Somewhere between recording your first lesson and pressing publish, there’s a decision that quietly shapes your whole business: where the course actually lives. It sits between you and every dollar a student pays, and it charges rent to stay there. This is one small corner of the creator’s content toolkit — but it’s the corner where a wrong pick costs you real money every month. So let’s choose carefully.
The verdict, up front (TL;DR). There is no single best course platform — there’s a best one for your revenue and your patience. Podia is the gentlest, cheapest real entry ($42/mo, though its Mover plan takes 5%). Teachable Starter is the lowest sticker price ($29/mo annually) but its 7.5% fee punishes success. Thinkific gets you to genuine 0% fees — only if you use its in-house payments. Kajabi is the all-in-one for people already earning, starting around $143/mo. Match the platform to the money you’ll actually make in year one, not the money you hope to.
The two questions that actually decide this
Before you compare a single feature, answer two things honestly.
First: how much will you make in year one? Not your dream number — your sober one. This matters because course platforms charge you two ways, a monthly fee and often a cut of sales, and the math flips depending on volume. A “cheap” plan with a 7.5% transaction fee quietly becomes the expensive one the moment you start selling.
Second: do you want an all-in-one home, or just a place to host lessons? Some of these platforms are entire businesses in a box — email, sales funnels, a website, a community. Others do one thing, hosting your course, and expect you to bring your own email and site. Paying for the box when you only need the shelf is the most common way creators overspend here.
Hold those two answers in mind. Everything below turns on them.
The at-a-glance comparison
Here’s where the four land in 2026. Prices are the effective monthly rate when billed annually; transaction fees are what the platform takes, on top of the usual payment-processor fee (Stripe or PayPal, roughly 2.9% + $0.30) that everyone pays no matter what.
| Platform | Entry plan (annual) | Platform transaction fee | Free plan? | Best described as |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Podia | Mover — $42/mo | 5% (Mover); 0% on Shaker+ | No (trial only) | Simple, cheap digital-product shop |
| Teachable | Starter — $29/mo | 7.5% (Starter); 0% on Builder+ | No (7-day trial) | Course host with a low sticker price |
| Thinkific | Basic — $40/mo | 0% via Thinkific Payments; 1-5% surcharge if you use your own Stripe | No (30-day trial) | Course-focused builder |
| Kajabi | Basic — $143/mo | 0% via Kajabi Payments (small surcharge on third-party) | No (14-day trial) | All-in-one business platform |
Two things in that table trip people up constantly, so let me pull them out.
The transaction-fee trap nobody explains
“No transaction fees” is the most misleading phrase in this whole category, and both Thinkific and Kajabi lean on it.
Here’s what that looks like in practice. Thinkific genuinely charges 0% — as long as you process payments through Thinkific Payments. Bring your own Stripe account instead and it applies a penalty surcharge: 5% on the Basic plan, 2% on Start, 1% on Grow, on your first million in sales. Kajabi does a milder version of the same, adding a surcharge (2% down to 0.5% by tier) when you use an outside processor. The 0% is real, but it comes with a leash: use our checkout, or pay for the privilege of using yours.
Teachable is more honest about the sting, and it stings more. Its Starter plan carries a flat 7.5% transaction fee — the heaviest of the group. On paper $29 a month looks like the bargain of the bunch. But do the arithmetic: at even a few thousand dollars of monthly sales, that 7.5% dwarfs the price gap to the fee-free Builder plan. The break-even lands around $533 in monthly revenue — past that, Starter is costing you money to save you money.
The lesson isn’t “avoid fees.” It’s that the cheapest sticker price and the cheapest total cost are almost never the same plan. Sketch your year-one revenue, multiply, and re-rank.
Time to your first course
Sticker price and fees decide the long game. But there’s a shorter game that matters just as much when you’re staring at a blank course builder at night: how fast can you actually ship a lesson?
This is where the all-in-one/single-purpose split shows its face again. Kajabi gives you the most, which means it also asks the most of you up front — you’re setting up not just a course but potentially an email system, a funnel, a site. That’s power if you’ll use it and drag if you won’t. Podia sits at the opposite end: it’s deliberately plain, and a determined creator can have a product live in an afternoon because there’s simply less to configure. Teachable and Thinkific land in the middle — course-first builders that get you to a published lesson quickly without pretending to be your whole business.
If your goal this month is a course that exists and sells, the simpler tools win on speed. You can always graduate to more platform later. You can’t get this month back.
Who each one is really for
Let me frame these the way I’d frame them for a friend over coffee, by the creator you are — not by a feature grid.
Podia is for the creator who wants to sell something this week. A workshop, a template pack, a small cohort. Its Mover plan is the cheapest genuine entry at $42 a month, and setup is refreshingly quick. The catch is Mover’s 5% fee and its newer caps (50 products, 500 videos), so as you grow you’ll want Shaker’s fee-free tier. Best for testing an idea without a big commitment.
Teachable is for the beginner who wants the lowest possible starting bill and isn’t selling much yet. At $29 a month annually, Starter is the smallest check to write. Just go in clear-eyed about the 7.5% fee, and plan to move up to Builder the moment your sales make that fee bite — which happens sooner than you’d think.
Thinkific is for the creator who’s serious about courses specifically and will commit to its payment system. Use Thinkific Payments and you get true 0% platform fees, which over a year of real sales is genuine money kept. Bring your own Stripe and the surcharge undercuts the whole appeal, so decide that up front. Best for a focused course business, not a sprawling one.
Kajabi is for the creator who’s already earning and is tired of duct-taping five tools together. It’s the priciest floor here (~$143/mo, after its first price increase in about a decade in early 2026), and it’s overkill — an expensive way to host three videos — if you won’t use the email, funnels, and community it bundles. But if you will, one bill replacing four is a fair trade. Best for the established seller consolidating a stack.
When none of the four is the answer
Sometimes the honest recommendation is to look sideways. If your budget is genuinely zero right now, Systeme.io offers a real free-forever plan — one course, unlimited emails, 0% fees — that will carry a first launch further than any trial. If you already feel Kajabi’s price pressing and you’re weighing an exit, I’ve ranked the escape routes by what part of Kajabi you’re actually replacing in Kajabi alternatives — because “replace the whole suite” and “replace just the course host” lead to very different answers.
The workflow it unlocks
Whichever you choose, the platform is only the shelf. The course still needs slides that don’t look like a 2009 webinar (that’s a job for Canva, not Figma for most of us), and it needs people who trust you enough to buy — which is what a newsletter quietly builds in the background while you teach. Pick the platform that fits your year-one numbers, ship the first module this week, and let real sales tell you when to upgrade. A ceiling you’ve hit is information. An upgrade prompt is just a prompt.
Sources
- Kajabi pricing (Basic $143/mo annual; Growth $199; Pro $399; Kickstarter $89 removed from public pricing Jan 2026; surcharges; first increase in ~10 years): https://kajabi.com/pricing — accessed 2026-09-26
- Kajabi pricing analysis (cross-check, updated 2026-04-04): https://www.learningrevolution.net/kajabi-pricing/ — accessed 2026-09-26
- Teachable pricing (renamed Starter/Builder/Growth/Advanced 2025; Starter $29 annual + 7.5% fee; no free plan): https://teachable.com/pricing — accessed 2026-09-26
- Teachable pricing analysis (cross-check, updated 2026-04-04): https://www.learningrevolution.net/teachable-pricing/ — accessed 2026-09-26
- Thinkific pricing (Basic $40/mo annual; 0% via Thinkific Payments, 1-5% surcharge on own Stripe; ~10% increase Aug 13 2026; free plan retired): https://www.thinkific.com/pricing/ — accessed 2026-09-26
- Thinkific pricing analysis (cross-check, updated 2026-09-10): https://schoolmaker.com/blog/thinkific-pricing — accessed 2026-09-26
- Podia pricing (Mover $42/mo + 5% fee; Shaker $84 0%; Earthquaker $150; free plan retired): https://www.podia.com/pricing — accessed 2026-09-26
- Podia transaction fees (help doc): https://help.podia.com/en/articles/11371138-understanding-podia-transaction-fees — accessed 2026-09-26
- Systeme.io pricing (free-forever tier: 1 course, unlimited emails, 0% fees): https://systeme.io/pricing — accessed 2026-09-26
