Teachable vs Kajabi vs Thinkific vs Podia vs LearnDash for Self Hosting Online Courses

what is the best platform to create and sell online courses we will look at five of the top options here and help you figure out which one uniquely is best for your situation based on the different features they offer I am currently using teachable think--if ik and learn - in some capacity to host my online courses and I see kajabi and patia as also good options to host your online courses the key thing to figure out is how each of these platforms can match up with your exact vision of what you're doing online I'll show you what I'm doing and how they match up with my vision of how to make the best business online to begin and then we'll talk about each of these in depth first let's look at the relative popularity of each of these platforms I've put all of the terms in Google Trends and the data shows that teachable is currently the most popular option however teachable also is a more generic search term that people might actually just google teachable the word itself and not necessarily the platform therefore that could skew it a little bit kajabi is the second most popular option probably not something someone's just going to Google on their own then after that it's patia think effect and then learn - is last that might be because learn - is actually a wordpress plugin while the other four of these are standalone therefore my first suggestion is if you already have a WordPress website learn - is the one you want to use because creating a sub domain or using a different platform as I've done to host my online courses is much less effective than just doing it all in WordPress if you don't already have a website that's on WordPress then you'll want to consider these other four however if you've got to where it wore a boo-boo what a website on WordPress and you don't use it or you could potentially switch the domain out then you may want to consider doing another all in one option learn - is what I use on Jerry banfield.com to make my online courses thus this is actually a part of my complete online teaching course which is hosted directly on Jerry banfield.com which is ideal for search engine optimization I think regardless of which platform you choose you need to just have one domain for yourself ideally it might be something like how I've got Jerry banfield.com then I've got my blog my online courses all my products all my services all on one website and whichever of these platforms you want to use it's important to put all of your eggs in one online basket for search engine ranking if you are using something like I was before at Jerry banfield.com then I was selling courses on either teachable or think afect and sending people to a different domain as far as Google's concerned both of those are separate and that's problematic when you're giving away free coupons building backlinks having people link to your courses you do not want that and it's also confusing thus the number one thing in selecting any of these is picking which one which approach you would like to use to put your entire business all on one website that leads us to a platform named kajabi which seems to be rising quickly in popularity because it's intended to be an all-in-one business platform I have not actually used this however if I was starting totally from scratch I would consider using kajabi because what you need to do otherwise is the setup I've got as it says everything in one place I need to get an affiliate link for this too because I'm just telling you this because it's good information right now at least and kajabi you can do your whole business it says instead of using WordPress and then instead of using something like click funnels or leadpages instead of using something else then teachable or think of it and I've done this to build my business instead of also doing email marketing instead of also using something else for automation instead of then using something more for groups instead of using more things to track leads and do conversions instead of having to do whoo-ha Burris kajabi offers you the ability to put all your everything all on one website and for that reason this looks like a very good option to me if you don't have a website or if you have a website you're not using and you could switch the domain out for example something like a yourname.com kajabi seems like it's a lot less of a learning curve than what i'm doing what I'm doing I have Gerry banfield.com on WordPress where I have that on a host I then have active campaign for email marketing as you can see on my resources page I've got to use all these separate services like web hosting then I've got email marketing then I also have think afect for video hosting I have all these separate services on my website which is a lot more challenging than just putting everything in one place and I'm guessing this is why I could job' is popular if you've got something like clickfunnels that apparently I haven't used it doesn't actually host online courses and it's nice because kajabi can do everything now downside of kajabi it does so many things it actually is one of the most expensive options the annual billing is 119 a month minimum or 149 a month with the monthly payment that said my web hosting costs 200 a month and my email marketing costs additional and etc the more things you use the more the cost builds up since this is intending to be a total replacement for your business instead of having all these separate services it does cost more you'll notice this plan also only allows three products if I was going to use this I would actually need this one at a minimum meaning I would have to pay a hundred ninety-nine a month minimum to use kajabi and this is what you are able to get out of it what is nice the it makes it a lot things you need to learn versus trying to learn all these different things like on my website I've learned a ton of different their skills let's take a look and compare some of the other options now outside of kajabi because kajabi is more expensive and it is not relevant if you already have your own website you wouldn't want to use kajabi if you already had your own WordPress website unless you wanted to get rid of it and replace it thus kajabi if you're starting from brand new this might be a good option if you don't have an email list if you don't have any products yet if you don't have a website and you're just getting started this could be a good option what I am using is WordPress with a plugin called learn - and this is my favorite option because I'm one about to show you on speed this if you want to have the most customizability the most control the most options this is the best setup to use and you can actually make this the very cheapest option my web hosting via Kinston which is very good has a minimum cost of $30 a month and as you'll see word the wordpress plugin approach when you'd look at the pricing is the very cheapest let's look at learn - next learn - is a wordpress plugin this is only a hundred and fifty nine dollars a year this is the very cheapest way to host your online courses and to have the greatest number of options in order to do this you need web hosting for WordPress which on my resources page I recommend Kinston I've tested a bunch of other solutions Kinston superfast they have an outstanding blog if they're on the Google cloud platform the same hosting Google uses that is why I use Kinston and I'll show you more about that in a minute you can help me out if you use my link in the description and view the pricing from there this is the best option in my opinion because I'm able to do almost anything on my WordPress website with something like kajabi you're looking at a lot of limitations if it's not built in their system if it's not set up the way they want you to do it then you are unlikely to be able to make that happen this is great if you just want to have the features they allow you to use like creating online courses a blog a basic business but if you want to be able to really do anything you going to want your own WordPress site and it's the cheapest if you put the cost together 30 dollars a month plus this for web hosting on Kingston plus if you divide this by 12 that comes out to less than $20 a month that means for $50 a month which is cheaper than almost or at the lowest cost of these other plans you can have your own WordPress website that has a ton of things you can do on it and you can put your online courses directly on your WordPress website one more thing you need if you've got to you if you decide to use learn - you will need to get a video host you can host for free on YouTube and just use unlisted videos I recommend a not because I currently I researched a lot about this Vimeo appears to be the best option you'll notice this is as little as seven dollars a month billed annually five gigabytes a week and if you need to upload more than that you can upload 20 gigabytes a week for $20 a month if you host your videos on Vimeo then you put them inside of learn - I'll show you exactly how this looks on my website you've got your WordPress website just like this you've got your course inside learn - you've got the Builder and then you just open a specific lesson when you open that lesson up then you take the link from Vimeo as I've got my videos here on Vimeo I just stick the link directly in here to embed a video with the Vimeo option I hit embed and then I've got a video lecture when you click on view lesson it looks like this when the student wants to watch they can click on the play button go through the course and to watch all the videos here without anything from YouTube on it which is ideal thus this is how learn - looks and you can integrate it with WooCommerce you can upgrade and have upgrade your WordPress website I mean and do things like put forums in it there's so much you can do learn - gives you a very Cod of customized ability within the context of WordPress the downside of this approach is there's a lot more things to learn this requires if you want to put learn - into WordPress you're going to need to know how to use WordPress you're going to need to speed WordPress up yourself you're going to need to learn how to use other plugins and manage your entire website for me I like having all of these options be and because I get to teach them also I can do a video about everything I'm learning and that gives me the ability to set up I for example I can put forms on my website if I want to I can sell my services at which you definitely want to be able to do some of the platform's are going to cover make that a little more difficult for example on my website I've got a shop where all my products and services are in the same thing from all of my online courses to my lifetime coaching that's in my partner program it's all in one place which is the benefit of WordPress and I could use something like leadpages to plug in specific pages on my website with WordPress you've got that flexibility we've covered the first two out of these based on what I think is best given the odds of what you're likely to be doing if you've got a WordPress website definitely use learn - don't even think about the rest of these unless you want to totally get rid of whatever WordPress website you've got if you don't have anything at all kajabi is probably a really good option although I haven't used it what we'll do next is cover these three teachable think if ik and patia each of these is great for just hosting online courses but not so good for actually replacing a website and as I said before because it's so important it's ideal as I've learned through a lot of experience to have everything all in one place a sub-domain even likee I used to have my courses hosted on teachable and think afect at you Jerri banfield.com and for Google that's not the same thing as Jerri banfield.com you want to have the highest amount of search engine optimization all the backlinks everything all in on the same domain and that's why I'm giving you these three options next and I'll show you a very important reason why being able to customize your own website make such a big difference first let's look at teachable teachable is the most popular option teachable I started using teachable and around 2015 I actually deleted my entire teachable school because I got so frustrated with it and wanted to start fresh from teachable I moved over to think of it think afaik has some advantages over teachable although the two of these are very similar in how they work finally you've got patia which i just found out about by looking around this seems to also be very similar to teachable and to think effects so one of the big differences with this is it does at least have an integrated blog where's for some reason teachable and think avec are not doing a great job with giving you a blog with teachable the pricing is $29.00 also just like with patia i wonder if they actually potty is a little more expensive thirty-nine dollars a month and on the shaker plan $79 a month you get to have a blog and being able to have a blog is very important if you want to sell online courses I've got a thousand plus blog post on my website I've got new blog posts coming out every day and guess what happens people find a video or post on my blog they find that post then they end up looking around oh he's got online courses oh let's take a look at this wait this is cool let me go ahead and buy this course and I get sales from people coming in on my blog even things like my partner membership and lifetime coaching for thousands of dollars people come straight in off my blog to buy these things do Google search for free you want to have a blog and it's nice that patia sets it up so that you can have a blog technically unteachable and think of it you can go through and have a blog however it is a bit annoying to execute and think of it for sure and teachable as far as I know it I don't know how much it's changed since I used it but it doesn't seem to have a very good set up for a blog either the advantage of teachable and think if ik and patia is these are very focused on just hosting online courses for hosting online courses they are very effective and they're because they're focused on it that can make things easier to sell they are both very good at uploading courses and getting the videos up and making the courses easy to sell I've sold about a hundred plus thousand dollars on teachable and think of it combined these are both really good platforms to sell online course than a lot of other people and businesses use these as well and patia seems pretty popular too so I'm guessing the same thing let's look in a little more detail at teachable teachable has features where you can do a lots of different image formats you can build a website you can have a blog if you want to unteachable and on think effect the teachable is great and think if ik both of these weren't good on mobile devices to watch the courses I've watched a teachable course by someone else recently on a mobile device and I watched make sure my own thing cafe courses work as well you can connect your domain like this you can have it and you prefer having it something like that where it's just your school comm you can even modify the language in teachable which is cool there's course completion course compliance feedback reviews and there's lots of integrations when you use zapier you can integrate with almost anything there's coupons pricing options affiliate program and if you look at these features this is very similar to think effect if you go over on think of it these are almost the exact same features that think if it's got and the pricing is very close think if ik does have a free plan where you can put some courses up and I'm thinking fake the basic plan is 49 a month which is nice that's not an annual rate that is the actual regular rate and what you might really want on think if ik is the $99 a month plan because you can if you look there some differences you can have zapier triggers here and some email integrations I used a $99 a month plan because what's nice to have is a site administrator someone else who has full control over all the courses and this can be one of the issues if you're trying to have multiple instructors something like learn - can be much easier for it and perhaps kajabi can be easier for it as well although there's ten admin users you can have which means kajabi might be a bit easier for doing this I'm a teachable and think of it it is a bit of an issue with what site admins can do versus what individual courses can do what you do need on the think if ik bundle you need it at the level where you can do memberships and bundles at the $99 a month because these tend to sell really well you also get some advanced customization that's helpful what the issue is with using some of these platforms on their own is how fast the website loads and the user experience with all of these except learn - you are forced to you can't customize very well you're stuck with whatever the platform however it's set up if you want to for example speed up your page load there's not much you can do if you're on teachable or think Vic or as far as I can see kajabi or patia whereas when you're using something like WordPress there's lots you can do I'll show you some examples of these for example this is what a think effect school looks like on youth na komm which is a private label rights marketplace is a primary thing that we're doing on uthia we've got 500 plus courses on uthia many of which are available for private label rights this is hosted with thinka 'fuck I'll show you the inside of in a little bit as you can see it's this page was pretty easy to make for the homepage think of it I chose it because it looked a lot better than teachable teachable is just for some reason kind of ugly to me and may think of it is I like how it works a bit better than teach for here's an example of the school video school online by Phil eben er this is hosted with teachable what you'll notice this is what the course landing pages look like with teachable teachable has its teachables a bit easier to use then think thick in some ways and the way the course the individual pages are laid out I actually like the way teachable does the individual course page is better if you compare this with think effect the individual course pages do not look quite as good as teachable however it is easier to make something like a nice homepage on think effect one of the keys you want to consider is how fast are these going to load Google has become obsessed with page speed which means how fast is your website load both on mobile devices and on desktop and what I tested the page load speeds out of teachable think if ik versus my website I use video school online Phil's website to test that out you're welcome Phil or sorry whatever where you want to look at it and let's look at the results this is on the Google developer tools to PageSpeed insight you can just Google PageSpeed insights to get to this you notice the homepage of video school online while it does look beautiful it looks absolutely great doesn't that look beautiful if you actually check how fast it loads it loads really slow five point six seconds on mobile and you've got to one point three seconds on desktop that's pretty slow page load time and the limitation with using anything such as teachable think efika kajabi or patia you're not going to be able to do much about this and this can make a big difference for user experience getting free search traffic and when you're sending people over from things like paid ads or YouTube video and your website loads super slow often people will just leave and you won't even realize why you're converting so low because your site's loading faster no let's check it youth in accom youth in accom is hosted with think effect think if ik is loading up significantly faster especially on mobile then teachable which these are very important stats how fast your websites loading if you've got something a load super slow you're missing out on a lot of opportunities on desktop you theta up to 82 and 59 on mobile let's take a look at my website on WordPress my website because I've applied speed optimizations and I've done a whole entire set up on my website dedicated to loading fast which I've got all of that I'm putting into the course I have on my website where it's called the complete WordPress e-commerce course I show exactly how I did all this the downside is this is a lot of work compared to just signing up for a school on teachable or think--if occur kajabi or patia however this helps me convert users a lot better this helps me keep people on the website this helps me get more search traffic from Google if you look I have a hundred page score on desktop on the home page loads very fast and 97 on mobile now let's look at some individual course pages and you'll notice this is one of the challenges that often happens using teachable or think of it is putting your courses on a sub domain for video school online fills actually got this set up on a sub domain which is awful for search engine optimization and backlinks you want your courses on the exact same main domain as your website and Phil's got it set up differently and this loads even slower at a 10 mobile and a 70 desktop let's look at on youth enna youth anal loads at this is an individual course landing page I checked home pages before now let's check individual course landing pages youth enna with think effect now you can with teachable have them all on the main URL as well Phil doesn't have his setup that way probably because the default teachable pages are kind of ugly and he wanted a custom website when people go to video school online and then actually buy the courses you have to go off to the real teachable website I'm guessing with you Thea here's an actual course that's loading 50 mobile and 94 on desktop think if ik is faster than teachable from the testing I've done and using it itself in terms of the user experience which is very good when you compare my website 90 I actually think of fake actually giving a faster load this is on a specific learn - page I've got a 90 on desktop and the nice thing is we're going to fix this up we're going to get this sped up to 100 and I'm working on how to do that now but still 84 page load time when I'm going straight to my website to the learn - landing page you compare that mobile on teachable 10 and mobile on think if ik 50 mobile 84 on my website that's a lot faster loading time therefore key consideration how fast do these websites load and if I had a kajabi example from somebody I knew use kajabi if I could have taken 10 minutes to figure that out before the video I would have done that and if you know somebody uses kajabi you can just put PageSpeed insights in there and test their website let's take a look at how the insides of these actually look they're fairly similar for example here is a course I've got I'm teachable with stack skills stack skills uses teachable to host a thousands of online courses and an advantage if you use teachable you can copy your teachable courses over to any other teachable school which is great if you want to put courses on stack skills and make more sales there which I've made a hundred and almost two hundred thousand on stack skills if you've got your courses on teachable you can copy direct two stacked skills whenever you have a new course you just email teachable and they can copy it straight into the stack skills then you email the stack commerce vendor manager you can get your course into bundles that way that is a big advantage big downside with teachable is that you're limited in what you can customize and the user experience you need to use they have specific pages for example they've got a specific sales page checkout page and thank-you page this can be great if you want something simple that you can actually go through and do versus something like WordPress that can be more challenging the courses are very quick and easy to upload to stack or to teachable which is what's that commerce uses you can just click on bulk upload drag a whole bunch of your videos over and upload it that way you can also upload through Dropbox the teachable interface is significantly better than think afect for uploading videos faster in fact teachable is the fastest I've used if you've got a whole lot of courses you can probably get them on teachable and ready to sell faster than on any other platform think if it takes significantly longer than uploading to teachable and learn - takes a comparable time as teachable although there's the added step on learn - you have to actually create the lecture like this and learn - then you need to go through and edit it and pull the Vimeo URL here and set the privacy settings on the Vimeo video so that someone just doesn't go to your Vimeo account watch all the videos you have for your online courses there you can set it up so that people have to have the private link to watch the videos however that is not nearly as fast as teachable just bulk uploading dragging publishing teachable super-fast to take your videos and stick them on there and get them up into an online course teachable also has different settings you can have your author bio teachable is a great option if you have a lot of different instructors that you want them all to publish to teachable that's probably why stack skills uses it think Vic has worked for us on youth na komm we have a about 80 instructors on think of ENCOM and we've been able to do that on youth in accom we've got about 80 instructors and think of it has been very good for building that out again same with teachable what you can do with the interface is fairly limited I think by now we've done a great job comprehensively looking over these five different platforms and options to host your online courses my purpose in filming this much depth to the video has been to give you an insight into picking which one of these is uniquely best for you because the decision to make which one of these to host with that is one of the most important decisions you'll make because as I found just quickly jumping into something like teachable and then Wow I get frustrated with the interface I don't want to use it anymore it's slow there's like a customization and then I end up deleting my whole school and starting over on think of it then I end up starting over again on Jerry banfield.com with learn - as you can imagine all of that is very time-consuming and I hope this has helped you pick out which one of these you can start with and stick with that's the most important element here is can you start with and stick with one of these in definitely my favorite two options are either to use learn - for you want that full customization and have WordPress or kajabi to me looks like a really good one to start with and stick with although I don't know how fast it actually is compared to something like a WordPress setup or compared to something like teachable and think of a teachable and think of it are both good if especially teachable if you want to make it really easy to just get your courses out and for sale and you don't care as much about what the landing pages look like if you're good with them just looking something like this which looks pretty good on Phil's website this is a basic teachable layout it's got a nice button watch promo social sharing and rolling the course custom you can just write your description put your instructor profile teachables very good for that if you want a bit more customization and you don't care about having a blog and you want to fast website you can use my link and get a one month free of that ninety-nine a month plan a four think effect however for me I'm I finally got a solution I'm doing indefinitely with WordPress directly on my website I'm very grateful for all the time you spent watching this and I hope it's been helpful to look at and figure out which of these is the best solution for you to host your online courses going forward

Channel: Jerry Banfield

Views: 29,134

Keywords: jerry banfield, jerrybanfield, Teachable, Kajabi, Thinkific, Podia, LMS, learning, management, system, LearnDash, Udemy, Skillshare, StackCommerce, Uthena, passive, income

Id: PPiLc03ENu0

Length: 31min 36sec (1896 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 30 2020