MemberPress provides more flexibility and ownership, but you’ll need to run your own WordPress website.
In short, each platform has its own perks, and it’s hard to know which one is the right fit for your online course goals. 🤔
Don’t worry – we’ve got you covered! We did a lot of research when deciding where to offer our free online video courses, and we’re here to tell you what we found out.
In this guide, we’ll break down the pros and cons of Teachable, Skillshare, and MemberPress based on what matters most.
Brief Comparison: Teachable vs. Skillshare vs. MemberPress
Let’s dive into a brief comparison of Teachable, Skillshare, and MemberPress to highlight their key differences:
An Introduction to Teachable, Skillshare, and MemberPress
Let’s start by taking a quick look at Teachable, Skillshare, and MemberPress. Later in this article, we’ll compare each platform’s features more in-depth.
Teachable is a user-friendly platform for creating, hosting, and selling digital courses and coaching. It offers unlimited course creation and student enrollment, making it a flexible solution for course creators.
With tools for posting multimedia files and engaging with students through comments, Teachable is perfect for instructors who want more interactive lessons. Plus, it allows you to link your courses to your own website with a custom domain.
💡 And as a standalone platform, you won’t need to worry about updates or backups. This allows you to focus on building a successful training business.
On the other hand, Skillshare is a great platform for teachers who want to share their knowledge and connect with a wide range of learners.
While video lessons are the main way courses are delivered, Skillshare goes beyond that. It also offers features like class projects, community discussions, and downloadable resources.
Plus, Skillshare is great for teachers who enjoy a practical approach. Whether you’re helping students design their first logo or build a photography portfolio, you’ll inspire them to dive in and create.
Finally, MemberPress is an all-in-one membership plugin and online course builder for WordPress websites.
With MemberPress, you can easily add membership levels to your site and offer different course access based on the plan a member subscribes to.
🧑🏫 MemberPress has a built-in virtual classroom that is distraction-free and works seamlessly with any WordPress theme.
Additionally, it offers online course-specific addons called Courses and CoachKit. These allow you to create and sell online courses and coaching sessions from your website.
It also includes advanced membership features like flexible pricing plans and drip content scheduling. To help you sell and manage your courses effectively, you’ll also get seamless integrations with top email marketing tools.
Keep in mind that MemberPress is a WordPress plugin, so you’ll need to create your own website to use it. For details, see our guide on how to create a membership website in WordPress.
With that in mind, we’ll show you how each platform stacks up in terms of the following factors. Feel free to go ahead and click on the jump link below to go to the factor you want to compare:
Ready? Let’s get started!
Ease of Use – Course Setup
When it comes to choosing an online course platform, ease of use is a very important factor. A user-friendly platform will make it simple for teachers to create, manage, and share their courses without technical hurdles.
Let’s compare how the 3 online learning platforms measure up in terms of ease of use.
Teachable
Teachable is a standalone platform designed to simplify online course creation and management.
You can set it up on a sub-domain, use a custom domain name to align with your branding, or link it to your school’s page for seamless integration.
Because it operates independently, Teachable handles all the updates, security patches, and backups for you. This means less time spent on administrative tasks and more time to focus on creating high-quality content and growing your business.
This platform has a user-friendly dashboard. The navigation menu is in the left-hand panel. On the ‘Home’ screen, you might notice that Teachable provides a checklist to help you set up your school.
Creating your first course is also very easy.
Teachable has powerful AI tools to help you develop course materials in just a few minutes. All you have to do is to provide a course title and a brief description.
When the AI is done generating, Teachable will take you to the ‘Setup Guide’ page. Here, you can find all the options for customizing your course, which we’ll cover in the course customization section.
To publish the course, you can simply use the bulk publish option.
And that’s it! You’ve created your first Teachable online course. Here’s what it might look like on your Teachable school site:
Skillshare
While Skillshare is more popular for finding online courses, it also lets you sign up as a teacher. With this platform, you can publish a class, offer a 1-1 session, and sell digital products.
Upon signing up as a teacher, you’ll be asked to select your areas of interest. However, this can be tricky as you can only sign up for Skillshare’s pre-listed categories.
Then, you’ll need to organize your classes according to SkillShare’s style guide: Create, Build, and Thrive.
Once you’ve prepared your learning materials, you’re ready to start recording your videos.
You can start by picking the right equipment for recording and editing. Here are some recommendations:
- Camera: Today’s smartphones are often good enough, but if you want to look more professional, you can check out the Sony Alpha ZV-E10 mirrorless camera.
- Microphone: We don’t recommend using a built-in microphone, as it might not produce clear audio. A good one to get started is the Samson C01UPRO USB Microphone.
- Video editing software: If you’re using Mac, then the iMovie is a great option for editing your videos. Meanwhile, Windows users can rely on the free Clipchamp video editor.
Next, you’ll need to set up a neat and professional-looking background. Props and good lighting can make all the difference.
Once your videos and materials are ready, it’s time to upload them to Skillshare. You can follow the platform’s Step-by-Step Uploading Guide to start your class draft and get everything uploaded properly.
MemberPress
MemberPress is a powerful WordPress membership plugin with learning management system (LMS) capabilities. Its Courses and CoachKit addons allow you to easily create online courses. They let you develop courses, add media files, edit lessons, offer 1-1 coaching programs, set up group learning, and more – all without requiring any technical expertise.
To create online courses, you can use the MemberPress Courses addon.
The first step in the course builder is creating the ‘Course Page,’ where you’ll provide essential details like the course topic, title, and description.
Since MemberPress uses the default WordPress block editor, you can get creative with the layout, giving your course page a professional and engaging design.
In addition to the basic content, you can add ‘Course Categories’ and ‘Course Tags’ to help organize your courses, set a featured image, and write a course page excerpt under the settings.
Then, you can move to the ‘Curriculum’ tab. Here, you can create sections that act as course modules. Within each section, add lessons by simply entering a title and then clicking to edit the lesson content.
You can further boost your course by adding quizzes.
Quizzes can be linked to lessons, and you can make them mandatory before users can proceed to the next lesson.
To publish, you will only need to click on the ‘Publish’ button in the course builder.
And that’s it! Here’s how the course might look on the front end:
For more details, you can see our guide on how to create online courses in WordPress.
With MemberPress, you will also need to set up memberships and access control rules.
By creating a rule, you can protect specific content, like a course, and specify conditions, such as requiring users to be part of a membership plan to gain access.
When selling your online course, you can set up one-time payments, recurring subscriptions, or lifetime memberships.
Recurring payments automate billing, saving time and reducing delays or errors for a smoother membership experience. You can set payments to recur monthly, yearly, weekly, quarterly, or at custom intervals.
Alternatively, one-time payments can be set with a lifetime option or an expiration date based on a specific calendar date or duration.
You can also enhance your offerings by including a free trial subscription.
For details on how all of this works, just see our complete MemberPress review.
Winner – Teachable or MemberPress
Overal, Teachable is the easiest online course platform to get set up on. You don’t need to create your own website to use it, and the platform handles all updates, security, and backups so you can focus on creating. Plus, the easy setup and AI tools make course creation quick and simple.
That being said, we think MemberPress is the easiest option for WordPress users. While it has a slightly steeper learning curve than Teachable, it’s pretty easy to learn if you’re already used to the WordPress block editor.
Course Customization Options
Strong customization options are key to making your course stand out. Adjusting everything from the layout to the learning experience can help you create a course that aligns with your vision.
Now, let’s dive into how each platform offers customization to enhance your course.
Teachable
On Teachable‘s ‘Setup Guide’ page, you can go about each section to edit your curriculum, add a course thumbnail, choose the course template, set up the course prices, and more.
For course templates, Teachable offers two types: Simple and Colossal. While this can be a bit limiting, we’re happy to see that the platform allows for customization of these templates.
When it comes to editing the course materials, Teachable’s editor is pretty intuitive to use. However, we have to admit that it looks and feels a little old school.
For example, in the ‘Text and images block’ screenshot below, you can see how simple the editor is. It features a wide area for drafting your materials and a toolbar for styling your text.
Teachable also allows you to upload videos and PDF resources, audio clips, and online quizzes.
Then, you can create a pricing plan for your course. The platform lets you choose from a few payment models, including free, recurring, and a one-time purchase.
To track how your courses are performing, Teachable provides built-in analytics and advanced data reporting. So, you can monitor student engagement, see how many people are completing your courses, and keep an eye on your sales.
Plus, Teachable offers unlimited course creation and student enrollment, which gives you the freedom to build as many courses or coaching programs as you want.
Skillshare
With Skillshare, you can customize the student’s learning path.
You can organize classes into playlists and let students set their own pace. Whether you prefer quick 10-minute tutorials or deeper dives into topics, there’s flexibility in how you structure your learning experience.
The video sequence label is also a great feature. It lets students easily jump between lessons or rewatch specific sections.
Additionally, you can allow students to participate in projects or workshops to promote interactivity.
Now, it’s important to note that Skillshare Originals sets the bar for quality and inspiration.
These professionally produced courses feature concise, well-structured videos with engaging visuals and practical examples. SkillShare continuously audits their content to maintain quality, so they can provide great references as you develop your own content.
MemberPress
One of the most interesting course customization features in MemberPress is cohort, which is a fancy name for group learning.
If you’re interested in setting this up, then you can check out our guide on how to offer cohort-based online courses.
Cohort-based online courses are structured so that everyone learns together, with set start and end dates. This helps create a sense of community and keeps students accountable.
Plus, students get to interact with both their instructors and classmates, making the learning experience more engaging and collaborative.
You can also require users to take a quiz before advancing to the next lesson with the MemberPress Quizzes addon.
Simply toggle the switch next to the ‘Require Previous Lesson/Quiz’ option in the course ‘Settings’ panel. This ensures users must complete the quiz before progressing further in the course.
MemberPress also offers these powerful addons for enhancing your online courses:
- MemberPress Assignments: Assign essays, digital projects, video recordings, and web-based projects to your students.
- MemberPress Gradebook: Manage student grades and real-time progress tracking in one place. It also makes it easier to provide personalized feedback.
Plus, the MemberPress CoachKit addon helps you organize and manage online coaching programs with features like client tracking, milestone setting, habit formation, and communication tools.
Milestones and habits are two key parts of the CoachKit addon. They let you set goals with due dates and organize tasks, respectively.
For each milestone, you’ll add a goal name, due date, and optional check-in questions.
Meanwhile, you can create habits by setting frequency and optional check-in questions.
Once everything is set up, you can click ‘Publish’ for the program to make it available to clients.
Here’s what it might look like in the client’s dashboard:
For details, you can see our guide on how to offer online coaching in WordPress.
Winner – MemberPress
MemberPress takes the lead because it gives you more flexibility and control when creating and selling online courses. For example, MemberPress allows you to set up cohort-based courses where everyone learns together at the same time or offer direct coaching sessions.
You can even offer different kinds of assignments with MemberPress and track student grades directly from your dashboard. These features make it easy to personalize your online courses and keep your students engaged.
Marketing Integrations
Marketing your online course effectively is very important for attracting students and boosting sales. A platform with strong marketing features can help you reach a wider audience and engage with potential learners more efficiently.
Let’s explore how each platform stacks up when it comes to marketing tools and features.
Teachable
Teachable works seamlessly with popular third-party tools, including AWeber, Zapier, and Kit. These integrations are designed to make your life easier by streamlining your marketing and operations.
With AWeber, you can manage email campaigns and engage with your students more effectively.
Zapier lets you automate tasks between Teachable and other apps, saving you time and effort. Meanwhile, Kit helps you with personalized marketing, making it easier to create email campaigns that reach the right audience at the right time.
The platform also offers a powerful sales page builder, which allows you to auto-generate professional-looking pages to market your courses and attract more students.
We also discovered Teachable offers options to enable abandoned cart emails. This allows you to reach out to potential students who didn’t complete their purchase, encouraging them to return and enroll.
Additionally, Teachable offers features for student referrals and affiliate marketing. From a marketing perspective, encouraging your students to share your courses with others helps you grow your business.
Skillshare
Skillshare is pretty limited when it comes to third-party integrations. The platform is designed to be all-in-one, so it’s not the best option if you’re looking to promote beyond your account.
Plus, as a Skillshare teacher, you’ll join a platform with over 30,000 courses. This is a highly competitive market.
Optimizing your Skillshare courses looks pretty much the same as optimizing WordPress website content. By using SEO techniques, you can make your course more visible to its target audience.
For details, you can check out our ultimate SEO guide for beginners.
Then, don’t forget to choose a standout cover image, as it’s one of the first things students notice. You should also make sure you fill out your teacher profile to build trust and credibility with students.
We like that Skillshare has ‘Staff Picks’, which are high-quality classes that are endorsed and promoted by the Skillshare team. Getting one of these badges could make your courses more visible and likely to be chosen by students.
Finally, you can promote your class on your social media, WordPress website, or any other platform to attract students to your Skillshare courses.
Plus, we found that many instructors share external resources, such as apps and websites, that can boost the learning experience.
MemberPress
MemberPress makes it easy to connect with popular email services like Constant Contact, AWeber, and Drip. These tools are perfect for keeping your audience engaged and running effective marketing campaigns.
For referral programs, it works well with AffiliateWP. Plus, it integrates with Stripe and PayPal to accept payments for your memberships and online courses.
On top of that, you can connect MemberPress with many other apps to expand its functionality even further.
Note: If you run an online store, then MemberPress is fully compatible with WooCommerce. This allows you to restrict access to products, offer VIP perks, or even create a private members-only online store for exclusive shopping experiences.
We also found features like content dripping and expiration dates to keep your learners engaged. They let you gradually release content and offer exclusive access to time-sensitive material.
This approach taps into the fear of missing out (FOMO), encouraging learners to stay active and invested in your courses or memberships.
Additionally, MemberPress uses automated notifications to keep learners informed about new content, upcoming deadlines, or special offers.
These reminders not only keep them engaged but also prompt them to take action, whether it’s completing a lesson, renewing their subscription, or making a purchase.
MemberPress supports bulk membership purchases and even lets others resell your memberships, too. This means that other businesses and organizations can help grow your audience and boost your revenue.
Winner – MemberPress
When it comes to marketing your online courses, MemberPress stands out.
While Teachable offers some great tools like a sales page generator and email marketing integrations, MemberPress takes it a step further with its deeper integration and more engaging features.
For example, MemberPress lets you connect with popular email services, helping you run highly targeted campaigns and keep your audience engaged.
Plus, it offers content dripping and expiration dates, which tap into FOMO (fear of missing out) to keep your learners invested and motivated to progress through your course.
Pricing
Pricing is a key consideration for course creators, especially since many creators are working with tight budgets. It’s important to understand what each plan offers and how the cost aligns with the features you need.
Let’s take a closer look at the pricing for each platform to help you make the best decision for your needs.
Teachable
The Teachable free version may seem attractive. However, it lacks important features, including content dripping.
Teachable paid plans start at $39 per month, but they tend to be more expensive than most online course platforms.
Additionally, some plans include transaction fees. For instance, the Basic plan charges a 5% fee on each transaction.
We also discovered that Teachable supports payment processing through PayPal, Stripe, Google Pay, and Apple Pay.
However, the timing of when you receive payments depends on the plan you choose.
Skillshare
Skillshare’s pricing is one of its standout features: you don’t need to pay to teach on this platform.
Now, since the platform works on a subscription system, people pay either monthly or yearly for a Skillshare membership. Each month, around 20% of Skillshare’s total subscription income goes towards paying teachers.
It’s important to note that teachers earn money based on the number of minutes of their classes watched and the engagement of students with their content.
Lastly, Skillshare uses Tipalti to process teacher payments.
MemberPress
MemberPress offers 3 main pricing plans to fit different needs:
- Basic ($179.50/year): Great for beginners, this plan supports unlimited members and integrates with Stripe and PayPal for payments.
- Plus ($299.50/year): Adds features like quizzes, certificates, and forums, making it ideal for interactive courses.
- Pro ($399.50/year): Includes bulk membership sales and tools like OptinMonster for advanced course monetization.
Then, you also have Elite. This plan integrates with CoachKit, which is perfect for offering personalized coaching alongside your courses.
When it comes to how much you’ll earn from selling online courses with MemberPress, it’s completely up to you. You have the freedom to set your own prices, whether it’s a one-time payment, subscription, or even a tiered pricing structure.
Plus, you won’t have to pay third-party platform fees to create and sell your online courses.
This flexibility allows you to tailor your pricing to your target audience and business goals, giving you complete control over how you monetize your course content.
Winner – MemberPress
While Skillshare’s no-cost entry and Teachable‘s affordability are appealing, MemberPress takes the win when it comes to pricing flexibility.
With plans starting at just $179.50 per year, MemberPress also offers more control over your earnings. You can set your own course prices, whether you prefer one-time payments, subscriptions, or even tiered pricing. You will also get to keep all of your profits.
This means you can adapt your pricing strategy based on your audience and business goals, giving you much more freedom compared to Skillshare’s revenue-sharing model.
Which Is the Best: Teachable vs. Skillshare vs. MemberPress?
When comparing Teachable vs. Skillshare vs. MemberPress, MemberPress stands out as the best option for most users. While all 3 platforms have their perks, MemberPress offers a unique combination of flexibility, customization, and pricing control that others can’t match.
Teachable is great if you want a straightforward platform with built-in sales pages and email marketing tools. But it can get pricey, especially with its transaction fees on some plans. It’s also less flexible when it comes to setting your own prices and offering memberships.
Skillshare is perfect for those who want to teach through videos without upfront costs. However, it works on a subscription model, where you earn based on how many minutes your students watch. This can be unpredictable, and you have less control over your pricing and monetization options.
MemberPress, on the other hand, gives you full control.
Whether you’re selling courses, memberships, or both, you get to set your own prices and offer different payment options. With flexible plans and features like quizzes, certificates, and automated notifications, MemberPress helps you create a more interactive and engaging learning experience.
Plus, it integrates seamlessly with popular tools, so you can grow your business even further.
Overall, MemberPress is the clear winner if you’re looking for a platform that lets you control pricing, build a community, and provide a personalized learning experience.
FAQs About Teachable vs. Skillshare vs. MemberPress
To help clear up any remaining doubts, let’s dive into some frequently asked questions about Teachable, Skillshare, and MemberPress or any eLearning-related ones.
What platforms are available to create an online course?
There are many platforms that can help you create online courses, including Teachable, Skillshare, and WordPress with an LMS plugin.
For WordPress users, plugins like Thrive Apprentice, AccessAlly, and MemberPress are all great options.
You can check out our expert picks of the best LMS plugins for WordPress for more details.
What is the average cost of creating an online course website?
The cost depends on factors like web hosting, a domain name, and premium tools. Expect to spend on these essentials, but it’s worth it for a professional setup. Generally speaking, you’re looking at $100 to $500 to $3000, to even as high as $30,000 or more.
For more information, you can refer to our guide on how much it really costs to build a WordPress website.
🌟 Insider Tip: Let WPBeginner’s experts design your custom WordPress website. From simple landing pages to full-fledged eLearning sites, we’ve got you covered. Starting at $599 – you can focus on growing your business while we handle the design. Book your consultation now!
What are free platforms for creating a membership website?
You can start with platforms like Skillshare or Gumroad for free.
However, investing in premium tools like MemberPress combined with its Courses and CoachKit addons gives you more features and better control over your site.
Is MemberPress an LMS?
Not exactly. It’s a membership plugin that works great for online courses when paired with its Courses and CoachKit addons. To learn more about how MemberPress works, you can check out our complete MemberPress review.
We hope this article has helped you see the differences between Teachable vs. Skillshare vs. MemberPress. Next, you might want to check out our guide on how to create and sell online courses and how to run a virtual classroom.
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