Online course platforms let you build, host and sell courses, coaching, downloads, memberships and webinars. We evaluate the fee structure (transaction fees and how they scale with revenue), what the free or trial option actually gives you, product and student limits, the billing model (per tier, per product, per license or all-in-one suite), and how much of the surrounding stack — email, website, community — ships in the same seat.
5 Online Courses tools are tracked in this index. 1 of them ships a free plan (Podia). and 4 offer a trial instead (Teachable, Kajabi, Thinkific, LearnDash). The lowest published entry price in the category is $39/mo (monthly, Starter) (Teachable). Across the 5 scored Online Courses entries, the index average is 4.0/5, led by Kajabi at 4.2/5. Most common tags on this page: Online Courses (5 tools), Creator Economy (4 tools), All-in-One (2 tools), Payments (2 tools). Pricing figures behind these entries were last checked between 2026-09-19 to 2026-09-21; every tool page carries its own check date.
Browse every head-to-head in the Online Courses comparison hub →
The full set of Online Courses entries, with the plan shape each vendor actually publishes:
Every price point above is copied from the vendor's own pricing page and carries the date it was checked on the individual tool page — we do not fill gaps from third-party roundups. Where a figure could not be verified against an official source, the tool page says so instead of guessing.
Teachable is a course-first platform for selling self-paced courses, coaching and digital products with native iOS and Android student apps. It bills by product count, not by seat, and its entry tier carries a 7.5% transaction fee that drops to 0% at the Builder tier.
Kajabi is the all-in-one creator operating system: courses, coaching, podcasts, community, email marketing, landing pages and a website in one subscription. It bills by product and contact volume, and its January 2026 restructure removed the cheap Kickstarter entry — Basic is now the floor at $143/mo annual.
Thinkific is a hosted course platform that builds, markets and sells courses, communities and digital downloads without a developer. It bills by tier and is the cluster's standout on fees: 0% platform transaction fees on Start, Grow and Plus tiers, with a 5% surcharge on Basic — and the only cluster member whose free option is a 30-day full-featured trial.
LearnDash is the WordPress LMS plugin: a one-time annual license you install on your own site, with unlimited courses and learners on every tier. It bills by license (Essentials / Pro / Elite per year), takes no cut of your sales, and is the only cluster member priced annually-only.
Podia is an all-in-one creator commerce platform for courses, downloads, memberships and coaching, aimed squarely at solo sellers. It bills by tier and is the cluster's only standing free plan (1 product, 8% fee); paid tiers are flat-priced with unlimited products and 0% fees on Shaker and up.
When you compare Online Courses tools, the fields that decide the outcome are the ones this index actually stores: whether a free plan exists and what it limits, the published entry price and how it bills (per seat, per month, per workspace), what the trial covers, which of the six index dimensions the tool scores on, when each figure was last checked against the official page, and which alternatives sit in the same category. Each tool page prints those fields with its own verification date, the Online Courses comparison pages put two products side by side on the same fields, and the list pages rank the category against the rest of the index — so you can move from a shortlist to a decision without opening a vendor's sales page.
Browse the rest of the index by category: Form Builders (5) · AI Writing (5) · CRM (8) · Email Marketing (5) · Project Management (5) · No-Code (5) · Analytics (5) · Customer Support (5) · Scheduling (5) · Password & Security (5) · AI API Gateways (5) · Social Media Scheduling (5) · Invoicing & AR (5) · eSignature (5) · SEO Tools (5) · Avatar Video (5) · AI Meeting Notes (5) · Conversational AI (5) · AI Presentation Tools (5) · AI Image Generation (5) · AI Video Generation (5) · AI Transcription Services (5) · Workflow Automation (5) · AI Video (1) · AI Image (1) · AI Assistant (1) · Developer Tools (4) · AI Chat (1) · AI Agents (1) · AI Voice Generation (5) · Time Tracking (5) · AI Coding Assistants (5) · Personal AI Agents (4) · LLM Observability (5) · Expense & Spend Management (5)
5 tools are tracked here, 1 of them with a free plan, and paid entry pricing starts at $39/mo (monthly, Starter) (Teachable). Online course platforms let you build, host and sell courses, coaching, downloads, memberships and webinars. We evaluate the fee structure (transaction fees and how they scale with revenue), what the free or trial option actually gives you, product and student limits, the billing model (per tier, per product, per license or all-in-one suite), and how much of the surrounding stack — email, website, community — ships in the same seat
Podia list a free plan in this index; Podia paid plans start at $39/mo (monthly, Mover).
Teachable has the lowest published entry price on this page at $39/mo (monthly, Starter) (Teachable bills by published-product count: 1 product on Starter, 5 on Builder, 25 on Growth, 100 on Advanced. Starter charges a 7.5% transaction fee on every sale; Builder and above carry 0% fees. There is no standing free plan — entry is the 7-day trial, and annual billing saves about 22-33% per tier). Teachable does not list a free plan.
Every price point above is copied from the vendor's own pricing page and carries the date it was checked on the individual tool page — we do not fill gaps from third-party roundups. Where a figure could not be verified against an official source, the tool page says so instead of guessing.
Kajabi leads this category at 4.2/5 — Kajabi is the all-in-one creator operating system: courses, coaching, podcasts, community, email marketing, landing pages and a website in one subscription. It bills by product and contact volume, and its January 2026 restructure removed the cheap Kickstarter entry — Basic is now the floor at $143/mo annual. The category average across 5 scored entries is 4.0/5.